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Coronavirus - General Chat - No statistics

The home for all non-political Coronavirus (Covid-19) discussions on The Lemon Fool
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This is the home for all non-political Coronavirus (Covid-19) discussions on The Lemon Fool
gryffron
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Re: Coronavirus - General Chat - No statistics

#416843

Postby gryffron » June 2nd, 2021, 3:03 pm

Julian wrote:Issues with bio-security not being up to the job not withstanding is the stuff thought by some to be going on in the Wuhan lab any more "unbelievably dangerous work" than some of the stuff going on in the most secure parts of Porton Down? I'm not trying to troll anyone, it's a genuine question.

Straight from the horse's mouth.
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/the- ... orton-down
we produce very small quantities of chemical and biological agents. They are stored securely and disposed of safely when they are no longer required.

So I think the answer is quite clearly yes, there is still some "unbelievably dangerous stuff" at Porton Down.

Gryff

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Re: Coronavirus - General Chat - No statistics

#416868

Postby 1nvest » June 2nd, 2021, 5:20 pm

redsturgeon wrote:if we had put no lockdown or any other precautions in place

LOL! There was no lockdown. Just certain individuals selected to be financially supported/funded but not others. And a excuse for taxpayer theft to fund big backhanders/contracts.

If there were lockdowns then getting groceries home delivered would have been well serviced and travel into/out of the UK would have had clear barriers/controls. Neither occurred.

Parliament incompetence is as rife as ever, a antiquated disgrace. Only 20% of the population actually vote to instate the government, the largest 'vote' is for none-of-the-above. Rightfully at the outbreak of a pandemic control should be handed over to more competent bodies such as the military - who would have established getting food/care delivered to each home and established actual lockdowns.

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Re: Coronavirus - General Chat - No statistics

#416879

Postby Clitheroekid » June 2nd, 2021, 6:29 pm

Nimrod103 wrote:The fact that the original virus started in Wuhan, where there is a research institute investigating, enhancing and creating new viruses, is enough of a smoking gun for me. But it will be impossible to prove because the Chinese will move heaven and earth to prevent the World finding out, because if proven the international consequences for the Chinese would be disastrous.

Unfortunately it wouldn't be remotely disastrous for China. They have discovered that the rest of the world is now so dependent on them that they can get away with anything, including genocide, mass suppression of human rights, annexing territory that doesn't belong to them, increasing their coal fired power station output, etc, etc.

They are a vicious, oppressive state, but they don't give a toss about what we say and do because they know that nobody is willing to take them on in any meaningful way.

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Re: Coronavirus - General Chat - No statistics

#416880

Postby Mike4 » June 2nd, 2021, 6:33 pm

Nimrod103 wrote:Without more supporting data, that Barcelona sample looks like contamination/misidentification/a Chinese plant. Mistakes do get made in scientific analyses. News about it has certainly gone quiet. If it were real, I think scientists would be jumping up and down by now.
Personally I think that those people who believe Covid did not originate in Wuhan are falling for the biggest and most unlikely conspiracy theory of all, probably promulgated by the Chinese authorities.


I think we are swerving right off topic here. The point under discussion earlier was nothing to do with beliefs, it was whether there was any point in tracing the virus back to its source, meaning its biological and molecular origin not its political/geographical origin.

If we can get to understand how the virus came to exist at all, all manner of un-forecastable benefits and insights in how to combat it might occur. But if we don't research the origins we can be certain there will be no such insights accruing.

If science is to "follow the evidence", we need to uncover it.

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Re: Coronavirus - General Chat - No statistics

#416884

Postby AleisterCrowley » June 2nd, 2021, 6:53 pm

Julian wrote:
Nimrod103 wrote:...However, one could also ask why the Chinese have such an advanced lab in Wohan doing what IMHO is unbelievably dangerous work because of its possible risks to mankind. AIUI the lab has had Western investment and a some visits from Western scientists. But no lab IMHO can be completely bio-secure, ...


Issues with bio-security not being up to the job not withstanding is the stuff thought by some to be going on in the Wuhan lab any more "unbelievably dangerous work" than some of the stuff going on in the most secure parts of Porton Down? I'm not trying to troll anyone, it's a genuine question.

Sadly I would be pretty sure that no one here would be in a position to give an authoritative answer to my question. At least in the time when I dealt with Porton Down at a very superficial level it was an extremely secure and secretive site and one needed to have gone through developed vetting (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_ ... etting_(DV)) to deal in any meaningful way with people there. I do get the impression that it is quite a lot less "secret squirrel" than it was a few decades ago but I wonder if there is still some really, really nasty stuff being studied in the most secure labs there. If yes then presumably (hopefully!) it is for "let's understand this" and "how would we defend against this?" reasons rather than "let's make a bomb out of this" reasons.

