Tornado Alley (PROG)

[fuagf]

stockmule, Yep, even before Noah (one of the lasting fairy tales). See below, one which on May 26 was attached to a reply of mine .. https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=163693405 .. to one of yours (hence the stockmule just below). Since it was attached to one i had given you i assumed you would be likely to have read it.

It's the same one as blackhawks' just gave you, just more completely outed.

An article which you, in your reiteration of your covid conspiracy theory, obviously either hadn't read before, or have chosen to forget. Or to ignore.

Note the article, which blackhawks just gave you part of, contains expert opinion on both sides of the controversial points around the virus and the Wuhan lab. We either weigh up what ALL these experts say, or ignore some experts and believe others.

In your sticking to your most unlikely scenario conspiracy theory, you obviously are doing the latter . You are doing what you encourage others of doing. Cherry-picking. Ignoring what doesn't fit your theory.

Note also: Still in the end your conspiracy could prove to be true. Point is that now - on the best evidence available - your position is considered the most unlikely. And parts of your conspiracy are outright rejected by experts close to the scene. That's the best evidence we have now.

Bits again here, with a touch of added emphasis:

The Wuhan Lab and the Gain-of-Function Disagreement

"stockmule, Your certainty as regards a conspiratorial vein of thought is confusing. What you and Wade say could be true, HOWEVER, at this point in time the great preponderance of evidence says it is most likely not the case. So i ask you WHY do you take a position of certainty in the face of the evidence at hand??

"How about we stop creating and doing gain of function ourselves.""

[...]

There are a lot of unknowns, speculation and differences of opinion on these topics. But let’s start with what we do know: In 2014, the NIH awarded a grant to the U.S.-based EcoHealth Alliance .. https://www.ecohealthalliance.org/ .. to study the risk of the future emergence of coronaviruses from bats .. https://reporter.nih.gov/search/-bvPCvB7zkyvb1AjAgW5Yg/project-details/8674931 . In 2019, the project was renewed for another five years, but it was canceled in April 2020 .. https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/04/nih-s-axing-bat-coronavirus-grant-horrible-precedent-and-might-break-rules-critics-say — three months after the first case of the coronavirus was confirmed in the U.S.

[...]

The Wuhan Institute of Virology has studied bat coronaviruses for years and their potential to ultimately infect humans, under the direction of scientist Shi Zhengli, as the Scientific American explained .. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-chinas-bat-woman-hunted-down-viruses-from-sars-to-the-new-coronavirus1/ .. in a June 2020 story. Such zoonotic transfer — meaning transmission of a virus from an animal to a human — of coronaviruses occurred with the SARS .. https://www.who.int/csr/sars/en/ .. and MERS .. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/mers/about/index.html .. coronaviruses, which led to global outbreaks in 2003 and 2012. Both viruses are thought to have started in bats, and then transferred into humans through intermediate animals — civets and racoon dogs .. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1212604/ , in the case of SARS, and camels .. https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:4d0XGGnhv0gJ:https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/middle-east-respiratory-syndrome-coronavirus-(mers-cov)+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us .. in the case of MERS.

Experts have suspected the SARS-CoV-2 virus similarly originated in bats. Researchers in China — including at the Wuhan Institute of Virology .. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2012-7 — have said the virus shares 96% of its genome with a bat virus collected by researchers in 2013 in Yunnan Province, China. (While that’s quite similar, Dr. Stanley Perlman .. https://medicine.uiowa.edu/microbiology/profile/stanley-perlman , a professor of microbiology and immunology at the University of Iowa who studies coronaviruses and a pediatric infectious disease physician, told us it would be “impossible” to take such a virus and make the kind of changes required to turn it into SARS-CoV-2 in a lab. One would need a virus that’s 99.9% similar, and “in theory it might work.”)

An article .. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9 .. published in Nature Medicine in March 2020 said that the virus likely originated through “natural selection in an animal host before zoonotic transfer,” or “natural selection in humans following zoonotic transfer.” The researchers, who analyzed genomic data, said SARS-CoV-2 “is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus.” While they said an accidental laboratory release of the naturally occurring virus can’t be ruled out, they said they “do not believe that any type of laboratory-based scenario is plausible.”

