When 56 year old Walter Mondale went up against 73 year old Ronald Reagan, Reagan trounced him 525 to 13.
This age obsession is so un-American.
The bigger issue is whether Joe Biden keeps his marbles, which is not synonymous with age. He's physically fit. He'll run. He'll win.
I agree that age itself doesn't matter. Some 80 year olds are more alert than people 20 years younger.
And some people have a massive mental decline between 80 and 82, let alone 86.
It's a gamble - and puts the Veep pick in sharper contrast.
I agree with Heathener and AndyJS in general - pushing 73, perhaps I'm biased - and think age is a lazy way to assess someone's capacity. But MarqueeMark is right that it makes the choice of VP more interesting than usual. What's the history of VPs wanting to stand again and NOT being selected? Henry Wallace under FDR, I think, but I'm struggling to think of more.
Obviously, Biden will benefit from the finest healthcare that can be provided. Within that, testing his mental capacity will be ongoing. Any significant decline will be known and shared with the President. He will be in a better position to know whether a second term is viable. He could take the view that as long as he can undertake a gruelling election campaign, he should be free to run - and if the 25th Amendment is required later in his second term, so be it.
But I am guided by my own family experience. My mother went from slightly confused to double incontinent and away with the fairies between 80 and 82. She died a couple of years later after a series of ailments that required hospitalisation and for which she was very poorly equipped to understand the changes going on around her.
In an ideal world, America would benefit from younger, sharper politicians. Keeping the old guy in place for fear of what comes next tends to be the preserve of authoritarian regimes.
I note the Ukrainians claim near 600 more Russians killed yesterday, although very little by way of additional kit. Are they still sending WW1-waves over the top to face the guns?
I am also musing over whether Russia has learned any lessons from the Winter War with Finland, fought in temperatures below -40C. Finnish dead (military and civilian) were around 20,000.
Russian numbers remain contentious. The Supreme Soviet was informed on 26 March 1940, of 48,475 dead and 158,863 sick and wounded. In 2013, the Russian State Military Archive held a database confirming 167,976 killed or missing along with the soldiers' names, dates of birth and ranks.
It did ultimately lead to territorial gains, but at a very heavy cost. Could Putin survive similar losses in a Ukrainian winter campaign?
Yes, the Russians are literally sending conscripts over the top to their deaths. Hundreds per day. Many of them don’t even make it ‘over the top’.
They’re digging trenches, in an era when their enemy has real-time satellite photography and precision guided missiles - guess how that plays out…
"Russia's continuing occupation is inevitable at this point. Let's at least tell ourselves the truth. They aren't going to be rolled back to the 2014 or even January 2022 borders.
Giving VVP something he can market as a win (probably the Donetsk/Luhansk oblasts and a land bridge to Crimea) is the only way this ends short of the extremely unlikely Kremlin palace coup. The alternative is the total and probably permanent destruction of Ukraine."
I agree with Mike that Joe Biden is too short for the Nom @ evens. However if it does end up with Biden vs DeSantis in 24 I'd make that a 50/50 contest, ie every chance of a 2nd term. His age is a real issue, I agree with that, esp up against a prime of lifer, but against this you have to factor in the probable damage to the GOP, one way or another, from their Donald Trump problem and how that shakes out.
For those of us genuinely interested in what happened, it's quite fascinating to watch as experts who were originally leaning towards lab escape came around to zoonosis.
There were three who were most Lab Leak (Edward Holmes (self-described as 70/30 in favour of lab), Farrar ("50/50") and Kristian Anderson ("60/40")). Rather interestingly, two of those were lead authors on the article they got published in February 2020, which seems a pretty fair way of doing it.
You get to see them all considering hypotheses, ruling out deliberate bioengineering (wherever it came about, it evolved in the presence of an immune system), then considering deliberate "pass through" in lab animals (which could reconcile that). However, they then concluded that was unlikely, but also insisted in including it as a potential consideration in the article, even if only to show it had been seriously considered (there was a discussion on whether they'd spark off conspiracy theorists by including it, but insisted they had to cover it).
All of the three who had been leaning lab-leak have ended up coming down very firmly on the zoonosis side. To the point where the lab-leakers of the present dismiss them immediately by ad hominem.
I personally find it encouraging that not only did they very seriously consider it (and have those who most believed it plausible to lead the papers on it), but that my belief it was initially plausible wasn't completely out there.
It does end up damaging a nice story (simple - even simplistic - with convenient baddies and a two minute hate), but on the flip side, it does forewarn us of potential future SARS-like viruses (especially with the recent uncovering of so many bat coronaviruses: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.11.23.517609v1 )
I’m sorry, but this cannot pass. Here is your hero Edward Holmes on Twitter in May 2020. He’s just a fucking liar who does most of his work in China. Enough
Coming immediately on the heels of "To the point where the lab-leakers of the present dismiss them immediately by ad hominem," that's actively funny.
You are a victim of the fallacy that ad hominem arguments are automatically fallacious. In some circumstances, say being presented with an investment proposal by Bernie Madoff, they are valid, legitimate and compelling. Or, say, Farrar describing the lab security at Wuhan as "wild west."
My issue is that they never address the questions, simply coming up with these ad hominems.
"How did you get multiple independent releases into the wet market and only the wet market and none of the other more likely super-spreader sites in Wuhan?" doesn't really get answered by ad hominems. Or provide much illumination to those who want to know what really happened.
You still haven’t explained why Jeremy Farrar went from “lab leak is 50/50” to “lab leak is evil conspiracy theory” in 18 days
I am answered. Thank you. I never considered that as how it happened.
Imagine if in 2023 we actually see the end of the Chinese, Iranian and Russian regimes. What a different world it would look like.
Yes: my biggest reservation however is that in at least two of those cases it isn't obvious that the regime which might take over would be either any less unpleasant ot any less inimical to our interests.
A long thread that details a tiny part of Ukrainian resilience. When the Mayor of Irpin said he needed homes for 7,000 people, the railway company provided five coaches and made what seems a very livable space:
They cold only house a relatively small number, but it was something. And what's better: the facility is being closed down, as temporary houses have already been built.
These are not the actions of a people who are about to break.
I note the Ukrainians claim near 600 more Russians killed yesterday, although very little by way of additional kit. Are they still sending WW1-waves over the top to face the guns?
I am also musing over whether Russia has learned any lessons from the Winter War with Finland, fought in temperatures below -40C. Finnish dead (military and civilian) were around 20,000.
Russian numbers remain contentious. The Supreme Soviet was informed on 26 March 1940, of 48,475 dead and 158,863 sick and wounded. In 2013, the Russian State Military Archive held a database confirming 167,976 killed or missing along with the soldiers' names, dates of birth and ranks.
It did ultimately lead to territorial gains, but at a very heavy cost. Could Putin survive similar losses in a Ukrainian winter campaign?
Yes, the Russians are literally sending conscripts over the top to their deaths. Hundreds per day. Many of them don’t even make it ‘over the top’.
They’re digging trenches, in an era when their enemy has real-time satellite photography and precision guided missiles - guess how that plays out…
"Russia's continuing occupation is inevitable at this point. Let's at least tell ourselves the truth. They aren't going to be rolled back to the 2014 or even January 2022 borders.
Giving VVP something he can market as a win (probably the Donetsk/Luhansk oblasts and a land bridge to Crimea) is the only way this ends short of the extremely unlikely Kremlin palace coup. The alternative is the total and probably permanent destruction of Ukraine."
lol
The permanent destruction of Ukraine isn't going to happen. There's a vast amount of money to be made from rebuilding Ukraine, both its civil and military infrastructure.
For those of us genuinely interested in what happened, it's quite fascinating to watch as experts who were originally leaning towards lab escape came around to zoonosis.
There were three who were most Lab Leak (Edward Holmes (self-described as 70/30 in favour of lab), Farrar ("50/50") and Kristian Anderson ("60/40")). Rather interestingly, two of those were lead authors on the article they got published in February 2020, which seems a pretty fair way of doing it.
You get to see them all considering hypotheses, ruling out deliberate bioengineering (wherever it came about, it evolved in the presence of an immune system), then considering deliberate "pass through" in lab animals (which could reconcile that). However, they then concluded that was unlikely, but also insisted in including it as a potential consideration in the article, even if only to show it had been seriously considered (there was a discussion on whether they'd spark off conspiracy theorists by including it, but insisted they had to cover it).
All of the three who had been leaning lab-leak have ended up coming down very firmly on the zoonosis side. To the point where the lab-leakers of the present dismiss them immediately by ad hominem.
I personally find it encouraging that not only did they very seriously consider it (and have those who most believed it plausible to lead the papers on it), but that my belief it was initially plausible wasn't completely out there.
It does end up damaging a nice story (simple - even simplistic - with convenient baddies and a two minute hate), but on the flip side, it does forewarn us of potential future SARS-like viruses (especially with the recent uncovering of so many bat coronaviruses: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.11.23.517609v1 )
I’m sorry, but this cannot pass. Here is your hero Edward Holmes on Twitter in May 2020. He’s just a fucking liar who does most of his work in China. Enough
Coming immediately on the heels of "To the point where the lab-leakers of the present dismiss them immediately by ad hominem," that's actively funny.
You are a victim of the fallacy that ad hominem arguments are automatically fallacious. In some circumstances, say being presented with an investment proposal by Bernie Madoff, they are valid, legitimate and compelling. Or, say, Farrar describing the lab security at Wuhan as "wild west."
My issue is that they never address the questions, simply coming up with these ad hominems.
"How did you get multiple independent releases into the wet market and only the wet market and none of the other more likely super-spreader sites in Wuhan?" doesn't really get answered by ad hominems. Or provide much illumination to those who want to know what really happened.
You still haven’t explained why Jeremy Farrar went from “lab leak is 50/50” to “lab leak is evil conspiracy theory” in 18 days
I am answered. Thank you. I never considered that as how it happened.
It’s all falling apart I’m afraid. One of the main scientists who has been pushing the wet market hypothesis for three years - she’s in those emails - has finally backtracked. Remember, she’s been claiming that “lab leak is debunked” all this time.
I note the Ukrainians claim near 600 more Russians killed yesterday, although very little by way of additional kit. Are they still sending WW1-waves over the top to face the guns?
I am also musing over whether Russia has learned any lessons from the Winter War with Finland, fought in temperatures below -40C. Finnish dead (military and civilian) were around 20,000.
Russian numbers remain contentious. The Supreme Soviet was informed on 26 March 1940, of 48,475 dead and 158,863 sick and wounded. In 2013, the Russian State Military Archive held a database confirming 167,976 killed or missing along with the soldiers' names, dates of birth and ranks.
