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Old 02-28-2023, 08:39 AM   #401
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This happened in China, there is no evidence of anything bad ever happening in China. Not from witnesses who are currently alive.
I'm talking about evidence of manipulation in the genetic makeup of the virus. The telltale signs of a genetically engineered or gene edited virus aren't there for SARS-CoV-2.

That doesn't mean it didn't happen, but there's currently no great evidence to suggest that.
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Old 02-28-2023, 10:01 AM   #402
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If the report was based on 1.5 year old Republican something or order, why is Rand Paul asking the Whitehouse to release the intelligence surrounding the DoE report? He's on the Senate Homeland Security Committee, so he would have access to whatever the original study was supposedly based on.

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Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), the ranking member of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, says the Biden administration should declassify classified documents showing that scientists at the Department of Energy believe COVID-19 leaked from a lab in Wuhan, China.

“Classified documents leaked (they should be declassified!) showing scientists at DOE believe COVID leaked from Wuhan Lab,” Paul tweeted on Monday, circulating a Wall Street Journal story published over the weekend reporting the Energy Department has concluded the COVID-19 pandemic likely came from a lab leak.

The Journal reported the Energy Department concluded the pandemic arouse from a mishap at a Chinese lab based on new intelligence. It matches the FBI’s conclusion from a 2021 analysis that the pandemic originated from a lab leak. The Energy Department study reportedly offered the conclusion with low confidence.
https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/...m-chinese-lab/

'based on new intelligence.'
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Old 02-28-2023, 11:02 PM   #403
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This all feels like a gun shot heard from inside a house. The neighbors hear it, call the police, yet all family members emerge from the house.

Yet when police arrive the family won’t let them go in the house. They claim it was a pipe that exploded. They show the pipe.

If your a cop do you think everything checks and leaves?
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Old 03-01-2023, 09:49 AM   #404
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If the report was based on 1.5 year old Republican something or order, why is Rand Paul asking the Whitehouse to release the intelligence surrounding the DoE report? He's on the Senate Homeland Security Committee, so he would have access to whatever the original study was supposedly based on.

https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/...m-chinese-lab/

'based on new intelligence.'
Yes, the update is based on somewhat new intelligence, but that intelligence has been shared with the other 16 agencies and so far at least, none of them have changed their conclusions.

But yes, they should absolutely release the evidence that they're drawing the conclusion from. And hopefully it's more conclusive/persuasive than the "3 of the several hundred people who worked at the lab went to the doctor in the fall of 2019 with cold/flu symptoms" that they trotted out in the past.
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Old 03-01-2023, 02:08 PM   #405
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WASHINGTON—FBI Director Christopher Wray said Tuesday that the Covid pandemic was probably the result of a laboratory leak in China, providing the first public confirmation of the bureau’s classified judgment of how the virus that led to the deaths of nearly seven million people worldwide first emerged.

“The FBI has for quite some time now assessed that the origins of the pandemic are most likely a potential lab incident in Wuhan,” Mr. Wray told Fox News. “Here you are talking about a potential leak from a Chinese government-controlled lab.”

Mr. Wray added that the Chinese government has been trying to “thwart and obfuscate” the investigation that the Federal Bureau of Investigation, other parts of the U.S. government and foreign partners have been carrying out into the origin of the pandemic, but that the bureau’s work continues.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/fbi-dir...-leak-13a5e69b
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Old 03-01-2023, 02:41 PM   #406
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Originally Posted by Azure View Post
yup.

People are like "where is the evidence"

all a big conspiracy by US government of course, of course.


Surely they're not being careful because they don't want WWIII. That can't be it.
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Old 03-01-2023, 02:45 PM   #407
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Yes, the update is based on somewhat new intelligence, but that intelligence has been shared with the other 16 agencies and so far at least, none of them have changed their conclusions.

But yes, they should absolutely release the evidence that they're drawing the conclusion from. And hopefully it's more conclusive/persuasive than the "3 of the several hundred people who worked at the lab went to the doctor in the fall of 2019 with cold/flu symptoms" that they trotted out in the past.

