The Origin of the Wuhan Coronavirus

Serryah

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Penicillin works. Anesthesias have saved millions from pain. The second law of thermodynamics has no reference to race or creed. The scientific method is the very closest attempt in all of history to remove all prejudice, of any kind, from the attempt to answer any question. Its kernel, its very ultimate idea, is submission to what is really seen, what is really there, what is really to be understood.

Most important of all, the colour of the skin of a discoverer has no bearing on the discovery.

You cannot “decolonize” science, because science has no colonies, it wishes none, and would lose all verity if it owed any allegiance except to cold observation, relentless questioning, and the utter exclusion of secondary impulses, most particularly those of race and activism.
Shame that this article didn’t come out until four months after an interesting debate on this exact thing.

How would a person decolonize penicillin? Or anesthesia? Or open-heart surgery? Or the miracle advances the past century gave the world through the understandings — still not complete — of quantum physics?

Scientific truth is the truth of bare fact. The only reverence science knows is the genuflection before hard, physical reality. Science wears no ribbons of fealty to causes, colours or the predispositions of any mentality or ideology, other than the asking of questions and the submission to the answers provided by absolutely neutral inquiry — answers always tentative, always open to revision or correction; science is never final….Unless it is a politician. Like Justin Trudeau, or Al Gore talking about science…settled science, etc…

And yet you've got to admit Ron that science is also "selective", depending on the person speaking. As in, if they don't like the science, it's "bunk", but if it goes in their favour, well....
 

The_Foxer

House Member
Aug 9, 2022
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True, but that's due to non-scientific motivations and tactics.

When I hear "Evolution is just a THEORY!" I respond "So's gravity."
gravity isn't a theory. Gravity is a physical observable phenomenon. Einstein's theory explaining why gravity exists and how it might behave mathematically is a theory. So your reply is nonsensical.

Evolution on the other hand actually is a theory. Although it's one with a great deal of data to suggest it's accurate. So the other person was smarter than you in that case.

And it doesn't come down to 'non scientific methods'. I believe we discussed this before - science is and always has been subject entirely to the bias and fallibility of the humans using the scientific method. That bias and fallibility shows up in how the experiments are crafted and conducted and how the results are interpreted.

We try to mitigate that with peer review. The very fact we need to do that shows that scientific methods produce the same errors and other motivated and non motivated bias and prejudice as any other method. But at the end of the day its' still in there. Science is HARDLY 'bias free'.
 

Ron in Regina

"Voice of the West" Party
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BRITISH ministers are “no longer discounting” the theory that coronavirus originated after leaking from a Chinese bio research lab in Wuhan, according to reports.

Senior sources have reportedly admitted while the “balance of scientific advice” is that the virus originated naturally, a leak is also being considered by security services.

Theories about the origins of coronavirus being linked to a lab in Wuhan have been batted around since the early days out of the outbreak.

One member of Cobra, the emergency committee led by Prime Minister Boris Johnson, said security services are now considering a possible leak, reports The Mail on Sunday.

The source added however they did not dispute the virus was “zoonotic” - meaning it originated in animals.

Chinese officials have previously attempted to dismiss claims of a leak as "internet rumours".

The government source’s comments come as pressure ratchets up on China to come clean over the outbreak.

The member of Cobra, which receives classified briefings from British intelligence, said: “There is a credible alternative view [to the zoonotic theory] based on the nature of the virus.

“Perhaps it is no coincidence that there is that laboratory in Wuhan. It is not discounted.”


https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.th...isters-coronavirus-china-lab-leak-theory/amp/
Trump Suggests China May Be ‘Knowingly Responsible’ for Virus



Australia demands coronavirus enquiry, adding to pressure on China
WASHINGTON—The U.S. Energy Department has concluded that the Covid pandemic most likely arose from a laboratory leak, according to a classified intelligence report recently provided to the White House and key members of Congress.

The shift by the Energy Department, which previously was undecided on how the virus emerged, is noted in an update to a 2021 document by Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines’s office.

The new report highlights how different parts of the intelligence community have arrived at disparate judgments about the pandemic’s origin. The Energy Department now joins the Federal Bureau of Investigation in saying the virus likely spread via a mishap at a Chinese laboratory.

(Four other agencies, along with a national intelligence panel, still judge that it was likely the result of a natural transmission, and two are undecided.)

The Energy Department’s conclusion is the result of new intelligence and is significant because the agency has considerable scientific expertise and oversees a network of U.S. national laboratories, some of which conduct advanced biological research.
 
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Jinentonix

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True, but that's due to non-scientific motivations and tactics.