It did ultimately lead to territorial gains, but at a very heavy cost. Could Putin survive similar losses in a Ukrainian winter campaign?
Yes, the Russians are literally sending conscripts over the top to their deaths. Hundreds per day. Many of them don’t even make it ‘over the top’.
They’re digging trenches, in an era when their enemy has real-time satellite photography and precision guided missiles - guess how that plays out…
"Russia's continuing occupation is inevitable at this point. Let's at least tell ourselves the truth. They aren't going to be rolled back to the 2014 or even January 2022 borders.
Giving VVP something he can market as a win (probably the Donetsk/Luhansk oblasts and a land bridge to Crimea) is the only way this ends short of the extremely unlikely Kremlin palace coup. The alternative is the total and probably permanent destruction of Ukraine."
lol
Who said that? There’s plenty of suspects.
Our military motoring expert, Dura Ace
Ah…
@Dura_Ace does know his stuff about mil aircraft and cars, but has always been very doveish on Western power - his cynicism likely coming from his time in the service. He’s also quite Russophile, having spent time there.
We are all now realising, that the Russian military is a real paper tiger bear, incapable of serious damage to what the rest of the world has to offer militarily.
And now we see why Xi is desperately holding onto the zero COVID policy and all of the infrastructure they've built for it. As if it wasn't already obvious.
I note the Ukrainians claim near 600 more Russians killed yesterday, although very little by way of additional kit. Are they still sending WW1-waves over the top to face the guns?
I am also musing over whether Russia has learned any lessons from the Winter War with Finland, fought in temperatures below -40C. Finnish dead (military and civilian) were around 20,000.
Russian numbers remain contentious. The Supreme Soviet was informed on 26 March 1940, of 48,475 dead and 158,863 sick and wounded. In 2013, the Russian State Military Archive held a database confirming 167,976 killed or missing along with the soldiers' names, dates of birth and ranks.
It did ultimately lead to territorial gains, but at a very heavy cost. Could Putin survive similar losses in a Ukrainian winter campaign?
Yes, the Russians are literally sending conscripts over the top to their deaths. Hundreds per day. Many of them don’t even make it ‘over the top’.
They’re digging trenches, in an era when their enemy has real-time satellite photography and precision guided missiles - guess how that plays out…
"Russia's continuing occupation is inevitable at this point. Let's at least tell ourselves the truth. They aren't going to be rolled back to the 2014 or even January 2022 borders.
Giving VVP something he can market as a win (probably the Donetsk/Luhansk oblasts and a land bridge to Crimea) is the only way this ends short of the extremely unlikely Kremlin palace coup. The alternative is the total and probably permanent destruction of Ukraine."
lol
The permanent destruction of Ukraine isn't going to happen. There's a vast amount of money to be made from rebuilding Ukraine, both its civil and military infrastructure.
I’m looking forward to the referendum in Crimea.
“Do you want to be part of the country that’s about to receive $1,000,000,000,000 of international goodwill, or the country that’s still getting $1,000,000,000,000 of sanctions for the next decade? ”
For those of us genuinely interested in what happened, it's quite fascinating to watch as experts who were originally leaning towards lab escape came around to zoonosis.
There were three who were most Lab Leak (Edward Holmes (self-described as 70/30 in favour of lab), Farrar ("50/50") and Kristian Anderson ("60/40")). Rather interestingly, two of those were lead authors on the article they got published in February 2020, which seems a pretty fair way of doing it.
You get to see them all considering hypotheses, ruling out deliberate bioengineering (wherever it came about, it evolved in the presence of an immune system), then considering deliberate "pass through" in lab animals (which could reconcile that). However, they then concluded that was unlikely, but also insisted in including it as a potential consideration in the article, even if only to show it had been seriously considered (there was a discussion on whether they'd spark off conspiracy theorists by including it, but insisted they had to cover it).
All of the three who had been leaning lab-leak have ended up coming down very firmly on the zoonosis side. To the point where the lab-leakers of the present dismiss them immediately by ad hominem.
I personally find it encouraging that not only did they very seriously consider it (and have those who most believed it plausible to lead the papers on it), but that my belief it was initially plausible wasn't completely out there.
It does end up damaging a nice story (simple - even simplistic - with convenient baddies and a two minute hate), but on the flip side, it does forewarn us of potential future SARS-like viruses (especially with the recent uncovering of so many bat coronaviruses: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.11.23.517609v1 )
You regard it as a sign of confidence in one's own argument, to dismiss opponents "immediately by ad hominem"? And you think zoonosis is incompatible with lab leak?
No, and no.
I find it detracts from the lab-leakers case to immediately dismiss their arguments by ad hominem. Don't you?
And that zoonosis could be compatible with lab leak has been looked at (you'd require multiple independent leaks to the same spot (in the wet market) only, with no leaks/super-spreader events at any of the many other more likely super-spreader locations in Wuhan).
Ah, sorry, misread you. But there's ad hominems and ad hominems. The mainstreamers are saying "hysterical conspiracy theorists," the lab leakers are saying "well, you condemned the appalling lab security at Wuhan, and you made research proposals about artificial furin cleavage sites in 2018." The second lot looks more compelling to me.
No, it's usually: "You can't believe HIM/HER!"
It's You can't believe HIM/HER because... Again, the lab leak theorists are saying because you did or said this highly inconsistent thing in the couple of years before the outbreak, their opponents are saying, because you're a conspiracy theorist and your mum smells funny.
You think the lab leak proponents have been consistent in their arguments ?
PRIOR inconsistent actions. Inconsistencies within the argument itself are a separate point.
Jeffrey Sachs, for example ? LOL.
Just a name, and then LOL, is the most perfectly reductive example of the gormless ad hominem I can imagine.
Here's a tweet you linked to (approvingly) a couple of days ago
"It makes clear that the defeatist, knee-jerk, or gaslighting reactions surrounding this pandemic have to stop (& that includes very much the #lableak conspiracy myth)."
Don't know about you but I make that six content-free ad hominems in one sentence. And the guy is not even making the point you want him,to make. Pathetically, he does not even try to refute a lab leak. All he is saying is Yebbut a naturally evolved virus might be really really bad too.
I was linking to the paper, which I came across via the link, as I recall. Its relevance, again as I recall, was that Covid style viral traits (targeting of the ACE receptor) were clearly possible in wild viruses.
And those are, I think, hominem free 'ad hominems' ?
I note the Ukrainians claim near 600 more Russians killed yesterday, although very little by way of additional kit. Are they still sending WW1-waves over the top to face the guns?
I am also musing over whether Russia has learned any lessons from the Winter War with Finland, fought in temperatures below -40C. Finnish dead (military and civilian) were around 20,000.
Russian numbers remain contentious. The Supreme Soviet was informed on 26 March 1940, of 48,475 dead and 158,863 sick and wounded. In 2013, the Russian State Military Archive held a database confirming 167,976 killed or missing along with the soldiers' names, dates of birth and ranks.
It did ultimately lead to territorial gains, but at a very heavy cost. Could Putin survive similar losses in a Ukrainian winter campaign?
Yes, the Russians are literally sending conscripts over the top to their deaths. Hundreds per day. Many of them don’t even make it ‘over the top’.
They’re digging trenches, in an era when their enemy has real-time satellite photography and precision guided missiles - guess how that plays out…
"Russia's continuing occupation is inevitable at this point. Let's at least tell ourselves the truth. They aren't going to be rolled back to the 2014 or even January 2022 borders.
Giving VVP something he can market as a win (probably the Donetsk/Luhansk oblasts and a land bridge to Crimea) is the only way this ends short of the extremely unlikely Kremlin palace coup. The alternative is the total and probably permanent destruction of Ukraine."
lol
Well, Russia are still sat on 6,000km2 of Ukraine and haven't been pinned back to the Jan 2022 borders yet.
For those of us genuinely interested in what happened, it's quite fascinating to watch as experts who were originally leaning towards lab escape came around to zoonosis.
There were three who were most Lab Leak (Edward Holmes (self-described as 70/30 in favour of lab), Farrar ("50/50") and Kristian Anderson ("60/40")). Rather interestingly, two of those were lead authors on the article they got published in February 2020, which seems a pretty fair way of doing it.
You get to see them all considering hypotheses, ruling out deliberate bioengineering (wherever it came about, it evolved in the presence of an immune system), then considering deliberate "pass through" in lab animals (which could reconcile that). However, they then concluded that was unlikely, but also insisted in including it as a potential consideration in the article, even if only to show it had been seriously considered (there was a discussion on whether they'd spark off conspiracy theorists by including it, but insisted they had to cover it).
All of the three who had been leaning lab-leak have ended up coming down very firmly on the zoonosis side. To the point where the lab-leakers of the present dismiss them immediately by ad hominem.
I personally find it encouraging that not only did they very seriously consider it (and have those who most believed it plausible to lead the papers on it), but that my belief it was initially plausible wasn't completely out there.
It does end up damaging a nice story (simple - even simplistic - with convenient baddies and a two minute hate), but on the flip side, it does forewarn us of potential future SARS-like viruses (especially with the recent uncovering of so many bat coronaviruses: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.11.23.517609v1 )
You regard it as a sign of confidence in one's own argument, to dismiss opponents "immediately by ad hominem"? And you think zoonosis is incompatible with lab leak?
No, and no.
I find it detracts from the lab-leakers case to immediately dismiss their arguments by ad hominem. Don't you?
And that zoonosis could be compatible with lab leak has been looked at (you'd require multiple independent leaks to the same spot (in the wet market) only, with no leaks/super-spreader events at any of the many other more likely super-spreader locations in Wuhan).
Ah, sorry, misread you. But there's ad hominems and ad hominems. The mainstreamers are saying "hysterical conspiracy theorists," the lab leakers are saying "well, you condemned the appalling lab security at Wuhan, and you made research proposals about artificial furin cleavage sites in 2018." The second lot looks more compelling to me.
No, it's usually: "You can't believe HIM/HER!"
It's You can't believe HIM/HER because... Again, the lab leak theorists are saying because you did or said this highly inconsistent thing in the couple of years before the outbreak, their opponents are saying, because you're a conspiracy theorist and your mum smells funny.
You think the lab leak proponents have been consistent in their arguments ?
PRIOR inconsistent actions. Inconsistencies within the argument itself are a separate point.
Jeffrey Sachs, for example ? LOL.
Just a name, and then LOL, is the most perfectly reductive example of the gormless ad hominem I can imagine.
Here's a tweet you linked to (approvingly) a couple of days ago
"It makes clear that the defeatist, knee-jerk, or gaslighting reactions surrounding this pandemic have to stop (& that includes very much the #lableak conspiracy myth)."
