Generic Virus Thread

[Chindie]

1 minute ago, chrisp65 said:

Haven’t there been a couple of investigations and yes they basically came down to the mad exotic wet meat market, or the covid lab across the road that had a poor safety record.

Which one you choose to believe depends on your politics.

Analysis of the virus makes the lab leak theory fairly unlikely iirc. I listened to a podcast a while back where a bunch of scientists basically discussed the lab leak theory and why it was very unlikely, and it came down to things like the virus has features that if it was artificially modified etc it wouldn't have.

But it also doesn't really matter. 

[Genie]

21 minutes ago, Chindie said:

Analysis of the virus makes the lab leak theory fairly unlikely iirc. I listened to a podcast a while back where a bunch of scientists basically discussed the lab leak theory and why it was very unlikely, and it came down to things like the virus has features that if it was artificially modified etc it wouldn't have.

But it also doesn't really matter. 

I would personally find the likelihood of such a virus originating in a place with a facility like that, and it NOT be involved somehow be too unlikely.

But there’s probably only a very small number of people on the planet who have all the facts.

[Wainy316]

3 minutes ago, Genie said:

But there’s probably only a very small number of people on the planet who have all the facts.

Yep, right wing commentators and GB News reporters

[Genie]

For the Wuhan lab to not be involved would be like  Uranium being found in the pond outside Hinckley Point and then there being a denial that it didn’t come from the power station. 

[Stevo985]

I find myself laughing when I hear the stuff about Boris in the Covid enquiry. He really is as much of a moron as he appears to be. Completely clueless and incompetent.

Then I remember how serious the issue is and it's not funny anymore

[Genie]

3 minutes ago, Stevo985 said:

I find myself laughing when I hear the stuff about Boris in the Covid enquiry. He really is as much of a moron as he appears to be. Completely clueless and incompetent.

Then I remember how serious the issue is and it's not funny anymore

It underlines how serious a situation can get when a **** idiot gets into a position of such power.

[tonyh29]

17 hours ago, Genie said:

It was reported at the time that the UK had the most deaths per 100k of population, and the biggest economic collapse of the g7 or g20 I can’t remember which.

ah yes I remember the glee accompanying each death as we rose up the charts like it was the Eurovision song contest  , each death squarely being the governments fault 

didn't matter that oranges were being compared with cars long as we could show that a country with a population of 40,000 was doing better than us 

At that time countries were reporting deaths differently , but now the noise has died down , we sorta finished mid table below Italy but above Spain  ...  and well above Sweden who didn't lock down at all (make of that what you will )

The longer term impact of mental health , the economy  and related excess deaths due to that , has yet to be fully measured  but the UK excess death rate is still higher than it was pre pandemic  75 600 were in 2020, 56 500 in 2021, 39 400 in 2022, and 33 200 in the first three quarters of 2023 .. that could be down to striking doctors killing people  or it could be down to government policy starving people into an early grave  .. or a combination of factors  .. across the EU 18 countries currently have a higher excess death rate then expected  and 9 have no excess deaths , coincidently those 9 seem to be the countries that had the highest Covid deaths (Hungary ,Slovakia etc) 

 

[Chindie]

6 minutes ago, Genie said:

For the Wuhan lab to not be involved would be like  Uranium being found in the pond outside Hinckley Point and then there being a denial that it didn’t come from the power station. 

Not quite.

That lab is there because it's the city closest to where the bats that these diseases have derived from live, and it's also why the same bats were being sold in the wet market in the same city. Its also true that there's labs all over Asia doing work on Corona viruses, because Asia has lots of reservoirs of Corona viruses and therefore lots of reasons to study them. In fact most of China's big cities (of which Wuhan is one) have virology labs, so any virus arising in China would likely have a lab nearby because viruses arise in cities more often than not. 

Iirc they also have modelled the early spread and all the earliest infections flow back to people that either worked in the market with animals or were near to animals. The lab is nowhere near it - it's on the other side of the city. In fact the market is the thing that stands out as the origin of the virus - it's a zoonotic virus, and we know that those type of viruses tend to become an issue to humans when humans are exposed for long periods to numerous wild animals (and especially so if varying wild species are closely held together). That was how one of the last outbreaks happened, a Corona virus mutated in a wet market and infected people there. The market is the big neon sign shouting danger.

[Mr_Dogg]

1 hour ago, Chindie said:

Analysis of the virus makes the lab leak theory fairly unlikely iirc. I listened to a podcast a while back where a bunch of scientists basically discussed the lab leak theory and why it was very unlikely, and it came down to things like the virus has features that if it was artificially modified etc it wouldn't have.

But it also doesn't really matter. 

I don't think it has to be that conspiratorially, they could have been studying naturally occurring viruses and it got out.

[bickster]

12 minutes ago, Mr_Dogg said:

I don't think it has to be that conspiratorially, they could have been studying naturally occurring viruses and it got out.

If they were studying a naturally occurring virus, it was "out" before the lab got hold of it

[Stevo985]

21 minutes ago, tonyh29 said:

ah yes I remember the glee accompanying each death as we rose up the charts like it was the Eurovision song contest  , each death squarely being the governments fault 

didn't matter that oranges were being compared with cars long as we could show that a country with a population of 40,000 was doing better than us 

At that time countries were reporting deaths differently , but now the noise has died down , we sorta finished mid table below Italy but above Spain  ...  and well above Sweden who didn't lock down at all (make of that what you will )

Source? (genuine question)

Anything I can find has us above all of those for deaths per 100k, and only (marginally) behind Italy for total deaths. 
We're above everyone apart from Italy for excess deaths too

(also weird that you're saying people were happy. I think you're confusing glee with anger)

Edited November 21, 2023 by Stevo985

[Chindie]

13 minutes ago, Mr_Dogg said:

I don't think it has to be that conspiratorially, they could have been studying naturally occurring viruses and it got out.