When I hear "Evolution is just a THEORY!" I respond "So's gravity."
Not quite. There's the Law of Gravity which elegantly explains how it works. Then there's the Theory of Gravity which still seeks to explain what gravity actually is.
And yet you've got to admit Ron that science is also "selective", depending on the person speaking. As in, if they don't like the science, it's "bunk", but if it goes in their favour, well....
Science is also selective depending on the money flow. At the time of the pandemic China was the WHO's single largest financial contributor. So of course when the Chinese govt insisted Covid didn't leak from a lab, the WHO bent over backwards claiming there was absolutely no way Covid could have leaked from a Chinese lab. And after the BC bud flap, the WHO didn't have a lot of credibility as it was.

Same with the IPCC's 97% so-called consensus on AGW. It's a lie. The only majority that survey determined was that 2/3 of the scientists who were sent
the survey thought it was garbage. You can't treat science like it's a topic to be polled and then only account for those who responded and ignoring the reason why the majority didn't respond. It's this politicization of science that's causing the most damage to it.

Look, I'm not a "science denier". My best subjects in high school were math, chemistry, biology and physics (and history). I love science. But Im'a need more than some ginned up survey results or the Chinese govt's word posing as empirical data to convince me of something.
I'm also going to need more than an MSM who was happy to push the fake Y2K Armageddon scam for some extra ad revenue.
 

Ron in Regina

"Voice of the West" Party
Apr 9, 2008
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So is this still a conspiracy theory, or a conspiracy fact?
Who knows? On Sunday, the Wall Street Journal published an explosive internal report from the U.S. Energy Department which ruled that COVID-19 likely originated as an accidental leak from a Chinese laboratory.

In the early weeks of COVID-19, it was deemed conspiratorial and even racist to suggest that COVID-19 was anything but a spontaneous eruption from the natural world.

That sounds so familiar somehow…?
The U.S. Department of Energy is just the latest high-profile agency to back the notion that the pandemic was due to human error. Above, at the top of the three above links is a quick guide to the mounting evidence in favour of the “lab leak” theory.
 
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Tecumsehsbones

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Assume it's true. What's the explosive part? That a major power is experimenting with NBC weapons, or that accidents happen? The latter is banal, and the former is only surprising if you're hopelessly naive.
 
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Ron in Regina

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I don’t think any of it is explosive, but it’s interesting looking back at how opinion was steered then (three years ago) & now based upon the direction the political winds are blowing regardless of any facts or lack there of.
 

Tecumsehsbones

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I don’t think any of it is explosive, but it’s interesting looking back at how opinion was steered then (three years ago) & now based upon the direction the political winds are blowing regardless of any facts or lack there of.
I'm not sure "there's no evidence of an accidental or deliberate release of biological experiments" constitutes "steering."
 

petros

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Nov 21, 2008
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I don’t think any of it is explosive, but it’s interesting looking back at how opinion was steered then (three years ago) & now based upon the direction the political winds are blowing regardless of any facts or lack there of.
If the truth came out front and center in January 2020 there would have been no shortage lynch mobs.
 
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Ron in Regina

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I'm not sure "there's no evidence of an accidental or deliberate release of biological experiments" constitutes "steering."
Let’s use this as an example. “There’s no evidence of an accidental or deliberate release of biological experiments” isn’t a consistent statement by most US Government entities now, but was it three years ago? Has new info come forward (?) or have the political winds began to blow in a different direction?

I’m not talking about a consensus, but are there more Gov’t entities publicly leaning towards a lab leak now as opposed to three years ago? If so, why?
 

Tecumsehsbones

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Let’s use this as an example. “There’s no evidence of an accidental or deliberate release of biological experiments” isn’t a consistent statement by most US Government entities now, but was it three years ago? Has new info come forward (?) or have the political winds began to blow in a different direction?

I’m not talking about a consensus, but are there more Gov’t entities publicly leaning towards a lab leak now as opposed to three years ago? If so, why?
Yes. The process of investigation usually leads to the acquisition of more information. That's kinda why we do it.
 

Ron in Regina

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To stop lynch mobs killing Asians mistaken as Chinese.
So, three years later, millions of deaths, billions in economic losses, the public is more open to the opinion than it would have been when this was fresh?

Yes. The process of investigation usually leads to the acquisition of more information. That's kinda why we do it.
So is it new information at this point in time (?) or looking at the same old information with todays eyes?
 
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Tecumsehsbones

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So, three years later, millions of deaths, billions in economic losses, the public is more open to the opinion than it would have been when this was fresh?


So is it new information at this point in time (?) or looking at the same old information with todays eyes?
Both. It seems fairly obvious to me that the acquisition of new information causes re-evaluation of the information previously in hand in light of the new information.