- Julian


You can tell where the dangerous (biological) stuff is going on from the Biosafety level - 4 being the highest
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosafety ... facilities
UK has 2 at Porton and 6 others (some dealing with animal pathogens like foot & mouth)
China has declared two (!) at Wuhan and Harbin. Harbin appears to be focussed on animal pathogens

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Re: Coronavirus - General Chat - No statistics

#416969

Postby Nimrod103 » June 3rd, 2021, 8:32 am

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/0 ... leak-says/

https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/why ... -lab-leak/

Serious questions about Chinese responsibility for developing this virus are being asked. I was not aware of the work of vaccines expert Professor Angus Dalgleish and Norwegian scientist Dr Birger Sorensen. More evidence of the smoking gun.

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Re: Coronavirus - General Chat - No statistics

#417446

Postby redsturgeon » June 5th, 2021, 11:42 am

Nimrod103 wrote:
Mike4 wrote:
Nimrod103 wrote:
Because detecting the virus is easy - people get sick and sometimes die, with a set of recognizable symptoms. The disease with these symptoms was first noted in Wuhan.
Quite different for the 'Kent' variant, which causes the same symptoms as every other Covid19 virus, so is indistinguishable from any other variant. Except that is, using the advanced technology that the UK has, which carries out 50% of all the genomic analyses performed in the World. So the 'Kent' virus could have existed in almost any part of the World before the superior UK labs picked it up, in Kent.

No conflict, just logic.


Yes, flawed logic.

How do you account for the SARS-CoV-2 found in frozen sewage samples collected in Barcelona in March 2019?

A skool of thought is it started somewhere as yet unknown and was imported to Wuhan following the Military Games, then China unfairly got the blame for being the first place to report it. Much like Spain incorrectly got the blame for Spanish Flu.


Without more supporting data, that Barcelona sample looks like contamination/misidentification/a Chinese plant. Mistakes do get made in scientific analyses. News about it has certainly gone quiet. If it were real, I think scientists would be jumping up and down by now.
Personally I think that those people who believe Covid did not originate in Wuhan are falling for the biggest and most unlikely conspiracy theory of all, probably promulgated by the Chinese authorities.


The evidence for the Barcelona sewage is now submitted for publication. Discussed here by Dr Campbell.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fyhMoWDSZ7Y

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Re: Coronavirus - General Chat - No statistics

#417449

Postby XFool » June 5th, 2021, 12:27 pm

The origin of COVID: Did people or nature open Pandora’s box at Wuhan?

The Bulletin

"The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted lives the world over for more than a year. Its death toll will soon reach three million people. Yet the origin of pandemic remains uncertain: The political agendas of governments and scientists have generated thick clouds of obfuscation, which the mainstream press seems helpless to dispel."

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Re: Coronavirus - General Chat - No statistics

#417464

Postby Mike4 » June 5th, 2021, 1:41 pm

XFool wrote:The origin of COVID: Did people or nature open Pandora’s box at Wuhan?

The Bulletin

"The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted lives the world over for more than a year. Its death toll will soon reach three million people. Yet the origin of pandemic remains uncertain: The political agendas of governments and scientists have generated thick clouds of obfuscation, which the mainstream press seems helpless to dispel."


What an excellent article, thanks!

Pretty much summarises what Dr Martenson has been saying on Youtube for the past year and persistently getting his videos taken down.

Here's one he published last night. He has an uncomfortably hysterical american style but the points he makes are generally very good. Most of what he says in this video rhymes with the bulletin.org article, but there is some stuff about the inexplicable involvement of the Wellcome Foundation in the big push to suppress the 'lab leak' hypothesis.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNxoVFZwMYw

Watch it soon before it gets taken down.

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Re: Coronavirus - General Chat - No statistics

#417475

Postby XFool » June 5th, 2021, 2:29 pm

I didn't feel he had what I would call an uncomfortably hysterical american style. However, it really did feel like an attempt to make something out of a whole lot of nothing!

'We have no real content here - so let's see what we can make with it.'

"This my friend was a mass cover-up" - Sorry! Not convinced.

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Re: Coronavirus - General Chat - No statistics

#419329

Postby onthemove » June 13th, 2021, 7:42 pm

ReallyVeryFoolish wrote:Essential reading for those, like me, who think the Covid pandemic originated in a virus research lab -

https://thebulletin.org/2021/05/the-ori ... -at-wuhan/

RVF


The article linked above, imv, is junk; I read it when posted previously and quickly made my own mind up - broadly speaking it puts a lot of sciencey words in there for effect, but the arguments, imv, don't follow through, amongst other issues and techniques it uses (imv) to twist the reader round to the where the author clearly wants them....

