58 points
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This is stupid. There is just as much evidence it came from Fort Detrick.

For the record I don’t think it came from either.

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32 points

That’s the thing, the COVID conspiracy people now posting this shirt saying, “SEE!?! IT WAS LAB LEAK!!” as if that justifies every single other insane thing they’ve ever said about COVID. Because there’s a huge difference between “covid CAME FROM a lab” and “lab leak possible origin.” One implies conspiracy, the other implies carelessness. What’s the old saying? ‘Never attribute to malice what can be attributed to greed?’ I very much think the same applies to stupidity—and honestly, in this case, greed probably caused the stupidity. How much funding-slashing has led to calamity in recent times? Plenty.

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17 points

I think the lab with a long record of carelessness leaking the virus by accident is entirely plausible if not the most reasonable explanation. The issue is not so much about how/when it was leaked, but more along the lines of how poorly they handled the whole situation and subsequent coverup. For all we know, it could have been leaked by accident way earlier.

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2 points

Exactly The issue is how China handled all of this. America has had leaks before as have other countries. China has several well known leaks.

China is still trying to hide the origins which to me heavily suggest a lab leak.

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14 points

Yeah, I don’t really have any issues with accepting a lab leak possibility, but the lab leak people generally add a whole bunch of other conspiracies on top of that (it was designed as a bioweapon, leaked intentionally, etc), and nobody can really explain why this would be any good as a bioweapon if it hurts you as much as your enemies, and if you release it without having a vaccine for it.

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23 points

I think the lab with a long record of carelessness leaking the virus by accident is entirely plausible if not the most reasonable explanation

I personally don’t think it came from Detrick, but I don’t fault you for thinking so

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41 points

I don’t know why anyone is still talking about a lab outbreak in Wuhan because of the wet market nearby being suspected in mid December, when we know for sure that Covid was in Italy in September/October and possibly as early as May. The world just shrugged at this info because faecal treatment samples aren’t as interesting as as bat soup and bioterrorism.

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32 points
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Racism mostly. Easier to just be racist against the Chinese than to admit COVID is the result of something more nuanced and systemic

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2 points

It’s also about laziness. It’s much less effort to just point a finger than to think about the complexities of a situation.

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2 points

Nobody has a problem with Chinese people.

But the CCP needs to be given the Beria treatment.

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9 points

Any sources on the virus being discovered in Italy before China? That would change the entire discussion.

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1 point

https://www.reuters.com/article/health-coronavirus-italy-timing-idUSKBN27W1J2

There’s no similar tests done in China (that I can find traces of) so we have no idea when the virus started circulating in China. Just like Winnie the Poo likes it.

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6 points

It came from the wild. They, along with Germany and other labs, were researching Sars related wild vectors and the possibility of natural selection causing a new outbreak.

I find it reasonable to believe a biosafety incident at the Wuhan lab infected several of the lab researchers and that led to the pandemic.

But that’s the extent of where things go. Conspiracies about bioweapons are idiotic.

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1 point
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I remembered reading early on that someone sold a carcass from the lab to a wet market. I think that’s probably Western propaganda and I have no idea whether that’s true.

However, in China there were posters in every restaurant saying to avoid eating such meats. They started to appear in the first half of 2020. I saw them in Shanghai, Ningbo, and Hangzhou.

Maybe the government just saw it as a useful opportunity to steer the public toward factory-produced meats that fall under the “safe umbrella” of capitalism. Either one is interesting to think about

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1 point

I thought this as well (massive safety events being a pretty normal thing, after all) until last year when the wet market swab data was finally analyzed. (After apparently being leaked? Accidentally? Accidentally on purpose?)

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abp8715

“Both early lineages of SARS-CoV-2 were geographically associated with the market”

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-89 points
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75 points

No self-respecting scientist concluded that either a natural origin or a lab leak were the definitive cause of the pandemic. This is clear if you actually read scientific literature. It’s why phrases akin to “the most supported hypothesis is X” or “the Y theory is unlikely without more supporting evidence” are used. Both hypotheses were and are still possible explanations.

It’s people who get their scientific info from sources like the Telegraph that keep jumping to conclusions. Or people who don’t understand what a section leader at the NIH does, how research grants work, or what gain of function research is. You know, like yourself.

