Origins of Covid 19 article

[Here's Johnny!]

Great scientific article on the origin of the Covid 19 virus. It is a long read but well written with lots of information.

https://nicholaswade.medium.com/origin-of-covid-following-the-clues-6f03564c038">https://nicholaswade.medium.com/origin- ... f03564c038">https://nicholaswade.medium.com/origin-of-covid-following-the-clues-6f03564c038

[Dan_AKA_ROY23]

Read most of it (vacation day)

From article...

For the lab escape scenario, the double CGG codon is no surprise. The human-preferred codon is routinely used in labs. So anyone who wanted to insert a furin cleavage site into the virus's genome would synthesize the PRRA-making sequence in the lab and would be likely to use CGG codons to do so.

"When I first saw the furin cleavage site in the viral sequence, with its arginine codons, I said to my wife it was the smoking gun for the origin of the virus," said David Baltimore, an eminent virologist and former president of CalTech. "These features make a powerful challenge to the idea of a natural origin for SARS2," he said.

^^^ Powerful evidence of Wuhan Lab escape!

[Dan_AKA_ROY23]

The direct-from-bats thesis is a chimera between the natural emergence and lab escape scenarios. It's a possibility that can't be dismissed. But against it are the facts that 1) both SARS2 and RaTG13 seem to have only feeble affinity for bat cells, so one can't be fully confident that either ever saw the inside of a bat; and 2) the theory is no better than the natural emergence scenario at explaining how SARS2 gained its furin cleavage site, or why the furin cleavage site is determined by human-preferred arginine codons instead of by the bat-preferred codons.

[Dan_AKA_ROY23]

Neither the natural emergence nor the lab escape hypothesis can yet be ruled out. There is still no direct evidence for either. So no definitive conclusion can be reached.

That said, the available evidence leans more strongly in one direction than the other. Readers will form their own opinion. But it seems to me that proponents of lab escape can explain all the available facts about SARS2 considerably more easily than can those who favor natural emergence.

It's documented that researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology were doing gain-of-function experiments designed to make coronaviruses infect human cells and humanized mice. This is exactly the kind of experiment from which a SARS2-like virus could have emerged. The researchers were not vaccinated against the viruses under study, and they were working in the minimal safety conditions of a BSL2 laboratory. So escape of a virus would not be at all surprising. In all of China, the pandemic broke out on the doorstep of the Wuhan institute. The virus was already well adapted to humans, as expected for a virus grown in humanized mice. It possessed an unusual enhancement, a furin cleavage site, which is not possessed by any other known SARS-related beta-coronavirus, and this site included a double arginine codon also unknown among beta-coronaviruses. What more evidence could you want, aside from the presently unobtainable lab records documenting SARS2's creation?

[Dan_AKA_ROY23]

^^ Pay attention to that last paragraph. It is the main theme and argument the author uses that the origin of SARS2 was it escaping from the Wuhan lab...

[Dan_AKA_ROY23]

Proponents of natural emergence have a rather harder story to tell. The plausibility of their case rests on a single surmise, the expected parallel between the emergence of SARS2 and that of SARS1 and MERS. But none of the evidence expected in support of such a parallel history has yet emerged. No one has found the bat population that was the source of SARS2, if indeed it ever infected bats. No intermediate host has presented itself, despite an intensive search by Chinese authorities that included the testing of 80,000 animals. There is no evidence of the virus making multiple independent jumps from its intermediate host to people, as both the SARS1 and MERS viruses did. There is no evidence from hospital surveillance records of the epidemic gathering strength in the population as the virus evolved. There is no explanation of why a natural epidemic should break out in Wuhan and nowhere else. There is no good explanation of how the virus acquired its furin cleavage site, which no other SARS-related beta-coronavirus possesses, nor why the site is composed of human-preferred codons. The natural emergence theory battles a bristling array of implausibilities.

[Dan_AKA_ROY23]

^^^ Pretty compelling argument, isn't it?

(Very long article, but as JFord said, well worth the read)

[rob@fain]

where did you find this article, it's blocked here at my job.

[Here's Johnny!]

where did you find this article, it's blocked here at my job.

I found it on Twitter.

https://twitter.com/AlexBerenson/status/1389720616203390977">https://twitter.com/AlexBerenson/status ... 6203390977">https://twitter.com/AlexBerenson/status/1389720616203390977

[Here's Johnny!]

I find it very interesting that Fauci is directly involved with the funding of this research.

"4. The US Role in Funding the Wuhan Institute of Virology"

[rob@fain]

twitter is also blocked here,

[Here's Johnny!]

twitter is also blocked here,

Read it at home. It takes about 50 minutes or so to read through it properly.

[DUM1]

Bioengineered in Wuhan for sure.
The only question to me is did it escape, or was it released.

Yes as John says- Fauci is ears deep in facilitating all this with the funding etc.
And Gatesy with his huge investment into vacc -seeeens as he "predicted" massive growth in the sector.
Monkeys the lot of them

12 MONKEYS ?

[Dan_AKA_ROY23]

Bioengineered in Wuhan for sure.
The only question to me is did it escape, or was it released.

Yes as John says- Fauci is ears deep in facilitating all this with the funding etc.
And Gatesy with his huge investment into vacc -seeeens as he "predicted" massive growth in the sector.
Monkeys the lot of them

12 MONKEYS ?

 :_thumbup: Great movie. Terrifying watching it in today's context.

[RobertELee]

Wait wut....? I thought your fact checkers fact checked it a proved it not to be a fact?

"Archived fact-check: Tucker Carlson guest airs debunked conspiracy theory that COVID-19 was created in a lab
Editor's note, May 17, 2021: When this fact-check was first published in September 2020, PolitiFact's sources included researchers who asserted the SARS-CoV-2 virus could not have been manipulated. That assertion is now more widely disputed. For that reason, we are removing this fact-check from our database pending a more thorough review. Currently, we consider the claim to be unsupported by evidence and in dispute. The original fact-check in its entirety is preserved below for transparency and archival purposes. Read our May 2021 report for more on the origins of the virus that causes COVID-19."

https://www.politifact.com/li-meng-yan-fact-check/">https://www.politifact.com/li-meng-yan-fact-check/