#lab leak theory

[fuckyeahmarxismleninism]

Three years into the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. again gave the “lab-leak” theory a major boost, as its Energy Department, citing “new intelligence” but holding “low confidence” in it, joined the FBI in smearing China.

Reported exclusively by the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) on Sunday, the claim immediately made headlines in major U.S. news outlets. However, its timing and source “only show the low credibility” of the report, analysts said, adding that the new hyping of an old topic is part of the U.S.’ political and information warfare with China.

[meditating-dog-lover]

Why I think it came from a lab

Note: before you judge me for what I'm about to say, just know I am speaking from a scientific and biological standpoint. I'm a cell biologist who works in virology, and have a BSc in Anatomy and Cell Biology and MS in Neuroscience. I'm a scientist, not your 40 year old conservative MAGA uncle on Facebook. I absolutely hate how the pandemic was politicized as you should never introduce bipartisan nonsense to indisputable and factual matters like science and diseases.

So coronaviruses are nothing new. There have been previous coronavirus strains that infected the world. There is the one that caused SARS in 2002 and the other that caused MERS in 2012. And yes, bats do spread them. They are species capable of zoonotic infections (between species), including rats (spread the bubonic plague) and cattle. However, COVID-19 was a lot more devastating than the other 2 outbreaks. With all the modern knowledge and technology we have on disease prevention/control and vaccines/drugs, the fact that this outbreak was devastating to the point of causing a global pandemic is suspicious. There is no way something as cataclysmic came from nature given our current immunological and microbiological advancements in the 21st century. And judging how bats have spread coronaviruses in the past, it was never this catastrophic.

This leads me to think there was gain of function research involved using animal models in a lab (the Wuhan Institute of Virology). I do have a theory as to how they conducted their research, but it could be wrong. But gain of function research was definitely taking place. I believe they had animals in the lab that were positive for coronavirus (either bats or rats). They took nasal swabs and/or saliva samples from them to be able to harvest cells that had coronavirus RNA replicated in them. One strange thing about some viruses is that they do not possess any DNA. They contain RNA, which is the nucleotide chain that is generated from DNA during a process known as transcription. And most RNA sequences are converted to proteins via translation. Why some viruses lack DNA, however, I never really knew why.

Now in this day and age, we have the technology to modify the sequence of DNA/RNA. This process is known as gene editing. You would have to cut the sequence at specific nucleotide junctions, either insert or remove nucleotides, and then glue the sequence back together. One famous method of doing so is using the CRISPR technique. But there are many other ways to modify DNA/RNA sequences. These modifications do have an effect on the function of the virus. By editing the virus' RNA sequence, you can either cause the virus to weaken (loss-of-function) or to strengthen (gain-of-function). Some modifications lead to no changes in the viral strength and activity. Weakened viruses are used in traditional vaccines, so this is when RNA editing can be beneficial. However, I do believe gain-of-function gene editing was performed in the lab by using the coronavirus RNA sequences harvested from these animals that tested positive for the virus.

This is one theory as to how the gain-of-function research was conducted. There are many ways to do it, we can never be sure as to how it was exactly performed with these coronavirus samples in the lab.

Now how it spread from the lab to the rest of the world, I have no idea. Obviously, infections spread between people who interact with one another. How it expanded from a single lab to the whole world is a complex process to understand.

So this is my theory as a cell biologist regarding the origins of COVID-19. Yes it came from a lab. I fail to believe something this infectious and destructive came naturally from bats. We have the technology and immunological knowledge to aid in minimizing the spread of illness and creating effective drugs and vaccines. Looking at previous trends where bats have spread coronaviruses to other animals and humans, they did not result in global pandemics to this extent. So I think the virus was genetically modified to become more infectious. What was the reasoning behind this? What was the hypothesis they were trying to test? I don't know.

Here in the US, there are strict regulations as what type of research you can conduct in a lab. In theory, you can create almost anything in a lab, from drugs, to explosives, to deadly bioweapons. However, just because you can, doesn't mean you should. While that strictness is enforced here, it is not in other countries unfortunately.

I am devastated by the destruction the pandemic caused. From a single viral outbreak, to illness, disease, lockdowns, crashing economy, closing of small business, politicization of science and biology, anti-Asian hate, etc... Had we had the knowledge beforehand, this would have fared better for us.

