INVESTIGATIONS The Lab-Leak Hypothesis

Intelligencer ^ | JAN. 4, 2021 | Nicholson Baker

[Pelham]

I think it’s worth offering some historical context for our yearlong medical nightmare. We need to hear from the people who for years have contended that certain types of virus experimentation might lead to a disastrous pandemic like this one. And we need to stop hunting for new exotic diseases in the wild, shipping them back to laboratories, and hot-wiring their genomes to prove how dangerous to human life they might become.

Over the past few decades, scientists have developed ingenious methods of evolutionary acceleration and recombination, and they’ve learned how to trick viruses, coronaviruses in particular, those spiky hairballs of protein we now know so well, into moving quickly from one species of animal to another or from one type of cell culture to another. They’ve made machines that mix and mingle the viral code for bat diseases with the code for human diseases — diseases like SARS, severe acute respiratory syndrome, for example, which arose in China in 2003, and MERS, Middle East respiratory syndrome, which broke out a decade later and has to do with bats and camels

[Pelham]

Some of the experiments — “gain of function” experiments — aimed to create new, more virulent, or more infectious strains of diseases in an effort to predict and therefore defend against threats that might conceivably arise in nature. The term gain of function is itself a euphemism; the Obama White House more accurately described this work as “experiments that may be reasonably anticipated to confer attributes to influenza, MERS, or SARS viruses such that the virus would have enhanced pathogenicity and/or transmissibility in mammals via the respiratory route.” The virologists who carried out these experiments have accomplished amazing feats of genetic transmutation, no question, and there have been very few publicized accidents over the years. But there have been some.

[Pelham]

“Gain of Function” ping

[Salamander]

“accidents”

[ifinnegan]

Nicholson Baker is an idiot.

[Pelham]

You’ll definitely want to read the part about “gain of function”. I saw some medical type mention it for the first time recently. This article fleshes it out.

“Stephen King meets Crispr”

[Salamander]

All our times have come. Here, but now they're...gone

[Salamander]

We can be like they are

[Salamander]

I, for one, welcome our new zombie overlords

[Pelham]

Do you remember ‘Mother Abigail’ who posted here around the time of the first SARS? A retired CDC scientist who had worked on Ebola and other scary as hell bugs. She believed that we were due for a near-extinction bug to hit us. She said it would be respiratory because those spread the fastest. And probably a hybrid flu like 1918 because those are the most efficient killers. Covid-19 isn’t it, but it’s headed in the same direction.

[Salamander]

I certainly do.

She has not posted since 2012.

I hope she’s okay.

[Salamander]

*courtesy ping

[Salamander]

https://freerepublic.com/tag/by:motherabigail/index?tab=comments;brevity=full;options=no-change

[Pelham]

She was probably getting up in years when she was posting regularly. But it’s also possible that she moved on to sites more geared to her interest of tracking flu outbreaks.

[Pelham]

A friend of mine caught Covid at a family Christmas gathering. He was hospitalized Friday night with a blood oxygen level of 84. He was intubated tonight so his condition isn’t improving. 60s and diabetic.

[Salamander]

Sorry for that

[Revel]

It was leaked intentionally. Part of the deep state plan. And it does not take much IQ to see how they have used it to gain all of their desires. Keeping election monitors from observing while they cheat is one the biggest.

[piasa]

She was probaly nudging. Seeding stories around various outlets well in advance to to nudge attitudes and achieve political goals for a future purpose.

"... Nudge is a concept in behavioral economics, political theory, and behavioral sciences which proposes positive reinforcement and indirect suggestions as ways to influence the behavior and decision making of groups or individuals. Nudging contrasts with other ways to achieve compliance, such as education, legislation or enforcement....'

[piasa]

The nudge concept was popularized in the 2008 book Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness, by two American scholars at the University of Chicago: behavioral economist Richard Thaler and legal scholar Cass Sunstein. It has influenced British and American politicians. Several nudge units exist around the world at the national level (UK, Germany, Japan and others) as well as at the international level (e.g. World Bank, UN, and the European Commission[2]). It is disputed whether “nudge theory” is a recent novel development in behavioral economics or merely a new term for one of many methods for influencing behavior, investigated in the science of behavior analysis.[3][4]

[piasa]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nudge_theory#:~:text=Nudge%20is%20a%20concept%20in%20behavioral%20economics,%20political,achieve%20compliance,%20such%20as%20education,%20legislation%20or%20enforcement.

[piasa]

Shortly after her appearance here was over in late 2012 [at least under that name] the Obama admin formalized nudging: The first public information on Obama's plan to use psychological operations to manipulate the American people came in 2013, when a document outlining the White House's plans to create a “Behavioral Insights Team” and engage in "behavioral interventions" surfaced. The paper made clear that the purpose of manipulating the public was to “nudge” the U.S. population into thinking and behaving in ways that Obama officials deem best, on everything from sustainability and health to education and welfare. Similar schemes to manipulate the public by U.K. authorities, praised by the Obama document for helping to "further advance priorities of the British government," had already come under fire. Separately, a planetary plot by the United Nations and Obama policy architect John Podesta for a “global partnership” to “encourage everyone to alter their worldview, profoundly and dramatically” also attracted criticism. In other words, even your mind is now in the government's crosshairs. Another Obama czar with totalitarian views, Cass Sunstein, appears to be the primary inspiration for the “nudge” agenda. The use of the word “nudge” in the 2013 behavioral science document provided a great deal of insight into the genesis of the schemes — and the real agenda. Indeed, the whole idea of having government “nudge” citizens to obey, believe, and love government came from Cass Sunstein, the Big Government extremist who co-authored Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness. Sunstein, who styles himself a “legal scholar” and now teaches law at Harvard, has faced intense criticism and ridicule for a variety of ideas that would turn American traditions of constitutional self-government on their head. Among them: pushing the notion that animals should have legal standing in the courts, advocating a plan to have taxpayer-funded shills engage in “cognitive infiltration” of groups authorities disagree with, and even proposing a government “ban” on “conspiracy theorizing.” Sounds familiar in this media driven Covid fear porn.