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COVID lab origin theory gains traction in U.S.

86 Comments
By Lucie AUBOURG

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Not a bat but a lab...

7 ( +14 / -7 )

Sooo many of these right-wingers are eager to put the blame of coronavirus solely on Wuhan and China/Chinese people in general.

Not because they are interested in the truth in order to understand and prevent future such outbreaks, but because they have an incessant need to demonize China as the boogeyman and justify and minimize anti-Asian hate crimes in the United States because of Trump's reckless language.

-19 ( +17 / -36 )

Whoever wrote the headline for this article needs to learn the distinction between hypothesis and theory.

26 ( +28 / -2 )

Sooo many of these left-wingers are eager to put the blame of coronavirus solely on a bat species which inhabits an area over 1000km from Wuhan.

Not because they are interested in the truth in order to understand and prevent future such outbreaks, but because they have an incessant need to assume that the must believe the opposite of any hypothesis Trump may be somehow connected to.

1 ( +24 / -23 )

A long-delayed report by a team of experts dispatched by the WHO to Wuhan and their Chinese counterparts drew no firm conclusions on the origins of the pandemic.

Too bad there is no mention of the enormous conflict of interest here.

The same people tasked with investigating the lab-leak idea ("experts" whose jobs, grants, and life's work are rooted in propagating gain-of-function research), are the same people who would have the most to lose if la-leak was determined to be true.

It's akin to having Exxon investigate climate change, or Phillip Morris investigate lung cancer.

12 ( +19 / -7 )

How many times did I say here that in my opinion, the Virus is engineered in a chinese Lab?

And I say it again, as long as I dont see a clear evidence, that convince me that I am wrong, I am still on with my opinion.

-4 ( +19 / -23 )

151E Today 07:12 am JST

Whoever wrote the headline for this article needs to learn the distinction between hypothesisand theory.

Correct!

8 ( +10 / -2 )

Of course the Chinese govt. knew about this Corona-virus jumping right out of one of their Wuhan lab. The really funny part is that there are some who would call me a racist for saying that. Fine, but tell me this . . . What has the Chinese government been hiding and why haven't they been more forthcoming?

Also, China owes the world a really big apology and it owes the world more than it can ever re-pay due to all of the human deaths this virus they're responsible caused. China even tried to blame it on U.S. soldiers and some crazy U.S. conspiracy to try and shift blame, remember that? It was like something straight out of North Korea's playbook. Has China even apologized? Even once? Thus, China should make zero profit off of any vaccine they create to combat this killer virus they released on the world. Think about it, it looks like they knew back in November what was happening, yet the Chinese govt. allowed hundreds of thousands (probably millions) of Chinese tourists and potential spreaders were flying to all points of the globe. Why? China may have screwed up big time and made a foolish mistake in the lab due to incompetence, but letting their citizens go abroad, especially when they had a strict travel ban on its own citizens within their own country, well, to put it mildly, that's just incomprehensible.

9 ( +21 / -12 )

Sooo many of these right-wingers are eager to put the blame of coronavirus solely on Wuhan and China/Chinese people in general.

No, because the Chinese were the first one to admit that it came from Wuhan, that’s a documented statement that’s irrefutable from them. As far as the bat market ruse, that is what was told and suspected at first, but other experts in the field of virology were more suspicious of the origin source and many concluded back then something about the information coming from the CCP is not right and in the beginning when a few Chinese virologists spoke out about the dangers of it and tried to inform the world, they vanished one is known to have fled China and is now living in the US under security as if she were in the witness protection program.

Not because they are interested in the truth in order to understand and prevent future such outbreaks,

Everyone around the globe were desperately interested and panicky to know the truth.

but because they have an incessant need to demonize China as the boogeyman and justify and minimize anti-Asian hate crimes in the United States because of Trump's reckless language.

That is just absolute absurdity, China is responsible for what happened globally. Ironic that this all took place close to one of their military base and the lab where the virus allegedly came from was a “level 4” BSL-4 Lab which is where they handle the most dangerous microbes and pathogens Trump and everyone else globally were absolutely right in calling out China as well as the Chinese backed WHO. China is responsible for this and China should held entirely responsible and compensate everyone that suffered and died from what now seems like an engineered mistake that went deadly wrong.

https://www.acsh.org/news/2020/04/13/best-evidence-yet-coronavirus-came-wuhan-bsl-4-lab-14712

7 ( +23 / -16 )

"Many of us feel that it is more likely that this is a natural occurrence, as has happened before," Fauci told reporters Tuesday. "But we don't know 100 percent the answer to that."

Good to know that a scientist is keeping all possibilities open while keeping the main hypothesis focused on what the evidence points to.

And I say it again, as long as I dont see a clear evidence, that convince me that I am wrong, I am still on with my opinion.

Opinions don't count on science, it's the evidence that does.

9 ( +15 / -6 )

This "lab" story has been debunked by ALL credible scientist worldwide. Quite pitiful that news outlets such as JT even publish tin hat wearing conspiracy theorist nonsense like this.

-18 ( +10 / -28 )

The truth of Wuhan may never be known, but the truth of Trump and his pathological purveying of lies, tourette-like tic of fabricating falsehoods and knee-jerk wacko gaslighting has long been established to the satisfaction of most in the psychiatric community.

