Display MoreThis virus has lab origin. Why don't you read this paper and tell us what you disagree with on a specific basis - not sourcing your opinions from Fact Checkers or Dr. Google. We don't need your Fact-Checking of Dr. Yan's credentials and we don't need your stating "no scientific consensus has formed." We don't need you taking generic broad statements and spinning them into an argument that dumps the entire subject into the dustbin and then starts to name-call anyone who looks at said subject.
On such a topic, with trillions of dollars of impact, of course truths become dangerous. She challenges a mega-narrative. Stick to the scientific argument, make it your own, let's see what you can do.
https://zenodo.org/record/4073…n%20Report.pdf?download=1
We are waiting. This is a way to figure out if you actually have anything to say at all, or if you are just here to stir the pot and foment discord.
I guess most people here think my answering this repetitive misinformation is feeding the trolls - but as you all know i'm a sucker for it. I did this in detail a few months ago. I do not have time now to repeat that, but instead I will summarise, quoting other sources. I want to point out you can go back to the original discussion if you want more.
First: I've not seen any worthwhile scientific argument for your extraordinary supposition. Sometimes even as a non-specialist (which I take you to be since I've never detected from you on this topic any critical appraisal) you can work out the nmerit of arguments by looking at both sides. In this case there was an early argument made by Yan and rebutted here. There was then a later argument so bad it was retracted.
The point here is that we don't need scientific reasons for it to be the same as all other similar viruses. That is expected. Those who argue for lab origin need scientific reasons for this hypothesis and do not have them.
How can I prove it is not a lab virus? In principle, a Navid-friendly lab run by a Navid-style deep conspiracy - probably several centuries old and possessing in secret advanced biotec all that time, could produce artificially a virus so similar in all respects to a natural zoonosis cross-over that it would fool everyone. Such a possibility can never be disproved. But it is unlikely.
Here are facts, please let me know which you question, and why you question them, and I will post support.
I'm quoting from a National geographic summary of the immediate scientific reactions to the Yan September rehash paper.
https://www.nationalgeographic…an-report-fact-check-cvd/
Chief among their complaints was that the report ignored the vast body of published literature regarding what is known about how coronaviruses circulate in wild animal populations and the tendency to spill over into humans, including recent publications about the origins of SARS-CoV-2.
I know you have a selected attention span when it come to reading science critical of your theories - but in this case the whole "hey - look - we've found all the bits we need in bats already" stuff has been well circulated here. As someone claiming to be knowledgable about cutting edge scientific research you will I'm sure be familiar with how to critically appraise a paper. This is absolutely necessary. You find papers arguing everything under the sun, and would end up believing all sorts of batty things....
OK that argument won't work with you: because you have done that and bought the T shirt - so to speak.
Here is why critical appraisal matters, especially when you are not familiar with the topic. That is the position most scientists are in when looking at novel work - by definition, it is novel, so they are not familiar with it.
You first look to see whether the paper has considered and either accepted or rejected prior work relevant. In this case the vast literature on wild CVs in bat populations, efforts to find proximal origin, and the quite substantial recent literature on COVID-2 origins. Its not difficult to find this stuff. For example, you take the original https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9 paper, and look up its citations (there are 512 from nature web site). I actually did this a while back and it is posted on here, in details, with the fascinating evidence. You seem to have forgotten.
The experts also pointed out that the report whipped up wild conspiracy theories and wrongly accused academic journals of plotting with conspirators by censoring important evidence.
Again - I realise that while most people see this as a red flag you probably find it attractive. So i will let everyone judge for themselves.
In July, David Robertson, a viral genomics researcher at University of Glasgow, authored a peer-reviewed paper in Nature Medicine that showed the lineage behind SARS-CoV-2 and its closest known ancestor, a virus called RaTG13, have been circulating in bat populations for decades. Virologists think this relative, which is 96-percent identical to the novel coronavirus, probably propagated and evolved in bats or human hosts and then went undetected for about 20 years before adapting its current form and causing the ongoing pandemic.
The Yan report claims this hypothesis is controversial, and that RaTG13 was also engineered in a lab. But that flies in the face of the overwhelming body of genetic evidence published about SARS-CoV-2 and its progenitors.
You perhaps remember the details of this (I quoted from the paper) when we last addressed this. at the time you went silent on the subject, but now seem to have come back for another dose of reality?
What’s more, the report was funded by the Rule of Law Society, a nonprofit organization founded by former chief White House strategist Steve Bannon, who has since been arrested for fraud.
See, I'm also giving the obvious to all non-scientific context - to counteract all the "conspiracy-smears" which are 100% non-scientific and comprise 90% of your posting on this topic. fair i think. You stick to science and I will too.
“It’s encroaching on pseudoscience, really,” says Robertson. “This paper just cherry-picked a couple of examples, excluded evidence, and came up with a ridiculous scenario.”
National Geographic reached out to other prominent virologists and misinformation researchers to better understand where the Yan report came from and what it got wrong. Along the way, they offered tips for overcoming misinformation surrounding the coronavirus.
Scientists have yet to find the direct parent of SARS-CoV-2 in feral beasts, though its closest relatives exist in bats. The virus may have passed through an intermediate animal—pangolins have been implicated—and then evolved to become better at infecting humans. Or it may have made the jump directly from bats to humans, given past examples of such occurrences. After the original SARS outbreak in China 20 years ago, researchers began surveying wild bats in local caves and the people who live near them. A 2018 study found the genetic relatives of the original SARS virus in the winged mammals—as well as specific antibodies, a residual sign of infection, in their human neighbors.
I pointed this out before. The argument that SARS-nCoV2 must be artificial because we can't find its immediate animal progenitor is fully blown apart by a little zoonotic history. SARS itself too 20 years for us to discover the link. Those bat viruses are not easy to find and isolate. Lots of bats. Lots of viruses.
Uncovering the natural source of the coronavirus will likely require large-scale sampling of animals—including bat and human populations—in China to trace the evolution of the novel coronavirus. The World Health Organization is readying a team to conduct such an investigation in China, though a timetable has not been released.
Navid, is there any specific scientific argument in Yan's paper that you'd like me to expand the rebuttal of? You seem now to be giving me a pretty easy job. Which I guess is why many here are getting bored of the repetition.
Mods - you had better not move this post and Navid's both to clearance - though they deserve this as repetitive - because if you do Navid will darkly claim you are pawns of deep state interests trying to suppress the truth, siding with "spin-doctors" such as me. LOL.
Well, I'm all for highlighting the whole truth, tedious though it is. It is only by such efforts that we can rebut the anti-science irrational internet cult-like conspiracy theories that in this coronavirus era seem to have such public traction. Should this site become a hotbed of such things I would be most sorry. Luckily I've not seen much sign of that, most here seem quite level-headed.
THH
