I’ve always thought the lab leak theory was possible. Like I don’t think it was malicious but an accidental leak makes a ton of sense to me. The official explanation just didn’t make sense. I’ll be very curious to see where this goes. I do think learning the origin is very important but I don’t really know that we will.
I’ve always thought the lab leak theory was possible. Like I don’t think it was malicious but an accidental leak makes a ton of sense to me. The official explanation just didn’t make sense. I’ll be very curious to see where this goes. I do think learning the origin is very important but I don’t really know that we will.
I always did as well.
For it to be such a perfect virus to have just morphine in the wild just never really made sense to me.
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Me and my adult child would have conversations about this pretty frequently, and we were always like, “I know I sound like one of them, but hear me out.”
I definitely don't think it was lab related, I appreciate that the administration is working to confirm the source but this seems like yet another messaging misstep.
I do wonder if people (aka conservatives) would have taken the virus more seriously if we had known it was lab created.
Then again, they probably would have wanted to do something stupid like bombing China.
If the theories in the article I posted turn out to be correct, then the US bears some responsibility as a funding agent for the (dangerous/unnecessary) research as well, depending on how you see things. I'm worried it might end up furthering distrust in science.
Post by Velar Fricative on May 26, 2021 17:50:52 GMT -5
A year ago, the theory that Trumpists were putting out was that it wasn't an accidental leak, but that the Chinese government created it and released it on purpose. At least, that's what I vaguely remember. THAT seems far-fetched to me, since it's not like China was unscathed by covid.
Having said that, I'm kind of disturbed that the lab leak theory has suddenly gotten so much traction. But, the truth is a good thing to uncover. But man, Redfield said just a month or so ago somewhere in the media that he believes it came from a lab and I was throwing shit. I can't believe he might be right.
If there's one silver lining regarding this, it's that this isn't something that can just happen with more regularity because there are so many bats or something, or that we continue to encroach on land teeming with wildlife. The idea of when the next global pandemic of this scale occurred, not if, is terrifying. This shit has killed more than 3 million people globally (and that's only the official number). If it's not caused by a natural jump from animal to human which seems like it could happen so easily...then yay? But holy hell, I also don't trust the Chinese government to accept any kind of responsibility - they never have this entire time.
All of my coworkers are going maskless at this point. I think it is so interesting how quickly it changed. We have worked in person since last June. We are healthcare education and everyone was soooo careful. Keeping things really strict in personal lives. Always respecting protocols etc. We all got the vaccine the second they were available. We have been apprehensive about our safety.
But the second the mask mandate was lifted, bam masks were off. I have been thinking about why that was. I think it is just a combo of trusting the science, but also level of exhaustion we are dealing with. That is at least where I am at. Like you tell me I am safe? Perfect, I am going to let this worry and anxiety go.
That’s what I’m seeing (and feeling) as well. We still have a mask mandate but today at work, for example, my coworkers and I shared a conference room sans masks. We all know we’re each vaccinated (and I have no reason not to believe them.) I think we really just crave normalcy and if the CDC says it’s safe, then I guess we all feel like it’s okay to trust that guidance. (Technically we broke company policy, and we wouldn’t have done it in a bigger group; it was just the three of us though and we’re work friends so we had already shared/celebrated when we got vaccinated.)
I do wonder if people (aka conservatives) would have taken the virus more seriously if we had known it was lab created.
Then again, they probably would have wanted to do something stupid like bombing China.
If the theories in the article I posted turn out to be correct, then the US bears some responsibility as a funding agent for the (dangerous/unnecessary) research as well, depending on how you see things. I'm worried it might end up furthering distrust in science.
I’m having trouble reconciling what I’m reading with Fauci’s hearing a week or so ago and “we did. not. Fund. Gain of function research.”
If the theories in the article I posted turn out to be correct, then the US bears some responsibility as a funding agent for the (dangerous/unnecessary) research as well, depending on how you see things. I'm worried it might end up furthering distrust in science.
I’m having trouble reconciling what I’m reading with Fauci’s hearing a week or so ago and “we did. not. Fund. Gain of function research.”
It's long, but the piece magpie shared above explains that. If you don't have time, scroll towards the end when the NIH is discussed and it's in there. Basically, gain-of-function has a very specific definition and if that's what Fauci was thinking of when he answered the question, he would have been answering truthfully.