-3 ( +10 / -13 )

The only people who believe this nonsense are the extreme right.

-14 ( +7 / -21 )

This guy belongs to the extreme right?

"We need to get to the bottom of this and we need a completely transparent process from China, we need the WHO (World Health Organization) to assist in that matter," senior White House Covid advisor Andy Slavitt said Tuesday."

10 ( +14 / -4 )

This "lab" story has been debunked by ALL credible scientist worldwide.

No.

Last week, 18 leading scientists published a letter in the academic journal Science calling for further investigation to determine the origin of the pandemic that has killed 3.4 million people worldwide.

“Theories of accidental release from a lab and zoonotic spillover both remain viable.”

"We must take hypotheses about both natural and laboratory spillovers seriously until we have sufficient data"

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/372/6543/694.1

4 ( +13 / -9 )

The article seems poorly organized and investigated, mixes a lot of different things towards one single conclusion when there is no need.

Clearly the scientific approach is to consider everything until it has been discarded as possible. At this point the natural origin is still the much more likely explanation, it fits with the evidence, have no contradictions and it has been proved true many times before. That does not mean it is the only worth investigating, just the one that is much more likely to be true. In comparison the laboratory origin as an explanation needs a lot of evidence that has not been presented, it is contradicted by some of what has been found and require a series of things happening in sequence, each decreasing the chances of it actually happening.

What is the cases of laboratory workers getting sick in November is supposed to mean? it is the season for infectious respiratory diseaes, if several workers got it it would be already well adapted to spread so it would have caused big outbreaks in the city well before the market, and more importantly it does nothing to contradict the evidence of COVID-19 infection on humans outside the city of Wuhan from October.

Is the explanation supposed to be that the disease came from nature, spread in the population, was isolated in the lab but was released just to put more cases to the ones already happening?

How many times did I say here that in my opinion, the Virus is engineered in a chinese Lab?

As many times as you want to say it, if your opinion is not based on evidence it has no real value.

Sooo many of these left-wingers are eager to put the blame of coronavirus solely on a bat species which inhabits an area over 1000km from Wuhan.

That makes no sense, there is no reservoir being identified yet, so there nothing depends on any kind of bat species, it doesn't even have to be a bat, a wild intermediary species is the usual process (as in MERS and SARS)

15 ( +24 / -9 )

Well, it’s always a conspiracy theory until it isn’t How will the information wing of the Democratic Party; aka, the msm, and the educated left unravel themselves from this one.

No, it’s still a conspiracy theory because there is no evidence yet.

Fauci and other more level headed intelligent types, as mentioned several times in the article handily provided above, are saying they are open to all possibilities. But there is no evidence yet.

It is only the ex president and the conspiracy nuts, as mentioned several times in the article, that are running victory laps already, again with zero evidence.

-3 ( +11 / -14 )

The lab story has not been debunked by all credible scientists at all, only by those under the thumb or beholden to a certain government. Although the market in Wuhan HAS been debunked by all credible scientists (including even those of a certain government itself and the WHO) many in the world still continue believing this red herring cover up story introduced in the early days of the pandemic by a certain government (BTW Why did they do that? Maybe they knew the real reason already not far away from the market)

6 ( +12 / -6 )

Whether if it's lab or bat, the Chinese govt. needs to be held accountable.

17 ( +18 / -1 )

The Chinese lab hypothesis, long a staple of right-wing conspiracy websites like Q-anon, and Tucker Carlson has gone mainstream. In the absence of any new, conclusive evidence, this is most likely an escalation of the US government campaign to vilify China.

Since it is clear that a large number of variants of COVID have emerged, apparently naturally, it appears that it is becoming more likely that COVID developed from natural sources. Otherwise, are we to assume that some of these variants were also engineered in labs?

-9 ( +4 / -13 )

Wuhan and the Wuhan market is 15 miles apart

-6 ( +1 / -7 )

this is most likely an escalation of the US government campaign to vilify China.

If the intent were to vilify China, perhaps it'd be better to take one of the many potent-yet-not-overly-deadly viruses from a country's secret research lab, then release it into China so as to pin the blame on them and destroy their global credibility and knock them down several rungs on the ladder.

And in releasing it in China, where better to release it than in the very same city which hosts a virus research lab.

Yes, this would be evil, but also exactly what some would believe Trump was be capable of doing.

Well, either Trump or Putin.

-8 ( +3 / -11 )

168,486,828 Coronavirus infection, 3,498,525, lost souls, and still counting.

The global community has a duty to compel Government of China to fully comply to a drains up independent investigation. All data to be handed over.

It is a simple as that, or those who succumbed to the pandemic, the loss to there families, will amount to a shameful betrayal.

To achieve the necessary compliance, the Government of China has to be subjected to total isolation.

The sovereign debts the Government of China holds be cancelled.

All trade curtailed.

All foreign assets seized.

The Government of China is an abomination of human rights atrocities, year in year out.

A global bully.

Threatening any nation that has the nerve to even suggest an open investigation.

Don't put any blame on the People of China.

The People of China are as much the victims as the millions who have lost there lives.

