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[Trekkin]

(If I was a cynic, I'd say it's so he can repack the new body with more compliant individuals than he's discovered are in the old body. And it appears that I am a cynic...)

It's also a branding effort. He knows the backlash to the quarantine is most severe among his base, so he thinks if he has an excuse to say "reopen" more, he profits politically. Also, this lets him more effectively ignore all the adults in his administration and claim everyone not in favor of declaring National Rip Out Someone's Lungs And Cough Directly Into Their Bronchi Day is politically motivated.

[feelotraveller]

Keep in mind, Bumber, 5 Eyes is an intelligence Agency aligned against China. Them contradicting public statements by US intelligence agencies makes me think they're mainly propogandizing here. If you have secondary sources, that would help.

I actually read a news item yesterday saying that 5 Eyes agencies thought the virus did come from the wet market. 

Also, even if the Chinese government did cover it up for four months without taking action (which I doubt), they're still reacting better than the US has, dear lord. And yes, Poo, I also heard that. Hence my *intense* confusion. Is the daily telegraph biased, maybe?

Edit: hard to tell bias. I do agree China did/is covering up, for the record. Just not that they made the virus intentionally.

Just on the bias issue - the Daily Telegraph is a core paper of the Murdoch establishment, and are well known for a strong conservative bias.  They are a 'tabloid' paper (I read that as 'gutter press' but then I'm me  ) extremely prone too clickbait hyper-sensationalised headlines and quite prone to sensationalised stories.  That said it doesn't prevent them occasionally doing 'real' or unbiased reporting, so make your own call as to how they end up with exlcusive access to the leaked document.

[Frumple]

So has anyone mentioned or noticed the murderously staggering horseshit coming out of the white house or somethin' related to it apparently suggesting covid deaths are going to zero out by the end of the month?

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Yeah, I'm running into a lot of galaxy brains declaring that the pandemic is already over and it can't last into June because of hot weather for real this time guys

[wierd]

Sadly yes.  Yes I have.


But it fits the mold of people in power expecting to dictate reality, because they cannot handle (and have no experience) with things being the other way around.

[Reelya]

I mean this virus was almost perfect for attacking the modern world in a way it was unable to cope with.

Yup, but that doesn't actually make it any more likely that it came out of a lab. Which you're probably already aware of, I'm not saying that you don't know that, btw.

Nobody could basically make something like that without extensive field-testing to get it right. The idea that anyone can make made-to-order viruses is pure sci-fi at this point. Especially since this would have had to been made in lab conditions which didn't include human testing, making the idea that anyone would get it right even more far-fetched.

Things that are spreading in the wild are far more likely sources of an outbreak than some toy microbe in a lab, since things in the wild are constantly being challenged by natural selection to stay on track.

EDIT: and this is omitting the fact that the Wuhan lab that's near the location of the outbreak didn't work on that kind of stuff anyway.
https://www.livescience.com/coronavirus-wuhan-lab-complicated-origins.html
https://www.businessinsider.com.au/why-coronavirus-did-not-leak-from-wuhan-lab-researcher-2020-4

One basic argument that comes up is the "we don't know exactly how it came from bats, so that means the lab-conspiracy explanation is more likely". But this is clearly fallacious reasoning. To paraphrase an old analogy, it's like saying that because you don't know whether the moon was formed from the Earth or captured separately, then that bolsters the "moon is made of Green Cheese" theory.

If you read what they do at that lab in the Business Insider article, you'll see why it's extremely unlikely, virtually impossible that the virus originated there. This isn't some sort of "virus breeding incubator" set-up or a genetic engineering facility, it's a lab that collects and sequences existing viruses from the wild.

[Doomblade187]

(Please note that nobody in the thread seems to be arguing in favor of the lab theory, just a quick observation. Discussion of the theory is amusing, though.)

[TD1]

If it captures and sequences viruses from the wild, maybe they had coronavirus in a petri dish somewhere, letting it mutate, until some researcher licked it or something?

The best solution is an amalgamation of both scenarios.

