Coronavirus 2019-2020 thread (no unsubstantiated rumours!)
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Lieutenant General
Looks like Dr. Li-Meng Yan works for Steve Bannon company of fake news after all.
A Chinese virologist claimed the coronavirus was 'intentionally' released. Turns out, she works for a group led by Steve Bannon.
A Chinese virologist claimed the coronavirus was 'intentionally' released. Turns out, she works for a group led by Steve Bannon.
A strange claiming the coronavirus was a "laboratory product" quietly made its way into a repository of preliminary research on Monday.
"The laboratory creation of this coronavirus is convenient and can be accomplished in approximately six months," the paper's authors, four Chinese virologists who fled to the US earlier this year, wrote.
Li-Meng Yan, the lead author, went a step further in with the Fox News host Tucker Carlson.
She told Carlson that her government had "intentionally" released the "man-made virus" — comments that echoed a fringe conspiracy theory that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and President Donald Trump .
But a closer look at Yan and her coauthors' work shows they're affiliated with a pair of nonprofits based in New York City, the Rule of Law Society and the Rule of Law Foundation, that were led by the former Trump strategist Steve Bannon before his arrest in August.
Neither organization has any history of publishing scientific or medical research, and the new paper has not been peer-reviewed by other scientists.
Most experts think the coronavirus originated in bats before jumping to people; found that it shared 96% of its genetic code with coronaviruses circulating in Chinese bat populations.
Yan's group, however, suggested that people made the virus using existing bat coronaviruses as "a backbone and/or template."
Bannon cofounded both groups with an exiled Chinese billionaire
Bannon was arrested in August on charges that he defrauded donors who gave money to the "We Build The Wall" campaign. In January 2019, helped found both Rule of Law groups with an exiled Chinese billionaire, Guo Wengui.
Steve Bannon, a former chief White House strategist.
J. Scott Applewhite/AP
Guo also founded the site G News, which has published () claiming the coronavirus originated in a Chinese lab and was purposefully spread by the military.
Bannon got $1 million in 2018 for a year's worth of "strategic consulting services" involving G News, .
Guo fled China for New York in 2014 after the Chinese Communist Party accused him of bribery and fraud. He had to accuse CCP officials of corruption.
Yan, at the University of Hong Kong, that she was one of the first researchers to study the new coronavirus. But Yan left the university — and China — in April, because she began to worry for her safety after suggesting the CCP and the World Health Organization knew about the virus' community spread before December, she said.
"I know how they treat whistleblowers," she told Fox News.
In her interview with Carlson on Tuesday, Yan said she had evidence that showed how China engineered the virus, adding, "I am the target that Chinese Communist Party wants disappeared."
The University of Hong Kong that Yan "never conducted any research on human-to-human transmission" of the coronavirus before she left and that her view "has no scientific basis but resembles hearsay."
'Poppycock dressed up' as science
An illustration of the new coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, which causes COVID-19.
CDC
Other experts were quick to speak out against the claims in Yan's paper.
Carl Bergstrom, a University of Washington biologist who the paper's connection to Bannon, called the research "bizarre and unfounded."
There's no evidence supporting the theory that the new coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, was genetically engineered. concluded based on genetic analysis that the coronavirus wasn't a hodgepodge of existing coronaviruses, as Yan and other supporters of the theory have suggested.
Those researchers wrote that their work indicated that it "is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus," adding that "the genetic data irrefutably show that SARS-CoV-2 is not derived from any previously used virus backbone."
On Tuesday, the lead author of that study, Kristian Andersen, said Yan's group had cherry-picked data in support of their conclusion, adding that it was "poppycock dressed up as 'science.'"
Twitter, which has a strict policy on tweets containing disputed claims about COVID-19, this week.
The virus probably didn't leak from a lab either
We still don't know how the coronavirus pandemic started, or where — and that uncertainty creates fertile territory for unsubstantiated theories.
Early on, many people thought an first passed the coronavirus from bats to people in a wet market in the city of Wuhan, China, in December. But it turned out that coronavirus infections were spreading in the city weeks before the cluster of cases linked to the market arose. That means the market probably but wasn't the pandemic's origin site.
Another theory suggested that the coronavirus had animal origins but that a sample of it stored at the Wuhan Institute of Virology .
The Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Researchers at that institute do study infectious diseases, including coronaviruses, which from members of the Trump administration earlier this year.
There's no evidence, however, that the coronavirus came from a sample stored at that lab.
"It's highly unlikely this was a lab accident," Jonna Mazet, a US epidemiologist who has worked with and trained researchers at the Wuhan institute, .
Mazet said she helped the staff there develop and implement a "very stringent safety protocol."
What's more, Shi Zhengli, a virologist at the institute, said none of the coronavirus samples that had been stored there matched the new coronavirus' genome.
"That really took a load off my mind," Shi in April. "I had not slept a wink for days."
Pretty much every other scientists have reached the consensus that the virus is naturally occurring, the only uncertainty is whether she's a garden variety 'political asylum' seeker(Gimme dem Greencard) or this.
This is the same Sinopharm vaccine in phase 3 trial in UAE. Result from UAE is due at the end of November so seems to be like starting a new phase 3 trial now is fairly pointless scientifically. I reckon Bahrain guys went next door to UAE to ask how the trial is going, and upon hearing that it's going very well decided they wanted in on that action because these type of contract say once a vaccine has successfully passed phase 3 trial, countries participating in the trial gets the right to manufacturer the vaccine domestically.
All in all I think this is very strong endorsement.
vesicles
Colonel
I wouldn't say it's pointless scientifically. In fact, it's the opposite. The whole purpose of a large scale clinical trial is to test the drugs/vaccines in as many people as you can before letting the general public take it. For this purpose, the number of test subjects is absolutely critical for evaluating the efficacy and side effects of these drugs/vaccines. The more people you test, the more likely you can uncover their potential side effects, and the more confident you can be of your drugs/vaccines. This is why, in the US, a new drug typically undergoes years and years, many times way over a decade, of clinical trials. As long as you can afford it (time-wise and money-wise), you want to conduct as many trials as you can. Typical vaccine development also take years. You can come up with a vaccine in the lab in a few months. Vast majority of that time frame of several years is clinical trials. To be honest, development of the vaccines for the current COVID-19 has been dangerously short, literally testing the upper limit of how fast we can come up with a vaccine for anything. There is a large chance that these vaccines will end up killing more people than the virus. We hope not...
Is it a shutdown, or a "shutdown"? Any UK users here have any more info?
Hmmm, the UK is in very deep shit right now huh
Yep, it's a shutdown.... but..... not a lockdown. See the difference?
Due to Boris's leaderless leadership, the last lockdown was a joke. He's allowed his political advisor to travel hundreds of miles to 'test his eye sights' and see his parents. Defended his actions stoutly. Thus giving an impression to the general populace that is ok to do so. In defiance to it's own government rules.
So instead of copying China's 'draconian measures' and take the pain for a later gain. The UK took the soft option and now is paying the price. Boris, like Trump is more worry about the economy, just couldn't wait to end the first lockdown (however loose that was).
Even now, schools are back just so people can leave their kids in schools so they can get back to work to get the economy going. My friend is a primary teacher, you tell to control the kids so they are separated at all time. It's a joke. As for my students, they are 16 to 19 years old. They are a bit more controlled and respectful in class. Bit I've seen them in the court yards and on the roads to and back from college. Complete lack of social distancing going on!
It's going to be alot more pain!