quisp

RN, Sharp SD: Cared for likely early COVID, onset ~late Dec 19. Healthy 30s pt—ICU, unusual clotting, highly contagious. No travel. Hosp rptd unknown viral pmn.

[Nathan Cofnas @nathancofnas]

I was just suspended by Ghent University. They will almost certainly fire me.

The decision was made by rector Petra De Sutter, a former leader of the Green Party.

[Rebecc@ ███████ @Rebecca21951651]

@dlingenfelter @sigridbratlie No new evidence - ref report by @MarionKoopmans "forced" him to favor zoonosis.

From article:

"In June 2020, 3 months ***after*** the paper was published... Andersen... wrote privately to his co-authors that he “found both scenarios [lab leak and natural origin] equally likely”

[quisp @quisp1965]

@GurusPod @gilbo852 This is easily assessed by their failure to steelman crucial topics. Take the FCS argument. They’ll always include their two talking points that don’t counter the relevant issue: none of SARS-CoV-2’s known close relatives has an FCS, and that is crucial given what we know.

[quisp @quisp1965]

@GurusPod @gilbo852 It’s all a repeat of Proximal Origins. Nearly everything is overstated, and ambiguous data gets pushed in one direction toward the preferred hypothesis.

[quisp @quisp1965]

@BergsonsGhost @Biorealism @mbw61567742 @Rebecca21951651 @Ayjchan @MichaelWorobey @jepekar @aaas The FCS argument is a good example of the field never steelmanning and acting like good scientists. The FCS certainly pegs the meter toward a LL. Washburne’s “1,000 years in nature” point gives some sense of the odds.

[quisp @quisp1965]

@BergsonsGhost @Biorealism @mbw61567742 @Rebecca21951651 @Ayjchan @MichaelWorobey @jepekar @aaas Every natural spillover leaning paper I see seems to overstate its case, at least at the media level, and almost always leaves out plausible LL explanations.

[quisp @quisp1965]

@BergsonsGhost @Biorealism @mbw61567742 @Rebecca21951651 @Ayjchan @MichaelWorobey @jepekar @aaas I think origins is rather simple, and I try not to get buried in the weeds. SARS2 is a virus consistent with the kind of work they were doing, and its odd spillover and evolutionary pattern fits what such work might plausibly produce.

https://t.co/ggn41WISWc

[quisp @quisp1965]

@BallouxFrancois If the amazing coincidence below meant something:

We would find ourselves in the unusual situation of having no animal host.

We would have a low-diversity outbreak.

We would have the strange phenomenon of missing evolution in a lineage whose history should be difficult to hide

[quisp @quisp1965]

@BergsonsGhost @Biorealism @mbw61567742 @Rebecca21951651 @Ayjchan @MichaelWorobey @jepekar @aaas This undesirable hypothesis is too political. The field looks in one direction and throws everything it can at it. In the beginning, too many professionals too quickly ruled out a lab conducting risky spillover studies on these same types of viruses, and that was ridiculous.

[quisp @quisp1965]

@BergsonsGhost @Biorealism @mbw61567742 @Rebecca21951651 @Ayjchan @MichaelWorobey @jepekar @aaas The market focus only made sense when China was not being honest about h2h transmission. A market whose data aligns with a diversion cannot honestly be used as evidence for zoonosis. Natural spillover needs the animal host.

[quisp @quisp1965]

@PaulRic56123559 @_everythingism @SaskiaPopescu @TheAtlantic If we had a LL, the market is a diversion.

I think China knew that if they had been honest about what they knew about h2h transmission, some expert would be on Western TV pointing out that the market focus was premature, which would have gotten them talking about alternatives.

[Alina Chan @Ayjchan]

https://t.co/fWMwbRzJ6E

[quisp @quisp1965]

@PatrickSSte @SashaGusevPosts From my understanding it's a useful paper....
....if you think China's data is complete
....if you think a natural spillover has been shown
...if you think the papers countering it are BS

[quisp @quisp1965]

@PatrickSSte @SashaGusevPosts I got the idea to get it to talk about point #1 from you.

I would have no idea if I'm going off a hallucination or BS, but it's still better than me alone 🤣

[The Seeker @TheSeeker268]

The next day, Daszak does something stunning.

He alerts WIV scientists (Shi Zhengli and Peng Zhou) that Jesse Bloom is requesting genomic data regarding bat coronaviruses studied under EHA’s NIH grant, and explicitly instructs the WIV not to share the data with Bloom.

He then openly admits that EHA was "fighting" the disclosure to keep US taxpayer-funded research on bat coronaviruses hidden from the public, but "journalists took the NIH to court and a judge forced them."

He outlines his strategy to Shi: he will point Bloom to already published sequences on GenBank, and when Bloom asks for raw data, he will "ignore his requests."

Daszak justifies this by claiming that because the NIH grant is suspended, Bloom's request is "not appropriate."

This is Daszak, on record, coordinating with WIV to block independent scientific review and subvert the data-sharing requirements of the grant.

[quisp @quisp1965]

@FabianiKevin @DanielWhiteson I actually blame mankind as a whole. We are learning as we go, and I fault no one.

Part of the problem is that the field is extremely biased on this issue and makes poor assessments of possible accidents.

So it’s a two-part problem:

1. Biosafety
2. Assessment

[quisp @quisp1965]

@BallouxFrancois I think the politics surrounding this undesirable hypothesis create an emperor with no clothes situation.

This seems cut and dried to me.

[quisp @quisp1965]

@BallouxFrancois If the amazing coincidence below meant something:

We would find ourselves in the unusual situation of having no animal host.

We would have a low-diversity outbreak.

We would have the strange phenomenon of missing evolution in a lineage whose history should be difficult to hide

[quisp @quisp1965]

@DanielWhiteson There is historic precedent for diversion following bioaccidents, and the evidence lines up with that. Yet so many people have been falsely led to believe this would be too difficult.

It only takes a director guiding the search and a lab doctoring the results.

[quisp @quisp1965]

@DanielWhiteson Mankind is a tribal, sad lot. Almost everybody who believes in natural spillover is a hard-core leftist.

I had a likely late-December case in San Diego. You know, that region with the positive serologies. COVID doesn’t leave clear origin trails.
https://t.co/92Xf9dHPcM

[quisp @quisp1965]

@SashaGusevPosts They never got to the market through any sound science. Once researchers understood the high R0, rapid spread, and extensive undetected transmission, it became obvious that the earliest recognized cases would not reveal where the outbreak began.
Here’s Baric explaining.