[pandemic-info]

SkepTalk: Origins of the COVID-19 Pandemic

If we don’t understand the origins of SARS-CoV-2 and the COVID-19 pandemic, we won’t understand the risks that could lead to future viral emergence events and pandemics. I will discuss the multitude of scientific lines of evidence relevant to this topic, including epidemiological and evolutionary data. Analyses of these data reveal overwhelming evidence of a zoonotic origin. About the Speaker: Michael Worobey is a Professor and the Head of the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Arizona. Originally from British Columbia, he received his Ph.D. from the Department of Zoölogy at the University of Oxford, in 2001, where he was a Rhodes Scholar. He uses the genomes of viruses to trace the evolution of major communicable diseases and to understand their origins, emergence and control. He has made seminal discoveries pinpointing where, when and how HIV originated and spread worldwide, and how pandemics like the 1918 ‘Spanish flu’ and COVID-19 have emerged and killed large numbers of people. His work is regularly published in respected journals such as Nature and Science and is the subject of multiple books and films, including Spillover and Rise of the Killer Virus.

[sgreffenius]

First, let us get our terms right. Lab leak became shorthand for one explanation of how Covid-19 started and spread. Wet market became shorthand for a competing explanation. Both the outdoor market and the virology lab at issue were located in Wuhan, China.

The term conspiracy theory became attached to the first explanation on this side of the globe. At no point did anyone accuse staff at the Wuhan Virology Institute of cooking up a conspiracy to infect the world with a gain-of-function virus that would kill millions of people all over the world.

We know how the phrase conspiracy theory works in the West. It actually works in a lot of ways. I don't need to explain them here. Arguments about whether Covid-19 infected millions due to an accidental release of a gain-of-function virus developed at the Wuhan Virology Institute actually do matter, though. We can't let Dr. Fauci's changing attitudes about this explanation for the pandemic obscure that.

We kept hearing the phrase during the pandemic, follow the science. Without a doubt, public health officials' primary aim throughout the pandemic was to protect themselves from looking bad, not follow the science. They certainly did not want American citizens to know that the National Institutes of Health, an agency Dr. Fauci's agencies worked with, had funded gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Virology Lab.

Thus Dr. Fauci and his colleagues subjected us all to mumbo jumbo about conspiracy theories. Once you introduce that term into your argument, you increase confidence that your side has the upper hand. No one one wants to be caught believing in a conspiracy theory. Calling an accidental release of the virus from the Wuhan Virology Institute a conspiracy theory was a perfect way to distract attention from the fact that the National Institutes of Health had funded gain-of-function research at the lab for years.

That was Dr. Fauci's strategy. When you want to protect yourself, and the truth makes you look bad, you do not tell the truth. You obscure it. When the truth comes out down the line, you can deny your denial. You can deny that you ever denied an accidental release of the virus from the lab as a plausible explanation. That's all you need, a double denial, to make many people not care whether you are a trustworthy public official. Who, after all, expects public officials to be trustworthy in the first place?

[parttimereporter]

The lab leak theory that many called a COVID conspiracy theory now looking more likely ..

The Department of Energy now thinking it was probably what happened all..

More..

The U.S. Energy Department has concluded that the Covid pandemic most likely arose from a laboratory leak, according to a classified intelligence report recently provided to the White House and key members of Congress.

The shift by the Energy Department, which previously was undecided on how the virus emerged, is noted in an update to a 2021 document by Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines’s office.

[nando161mando]

[grub-s]

is the fbi for fucking real like………….. i’m sorry to even be posting about this but honestly this is so dumb

[wat3rm370n]

Lab Leak Truthers are Pandemic Deniers.

The false internal logic of being mad about a lab leak, but being cool with spreading the virus.

