Comments by "Harry Stoddard" (@HarryS77) on "HasanAbi"
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There was a recentish Citations Needed episode on MIC lobbying, and one of the examples they adduce is of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank funded by the defense department and contractors, publishing a report setting off the alarm about an ice cutter gap between Russia and the US. Russia has 7 ice cutters; we have only 2. (But Russia also has 14x the Arctic coastline we do, so if anything, we have a relative surplus.)
Well, that study got picked up in the news. The NYT reported it, as did Politico. Congress swung into action and passed a bill to fund the construction of 6 new ice cutters (giving us 1 more than Russia). The contract for those vessels landed in the lap of Lockheed Martin, one of the top donors to CSIS.
So you have this circular dynamic whereby these arms manufacturers—who cannot, for political reasons, simply come out and say, We need to build more weapons!—launder their marketing through an ostensibly disinterested think tank, which cycles through the media, through public alarm and calls for action, through Congress, and ends up back at the arms manufacturer in the form of a lucrative contract.
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@scotaloo77g73 That's weird, youtube deleted your links to peer-reviewed studies too. Why is it only doing that for you and the other guy?
"Researchers from the WIV collected hundreds of samples from bats roosting in a mine between 2012 and 2015, after several miners working there had gotten sick with an unknown respiratory disease. (Last year, researchers reported that blood samples taken from the miners tested negative for antibodies against SARS-CoV-2, meaning that the sickness was probably not COVID-199.) Back at the lab, WIV researchers detected nearly 300 coronaviruses in the bat samples, but they were able to get whole or partial genomic sequences from fewer than a dozen , and none of those that were reported were SARS-CoV-29,10. During the WHO-led origins probe earlier this year, WIV researchers told investigators that they cultured only three coronaviruses at the lab, and none were closely related to SARS-CoV-2.
"Although the investigators didn’t sift through freezers at the WIV to confirm this information, the low number of genomes and cultures doesn’t surprise virologists. Munster says it’s exceedingly difficult to extract intact coronaviruses from bat samples. Virus levels tend to be low in the animals, and viruses are often degraded in faeces, saliva and droplets of blood. Additionally, when researchers want to study or genetically alter viruses, they need to keep them (or synthetic mimics of them) alive, by finding the appropriate live animal cells for the viruses to inhabit in the lab, which can be a challenge.
"So, for SARS-CoV-2 to have come from this mine in China, WIV researchers would have had to overcome some serious technical challenges — and they would have kept the information secret for a number of years and misled investigators on the WHO-led mission, scientists point out. There's no evidence of this, but it can't be ruled out." (Nature)
So, cautiously, the mine theory can't be ruled out, but it also seems unlikely and relies on a shaky conspiracy, like all the other theories you've thrown out as "evidence."
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@scotaloo77g73 No, I cited an article from a major science journal explaining the relevance of the mine to the lab leak theory.
You repeatedly invoke generic "scientists," but what you're really referring to is a letter that 18 scientists signed and general calls for more investigation. But, awkwardly for you, virtually all reporting on this topic (aside from places like Sky News, granted) includes some version of 'Scientists agree natural transmission is the most likely scenario."
Moreover, even some of the signers of that letter don't buy the lab leak theory.
"The organizer of the letter, David Relman of Stanford, told Nature’s Amy Maxmen, “I am not saying I believe the virus came from a laboratory.” Another signatory, Ralph S. Baric of the University of North Carolina, told the New Yorker, “The genetic sequence for SARS-CoV-2 really points to a natural-origin event from wildlife.”" (LA Times)
In other words, the investigation is a way to put lab leak theories to rest.
So I have to wonder why you're so eager to invoke "scientists" when 1) there's no scientific evidence to support a lab leak, 2) genetic evidence points to natural transmission (cf Andersen), 3) scientists in general believe the most likely origin is natural transmission, 4) except in the land of conspiracy crankery, calls for investigation aren't proof of potential outcomes of that investigation, especially the least likely outcomes.
This article does a good job explaining why your suspicions (what you think are proof) have plausible explanations and don't prove a lab leak. For instance, why would China resist calls for transparency? For one, because that's what they usually do. (Plenty of authoritarian regimes have resisted inspections even when they had nothing to hide, eg Saddam and WMD.) Two, the calls for inspection and transparency are being made by hostile governments. The whole argument that China's opacity proves a lab leak is a version of "the innocent have nothing to hide," which of course isn't true. https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/the-origin-of-sars-cov-2-revisited/
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@scotaloo77g73 And Roizman is basing that on zero evidence, just like you. I'm glad you found one scientist who's convinced of a lab leak. For someone who disdains appeals to authority, citing him as evidence seems odd. You can't seem to disambiguate between an investigation and its (unreached) conclusions, and also don't understand that citing actual data and studies isn't "an appeal to authority"; it's an appeal to evidence. How cringey of me to uh cite evidence. I should be more like you and make baseless speculations and insist that trust me bro, bro trust me, all these coincidences are PROOF I'm right. That's the noncringe way to argue.