Don't know about you but I make that six content-free ad hominems in one sentence. And the guy is not even making the point you want him,to make. Pathetically, he does not even try to refute a lab leak. All he is saying is Yebbut a naturally evolved virus might be really really bad too.
I was linking to the paper, which I came across via the link, as I recall. Its relevance, again as I recall, was that Covid style viral traits (targeting of the ACE receptor) were clearly possible in wild viruses.
And those are, I think, hominem free 'ad hominems' ?
For those of us genuinely interested in what happened, it's quite fascinating to watch as experts who were originally leaning towards lab escape came around to zoonosis.
There were three who were most Lab Leak (Edward Holmes (self-described as 70/30 in favour of lab), Farrar ("50/50") and Kristian Anderson ("60/40")). Rather interestingly, two of those were lead authors on the article they got published in February 2020, which seems a pretty fair way of doing it.
You get to see them all considering hypotheses, ruling out deliberate bioengineering (wherever it came about, it evolved in the presence of an immune system), then considering deliberate "pass through" in lab animals (which could reconcile that). However, they then concluded that was unlikely, but also insisted in including it as a potential consideration in the article, even if only to show it had been seriously considered (there was a discussion on whether they'd spark off conspiracy theorists by including it, but insisted they had to cover it).
All of the three who had been leaning lab-leak have ended up coming down very firmly on the zoonosis side. To the point where the lab-leakers of the present dismiss them immediately by ad hominem.
I personally find it encouraging that not only did they very seriously consider it (and have those who most believed it plausible to lead the papers on it), but that my belief it was initially plausible wasn't completely out there.
It does end up damaging a nice story (simple - even simplistic - with convenient baddies and a two minute hate), but on the flip side, it does forewarn us of potential future SARS-like viruses (especially with the recent uncovering of so many bat coronaviruses: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.11.23.517609v1 )
You regard it as a sign of confidence in one's own argument, to dismiss opponents "immediately by ad hominem"? And you think zoonosis is incompatible with lab leak?
No, and no.
I find it detracts from the lab-leakers case to immediately dismiss their arguments by ad hominem. Don't you?
And that zoonosis could be compatible with lab leak has been looked at (you'd require multiple independent leaks to the same spot (in the wet market) only, with no leaks/super-spreader events at any of the many other more likely super-spreader locations in Wuhan).
Ah, sorry, misread you. But there's ad hominems and ad hominems. The mainstreamers are saying "hysterical conspiracy theorists," the lab leakers are saying "well, you condemned the appalling lab security at Wuhan, and you made research proposals about artificial furin cleavage sites in 2018." The second lot looks more compelling to me.
No, it's usually: "You can't believe HIM/HER!"
It's You can't believe HIM/HER because... Again, the lab leak theorists are saying because you did or said this highly inconsistent thing in the couple of years before the outbreak, their opponents are saying, because you're a conspiracy theorist and your mum smells funny.
You think the lab leak proponents have been consistent in their arguments ?
PRIOR inconsistent actions. Inconsistencies within the argument itself are a separate point.
Jeffrey Sachs, for example ? LOL.
Just a name, and then LOL, is the most perfectly reductive example of the gormless ad hominem I can imagine.
Here's a tweet you linked to (approvingly) a couple of days ago
"It makes clear that the defeatist, knee-jerk, or gaslighting reactions surrounding this pandemic have to stop (& that includes very much the #lableak conspiracy myth)."
Don't know about you but I make that six content-free ad hominems in one sentence. And the guy is not even making the point you want him,to make. Pathetically, he does not even try to refute a lab leak. All he is saying is Yebbut a naturally evolved virus might be really really bad too.
I was linking to the paper, which I came across via the link, as I recall. Its relevance, again as I recall, was that Covid style viral traits (targeting of the ACE receptor) were clearly possible in wild viruses.
And those are, I think, hominem free 'ad hominems' ?
"Possible in wild viruses" doesn't preclude lab leak, though, does it?
I note the Ukrainians claim near 600 more Russians killed yesterday, although very little by way of additional kit. Are they still sending WW1-waves over the top to face the guns?
I am also musing over whether Russia has learned any lessons from the Winter War with Finland, fought in temperatures below -40C. Finnish dead (military and civilian) were around 20,000.
Russian numbers remain contentious. The Supreme Soviet was informed on 26 March 1940, of 48,475 dead and 158,863 sick and wounded. In 2013, the Russian State Military Archive held a database confirming 167,976 killed or missing along with the soldiers' names, dates of birth and ranks.
It did ultimately lead to territorial gains, but at a very heavy cost. Could Putin survive similar losses in a Ukrainian winter campaign?
Yes, the Russians are literally sending conscripts over the top to their deaths. Hundreds per day. Many of them don’t even make it ‘over the top’.
They’re digging trenches, in an era when their enemy has real-time satellite photography and precision guided missiles - guess how that plays out…
"Russia's continuing occupation is inevitable at this point. Let's at least tell ourselves the truth. They aren't going to be rolled back to the 2014 or even January 2022 borders.
Giving VVP something he can market as a win (probably the Donetsk/Luhansk oblasts and a land bridge to Crimea) is the only way this ends short of the extremely unlikely Kremlin palace coup. The alternative is the total and probably permanent destruction of Ukraine."
lol
Well, Russia are still sat on 6,000km2 of Ukraine and haven't been pinned back to the Jan 2022 borders yet.
It'll all be over by (Orthodox) Christmas.
Just a shame they’ve not no tanks and no missiles, while the Ukranians are still being armed by the rest of the world.
It’s increasingly likely to be over by (Orthodox) Christmas.
I note the Ukrainians claim near 600 more Russians killed yesterday, although very little by way of additional kit. Are they still sending WW1-waves over the top to face the guns?
I am also musing over whether Russia has learned any lessons from the Winter War with Finland, fought in temperatures below -40C. Finnish dead (military and civilian) were around 20,000.
Russian numbers remain contentious. The Supreme Soviet was informed on 26 March 1940, of 48,475 dead and 158,863 sick and wounded. In 2013, the Russian State Military Archive held a database confirming 167,976 killed or missing along with the soldiers' names, dates of birth and ranks.
It did ultimately lead to territorial gains, but at a very heavy cost. Could Putin survive similar losses in a Ukrainian winter campaign?
Yes, the Russians are literally sending conscripts over the top to their deaths. Hundreds per day. Many of them don’t even make it ‘over the top’.
They’re digging trenches, in an era when their enemy has real-time satellite photography and precision guided missiles - guess how that plays out…
"Russia's continuing occupation is inevitable at this point. Let's at least tell ourselves the truth. They aren't going to be rolled back to the 2014 or even January 2022 borders.
Giving VVP something he can market as a win (probably the Donetsk/Luhansk oblasts and a land bridge to Crimea) is the only way this ends short of the extremely unlikely Kremlin palace coup. The alternative is the total and probably permanent destruction of Ukraine."
lol
Who said that? There’s plenty of suspects.
Our military motoring expert, Dura Ace
Ah…
@Dura_Ace does know his stuff about mil aircraft and cars, but has always been very doveish on Western power - his cynicism likely coming from his time in the service. He’s also quite Russophile, having spent time there.
I lived in Moscow for nine years. Absolutely nobody could endure that without being or becoming a cultural Russophile. I burn no candle for VVP other than to note that whatever succeeds him will probably be worse.
A long thread that details a tiny part of Ukrainian resilience. When the Mayor of Irpin said he needed homes for 7,000 people, the railway company provided five coaches and made what seems a very livable space:
They cold only house a relatively small number, but it was something. And what's better: the facility is being closed down, as temporary houses have already been built.
These are not the actions of a people who are about to break.
When the original invasion happened, there was an article about the reaction of a small town. The reservists all turned up at the town hall, the local Earth moving contractor offered to scarp the river bank to make it impassable to amphibious vehicles… it was the attitude of “hmmm, what can I do?”
Reminded me of the story in 1940 - I think it was Manchester, where the military and local authorities were having a meeting about what to do in the event of invasion. The commander of the heavy AA guns around the city turned up. And stated that he’d got all his guns setup for anti tank work, plus they’d started practising as land artillery. While they weren’t trained for it, he’d found a couple of trained men and got the manuals out…
Compare and contrast with France - The commander of an airfield full of Dewoitine D.520, which just lacked guns, said that it wasn’t his job to get the planes armed and he was busy with paperwork anyway.
Just starting Sebastian Payne’s “The Fall of Boris Johnson.
Starts with this quote:
‘When a regime has been in power too long, when it has fatally exhausted the patience of the people, and when oblivion finally beckons – I am afraid that across the world you can rely on the leaders of that regime to act solely in the interests of self-preservation, and not in the interests of the electorate.’ – BORIS JOHNSON
For those of us genuinely interested in what happened, it's quite fascinating to watch as experts who were originally leaning towards lab escape came around to zoonosis.
There were three who were most Lab Leak (Edward Holmes (self-described as 70/30 in favour of lab), Farrar ("50/50") and Kristian Anderson ("60/40")). Rather interestingly, two of those were lead authors on the article they got published in February 2020, which seems a pretty fair way of doing it.
You get to see them all considering hypotheses, ruling out deliberate bioengineering (wherever it came about, it evolved in the presence of an immune system), then considering deliberate "pass through" in lab animals (which could reconcile that). However, they then concluded that was unlikely, but also insisted in including it as a potential consideration in the article, even if only to show it had been seriously considered (there was a discussion on whether they'd spark off conspiracy theorists by including it, but insisted they had to cover it).
All of the three who had been leaning lab-leak have ended up coming down very firmly on the zoonosis side. To the point where the lab-leakers of the present dismiss them immediately by ad hominem.
I personally find it encouraging that not only did they very seriously consider it (and have those who most believed it plausible to lead the papers on it), but that my belief it was initially plausible wasn't completely out there.
It does end up damaging a nice story (simple - even simplistic - with convenient baddies and a two minute hate), but on the flip side, it does forewarn us of potential future SARS-like viruses (especially with the recent uncovering of so many bat coronaviruses: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.11.23.517609v1 )
I’m sorry, but this cannot pass. Here is your hero Edward Holmes on Twitter in May 2020. He’s just a fucking liar who does most of his work in China. Enough
Coming immediately on the heels of "To the point where the lab-leakers of the present dismiss them immediately by ad hominem," that's actively funny.
You are a victim of the fallacy that ad hominem arguments are automatically fallacious. In some circumstances, say being presented with an investment proposal by Bernie Madoff, they are valid, legitimate and compelling. Or, say, Farrar describing the lab security at Wuhan as "wild west."
My issue is that they never address the questions, simply coming up with these ad hominems.
"How did you get multiple independent releases into the wet market and only the wet market and none of the other more likely super-spreader sites in Wuhan?" doesn't really get answered by ad hominems. Or provide much illumination to those who want to know what really happened.