In case anyone hasn’t heard yet, or Robert Redfield wasn’t obvious enough for people, lab leak conspiracy theory is part of the right-wing, anti-democratic, anti-communist, fascist, climate denial, covid contrarian, Great Barrington Declaration, Project 2025, Heritage Foundation, Koch money funded narratives pushed for various financial, political, and geopolitical reasons. It’s all within the same movement. Allison Neitzel points out on Science-Based Medicine that “the GBD and the lab leak were highlighted in the right-wing think tank Heritage Foundation’s “Road Map for COVID-19 Congressional Oversight” published a month ahead of the first HSSCP hearing featuring Bhattacharya.” and that the “GOP-led subcommittee appears to be following this script and has focused on the lab leak…” And people within this movement are looking for any excuse to back up their fascist fantasies, sending out vigilante death squads, or as Ivan Raiklin described it: “livestreamed swatting raids” on public health figures and others on an enemies list.

Jonathan Howard recently published commentary on Science-Based Medicine asking a legitimate question: “why supposedly releasing a deadly virus was mass murder, but intentionally spreading it was a forgivable “policy position.”

Make it make sense, right?

I guess I have to go over how this is explained because if you only know what they’re saying to you — (to “trigger the libs” and such), you don’t necessarily know what they say to each other in their safe spaces, and so then you won’t understand the context of narrative stories that while absolutely false and ill-conceived, do have internal coherence to the adherents.

People buying into this conspiracy fiction and political ideology are led to think that there was a sinister plot to make covid in a lab, but they don’t actually think that the virus itself was the murder part. They believe the lab leak gave cover and excuse for “the deep state” to “do lockdowns” or make people wear masks as some kind of control tactic, and they believe it was ultimately machination to make people get vaccines as a sinister plot to kill people, or at least harm everyone. There are a buffet of potential motives to choose from, but that’s another level of the narrative. The bottom line is, for the diehard lab leak truthers, it’s not spreading covid that kills people, they believe wrongly the vaccines are killing people, and that “lockdowns” harmed people — and that’s how they square it where it makes sense for lab leak truthers to think it’s ok to spread the virus.

So when these pundits or the followers of this stuff say that covid has been “weaponized” many of us may assume that is a tacit recognizing that covid is deadly, but that’s not necessarily the case. Yes there are in fact even right-wingers who recognize covid is bad. I know of Trump voting Republicans and even people into at least some MAGA conspiracy theories who also don’t want to get covid, and some even use masks at their workplace or during the holiday season to avoid it, because they’re living in practical reality. But they’re probably not the same people who believe masks are “lockdown”, or think that kids should go to school sick, or that clinically vulnerable kids needed to be sacrificed and die to stop the sickness spreading. The Qanon conspiracy theory information landscape has a religion-esque type quality in that there’s lots of room for “sects” and for people to treat it like a buffet, picking and choosing which parts to believe. Past polling revealed that when asked about individual conspiracy fictions or ideas that are under the umbrella of Qanon, a lot of people believe some but not others. And that most conservatives believe at least one Qanon concept.

On the Knowledge Fight podcast covering the September 11th Alex Jones show, you can hear Alex Jones sing about supposedly the shots killing people. Anti-vax conspiracy fictions have been made into entertainment and ritual, as well as a motivation for potentially violent mobilization. Alex Jones is also a 9–11 truther as well, who espouses the U.S. government “deep state” was the real perpetrator who collapsed the World Trade Center towers. I’m sorry that I can’t explain how they square wanting retribution against Muslims and Arabs for September 11th, while at the same time NOT blaming them for doing the September 11th attack. I just haven’t really looked into this particular genre of fringe myself. There may be some internal logic, or maybe it’s like when Donald Trump tells obvious lies and his die hard fans don’t care because they feel like “they’re in on it” with him. On the same 9/11/2024 episode of Alex Jones, a caller said that basically he knew the “eating the pets” story wasn’t really true, but he didn’t care because at least it drew attention to “the immigrants” in Ohio. A few days later JD Vance went on national news and more or less said the same: “But yes, we created the actual focus that allowed the American media to talk about this story…” 

And so we have no way to know for sure if the lab leak assertions are even genuine or disingenuous, do we?

crossposted from substack

[paladinguy]

The Lab Leak Hypothesis: Wrong AND Dangerous

[phagodyke]

this assay is so fucking fake......