The lab and the scientists there have declared the things they were working on prior to the pandemic, and there's no evidence they've hidden or not disclosed anything, and there's been no evidence of them working on anything that is COVID, in any way (and it doesn't make sense for them to have hidden work prior to any leak because nobody would be bothered - in fact they'd want to be collaborating internationally, and they were, on these things). There's even a paper, submitted in 2018 and subject to a 4yr non-disclosure, which shows they were doing work on the origin of the original SARS virus, but there's nothing showing work on either a progenitor or COVID itself. The closest that comes to that is they were researching a single gene of a virus that is also found in COVID - but that's not COVID itself. Its nonsense.

It started in the market. Same as a few other similar viruses in the last 20 years or so. People too close to wild animals too often. We know these situations are dangerous, and it was an embarrassment to China that they knew these markets were still operating and were likely going to cause a problem eventually. They'd got lucky before with other viruses of this sort burning out and being contained, this one the luck ran out.

[Davkaus]

Via Dominic Cummings, so not something I'll take at face value, but I'd hope to see some follow up to this. 

I'm glad Vallance was keeping some quite thorough contemporaneous notes.

https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/uk-pm-sunak-reportedly-said-just-let-people-die-covid-inquiry-hears-2023-11-20/

Quote

Patrick Vallance, who was the government's chief scientific adviser during COVID, made a note in his diary on Oct. 25, 2020, about a meeting involving then Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Sunak, who was finance minister.

 

The diary entry shown to the inquiry recorded how Dominic Cummings, Johnson's most senior adviser during the pandemic, had relayed to Vallance what he said he had heard at the meeting.

Vallance quoted Cummings in his diary as saying: "Rishi thinks just let people die and that's okay. This all feels like a complete lack of leadership."

 

[tonyh29]

21 minutes ago, Stevo985 said:

Source? (genuine question)

Anything I can find has us above all of those for deaths per 100k, and only (marginally) behind Italy for total deaths. 
We're above everyone apart from Italy for excess deaths too

(also weird that you're saying people were happy. I think you're confusing glee with anger)

sorry I thought i'd linked it , but only did the excess deaths one 

Incidence of coronavirus (COVID-19) deaths in Europe as of January 13, 2023, by country

There were people on twitter (yeah i know , but i was looked down at hoem and bored so had to read something ) that were positively taking delight in using the stats to show how bad we were doing

[Genie]

Now the tax cuts make sense! I wonder if it will work to bury the “let them die” story… 

[Mr_Dogg]

16 minutes ago, Chindie said:

The lab and the scientists there have declared the things they were working on prior to the pandemic, and there's no evidence they've hidden or not disclosed anything, and there's been no evidence of them working on anything that is COVID, in any way (and it doesn't make sense for them to have hidden work prior to any leak because nobody would be bothered - in fact they'd want to be collaborating internationally, and they were, on these things). There's even a paper, submitted in 2018 and subject to a 4yr non-disclosure, which shows they were doing work on the origin of the original SARS virus, but there's nothing showing work on either a progenitor or COVID itself. The closest that comes to that is they were researching a single gene of a virus that is also found in COVID - but that's not COVID itself. Its nonsense.

It started in the market. Same as a few other similar viruses in the last 20 years or so. People too close to wild animals too often. We know these situations are dangerous, and it was an embarrassment to China that they knew these markets were still operating and were likely going to cause a problem eventually. They'd got lucky before with other viruses of this sort burning out and being contained, this one the luck ran out.

You have much more knowledge if this than I do and I don't doubt what you have read. But I also wouldn't believe a single thing coming out of China on this.

[Genie]

If I were China I would 100% be leading a crumb trail to the wet market “what can we do about evolution?” rather than the lab “we f**ked up”

Just this year in March the FBI said they believe it came from the Wuhan lab.

Quote

FBI Director Christopher Wray has said that the bureau believes Covid-19 most likely originated in a Chinese government-controlled lab.

"The FBI has for quite some time now assessed that the origins of the pandemic are most likely a potential lab incident," he told Fox News.

It is the first public confirmation of the FBI's classified judgement of how the pandemic virus emerged.

bbc

[bickster]

8 minutes ago, Davkaus said:

Via Dominic Cummings, so not something I'll take at face value, but I'd hope to see some follow up to this. 

I'm glad Vallance was keeping some quite thorough contemporaneous notes.

https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/uk-pm-sunak-reportedly-said-just-let-people-die-covid-inquiry-hears-2023-11-20/

 

Yes, iirc it was leaked at the time. Rishi, your saviour really wanted you to die

[Genie]

1 minute ago, bickster said:

Yes, iirc it was leaked at the time. Rishi, your saviour really wanted you to die

and did his best to increase the odds with his Eat Out to Help Out scheme  

[Stevo985]

7 minutes ago, tonyh29 said:

sorry I thought i'd linked it , but only did the excess deaths one 

 

Yeah it's more or less the same as the source I had. That shows we're worse than everyone in Western Europe except Italy where it effectively started (the source I had was the same but had us marginally above Italy, but was only to the end of 2022)

I'm not sure that's a glowing statistic to be honest