Some of the claims that it took and ran with, have now been retracted by the original scientist who made them.

Other claims, also made in that article, have also been debunked by the balance of scientists.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/ ... eak-theory
"In the midst of the renewed controversy, one of the key scientific debates has drilled down into whether the virus’s furin cleavage site is so novel that it occurred through human manipulation rather than evolving naturally.

Supporting the latter theory, some scientists point out that the same feature occurs in other common coronaviruses including ones that cause colds and that it appears intermittently in the family tree of coronaviruses.

Baltimore’s clarification came as he was also challenged in Nature on another of his claims relating to Covid-19, that the coding of a segment found in the furin cleavage site was not usually found in viruses, with a fellow scientist pointing out the same coding was also a feature of the Sars virus."

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Re: Coronavirus - General Chat - No statistics

#419432

Postby XFool » June 14th, 2021, 11:24 am

Nimrod103 wrote:
GrahamPlatt wrote:
Nimrod103 wrote:Please explain what this molecular biological evidence is that convinces you it could not have been released deliberately?

I am not going to waste my time.

You have no evidence then?
It just seemed like a non sequiter to jump from molecular biology to the political question of whether a virus was released deliberately by an aggessive totalitarian state.

Quick question: Why would an "aggressive totalitarian state" deliberately release a deadly virus in its own population?

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Re: Coronavirus - General Chat - No statistics

#419433

Postby servodude » June 14th, 2021, 11:27 am

XFool wrote:
Nimrod103 wrote:
GrahamPlatt wrote:I am not going to waste my time.

You have no evidence then?
It just seemed like a non sequiter to jump from molecular biology to the political question of whether a virus was released deliberately by an aggessive totalitarian state.

Quick question: Why would an "aggressive totalitarian state" deliberately release a deadly virus in its own population?


Because they're foreign!! ;)

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Re: Coronavirus - General Chat - No statistics

#419434

Postby XFool » June 14th, 2021, 11:33 am

Nimrod103 wrote:https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/06/03/china-will-have-destroyed-proof-wuhan-coronavirus-leak-says/

https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/why ... -lab-leak/

Serious questions about Chinese responsibility for developing this virus are being asked. I was not aware of the work of vaccines expert Professor Angus Dalgleish and Norwegian scientist Dr Birger Sorensen. More evidence of the smoking gun.

I just read the above post! Let's just leave The Daily Telegraph to one side for now. :)

My impression is that the (ironically named?) Conservative Woman website is a hotbed of conspiracy thinking. I wouldn't even bother...

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Re: Coronavirus - General Chat - No statistics

#419435

Postby Nimrod103 » June 14th, 2021, 11:42 am

XFool wrote:
Nimrod103 wrote:https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/06/03/china-will-have-destroyed-proof-wuhan-coronavirus-leak-says/

https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/why ... -lab-leak/

Serious questions about Chinese responsibility for developing this virus are being asked. I was not aware of the work of vaccines expert Professor Angus Dalgleish and Norwegian scientist Dr Birger Sorensen. More evidence of the smoking gun.

I just read the above post! Let's just leave The Daily Telegraph to one side for now. :)

My impression is that the (ironically named?) Conservative Woman website is a hotbed of conspiracy thinking. I wouldn't even bother...


I guess Joe Biden must read it, because he is asking the same questions.
You shouldn't dismiss any source on this subject as being beneath you. There is so much filtering and censoring going on on mainstream media.

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Re: Coronavirus - General Chat - No statistics

#419443

Postby XFool » June 14th, 2021, 12:06 pm

Nimrod103 wrote:
XFool wrote:
Nimrod103 wrote:https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/06/03/china-will-have-destroyed-proof-wuhan-coronavirus-leak-says/

https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/why ... -lab-leak/

Serious questions about Chinese responsibility for developing this virus are being asked. I was not aware of the work of vaccines expert Professor Angus Dalgleish and Norwegian scientist Dr Birger Sorensen. More evidence of the smoking gun.

I just read the above post! Let's just leave The Daily Telegraph to one side for now. :)

My impression is that the (ironically named?) Conservative Woman website is a hotbed of conspiracy thinking. I wouldn't even bother...

You shouldn't dismiss any source on this subject as being beneath you.

No? I always dismiss sources that are full of obvious BS and will continue to do so.

Nimrod103 wrote:There is so much filtering and censoring going on on mainstream media.