[forbiddencomma]

Magical thinking and the limitless power of fear

An Orwell quote featured below is fancied by those presenting themselves to their peers as reasonable, moderate rationalists. Jake Tapper and Andrew Sullivan have or had it featured, for instance. People who copy-and-paste it to their social media bios mean to tell us that they are wise enough to see the world for what it is, unlike you easily swayed rubes in the cheap seats with your sub-1k…

[omg-erika]

Covered up: Ebola Also Comes From The Laboratory.

by Dr.Harald Wiesendanger– Klartext What the mainstream media is hiding Is Ebola, one of the deadliest viruses, really natural? An American scientist presents convincing evidence that it actually came from a bio lab – no different than the Covid-19 pathogen. Once upon a time, there was a two-year-old boy named Emile Ouamouno. He lived with his parents and four siblings in Meliandou, a village…

[cedarmoonzz]

between the bars •｡ꪆৎ ˚⋅

followed by: once more to see you and slow like honey

fandom: gravity falls

ship: ford pines x reader

warnings: brief mention of boners, making out, angst

summary:

being engaged to the world’s smartest idiot feels like navigating a storm while he’s engrossed in his portal research. you wonder if there’s anything you can do to help him.

Three months.

Ninety-one sleepless, tormented days. 

That’s how long you’ve watched Ford, once so full of life, become a shell of himself.

Each day seems to blend into the next, weighed down by the crushing demands of his portal. His bright eyes have lost their spark, replaced by a weary, distant look that suggests he is fighting a constant battle with exhaustion. He’s always buried in his research, disappearing into a maze of endless calculations and theories, only coming up to ask for coffee, food, or help with his measurements. Each interaction is a reminder of the distance that has grown between you, making you ache for the vibrant person he is beneath all the work. It allows you to realize something.

Stanford is an incredibly stubborn man.

You count your breaths, letting the full force of Ford’s distance fill you. Once a day, only in the evening, you allow yourself to feel abandoned, lost, and alone—but only here, only in the evening, before Stanford trudges upstairs for his third pot of coffee. Afterwards, you must set these feelings aside, for there is still so much work to be done, so much still at stake.

Stanford lets you handle all the paper calculations and complex math for the portal, trusting you with the intricate details crucial to his project. Yet, despite your role, he keeps you from seeing the fruits of your labor. You are barred from the basement, the place where the results of your hard work come to life. This exclusion only deepens your sense of isolation and frustration, as you toil endlessly without ever truly understanding the impact of your efforts. The distance between what you contribute and what you’re allowed to see only reinforces the feeling of being a cog in a machine, valued for your skills but denied any real connection to the end result.

Beyond the kitchen door, you can hear your lab mates arguing. The last light of day was leaking through the fissures of the window shutters, changing shape as they paced outside, their shadows stretching to where you sit, hidden, not yet prepared to face them. Though you could not make out their words, you could detect the urgency in their voices. You pressed your palms against your eyes and sighed, then rolled up the loose sleeves of Stanford’s (now your) sweater.

With a harsh, abrupt grunt, akin to the percussive crack of a twig beneath a boot, your fiancé wrenched the splintered door open, slamming it shut with a resounding thud. You were jolted from your thoughts, having been lost in your own reverie as the unexpected noise shattered your concentration. As he stood there, his face etched with a mixture of anger and exhaustion, you could see the deep lines of fatigue and frustration carved into his features. He muttered a stream of incoherent curses under his breath, his visible irritation and weariness painting a stark picture of his emotional state.

Softly, you encouraged him. “Ford, what is it?”

He didn’t answer; he only stood, looking at you as if he might scream.

“It’s Fiddleford!” Stanford growled. “He’s speaking nonsense! Trying to propose that only bad can come from the portal we spent months on! Your calculations, my handiwork and experience? All down the drain because McGucket is scared? It’s ridiculous! I should’ve never trusted him. It seems I can trust no one with my work these days!”

His words caught you between places: you stare down at the ring that graced your finger, the tea kettle whistling, trails of steam emitting behind you, leaving you in between your selves.

“No one?” you repeat, but did not elaborate further. You did not want to be cruel to him, but now that he had insulted you (now, of all times, when you were working so hard to understand him), it was difficult to resist lashing out at him.

Ford paused, words caught between his teeth as you stood in silence. “[Y/n]… my love.” Regret crept into his voice, daring to color his words with a warmth you were sure was genuine—but rather than comfort, it only wounded you. “Of course I can trust you. This portal… It wouldn’t be possible without your work.”

