SARS II: Respiratory Boogaloo

Has it gotten past “can’t rule it out” yet, or is this just media noise?

It seems that we've gone a bit past "can't rule it out". Maybe not. That's how it seems to me. Your mileage may vary.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/intell...b-fuels-debate-on-covid-19-origin-11621796228

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/24/got...-that-covid-may-have-originated-in-a-lab.html

https://www.businessinsider.com/3-w...zed-fall-2019-coronavirus-covid-origin-2021-5

Always sounded like a perfectly logical scenario option to me. The lab or the market, or some combination thereof. No idea why it got politicized. Had to come from somewhere.

Its a city of 11million people in high density areas with questionable animal hygene practices, not a quaint village that happens to have a disease lab!

oh hell if Fauci's on board then it's a slam dunk - guilty as charged, China! That said when Fauci does a 180 in a week or so you're a xenophobic, racist, bully to accuse China!

No.

Additional evidence has come to light.

I haven't seen Fauci's statement but if he's saying it warrants investigation that's not exactly "on board."

why was it politicized? Because Trump said it came from China - so if you dared to agree you were a bootlicking Nazi retard.
But now that Fauci and the kewl kids on the left are at least considering the obvious & likely possibility of the Covid origin, the theory is kosher. Amazing how that works, isn't it?

It was always thought to originate in China.

except for the Chinese government who blamed it on Taiwan, Vietnam and the U.S. military. My prediction is this:
1) eventually it will be proven and accepted that the virus originated in China
2) China will be considered completely blameless by every measure
3) absolutely no lessons will be learned nor will any attempt be made by China to prevent something like this from ever happening again

It's bad for business. Communist China is as capitalist as most countries.

Yep. Yet a year ago when I mentioned that in a FB discussion I got called a Xenophobe and a racist by some crazy lady out there in FB land, who closed her rant with "We see you!!!"

United to raffle off free flights to people who've been vaccinated.

What is this facebook?

Seems like people are trying to rewrite history. The idea that Rona originated in Wuhan, China, has never been in dispute -- Delhi Airport was placing travelers arriving from China (or had been there in the prior fortnight) in separate queues when I was there in Feb 2020.
The issue in question was Trump's inflammatory rhetoric in calling Rona 'the China Virus' to score points with his base and to stroke his ego.

and I have no problem with China being capitalist - for a long time the U.S encouraged and helped China to become a developed nation. Yada yada yada they took to it like a duck to water and now they make our fucking drugs & medications (what can go wrong?) install and maintain our high tech communications (to include military!) completely trash any concept of intellectual property rights or any type of copyright laws, use Uighur slave labor so Americans can save a buck on shirt, fire up coal-powered battery factories for electric cars, etc etc etc and we brought the shit on ourselves.

that's a factor but not the only factor in politicizing it.

@Zombie called it early on.
https://wordforge.net/index.php?posts/3213635/
I kind of called it.
https://wordforge.net/index.php?threads/sars-ii-respiratory-boogaloo.119421/page-49#post-3224297

Guessing and/ or making shit up versus actual evidence?

Having flown United more times than i care to admit this isn’t exactly what I’d call a prize. I’d rather win a kick in the nuts

Oof, you take a news break for one weekend… yeah that’s definitely the kind of evidence we’d expect to see from a lab accident origin*. Still not inconsistent with zoonotic origin; but I’d say that pulls it way out of just “can’t rule it out.”

*that’s not to say the virus was created or augmented in the lab, for which I haven’t heard any evidence (caveat: the aforementioned news break this weekend). Far, far more likely it was accidental infection by a collected specimen. Evidence: we saw two previous bat+intermediary zoonotic coronaviruses emerge in around 10 and 20 years ago, so we know they’re not exactly rare events.

Nate Silver’s adjusted his estimation of lab accident vs animal contact release to 60-40. Mine is not that high, but I’d say it’s jumped from like 5-94, to 35-65. It’s still entirely possible that the jump happened outside the lab into a lab worker who spread it to their colleagues either directly from the wildlife market (remember how nearby it was?), or even from an accident collecting pangolin poop samples or something.
edit:

Counterpoint: the reporting might be garbage, a thread:

Fauci, as always, is being a rational actor and insane folk are jumping on his statements - in this case, because it supports their own agenda.

Prior to this, it had been said that the first cases happened in October. While no mention was made of who was infected, if the disease was running around for a month prior to those lab cases, then it’s entirely possible that it didn’t come from the lab at all.

You have a point, but I don't think anyone has any proof that the first cases were in October (or sooner). I believe the strongest language I have ever seen is "the first cases may have been as early as October".

Some Italians claim COVID was running around over there in September, but I don't believe anyone takes that seriously. In fact, the "official line" still says the first cases were in December.

I know a lot of people (in the U.S., who weren't traveling) who are convinced they had it in November or December because they had a really bad cold around then.

However, the odds are that every year, a certain percentage of the population will have a cold that's unusually bad for them. I haven't seen any evidence that that number was higher this year; it's just that because of the timing, people who coincidentally happened to get a bad cold in late 2019 are inclined to think "maybe it was COVID."

But because COVID's R0 number was insanely high in the beginning, the odds are that if those people really had it, it would have started spreading like wildfire right then and there.

Yep.

Here's an anecdote. I got the flu in mid-January 2020. We were just starting to hear about COVID, but there were no confirmed cases in the United States yet and no one really knew how bad things would get.

I went to the doctor and tested positive for Influenza Type A. I was miserable for the better part of a week, but it was really just the standard flu.

My Dad flew in from Wisconsin to visit me, and he arrived literally the day my symptoms started. I stayed back in the bedroom and recovered, my Dad and my Step-mom stayed in the guest room, and my wife basically entertained my parents for several days. I felt better enough to socialize after about five days and I was able to actually enjoy my Dad's company for a day or two before they had to go home (to be fair, he REALLY visited to see my daughter, his granddaughter, for the first time and who was only four months old at the time).

The day my Dad and Step-mom got back to Wisconsin, they fell sick too. Neither went to the doctor nor got any testing, but they were both down for the count for about three or four days.

To this day my Dad is convinced that he had COVID and that *I* had COVID, even though I remind him every single time that I had a positive Influenza-A test result. He just sort of smirks like he's mentally patting me on the head and says things like "Sure, Son. Sure. You really do believe everything they say, don't you?"

You can't win against that mindset.

I believe that there’s tissue samples that were from that period of time that were later tested and found to contain the virus. Also, there are “excess death” numbers that indicate it was circulating earlier than thought.

These could have been tainted samples. The medical community believes this to be the case, from what I have read.

I don't believe this is true.