8 ( +10 / -2 )

The same people tasked with investigating the lab-leak idea ("experts" whose jobs, grants, and life's work are rooted in propagating gain-of-function research),

That's not how the WHO works or what it does.

are the same people who would have the most to lose if la-leak was determined to be true.

Did you miss this part?

After the report was released, however, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus himself insisted all theories remained on the table.

6 ( +7 / -1 )

Since it is clear that a large number of variants of COVID have emerged, apparently naturally, it appears that it is becoming more likely that COVID developed from natural sources.

This is the first time I've heard that a virus engineered in a lab can't have a large number of variants. In fact, I would assume the opposite. No, variants don't have to be engineered in a lab, they mutate overtime after infecting millions of people. Do you actually think that a virus or life form will remain exactly the same after replicating itself billions and billions of times? Thats absurd.

That being said, this is really about the "gain-of-function" research that the lab in Wuhan was conducting on coronaviruses. Under Obama, this type of research was halted and not funded as it is extremely dangerous to create new viruses with the idea that they might emerge naturally in the future. Under Trump however, this type of research was continued and funded at the request of Fauci.

This isn't some right wing conspiracy, its only that the liberal left media (MSNBC, CNN) decided to take Fauci's side on everything since he was "Mr Science" and wasn't getting along with Trump.

-1 ( +6 / -7 )

Even Fauci has done a 180 on this. But those of us who dared say this is possible (not even for sure....just possible) were dismissed as crazy people. Yes. It is possible it somehow came from the WIV. The WHO “investigation” was a farce. A true investigation would require a couple of weeks in the lab. We all know that will never happen. As an American my tax money went there as well. I won’t be surprised if this is suppressed at some point.

5 ( +12 / -7 )

Well, the whole world knows how it started and where it came from...

-2 ( +6 / -8 )

Either way, one thing we can all agree on is that the CCP's lack of transparency is troubling.

Another is that we should be open to all possibilities of the origins of this virus without jumping to conclusions

16 ( +16 / -0 )

Did you miss this part?

After the report was released, however, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus himself insisted all theories remained on the table.

Yet for over a year the media was adamant that lab-leak was not credible and "debunked", and many people on comments here still believe its "debunked by ALL scientists" and just a kooky extreme right-wing Trump-inspired Q-Anon conspiracy.

So I guess they all missed that part too.

0 ( +6 / -6 )

Expect a series of movies on the origins of " COVID 19" once the dust has settled and normalcy returns.The Covid Pandemic has devastated the entire World monetarily as well as physically with a toll of human lives.Hope the mystery of the origin of the Pandemic is solved .

8 ( +8 / -0 )

There has to be a full investigation.

The danger if not, is that this pandemic could occur again.

With the grave possibility of even more devastating outcome.

Conspiracy theories, from whatever direction are the fault/result of the Government of China refusal to fully cooperate.

8 ( +9 / -1 )

Previous coronaviruses that crossed over to humans, SARS and MERS, were quickly traced back to civets and camels.

It is hard to read an article that starts off with such a patently false statement. SARS was genetically traced to a colony of cave-dwelling horseshoe bats in Xiyang Yi Ethnic Township, Yunnan.[ The source of MERS has not been definitively determined.

Lots of people in the US might believe SARS-CoV2 originated from the Wuhan Institute of Virology but believing something doesn't prove it or make it so.

4 ( +8 / -4 )

The truth of Wuhan may never be known,

We already know the origins. That is what we are talking about.

but the truth of Trump and his pathological purveying of lies, tourette-like tic of fabricating falsehoods and knee-jerk wacko gaslighting has long been established to the satisfaction of most in the psychiatric community.

Ok, but you’re mixing apples with oranges. That has nothing to do with the origins of where the virus originated. This is not about Trump. It’s about how the CCP lied about the origins of the virus. Hate Trump is you want, that’s your prerogative, but stop making excuses for China.

-5 ( +9 / -14 )

Here's the problem: When the Trump Administration or members of the Republican Party said something that was actually factual, because of their habitual lying or agenda driven view of facts, they tended to be viewed as not credible, in a version of "the boy who cried wolf" syndrome. Let's go ahead and take another look at it. I would trust whatever conclusions an investigation completed by the Biden Administration might come up with, unlike the prior administration.

4 ( +8 / -4 )

A virology lab is in Wuhan China. Scientists in Wuhan perform experiments on viruses. A global pandemic starts in Wuhan. Does it not occur to anyone that it’s a possibility that the virus originated in the lab? Does the CCP’s pressure campaign on WHO and avoidance of answering questions not at all suspicious? Do these circumstances add up to conspiracy theory? Well, according to the Leftist press it is.

0 ( +8 / -8 )

so here we are with the backtracking which means there is evidence that the initial Fauci/media response was wrong.

But hey Fauci always covers his errors in vagueness. At what point will people admit that he is basically just guessing and that his guesses always favor one political viewpoint over another. Did he 100% know the answer that it was NOT from the lab before he said that? No, he didnt. Yet said it anyway.

NOW he needs 100% before he can speak clearly?