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-66 points

Yeah, it was just coincidence that the exact same strain evolved in the wild and transferred to humans in the same place at the same time!

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26 points
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sigh I know you’ve probably either already made up your mind or you’re not arguing in good faith, so I’m not gonna engage any further except to say that it’s entirely possible for a virologist to do research on zoonotic viruses. Just because it’s a bat virus doesn’t mean it stays a bat virus.

Also, there are probably billions if not trillions or quadrillions of individual COVID viruses out there. Each time a new one’s made, there’s a chance for it to mutate into something else. It’s totally possible for a virus to evolve similar features in separate environments. I believe the term, “convergent evolution” applies here, and you can find examples larger than viruses in plants and animals, where even separate species can sometimes evolve the same features independently from one another. Carcinisation is an extreme example of this.

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68 points

The original grant was to the EcoHealth Alliance, which then subcontracted the Wuhan institute to collect wild samples from bats. In other words, the whole point of the research was to try and catalogue viruses that existed in the wild with pandemic potential.

It’s not coincidence that lab samples there or in other facilities exist that are close in sequence to viruses later identified in humans. That was, in fact, the goddamn point of surveying bat coronaviruses: to identify those with spillover potential. And it’s absolutely possible one of these collected samples was mishandled and leaked from the lab. After all, lab leaked viral outbreaks happen almost every other year, and there were already safety concerns at this particular site published long before the pandemic.

But what you and every other mouthbreathing idiot is trying to say is that Fauci, a director of the NIAID at the time, personally directed gain of function research to engineer new viruses to infect humans and then that virus escaped. Which, speaking as a molecular biologist myself, is laughably backwards.

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17 points

The gain of function research on the same wild virus being done in conjunction with Germany?

Do you know any of the actual details of the project, where they were collecting wild bats infected with the proto version of Covid and were splitting up different components of the research to different labs?

The Wuhan group were researching the viral backbone and Germany the viral antigens.

The same sort of collaboration done on many other potentially concerning natural vector diseases.

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-47 points

You’re so invested in your narrative.

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23 points

You mean I’ve actually read the scientific data and evidence going back years before the pandemic? The research they were doing there and in Germany was well known and openly available. Published papers and all.

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8 points

If so, you’re two of a kind.

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18 points
Removed by mod
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-32 points

I question narratives and I’m met by insults. If the people responding had any evidence or were secure in their narrative they wouldn’t need to resort to insults first.

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3 points

Have they found an animal with a strain related to the human variant? Isn’t that the main evidence they expect to be able to find to help prove it actually had a path from animal to human?

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-23 points

If so, I haven’t seen it. As far as I can tell, investigating the narrative is off limits. You can see how every person who has responded to my questioning has attacked me on a personal level.

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-6 points
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I don’t know if those attacking you are right or wrong in the narrative they believe, but they’re definitely jumping to conclusions about people who choose to believe in the possibility of a lab leak and subsequent coverup. It seems they think all of us to be conspiracy theory nutjobs with alt-right ideologies.

Personally, I started believing the lab leak stuff may be legit when I watch johnny harris’s video. I figured Johnny Harris was giving a decent take on the whole situation. He had numerous reasons for coming to the conclusions he did, and it all seems decently reasonable.

But recently it’s come to my attention that maybe Harris isn’t the most reliable source. While I can’t recall the details atm, I have read and watched stuff about Harris that does call into question his biases. At the same time, I don’t believe anyone has said anything against his factual accuracy. But the slant of a presentation and possibly excluded information can do quite a bit for undermining a narrative if you really want to do that. So, its hard to say if you should believe his story about the lab leak.

But, It’s not like I’m gonna do anything useful with my opinion on the topic…. So I’m not going to waste time seriously investing in researching the topic.

Edit: Reworded, and added context that I completely left out the first time around.

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2 points

Source on that claim?

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33 points

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10 points

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40 points

Sup guys. Just commenting here so you can avoid reading the most brainlet of a take below. Hope you all have a good day.

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47 points
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Hexbear users coming to defend China before even reading the post title:

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8 points
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1 point
Deleted by creator
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5 points

They’re coming in with their alts now. If you check some of the profiles on here, look how often China is mentioned and tell me it’s not just obviously Hexbear users with alts

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-3 points
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10 points
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Deleted by creator
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I am aware that this news article may be misleading. That’s not the point of my comment.

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