Coronavirus Thread

[ARM1968]

2 minutes ago, Line-X said:

Recently? Has it? 

 

As I said, there is zero evidence to substantiate the lab leak theory, simply conjecture in the popular press. It is theoretically possible, but there is nothing in support of that claim, so @whoareyaaa is incorrect to state it as fact.

 

Not "my research". Nothing to do with me. The evidence to the contrary is based upon data and findings in support of zoonotic spillover and subject to the scientific method. There is zero evidence in support of the lab leak theory, simply supposition. 

 

Please do. Commence with the evidence in support of the lab leak theory - naturally avoiding the confirmation bias that you refer to.

 

Oh dear. Is there? Sure about that are you? The fields of virology, immunology and epidemiology would beg to differ. Would you like to read it and cast your expert eye over it? - because you obviously haven't.

Nor have you. I’m not talking about SARS viruses in bats and other known carriers. That is well known. However there is NO animal carrier of SARS-Cov2. They cannot find it. As I say, those far closer to the research than you, are now fairly certain that this virus is the result of lab manipulation. You can keep crying about it if you like, but you’re wrong. It happens, just put your big boy pants on and accept it. 

[Górnik Leicester]

Now I know that after a bout of Covid, it can show up on a PCR for a while after, but how about on LFT tests?

 

Wife and son have both had it. Wife's isolation ends today, and has been testing negative for a day-or-two now. Son's isolation ends on Tuesday, but his LFT is still lighting up like a Christmas tree. 

 

He has no symptoms - is the continued positive LFT anything to worry about, or should we just let him loose once his 10 days are up? 

[Babylon]

44 minutes ago, ousefox said:

Does anybody know anyone who has had covid once and then had it again, but worse?

 

Or seen any data on this?

 

I imagine a good proportion of the population, like myself, will have had 3 doses and a bout of covid at some point now.

I know someone who had it early, the probably got delta after than and said it was worse second time.

[Babylon]

11 minutes ago, ARM1968 said:

Latest study as reported on SKY news today suggests what we already know from South Africa - Omicron is significantly more contagious and shows far greater immune escape. They did not put any numbers on it as far as I could see. 
 

However, the most important finding was that Omicron causes far less damage in the lungs and doesn’t replicate in the respiratory system as well. The last bit I found odd, but there you go. So more transmissible but far less severe. 

And the models would have been done long before this data was available. 
 

More transmissible can also be worse than more severe.

[Buce]

A new peer-reviewed research paper points to the likelihood that the COVID-19 pandemic originated at a seafood and wildlife market in Wuhan, China, rather than from a Chinese laboratory studying bat viruses.

The paper, by University of Arizona evolutionary biologist Michael Worobey, supports the consensus among virology experts that the pandemic’s origin was natural — that the SARS-CoV-2 virus causing COVID-19 spread via contacts between humans and animals, first from bats, then to intermediate mammalian species, and then to humans. Worobey’s report was published Thursday in the journal Science.

Worobey’s finding that the earliest identified COVID-19 cases centered around the Huanan Market in central Wuhan, the teeming metropolis where the outbreak apparently originated, “takes the lab-leak idea almost completely off the table,” he told me.

 

Worobey notes that more than half of the earliest identified COVID-19 cases were centered around the market.

The patients either worked at the market or had friends or other contacts who did, some of whom has visited their homes. Others lived in the “direct vicinity” of the market and may have been connected by only one or two transmissions of the highly infectious virus to someone with direct contact with the market.

 

“So many of the early cases were tied to this one Home Depot-sized building in a city of 11 million people, when there are thousands of other places where it would be more likely for early cases to be linked to if the virus had not started there,” he says.

 

For even early cases not directly linked to the market to arise among patients with home addresses clustered around the market “is an absolutely crucial point,” he says. “There’s no way you should expect a bunch of people with the earliest cases of the virus to live around the market unless it started at the market.”

Worobey’s paper takes aim at one of the central contentions of lab-leak proponents — that Chinese investigators tied the earliest COVID cases to the Huanan Market deliberately to steer attention away from government laboratories in Wuhan, specifically the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The institute was known to have been studying bat viruses purportedly similar to SARS-CoV-2.