"Many of us feel that it is more likely that this is a natural occurrence, as has happened before," Fauci told reporters Tuesday. "But we don't know 100 percent the answer to that."

-7 ( +5 / -12 )

It's funny to see so many people now just casually accepting it as possible now it has come from 'their side'...

That is the danger of abusing strawman fallacies, if you mischaracterize other people opinions you can easily forget what were the actual opinions in the first place and be surprised they contradict what you said instead.

The lab leak may be plausible, but China's recorded promotion of lockdowns without a scientific basis deserves the main focus: 

That would be irrelevant, the scientific evidence of the efficacy of lockdowns and other non-pharmaceutical measures is not based in whatever China has to say about it.

They were never done before because they don't provide justifiable benefits:

If the best argument you could find did not come from an epidemiologist or public health expert but from an economist (and that does nothing against the growing literature that proved the opposite, just try very hard to ignore it) that should put you to think if what you believe is actually correct or not.

Yet for over a year the media was adamant that lab-leak was not credible and "debunked", and many people on comments here still believe its "debunked by ALL scientists" and just a kooky extreme right-wing Trump-inspired Q-Anon conspiracy.

Well, it is still not credible, and what has been debunked are the obviously false arguments used until now to defend this theory as likely (such as the terribly Yan's manuscript or the "leaked" information about the lab) one thing is to say it is theoretically possible, another completely different is to say it is practically a believable option supported by evidence.

That being said, this is really about the "gain-of-function" research that the lab in Wuhan was conducting on coronaviruses. Under Obama, this type of research was halted and not funded as it is extremely dangerous to create new viruses with the idea that they might emerge naturally in the future. Under Trump however, this type of research was continued and funded at the request of Fauci.

That is completely incorrect, every lab in the world working with viruses is doing gain of function research, it is one of the most basic things necessary to do to characterize viruses, the work that was stopped was not in coronavirus but in influenza virus, was subjected to an ethical and biosafety evaluation and resumed in the same Obama administration.

Most importantly, the gain of function research on coronavirus did predict an adaptation that increase attachment ability to ACE2 receptors, and that adaptation was simple, elegant, effective... and completely different from the messy unpredictable sequence that the virus actually developed by itself.

This isn't some right wing conspiracy, its only that the liberal left media (MSNBC, CNN) decided to take Fauci's side on everything since he was "Mr Science" and wasn't getting along with Trump.

Using false or misleading information to "prove" something is a conspiracy theory, and there is nothing wrong with repeating the consensus of science, no matter who is the person that is expressing that consensus. If the head of a medical or scientific institution has to make a declaration it has to do it in concordance with the best available evidence, so it is natural that these declarations are the same no matter who is the one saying it.

5 ( +10 / -5 )

A virology lab is in Wuhan China. Scientists in Wuhan perform experiments on viruses. A global pandemic starts in Wuhan. Does it not occur to anyone that it’s a possibility that the virus originated in the lab? 

So that is the thing, the pandemic did not star in Wuhan, so what does that makes of your explanation?

4 ( +9 / -5 )

Just me but I think they are all barking up the wrong tree. That coronavirus was circulating probably before November 2019. Maybe months before November 2019. We had something rip through our high desert town that in hindsight looked an awful lot like SARS. The cough, low oxygen, diarrhea, fever, chills, hard to breath, etc. X-rays were low quality so the doc couldn't tell one way or the other if I had pneumonia. The docs would take specimens and the tests all came back negative. Not flu, not pneumonia. Nobody knew what it was so they called it "bronchitis" and gave us antibiotics. I had it in November 2019 and it was late summer of 2020 before I could take a deep breath without starting a coughing fit and my energy level didn't quite return until summer either. I know others who suffered the same thing and the docs here, in hindsight, think we have had an early wave. Unfortunately all the lab samples are long since discarded so we can't prove it. There is more to this story and I think scientists need to move their timeline earlier in 2019 to find the origins of SARS-CoV2. Just my opinion. I'm not a virologist so what do I know?

3 ( +7 / -4 )

I mean didnt you notice, now its "many of US feel....". (ummm science?)

I didnt see "US" on TV every day doing everything they could to cover up for China- I saw Fauci.

This all changed once Rand Paul proved Fauci provided "modest" funding for the Wuhan lab.

-8 ( +4 / -12 )

As an engineer and scientist it is really tiresome to see people bring politics into this. A risk assessment on such a facility takes medical professionals and engineers around a month (I do not know the size of the lab so could be bigger or smaller). People would need to ensure all protective interlocking and engineering controls are in place and working; for example are the differential pressure switches ensuring proper static pressure isolation between areas within the lab set properly, calibrated, and working? (one of numerous such protective means). Are all required administrative controls and procedures in place suitable and are the procedures understood by all in the lab and being followed? Is this being checked semi annually?

A risk assessment report for this type of facility would be 100's of pages and would require those knowledable in virology and engineering to participate in the assessment or review it.

The honest answer is we do not know how the virus moved to the general population (which is different than where the virus "came from") and we probably never well.

The one thing I can say with 100% certainty is none of us here at Japan Today know the answer to this.

2 ( +7 / -5 )

Trump was right.

-4 ( +9 / -13 )

This all changed once Rand Paul proved Fauci provided "modest" funding for the Wuhan lab.

