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4 comments
" But it turns out that this wasnt the case because the grant application was denied. "
They are basing that on the rejection of the research by DARPA, which of course they didn't tell us about to begin with until it got leaked by a whistleblower.
First, it's a major lie of omission that they didn't mention that they proposed doing research to make the virus in a laboratory in the city they say the virus naturally arose in.
Second, they were shopping the research to multiple agencies for funding.
Third, they may have already done the research in anticipation that they were going to be funded; this is apparently a common practice in biological research. We can't tell, because their records were taken offline a couple months or so before the pandemic started.
I'd like to recommend, for background information on this, Matt Ridley and Alina Chan's _Viral_.
They are basing that on the rejection of the research by DARPA, which of course they didn't tell us about to begin with until it got leaked by a whistleblower.
First, it's a major lie of omission that they didn't mention that they proposed doing research to make the virus in a laboratory in the city they say the virus naturally arose in.
Second, they were shopping the research to multiple agencies for funding.
Third, they may have already done the research in anticipation that they were going to be funded; this is apparently a common practice in biological research. We can't tell, because their records were taken offline a couple months or so before the pandemic started.
I'd like to recommend, for background information on this, Matt Ridley and Alina Chan's _Viral_.
You appear to be moving the goalposts(?) of a strawman argument (that the US was involved in the creation of Covid).
This is not a dubiously sourced report. This is documents released by the federal government, through official channels, that outline a laboratory blueprint of the Covid-19 virus that was eventually found in the wild (and then suggested to be of likely natural origin).
What any of that has to do with “anti-science”, or with lifesaving vaccines is beyond me
This is not a dubiously sourced report. This is documents released by the federal government, through official channels, that outline a laboratory blueprint of the Covid-19 virus that was eventually found in the wild (and then suggested to be of likely natural origin).
What any of that has to do with “anti-science”, or with lifesaving vaccines is beyond me
Two comments that I would like to make about this and a quick preface. As a preface, I was in the world of DARPA funded research projects. My last effort before leaving this career more than a decade ago was a project where we were predicting viral evolution in silico. I have read the DARPA proposal that was rejected and it reads like every other proposal that I have seen (ie, it reads as legitimate). I also know one of the reviewers that evaluated the proposal, and he vouched for its authencity (and the fact that it was quite close to getting funded).
Two comments:
1. When you construct a multi-million dollar proposal for one of these agencies, one tends not to pitch a pie-in-the-sky idea. Instead, teams pitch things that they know will work, often because they have already at least built the foundation if not outright developed a working example. If WIV pitched this idea of inserting furin cleavages into SARS viral backbones, it is almost 100% guaranteed that they had *already* done these experiments.
2. What many also don't understand is that there were two groups within virology. One group was adamant that the only way you could save humanity and prevent the next pandemic was to engineer terrifying viruses capable of destroying humanity in the lab. With example world-ending viruses, you could then create countermeasures - drugs and vaccines - and save the world. The rest of us, myself included, thought this group was (forgive the pun) "batshit" crazy because nothing in the lab stays in the lab forever. Lab leaks are large in number, even the ones that are public.
Two comments:
1. When you construct a multi-million dollar proposal for one of these agencies, one tends not to pitch a pie-in-the-sky idea. Instead, teams pitch things that they know will work, often because they have already at least built the foundation if not outright developed a working example. If WIV pitched this idea of inserting furin cleavages into SARS viral backbones, it is almost 100% guaranteed that they had *already* done these experiments.
2. What many also don't understand is that there were two groups within virology. One group was adamant that the only way you could save humanity and prevent the next pandemic was to engineer terrifying viruses capable of destroying humanity in the lab. With example world-ending viruses, you could then create countermeasures - drugs and vaccines - and save the world. The rest of us, myself included, thought this group was (forgive the pun) "batshit" crazy because nothing in the lab stays in the lab forever. Lab leaks are large in number, even the ones that are public.
In this case, the Mail is reporting on a claim that NIH and DoD were involved, via the EcoHealth Alliance org, in bio research that led to shady goings on in Wuhan. But it turns out that this wasnt the case because the grant application was denied. Maybe Covid escaped from a lab in Wuhan, maybe it escaped from a wet market, who knows. But this article is solidly in keeping with the Daily Mail's general anti-science, anti-vax tenor and should not be considered gospel truth by itself.