It's one that gets people going, but I don't think it's taken very seriously by actual scientists who study viruses for a living. There's pretty broad consensus and strong genetic evidence it came from an animal, as did SARS-CoV1 and MERS before it. The only people who've ever really claimed it came from a lab are people with political reasons to do so e.g. the Republican government just as they are trying to start a trade war with China.Originally Posted by Spikey M
Anyone seen any of this stuff about bird flu in the US?
When you put it like that you can understand why China went out of their way to lie about it and chimp at the slightest scrutiny. They obviously don't want to see it politicised.
I presume you mean lab flu.
@Boydy
Yeah and all the nerd virologists in the whole world just have an agenda to protect the CCP.
The problem is, it can be both a naturally occurring virus that made the species jump AND from the lab. That's what happened with the Marberg Outbreak in Germany.
As I said, we will never know, and I'm not about to nail my colours to either mast, but I certainly wouldn't be ruling out some kind of lab involvement. Even if it was just a natural sample that accidentally infected the work experience kid.
There will be some dispute amongst them for even the 'low confidence' verdict to exist. Trump stooges to a man presumably.
I don't "rule it out" either. I just pointed out Quincy is a moron for thinking that the article he posted CONFIRMED it most likely came from a lab and gave him opportunity to gloat, when it did nothing of the sort.
You often do this; just state things as facts with no actual evidence they are true. I can well imagine an intelligence agency stating something completely against the scientific consensus. Your position is no more based in evidence than mine. It's just a belief.
Why would several intelligence agencies independently go out of their way to give credence to something against the scientific consensus?
Because it's politically expedient for them to do so.
Why would the worldwide scientific community engage in a conspiracy on the origins of a virus for the benefit of the Chinese government?
Because it's politically expedient for them to do so?
I always thought that lab leak theory was more along the lines of they [China] knew about this a lot earlier than they will admit and were studying it/lying about it rather than it having been an accidentally or intentionally manufactured thing which originated in the lab.
'Worldwide scientific community' is just not a thing.
How? What's the motivation?
Well yes that's more of less the point. Scientists all over the world have independently come up with the same results and same conclusions, and yet apparently they are all one giant network colluding for the benefit of China.
Haven't looked carefully, but I think that there has been enough groups with enough credibility saying that maybe it came from a lab but really hard to tell that we have to leave it as a small but unlikely possibility. Why anyone cares, that I do not know.
They aren't running direct interference for the Chinese Communist Party, but I don't consider it far-fetched to think that enough of them will have been fretting about the NARRATIVE when it comes to putting their name to something. If you don't think scientists are willing to politicise themselves then I have a lovely bridge with your name on.
At least MJ is on board with this.
Dude, don't get all Daily Mail on me. You're misquoting me.
There is supposedly only 40 or 50 of these labs around the world and you don't question the coincidence that China claimed it came from the local market. These types of markets being in thousands of locations in and around China.
You two and Ignatius J. Reilly.
Because it is politically expedient to do so?
Claiming in misquoting you when your post is right there for all to see is special even for you.
In case you've forgotten what you wrote.
In case this helps. x
Which is exactly what I wrote in the post you've quoted and said I misquoted you in you dribbling fucking idiot
Dr RFK Jr will save us.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/16/o...6.TfiIiWId6GeF
To this day, there is no strong scientific evidence ruling out a lab leak or proving that the virus arose from human-animal contact in that seafood market. The few papers cited for market origin were written by a small, overlapping group of authors, including those who didn’t tell the public how serious their doubts had been.
I'm not a lab leak denier, I'm yevrah but another
Pep, the lines have been drawn and they won't change. Even I know this point is futile.
Without wanting to pour fuel on the fire, that extremely pithy summary quoted is stated without any evidence as to its central thesis that there is scant evidence for the non-conspiracy, which, if you bother to look into things doesn't appear to be the case.
https://www.bmj.com/content/386/bmj.q1578
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9420317/
https://www.science.org/content/arti...urvey-suggests
The whole thing seems to argue that, rather than try to successfully state the case you believe and why you believe it, it is better to try to undermine and pour scorn on the contrary/rival position, which seems quite an agenda-led/teleological type of reasoning.
A type of dishonest argumentation, seen in many fields, which should raise suspicion in my view.
Last edited by niko_cee; 17-03-2025 at 02:32 PM.
Five years after the onset of the Covid pandemic, it’s tempting to think of all that as ancient history. We learned our lesson about lab safety — and about the need to be straight with the public — and now we can move on to new crises, like measles and the evolving bird flu, right?