It broke you—or broke what feeble grip you had on yourself, the reserves of strength you used to keep your grief and despair in check all spent.

“My work,” you spat out, almost hissing the words through clenched teeth. You threw the kettle off the stove and pivoted to confront him, closing the distance between you with two broad, angry strides. Pointing a finger at him, you seethed, “Is that all the trust you have? Just your precious portal? Ford, when was the last time you actually talked to me? I can't deal with this anymore! I followed you all the way to Gravity Falls, to the middle of nowhere, and you barely let me see the full scope of my work. Always holed up in the basement.”

Your palm remains red from the heat of the kettle’s handle, but that does not burn as bad as the heat of your fiancé’s abandonment. And still, stupidly, in spite of it all, you wanted to trust Ford. To believe that there was a reason, an explanation for all the half-truths and deceptions. You want to protect him. You want your answers. You want to see him: not a passing nod of acknowledgment, or a pat on the back as you walk past him, or a fragment of him in a dream, but his skin in the flesh, and you loathe yourself for how badly you want it… but you turn that loathing outward, funneling it through the anger, and set the air around you crackling with fury.

As you glared at him, a profound sense of abandonment and worthlessness enveloped you like a shroud. It felt as though you had been reduced to nothing more than a glorified calculator in Ford’s eyes—a mere instrument, a cog in the vast machinery of his ambitions, used and discarded with no regard for your own significance. The weight of your perceived insignificance bore down on you, each moment in his shadow a reminder of how fleeting and unimportant your role had become. The very essence of your being seemed to diminish with every unacknowledged contribution, leaving you to wrestle with the crushing realization that your efforts and sacrifices had been eclipsed by his relentless pursuit, barely noted and even less appreciated.

Stanford’s eyes met yours, narrowing ever so slightly as he took in the gravity of the moment. He measured the tension between you, a flicker of regret crossing his features as he struggled to comprehend the full extent of your pain. The silence stretched on, thick with unspoken remorse, before he finally cleared his throat, his voice betraying a hint of sorrow for the hurt he had caused and the realization of how far he had let things go.

“I'm sorry, [Y/n].” Stanford reached out to hold your waist—and did you imagine it, or did you lean into that touch, pressing your body to the warmth of his open palms? You swallowed. Softly, he asked you, “Do you want me to go?”

You shook your head, more as an excuse to look away from him than anything—now that you had reprimanded him, you realized just how close he was, and your hair fell in front of your eyes, offering you a moment of reprieve. It was difficult having him so near; when your rage subsided, you were left with a profound sense of abandonment and a wounded heart. In a voice tinged with desperation and hurt, you asked, “Why can’t you just let me help you, Ford?”

As the words left your lips, you found yourself instinctively moving closer, your breath mingling with his. The proximity heightened the tension between you, the unspoken emotions crackling in the air. Your lips nearly brushed his as you whispered, the vulnerability in your voice blending with an undeniable, charged intimacy.

“[Y/n],” he begs, but he keeps his hands around your waist. “It’s dangerous…” But even as he speaks, his head is falling towards yours, his mouth ajar and questing, breath ragged.

You lift your hand from the collar of Stanford’s lab coat to hold his face, running your thumb tenderly over the stubble that graced his sharp jawline.

“I’m just as capable as Fiddleford,” you whisper, only inches between you now, so close that you can feel his breath on your neck as you speak the words. “Let me prove myself to you.”

Ford shudders. When his eyes meet yours again, they read something within them—perhaps some hidden fate or doom—and then, he remains. He holds you in his eyes like he is weighing you, or trying to carry a piece of you away with him. With a weary sigh, he lifts his hands to frame your face instead, tracing your cheek with his thumb. He leans forward—you dare not breathe—and presses his lips to your brow, just below the line of your hair. You can feel the soft warmth of his breath against the top of your head. Your eyes sting with tears; you will your body not to shake.

“I know you’re incredibly intelligent, but what Fiddleford saw in that portal… it ruined him. I don’t want the same fate for you.” He pleads, raising a hand of his own as if to pry yours from his face, but it trembles instead, then covers yours, holding the warmth of your palm to his cheek. “It is not that simple.”