Trusting Rand Paul over and actual doctor for a public health matter would be like trusting a monkey over an accountant to do your taxes. But hey, as long as it keeps Fauci living rent-free in your head...

3 ( +8 / -5 )

Under Trump however, this type of research was continued and funded at the request of Fauci.

Sigh, that is a false statement. The US did not conduct gain of function research for the reasons you state. Period, full stop. It was not funded under the Trump administration. In fact the US was interested to know if the Chinese were conducting gain of function research at several different labs in China but was not able to determine with certainty China was doing so. There is by some accounts evidence they were but the Chinese are not admitting to anything.

What did happen under the Trump administration was funding for the posting of US epidemiologist at China's Center for Disease Control was cut for 2019 and the US scientist posted there left that July 2019.

3 ( +7 / -4 )

Trusting Rand Paul over and actual doctor for a public health matter would be like trusting a monkey over an accountant to do your taxes. But hey, as long as it keeps Fauci living rent-free in your head...

At this Point I trust Paul, he may not be a virologist, but he’s and ophthalmologist and a surgeon and whatever people think about left or right politics, he is a doctor and he spent years and years in med school, so I think the guy knows what he’s talking about and I’ll listen to him any day over it quacks like Fauci, and I think he should be challenged on the facts.

-9 ( +6 / -15 )

The National Institutes of Health earmarked $600,000 for the Wuhan Institute of Virology over a five-year period to study whether bat coronaviruses could be transmitted to humans, White House chief medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci told lawmakers Tuesday.

Funded. and thats not "modest" as Fauci claims.

They are hiding behind this "gain of function" issue by saying they cant prove the money was used for this.

But they couldnt prove it came from a bat or that it didnt come from the lab, but they said those things as fact anyway- didnt they?

-10 ( +5 / -15 )

At this Point I trust Paul, he may not be a virologist, but he’s and ophthalmologist 

I rest my case.

4 ( +8 / -4 )

 That coronavirus was circulating probably before November 2019. Maybe months before November 2019. We had something rip through our high desert town that in hindsight looked an awful lot like SARS. The cough, low oxygen, diarrhea, fever, chills, hard to breath, etc. X-rays were low quality so the doc couldn't tell one way or the other if I had pneumonia.

I got pneumonia in June 2019. I remember getting it in Japan, and feeling lousy, but able to travel and did to Canada. Once there, it got a lot worse. I had to isolate to stay away from my mom who was very weak at the time and dying of brain cancer. I remember just being floored for about a week or so with coughs that hurt my lungs sooo much I could barely breath. I sent my wife and kids to stay with my family while I just slept and slept for a week in my Airbnb. After that, I got better and was able to hang out with family and no one else got sick. I often wonder if what I had was indeed covid, but again, who knows?

3 ( +7 / -4 )

May 11: Fauci admits it is a possibility the virus may have come from a lab.

https://nypost.com/2021/05/11/fauci-admits-covid-19-could-have-come-from-wuhan-lab-butts-heads-with-rand-paul/

From yesterday

https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medical/why-fauci-is-suddenly-willing-to-entertain-the-covid-lab-leak-theory/ar-AAKkE3I

7 ( +8 / -1 )

donald's claims were not based on facts, rather it was part of all the other lies he and his bigots had been spouting.

What is being looked at now is actual data, not the opinion of half-witted bigots.

That's the difference!!!

4 ( +11 / -7 )

This all changed once Rand Paul proved Fauci provided "modest" funding for the Wuhan lab

lololol Fauci didn't fund anything, please.

8 ( +11 / -3 )

Did you know that COVID 19 is a super virus that is not found in bats? And did you know that there is no intermediate host of COVID 19? And did you further know that COVID 19 cannot be found in nature? And did you know, that COVID 19 likes humans more than bats? 

Did you know none of this is remotely true, provable or based on reality?

7 ( +12 / -5 )

I have said it many times since this started. At a MINIMUM China should be expelled from the UN security council. They have provided ABSOLUTELY no security for the world. If I write any more I will get annoyed about the transience of world governments in coming to the root cause of this. Suffice it to say "we , the world citizens pay for an ever expanding dictatorship". I haven't seen my wife in over 2 years thanks to the little Chinese Panda. I'm sure he's sleeping well though.

7 ( +9 / -2 )

@takeda

I am not sure if Fauci funded it but the U.S. Government certainly did. Even mainstream Newseek has reported this. The article below is from April 27, 2020 by the way.

https://www.newsweek.com/controversial-wuhan-lab-experiments-that-may-have-started-coronavirus-pandemic-1500503

Yes the taxes which I pay to my U.S. government did fund some research at the lab.

1 ( +4 / -3 )

I am not sure if Fauci funded it but the U.S. Government certainly did. Even mainstream Newseek has reported this. The article below is from April 27, 2020 by the way.

Which is different, and more nuanced, than saying "Fauci funded labs in China." Certain posters here have a habit of making rather absurd claims, and they appear to be using this story of the US funding the lab in China as some sort of knock against Fauci.