 

The paper undermines a competing theory that the SARS-CoV-2 virus leaked from the Wuhan institute or another lab studying bat viruses, whether inadvertently or as the result of secret bioweapon research. No evidence of research at those labs on viruses that could be precursors to SARS-CoV-2 has ever emerged.

The lab-leak theory originated in 2020 among ideologues in the State Department under then-President Trump. For them, blaming a pandemic on the Chinese government served the dual purposes of scoring points against a geopolitical adversary and distracting attention from the Trump administration’s incompetent response to the pandemic.

Worobey performed what he calls a “deep dive” into the chronology and pattern by which the earliest patients were identified at local and regional hospitals.

He found that doctors were finding patients with what turned out to be telltale signs of COVID-19, such as distinctive X-ray images of infected lungs and patients’ failure to respond to customary antiviral treatments, well before anyone identified the market as an epicenter of the infection.

(Reprinted with permission from the American Assn. for the Advancement of Science)

That ruled out any chance that investigators had “cherry picked” the early cases to place blame on the market and divert it from government labs.

“The experiences of these hospitals as they went from not understanding anything about these new cases to its dawning on people at different places and different times that it’s spreading,” Worobey says, “that rules out ascertainment bias. The link to the market is real, not a mirage.”

Worobey concludes that the earliest known COVID-19 case was that of a female seafood vendor at the market, who fell ill on Dec. 11, 2019, and who told investigators that she knew of several other people who fell ill with the same symptoms around the same time.

That conflicts with the long-held identification of the first case as that of a 41-year-old male accountant who had been reported as falling ill on Dec. 8, despite living some 20 miles from the seafood market and having no connection to it.

Worobey unearthed reports, confirmed by hospital records, that the accountant’s initial disease was related to a dental problem, not the virus. He did not fall ill with COVID-19 until Dec. 16, possibly during a hospital visit for his dental treatment or during a subway commute, and was hospitalized on Dec. 22.

Worobey’s paper adds to the growing body of research pointing to a natural, or “zoonotic” origin of the pandemic. That conclusion is regarded as overwhelmingly likely by virologists, especially since it matches the path by which viral pandemics have typically started throughout history.

Worobey was an instigator an co-author of a May 14, 2021, open letter published in Science and signed by himself and 17 other scientists urging a “dispassionate, science-based” inquiry into the two hypotheses.

He says he was concerned that the potential that the virus escaped from a lab had been dismissed “prematurely,” though “even at that time, I thought a natural origin was more likely, though I thought the lab-leak scenario was much more of a contender than I think now.”

Multiple research findings since the letter’s publication have dealt “body blows” to the lab-leak idea, he told me. Those include a published paper documenting that wildlife susceptible to the virus were being sold illegally at the Huanan Market, which Chinese authorities initially denied.

Other research has established that viruses collected from bats at a copper mine in Mojiang, on the Laotian border about 800 miles from Wuhan, and studied at the Wuhan institute are not nearly as genetically similar to SARS-CoV-2 as initially reported. That means they could not have been progenitors of the pandemic virus.

“I’ve been very much open to the lab-leak idea,” Worobey says. “I would be very happy to have rejected the natural origin idea with this deep dive that I’ve done. But that’s just not how it worked out.”

Proponents of the lab-leak hypothesis argue that no empirical evidence exists for a natural spillover, as no animals of potentially intermediate species have yet been found to carry antibodies for the virus.

That’s misleading, however. Scientists have found evidence pointing to an evolutionary pathway leading to SARS-CoV-2 from closely related viruses found in Laos and Cambodia, about 1,000 miles from Wuhan.

“The common wisdom is that we don’t know very much about the emergence of SARS-CoV-2,” virologist Robert Garry of Tulane University told a colloquium sponsored by the Global Virus Network earlier this week. He observed that nine coronaviruses that share structural features with SARS-CoV-2 have been known to infect humans, including the original SARS virus that spread globally and killed more than 700 people in 2002-2004, and the MERS virus that spread primarily in the Middle East in 2012.