Yeah super sketchy that the department of Housing and Urban development hasn't gone public right?

So weird that the only department commenting is the one in charge of genomics.
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Old 03-01-2023, 03:31 PM   #408
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yup.

People are like "where is the evidence"

all a big conspiracy by US government of course, of course.


Surely they're not being careful because they don't want WWIII. That can't be it.
Yes, let's all blindly trust US intelligence agencies when it comes to an adversary. Maybe they'll find those WMDs in Iraq one of these days.

And even if one is naive enough to take them all at their word, why haven't the others changed their position? And why is the DoE's assessment only "low confidence"? The answer most likely is, because they don't actually know a whole lot. But if I have to pick between the experts in the field on the one hand, and US intelligence agencies on the other, I'll defer to the former every time. And their position is that both theories are plausible, but current evidence leans towards natural origin.

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Yeah super sketchy that the department of Housing and Urban development hasn't gone public right?

So weird that the only department commenting is the one in charge of genomics.
You couldn't even be bothered to look up the list of intelligence agencies?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United...ence_Community
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Old 03-01-2023, 03:39 PM   #409
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There's no evidence
I want to start by saying this is in no way an issue confined to your post, Opendoor, and more of a general observation.

Throughout the last decade, and especially during the Trump presidency, people have said “there’s no evidence” with regard to far too many things for which there is a lot of evidence.

These statements are a different version of “you’re biased”, as though anyone is entirely neutral, or that’s something to aspire to in the first place.

Furthermore, the idea of evidence makes things feel like a courtroom. This is a
Message board.

“I haven’t been shown anything that I find convincing, and here’s why.”

“Where are you getting this information?”

“I find this argument compelling for these reasons.”

This is all very general stuff - more specifically as it relates to the coronavirus, we have a virus lab, studying the coronavirus that rampaged across the globe, but the origin is actually from a wet market in the same city?

That seems convenient, based on the poetry of the situation if nothing else.

I’m just a lowly history grad - I’m not a virologist. But does it even matter if the virus wasn’t “modified” to be more virulent?

It’s a coronavirus - before 2020, there had never been a successful coronavirus vaccine. It didn’t need to be modified, it would do that on its own.

I am willing to buy that improper safety processes at the lab resulted in this escaping. I don’t think that’s an unreasonable possibility.

The more conspiratorial side of me wonders about this being a trial run for a worse biological attack, but overall I think the effects have been far too devastating to the CCP internally to justify doing it with more malicious intent. I don’t know if it was Nixon or Kissinger or someone else who said “it’s difficult to negotiate with a country who thinks in terms of dynasties.”

China plays the long game. Empires rise and fall, and China endures. However, the CCP, like all communist regimes, is built on lies. Each lie incurs a debt to the truth, and eventually that debt is always paid.

If you want to say it’s not a lab leak, I have no interest telling you you’re wrong.

If you think the coronavirus escaped from a lab that happens to study coronaviruses and be located in the same City as the wet market it supposedly came from, well, you may have been on to something.

I might’ve lost the plot by now, so I’ll stop.

In any event, it’s the simple acts of kindness and love that keep the darkness at bay, so everyone do a little more of that.
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Old 03-01-2023, 04:15 PM   #410
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I want to start by saying this is in no way an issue confined to your post, Opendoor, and more of a general observation.

Throughout the last decade, and especially during the Trump presidency, people have said “there’s no evidence” with regard to far too many things for which there is a lot of evidence.
Those things I was talking about are scientific though. Unless you can point to evidence of the virus being modified or a progenitor existing in the lab, then I stand by that 100%.

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This is all very general stuff - more specifically as it relates to the coronavirus, we have a virus lab, studying the coronavirus that rampaged across the globe, but the origin is actually from a wet market in the same city?

