Coronavirus from Wuhan Lab
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@jon-nyc said in Coronavirus from Wuhan Lab:
Twitter says the authors are from a Steve Bannon org.
Good recap here:
other virologists disagree and say the paper makes false claims about a number of basic facts. “Basically, it's all circumstantial and some of it is entirely fictional,” Dr. Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at Columbia University, told The Daily Beast of the study.
The paper leads with a claim that the coronavirus' genes are "suspiciously similar to that of a bat coronavirus discovered by military laboratories" in China—an assertion Rasmussen says shouldn’t be surprising because “they are related SARS-like coronaviruses.”
The study’s authors made a similar claim about a portion of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein—which viruses use to breach and infect cells—and wrote that it’s similar to the original SARS virus in a “suspicious manner” and suggests genetic manipulation. “SARS-CoV also used ACE2 as a cellular receptor, as do other SARS-like bat coronaviruses,” Rasmussen says. “It is not suspicious and is in fact expected that the receptor binding domains that bind the same protein would be similar.”
Rasmussen also said that the paper misrepresented basic facts about another part of coronavirus spike proteins known as furin cleavage sites. The authors claim that SARS-CoV-2’s cleavage site is “unique” and unseen elsewhere in nature. But according to Rasmussen, “Furin cleavage sites occur naturally in many other beta-CoVs, including MERS-CoV and other SARS-like bat coronaviruses.”
Regarding Bannon (from the same site:
The study is the work of the Rule of Law Society and the Rule of Law Foundation, sister nonprofit organizations that Bannon was instrumental in creating. According to documents posted on the Society’s website last year, he served as that group’s chair. The Bannon connection was first spotted by Kevin Bird, a Ph.D. candidate at Michigan State University, and shared by Carl Bergstrom, a biology professor at the University of Washington, who called the study “bizarre and unfounded.”
A search of Google Scholar and the Rule of Law Society and Rule of Law Foundation websites indicates that the organizations have not previously published scientific or medical research, and it’s unclear whether the paper received any peer review. It was posted on Monday on the website Zenodo, a publicly available repository of scientific and academic research to which anyone can upload their work.
Both of the nonprofits behind the study were formed in conjunction with exiled Chinese billionaire Guo Wengui, with whom Bannon has collaborated on a number of advocacy efforts targeting the Chinese government and business endeavors that have drawn the scrutiny of federal law enforcement officials.
And the report that her account was suspended was from Zero Hedge, so there's that, LOL.
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So, basically, the report is political bullshit wrapped up in a lot of convincing sounding techno-babble?
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Wouldn't shock me either way. Also wouldn't surprise me if the gov't for political reasons decided to down play it if it turns out this was created in a lab.
Pretty sure we create nasty stuff in labs too. I doubt the Chinese spread it intentionally if it was their creation.
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@Doctor-Phibes said in Coronavirus from Wuhan Lab:
So, basically, the report is political bullshit wrapped up in a lot of convincing sounding techno-babble?
Li-Meng Yan's mother has been arrested.
A reasonable person would wonder why that happened.
Perhaps she's a bank robber, or a burglar. At age 63, I suppose that's possible.
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"Now look here, you Baltic gas passer... " - Mik, 6/14/08
The saying, "Lite is just one damn thing after another," is a gross understatement. The damn things overlap.
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You certainly won't find me defending the Chinese communists. They're monstrous. What is happening to Hong Kong and to Chinese Muslims is clearly tyranny in action.
That doesn't mean that what she's saying is true. Neither does her mother being arrested, which is also barbaric.
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@Larry said in Coronavirus from Wuhan Lab:
So you think a woman would manufacture a lie knowing her mother might be killed because of it?
Yes, she might, if she thought it was worth the risk to bring down the Chinese government, but I'm not assuming she's lying. She could just be wrong. People are heavily swayed by opinion and prejudice, and a lot of other scientists are saying the virus is naturally occurring. They could also be wrong, of course.
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@Larry said in Coronavirus from Wuhan Lab:
What does the statistics say................
If you read the paper, there's an awful lot of stuff in there I don't understand. It could be data, it could be techno-babble - I have no idea. I doubt you can tell the difference either. I guess just making up your mind because you want to believe her is one approach. Like I said, there are a lot of highly qualified folks who don't agree with her.