“Compared to these other viruses, we actually know more about the emergence SARS-CoV-2,” he said. “We know more about how it got into the human population, we know the proximal ancestor, we know there’s a bat, we know the particular kind of bat, we have a virus that’s extremely close to SARS-CoV-2 [a virus isolated from bats in Laos], and we know the place that the virus spilled over” from animals to people.

“We’ve made actually some great strides with determining the origin of SARS-CoV-2,” Garry said. “You have to believe in quite a few impossible things to believe that the virus leaked from a lab at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.”

 

https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2021-11-19/a-new-research-paper-evidence-for-the-animal-origin-of-covid-19

 

@ARM1968

 

 

Edited 19 December 2021 by Buce

[ARM1968]

1 minute ago, Babylon said:

And the models would have been done long before this data was available. 
 

More transmissible can also be worse than more severe.

The modelling is flawed, it always has been, but it’s only as good as it’s data points. 
 

More transmissible could lead to more bad cases granted if the infected numbers rocket, which it looks like they will. However, it could ultimately prove to be the end of the pandemic too. So let’s hope for the best. 

[Parafox]

2 hours ago, Line-X said:

Popular opinion always does know better. "No one will ever convince me otherwise". 

Problem is the only person that will convince Mr Farrington of anything is the man himself. He'll never accept anyone else's POV or the facts as presented to him however incontrovertible. He strikes meas a person who will scour the Internet to find proof of his own views. Whether that information is correct or accurate or proven doesn't matter. 

Edited 19 December 2021 by Parafox

[HighPeakFox]

Just now, Parafox said:

Problem is the only person that will convince Mr Farrington of anything is the man himself. He'll never accept anyone else's POV or the facts as presented to him however incontrovertible 

I am sure I can think of one or two foul public figures who he'd listen to.

 

There's another poster (who I won't name) who should be given a room for the two of them to stoke each others' absurdities.

[String fellow]

4 hours ago, Foxdiamond said:

I wonder if these people ever take expert advice on anything or do they always know better

If they take their advice from Piers Corbyn, we're all doomed. Glad he's been arrested.

[yorkie1999]

14 minutes ago, ARM1968 said:

Nor have you. I’m not talking about SARS viruses in bats and other known carriers. That is well known. However there is NO animal carrier of SARS-Cov2. They cannot find it. As I say, those far closer to the research than you, are now fairly certain that this virus is the result of lab manipulation. You can keep crying about it if you like, but you’re wrong. It happens, just put your big boy pants on and accept it. 

Maybe a different virus passes over to a human and then mutated into what we have now

 

[st albans fox]

14 minutes ago, Górnik Leicester said:

Now I know that after a bout of Covid, it can show up on a PCR for a while after, but how about on LFT tests?

 

Wife and son have both had it. Wife's isolation ends today, and has been testing negative for a day-or-two now. Son's isolation ends on Tuesday, but his LFT is still lighting up like a Christmas tree. 

 

He has no symptoms - is the continued positive LFT anything to worry about, or should we just let him loose once his 10 days are up? 

my kids lft’s all showed negative before their isolation period ended 

 

afaik, lft’s doesn’t  show positive like PCR’s once you are no longer infectious. My youngest’s lft’s slowly showed the line getting fainter until it disappeared around day 8. If your son’s is still very strong then you should assume he is still infectious.  Hopefully by Tuesday the line will be gone. 

[SpacedX]

4 minutes ago, ARM1968 said:

Nor have you. I’m not talking about SARS viruses in bats and other known carriers. That is well known. However there is NO animal carrier of SARS-Cov2. They cannot find it. As I say, those far closer to the research than you, are now fairly certain that this virus is the result of lab manipulation. You can keep crying about it if you like, but you’re wrong. It happens, just put your big boy pants on and accept it. 

Oh Jeez. Like I said, it's nothing to do with me.

 

Righto. Thanks for that. You know best. Could you produce the scientific evidence in support of a lab leak demonstrating that this virus is the result of lab manipulation? Because, apologies, everything that I have seen is driven by the popular press as opposed to science and treats the idea that the virus escaped from a lab credulously. They either downplay or entirely ignore the latest scientific findings that support the theory that the virus’ origin can be found in the animal kingdom.