Okay, I finally read the whole thing. It's...wow. Now I'm dying to check what the scientists are saying on Twitter lol.
I mean, I don't know who this guy is but everything he wrote sounds plausible. This isn't some Tucker Carlson bullshit written up. This guy sounds like he knows what he's talking about but then again, I found myself thinking "OMG am I a Plandemic person who believes everything she sees on the internet now?"
It also made me realize we probably won't ever know the truth. If China AND the US can both be implicated...that's a geopolitical hot mess right there and neither is well-served in letting the truth come out. But also, I have to believe our intelligence people aren't suddenly realizing any of this right now re: Biden's announcement to have them give him a report in 90 days. They have to know what most likely happened, even with the secrecy within the Chinese government. This could be a way to publicly acknowledge that nothing can be ruled out but they'll find some way to rule it out after 90 days, or at least conclude with "Welp, we tried - we'll never know."
I’m having trouble reconciling what I’m reading with Fauci’s hearing a week or so ago and “we did. not. Fund. Gain of function research.”
It's long, but the piece magpie shared above explains that. If you don't have time, scroll towards the end when the NIH is discussed and it's in there. Basically, gain-of-function has a very specific definition and if that's what Fauci was thinking of when he answered the question, he would have been answering truthfully.
Weird. I read the whole article (or at least I thought I finished it), and that article, and the end discussing the research and grants, is what had me scratching my head.
Thinking about source credibility, I Googled his name. It seems like he was previously a science writer for the NYT (assuming it is the same person). Still, though... There's something that feels a bit sensational about the Medium piece.
I definitely don't think it was lab related, I appreciate that the administration is working to confirm the source but this seems like yet another messaging misstep.
How can you be sure?
I might be wrong, hopefully the investigation will have some definitive answers. It just feels very sensationalized after everything we've been hearing for over a year (minus the fringe conspiracy theories).
The announcement of the investigation feels like a power play by the US government.
Whatever the source, I think both the US & China could have behaved differently and lead to significantly different outcomes.
I'm still pissed that Trump cut funding & pulled the working group of US scientists from China that could have identified & alerted the world about this sooner. He as POTUS, could have handled the outbreak better once it was in the US & the outcome would have been different
I also fault the Chinses on their handling & initial cover up of the disease, no matter what the source. It seems like there was def. an attempt to hide & minimize things, without a lot of transparency. I think the world would have reacted differently & it could have been initially contained much better & maybe the Euro outbreak would have been detected/slowed.
All of my coworkers are going maskless at this point. I think it is so interesting how quickly it changed. We have worked in person since last June. We are healthcare education and everyone was soooo careful. Keeping things really strict in personal lives. Always respecting protocols etc. We all got the vaccine the second they were available. We have been apprehensive about our safety.
But the second the mask mandate was lifted, bam masks were off. I have been thinking about why that was. I think it is just a combo of trusting the science, but also level of exhaustion we are dealing with. That is at least where I am at. Like you tell me I am safe? Perfect, I am going to let this worry and anxiety go.
That’s what I’m seeing (and feeling) as well. We still have a mask mandate but today at work, for example, my coworkers and I shared a conference room sans masks. We all know we’re each vaccinated (and I have no reason not to believe them.) I think we really just crave normalcy and if the CDC says it’s safe, then I guess we all feel like it’s okay to trust that guidance. (Technically we broke company policy, and we wouldn’t have done it in a bigger group; it was just the three of us though and we’re work friends so we had already shared/celebrated when we got vaccinated.)
This is where I am too. I am also in healthcare education so this is interesting to me. I don’t really know what people do in private lives but I imagine most are dropping masks ASAP. At work we aren’t allowed to be maskless in public areas. I have two coworkers I don’t mask around and haven’t for about a month. I am not ready to ask people if they’re ok with it but if someone asks me, I’m all “masks off, party meeting!” We’ve been in person for months and don’t do big meetings live but for a couple of people we do and it’s the BEST.
I do agree it’s the exhaustion. I was so so careful about masking, distancing. I have been really struggling keeping it up honestly since the weather improved and we hit the 1 year mark and am glad the mandates are starting to fall locally.
“But there are at least three concrete ways, in addition to the inherent value of truth, in which the origin matters.