You still haven’t explained why Jeremy Farrar went from “lab leak is 50/50” to “lab leak is evil conspiracy theory” in 18 days
I am answered. Thank you. I never considered that as how it happened.
It’s all falling apart I’m afraid. One of the main scientists who has been pushing the wet market hypothesis for three years - she’s in those emails - has finally backtracked. Remember, she’s been claiming that “lab leak is debunked” all this time.
Her then:
Her now:
You don't get it.
I can be argued around to lab leak. Just get the key questions answered. I don't care about "he said, she said, he said." I don't care that over eighteen days of discussion, people came around from believing it plausible to seeing it as implausible (albeit those eighteen days of discussion might provide a clue as to why). Any more than I care that Isaac Newton was an arsehole who was a twat to Hooke, who insisted Leibniz stole his calculus (when Leibniz obviously came up with it first), and who firmly believed in alchemy, turning base metals into gold, and the like: his Laws of Motion either work or do not work (and they work).
My big issue is the one I've outlined, and all the "he said this at this point and that at that point," or "She was present when it was said to be debunked and has recently said simply she doesn't see that the evidence weighs in favour of it."
None of that answers the question or questions. If they're plausibly answered, then you can get me around.
I note the Ukrainians claim near 600 more Russians killed yesterday, although very little by way of additional kit. Are they still sending WW1-waves over the top to face the guns?
I am also musing over whether Russia has learned any lessons from the Winter War with Finland, fought in temperatures below -40C. Finnish dead (military and civilian) were around 20,000.
Russian numbers remain contentious. The Supreme Soviet was informed on 26 March 1940, of 48,475 dead and 158,863 sick and wounded. In 2013, the Russian State Military Archive held a database confirming 167,976 killed or missing along with the soldiers' names, dates of birth and ranks.
It did ultimately lead to territorial gains, but at a very heavy cost. Could Putin survive similar losses in a Ukrainian winter campaign?
Yes, the Russians are literally sending conscripts over the top to their deaths. Hundreds per day. Many of them don’t even make it ‘over the top’.
They’re digging trenches, in an era when their enemy has real-time satellite photography and precision guided missiles - guess how that plays out…
"Russia's continuing occupation is inevitable at this point. Let's at least tell ourselves the truth. They aren't going to be rolled back to the 2014 or even January 2022 borders.
Giving VVP something he can market as a win (probably the Donetsk/Luhansk oblasts and a land bridge to Crimea) is the only way this ends short of the extremely unlikely Kremlin palace coup. The alternative is the total and probably permanent destruction of Ukraine."
lol
Who said that? There’s plenty of suspects.
Our military motoring expert, Dura Ace
Ah…
@Dura_Ace does know his stuff about mil aircraft and cars, but has always been very doveish on Western power - his cynicism likely coming from his time in the service. He’s also quite Russophile, having spent time there.
I lived in Moscow for nine years. Absolutely nobody could endure that without being or becoming a cultural Russophile. I burn no candle for VVP other than to note that whatever succeeds him will probably be worse.
For those of us genuinely interested in what happened, it's quite fascinating to watch as experts who were originally leaning towards lab escape came around to zoonosis.
There were three who were most Lab Leak (Edward Holmes (self-described as 70/30 in favour of lab), Farrar ("50/50") and Kristian Anderson ("60/40")). Rather interestingly, two of those were lead authors on the article they got published in February 2020, which seems a pretty fair way of doing it.
You get to see them all considering hypotheses, ruling out deliberate bioengineering (wherever it came about, it evolved in the presence of an immune system), then considering deliberate "pass through" in lab animals (which could reconcile that). However, they then concluded that was unlikely, but also insisted in including it as a potential consideration in the article, even if only to show it had been seriously considered (there was a discussion on whether they'd spark off conspiracy theorists by including it, but insisted they had to cover it).
All of the three who had been leaning lab-leak have ended up coming down very firmly on the zoonosis side. To the point where the lab-leakers of the present dismiss them immediately by ad hominem.
I personally find it encouraging that not only did they very seriously consider it (and have those who most believed it plausible to lead the papers on it), but that my belief it was initially plausible wasn't completely out there.
It does end up damaging a nice story (simple - even simplistic - with convenient baddies and a two minute hate), but on the flip side, it does forewarn us of potential future SARS-like viruses (especially with the recent uncovering of so many bat coronaviruses: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.11.23.517609v1 )
I’m sorry, but this cannot pass. Here is your hero Edward Holmes on Twitter in May 2020. He’s just a fucking liar who does most of his work in China. Enough
Coming immediately on the heels of "To the point where the lab-leakers of the present dismiss them immediately by ad hominem," that's actively funny.
You are a victim of the fallacy that ad hominem arguments are automatically fallacious. In some circumstances, say being presented with an investment proposal by Bernie Madoff, they are valid, legitimate and compelling. Or, say, Farrar describing the lab security at Wuhan as "wild west."
My issue is that they never address the questions, simply coming up with these ad hominems.
"How did you get multiple independent releases into the wet market and only the wet market and none of the other more likely super-spreader sites in Wuhan?" doesn't really get answered by ad hominems. Or provide much illumination to those who want to know what really happened.
You still haven’t explained why Jeremy Farrar went from “lab leak is 50/50” to “lab leak is evil conspiracy theory” in 18 days
I am answered. Thank you. I never considered that as how it happened.
It’s all falling apart I’m afraid. One of the main scientists who has been pushing the wet market hypothesis for three years - she’s in those emails - has finally backtracked. Remember, she’s been claiming that “lab leak is debunked” all this time.
Her then:
Her now:
You don't get it.
I can be argued around to lab leak. Just get the key questions answered. I don't care about "he said, she said, he said." I don't care that over eighteen days of discussion, people came around from believing it plausible to seeing it as implausible (albeit those eighteen days of discussion might provide a clue as to why). Any more than I care that Isaac Newton was an arsehole who was a twat to Hooke, who insisted Leibniz stole his calculus (when Leibniz obviously came up with it first), and who firmly believed in alchemy, turning base metals into gold, and the like: his Laws of Motion either work or do not work (and they work).
My big issue is the one I've outlined, and all the "he said this at this point and that at that point," or "She was present when it was said to be debunked and has recently said simply she doesn't see that the evidence weighs in favour of it."
None of that answers the question or questions. If they're plausibly answered, then you can get me around.
There's a difference between "implausible" and "racist conspiracy theory".
For those of us genuinely interested in what happened, it's quite fascinating to watch as experts who were originally leaning towards lab escape came around to zoonosis.
There were three who were most Lab Leak (Edward Holmes (self-described as 70/30 in favour of lab), Farrar ("50/50") and Kristian Anderson ("60/40")). Rather interestingly, two of those were lead authors on the article they got published in February 2020, which seems a pretty fair way of doing it.
You get to see them all considering hypotheses, ruling out deliberate bioengineering (wherever it came about, it evolved in the presence of an immune system), then considering deliberate "pass through" in lab animals (which could reconcile that). However, they then concluded that was unlikely, but also insisted in including it as a potential consideration in the article, even if only to show it had been seriously considered (there was a discussion on whether they'd spark off conspiracy theorists by including it, but insisted they had to cover it).
All of the three who had been leaning lab-leak have ended up coming down very firmly on the zoonosis side. To the point where the lab-leakers of the present dismiss them immediately by ad hominem.
I personally find it encouraging that not only did they very seriously consider it (and have those who most believed it plausible to lead the papers on it), but that my belief it was initially plausible wasn't completely out there.
It does end up damaging a nice story (simple - even simplistic - with convenient baddies and a two minute hate), but on the flip side, it does forewarn us of potential future SARS-like viruses (especially with the recent uncovering of so many bat coronaviruses: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.11.23.517609v1 )
I’m sorry, but this cannot pass. Here is your hero Edward Holmes on Twitter in May 2020. He’s just a fucking liar who does most of his work in China. Enough
Coming immediately on the heels of "To the point where the lab-leakers of the present dismiss them immediately by ad hominem," that's actively funny.
You are a victim of the fallacy that ad hominem arguments are automatically fallacious. In some circumstances, say being presented with an investment proposal by Bernie Madoff, they are valid, legitimate and compelling. Or, say, Farrar describing the lab security at Wuhan as "wild west."
My issue is that they never address the questions, simply coming up with these ad hominems.
"How did you get multiple independent releases into the wet market and only the wet market and none of the other more likely super-spreader sites in Wuhan?" doesn't really get answered by ad hominems. Or provide much illumination to those who want to know what really happened.
You still haven’t explained why Jeremy Farrar went from “lab leak is 50/50” to “lab leak is evil conspiracy theory” in 18 days
I am answered. Thank you. I never considered that as how it happened.
It’s all falling apart I’m afraid. One of the main scientists who has been pushing the wet market hypothesis for three years - she’s in those emails - has finally backtracked. Remember, she’s been claiming that “lab leak is debunked” all this time.
Her then:
Her now:
You don't get it.
I can be argued around to lab leak. Just get the key questions answered. I don't care about "he said, she said, he said." I don't care that over eighteen days of discussion, people came around from believing it plausible to seeing it as implausible (albeit those eighteen days of discussion might provide a clue as to why). Any more than I care that Isaac Newton was an arsehole who was a twat to Hooke, who insisted Leibniz stole his calculus (when Leibniz obviously came up with it first), and who firmly believed in alchemy, turning base metals into gold, and the like: his Laws of Motion either work or do not work (and they work).
My big issue is the one I've outlined, and all the "he said this at this point and that at that point," or "She was present when it was said to be debunked and has recently said simply she doesn't see that the evidence weighs in favour of it."
None of that answers the question or questions. If they're plausibly answered, then you can get me around.
Farrar didn’t change his mind. He made a ridiculous double back body flip from “50/50” to “conspiracy theory”. You’re too smart not to see the insanity of this
Or maybe you aren’t that smart, and you’re just good with numbers
But I do not wish to be unkind and you’ve been a great source on Covid, and I’ll ascribe your myopia to wilful naivety with good intentions. You like science and scientists and hate the idea they might have caused a pandemic so it’s clouding your judgement. Hey Ho
I note the Ukrainians claim near 600 more Russians killed yesterday, although very little by way of additional kit. Are they still sending WW1-waves over the top to face the guns?
I am also musing over whether Russia has learned any lessons from the Winter War with Finland, fought in temperatures below -40C. Finnish dead (military and civilian) were around 20,000.
Russian numbers remain contentious. The Supreme Soviet was informed on 26 March 1940, of 48,475 dead and 158,863 sick and wounded. In 2013, the Russian State Military Archive held a database confirming 167,976 killed or missing along with the soldiers' names, dates of birth and ranks.