 

Contrary to your assertion, the view accepted by a preponderance and consilience of experts in virology, immunology and epidemiology is that COVID-19 is caused by a coronavirus from an animal. Simply because it hasn't been identified does not negate that. COVID-19 is a zoonosis, a human disease of animal origin. However, the animal source of SARS-CoV-2, the virus behind the COVID-19 pandemic, has not yet been confirmed. It is likely to have its ancestral origins in a bat species but it probably reached humans through an intermediary species or mutated within humans to be able to be transmitted between people and subsequently cause disease. 

 

I'm not crying about anything, For the benefit of myself and everyone reading this thread, I'm inviting you to produce the empirical evidence that SARS-CoV-19 was the result of lab manipulation because I obviously missed that. I will willingly stand corrected and would be fascinated to see it. As you rightly cautioned, you will naturally avoid such confirmation bias as the popular press or cherry picked data.

 

In your own time. 

[Parafox]

1 minute ago, yorkie1999 said:

Maybe a different virus passes over to a human and then mutated into what we have now

 

Wasn't bird flu a result of transferred virus from birds to humans? 

[ARM1968]

3 minutes ago, yorkie1999 said:

Maybe a different virus passes over to a human and then mutated into what we have now

 

They find the carrier animal, the progenitor if you will. It’s what they do. They cannot find the one for this virus. If they ever do I might change my mind, but when a lot more informed people than us are claiming that the virus likely escaped from a lab you really should listen, because to even suggest it is a big thing. 

[SpacedX]

1 minute ago, Parafox said:

Wasn't bird flu a result of transferred virus from birds to humans? 

H1N1 is an avian influenza virus. Again, it's not known precisely which animal it originated from but it was of avian origin, so likely came from farmed poultry or wild birds. Virologists know that animals have been the source of most of the viral diseases afflicting humanity.

 

 

[ARM1968]

3 minutes ago, Line-X said:

Oh Jeez. Like I said, it's nothing to do with me.

 

Righto. Thanks for that. You know best. Could you produce the scientific evidence in support of a lab leak demonstrating that this virus is the result of lab manipulation? Because, apologies, everything that I have seen is driven by the popular press as opposed to science and treats the idea that the virus escaped from a lab credulously. They either downplay or entirely ignore the latest scientific findings that support the theory that the virus’ origin can be found in the animal kingdom.

 

Contrary to your assertion, the view accepted by a preponderance and consilience of experts in virology, immunology and epidemiology is that COVID-19 is caused by a coronavirus from an animal. Simply because it hasn't been identified does not negate that. COVID-19 is a zoonosis, a human disease of animal origin. However, the animal source of SARS-CoV-2, the virus behind the COVID-19 pandemic, has not yet been confirmed. It is likely to have its ancestral origins in a bat species but it probably reached humans through an intermediary species or mutated within humans to be able to be transmitted between people and subsequently cause disease. 

 

I'm not crying about anything, For the benefit of myself and everyone reading this thread, I'm inviting you to produce the empirical evidence that SARS-CoV-19 was the result of lab manipulation because I obviously missed that. I will willingly stand corrected and would be fascinated to see it. As you rightly cautioned, you will naturally avoid such confirmation bias as the popular press or cherry picked data.

 

In your own time. 

Couldn’t find your big boy pants I guess. You are wrong. Like I say it happens and if I considered you worth the effort I would try, but you wouldn’t listen anyway. So hold to your delusions and enjoy the ride you’re on. 

[FoxesDeb]

49 minutes ago, ARM1968 said:

Well that’s odd as it has recently been stated in the press and by ‘officials’ that the lab leak is most likely. They have failed to find the animal carrier which they did quickly in the case of SARS and MERS. 
 

I can only assume your research is based on confirmation bias. 
 

A number of very good scientists, including the creator of mRNA technology say that the virus shows all the hallmarks of being created in the lab. 
 

I could enter in to this with you, but it would be pointless in reality. I mean there is literally zero evidence that this virus occurred naturally. 

Can you share the sources for this please? Because all the peer reviewed evidence I've read says pretty much the opposite... 

