Posted on 02/22/2020 7:33:02 PM PST by SeekAndFind
A team of researchers has hit back at rumors that the coronavirus that emerged in the central Chinese city of Wuhan late last year was engineered.
In a paper posted on Monday on the scientific online forum Virological, the scientists – who include top epidemiologist W. Ian Lipkin from Columbia University; Edward Holmes from the University of Sydney; and Kristian Andersen of Scripps Research – said crucial genetic clues indicate that the coronavirus was not created in a laboratory.
Despite scientists’ repeated efforts at debunking conspiracy theories, rumors about the still-unknown origins of the virus, also known as SARS-CoV-2, have been rife.
Most are based on the idea that the virus emerged from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where researchers have built one of the world’s biggest databases of bat-related viruses. The institute was the first to identify the new coronavirus as directly related to a wild strain found in bats.
The speculation prompted the institute’s lead researcher, Shi Zhengli, to say in a post on the social media platform WeChat: “I swear with my life, [the virus] has nothing to do with the lab.”
But that has not stopped the rumors, including in the United States, where Senator Tom Cotton, Republican of Arkansas, suggested in a Fox News television broadcast on Sunday that the virus could have come from a “biosafety level-4 super laboratory” in China.
The senator later clarified on Twitter he did not say the new coronavirus was an “engineered bioweapon,” but that there were several hypotheses about its origins that needed to be further explored.
(Excerpt) Read more at inkstonenews.com ...
Doesn’t mean the virus didn’t come out of a lab.
—
Exactly.
The “rebuff” is BS designed to spin a meme.
Yeah how big is that group of scientists who push the man made global warming scam.
Who pays for the research these scientist do. And how might that effect what they say.
RE: Doesn’t mean the virus didn’t come out of a lab.
If we believe what the scientists in this article said, then the answer is YES.
What disturbed me was the immediate attempt by the Chinese officials to sell the idea that the virus originated in the Wuhan wet market. They even produced PSA videos and news articles showing people eating bat heads to make their case to the world.
More complete patient tracking later showed that the virus was detected in patients that had not been to the market first and then appeared at patients from the market. When the government in charge of managing a situation starts putting out propaganda before getting the facts it makes concerned people suspicious and destroys any credibility they might have had.
Maybe its just a coincidence that the only P4 bio laboratory built in China is less than a mile from the site of the first infections but its understandable that people would speculate on this. I don’t think this is the end of the controversy.
RE: They even produced PSA videos and news articles showing people eating bat heads to make their case to the world.
The only problem with this is the propaganda is FALSE.
SEE HERE FROM THE NEW YORK POST:
https://nypost.com/2020/02/22/dont-buy-chinas-story-the-coronavirus-may-have-leaked-from-a-lab/
EXCERPT:
They first blamed a seafood market not far from the Institute of Virology, even though the first documented cases of Covid-19 (the illness caused by SARS-CoV-2) involved people who had never set foot there. Then they pointed to snakes, bats and even a cute little scaly anteater called a pangolin as the source of the virus.
I don’t buy any of this. It turns out that snakes don’t carry coronaviruses and that bats aren’t sold at a seafood market. Neither are pangolins, for that matter, an endangered species valued for their scales as much as for their meat.
The evidence points to SARS-CoV-2 research being carried out at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The virus may have been carried out of the lab by an infected worker or crossed over into humans when they unknowingly dined on a lab animal. Whatever the vector, Beijing authorities are now clearly scrambling to correct the serious problems with the way their labs handle deadly pathogens.
China has unleashed a plague on its own people. It’s too early to say how many in China and other countries will ultimately die for the failures of their country’s state-run microbiology labs, but the human cost will be high.
Says something about our corrupt media that the Washington Post called the lab origin a “discredited conspiracy theory” without asking any real questions or doing any journalism.
If the Chinese allow WHO into that lab and reveal the studies that have done on there, then that’s some level of third party confirmation. However, Chinese government promises? Sorry. Not buying that.
If it was a bioweapon that escaped, then we need all of that information to combat the spread. This a very easy weapon to spread with, say, a volunteer group of jihadis willing to cross our southern border or just fly into the country before it has become active.
RE: If the Chinese allow WHO into that lab and reveal the studies that have done on there, then that’s some level of third party confirmation.
Not only WHO. The US CDC also offered to help in the research on the origins of the Covid-2019 virus. They were rebuffed.
Exactly. The virus might have been harvested from a bat, then been studied, unmodified, in the lab. Then some lab worker made a little mistake.
And then you remember that the head of the Chemistyr Dept. from HARVARD, was arrested for getting money under the table from Red China, to help them set up a research center in Wuhan, and for placing Chinese Army Spies in his department.
So gives a rat's flying f**k WHAT any of these liberal vermin say?
Treat them as guilty, even if PROVEN innocent; after all, that's what they did to the kids at Waco, and Randy Weaver, and Paul Manafort, and Roger Stone, and the President, and every heterosexual white male in the country, right?
F 'em ALL.
Yes, CDC was rejected as well.
China also tried to hide the virus and threatened those that warned of its dangers. Not exactly the behavior of an innocent victim of a random new virus.
I’ve read “conspiracy theory” was actually a phrase invented by the CIA to attack its enemies. But maybe that’s a conspiracy theory?
The other point being that we are in the Stone Age re biology. It’s not lack of desire. It’s lack of ability.
From a military standpoint, a germ isn’t a useful weapon, unless it’s controllable as an area weapon.
Reptiles passing the "flu" to human mammals.
Right
It would be interesting to find out how many of this group of scientists took grant money from China or US government...
Follow the money...
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.