Wrong. If anyone needs convincing that the next pandemic is only an accident away, check out a recent paper in Cell, a prestigious scientific journal. Researchers, many of whom work or have worked at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (yes, the same institution), describe taking samples of viruses found in bats (yes, the same animal) and experimenting to see if they could infect human cells and pose a pandemic risk.
Sounds like the kind of research that should be conducted — if at all — with the very highest safety protocols, as W. Ian Lipkin and Ralph Baric discussed in a recent guest essay. But if you scroll all the way down to Page 19 of the journal article and squint, you learn that the scientists did all this under what they call “BSL-2 plus” conditions, a designation that isn’t standardized and that Baric and Lipkin say is “insufficient for work with potentially dangerous respiratory viruses.” If just one lab worker unwittingly inhaled the virus and got infected, there’s no telling what the impact could be on Wuhan, a city of millions, or the world.
It was clearly a lab leak, but it's bad for business to embarrass the Chinese government by saying this, so it will remain a fringe position forever.
I'm not really sure if the bag head indicates a positive or negative view towards the lab leak but the thing I don't really follow in the logic/argument, as exampled by the opening paragraph:
is that, if you read the lab leak paper directly referenced, it accounts for the escape of existing [or previously extant] viruses. All of these viruses existed, and were prevalent in nature at some point prior to be lab leaked. Isn't that the fundamental problem here - Wuhan lab leak is actually pre-supposed upon it having been lab created, not just lab leaked. If it just 'leaked' out it must have already existed in nature, probably in the fabled wet market or that area generally? Thus making it not really 'leaked' at all. Did the Chinese know about it before the official version says they did? Almost certainly. Did they lie about and or attempt to cover their arses in ensuing investigations? Absolutely. Does any of that have any bearing on the actual origin of covid? Not really.Since scientists began playing around with dangerous pathogens in laboratories, the world has experienced four or five pandemics, depending on how you count. One of them, the 1977 Russian flu, was almost certainly sparked by a research mishap. Some Western scientists quickly suspected the odd virus had resided in a lab freezer for a couple of decades, but they kept mostly quiet for fear of ruffling feathers.
Just trying to add fuel to the fire, tbh. I am neither for nor against the lab leak theory. I've never looked at the evidence to have an opinion either way, plus at this point it is clear that we will never know for sure. I do find it interesting that gain of function research seems to have survived the pandemic pretty much unscathed. I would have imagined that someone would try to regulate it more tightly, considering how tightly regulated other much less potentially dangerous things are.
It's not only this, but if it did come from a lab it sort of leaves science with a score draw (no away goals) position at best, in that it played a huge part in stopping a pandemic it started.
We will never know for sure, but if hypothetically someone did know the answer for certain and they offered odds similar to the how likely it's portrayed to have come from a lab (what, 10-1 or longer), I'd put a very fair chunk on lab and wouldn't touch 'market' for shit.
Aye, who needs rigorous or reasoned research when we can go on gut feeling and the betting markets, be they real or hypothetical.
If Denise super boosts it for me, then I'm sold.
If we'd had any of those things we wouldn't be in this position, but as you'll remember anyone even suggesting it came from a lab was labelled a conspiracy theorist. There never has been and never will be any desire in the scientific community or within China to seriously consider if it came from a lab, which as covered above, doesn't take a rocket scientist to speculate why.
I still don't really understand what you mean by came from a lab. Do you mean manmade / engineered and then let loose?
I feel there is a level of intentional definitional vaguery around all these things, not from you but in a lot of the reporting, that allows one to 'quite sensibly' transition from what is perceived to be the most likely explanation [it woz nature wot made it] to a much less likely one through a series of steps, well they were researching these things and look we have had lab leaks before so . . .
It’s over lads.
Not necessarily deliberately let loose. But there was a virus, from Wuhan, where the Wuhan Institute of Virology is and it definitely did not come from a lab?
I mean, clearly I’ve no idea where it came from but the total shutting down of that conversation was so surreal it just fuelled the viewpoint that it was of lab origin, whether it was or not.
Chuck in that we nailed the origin of SARS and MERS within 12 months and it just all stinks.
Still, Giggles is right, it’s all over (until the next one at least).
I've no doubt that long COVID is a thing and must be awful for anyone that's got it. Chuck it on the ME/Fibromyalgia bonfire of things nobody cares about.
Long covid is absolutely a real thing. There'll be some grifters as there is with any condition we don't have a definitive test for, but there is no doubt it's a real thing. Post-viral syndromes are not even a remotely controversial concept within medicine.
Hang on, why haven't you gone aggressive on Pepe's links?
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