It did ultimately lead to territorial gains, but at a very heavy cost. Could Putin survive similar losses in a Ukrainian winter campaign?
Yes, the Russians are literally sending conscripts over the top to their deaths. Hundreds per day. Many of them don’t even make it ‘over the top’.
They’re digging trenches, in an era when their enemy has real-time satellite photography and precision guided missiles - guess how that plays out…
"Russia's continuing occupation is inevitable at this point. Let's at least tell ourselves the truth. They aren't going to be rolled back to the 2014 or even January 2022 borders.
Giving VVP something he can market as a win (probably the Donetsk/Luhansk oblasts and a land bridge to Crimea) is the only way this ends short of the extremely unlikely Kremlin palace coup. The alternative is the total and probably permanent destruction of Ukraine."
lol
Who said that? There’s plenty of suspects.
Those who mistake pessimism for realism.
(Optimists are not necessarily more likely to be right, many predictions of Russian collapse spring to mind, but there's a strand of lazy opinion which is just 'pick the worst outcome and call it realpolitik')
Imagine if in 2023 we actually see the end of the Chinese, Iranian and Russian regimes. What a different world it would look like.
I imagine it, and chaotic as any end would be one could hope it would work out, but regimes are good at hanging on, even if when they go they can go quickly.
For Emperor Xi one wonders how well he has indeed neutered the rest of the apparatus, as under the system if the last 40 years it would have been someone else's turn now.
Planning is a statutory requirement so you would expect that spending in local authorities would have remained consistent over the years
Yet Royal Town Planning Institute @RTPIPlanners · 10m A 43% fall in resources to the planning system from Local Authorities since 2009/10 has led to a tangible and damaging impact on planning enforcement, creating major delays, and negatively affecting both officers and the public.
For those of us genuinely interested in what happened, it's quite fascinating to watch as experts who were originally leaning towards lab escape came around to zoonosis.
There were three who were most Lab Leak (Edward Holmes (self-described as 70/30 in favour of lab), Farrar ("50/50") and Kristian Anderson ("60/40")). Rather interestingly, two of those were lead authors on the article they got published in February 2020, which seems a pretty fair way of doing it.
You get to see them all considering hypotheses, ruling out deliberate bioengineering (wherever it came about, it evolved in the presence of an immune system), then considering deliberate "pass through" in lab animals (which could reconcile that). However, they then concluded that was unlikely, but also insisted in including it as a potential consideration in the article, even if only to show it had been seriously considered (there was a discussion on whether they'd spark off conspiracy theorists by including it, but insisted they had to cover it).
All of the three who had been leaning lab-leak have ended up coming down very firmly on the zoonosis side. To the point where the lab-leakers of the present dismiss them immediately by ad hominem.
I personally find it encouraging that not only did they very seriously consider it (and have those who most believed it plausible to lead the papers on it), but that my belief it was initially plausible wasn't completely out there.
It does end up damaging a nice story (simple - even simplistic - with convenient baddies and a two minute hate), but on the flip side, it does forewarn us of potential future SARS-like viruses (especially with the recent uncovering of so many bat coronaviruses: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.11.23.517609v1 )
I’m sorry, but this cannot pass. Here is your hero Edward Holmes on Twitter in May 2020. He’s just a fucking liar who does most of his work in China. Enough
Coming immediately on the heels of "To the point where the lab-leakers of the present dismiss them immediately by ad hominem," that's actively funny.
You are a victim of the fallacy that ad hominem arguments are automatically fallacious. In some circumstances, say being presented with an investment proposal by Bernie Madoff, they are valid, legitimate and compelling. Or, say, Farrar describing the lab security at Wuhan as "wild west."
My issue is that they never address the questions, simply coming up with these ad hominems.
"How did you get multiple independent releases into the wet market and only the wet market and none of the other more likely super-spreader sites in Wuhan?" doesn't really get answered by ad hominems. Or provide much illumination to those who want to know what really happened.
You still haven’t explained why Jeremy Farrar went from “lab leak is 50/50” to “lab leak is evil conspiracy theory” in 18 days
I am answered. Thank you. I never considered that as how it happened.
It’s all falling apart I’m afraid. One of the main scientists who has been pushing the wet market hypothesis for three years - she’s in those emails - has finally backtracked. Remember, she’s been claiming that “lab leak is debunked” all this time.
Her then:
Her now:
You don't get it.
I can be argued around to lab leak. Just get the key questions answered. I don't care about "he said, she said, he said." I don't care that over eighteen days of discussion, people came around from believing it plausible to seeing it as implausible (albeit those eighteen days of discussion might provide a clue as to why). Any more than I care that Isaac Newton was an arsehole who was a twat to Hooke, who insisted Leibniz stole his calculus (when Leibniz obviously came up with it first), and who firmly believed in alchemy, turning base metals into gold, and the like: his Laws of Motion either work or do not work (and they work).
My big issue is the one I've outlined, and all the "he said this at this point and that at that point," or "She was present when it was said to be debunked and has recently said simply she doesn't see that the evidence weighs in favour of it."
None of that answers the question or questions. If they're plausibly answered, then you can get me around.
Edit - my bad, poor reading comprehension and I'm not allowed coffee any more
Reagan was 77 when he left office. Biden will be 82. That is a huge difference.
And that's assuming he left office after one term. If, like Reagan, he went for two, he'd be 86.
The difference between late 70s and late 80s is often (not always, but often) very large indeed. I suspect, in his heart, Biden knows that. I suspect Jill Biden knows it even better. That's why I continue to believe he'll ultimately not be on the ballot.
On the flip-side, I note some of the more obvious challengers to Biden if he did go again have melted away. You're probably looking at someone in their 50s or 60s, as the younger ones will think they can wait (they might be misjudging it, but it's what they believe). Of those, Gavin Newsom was the most obvious and clearly considered it but has firmly ruled himself out. Klobucher and Booker both kind of fit the bill but didn't wow in 2020 and are close to Biden. Someone on the left may go for it but they've not had a great mid-term.
For those of us genuinely interested in what happened, it's quite fascinating to watch as experts who were originally leaning towards lab escape came around to zoonosis.
There were three who were most Lab Leak (Edward Holmes (self-described as 70/30 in favour of lab), Farrar ("50/50") and Kristian Anderson ("60/40")). Rather interestingly, two of those were lead authors on the article they got published in February 2020, which seems a pretty fair way of doing it.
You get to see them all considering hypotheses, ruling out deliberate bioengineering (wherever it came about, it evolved in the presence of an immune system), then considering deliberate "pass through" in lab animals (which could reconcile that). However, they then concluded that was unlikely, but also insisted in including it as a potential consideration in the article, even if only to show it had been seriously considered (there was a discussion on whether they'd spark off conspiracy theorists by including it, but insisted they had to cover it).
All of the three who had been leaning lab-leak have ended up coming down very firmly on the zoonosis side. To the point where the lab-leakers of the present dismiss them immediately by ad hominem.
I personally find it encouraging that not only did they very seriously consider it (and have those who most believed it plausible to lead the papers on it), but that my belief it was initially plausible wasn't completely out there.
It does end up damaging a nice story (simple - even simplistic - with convenient baddies and a two minute hate), but on the flip side, it does forewarn us of potential future SARS-like viruses (especially with the recent uncovering of so many bat coronaviruses: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.11.23.517609v1 )
I’m sorry, but this cannot pass. Here is your hero Edward Holmes on Twitter in May 2020. He’s just a fucking liar who does most of his work in China. Enough
Coming immediately on the heels of "To the point where the lab-leakers of the present dismiss them immediately by ad hominem," that's actively funny.
You are a victim of the fallacy that ad hominem arguments are automatically fallacious. In some circumstances, say being presented with an investment proposal by Bernie Madoff, they are valid, legitimate and compelling. Or, say, Farrar describing the lab security at Wuhan as "wild west."
My issue is that they never address the questions, simply coming up with these ad hominems.
"How did you get multiple independent releases into the wet market and only the wet market and none of the other more likely super-spreader sites in Wuhan?" doesn't really get answered by ad hominems. Or provide much illumination to those who want to know what really happened.
You still haven’t explained why Jeremy Farrar went from “lab leak is 50/50” to “lab leak is evil conspiracy theory” in 18 days
I am answered. Thank you. I never considered that as how it happened.
It’s all falling apart I’m afraid. One of the main scientists who has been pushing the wet market hypothesis for three years - she’s in those emails - has finally backtracked. Remember, she’s been claiming that “lab leak is debunked” all this time.
Her then:
Her now:
You don't get it.
I can be argued around to lab leak. Just get the key questions answered. I don't care about "he said, she said, he said." I don't care that over eighteen days of discussion, people came around from believing it plausible to seeing it as implausible (albeit those eighteen days of discussion might provide a clue as to why). Any more than I care that Isaac Newton was an arsehole who was a twat to Hooke, who insisted Leibniz stole his calculus (when Leibniz obviously came up with it first), and who firmly believed in alchemy, turning base metals into gold, and the like: his Laws of Motion either work or do not work (and they work).
My big issue is the one I've outlined, and all the "he said this at this point and that at that point," or "She was present when it was said to be debunked and has recently said simply she doesn't see that the evidence weighs in favour of it."
None of that answers the question or questions. If they're plausibly answered, then you can get me around.
Farrar didn’t change his mind. He made a ridiculous double back body flip from “50/50” to “conspiracy theory”. You’re too smart not to see the insanity of this
Or maybe you aren’t that smart, and you’re just good with numbers
But I do not wish to be unkind and you’ve been a great source on Covid, and I’ll ascribe your myopia to wilful naivety with good intentions. You like science and scientists and hate the idea they might have caused a pandemic so it’s clouding your judgement. Hey Ho
Now I must get to my flints. Good day
If you have long email discussions about a proposition, starting from 50/50 and ending up at 100/0 after 18 days, hows is that a ridiculous double back body flip? Doesn't it sound more like consideration of lots of evidence?
Really there is little point debating this with Leon as he knows, knows, the truth. And the truth just happens to be the more dramatic, more exciting possibility, and this fits with his take on everything.
Its entirely possible it leaked from the lab - what Leon never addresses is if this is the case, was it (A) a natural zoonotic pathogen or (B) GM - the infamous gain of function version.
Its also possible that it was entirely natural in origin, just like MERS, flu, SARS etc.
For those of us genuinely interested in what happened, it's quite fascinating to watch as experts who were originally leaning towards lab escape came around to zoonosis.
There were three who were most Lab Leak (Edward Holmes (self-described as 70/30 in favour of lab), Farrar ("50/50") and Kristian Anderson ("60/40")). Rather interestingly, two of those were lead authors on the article they got published in February 2020, which seems a pretty fair way of doing it.
