I've addressed this in quite a different way in a recent post on my own blog which exists to make the case that Covid is neither of the alternatives you mention, but the taboo third alternative - an intentional bioweapon.
Modern, progressive people "trust science" over faith-based belief forms like religion. We're raised with the scientific method and understand it to mean that results can be verified by others if the same methods are followed. This seems more sensible than trusting what is written in a 2000 year-old book purporting to be the word of God. We're trusting that other skeptical humans will weed out false claims. This leaves us vulnerable to exploitation by charlatans who profess to be scientists, but whose results aren't reproducible - and so shouldn't be treated as verifiable scientific facts.
This applies to nearly all the evidence for a natural origin of Covid. We can't trust the viral sequences purporting to show a natural evolution. These come from a small set of related parties (WIV,AMMS and associates) who also happen to be the most likely culprits. It isn't possible to independently reproduce sampling these in nature. The best we can do is synthesize them and attempt to infect their natural hosts, but - oddly - this hasn't been tried yet. I've been showing evidence that many of the claims are fraudulent, sequences that look like chimeras, not natural recombinants. When we're told by the media that "Scientists have found..." it sounds more credible than "Jesus said..." but there is possibly even less basis for our trust.
Let's say, just for the sake of argument, that you're correct about some of the alleged natural sequences having been altered. (People who are more immersed in the biology can judge the sequence data better than me.) It still seems like a huge unreasonable leap to then say that the whole thing was a deliberate bioweapon. Why would UNC, Duke NUS, NIH, and WIV be collaborating on that? Sure, the militaries of each country would be keeping an eye on the work and maybe (as was requested from DARPA) sometimes funding part of it, but that still doesn't make this virus "an intentional bioweapon". There's plenty of motivation to cover up a screw-up of reckless research without that extra layer. I'm not particularly a respecter of taboos, but I don't like to just make things up.
The accidental lab leak scenario is based on the premise there are enteric bat viruses which can cause human respiratory pandemics with just a small amount of tinkering by a reckless scientist i.e. they are pre-adapted for efficient respiratory transmission with the Swiss army knife of RBMs, all that's needed is a tiny FCS insert to trigger Armageddon.
Far from "just making things up", I've spent years looking at the evidence for this, analyzing sequence data, before concluding it is fraudulent. The evidence comes largely from WIV and the PLA's Academy of Military Sciences with assistance from CSIRO (particularly Linfa Wang), EHA and Institut Pasteur. My take is that western scientists were hoodwinked by WIV/AMMS, but there is also some amount of motivated reasoning and willful blindness.
Please read some more of my work and understand a bit of the history of SARS and the subsequent investigation into its origin. Few "lab-leakers" have bothered to look back beyond 2015 or so, and fewer have analyzed any data themselves which is why they have it wrong. They are basing their view that it isn't a bioweapon on intuition, not scientific evidence.
I'm open to criticism of my work, but I prefer people read it first.
I agree that your SNAP diagram is impressively weird and, to (non-expert) me, doesn't look natural. Your other stories are also interesting and easy to read.
I disagree on one point. At the start you mention how rare certain precise mutations are in nature. The issue, however, is how rare they would be after many accidental tries in nature followed by post-selection— people only having reason to pay attention to viruses with some special dangerous features.
At this point the anomalies you describe are intriguing but without more confirmation would not noticeably alter my odds for the more generic question of whether SC2 came from some sort of research.
The tendency of most of the pillars of the scientific establishment to stand by the canonical market account, even including transparent nonsense like the Pekar 2022 paper, is deeply embarrassing regardless of what type of research was probably involved. Some naivety on the part of scientists is not as alarming as repeatedly pushing obviously bad science.
It's hard to avoid the conclusion there are "higher ups" pushing scientists to adopt this position though It's unclear why. Embarrassment over past collaboration and funding doesn't seem a strong enough reason. At various times I've written (politely) to Baric/Denison/Menachery/Weiss et al, CSIRO, UC Davis/Columbia (PREDICT) scientists to ask if they had noticed anomalies, or can offer alternative explanations, but have never received a response. In other fields I've found scientists to be thrilled that someone has taken an interest in their work and most happy to discuss it. This is something other than science.
The CDC and the public health establishment had already been compromised by politics before Covid, though the politics have less partisan valence. Their campaign against vaping is full of half-truths, distortions, and outright lies trying to convince people that vaping is as dangerous as smoking. Their anti-teen-vaping campaign is much more prominent than their anti-teen-smoking campaign, which signals that getting addicted to nicotine is worse than filling your lungs with weird combustion products plus getting addicted to nicotine. While it may make sense to put resources towards preventing teens from starting to vape, there's almost no attraction to vaping from adult non-smokers, making general anti-vaping campaigns actively counterproductive. In 2019, the CDC was actively spreading false statements about injuries caused by gray-market THC vapes, blaming them on legitimate nicotine vapes and using the confusion to destroy Juul.
So while The Science has some work to do to regain people's trust, the CDC and the public health establishment in general has a lot more work before they deserve any trust.
I've addressed this in quite a different way in a recent post on my own blog which exists to make the case that Covid is neither of the alternatives you mention, but the taboo third alternative - an intentional bioweapon.