[Jimmy]

Pretty sure this is why Australia is pushing for an independent investigation into the virus origin. That way we can have someone go there, look around, check what the lab was researching and say yes or no.

Also curious if this is why China isn't too keen on the idea.

[Trekkin]

Also curious if this is why China isn't too keen on the idea.

To be fair, there's no way to conclusively prove the virus was never there, and the range of possible evidence that the virus was there (that being, primarily, the presence of the virus itself) is straightforward to destroy and therefore easy to claim could have been destroyed given its absence. It's difficult to see what such an investigation could possibly find that would change anyone's mind either way.

Even if the virus is there, it's hard to see a sequence of events that is both apparent following the investigation and epidemiologically relevant.

[Starver]

*sob sob* Oh son, whar's your fatherbrother, them mean clerks wouldn't let me in tha store ta git somemore cigs and lil debbies so I spit on him!

Accurately or not, my first thought on reading about that incident is that it was more "He letched at me, made the filthiest suggestions..." or whatever she needed to say to incite her kin to the same anger she felt. Heck "...tol' me I should be wearing a veil, that it was a sin to go about without my face covered" would pluck an awful lot of the 'right' strings.

Though I've heard no details, so that's in my head only.

So has anyone mentioned or noticed the murderously staggering horseshit coming out of the white house or somethin' related to it apparently suggesting covid deaths are going to zero out by the end of the month?

Since February! (Since well before, actually, except for the zeroing-out bit which would have just sounded weird this time last year.)

If it captures and sequences viruses from the wild, maybe they had coronavirus in a petri dish somewhere, letting it mutate, until some researcher licked it or something?

The best solution is an amalgamation of both scenarios.

A pangolin burst down the lab door and released all the samples on behalf of Pangolins for the Ethical Treatment of Viruses.

[mko]

I mean this virus was almost perfect for attacking the modern world in a way it was unable to cope with.

That is because ones easy to mitigate were mitigated.

See for example Ebola, SARS-Cov-1 that were easier to contain and were contained.

Not contained viruses will tend to be ones that are harder to contain, as we are trying to stop them.

Also curious if this is why China isn't too keen on the idea.

To be fair, there's no way to conclusively prove the virus was never there, and the range of possible evidence that the virus was there (that being, primarily, the presence of the virus itself) is straightforward to destroy and therefore easy to claim could have been destroyed given its absence. It's difficult to see what such an investigation could possibly find that would change anyone's mind either way.

But it is likely that further evidence of early coverup will be discovered and other failures. Also, it would be humiliating for them to accept outside investigation. It is kind like China trying to investigate disease spread on USA carriers.

Refusal of outside investigation is not surprising, this happens in cases where blame is entirely on other side. Like with Russia shooting down civilian plane in Ukraine, or with discovery of USSR mass murder by Germans...

[Iduno]

Pretty sure this is why Australia is pushing for an independent investigation into the virus origin. That way we can have someone go there, look around, check what the lab was researching and say yes or no.

Also curious if this is why China isn't too keen on the idea.

Considering Australia is one of the 5 eyes nations claiming that China created the virus...

[TamerVirus]

Call me if reaches seasonal flu levels.

Yeah so here's the call  _{me being petty here}. The USA's death toll (72,334) has bypassed upper boundaries the death toll of the 2019-2020 seasonal flu (24,000 - 62,000)

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Also curious if this is why China isn't too keen on the idea.

To be fair, there's no way to conclusively prove the virus was never there, and the range of possible evidence that the virus was there (that being, primarily, the presence of the virus itself) is straightforward to destroy and therefore easy to claim could have been destroyed given its absence. It's difficult to see what such an investigation could possibly find that would change anyone's mind either way.

But it is likely that further evidence of early coverup will be discovered and other failures. Also, it would be humiliating for them to accept outside investigation. It is kind like China trying to investigate disease spread on USA carriers.

Refusal of outside investigation is not surprising, this happens in cases where blame is entirely on other side. Like with Russia shooting down civilian plane in Ukraine, or with discovery of USSR mass murder by Germans...

imagine not letting a bunch of foreign intelligence operatives run around your country

that's real rogue state behavior right there, thunder run when boys