You get to see them all considering hypotheses, ruling out deliberate bioengineering (wherever it came about, it evolved in the presence of an immune system), then considering deliberate "pass through" in lab animals (which could reconcile that). However, they then concluded that was unlikely, but also insisted in including it as a potential consideration in the article, even if only to show it had been seriously considered (there was a discussion on whether they'd spark off conspiracy theorists by including it, but insisted they had to cover it).
All of the three who had been leaning lab-leak have ended up coming down very firmly on the zoonosis side. To the point where the lab-leakers of the present dismiss them immediately by ad hominem.
I personally find it encouraging that not only did they very seriously consider it (and have those who most believed it plausible to lead the papers on it), but that my belief it was initially plausible wasn't completely out there.
It does end up damaging a nice story (simple - even simplistic - with convenient baddies and a two minute hate), but on the flip side, it does forewarn us of potential future SARS-like viruses (especially with the recent uncovering of so many bat coronaviruses: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.11.23.517609v1 )
I’m sorry, but this cannot pass. Here is your hero Edward Holmes on Twitter in May 2020. He’s just a fucking liar who does most of his work in China. Enough
Coming immediately on the heels of "To the point where the lab-leakers of the present dismiss them immediately by ad hominem," that's actively funny.
You are a victim of the fallacy that ad hominem arguments are automatically fallacious. In some circumstances, say being presented with an investment proposal by Bernie Madoff, they are valid, legitimate and compelling. Or, say, Farrar describing the lab security at Wuhan as "wild west."
My issue is that they never address the questions, simply coming up with these ad hominems.
"How did you get multiple independent releases into the wet market and only the wet market and none of the other more likely super-spreader sites in Wuhan?" doesn't really get answered by ad hominems. Or provide much illumination to those who want to know what really happened.
You still haven’t explained why Jeremy Farrar went from “lab leak is 50/50” to “lab leak is evil conspiracy theory” in 18 days
I am answered. Thank you. I never considered that as how it happened.
It’s all falling apart I’m afraid. One of the main scientists who has been pushing the wet market hypothesis for three years - she’s in those emails - has finally backtracked. Remember, she’s been claiming that “lab leak is debunked” all this time.
Her then:
Her now:
You don't get it.
I can be argued around to lab leak. Just get the key questions answered. I don't care about "he said, she said, he said." I don't care that over eighteen days of discussion, people came around from believing it plausible to seeing it as implausible (albeit those eighteen days of discussion might provide a clue as to why). Any more than I care that Isaac Newton was an arsehole who was a twat to Hooke, who insisted Leibniz stole his calculus (when Leibniz obviously came up with it first), and who firmly believed in alchemy, turning base metals into gold, and the like: his Laws of Motion either work or do not work (and they work).
My big issue is the one I've outlined, and all the "he said this at this point and that at that point," or "She was present when it was said to be debunked and has recently said simply she doesn't see that the evidence weighs in favour of it."
None of that answers the question or questions. If they're plausibly answered, then you can get me around.
Farrar didn’t change his mind. He made a ridiculous double back body flip from “50/50” to “conspiracy theory”. You’re too smart not to see the insanity of this
Or maybe you aren’t that smart, and you’re just good with numbers
But I do not wish to be unkind and you’ve been a great source on Covid, and I’ll ascribe your myopia to wilful naivety with good intentions. You like science and scientists and hate the idea they might have caused a pandemic so it’s clouding your judgement. Hey Ho
Now I must get to my flints. Good day
You are ascribing characteristics to Andy that you have no idea that he has and slightly insulting ones at that. Scientists tend to rely on evidence so don't generally have as much clouded judgement compared to the general population (although it happens obviously). It seems to me he would just prefer to see some facts and not nonsense stuff like he describes as 'he said, she said, he said' which tends to be the line of people putting forward conspiracies.
How about trying not to do this stuff and present evidence.
I have no idea which source is correct, but my judgement IS often clouded when I see stuff like 'he said, she said' from someone who often comes out with conspiracies.
I note the Ukrainians claim near 600 more Russians killed yesterday, although very little by way of additional kit. Are they still sending WW1-waves over the top to face the guns?
I am also musing over whether Russia has learned any lessons from the Winter War with Finland, fought in temperatures below -40C. Finnish dead (military and civilian) were around 20,000.
Russian numbers remain contentious. The Supreme Soviet was informed on 26 March 1940, of 48,475 dead and 158,863 sick and wounded. In 2013, the Russian State Military Archive held a database confirming 167,976 killed or missing along with the soldiers' names, dates of birth and ranks.
It did ultimately lead to territorial gains, but at a very heavy cost. Could Putin survive similar losses in a Ukrainian winter campaign?
Yes, the Russians are literally sending conscripts over the top to their deaths. Hundreds per day. Many of them don’t even make it ‘over the top’.
They’re digging trenches, in an era when their enemy has real-time satellite photography and precision guided missiles - guess how that plays out…
"Russia's continuing occupation is inevitable at this point. Let's at least tell ourselves the truth. They aren't going to be rolled back to the 2014 or even January 2022 borders.
Giving VVP something he can market as a win (probably the Donetsk/Luhansk oblasts and a land bridge to Crimea) is the only way this ends short of the extremely unlikely Kremlin palace coup. The alternative is the total and probably permanent destruction of Ukraine."
lol
Well, Russia are still sat on 6,000km2 of Ukraine and haven't been pinned back to the Jan 2022 borders yet.
It'll all be over by (Orthodox) Christmas.
Over 50% of land taken in the "Special Military Operation" has already been lost by Russia. At vast cost in terms of men, material and reputation. Its entrepreneurs have departed en masse. It's western borders have now got NATO actually or de facto up to everywhere bar Belarus. And that will fall too, in time. Meanwhile, Russia's eastern border with China would last days before the Kremlin was having to decide to go nuclear. And a distracting war might just be what the leadership in China need to transition away from the collapse of zero-Covid. Taiwan would involve the US and other military powers siding against China. Taking on Russia? Would get NATO out an endless supply of munitions hole.
For those of us genuinely interested in what happened, it's quite fascinating to watch as experts who were originally leaning towards lab escape came around to zoonosis.
There were three who were most Lab Leak (Edward Holmes (self-described as 70/30 in favour of lab), Farrar ("50/50") and Kristian Anderson ("60/40")). Rather interestingly, two of those were lead authors on the article they got published in February 2020, which seems a pretty fair way of doing it.
You get to see them all considering hypotheses, ruling out deliberate bioengineering (wherever it came about, it evolved in the presence of an immune system), then considering deliberate "pass through" in lab animals (which could reconcile that). However, they then concluded that was unlikely, but also insisted in including it as a potential consideration in the article, even if only to show it had been seriously considered (there was a discussion on whether they'd spark off conspiracy theorists by including it, but insisted they had to cover it).
All of the three who had been leaning lab-leak have ended up coming down very firmly on the zoonosis side. To the point where the lab-leakers of the present dismiss them immediately by ad hominem.
I personally find it encouraging that not only did they very seriously consider it (and have those who most believed it plausible to lead the papers on it), but that my belief it was initially plausible wasn't completely out there.
It does end up damaging a nice story (simple - even simplistic - with convenient baddies and a two minute hate), but on the flip side, it does forewarn us of potential future SARS-like viruses (especially with the recent uncovering of so many bat coronaviruses: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.11.23.517609v1 )
I’m sorry, but this cannot pass. Here is your hero Edward Holmes on Twitter in May 2020. He’s just a fucking liar who does most of his work in China. Enough
Coming immediately on the heels of "To the point where the lab-leakers of the present dismiss them immediately by ad hominem," that's actively funny.
You are a victim of the fallacy that ad hominem arguments are automatically fallacious. In some circumstances, say being presented with an investment proposal by Bernie Madoff, they are valid, legitimate and compelling. Or, say, Farrar describing the lab security at Wuhan as "wild west."
My issue is that they never address the questions, simply coming up with these ad hominems.
"How did you get multiple independent releases into the wet market and only the wet market and none of the other more likely super-spreader sites in Wuhan?" doesn't really get answered by ad hominems. Or provide much illumination to those who want to know what really happened.
You still haven’t explained why Jeremy Farrar went from “lab leak is 50/50” to “lab leak is evil conspiracy theory” in 18 days
I am answered. Thank you. I never considered that as how it happened.
It’s all falling apart I’m afraid. One of the main scientists who has been pushing the wet market hypothesis for three years - she’s in those emails - has finally backtracked. Remember, she’s been claiming that “lab leak is debunked” all this time.
Her then:
Her now:
You don't get it.
I can be argued around to lab leak. Just get the key questions answered. I don't care about "he said, she said, he said." I don't care that over eighteen days of discussion, people came around from believing it plausible to seeing it as implausible (albeit those eighteen days of discussion might provide a clue as to why). Any more than I care that Isaac Newton was an arsehole who was a twat to Hooke, who insisted Leibniz stole his calculus (when Leibniz obviously came up with it first), and who firmly believed in alchemy, turning base metals into gold, and the like: his Laws of Motion either work or do not work (and they work).
My big issue is the one I've outlined, and all the "he said this at this point and that at that point," or "She was present when it was said to be debunked and has recently said simply she doesn't see that the evidence weighs in favour of it."
None of that answers the question or questions. If they're plausibly answered, then you can get me around.
Farrar didn’t change his mind. He made a ridiculous double back body flip from “50/50” to “conspiracy theory”. You’re too smart not to see the insanity of this
Or maybe you aren’t that smart, and you’re just good with numbers
But I do not wish to be unkind and you’ve been a great source on Covid, and I’ll ascribe your myopia to wilful naivety with good intentions. You like science and scientists and hate the idea they might have caused a pandemic so it’s clouding your judgement. Hey Ho
Now I must get to my flints. Good day
If you have long email discussions about a proposition, starting from 50/50 and ending up at 100/0 after 18 days, hows is that a ridiculous double back body flip? Doesn't it sound more like consideration of lots of evidence?
Really there is little point debating this with Leon as he knows, knows, the truth. And the truth just happens to be the more dramatic, more exciting possibility, and this fits with his take on everything.
Its entirely possible it leaked from the lab - what Leon never addresses is if this is the case, was it (A) a natural zoonotic pathogen or (B) GM - the infamous gain of function version.
Its also possible that it was entirely natural in origin, just like MERS, flu, SARS etc.
I don't think we will ever know for certain.
The paradox is that "bad guy did it" is the comforting scenario here. If we try hard, we can locate bad guy and punish him. If we try really hard, we can reduce the chances of future bad guys getting the opportunity. There's a degree of human agency.