“It can be,” you insist, as you lower your other hand to rest above his frantic, pounding heart. “It is.”

The space between the two of you is shrinking before you know whether you or Ford had moved first. Then your palm was carding through the tangled brown hair at the back of his head, drawing him closer as you kiss. When your mouths first met, Ford flinched, as though he might retreat… but he parted his lips for you, and your knees weaken at the taste of his tongue. You clutched his lab coat; his hands danced across your waist to the small of your back and held you against him. His heat rose against you; you could feel him through his slacks, insistent against your thigh—

“I’m sorry,” Stanford whispers, his lips brushing against yours before he pulls away. He turns abruptly and exits the room. Without another word, he heads straight for the basement, leaving you standing there, your heart aching with the weight of unsaid confessions and unfulfilled desires. The intensity of the moment lingers in the air, a palpable reminder of the emotional distance that remains between you.

The way he looked at you was too much; so much unspoken between the two of you, so much you wish to tell him, confess to him: how he always makes you feel safe. That this whole research project, the calculations and all, had only ever been bearable because he had let you be by his side. That his presence is more valuable to you than anything; that you had treasured every moment spent with him. That you’re worried for him.

That you felt like he was in danger, and you were running out of time.

[ivan-fyodorovich-k]

I don't know very many people who scratch the surface of conspiracist thinking without collecting more or less all of them sooner or later

it makes me sad that most of the people I used to know who were into guns / WWII have moved on to being super into fascism / jew hatred / conspiracy theories

[simply-ivanka]

Hunter Biden trial shows media pushed false narrative to help the left

It turns out the ones who were spreading garbage were Biden and these disinformation “experts,” who, along with a complicit mainstream news media, quashed and discounted an important story just weeks before the presidential election. 

[crazycatgirl420]

It's not Magic, It's Science P2

The Fentons had been good at inventing, at research, at theories and experiments to prove or disprove those theories. They had not been good at bussiness.

Danny gave Tucker a hundred dollars to fix the FentonWorks website into something more professional. Sam was his first Client, and they sat down to figure out how Danny would take clients and sell his inventions.

With the Portal closed, the only Ghosts who came through were coming from Vlad's Portal. Being Emancipated meant there was no custody issues. All of Vlad's attempts at forcing his way into Danny's life were slowly esclating with Maddie and Jack dead.

Danny didn't have time to be dealing with the Mayor of Amity Park's obbession with him. So he took the collection of cameras and mics to the police and requested a restraining order.

"Mister Fenton, is it true your parents knew Mayor Masters?"

"-that your parents supported Mayor Masters?"

"-know that Mayor Masters took videos of minors?"

"-Are you pressing charges? Will you sue?"

Valerie and Dash stepped between the Papparazzi and Danny, as they left the school. Sam and Tucker sheilded Danny from the back, and together they fled to Jazz's little car.

"Go with them," Val said, as Sam and Tucker took the backseat with Danny. "I'll follow on my bike."

Danny never thought he'd need bodyguards, or that Dash would become one of them. But a lot of things changed after the funeral. Hiring Val and Dash as bodyguards would probably be smart, at least until the issue with Vlad goes away.

Danny slowly grew Fenton Works into an actual Amity Park bussiness, instead of a local oddity. Ectoplasm was a wondeful green energy source, natural and rewnewable, at least until a thousand years after all life on the planet dies off. Harvesting it from the air, using things the Doctors Fenton had already built that do just that, and then making that into a collection of power sources.

Ecto-Batteries, and their charging pods. Ecto-Light Blubs, with a filter for red light at Sam's insistance, that went into all public lights. Ecto-Blubs for the schools, bussinesses, houses that came with a collection of color fliters to choose from.

"Can Ecto replace gas?" Sam asked, the first time Jazz's car had a leak.

Danny spent the weekend under Jazz's car, and three hours after school learning at a mechanic shop. It took six months, dozens of trips from the lab to the car port, but he built a car able to run on Ectoplasam.

The issue came when he added it to his website.

"Mister Fenton? This is Timothy Drake-Wayne of Wayne Enterprises. I'd like to talk to you about your Ecto-fueled vehicle. Do you have time to talk next week?"