In an April 2020 statement, University of Sydney professor Edward Holmes, who was involved in mapping the genome of SARS-CoV-2, responded to “unfounded speculation” that the bat virus with 96% similarity was the origin of SARS-CoV-2. He said: “In summary, the abundance, diversity and evolution of coronaviruses in wildlife strongly suggests that this virus is of natural origin. However, a greater sampling of animal species in nature, including bats from Hubei province, is needed to resolve the exact origins of SARS-CoV-2.”

The U.S. Intelligence Community said .. https://www.dni.gov/index.php/newsroom/press-releases/item/2112-intelligence-community-statement-on-origins-of-covid-19 .. in an April 30, 2020, statement that it “concurs with the wide scientific consensus that the COVID-19 virus was not manmade or genetically modified,” and that it “will continue to rigorously examine emerging information and intelligence to determine whether the outbreak began through contact with infected animals or if it was the result of an accident at a laboratory in Wuhan.”

The zoonotic transfer theory hasn’t been proven; for example, no intermediate animal host, as was the case for SARS of MERS, has yet been identified. Lab-accident theories haven’t been proven either — whether a lab worker could have been infected by a naturally occurring virus and then transmitted it outside the lab, or, as Paul and others suggest, a lab-manipulated virus could be the origin.

[...]

“Although the team has concluded that a laboratory leak is the least likely hypothesis, this requires further investigation, potentially with additional missions involving specialist experts, which I am ready to deploy,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the day the report was publicly released on March 30. “Let me say clearly that as far as WHO is concerned all hypotheses remain on the table.”

In a May 11 Senate hearing .. https://www.rev.com/blog/transcripts/dr-fauci-cdc-director-testify-before-senate-on-covid-19-guidelines-transcript , Paul raised the issue of the origins of SARS-CoV-2 and said some in the government weren’t interested in investigating the lab-leak theory. The Kentucky senator said that “government authorities, self-interested in continuing gain-of-function research say there’s nothing to see here.” He went on to assert a tie between U.S. researchers and the Wuhan Institute of Virology and accused them of “juicing up super-viruses,” asking Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, if he still supported “the NIH funding of the lab in Wuhan.”

Fauci responded that “the NIH has not ever and does not now fund gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.”

In a subsequent interview on “Fox & Friends” .. https://www.foxnews.com/media/rand-paul-hits-media-for-not-asking-dr-fauci-the-right-questions .. on May 13, Paul said he didn’t know whether SARS-CoV-2 came from a lab. “Nobody knows,” he said. But he posited that if it did, Fauci, among others, “could be culpable for the entire pandemic,” adding, “I’m not saying that happened. I don’t know.”

Paul made the money-is-fungible argument, saying the NIH gave money to the lab, regardless of what that particular grant funded. But then asserted that NIH funding furthered risky gain-of-function research. The answer to the question of whether it did or didn’t depends on whom you ask and their definition of gain-of-function.

Hours after his May 11 exchange with Paul, Fauci said at a fact-checking conference hosted by PolitiFact.com that it would “almost be irresponsible” to not collaborate with Chinese scientists given that the 2003 SARS outbreak originated in China. “So we really had to learn a lot more about the viruses that were there, about whether or not people were getting infected with bad viruses.”

He called the EcoHealth collaboration “a very minor collaboration as part of a subcontract of a grant,” and said Paul conflated that with the claim that “therefore we were involved in creating the virus, which is the most ridiculous, majestic leap I’ve ever heard of.”

Fauci said he wasn’t convinced that the coronavirus developed naturally. “I think that we should continue to investigate what went on in China until we find out to the best of our ability exactly what happened.”
----
[INSERT: It's these groundless leaps which accuse with 'certainty' (some certainly do) good people of being maliciously dishonest which shits me. Ok, there is a possibility the conspiracists are correct. That's cool. It has happened before. See "33 "conspiracy theories" that turned out to be fact:" .. https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=47500098 .

The difference is we look at "what we know now" while leaving all options on the table. That is the only moral and ethical way of approaching these controversies.