First, if the virus really did come from a lab, an immediate airing of the details might have led to even faster vaccine development and more effective treatments. Second, a leak that caused millions of deaths could lead to widespread change in laboratories’ safety precautions. Third, confirmation of a leak would affect the world’s view of China — and would put pressure on China to bear the burden of vaccinating the world as quickly as possible.”
If this really was a lab leak and we could have had a viable vaccine and better treatments even sooner if this wasn’t hidden…my god.
Also at the end, he links to pieces by reporters I’ve followed over the last year that I want to read when I have a chance too.
I definitely don't think it was lab related, I appreciate that the administration is working to confirm the source but this seems like yet another messaging misstep.
I'm kind of in between. I can buy it being a lab leak, but not a man-made virus. Like, a naturally-occurring virus they were studying in the lab and from there it got out, has always seemed plausible to me.
I definitely don't think it was lab related, I appreciate that the administration is working to confirm the source but this seems like yet another messaging misstep.
I'm kind of in between. I can buy it being a lab leak, but not a man-made virus. Like, a naturally-occurring virus they were studying in the lab and from there it got out, has always seemed plausible to me.
This is kind of where I’m at. *Could* it have been made by humans? Yes, very easily. Pretty much any entry level scientist in the right field could make a new virus. Give me a PCR machine, the right reagents, and time to study the various genetic sequences to see what’s known already about what makes a “good” coronavirus, and I could make a new mutant virus pretty easily. Mutating your “gene of interest” and splicing in genetic sequences from other genes are some of the early things that you learn in many biological science programs. So yes, it could be done.
But, and this is a big but, if this was made by scientists, they need to be fired. Not just because of the ethics of creating a virus that kills millions of people, but because they would just be bad scientists. From what I read at the beginning of the pandemic, many of the mutations in this virus just wouldn’t make sense for a scientist to have put in there. And if they wanted to create a more virulent or deadly virus, they could have made it so.much.worse than it is with much “better” (better for the virus, not us who could be infected by it) mutations. There just isn’t much reason for a scientist to have designed the virus the way it is.
I do agree that it’s entirely possible that scientists were studying ia naturally made virus and accidentally let it out into the world. Despite how much scientists are taught about how to safely handle everything, many scientists have incredibly poor sterile techniques. One would hope that people working with potentially deadly viruses would follow all appropriate precautions, but mistakes happen, and people get careless.
I could be completely wrong, and SARS-CoV-2 really was designed in a lab and maliciously released, but I really think it’s more likely that it arose spontaneously in nature and spread from there. Wild animals provide such a huge reservoir of viruses that are constantly mutating. It unfortunately was only a matter of time until the right mutation made the leap to humans.
I really don't want to go into the rabbit hole, I'm just circling the edges.
However, I will say, if it was manmade they were probably testing the genetic abilities of the virus without the intention of unleashing it. China is where we've gotten most of our cloning tech from. Their mindset is, "Can we do it?" instead of "Should we do it?" It's long been a moral debate when it comes to biological research. It's strictly clinical.
Just chiming in with a couple of anecdotes about covid antibodies. My husband and I both recently gave blood (about ten days post Pfizer #2 for him and 72 days post J&J for me) and we both tested “reactive” for covid antibodies. Yay! “Reactive” means we have antibodies to the spike protein of the virus, indicating vaccination. (“Reactive” also means that we were negative for the presence of the nucleocapsid protein, which would have been found, if we had actually had covid). www.redcrossblood.org/faq.html#donating-blood-covid-19-testing
I had no reason to doubt it, this far out, but it’s nice to see confirmation, (especially after I was negative for antibodies at my last donation, 12 days post J&J). I love science!
I’m also excited to have something different tomorrow to enter into the public health sampling covid questionnaire that I have been doing daily since January. Lol.
Post by picksthemusic on May 28, 2021 14:32:18 GMT -5
So, WWYD? DH is now fully vaccinated as of yesterday (2 weeks post-2nd vaccine). I've been cutting his hair this whole time (usually every 2 months or so). Now that he's vaccinated, I suggested he should go back to the barber to get his hair cut. He said he wants me to do it, he doesn't feel comfortable going out yet. He's been WFH this whole time, rarely goes out (he's been to the grocery store and to the office only a handful of times), and I am the one going in to work every day and doing the grocery shopping, and driving around for various errands and things that need to get done.