That seems convenient, based on the poetry of the situation if nothing else.
There's no evidence that they had the progenitor of SARS-CoV-2 and the closest known relative to SARS-CoV-2 was found in Laos in late 2021. Maybe they did have it and kept it under wraps, that's totally possible. But at present there's no real public evidence pointing to that.

And there are also factors with how it spread that would make a lab leak less likely. There were multiple distinct variants detected at the market which were genetically different enough that they'd normally require a fair bit of spread to diverge like that. Whereas if it leaked from the lab you'd normally expect there to be a single variant that didn't mutate until it had spread for a while.

Now that doesn't rule out a lab leak. There could have been multiple leaks of different variants, or the detection of multiple variants could have been falsified, etc. But it does raise the threshold of plausibility a bit.

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I’m just a lowly history grad - I’m not a virologist. But does it even matter if the virus wasn’t “modified” to be more virulent?

It’s a coronavirus - before 2020, there had never been a successful coronavirus vaccine. It didn’t need to be modified, it would do that on its own.

I am willing to buy that improper safety processes at the lab resulted in this escaping. I don’t think that’s an unreasonable possibility.
I'm not really sure what you're saying here. Much of the basis of the lab leak hypothesis has been that the virus had been altered (either through manipulation or gain of function research) so that it could infect humans. Bat coronaviruses normally can't transmit to humans, so the theory was that the progenitor virus was altered to do so. Some people called the furin cleavage site (one of the things that made it so effective at infecting humans) a "smoking gun". But then the coronavirus found in the wild in Laos that I mentioned above ended up being one amino acid insertion away from having a FCS. So it's not really evidence of manipulation at all.

For it not to be modified in any way, that would mean that the researchers stumbled upon it randomly. And given the precautions they normally take when collecting samples vs. what BSL-4 lab has, it would be pretty surprising if they collected SARS-CoV-2 and no one was infected, but then it leaked from the lab later on. Again, not impossible which is why the lab leak is still a very plausible scenario when taken with all the circumstantial evidence, but it's still probably less likely than the virus emerging like virtually every single other virus in history has.
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Old 03-01-2023, 04:38 PM   #411
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I think its obvious that as time goes on a lot of people who had a certain viewpoint on COVID, and spent the last two years vilifying anyone who dared think, talk or even ASK differently are going to have a hard time coming to terms with the realization that things were not as black and white as they saw them.

And I'm not talking about the belief that ivermectin worked. I'm talking about people who questioned vaccine mandates when it should have been clear natural immunity was worth something. But holy crap, vilified is a nice way of putting it.
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Old 03-01-2023, 05:04 PM   #412
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I think its obvious that as time goes on a lot of people who had a certain viewpoint on COVID, and spent the last two years vilifying anyone who dared think, talk or even ASK differently are going to have a hard time coming to terms with the realization that things were not as black and white as they saw them.

And I'm not talking about the belief that ivermectin worked. I'm talking about people who questioned vaccine mandates when it should have been clear natural immunity was worth something. But holy crap, vilified is a nice way of putting it.
To put it bluntly, no one gives a **** that a group of people who were filling up hospitals at a rate about 10x the rate of the vaccinated population couldn't go to restaurants for a few months during the worst phase of the pandemic. I guess it would have been better to just keep those businesses closed even longer?
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Old 03-01-2023, 10:03 PM   #413
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Funny how the us can “solve”this but can’t solve who blew up the nordstream pipeline
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Old 03-02-2023, 01:31 AM   #414
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To put it bluntly, no one gives a **** that a group of people who were filling up hospitals at a rate about 10x the rate of the vaccinated population couldn't go to restaurants for a few months during the worst phase of the pandemic. I guess it would have been better to just keep those businesses closed even longer?

I think where we may be seeing a little bit of a shift with a lot of people might be on those people who are in the middle so to speak. Vaccinated, followed the rules as much as anybody, didn't fall into the trap of dangerous news, people who listened to mainstream media and health professionals.

