Virologist whistleblower says COVID-19 was intentionally created in Chinese lab

[RidgeSprinter]

And an absolutely false statement.

Ipsi dixit fallacy.

 

[vz71]

Ipsi dixit fallacy.

Not at all…it is self evident

 

[LeafByNiggle]

I’ve never doubted that this pandemic was no accident. I never bought into the wet market story – it just sounded too hokey.

Why? It is the same way other viruses have jumped the species barrier. What makes it “sound hokey”?

This is sinister stuff!

It would be if the the conspiracy theory was correct.

She’s taking a huge risk.

She is taking no risk at all. She has probably already been richly rewarded. (You see? I can make up conspiracy theories too: “This story about a whistleblower sounds too hokey. I never doubted that she was paid to make up her story.”)

What I know is that there has been a lot of people coming forward and somehow, they get “censored”.

What I know is that there is huge problem with misinformation spreading on the Internet. Most of it should be “censored”.

Why? If they are wrong, it is easy to simply counter the argument.

You can’t prove a negative. It is not easy to prove you didn’t do something 8 months ago.

If China did in fact has Zero new cases, and they are not telling the world how to do it. It is even more conspiratorial.

China is not having “zero new cases”, despite their propaganda saying otherwise. But what they may be having is very low numbers of cases now - not because of a vaccine (which would be impossible to hide, since all the people would be aware they are being stuck by a needle) but because of very rigorous (and expensive) countermeasures, such as quarantines, lockdowns, etc. The people there are somewhat more compliant than people in the US. I’m not saying it is a good thing. It is just a fact.

Wow. It must really be important to you that she be discredited.
Makes me wonder if what she has to say will really hurt the Biden campaign.

And right there we have the seeds of another conspiracy theory.

To be sure, I’m not saying they did. I don’t have evidence. I am saying they’re quite capable of it.

So is the US capable of engineering a virus and releasing it in Wuhan to frame the Chinese. That does not mean it is likely.

Let her put forth her point. Then, let other scientists put forth criticism. Then let her respond. Then let those scientist respond to her response.

Scientists have better things to do than to mount an effective social media campaign to combat misinformation. That is why there is peer review - to catch those errors before they get widely distributed. Even if scientists prove beyond any doubt that her claim is false, people will not remember the refutation. They will only remember the sensational claim.

 

[KMC]

Scientists have better things to do than to mount an effective social media campaign to combat misinformation. That is why there is peer review - to catch those errors before they get widely distributed. Even if scientists prove beyond any doubt that her claim is false, people will not remember the refutation. They will only remember the sensational claim.

Freedom is better then censorship. Learning is a constant process…censorship has no place in the learning process.

 

[LeafByNiggle]

Freedom is better then censorship.

Then we should repeal all libel laws, right?

 

[KMC]

Libel is publishing a false statement damaging to a person’s reputation…like what the Washington Post did with Nick Sandman.

I don’t see how that applies to the OP

 

[LeafByNiggle]

Libel is publishing a false statement damaging to a person’s reputation…

I don’t see how that applies to the OP

It applies to your overly-general generalization:

KMC:

Freedom is better then censorship.

Would you care to rephrase that generalization in a more restrictive way?

And, by the way, it also applied directly to the OP, since the claim by this rogue virologist is damaging to the reputation of all the workers at the Wuhan Lab.

 

[KMC]

Would you care to rephrase that generalization in a more restrictive way?

No…10 characters

 

[JonNC]

And right there we have the seeds of another conspiracy theory.

I know. The way this woman has been treated, as if she had an ulterior motive is terrible.

So is the US capable of engineering a virus and releasing it in Wuhan to frame the Chinese. That does not mean it is likely.

Neither likely nor our MO. Communist China, OTOH is notorious for its brutality and evil treatment of its people.

 

[OneSheep]

Babies, again.
They feel threatened by babies.

They don’t care who dies.

Even Stalin would not have felt threatened by his own child unless he was a completely paranoid psychopath. But it was not the babies that would die from covid19, but the elderly parents and grandparents, and people with health issues. Again, for a person to intentionally release a virus that would indiscriminately kill your own family, that would take a person with truly psychopathic and paranoid issues, and these people are quite rare.