If anything is based in reality there is no good reason why it will not eventually be reported in the reliable "mainstream media".

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Re: Coronavirus - General Chat - No statistics

#419462

Postby XFool » June 14th, 2021, 1:22 pm

More grist to the mill:

CGGCGG: The latest new-old wrinkle in the COVID-19 “lab leak” conspiracy theory

Respectful Insolence

Earlier this week, the Wall Street Journal published an editorial claiming that the sequence CGGCGG in SARS-CoV-2 means that the coronavirus must be engineered. It’s utter nonsense.

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Re: Coronavirus - General Chat - No statistics

#419472

Postby Nimrod103 » June 14th, 2021, 1:55 pm

XFool wrote:More grist to the mill:

CGGCGG: The latest new-old wrinkle in the COVID-19 “lab leak” conspiracy theory

Respectful Insolence

Earlier this week, the Wall Street Journal published an editorial claiming that the sequence CGGCGG in SARS-CoV-2 means that the coronavirus must be engineered. It’s utter nonsense.


When any scientic or quasi scientific article makes a comment such as "Earlier this week, the Wall Street Journal published an editorial claiming that the sequence CGGCGG in SARS-CoV-2 means that the coronavirus must be engineered. It’s utter nonsense." I get concerned about its impartiality. Even without understanding much of the described science, I can recognize that at this stage of the investigation, it is far too early to make any damning comment about one theory versus another.

Which AIUI was the view taken in the previously cited work:
https://thebulletin.org/2021/05/the-ori ... -at-wuhan/
Which I thought was quite open minded and even handed.

The only bizarre and non-sensical thing about this whole saga, is the way many pundits have jumped to make definitive rulings or have not declared their own interests. I continue to have an open mind, except for the fact that the outbreak occurred in a city where there is a lab making highly dangerous and life threatening new viruses. The onus is on them to come clean.

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Re: Coronavirus - General Chat - No statistics

#419481

Postby XFool » June 14th, 2021, 3:02 pm

Nimrod103 wrote:When any scientic or quasi scientific article makes a comment such as "Earlier this week, the Wall Street Journal published an editorial claiming that the sequence CGGCGG in SARS-CoV-2 means that the coronavirus must be engineered. It’s utter nonsense." I get concerned about its impartiality.

Why? If the person saying that backs it up with reasonable explanations?

Nimrod103 wrote:Even without understanding much of the described science, I can recognize that at this stage of the investigation, it is far too early to make any damning comment about one theory versus another.

Good.

Nimrod103 wrote:Which AIUI was the view taken in the previously cited work:
https://thebulletin.org/2021/05/the-ori ... -at-wuhan/
Which I thought was quite open minded and even handed.

Yes? If you say so.

"People round the world who have been pretty much confined to their homes for the last year might like a better answer than their media are giving them. Perhaps one will emerge in time. After all, the more months pass without the natural emergence theory gaining a shred of supporting evidence, the less plausible it may seem. Perhaps the international community of virologists will come to be seen as a false and self-interested guide. The common sense perception that a pandemic breaking out in Wuhan might have something to do with a Wuhan lab cooking up novel viruses of maximal danger in unsafe conditions could eventually displace the ideological insistence that whatever Trump said can’t be true.

And then let the reckoning begin.
" [ Emphasis mine ]

And with that article in mind, this from 9 June seems relevant:

Leading biologist dampens his ‘smoking gun’ Covid lab leak theory

The Guardian

Nobel laureate David Baltimore says he overstated case, and the origins of the virus are still unknown

"David Baltimore, a distinguished biology professor, had become one of the most prominent figures cited by proponents of the so-called lab leak theory.

Originally quoted in an article in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists in May...
"

Nimrod103 wrote:The only bizarre and non-sensical thing about this whole saga, is the way many pundits have jumped to make definitive rulings or have not declared their own interests. I continue to have an open mind, except for the fact that the outbreak occurred in a city where there is a lab making highly dangerous and life threatening new viruses. The onus is on them to come clean.

They have to prove a negative? Reminds me of Saddam Hussein... :)

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Re: Coronavirus - General Chat - No statistics

#419503

Postby Nimrod103 » June 14th, 2021, 4:12 pm

XFool wrote:They have to prove a negative?


Or they could just allow complete access to everyone and everything, to be investigated by completely independent investigators*. AIUI the Chinese have not done this. Of course, the nightmare scenario is that it escaped from a Chinese lab, which was financed by US money and using some US technology.
In that circumstance, getting to the truth will be impossible, and we are just being led in a merry dance.

*I was very concerned about the stories revolving around one of the WHO investigators, Peter Daszak. Doesn't appear to be independent.


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