I have noticed it with that group within my friends. People who may be a little more understanding of some of the unvaccinated people's concerns and in some ways, pointing out some of the obvious that is now very much true and mainstream.

Plenty of vaccinated people felt "safe" with mandates and attending packed arenas and were very vocal about an unvaccinated person having a patio coffee at a coffee shop. Different provinces had different rules for something as simple as that. It became very clear in spring/summer 2021 that vaccines were not stopping spread as much as we had hoped, even though they were excellent at reducing hospitalization and death. In Canada it took until June 2022 for us to get rid of the vaccine mandate for domestic flights.

There were plenty of people who may have missed important events such as funerals, deaths, weddings, birth's etc as a result. There was very little rationale or scientific background why in early June 2022 a double vaxxed and unvaxxed person, both wearing masks, had a different risk profile on a domestic flight.

I've had a 3 friends who have recently had medical appointments for themselves or a parent and some of the questions regarding vaccination from the medical professionals kind of threw them off a bit. A friend, who is a healthy male in his 30's had a total of 5 mixed shots. He has developed AFIB, probably NOT from the vaccine but his cardiologist (and family friend) notes he has seen an uptick of heart related issues in people who didn't normally present heart related issues. When questioned by the Dr why he had 5 shot's, it was "I was told to protect myself" but in hindsight he regrets taking 5 now.

A recent Canadian study indicates that vaccination during pregnancy helps protect newborns against Covid 8 weeks post birth. I think that's great and if I was married, I would have encouraged my wife to be vaxxed. When I saw that and I recall how many friends who's wives had children during Covid, there was a lot of concern about how MRNA shot's may affect the baby. There was a lot of assurances from medical professionals, specialists on tv etc that those concerns might be unfounded. If new born babies are being born with the benefits of the shots, does it mean they can also be affected by the side effects as well? That element was also downplayed.

You have been an excellent contributor here during this period given your background and I personally want to thank you, as I recall we had many discussions with me trying to understand certain things better.

I do think where we may be having a shift as I described above is also on the general public's lack of science skills, right or wrong. Thing's don't seem as tribal as they were a few years ago.
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Old 03-02-2023, 10:13 AM   #415
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The zealots on both sides were always weird, and they're the only ones still obsessed with it all. The vast majority of the population got vaccinated 2 or 3 times, significantly lessened their risk, and then moved on with their lives.

Vaccine mandates were emergency measures to allow reopening as much as possible without overwhelming hospitals, and they largely succeeded in that. The Federal ones were clearly kept too long (and I have no idea why the US still has their entry rules) and most people agreed even at the time that they should be removed once the emergency phase of the pandemic was over. Some employers have kept them around as moron filters, and they're probably effective in that regard even if they're useless for COVID-related things.

I do think the messaging by public health has been unhelpful at times, and European health authorities seemed to have a more balanced and realistic take on everything. For instance, there is really no basis for a healthy young person to keep getting boosters, whereas it's very important for older or at-risk people to regularly get vaccinated. I think other countries communicated that better than we did.

But the idea that we should all introspectively take stock in ourselves to fulfill some victim complex that antivaxxers have about themselves is laughable. No one cares.
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Old 03-02-2023, 10:25 AM   #416
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I have friends who were double + booster who also have heart problems now that didn't exist previous to vaccination. Both of them are in the demographic that according to the statistics were virtually not at risk, but because of a dogmatic public health policy that everyone needs to get vaccinated or else, they now have what their doctor is calling a potential life long problem.

So we can sit here and yell and scream about those damn unvaccinated, but end of the day we ignored some pretty basic principles of public health.

Natural immunity
Focusing on most at risk, including out of shape & overweight people, care homes, hospitals, etc. The government has largely buried what has happened at most care homes, especially during the early days.
The literal clear link to pre-existing conditions being a massive problem in terms of leading to hospitalization and death.

At some point it was clear vaccination was not stopping the spread, so whether or not my grandma got COVID in 2021 because I was or wasn't vaccinated is a moot point. If she wasn't vaccinated, she would likely have died. I wasn't even slightly at risk.

