I'm sure if you think about your own job, there are tasks which to someone who is clueless would look equivalent but to you who understands them, one is obviously more complex than the other.
Again, of course and I am sympathetic, but this works both ways. Scientists were also claiming it hadn't come from a laboratoire when they didn't know it hadn't.
In any case, my real ire against all of this, which was the invited overreach of scientists on government policy and in turn, my life, has long since abated and the sun is shining again.
They claimed they thought they knew where it came from i.e. a market. They were right. Then people started claiming it came from a lab, so they have worked to prove beyond doubt it didn't.
SCIENCE cannot instantly know everything about everything. The SCIENCEtists made a (seemingly correct) deduction based on the evidence available at the time and have since worked to prove it. That is how it works and there is literally nothing wrong with any of it.
Fair points, very well put.
No no Magic, unlike you I can accept when someone puts a persuasive and very well worded argument forward.
He's fishing for a reaction, so no doubt one of his slaves posted that for him.
I don't know why but that made me lol.
Thing with SCIENCE and SCIENTISTS is that there is not one massive group where everyone agrees on everything. While this group has strong evidence of A, another might think that B is more plausible. In any case, from what I remember, Yevrah did not have an issue with scientists doing science things. He had an issue with SCIENCE choosing its messaging based on what was politically palatable, not on what was factual.
Also, reading that article, I see the following statements from the group of scientists:
"We find a very consistent story in terms of this pointing - even at the level of a single stall - to the market as being the very likely origin of this particular pandemic," says Prof Kristian Andersen, from the Scripps Institute in the US.The samples suggest, but do not prove, that Covid started more than once in the market with potentially two spillover events from animals to humans.Prof Worobey said: “It's far beyond reasonable doubt that that this is how it happened”, and that other explanations for the data required "really quite fanciful absurd scenarios".Prof Alice Hughes, from the University of Hong Kong, who was not involved in the analysis, said it was a “good study”.
“[But] without swabs from the actual animals in the market, which were not collected, we cannot obtain any higher certainty."So we have phrases such as "very likely", "very strong evidence", "not definitive", "suggest but not prove", and one "beyond reasonable doubt." I wonder which of those MEDIA will use as the headline?Prof James Wood, the co-director of Cambridge Infectious Diseases, said the study provided “very strong evidence” of the pandemic starting in wildlife stalls at the market. However, he said it could not be definitive because the samples were collected after the market closed, and the pandemic probably started weeks earlier.
"A team of scientists say it is “very likely but not definitve"" or "One scientist says it is “beyond reasonable doubt”" would not get as many clicks, I guess.
As always with this stuff, I expect there's a right-leaning publication somewhere that has reported this as "Covid Lab Leak Cannot Be Ruled Out".
The Media is quickly becoming pointless.
Here you go:
https://www.post-gazette.com/news/wo...s/202409190096
“The results we see are consistent with infected animals, but we cannot prove that they were,” said Florence Débarre, an evolutionary biologist at the French National Center for Scientific Research and a co-author of the new paper.
I often think about Vince Russo saying CORONA VIRUS DEATH THREAT.
I'm a twit
Did China ever do anything about those markets?
Pepe on the ropes.
Not sure if it's been mentioned here or not but I totally missed Dr John Campbell going full anti-vax and saying boosters cause cancer.
Only noticed because my mental dad linked me to a video of his about the Turin shroud which rang alarm bells for me early doors when he said 'it was undoubtedly human blood' as if there wasn't an expert who'd been awarded a scientific prize for analysing samples at a molecular level and concluding it wasn't blood.
Makes you wonder if his head popped recently or if his 'just the facts' schtick was always bollocks.
I imagine the only people still consuming Covid content are conspiracy nuts, so the choice is either to lean into that or find something else to talk about and risk losing your insane viewers.
We've got someone at work who still talks about COVID. It feels like they bring it up almost weekly still. They're in the "it's a danger and we all must get our boosters" nut camp.
I went to Oxford the other day and I couldn't believe how many people there were zipping around in masks. Haven't seen it anywhere else. Must be the ivory tower complex (or just tower, possibly, they can be made of all kinds of materials).
John Campbell is a disgrace. His channel started just giving the fachts but then he quickly realised that wasn’t where the money is so went full conspiracy nut bag almost overnight.
Steven Bartlett is also dangerously close to that territory, if he hasn’t landed in it already (I haven’t watched for a while).
https://apnews.com/article/congo-unk...ef9b2575f8d226
Here we go again.
It's Liverpool's year.
That actually sounds much more worrying than mpox or whatever else gets touted as the next pandemic if it's actually "flu-like".
Depends really. Africa has loads of viruses that are flu like. Even Ebola starts out Flu like. Malaria is usually flu like. Most of them are mercifully useless at spreading outside of tropical / superhot shithole conditions.
Your move, climate change.
Isn't it also because people get ill/die before they can give it to anyone outside of their social distancing bubble?
What we really need is a slow burner that only takes you out after a month.
Please please please.
How many olfactory senses can one man afford to lose?
Bit racist of the WHO and AP to be painting Africa as a place of disease and death. Best to just let them sort themselves out, I'm sure it'll be fine.
At Christmas time of all times.
Shut us down for good.
We using this thread for Human metapneumovirus (HMPV) or starting a new one?
I'm a twit
That sounds like the mother of all false alarms from the people desperate to lock us all down again.
It's basically the cold according to the beeb.
Although I guess the last one wasn't much more.
The Independent going with "mystery new virus." Wrong on both counts. These journos want locking up.
It would be interesting to see what would happen if the sort of nonsense imposed during the 2nd and 3rd lockdowns was attempted to be enforced again for something even less threatening.
Are we having a sweepstake on who goes out panic buying first?
Giggles is stocking up on his face masks as we speak.
Just until I get the all clear from the monkey pox.
Don't think that's actually entirely true. I would suspect it's far more likely you get journalists in certain areas who actually have a background education which is relevant to what they report on.
I will prove this beyond reasonable doubt with my sample size of one from the BBC. Economics editor Faisal Islam has a degree in economics. Health editor Hugh Pym has a degree in Philosophy, Politics and Ethics.
I'd imagine it holds for most science content though.
Economics is largely a load of made up pseudo-scientific wank though.
When you see anything you know deeply about talked about in the media it's embarrassing, health is no different to anything else in that regard.
Can confirm. Every time they run one of those "I can't afford to live" articles I spot atleast a couple of obvious liars that you only need a basic understanding of the benefits system to spot.