Please, what the Father made is good. His presence is love in all people. An ordinary, non-psychopathic person can develop the idea that “communists” are in the outgroup. Such an ordinary person is capable of hate, capable of destroying what they see as a threat, a perception that the "other"has no value and is dispensable. When we attribute inhuman characteristics to the outgroup, this is the very formula for a normal person to be capable of killing the outgroup, killing those who are a threat. When a person attributes inhuman characteristics to the outgroup, whether they are “the blacks”, “the whites” or “the communist leaders”, this is nothing less than the result of extreme prejudice, and hate.

All hate is understandable. Yes, there is history of horrible behavior from some communist leaders, but the mentality that leads one to jump to the conclusion that the communist leadership in China intentionally released a virus that could very well kill people they loved, that is the very mentality that would lead a person to do such an insane thing in the first place - to their enemies.

Are you familiar with the concept of projection? Jesus said, “first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye”.

I am also not saying this scientist is right. I’m saying she should not be silenced. She should be heard like all others.

Yes, she should be heard, but her field of science is not about attributing intention. Sure, she could make the case that the virus is synthetic, and then that evidence can be scrutinized by her peers. But if she or anyone else is actually making the case that there was an intentional release, that involves a “science” that requires much different evidence, not simple speculation.

As Christians, we are called to give people the benefit of the doubt. Accidents happen.

 

[RidgeSprinter]

As Christians, we are called to give people the benefit of the doubt. Accidents happen.

As Catholics, more so.

 

[JonNC]

Even Stalin would not have felt threatened by his own child unless he was a completely paranoid psychopath.

He killed his son in law. His daughter had to seek asylum. Psychopath is a medical term. He was a brutal, murderous tyrant.

Please, what the Father made is good. His presence is love in all people .

I don’t think the Father would consider what he did as good. But I’ll not make a judgment as to his salvation, only his actions on earth.

Are you familiar with the concept of projection? Jesus said, “first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye”.

For all have sinned and fall short of His glory. I have my sins to deal with. I have not, however, murdered tens of millions of civilians like he did.

Yes, she should be heard, but her field of science is not about attributing intention.

She was there. She saw what was going on. None of the American scientists or politicians who dispute her were. She is the one who’s life is in jeopardy.

As Christians, we are called to give people the benefit of the doubt. Accidents happen.

I am all in favor of waiting for the evidence. Others seem to want to silence hers.
I wonder why.

 

[JonNC]

As Catholics, more so.

Why more so ? Do you think other Christians are less obliged to follow His commands?

 

[josie_L]

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/bies.202000091

Despite claims from prominent scientists that SARS‐CoV‐2 indubitably emerged naturally, the etiology of this novel coronavirus remains a pressing and open question: Without knowing the true nature of a disease, it is impossible for clinicians to appropriately shape their care, for policy‐makers to correctly gauge the nature and extent of the threat, and for the public to appropriately modify their behavior. Unless the intermediate host necessary for completing a natural zoonotic jump is identified, the dual‐use gain‐of‐function research practice of viral serial passage should be considered a viable route by which the novel coronavirus arose. The practice of serial passage mimics a natural zoonotic jump, and offers explanations for SARS‐CoV‐2’s distinctive spike‐protein region and its unexpectedly high affinity for angiotensin converting enzyme (ACE2), as well as the notable polybasic furin cleavage site within it. Additional molecular clues raise further questions, all of which warrant full investigation into the novel coronavirus’s origins and a re‐examination of the risks and rewards of dual‐use gain‐of‐function research.

Dr. Li-Meng Yan’s Claims Call for Skepticism but Not Dismissal | National Review

Dan Coat calls for a special commission to oversee the upcoming election, Dr. Li-Meng Yan’s claims about the coronavirus being engineered, and more.

www.nationalreview.com

. . labs can mimic the process of “natural” evolution and effectively speed it up: “[Cells are inoculated into media and left to grow until the culture reaches a high population density.]