Modern, progressive people "trust science" over faith-based belief forms like religion. We're raised with the scientific method and understand it to mean that results can be verified by others if the same methods are followed. This seems more sensible than trusting what is written in a 2000 year-old book purporting to be the word of God. We're trusting that other skeptical humans will weed out false claims. This leaves us vulnerable to exploitation by charlatans who profess to be scientists, but whose results aren't reproducible - and so shouldn't be treated as verifiable scientific facts.
This applies to nearly all the evidence for a natural origin of Covid. We can't trust the viral sequences purporting to show a natural evolution. These come from a small set of related parties (WIV,AMMS and associates) who also happen to be the most likely culprits. It isn't possible to independently reproduce sampling these in nature. The best we can do is synthesize them and attempt to infect their natural hosts, but - oddly - this hasn't been tried yet. I've been showing evidence that many of the claims are fraudulent, sequences that look like chimeras, not natural recombinants. When we're told by the media that "Scientists have found..." it sounds more credible than "Jesus said..." but there is possibly even less basis for our trust.
My post:
https://www.sarsisterrorism.org/p/the-batshit-evolution-of-sars-cov
Let's say, just for the sake of argument, that you're correct about some of the alleged natural sequences having been altered. (People who are more immersed in the biology can judge the sequence data better than me.) It still seems like a huge unreasonable leap to then say that the whole thing was a deliberate bioweapon. Why would UNC, Duke NUS, NIH, and WIV be collaborating on that? Sure, the militaries of each country would be keeping an eye on the work and maybe (as was requested from DARPA) sometimes funding part of it, but that still doesn't make this virus "an intentional bioweapon". There's plenty of motivation to cover up a screw-up of reckless research without that extra layer. I'm not particularly a respecter of taboos, but I don't like to just make things up.
The accidental lab leak scenario is based on the premise there are enteric bat viruses which can cause human respiratory pandemics with just a small amount of tinkering by a reckless scientist i.e. they are pre-adapted for efficient respiratory transmission with the Swiss army knife of RBMs, all that's needed is a tiny FCS insert to trigger Armageddon.
Far from "just making things up", I've spent years looking at the evidence for this, analyzing sequence data, before concluding it is fraudulent. The evidence comes largely from WIV and the PLA's Academy of Military Sciences with assistance from CSIRO (particularly Linfa Wang), EHA and Institut Pasteur. My take is that western scientists were hoodwinked by WIV/AMMS, but there is also some amount of motivated reasoning and willful blindness.
Please read some more of my work and understand a bit of the history of SARS and the subsequent investigation into its origin. Few "lab-leakers" have bothered to look back beyond 2015 or so, and fewer have analyzed any data themselves which is why they have it wrong. They are basing their view that it isn't a bioweapon on intuition, not scientific evidence.
I'm open to criticism of my work, but I prefer people read it first.
https://www.sarsisterrorism.org/p/how-the-ccp-corrupted-western-science
I agree that your SNAP diagram is impressively weird and, to (non-expert) me, doesn't look natural. Your other stories are also interesting and easy to read.
I disagree on one point. At the start you mention how rare certain precise mutations are in nature. The issue, however, is how rare they would be after many accidental tries in nature followed by post-selection— people only having reason to pay attention to viruses with some special dangerous features.
At this point the anomalies you describe are intriguing but without more confirmation would not noticeably alter my odds for the more generic question of whether SC2 came from some sort of research.
The tendency of most of the pillars of the scientific establishment to stand by the canonical market account, even including transparent nonsense like the Pekar 2022 paper, is deeply embarrassing regardless of what type of research was probably involved. Some naivety on the part of scientists is not as alarming as repeatedly pushing obviously bad science.
It's hard to avoid the conclusion there are "higher ups" pushing scientists to adopt this position though It's unclear why. Embarrassment over past collaboration and funding doesn't seem a strong enough reason. At various times I've written (politely) to Baric/Denison/Menachery/Weiss et al, CSIRO, UC Davis/Columbia (PREDICT) scientists to ask if they had noticed anomalies, or can offer alternative explanations, but have never received a response. In other fields I've found scientists to be thrilled that someone has taken an interest in their work and most happy to discuss it. This is something other than science.
The CDC and the public health establishment had already been compromised by politics before Covid, though the politics have less partisan valence. Their campaign against vaping is full of half-truths, distortions, and outright lies trying to convince people that vaping is as dangerous as smoking. Their anti-teen-vaping campaign is much more prominent than their anti-teen-smoking campaign, which signals that getting addicted to nicotine is worse than filling your lungs with weird combustion products plus getting addicted to nicotine. While it may make sense to put resources towards preventing teens from starting to vape, there's almost no attraction to vaping from adult non-smokers, making general anti-vaping campaigns actively counterproductive. In 2019, the CDC was actively spreading false statements about injuries caused by gray-market THC vapes, blaming them on legitimate nicotine vapes and using the confusion to destroy Juul.
So while The Science has some work to do to regain people's trust, the CDC and the public health establishment in general has a lot more work before they deserve any trust.
Interesting!