WSJ opinion - smoking gun Covid was synthesized in Wuhan lab

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Scientists don’t really “rule out” possible hypotheses. If it’s possible, it’s possible. As evidence is accumulated, the salient question is “what is most likely?”

For example: evidence is overwhelming that smoking causes lung cancer. Is it still “possible” that it doesn’t? Of course. But given the evidence, you’d be foolish to believe that it doesn’t. Evidence is overwhelming that life on earth evolved over billions of years. Is it “possible” that life on earth was created over a much shorter period of time? Sure. But 97% of the scientific community accepts evolution (I’m guessing that number would be >99% amongst biologists). That number is much lower amongst the general public.

Hypotheses are just hypotheses (aka possibilities). Evidence either supports a hypothesis or it doesn’t. Every time a manuscript crosses my desk as a peer reviewer, if it doesn’t have a specific and distinct hypothesis clearly stated, along with a report of how their data do or do not support the hypothesis, I require that they do so before I recommend the paper for publication.

Scientists don’t deal in absolutes. We deal in likelihoods.

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It hasn’t been ruled out, but that doesn’t mean that it’s the preferred theory by more than a tiny percent of epidemiologists. And the people who understand these things are the epidemiologists, not the CIA operatives who studied political science, not physicians who know mostly how to treat people infected with viruses, but have no training in research, not bacteriologists who work on different organisms entirely, not engineers, and not science writers.

When talking about something as specific as a pandemic, the people whose opinions are important are the specialists, not the talking heads, and not even other scientists. That is exactly like the manufactured “controversies” on climate change. The fossil fuel corporations and their shills trot out scientists (usually physicists) with zero training in climatology to provide their “expert” opinion that “there is no climate change”.

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Really, this last bit comes down to the problem of specialist(≈technical) vs. nonspecialist(≈colloquial) language, you know?

Well, and also a bit of not reading the room, à la Jim Carrey.
So you're telling me there's a chance

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Thanks for confirming it is still a possibility.

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There’s a possibility that Robert Redford is my biological father, due to his proximity to my mother during the time period in which I was conceived. But given the evidence, it’s highly unlikely.

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I have heard good looks can skip a generation.

:rofl: jk jk just trying to lighten the mood.

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:laughing: Funny enough, I look just like (the person I’ve been led to believe is) my dad. Also I’ve seen Redford a few times and he’s ignored me, the jerk!

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Rude Redford! :rofl:

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But was the Chinese government trying to weaponize Robert Redford’s DNA? And how did he escape his lab?

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Have those possibilities been definitively ruled out yet? Makes you think.

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This is the CC content I’m here for!

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Excellent and damning analysis. I doubt that it was an intentional release, but rather accidental. However, all the evidence of China’s initial attempts at cover up of the escaped of the virus also confirm that China very quickly knew exactly what had happened. Someday, if they ever feel safe to speak it, the truth will be confirmed by those who worked in that section of the lab (if they’re still alive by then).

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Is there any evidence that early cases were among those who worked (or lived with those who worked) at the lab? Some very basic epidemiology showing a number of early cases were in those with ties to the lab would be far more convincing - but so far I’ve never seen anything suggesting this.

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And the Chinese government is not exactly forthcoming with any evidence one way or the other.

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Well what do you think? Remember what the Chinese govt did to the eye doc who tried to report that he was seeing a lot of patients with a SARS like illness? They forced him to recant, and then he died of it. They forced researchers to withdraw the genetic code of the virus, that they already had sequenced. They forced reporters who dared to report on the spread of the virus into containment centers, never to be heard from again.

Of course the researchers at the lab who first got sick are not talking! Even if they were to defect to the US and talk, China could still imprison their relatives, and assassinate them in the US. How many of them have already been disappeared?

This was evident, that it came from the Wuhan lab, from the very start. I had been reading the early reports of illness in Wuhan in the South China Post from then free Hong Kong in Dec of 2019, and as soon as I heard that the top virology lab in China was located in Wuhan, it was obvious what had happened. It was too much of a coincidence for this to have arisen by chance in that same location as the only level 4 virology lab that had been studying the virus. They weaponized it, and then it got out. The irony is that they did it with US funding, although I thunk the goal of the funding was to help them to develop better containment techniques.

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Before the official start of the outbreak, in November 2019, Chinese researchers may have started manufacturing two Covid vaccines, according to a US senate report. China had known about the “leak” months before the world knew about it.

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But since the purported purpose of the coronavirus research was to be able to better respond to a future SARs like viral outbreak, that research to develop a vaccine may have been unrelated to the accidental release of the altered virus.

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Only if you give China the benefit of doubt.

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Sigh. Another big stinking pile of “Same old garbage packaged in some new wrapping”.

She cannot get her article published because experts in the matter find the argument unconvincing, put she craves the fame and fortune that she believes her brilliant discovery deserves, so she gets it published in a venue which is a lot less critical and lacks experts who can point out the weaknesses in her arguments.

I’m sorry, but the fact that she published this as an opinion piece in a popular magazine, but is unable to get it published in any peer-reviewed venue tells me that her scientific “proof” is weak.

It also tells me that it is more important for her to get public fame than to actually figure out what is going on.

No it isn’t. If it were, her article would have been published in at least ONE peer reviewed journal, instead of her publishing it without any review or analysis by experts.

The fact that you are convinced doesn’t actually mean anything, because you are not an expert in either virology not in infectious disease. In fact, neither is Dr Chan. She is neither an expert in Virology, not is she an expert in infectious disease. Yet she is claiming to be both.

She is simply repeating the same tired old arguments that we have heard again and again, without adding a single iota of actual evidence.

There MAY have been a proposal.

The proposal MAY have been funded by the Chinese government

The Research MAY have succeeded

The successful virus MAY have been Leaked

The Leaked virus MAY have made its way to the Wet Market first

Oh and FURIN CLEAVAGE, FURIN CLEAVAGE, FURIN CLEAVAGE!!! Repeat that three times in front of a mirror, and the claim that “IT ESCAPED FROM THE LAB!!!” magically becomes true.

We have more “Mays” than there have been in the 21st century, a dozen claims that have never been supported by evidence, and, oh yes, “Furin Cleavage”.

This article also has some cool dynamic graphics, which, as we know, are the most important part of a convincing scientific argument.

SOmebody in NYT is looking to increase readership so they allow this BS to return. Maybe some person who hates Fauci.

Great Job, NYT, providing a platform for theories that have been rejected by scientists.

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