• cecinestpasunbotEnglish
    241·
    5 months ago

    This article is motivated reasoning at its best. It’s drawing conclusions about the likelihood of a lab leak based purely on circumstantial evidence. That’s not how science works! That kind of reasoning is the basis for race science, climate change denialism, and all sorts of other pseudoscientific nonsense. You can’t just say “There is some uncertainty in climate models and also it snowed today so obviously global warming is a myth”. You also can’t casually dismisses the evidence presented that point to a zoonotic origin of the virus without good counter evidence.

    The fact remains that most of the preeminent virologists in the world believe a zoonotic crossover event was the likely origin of Covid. The World Health Organization made a statement to that effect and they haven’t changed their position. Even Fauci recently testified in front of congress and said the same thing. The author of this article, Alina Chan, is not taken seriously in the field. She’s just some fucking post doc who wanted a book deal.

    It just goes to show how much the liberal line of “Listen to the science” is such bullshit if all the opinions in the NYT are pseudo intellectual hacks that obediently regurgitate the US state department line.

    • Black_Mald_Futures [any]@hexbear.netEnglish
      181·
      5 months ago

      The fact remains that most of the preeminent virologists in the world believe a zoonotic crossover event was the likely origin of Covid. The World Health Organization made a statement to that effect and they haven’t changed their position

      yeah because they either haven’t heard of ft detrick or are covering it up!

      • cecinestpasunbotEnglish
        5·
        5 months ago

        If you believe that then you’re making the same mistake as this author just without the whole carrying water for imperialism thing which of course matters.

        • Black_Mald_Futures [any]@hexbear.netEnglish
          121·
          5 months ago

          lol k tell me what caused the vaping disease around ft detrick in 2019

          Steam wastewater sterilization wasn’t working from 2018-2019, mysterious illness crops up, and then military service members from the area go to Wuhan China for military games, but yea, totally not a lab leak from a shoddily run american bioweapons facility

          • cecinestpasunbotEnglish
            81·
            5 months ago

            No that’s not how this works. There are a so many things that could cause respiratory illnesses and the vast majority of them aren’t covid. Whatever you say was happening at ft detrick doesn’t have to be covid at all. You only believe it so because the narrative suits your particular bias. Again you’re doing exactly what the author of this article is doing, minus her capacity to fake scientific credibility for a general audience and her pro state departments bias.

            More importantly, if you even want to suggest it was covid you would have to be able to explain away the evidence we do have. That’s something the author of this article tries but fails to do. I don’t expect you’ll have better arguments than the papers she cites. You’d have better luck parroting what they say if you want to make your case.

            That said, I feel like I’m going to have a hard time convincing you you’re wrong because I doubt you understand anything about the science in question. You first need to understand that virologists can trace the evolution of a virus down to a precise timescale and lineage. Viruses mutate in a predictably rapidly but consistent rate. Think of their genetic code as like an atomic clock in a way. It’s so precise in fact that scientists can trace the origins of every circulating strain of Covid to a set of almost uniformly identical strains found in Wuhan. They can also pin down a precise time point for when those strains started spreading in humans. From that they can conclude that it is incredibly unlikely the virus was spreading in humans before reaching Wuhan. Additionally scientists can lay out the locations of where the virus was as it mutated and spread, not just globally but within Wuhan itself. That analysis shows us that the Wuhan wet market was the likely epicenter of the spread. There’s more but if you want to discuss further than that you’ll really need to read up on the tools and methods virologists use.

            That’s all to say that the evidence available makes any ft detrick scenario just so incredibly unlikely it’s not worth considering seriously. Seek truth from facts BMF and you’ll be much better at deducing when and how the state department is lying to you.