The idea that the world can be turned upside down for a couple of years, with aftershocks that will last our lifetimes, just because of cruel chance... that's really scary.
Imagine if in 2023 we actually see the end of the Chinese, Iranian and Russian regimes. What a different world it would look like.
I imagine it, and chaotic as any end would be one could hope it would work out, but regimes are good at hanging on, even if when they go they can go quickly.
For Emperor Xi one wonders how well he has indeed neutered the rest of the apparatus, as under the system if the last 40 years it would have been someone else's turn now.
Certainly the Chinese government has come through moments of greater danger than this, and survived, and strengthened itself. So I’m in complete agreement, at this stage we can’t tell if this is the start of something different or another false dawn.
That all 3 of Russia, China and Iran are showing signs of destabilisation (albeit for different reasons) does feel significant, but early days.
For those of us genuinely interested in what happened, it's quite fascinating to watch as experts who were originally leaning towards lab escape came around to zoonosis.
There were three who were most Lab Leak (Edward Holmes (self-described as 70/30 in favour of lab), Farrar ("50/50") and Kristian Anderson ("60/40")). Rather interestingly, two of those were lead authors on the article they got published in February 2020, which seems a pretty fair way of doing it.
You get to see them all considering hypotheses, ruling out deliberate bioengineering (wherever it came about, it evolved in the presence of an immune system), then considering deliberate "pass through" in lab animals (which could reconcile that). However, they then concluded that was unlikely, but also insisted in including it as a potential consideration in the article, even if only to show it had been seriously considered (there was a discussion on whether they'd spark off conspiracy theorists by including it, but insisted they had to cover it).
All of the three who had been leaning lab-leak have ended up coming down very firmly on the zoonosis side. To the point where the lab-leakers of the present dismiss them immediately by ad hominem.
I personally find it encouraging that not only did they very seriously consider it (and have those who most believed it plausible to lead the papers on it), but that my belief it was initially plausible wasn't completely out there.
It does end up damaging a nice story (simple - even simplistic - with convenient baddies and a two minute hate), but on the flip side, it does forewarn us of potential future SARS-like viruses (especially with the recent uncovering of so many bat coronaviruses: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.11.23.517609v1 )
I’m sorry, but this cannot pass. Here is your hero Edward Holmes on Twitter in May 2020. He’s just a fucking liar who does most of his work in China. Enough
Coming immediately on the heels of "To the point where the lab-leakers of the present dismiss them immediately by ad hominem," that's actively funny.
You are a victim of the fallacy that ad hominem arguments are automatically fallacious. In some circumstances, say being presented with an investment proposal by Bernie Madoff, they are valid, legitimate and compelling. Or, say, Farrar describing the lab security at Wuhan as "wild west."
My issue is that they never address the questions, simply coming up with these ad hominems.
"How did you get multiple independent releases into the wet market and only the wet market and none of the other more likely super-spreader sites in Wuhan?" doesn't really get answered by ad hominems. Or provide much illumination to those who want to know what really happened.
You still haven’t explained why Jeremy Farrar went from “lab leak is 50/50” to “lab leak is evil conspiracy theory” in 18 days
I am answered. Thank you. I never considered that as how it happened.
It’s all falling apart I’m afraid. One of the main scientists who has been pushing the wet market hypothesis for three years - she’s in those emails - has finally backtracked. Remember, she’s been claiming that “lab leak is debunked” all this time.
Her then:
Her now:
You don't get it.
I can be argued around to lab leak. Just get the key questions answered. I don't care about "he said, she said, he said." I don't care that over eighteen days of discussion, people came around from believing it plausible to seeing it as implausible (albeit those eighteen days of discussion might provide a clue as to why). Any more than I care that Isaac Newton was an arsehole who was a twat to Hooke, who insisted Leibniz stole his calculus (when Leibniz obviously came up with it first), and who firmly believed in alchemy, turning base metals into gold, and the like: his Laws of Motion either work or do not work (and they work).
My big issue is the one I've outlined, and all the "he said this at this point and that at that point," or "She was present when it was said to be debunked and has recently said simply she doesn't see that the evidence weighs in favour of it."
None of that answers the question or questions. If they're plausibly answered, then you can get me around.
Farrar didn’t change his mind. He made a ridiculous double back body flip from “50/50” to “conspiracy theory”. You’re too smart not to see the insanity of this
Or maybe you aren’t that smart, and you’re just good with numbers
But I do not wish to be unkind and you’ve been a great source on Covid, and I’ll ascribe your myopia to wilful naivety with good intentions. You like science and scientists and hate the idea they might have caused a pandemic so it’s clouding your judgement. Hey Ho
Now I must get to my flints. Good day
If you have long email discussions about a proposition, starting from 50/50 and ending up at 100/0 after 18 days, hows is that a ridiculous double back body flip? Doesn't it sound more like consideration of lots of evidence?
Really there is little point debating this with Leon as he knows, knows, the truth. And the truth just happens to be the more dramatic, more exciting possibility, and this fits with his take on everything.
Its entirely possible it leaked from the lab - what Leon never addresses is if this is the case, was it (A) a natural zoonotic pathogen or (B) GM - the infamous gain of function version.
Its also possible that it was entirely natural in origin, just like MERS, flu, SARS etc.
I don't think we will ever know for certain.
The paradox is that "bad guy did it" is the comforting scenario here. If we try hard, we can locate bad guy and punish him. If we try really hard, we can reduce the chances of future bad guys getting the opportunity. There's a degree of human agency.
The idea that the world can be turned upside down for a couple of years, with aftershocks that will last our lifetimes, just because of cruel chance... that's really scary.
Planning is a statutory requirement so you would expect that spending in local authorities would have remained consistent over the years
Yet Royal Town Planning Institute @RTPIPlanners · 10m A 43% fall in resources to the planning system from Local Authorities since 2009/10 has led to a tangible and damaging impact on planning enforcement, creating major delays, and negatively affecting both officers and the public.
For those of us genuinely interested in what happened, it's quite fascinating to watch as experts who were originally leaning towards lab escape came around to zoonosis.
There were three who were most Lab Leak (Edward Holmes (self-described as 70/30 in favour of lab), Farrar ("50/50") and Kristian Anderson ("60/40")). Rather interestingly, two of those were lead authors on the article they got published in February 2020, which seems a pretty fair way of doing it.
You get to see them all considering hypotheses, ruling out deliberate bioengineering (wherever it came about, it evolved in the presence of an immune system), then considering deliberate "pass through" in lab animals (which could reconcile that). However, they then concluded that was unlikely, but also insisted in including it as a potential consideration in the article, even if only to show it had been seriously considered (there was a discussion on whether they'd spark off conspiracy theorists by including it, but insisted they had to cover it).
All of the three who had been leaning lab-leak have ended up coming down very firmly on the zoonosis side. To the point where the lab-leakers of the present dismiss them immediately by ad hominem.
I personally find it encouraging that not only did they very seriously consider it (and have those who most believed it plausible to lead the papers on it), but that my belief it was initially plausible wasn't completely out there.
It does end up damaging a nice story (simple - even simplistic - with convenient baddies and a two minute hate), but on the flip side, it does forewarn us of potential future SARS-like viruses (especially with the recent uncovering of so many bat coronaviruses: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.11.23.517609v1 )
I’m sorry, but this cannot pass. Here is your hero Edward Holmes on Twitter in May 2020. He’s just a fucking liar who does most of his work in China. Enough
Coming immediately on the heels of "To the point where the lab-leakers of the present dismiss them immediately by ad hominem," that's actively funny.
You are a victim of the fallacy that ad hominem arguments are automatically fallacious. In some circumstances, say being presented with an investment proposal by Bernie Madoff, they are valid, legitimate and compelling. Or, say, Farrar describing the lab security at Wuhan as "wild west."
My issue is that they never address the questions, simply coming up with these ad hominems.
"How did you get multiple independent releases into the wet market and only the wet market and none of the other more likely super-spreader sites in Wuhan?" doesn't really get answered by ad hominems. Or provide much illumination to those who want to know what really happened.
You still haven’t explained why Jeremy Farrar went from “lab leak is 50/50” to “lab leak is evil conspiracy theory” in 18 days
I am answered. Thank you. I never considered that as how it happened.
It’s all falling apart I’m afraid. One of the main scientists who has been pushing the wet market hypothesis for three years - she’s in those emails - has finally backtracked. Remember, she’s been claiming that “lab leak is debunked” all this time.
Her then:
Her now:
You don't get it.
I can be argued around to lab leak. Just get the key questions answered. I don't care about "he said, she said, he said." I don't care that over eighteen days of discussion, people came around from believing it plausible to seeing it as implausible (albeit those eighteen days of discussion might provide a clue as to why). Any more than I care that Isaac Newton was an arsehole who was a twat to Hooke, who insisted Leibniz stole his calculus (when Leibniz obviously came up with it first), and who firmly believed in alchemy, turning base metals into gold, and the like: his Laws of Motion either work or do not work (and they work).
My big issue is the one I've outlined, and all the "he said this at this point and that at that point," or "She was present when it was said to be debunked and has recently said simply she doesn't see that the evidence weighs in favour of it."
None of that answers the question or questions. If they're plausibly answered, then you can get me around.
Farrar didn’t change his mind. He made a ridiculous double back body flip from “50/50” to “conspiracy theory”. You’re too smart not to see the insanity of this
Or maybe you aren’t that smart, and you’re just good with numbers
But I do not wish to be unkind and you’ve been a great source on Covid, and I’ll ascribe your myopia to wilful naivety with good intentions. You like science and scientists and hate the idea they might have caused a pandemic so it’s clouding your judgement. Hey Ho
Now I must get to my flints. Good day
You are ascribing characteristics to Andy that you have no idea that he has and slightly insulting ones at that. Scientists tend to rely on evidence so don't generally have as much clouded judgement compared to the general population (although it happens obviously). It seems to me he would just prefer to see some facts and not nonsense stuff like he describes as 'he said, she said, he said' which tends to be the line of people putting forward conspiracies.
How about trying not to do this stuff and present evidence.
I have no idea which source is correct, but my judgement IS often clouded when I see stuff like 'he said, she said' from someone who often comes out with conspiracies.
"Scientists tend to rely on evidence" is utter gibberish for starters. What job do you do that doesn't? Even if you are unemployed, life is a pretty evidence based enterprise anyway (water is falling on my head; this evidence of rain prompts me to put my umbrella up.) He is treating the non lab leak theory as the default from which he needs to be swayed, which is not an evidence-based position, and you are actually doing he said, she said stuff under the illusion that you are criticising it, in a beautiful example of circular logic.
For those of us genuinely interested in what happened, it's quite fascinating to watch as experts who were originally leaning towards lab escape came around to zoonosis.