See fucking Fucker here. He states a conspiracy as fucking fact. Click-bait unethical clowns as Carlson make their living doing that shit. ]
----
Fox News’ Tucker Carlson raised these issues on his show on May 11, saying: “The guy in charge of America’s response to COVID turns out to be the guy who funded the creation of COVID. We’re speaking of Tony Fauci and the gain-of-function experiments at the Wuhan laboratory that the U.S. government with his approval paid for.” There’s no evidence that the Wuhan laboratory, with or without funding from an NIH grant, created SARS-CoV-2.

The night before, Carlson referred .. https://video.foxnews.com/v/6253587554001?playlist_id=5198073478001#sp=show-clips .. to a May 2 article .. https://nicholaswade.medium.com/origin-of-covid-following-the-clues-6f03564c038 .. on Medium by former New York Times science writer Nicholas Wade.
----
[stockmule, Lab leak conspiracy theory rears its ugly head again: this time it's Nicholas Wade of the New York TImes.
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=163698000
Da Kine 17, Still more no-evidence conspiracy garbage from you. Not going to bother with any more than your first one
Archived fact-check: Tucker Carlson guest airs debunked conspiracy theory that COVID-19 was created in a lab
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=163983644
B402, Why dismiss anything except, yes, the earth is not flat and covid cannot be cured by drinking disinfectant. And Biden's
election win was not stolen. Go with the evidence we have always done, so no reason to stop that practice now. You say
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=164003150]
----
In that piece, Wade wrote about “two main theories” of SARS-Co-V-2’s origin: “One is that it jumped naturally from wildlife to people. The other is that the virus was under study in a lab, from which it escaped.” Wade asserted that the “clues point in a specific direction” — a lab-leak. But he said at the outset: “It’s important to note that so far there is no direct evidence for either theory. Each depends on a set of reasonable conjectures but so far lacks proof.”

Gain-of-Function

Gain-of-function .. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK285579/ .. is a term that could describe any type of virology research that results in the gain of a certain function. But the type that’s controversial, including among scientists, is research that causes a pathogen to be more infectious, particularly to humans.

In 2014, the U.S. government put a pause .. https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/blog/2014/10/17/doing-diligence-assess-risks-and-benefits-life-sciences-gain-function-research .. on new funding of gain-of-function research, which it defined this way: “With an ultimate goal of better understanding disease pathways, gain-of-function studies aim to increase the ability of infectious agents to cause disease by enhancing its pathogenicity or by increasing its transmissibility.” A 2016 paper .. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4996883/ .. on the ethics of gain-of-function research said: “The ultimate objective of such research is to better inform public health and preparedness efforts and/or development of medical countermeasures.”

[...]

EcoHealth Grant

So, did the NIH’s grant .. https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/8674931 .. to EcoHealth fund gain-of-function research at the Wuhan lab? There are differing opinions on that. As noted above, whether research is “likely” or “reasonably anticipated” to enhance transmissibility can be subjective.

EcoHealth and the NIH and NIAID say no. “EcoHealth Alliance has not nor does it plan to engage in gain-of-function research,” EcoHealth spokesman Robert Kessler told us in an email. Nor did the grant get an exception from the pause, as some have speculated, he said. “No dispensation was needed as no gain-of-function research was being conducted.”

The NIAID told the Wall Street Journal: “The research by EcoHealth Alliance, Inc. that NIH funded was for a project that aimed to characterize at the molecular level the function of newly discovered bat spike proteins and naturally occurring pathogens. Molecular characterization examines functions of an organism at the molecular level, in this case a virus and a spike protein, without affecting the environment or development or physiological state of the organism. At no time did NIAID fund gain-of-function research to be conducted at WIV.”

And in a May 19 statement .. https://www.nih.gov/about-nih/who-we-are/nih-director/statements/statement-misinformation-about-nih-support-specific-gain-function-research , NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins said that “neither NIH nor NIAID have ever approved any grant that would have supported ‘gain-of-function’ research on coronaviruses that would have increased their transmissibility or lethality for humans.”

https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=164053476