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Guess What Just Went Viral in China?
Xi didn’t actually admit that the coronavirus now devastating large swathes of China had escaped from one of the country’s bioresearch labs. But the very next day, evidence emerged suggesting that this is exactly what happened, as the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology released a new directive entitled: “Instructions on strengthening biosecurity management in microbiology labs that handle advanced viruses like the novel coronavirus.”
It’s probably nothing.
Published in Science & Technology
That is true, but if you read my comment and think about what I said, you will realize that it’s irrelevant.
I didn’t say, imply, or hint at the thought which you’ve attributed to me, nor do believe it.
Mark, you’re actually being pretty coy about your point of view here. Could you put the darts down for a minute and deign to write a few words in the affirmative putting forward your own position?
I’ll jump in here. He doesn’t believe in math, though he does believe in logic. How’s that? 😜
Those wild and wacky conspiracy theorists over at the State Dept. raised the Travel Advisory Level to “Exercise Increased Caution” for Japan and South Korea yesterday. The level for China is “Do Not Travel.”
Don’t worry. There’s nothing to see here. Move along.
Note to @markcamp: A straight line on a semi-log plot means exponential growth.
This is the year we found out that “Wuhan” is Chinese for “Sverdlovsk.”
That would be self-contradictory.
You are refuting something that you imagine, incorrectly, that I must have thought.
When you read what I write, you should only assume that I meant what I actually wrote.
Been there!
This stems from # 22, right?
To what conspiracy theory were you referring there?
Yeah, you left out the emoticon in quoting me, accidentally I’m sure, that indicates it’s not to be taken literally. So, no kiddin’ it’s self contradictory.
Scott Adams claims about 1/3 of people can’t recognize humor without an explicit cue. We’ve now seen an example of a person who could not recognize even with an explicit cue.
Others have repeatedly asked you to clarify what you mean. Take that as a clue that your writings are unclear. Snarky responses don’t count.
Yes.
First, I don’t know whether or not statement this is true of the Chinese government and the Wuhan virus:
What I do know is that this fact
is not evidence of the first fact, with respect to itself and that virus.
No comment.
Point taken, thanks.
So this in your mind makes a conspiracy ? Not worthy of the front page ?
Woops, we are on the front page.
Yes, I think you’re right.
I’m not sure anyone here is touting that particular conspiracy theory. It could have escaped from a lab without being created there; someone there was looking at bat viruses–not creating new ones–and one escaped.
What I still haven’t sorted through is whether the safety guidelines thing constitutes any sort of positive evidence for this particular theory. Maybe not–Percival is right that the safety guidelines thing can happen even if the virus didn’t come from a lab. But I’ll give this theory this much: It’s plausible enough, and doesn’t have any significant Occam’s Razor problem. If I may be permitted this terminology, it’s a theory about a cover-up, but not a conspiracy as such.
Meh. You know what? Dang all them theories. It was aliens!
I’ll go along with that. That needle isn’t indicating proved. It isn’t indicating disproved, either.
If someone where hawking infected bats or monkeys to a wild meat market, that would cause massive loss of face.
Technically, an accidental and undetected release is does not require a conspiracy. I guess you could say that some CCP not fessing up that they had that virus in one of their labs is a conspiracy, but we all know that the CCP lies about stuff, so theory does not apply.
I think that it does not. Whether or not premise A (I mean, the first one in block quotes) is true, a government would need to ensure lab safety in the labs under its control (premise B).
The logic of the OP and almost all the commenters is that if B is consistent with A, then B is evidence of A.
Maybe I misspoke when referring to a “conspiracy theory”. It may have seemed to some Ricochet readers that I was referring to the possibility that the CCP had the virus in its bio-warfare labs for malicious purposes. I didn’t mean that. The CCP do have bio-warfare labs, and they will use any means, including bio-warfare, to achieve their ends, regardless even of the devastation unleashed on their own subjects. Obviously, if the CCP didn’t have the Wuhan virus in their labs, and it has military potential, they wish they had it.
Some numbers for this morning.
The thing is that at this point one of main issues about whether this CoronaVirus was engineered or not is that conclusive evidence whether or not will give us some clues how to fight it. One can speculate all you want about who or what was at fault now, but at this point lives are being lost because we don’t know how to treat it.
The Chinese have finally admitted the CoronaVirus did not come from the Wuhan Seafood market. That was after two Chinese Scientists last week from the South China University of Technology in Guangzhou, Botao Xiao and Lei Xiao published a paper on “The possible origins of 2019-nCoV Coronavirus” and had this to say:
“In summary, somebody was entangled with the evolution of 2019-nCoV coronavirus. In addition to origins of natural recombination and intermediate host, the killer coronavirus probably originated from a laboratory in Wuhan.”
There is a division of the Chinese Bio Weapons lab that is only 850 meters or so from the Seafood Market. There was a scientist from the Bio Weapons lab that in his advertisements to hire specialists boasted that he was combining a CoronaVirus and Bat immunology. And then from Bethany: “Some Chinese researchers are in the habit of selling their laboratory animals to street vendors after they have finished experimenting on them. “
The combination of all these facts should give one great pause.
One can yell “Conspiracy! Conspiracy!” all you want as if it is a dastardly capital offense but we need to get to the bottom of the facts and the facts are trending very heavily in the direction that something very bad came from the Wuhan Bio Weapons lab. The difference is that a bio-weapon may be designed to kill in a serial killing mass murder kind of way, where some sore of natural mutation is much less likely to be so deadly and virulent. We need to find out and quick.
Now I’ve seen this from SCMP:
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3051981/coronavirus-did-not-originate-wuhan-seafood-market-chinese
But this . . . this is new. Wow.
Seems to me that the cdc or other world orgs can discern if this is the same virus that came from a Canadian lab or if it is altered or mutated.
I agree. The idea in the OP, that the Chinese were revealing culpability for creating the crisis, would be irrelevant to the present problem even if it made sense.
I’m guessing that this was directed at me. I have no comment, if so, because it’s the same strawman technique applied with robotic monotony.
Its been known for several weeks that the genetic signature of the virus — because of the distinctive splicing — had to have been created in a lab. Which lab and for what purpose are the open questions.
The scientists claiming to rebut that haven’t known it. I sure haven’t known it. I struggle to understand the pattern of argument, to say nothing of the underlying science.
https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1230985717263818759
My friends. You need new friends.
https://www.livescience.com/coronavirus-spike-protein-structure.html
Reminds me of the cause of the plague in the Stephen King novel, The Stand.
“Its been known for several weeks that the genetic signature of the virus — because of the distinctive splicing — had to have been created in a lab. Which lab and for what purpose are the open questions.”
French scientists, allegedly though I cannot back it up with a reference, claim the genetic sequence for the CoronaVirus had to have been made with what they termed “gain of function technology” – a technology that is only used to create a bio-weapon.
I’m from the government and I’m here to (cough) help (cough) “pardon me” (hack) (hack).
Never mind.