There are other examples as well.

Basically the way everything was handled by public health officials only further served to undermine overall vaccine uptake, and we are now going to see what was perhaps a 10% overall non-vaccinated rate for things like measles, polio etc, likely going to jump quite a bit.

And all of that still has nothing to do with what is now turning into a blatant Chinese government and WHO coverup that all of this originated from the Wuhan lab. It also calls into question what was being done at the lab to begin with, how the lab in Winnipeg was involved, and if Canada or the US were funding those activities.
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Old 03-02-2023, 12:47 PM   #417
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The zealots on both sides were always weird, and they're the only ones still obsessed with it all. The vast majority of the population got vaccinated 2 or 3 times, significantly lessened their risk, and then moved on with their lives.

Vaccine mandates were emergency measures to allow reopening as much as possible without overwhelming hospitals, and they largely succeeded in that. The Federal ones were clearly kept too long (and I have no idea why the US still has their entry rules) and most people agreed even at the time that they should be removed once the emergency phase of the pandemic was over. Some employers have kept them around as moron filters, and they're probably effective in that regard even if they're useless for COVID-related things.

I do think the messaging by public health has been unhelpful at times, and European health authorities seemed to have a more balanced and realistic take on everything. For instance, there is really no basis for a healthy young person to keep getting boosters, whereas it's very important for older or at-risk people to regularly get vaccinated. I think other countries communicated that better than we did.

But the idea that we should all introspectively take stock in ourselves to fulfill some victim complex that antivaxxers have about themselves is laughable. No one cares.
Messaging by public health was unhelpful? That is what you want to call it?

It was a disaster in many ways. Not 'unhelpful.'

And the anti-vaxxers you seemingly care so little about, guess what? They are now going to be 20%+ of the population, not just 10%.

So all the parents that took the effort to keep up with childhood vaccines now have the secondary worry of their kids catching measles because of absolutely terrible policies.
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Old 03-02-2023, 05:21 PM   #418
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Funny how the us can “solve”this but can’t solve who blew up the nordstream pipeline

It was a zoonotic explosion caused by bats.
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Old 03-03-2023, 11:29 AM   #419
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Yes, let's all blindly trust US intelligence agencies when it comes to an adversary. Maybe they'll find those WMDs in Iraq one of these days.

And even if one is naive enough to take them all at their word, why haven't the others changed their position? And why is the DoE's assessment only "low confidence"? The answer most likely is, because they don't actually know a whole lot. But if I have to pick between the experts in the field on the one hand, and US intelligence agencies on the other, I'll defer to the former every time. And their position is that both theories are plausible, but current evidence leans towards natural origin.


You couldn't even be bothered to look up the list of intelligence agencies?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United...ence_Community
If there was a major nerve gas leak that originated around a testing facility in Baghdad just prior to the US's accusations, I'd be a lot more inclined to believe them.

I don't see why we can't have an open discussion about the origins of Covid without resorting to accusations of conspiracy theory. The circumstances surrounding the initial outbreak and China's behaviour afterwards are both extremely shady.

Also, you don't need genetic tampering of any kind to hold China responsible for this. If they found a very dangerous naturally occurring virus, bred, concentrated, and then accidentally released it into a large population centre, they're still at fault, even if they didn't design the virus themselves.

Also, can we keep the discussion on topic. This isn't a thread about vaccines.
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Old 03-04-2023, 09:35 AM   #420
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https://www.scientificamerican.com/a...c-conclusions/

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We now know that the DOE was previously one of four agencies, along with the National Intelligence Council, that assessed, with “low confidence,” that the natural route was more likely. The reversal by the department on this point has the DOE supporting a lab origin, again with “low confidence.” Meanwhile the FBI’s statement reveals it was the one agency from the#review’s unclassified summary#that felt, with “moderate confidence,” that a lab leak was likely—unlike the others, which were neutral or leaned the opposite way.

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