5 ( +8 / -3 )

There has been a pretty clear pro-China bias in reporting. Journalists readily use the terms “Indian variants” and “British variants” but avoid “China virus”. Why?

0 ( +5 / -5 )

People like to have simple explanations for complex or random things. And if it fits their pre-existing worldview, then even better.

The most terrifying possibility for COVID-19 is not that it was man-made, but that this virus was simply just another natural mutation that somehow jumped from animals to humans, like basically all other pandemics in recorded history. 

But it's uncomfortable for people to accept how random it all can be. Human society can't be so fragile as to be brought to its knees by one of billions or trillions untraceable and uncontrollable viral mutations, can it? So they want to look for other neat explanations instead.

[That said, the Chinese government should get zero benefit of the doubt on this. But we should beware the gradual slide of everything into conspiracy theory territory as almost a default explanation for difficult or complex situations.]

7 ( +9 / -2 )

Rand Paul is a liar and an embarrassment to the medical community. He acted irresponsibly even when he was diagnosed with COVID, swimming in the pool, going about unmasked, there are probably a few who were infected by him.

His lies about Fauci funding the Wuhan lab have been proven to be lies but that doesn’t stop donald’s idiots from believing him!!!

5 ( +10 / -5 )

The US did not conduct gain of function research for the reasons you state. Period, full stop.

Fauci funded the gain of function research (he calls it something else, he's "confused") and the funds were channeled to the Wuhan lab by Daszak, who was a major member of the WHO "investigation" team.

So that is the thing, the pandemic did not star in Wuhan...

You've stated that many times as if it was established fact. It isn't.

-7 ( +3 / -10 )

Fauci funded the gain of function research (he calls it something else, he's "confused") and the funds were channeled to the Wuhan lab by Daszak, who was a major member of the WHO "investigation" team.

Not according to the information available from the reports from the research project, if you have some information that contradicts this it would be necessary to provide it.

You've stated that many times as if it was established fact. It isn't.

There has been no controversy about it, samples from October collected from symptomatic patients outside of Wuhan are positive specifically for COVID019, there is nothing strange about the first cases identified from a disease not being the first actual cases. Again, if you have any kind of information that contradicts this it would be necessary to provide evidence, up until now your argument is just that you don't want to believe it because it makes the laboratory escape explanation much more easily proven false. That is not an argument.

There has been a pretty clear pro-China bias in reporting. Journalists readily use the terms “Indian variants” and “British variants” but avoid “China virus”. Why?

The denomination of the variants are the ones in mistake, the consensus now is to avoid using name of places or people to designate diseases and pathogens, the media simply choose to be mistaken because there are many variants of importance right now, the disease itself is still the same, so only one name is necessary and so it is much easier to use the correct one.

5 ( +10 / -5 )

so much to unravel here. The very credible claim from those in the know that the virus was from the Wuhan Lab has been around for over a year. Anyone with half a brain knew this. But because it 1. proves President Trump right, and/or 2. shines a light on the Chinese crime against humanity , it was called a right-wing conspiracy theory to shame those who suggested it.

Now the narrative has been allowed to see the light of day. The OK was given.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/05/25/timeline-how-wuhan-lab-leak-theory-suddenly-became-credible/

From that right-wing publication, the Washington Post.

Look at the names above that deny it even now, everyone. Remember them. Then ask yourself why they let themselves be compromised so badly and still allow it now after the truth has started to come out.

These are unserious people.

-7 ( +5 / -12 )

lololol Fauci didn't fund anything, please.

Uhh, beg to differ...

https://www.republicworld.com/world-news/global-event-news/china-studied-virus-closest-to-covid-fauci-and-nih-funded-pla-linked-wuhan-lab-us-report.html

https://swarajyamag.com/news-brief/covid-lab-leak-dr-anthony-fauci-under-fire-for-funding-gain-of-function-research-at-wuhan-institute-of-virology

-4 ( +6 / -10 )

Uhh, beg to differ...

lololol Again, Fauci didn't fund anything. The NIH did. You got a problem with that? Fine, but it was the NIH as a group, not Fauci individually.

2 ( +5 / -3 )

lololol Again, Fauci didn't fund anything. The NIH did. You got a problem with that? Fine, but it was the NIH as a group, not Fauci individually.

Nobody suggested Fauci went to Wuhan with a suitcase full of cash.

Fauci certainly approved the gain of function research at the Wuhan lab, which VERY likely ended up creating SARS-CoV2.

-2 ( +3 / -5 )

The American DNA, always blaming someone else, let's see your proof, publish your intelligence in the mainstream media, another right-wing conspiracy. Let's see the timeline, hospital admission data, people's names, the hospital records. How come this so-called intelligence is appearing now, May 2021. You might fool the American people, but for the rest of the world, nah !

-1 ( +3 / -4 )

@virusrex

Here is a letter published on Science calling for a scientifically based investigation of the origin of the COVID-19 including laboratory spillovers. The people who wrote this letter which was of course was peer-reviewed, have the expertise to talk about this subject. You don't. They are not saying that the lab evasion is the origin of the virus. They are saying however that this hypothesis needs to be equally and thorougsly investigated. The WHO work on the origin of the virus so far has not done that. The journal Science is a serious journal to say the least and I hope you won't have the nerve to call it a conspiracy spreader. The people who wrote the letter are serious people, qualified for the subject and I hope that you won't have the nerve to call them conspiracy spreaders. In fact would you have any relation whatsoever to scientific research, you would have known about this letter. But you keep talking about something you don't understand, don't have any expertise and just invent arguments from your imagination about a topic that goes well above your head.