[ARM1968]

Buce - did you just happen to have that ready. Awesome work. 
 

Love the links and reports of work done in the Wuhan lab on gain of function work on exactly this kind of virus, paid for by the USA and coordinated by Fauci himself. 
 

So they’re working on a virus exactly like Covid-19 in Wuhan where the outbreak originated, with funding for exactly that from the USA, and you think it occurred naturally?  Ok. 
 

You do understand that there is a lot of damage limitation going on and placating of China, yes? Oh and research funding - where is that coming from?  

[SpacedX]

2 hours ago, ARM1968 said:

but when a lot more informed people than us are claiming that the virus likely escaped from a lab you really should listen

Who precisely? Could you refer me to this - avoiding isolated appeal to authority? Because so far as I can tell this is a false canard foisted by social media and the popular press. 

 

What of the lot more "informed people" than you that are currently demonstrating precisely the opposite?

 

(I believe that you mentioned confirmation bias)? 

 

2 hours ago, ARM1968 said:

Couldn’t find your big boy pants I guess. You are wrong. Like I say it happens and if I considered you worth the effort I would try, but you wouldn’t listen anyway. So hold to your delusions and enjoy the ride you’re on. 

Yes, I'm perfectly prepared to listen, I'm requesting that - and likewise I'm ready to don my "big boy pants" and accept the possibility that I'm wrong - but I'll require evidence to do that. I'm inviting you to demonstrate it. Nothing to hold on to here - science works through falsification. I'm used to it. As far as I was aware, all the available evidence gathered to date indicates zoonotic origin, whilst there is none in support of the lab leak theory beyond conjecture and the circumstantial. Apologies, you clearly know better.

 

As requested, for the benefit of myself and everyone reading this thread, I'm asking you to produce the empirical evidence that SARS-CoV-19 was the "result of lab manipulation" because I completely missed that. Again, I will willingly stand corrected and would be fascinated to see it. As you rightly cautioned, you will naturally avoid such confirmation bias as the popular press or cherry picked circumstantial evidence.

 

You have the floor...and I'm listening. 

Edited 19 December 2021 by Line-X

[Farrington fox]

20 minutes ago, Parafox said:

Problem is the only person that will convince Mr Farrington of anything is the man himself. He'll never accept anyone else's POV or the facts as presented to him however incontrovertible. He strikes meas a person who will scour the Internet to find proof of his own views. Whether that information is correct or accurate or proven doesn't matter. 

I’ll accept anyones pov. Doesn’t mean I’ll agree with them. I don’t agree with lockdowns it’s as simple as that. 

[Farrington fox]

21 minutes ago, HighPeakFox said:

I am sure I can think of one or two foul public figures who he'd listen to.

 

There's another poster (who I won't name) who should be given a room for the two of them to stoke each others' absurdities.

Jesus Christ 🤦🏼‍♂️

[SpacedX]

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackbrewster/2021/06/16/heres-what-dr-fauci-has-said-about-covids-origins-and-the-lab-leak-theory/?sh=3c82c61ea853

[SpacedX]

4 minutes ago, ARM1968 said:

Buce - did you just happen to have that ready. Awesome work. 
 

Love the links and reports of work done in the Wuhan lab on gain of function work on exactly this kind of virus, paid for by the USA and coordinated by Fauci himself. 
 

So they’re working on a virus exactly like Covid-19 in Wuhan where the outbreak originated, with funding for exactly that from the USA, and you think it occurred naturally?  Ok. 
 

You do understand that there is a lot of damage limitation going on and placating of China, yes? Oh and research funding - where is that coming from?  

Is that it?

[HighPeakFox]

2 minutes ago, Farrington fox said:

Jesus Christ 🤦🏼‍♂️

I didn't have him in mind in this instance.

[Lionator]

22 minutes ago, FoxesDeb said:

Can you share the sources for this please? Because all the peer reviewed evidence I've read says pretty much the opposite... 

Somebody (Alina Chan) who has a book to sell was invited to a commons event this week and answered questions and said this. 

 

The theory is dismissed by pretty much all credible virologists.

Edited 19 December 2021 by Lionator