You've yet to produce any credible, verified, peer-reviewed evidence for your theory, and if you keep avoiding it, I'm going to have to assume it's because you don't know of any.
And unless I'm mistaken, that WSJ article is basically just repeating information from the State Department, hence why I keep referring to your theory about 3 sick WIV researchers as unverified State Department info. Because that's what it is. You are conveniently pretending that the unverified claim about 3 sick WIV researchers refers to something broader, but that specific claim comes from the State Department. Maybe you didn't know that.
At the risk of being accused of "appealing to authority" and "copy pasting," here's the fact sheet and relevant section: https://ge.usembassy.gov/fact-sheet-activity-at-the-wuhan-institute-of-virology/
"The U.S. government has reason to believe that several researchers inside the WIV became sick in autumn 2019, before the first identified case of the outbreak, with symptoms consistent with both COVID-19 and common seasonal illnesses. This raises questions about the credibility of WIV senior researcher Shi Zhengli’s public claim that there was “zero infection” among the WIV’s staff and students of SARS-CoV-2 or SARS-related viruses."
I for one love uncritically taking the US intelligence community at its word when it says it has "reason to believe" something without producing evidence. I know you do, too, big ol' skeptic, you.
I'll reply if actual evidence is adduced, but I don't see the point in continuing to entertain the same wild speculations as if they were true.
I don't think you even bothered to read the study on early spread. More posturing on your side; no evidence.
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@scotaloo77g73 Yes, they are very recent statements. I know you have an allergy to reading sources, but I've provided them above.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/06/15/lab-leak-theory-doesnt-hold-up-covid-china/
"When those independent experts got a look at the State Department’s analysis, he wrote in an email at the time, they found it rested on a single statistical analysis prepared by one scientist “a pathologist, rather than a virologist, epidemiologist, or infectious disease modeler” without expertise in that type of modeling. The “statistical case seems notably weak,” Ford wrote."
'And what about RaTG13, the virus that Wade and Baker argue is so similar to COVID-19 that it would only need some tuneups? In a statement from April 2020, Edward Holmes—an evolutionary biologist and virologist at the University of Sydney—noted that “the level of genome sequence divergence between SARS-CoV-2 and RaTG13 is equivalent to an average of 50 years (and at least 20 years) of evolutionary change.”
“Hence, SARS-CoV-2 was not derived from RaTG13,” Holmes said. Backing up what numerous other researchers have found, Holmes added that “the abundance, diversity and evolution of coronaviruses in wildlife strongly suggests that this virus is of natural origin.”
"I asked him about the lab leak theory. “This ‘growing body of evidence’—we haven’t seen it,” Ben Embarek said."
"In a Feb. 9 press conference, after several weeks on the ground, Ben Embarek and his colleagues announced that they had seen enough to conclude that the lab leak theory was “extremely unlikely.”
“There had been no publication, no reports of this virus, of another virus extremely linked or closely linked to this, being worked with in any other laboratory in the world,” Ben Embarek noted then."
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@SeraphsWitness Except we had multiple trained and respected medical experts testify that positional asphyxiation was the cause of death and clearly explained how that can happen.
We also had police officers, including the chief of police, testify that leaning on someone's neck for 9 minutes was not in keeping with policy or training and represented a gross disregard for life and safety.
To be absolutely clear: Chauvin's use of force was so extreme and malicious that even the police could recognize that. Why can't you?
So even if Floyd had conditions which made him more vulnerable to respiratory distress, Chauvin went far beyond what he was trained to do, disregarded Floyd's health, and was therefore the direct cause of his death EVEN IF in some other reality some other combination of factors could have killed him later. As I've already had to point out before, much to my amazement, the police don't have justification to kill you just because there's a chance you could die from something else. If anything, we should expect the opposite to be the case: they should be expected to help you avoid that end, especially when your infraction was as petty as a counterfeit $20.
The conversation may have been different had Chauvin shown restraint, exercised only the force that was needed to arrest Floyd, made every attempt to preserve his life, and followed protocol to the letter; but that simply was not the case, and the overwhelming number of experts and witnesses testified to that, and the jury agreed. Like them, I'm going to trust a world-renowned pulmonologist before I trust some guy in the YouTube comments with a PhD in common sense, intuition, and feels.
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