I thought it would be a big relief to have him vaccinated, and it is, but he's still so resistant to doing anything out of the house. I mean, we go see family, but that's it. He doesn't want to do the shopping, he barely goes to his appointments that he needs to do (eyes, doctor, dentist), and now he's saying he's not comfortable getting a haircut.
I know he has anxiety. I know he is probably dealing with what a lot of folks are dealing with, but I leave the house every day, see the public every day (masked, of course), and it's been fine. He knows this. He just doesn't want to do it (yet), he says. I'll cut his hair for him, I don't mind, but it'd be nice to not have to be the one responsible for yet another thing for our family.
I did it. I went shopping without a mask. The CDC, the state of Ohio, and Nordstrom Rack all put their stamp of approval on this and it STILL felt like I was committing a felony.
So, WWYD? DH is now fully vaccinated as of yesterday (2 weeks post-2nd vaccine). I've been cutting his hair this whole time (usually every 2 months or so). Now that he's vaccinated, I suggested he should go back to the barber to get his hair cut. He said he wants me to do it, he doesn't feel comfortable going out yet. He's been WFH this whole time, rarely goes out (he's been to the grocery store and to the office only a handful of times), and I am the one going in to work every day and doing the grocery shopping, and driving around for various errands and things that need to get done.
I thought it would be a big relief to have him vaccinated, and it is, but he's still so resistant to doing anything out of the house. I mean, we go see family, but that's it. He doesn't want to do the shopping, he barely goes to his appointments that he needs to do (eyes, doctor, dentist), and now he's saying he's not comfortable getting a haircut.
I know he has anxiety. I know he is probably dealing with what a lot of folks are dealing with, but I leave the house every day, see the public every day (masked, of course), and it's been fine. He knows this. He just doesn't want to do it (yet), he says. I'll cut his hair for him, I don't mind, but it'd be nice to not have to be the one responsible for yet another thing for our family.
Any advice or commiseration?
He is *just now* fully vaccinated so I'd be more patient, honestly. I wouldn't want to be cutting his hair forever myself, but I don't think it's unreasonable for him to work his way up to getting his hair cut elsewhere. In the meantime, he can spend time searching for shops that follow safety protocols, start with other steps like going to the grocery store, etc.
Take the money you’d spend on his haircut and buy yourself something nice? #nothelpful I’m still cutting my husband’s hair, too. I don’t mind it but he’s still trying to lower the per haircut cost for each time I use the tools we bought to cut it. (He’s very MM.)
So, WWYD? DH is now fully vaccinated as of yesterday (2 weeks post-2nd vaccine). I've been cutting his hair this whole time (usually every 2 months or so). Now that he's vaccinated, I suggested he should go back to the barber to get his hair cut. He said he wants me to do it, he doesn't feel comfortable going out yet. He's been WFH this whole time, rarely goes out (he's been to the grocery store and to the office only a handful of times), and I am the one going in to work every day and doing the grocery shopping, and driving around for various errands and things that need to get done.
I thought it would be a big relief to have him vaccinated, and it is, but he's still so resistant to doing anything out of the house. I mean, we go see family, but that's it. He doesn't want to do the shopping, he barely goes to his appointments that he needs to do (eyes, doctor, dentist), and now he's saying he's not comfortable getting a haircut.
I know he has anxiety. I know he is probably dealing with what a lot of folks are dealing with, but I leave the house every day, see the public every day (masked, of course), and it's been fine. He knows this. He just doesn't want to do it (yet), he says. I'll cut his hair for him, I don't mind, but it'd be nice to not have to be the one responsible for yet another thing for our family.
Any advice or commiseration?
He is *just now* fully vaccinated so I'd be more patient, honestly. I wouldn't want to be cutting his hair forever myself, but I don't think it's unreasonable for him to work his way up to getting his hair cut elsewhere. In the meantime, he can spend time searching for shops that follow safety protocols, start with other steps like going to the grocery store, etc.
Thank you for this. I do need to be more patient. I've been desensitized by how often I go out, so it's expected for him to be more anxious about it all than I am.
picksthemusic - Are there any places near you where each stylist is renting their own small space? That’s how my hair dresser is, and it’s great. If they’re also vaccinated it might make him feel more comfortable to be in a more limited contact space.