1 hour ago, sameaglesfan said:

Is it though?

Trump first said it was a hoax. Then he said it would go away like a miracle. Then he praised China for how well they handled it and how transparent they have been...

1 hour ago, mikemack8 said:

Damn - I knew you fatties loved your Chinese food, just didn't think you'd have such an affinity for Chinese ballsack.  

Next you'll tell me you believe they COVID numbers they've reported are 100% accurate  

Nobody is defending China.

Idiots pretend they know something. Idiots like you.

Speaking of ball sacks, what is it like being a eunuch?

34 minutes ago, Toastrel said:

Nobody is defending China.

Idiots pretend they know something. Idiots like you.

Speaking of ball sacks, what is it like being a eunuch?

OK, Lebron.  

China:

Libs in CVON:

2 hours ago, mikemack8 said:

Damn - I knew you fatties loved your Chinese food, just didn't think you'd have such an affinity for Chinese ballsack.  

Next you'll tell me you believe they COVID numbers they've reported are 100% accurate  

So what are the real numbers?

1 hour ago, Gannan said:

Trump first said it was a hoax. Then he said it would go away like a miracle. Then he praised China for how well they handled it and how transparent they have been...

Oof.......................................

1 hour ago, Gannan said:

Trump first said it was a hoax. Then he said it would go away like a miracle. Then he praised China for how well they handled it and how transparent they have been...

If Biden acted in this manner we'd be on our 3rd set of congressional investigations.

 

2 minutes ago, vikas83 said:

 

Unfortunately a more definitive determination is unlikely unless researchers are able to identify an intermediary within that time frame.

Quote

while two elements in the IC leans towards the former scenario and one leans more toward the latter -- each with low or moderate confidence -- the majority of elements do not believe there is sufficient information to assess one to be more likely than the other.

They don't know. Further, there is no sign they will ever know. Could it be it was both scenarios and neither, at the same time?

10 minutes ago, toolg said:

Further, there is no sign they will ever know

While civets and camels were identified relatively quickly as intermediate hosts for SARS and MERS, just because we haven't identified one for this doesn't mean we never will. Beta coronaviruses can infect hundreds of animal species, so it can be a painstaking process, especially while a pandemic is still ongoing. Now if one still hasn't been found 5 or 10 years after the fact? Then that's more ammo for the lab leak hypothesis.

Also of note, one of the potential suspects is something called a raccoon dog, which the Japanese refer to as a tanuki. For those familiar with mario, yes, it's that tanuki.

1 hour ago, mikemack8 said:

OK, Lebron.  

China:

Libs in CVON:

Ironically the biggest defense of China on the last few pages was that tweet from Trump somebody posted.

18 minutes ago, Boogyman said:

Ironically the biggest defense of China on the last few pages was that tweet from Trump somebody posted.

That wasn't so much a defense of China as pointing out that Trump is a moron - just my opinion.  

China seems indefensible.

11 minutes ago, sameaglesfan said:

That wasn't so much a defense of China as pointing out that Trump is a moron - just my opinion.  

China seems indefensible.

I didn't mean the person who posted it was defending China, I meant the actual tweet was the biggest defense of them in this thread.

FWIW, I jumped in a FB thread about this and got this response:

"..to be very clear, there are no biological markers in this virus that would indicate it was genetically altered. Genetic alterations usually leave behind a signature, certain genes are commonly targetted or modified in the (known) processes to do this. Those markers do not exist.

There is room for this to have happened with secret or undetectable techniques we're unaware of - but while possible, there is no evidence of this yet, and it's more likely this was not some grand conspiracy and instead was simply an accident."

1 hour ago, mikemack8 said:

OK, Lebron.  

China:

Libs in CVON:

So you are into Asian men **** and spraying on your face.

Really into it.

No judgement.

Here's another angle to consider: Rather than being "engineered," there's a possibility that the virus itself was being studied in a lab and then, either inadvertently or intentionally, naturally infected/mutated through another host in the lab setting, then escaped through a human vector.

43 minutes ago, EaglesRocker97 said:

FWIW, I jumped in a FB thread about this and got this response:

"..to be very clear, there are no biological markers in this virus that would indicate it was genetically altered. Genetic alterations usually leave behind a signature, certain genes are commonly targetted or modified in the (known) processes to do this. Those markers do not exist.

There is room for this to have happened with secret or undetectable techniques we're unaware of - but while possible, there is no evidence of this yet, and it's more likely this was not some grand conspiracy and instead was simply an accident."

There are methods that essentially "evade detection" but they are highly inefficient and difficult to direct if your desired outcome is to select for specific mutations that improve certain traits. It's not like they're dog breeders trying to make labradoodles. And the closest relative, a bat coronavirus called RaTG13, is still far too distant to be a plausible ancestor using these methods. So that leaves two possibilities, that a closer relative was found, sequenced, and cultured without ever being entered into any database or noticed by any researchers in the international scientific community (deemed highly unlikely), or that China has developed a far more advanced method to increase natural evolutionary mutations faster than all currently known methods (still unlikely but slightly more plausible than the first possibility.) 

All the genetic analysis thus far points to SARS-CoV-2 and RaTG13 sharing a common ancestor rather than the former being a descendent of the latter. It took almost 15 years for the lineage and etiology of the original SARS to be fully understood, so we might have lingering questions for a while yet with this one.

41 minutes ago, EaglesRocker97 said:

Here's another angle to consider: Rather than being "engineered," there's a possibility that the virus itself was being studied in a lab and then, whether inadvertently or intentionally, naturally infected/mutated through another host in the lab setting, then escaped through a human vector.

Exactly. It's why I keep saying lab leak =/= man made. This scenario is essentially both "camps" being proven correct. A viral sample or culture from an infected bat spilling over to a lab researcher would validate both the zoonotic origin hypothesis, as well as the "lab leak" hypothesis.

1 hour ago, toolg said:

They don't know. Further, there is no sign they will ever know. Could it be it was both scenarios and neither, at the same time?

You'd have to think that if the workers at the lab got sick and their friends and family members also got sick early on then it was probably a lab accident.

Calm down, Kz

8 hours ago, EaglesRocker97 said:

Here's another angle to consider: Rather than being "engineered," there's a possibility that the virus itself was being studied in a lab and then, either inadvertently or intentionally, naturally infected/mutated through another host in the lab setting, then escaped through a human vector.

The other angle is that the virus was brought here by the aliens, we were studying it in preparation to have a way to combat it when the aliens unleashed their biological warfare upon humanity, but before we could finish, the virus was stolen by a group of Chinese spies posing as lab techs, they injected it into themselves with the intent to extract it later, but before they could finish their plan, the Russians caught wind of it and intercepted the shipment of anti-viral.  Luckily for the US, Dominic Toretto and a group of car enthusiasts who can also fight like Jackie Chan and hack computers like Matthew Lillard, stepped in and stole the antiviral back.  Meanwhile steve carrell and the space force are hard at work devising a plan to protect the people planet from future alien attacks.  Let’s just hope they don’t accidentally let Godzilla and Kong out of the hollow earth. 
 

it’s either that, or I ate the wrong gummies and watched too much Netflix last night. 
 

 

9 minutes ago, DBW said:

The other angle is that the virus was brought here by the aliens

 

 

 

 

 

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/26/health/coronavirus-immunity-vaccines.html