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/372/6543/694.1

-5 ( +4 / -9 )

Fauci certainly approved the gain of function research at the Wuhan lab, which VERY likely ended up creating SARS-CoV2.

I think you are wrong. There are documented cases of it in Italy in November 2019 and as I said earlier there was something going through our town that in hindsight many doctors and victims here think was Covid-19, but all the specimens taken from that time have long since been disposed of. I had something no doctor could identify in November of 2019 and by the time I saw the doctor had been deathly sick for two weeks. In hindsight I had all the symptoms of Covid-19 and it was awful, an I had it a month before anyone was making any noises about there being an incipient something out there like SARS. There is more to the story. Keep an open mind. We are still in the pandemic and the forensics are in their infancy. It took many years to identify the source of the first SARS epidemic and nobody really knows the source of MERS. This will take time to unravel.

1 ( +6 / -5 )

"The report mentions that alarm bells were rung by US diplomats as late as 2017, when health and science experts from the US Embassy in Beijing made multiple visits to the WIV. "The diplomats warned Washington that the lab's work to make bat coronavirus infectious for humans, coupled with grave safety concerns, could result in the accidental unleashing of a new SARS-like pandemic," the report reads. "

Under Trump's watch!

And the Trump administration pulled funding for the virologist posted to China's Center for Disease Control and she left July 2019, just a couple of months before a pandemic where having her eyes in China would have been of immeasurable value.

0 ( +5 / -5 )

Uhh, beg to differ...

How about something from reputable sources...........

2 ( +4 / -2 )

The mask is slipping. Anyone who dared to claim this even just days ago was written off as a loony conspiracy theorist. But now that even folks like Fauci are publicly not ruling out that the Wuhan lab may have been the source of this virus, makes you wonder what else is being hidden from the public.

-4 ( +6 / -10 )

Uhh, beg to differ...

https://www.republicworld.com/world-news/global-event-news/china-studied-virus-closest-to-covid-fauci-and-nih-funded-pla-linked-wuhan-lab-us-report.html

https://swarajyamag.com/news-brief/covid-lab-leak-dr-anthony-fauci-under-fire-for-funding-gain-of-function-research-at-wuhan-institute-of-virology

Self-professed indiand right-wing websites? Those are your sources now? :'D

5 ( +8 / -3 )

 am not sure if Fauci funded it but the U.S. Government certainly did. Even mainstream Newseek has reported this. The article below is from April 27, 2020 by the way.

https://www.newsweek.com/controversial-wuhan-lab-experiments-that-may-have-started-coronavirus-pandemic-1500503

Yes the taxes which I pay to my U.S. government did fund some research at the lab.

You misrepresent what the article says. Here is the exact text from the article you reference in the link:

"This is no nefarious secret program in an underground military bunker. The Wuhan lab received funding, mostly for virus discovery, in part from a ten-year, $200 million international program called PREDICT, funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development and other countries. Similar work, funded in part by the U.S. National Institutes of Health, has been carried out in dozens of labs throughout the world. Some of this research involves taking deadly viruses and enhancing their ability to spread quickly through a population—research that took place over the objections of hundreds of scientists, who have warned for years of the program's potential to cause a pandemic."

The effort in question was an international program carried out across multiple labs funded by many countries including the US trying to catalog viruses around the world attempting to locate those with a high potential for human transmission. Predict was launched in 2009 in response to the 2005 Bird Flu outbreak. Predict operated on five year funding cycles and the US spent about $200 million over ten years ($20 million/year). The program ran out of money in 2019 as Congress refused to reappropriate it. In April 2020 Congress appropriated money for a six month extension with UC Davis doing the research on Covid-19. Many Senators said at the time that Predict should be ramping up instead of shutting down.

Truth, not rumors and conspiracies.

9 ( +11 / -2 )

This "lab" story has been debunked by ALL credible scientist worldwide. 

The only people who believe this nonsense are the extreme right.

Not true.

The Chinese government has been supressing evidence from day 1, and they are responsible for the pandemic. They buried evidence just like they buried a maglev train that crashed. Even the last WHO trip to China was a farce, and they could not get access to data on the earliest people infected.

They may be successful, unless this leads to some conclusion:

A quote from David Baltimore, a virologist and former president of the California Institute of Technology: “When I first saw the furin cleavage site in the viral sequence, with its arginine codons, I said to my wife it was the smoking gun for the origin of the virus. These features make a powerful challenge to the idea of a natural origin for SARS2.”

2 ( +9 / -7 )

Fauci certainly approved the gain of function research at the Wuhan lab, which VERY likely ended up creating SARS-CoV2.

Except it doesn't, because their research finding pointed to a completely different direction for the adaptation to happen, so not, not likely at all.

Your opinion does not have any value either.

You keep posting on a subject you don't understand meaningless posts which are frankly barely readable.