As a reader put it to me a few months back, “natural mutations are caused by just the right doses of toxins, stress, ultraviolet light, environmental extremes. One can throw the dice and expose a virus to any of those outside forces in a laboratory, carefully adjusting the doses so that 99.9 percent or so of the virus dies. What’s left might be unaffected, but some will almost certainly have some mutations. Some mutations will doom the virus. But some might be very useful, and they can then be moved to a nutrient medium and get coddled for a while to replicate. That is a very hit and miss procedure, but the time and cost is negligible.”

The scientist isn’t going in and changing the genes, he’s just hitting fast-forward on survival of the fittest. Does this represent being “made in a lab” or does this represent “naturally occurring”? Or both?

Most virologists around the world say they don’t see evidence of engineering or manipulation in the genetic code of SARS-CoV-2, and I trust their assessment. But it is worth noting that this doesn’t mean that a naturally occurring virus — say, found in a horseshoe bat — could not have been subjected to microbial experimental evolution in a laboratory. The end result of that experimentation would be a virus stronger and possibly more contagious than the original samples and not have any signs of genetic tampering or alterations.

 

[Balto1]

Fine. You are missing my point. Let her put forth her point. Then, let other scientists put forth criticism. Then let her respond. Then let those scientist respond to her response.

That’s what happened. She put forth her obviously false point. Scientists not cashing Bannon checks trashed it because it’s trash. She’s now free to respond to them and support her position.

Truth is not acquired by censoring one of the scientists. Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey do not have the charism of infallibility, and censorship is not part of the scientific method.

This is only a problem if she’s more concerned about spreading her misinformation than proving her science. The search for scientific truth you feel is so important doesn’t happen on social media. She is free to respond to critiques of her unpublishable nonsense however she wishes.

 

[KMC]

The search for scientific truth you feel is so important doesn’t happen on social media.

agreed. So social media companies should stop pretending their cadre of computer science majors should be a part of the process.

 

[OneSheep]

He killed his son in law. His daughter had to seek asylum. Psychopath is a medical term. He was a brutal, murderous tyrant.

So, bringing it back to the Gospel, Jesus was tortured and murdered by a large group of people. What He recognized was that the crowd did not know what they were doing. Stalin obviously saw his son-in-law as a threat or something of negative value, as the crowd did of Jesus.

Can you relate to the crowd? Can you see that we are all like Stalin, all capable of such blindness?

This is not an attempt to excuse any person or group’s bad behavior. I am coming from a position of solutions, solutions promoted by Jesus Himself. Jesus saw that they did not know what they were doing. Can you come to a place of recognizing that when political leaders do atrocious things, they do not know what they are doing? The are not seeing the beauty and value of what they destroy.

I don’t think the Father would consider what he did as good

Agreed, but His presence is love in all people.

She was there. She saw what was going on.

Her message is that the virus was made in the Wuhan lab. We can definitely hear her out on this, but I cannot find any statement from her saying that the coronavirus was an intentional release. What she is saying is that there was a “cover-up”. Liberal media is making a big deal about Donald Trump’s “cover up” but the same question applies: why was there a cover-up? It is pretty easy to see that Mr. Trump held some information in order to stop panic and stop matters from getting worse. He had understandable motives.

I’m looking at the same thing from the Chinese govt. If the virus was made in a lab and released accidentally, they wanted to cover up their responsibility; obviously there was some incompetence or careless practice involved, and no one wants to take responsibility for their errors, right? If the Chinese govt did do a “cover up”, which I have no reason to doubt, then they also had some understandable reasons.

Now, as far as the government trying to “disappear” Li-Meng Yan, that is something worth condemning, for sure, if it is true.

I am all in favor of waiting for the evidence. Others seem to want to silence hers.
I wonder why.

I’m in favor of the same. They want to silence her because there are many people involved who want to save face, and she is a threat. We need to do all we can to protect her.

 

[Balto1]

Americans know all about communism, we had to suffer under Barack Hussein Obama.

 

[RidgeSprinter]

I assumed it to be ALL tongue and cheek satire.

 

[tomarin]

In a way, yes.