Much less value is in trying to guess what other people understand or not or what qualifications they have. Specially when you yourself accepted not being able to understand the comment you want to criticize. Adress the arguments, if you reduce yourself to discussing the people that makes it obvious you could not do anything about the arguments that contradict your beliefs.

It is also against the rules of the site.

They are saying however that this hypothesis needs to be equally and thorougsly investigated. The WHO work on the origin of the virus so far has not done that. The journal Science is a serious journal to say the least and I hope you won't have the nerve to call it a conspiracy spreader. 

And what is the problem with that? if you had understand the comments you want to criticize you would know this contradicts nothing about it. The need to investigate comes from having next to zero evidence to support this theory and some evidence that contradicts it directly, that still means it would be very useful to do it even if only to completely discard it as a possibility.

Also, try to read again my comments, what are the examples I did of debunked pseudo-evidence? did it include opinions or published valid data? obviously not.

1 ( +7 / -6 )

I beleive it escaped from the Lab. They made many bat viruses and made them more powerfull on purpose. The lab has completely failed humanity. It is a disgrace.

-3 ( +5 / -8 )

@Desert Tortoise

Here is another article. Regardless of how you cut it my U.S. tax money did go to WIV. I do not believe the money funneled from the NIH through EcoHealth Alliance was related to the program above about which you speak. The quote from the article is below followed by the link. This is truth and not a conspiracy theory.

The National Institutes of Health earmarked $600,000 for the Wuhan Institute of Virology over a five-year period to study whether bat coronaviruses could be transmitted to humans, White House chief medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci told lawmakers Tuesday.

Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), told a House Appropriations subcommittee that the money was funneled to the Chinese lab through the non-profit EcoHealth Alliance to fund “a modest collaboration with very respectable Chinese scientists who were world experts on coronavirus.”

But Fauci emphatically denied that the money went toward so-called “gain of function” research, which he described as “taking a virus that could infect humans and making it either more transmissible and/or pathogenic for humans.”

https://www.nypost.com/2021/05/25/fauci-admits-nih-funding-of-wuhan-lab-denies-gain-of-function/

2 ( +5 / -3 )

@Takeda

Why not just say, " the NIH paid the lab in China?"

On this I agree with you; or more correctly Eco Health Alliance paid them. I do not understand why the funding was routed through Eco Health Alliance but I would imagine there are legal reasons for that.

2 ( +4 / -2 )

This is sounding more like a science fiction movie plot and I want to hear more what real scientists are saying and not Trump Theologists

-3 ( +3 / -6 )

And one more problem with the Science fiction lab theory in Wuhan - Scientists (not Trump Theologists like Rand Paul or Ben Carson) are afraid of future and worse Pandemics. Will these also come from the same lab? Or do Trump Theologists just want to frame China for everything now? Blaming China for this pandemic is short sighted because we ain't seen nothing yet compared to future viruses.

-3 ( +3 / -6 )

And I believe around that time, 3 staff members of the Wuhan lab were taken to hospital with covid-like symptoms. Its accepted that this thing started months before we saw it on the news.

"covid-like symptoms" being of course equivalent to "a cold" which would be the default for any place with more than 10 people since November is completely inside of the season for respiratory infectious diseases.

It would have been much more strange that not a single person had any cold-like symptoms during the whole month. And of course this would make a single big outbreak in the city as described much more unlikely. If 3 people living in the city were already infected in November (no word even if they worked in the same department or even if they had contact with each other) then it would be much more likely to observe several outbreaks happening at the same time.

One case, or cluster, coming to the city from outside as is thought to be the case would be exactly how you could get one single big outbreak first.

Yes, very unreadable and lacking substance. That's what happens when you can't defend an idea...

That is the problem with bias, trying very hard to ignore anything that can contradict your idea can make people think other's comments are empty. An easier way to identify when someone can't defend their ideas is when they simply stop doing it after being contradicted or begin to attack the people writing the arguments they can't defend against.

0 ( +5 / -5 )

If anyone is interested in a non-political opinion on the lab vs nature argument, watch this Peak Prosperity video on YouTube. Dr. Chris Martensen has been consistent, science-based, and truthful from the very beginning. No, he isn't some kook and his account has never been taken down. He isn't right or left, but more up/down.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yn1MDIBO7M&t=706s

3 ( +5 / -2 )

The Chinese government has been supressing evidence from day 1, and they are responsible for the pandemic. They buried evidence just like they buried a maglev train that crashed. Even the last WHO trip to China was a farce, and they could not get access to data on the earliest people infected.

That has been always the case and the Chinese in the beginning admitted and warned the Trump administration how deadly the virus is and no one knew at the time and most didn’t take it that seriously and then later shifted to cover the bungled efforts on the part of the CCP that now the source of the virus is up for speculation, it’s just unbelievable that this country refuses to take responsibility for what they unleashed and the millions that died from the virus as well as the ones trying to blow the lid wide open on this thing.

Dr. Chris Martensen has been consistent, science-based, and truthful from the very beginning. No, he isn't some kook and his account has never been taken down. He isn't right or left, but more up/down.

I saw that, quite interesting.

0 ( +5 / -5 )

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