There were three who were most Lab Leak (Edward Holmes (self-described as 70/30 in favour of lab), Farrar ("50/50") and Kristian Anderson ("60/40")). Rather interestingly, two of those were lead authors on the article they got published in February 2020, which seems a pretty fair way of doing it.
You get to see them all considering hypotheses, ruling out deliberate bioengineering (wherever it came about, it evolved in the presence of an immune system), then considering deliberate "pass through" in lab animals (which could reconcile that). However, they then concluded that was unlikely, but also insisted in including it as a potential consideration in the article, even if only to show it had been seriously considered (there was a discussion on whether they'd spark off conspiracy theorists by including it, but insisted they had to cover it).
All of the three who had been leaning lab-leak have ended up coming down very firmly on the zoonosis side. To the point where the lab-leakers of the present dismiss them immediately by ad hominem.
I personally find it encouraging that not only did they very seriously consider it (and have those who most believed it plausible to lead the papers on it), but that my belief it was initially plausible wasn't completely out there.
It does end up damaging a nice story (simple - even simplistic - with convenient baddies and a two minute hate), but on the flip side, it does forewarn us of potential future SARS-like viruses (especially with the recent uncovering of so many bat coronaviruses: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.11.23.517609v1 )
I’m sorry, but this cannot pass. Here is your hero Edward Holmes on Twitter in May 2020. He’s just a fucking liar who does most of his work in China. Enough
Coming immediately on the heels of "To the point where the lab-leakers of the present dismiss them immediately by ad hominem," that's actively funny.
You are a victim of the fallacy that ad hominem arguments are automatically fallacious. In some circumstances, say being presented with an investment proposal by Bernie Madoff, they are valid, legitimate and compelling. Or, say, Farrar describing the lab security at Wuhan as "wild west."
My issue is that they never address the questions, simply coming up with these ad hominems.
"How did you get multiple independent releases into the wet market and only the wet market and none of the other more likely super-spreader sites in Wuhan?" doesn't really get answered by ad hominems. Or provide much illumination to those who want to know what really happened.
You still haven’t explained why Jeremy Farrar went from “lab leak is 50/50” to “lab leak is evil conspiracy theory” in 18 days
I am answered. Thank you. I never considered that as how it happened.
It’s all falling apart I’m afraid. One of the main scientists who has been pushing the wet market hypothesis for three years - she’s in those emails - has finally backtracked. Remember, she’s been claiming that “lab leak is debunked” all this time.
Her then:
Her now:
You don't get it.
I can be argued around to lab leak. Just get the key questions answered. I don't care about "he said, she said, he said." I don't care that over eighteen days of discussion, people came around from believing it plausible to seeing it as implausible (albeit those eighteen days of discussion might provide a clue as to why). Any more than I care that Isaac Newton was an arsehole who was a twat to Hooke, who insisted Leibniz stole his calculus (when Leibniz obviously came up with it first), and who firmly believed in alchemy, turning base metals into gold, and the like: his Laws of Motion either work or do not work (and they work).
My big issue is the one I've outlined, and all the "he said this at this point and that at that point," or "She was present when it was said to be debunked and has recently said simply she doesn't see that the evidence weighs in favour of it."
None of that answers the question or questions. If they're plausibly answered, then you can get me around.
Farrar didn’t change his mind. He made a ridiculous double back body flip from “50/50” to “conspiracy theory”. You’re too smart not to see the insanity of this
Or maybe you aren’t that smart, and you’re just good with numbers
But I do not wish to be unkind and you’ve been a great source on Covid, and I’ll ascribe your myopia to wilful naivety with good intentions. You like science and scientists and hate the idea they might have caused a pandemic so it’s clouding your judgement. Hey Ho
Now I must get to my flints. Good day
If you have long email discussions about a proposition, starting from 50/50 and ending up at 100/0 after 18 days, hows is that a ridiculous double back body flip? Doesn't it sound more like consideration of lots of evidence?
Really there is little point debating this with Leon as he knows, knows, the truth. And the truth just happens to be the more dramatic, more exciting possibility, and this fits with his take on everything.
Its entirely possible it leaked from the lab - what Leon never addresses is if this is the case, was it (A) a natural zoonotic pathogen or (B) GM - the infamous gain of function version.
Its also possible that it was entirely natural in origin, just like MERS, flu, SARS etc.
I don't think we will ever know for certain.
The paradox is that "bad guy did it" is the comforting scenario here. If we try hard, we can locate bad guy and punish him. If we try really hard, we can reduce the chances of future bad guys getting the opportunity. There's a degree of human agency.
The idea that the world can be turned upside down for a couple of years, with aftershocks that will last our lifetimes, just because of cruel chance... that's really scary.
Very true, and notably Leon has often expressed that those responsible should be put on trial, Nuremburg style.
For those of us genuinely interested in what happened, it's quite fascinating to watch as experts who were originally leaning towards lab escape came around to zoonosis.
There were three who were most Lab Leak (Edward Holmes (self-described as 70/30 in favour of lab), Farrar ("50/50") and Kristian Anderson ("60/40")). Rather interestingly, two of those were lead authors on the article they got published in February 2020, which seems a pretty fair way of doing it.
You get to see them all considering hypotheses, ruling out deliberate bioengineering (wherever it came about, it evolved in the presence of an immune system), then considering deliberate "pass through" in lab animals (which could reconcile that). However, they then concluded that was unlikely, but also insisted in including it as a potential consideration in the article, even if only to show it had been seriously considered (there was a discussion on whether they'd spark off conspiracy theorists by including it, but insisted they had to cover it).
All of the three who had been leaning lab-leak have ended up coming down very firmly on the zoonosis side. To the point where the lab-leakers of the present dismiss them immediately by ad hominem.
I personally find it encouraging that not only did they very seriously consider it (and have those who most believed it plausible to lead the papers on it), but that my belief it was initially plausible wasn't completely out there.
It does end up damaging a nice story (simple - even simplistic - with convenient baddies and a two minute hate), but on the flip side, it does forewarn us of potential future SARS-like viruses (especially with the recent uncovering of so many bat coronaviruses: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.11.23.517609v1 )
I’m sorry, but this cannot pass. Here is your hero Edward Holmes on Twitter in May 2020. He’s just a fucking liar who does most of his work in China. Enough
Coming immediately on the heels of "To the point where the lab-leakers of the present dismiss them immediately by ad hominem," that's actively funny.
You are a victim of the fallacy that ad hominem arguments are automatically fallacious. In some circumstances, say being presented with an investment proposal by Bernie Madoff, they are valid, legitimate and compelling. Or, say, Farrar describing the lab security at Wuhan as "wild west."
My issue is that they never address the questions, simply coming up with these ad hominems.
"How did you get multiple independent releases into the wet market and only the wet market and none of the other more likely super-spreader sites in Wuhan?" doesn't really get answered by ad hominems. Or provide much illumination to those who want to know what really happened.
You still haven’t explained why Jeremy Farrar went from “lab leak is 50/50” to “lab leak is evil conspiracy theory” in 18 days
I am answered. Thank you. I never considered that as how it happened.
It’s all falling apart I’m afraid. One of the main scientists who has been pushing the wet market hypothesis for three years - she’s in those emails - has finally backtracked. Remember, she’s been claiming that “lab leak is debunked” all this time.
Her then:
Her now:
You don't get it.
I can be argued around to lab leak. Just get the key questions answered. I don't care about "he said, she said, he said." I don't care that over eighteen days of discussion, people came around from believing it plausible to seeing it as implausible (albeit those eighteen days of discussion might provide a clue as to why). Any more than I care that Isaac Newton was an arsehole who was a twat to Hooke, who insisted Leibniz stole his calculus (when Leibniz obviously came up with it first), and who firmly believed in alchemy, turning base metals into gold, and the like: his Laws of Motion either work or do not work (and they work).
My big issue is the one I've outlined, and all the "he said this at this point and that at that point," or "She was present when it was said to be debunked and has recently said simply she doesn't see that the evidence weighs in favour of it."
None of that answers the question or questions. If they're plausibly answered, then you can get me around.
Farrar didn’t change his mind. He made a ridiculous double back body flip from “50/50” to “conspiracy theory”. You’re too smart not to see the insanity of this
Or maybe you aren’t that smart, and you’re just good with numbers
But I do not wish to be unkind and you’ve been a great source on Covid, and I’ll ascribe your myopia to wilful naivety with good intentions. You like science and scientists and hate the idea they might have caused a pandemic so it’s clouding your judgement. Hey Ho
Now I must get to my flints. Good day
If you have long email discussions about a proposition, starting from 50/50 and ending up at 100/0 after 18 days, hows is that a ridiculous double back body flip? Doesn't it sound more like consideration of lots of evidence?
Really there is little point debating this with Leon as he knows, knows, the truth. And the truth just happens to be the more dramatic, more exciting possibility, and this fits with his take on everything.
Its entirely possible it leaked from the lab - what Leon never addresses is if this is the case, was it (A) a natural zoonotic pathogen or (B) GM - the infamous gain of function version.
Its also possible that it was entirely natural in origin, just like MERS, flu, SARS etc.
I don't think we will ever know for certain.
The paradox is that "bad guy did it" is the comforting scenario here. If we try hard, we can locate bad guy and punish him. If we try really hard, we can reduce the chances of future bad guys getting the opportunity. There's a degree of human agency.
The idea that the world can be turned upside down for a couple of years, with aftershocks that will last our lifetimes, just because of cruel chance... that's really scary.
The world didn't turn itself upside down and neither did the virus - the politicians did (because the people demanded it). The origin of the virus is orthogonal to that.
I wonder if there will be a betting market on next year's Ukrainian Presidential Election. Klitschko might run as controlled opposition to Zelensky. Although that could turn from controlled to actual opposition as they fucking despise each other.
Poroshenko will definitely be back in the fray (probably backed by Russian money).
For those of us genuinely interested in what happened, it's quite fascinating to watch as experts who were originally leaning towards lab escape came around to zoonosis.
There were three who were most Lab Leak (Edward Holmes (self-described as 70/30 in favour of lab), Farrar ("50/50") and Kristian Anderson ("60/40")). Rather interestingly, two of those were lead authors on the article they got published in February 2020, which seems a pretty fair way of doing it.
You get to see them all considering hypotheses, ruling out deliberate bioengineering (wherever it came about, it evolved in the presence of an immune system), then considering deliberate "pass through" in lab animals (which could reconcile that). However, they then concluded that was unlikely, but also insisted in including it as a potential consideration in the article, even if only to show it had been seriously considered (there was a discussion on whether they'd spark off conspiracy theorists by including it, but insisted they had to cover it).
All of the three who had been leaning lab-leak have ended up coming down very firmly on the zoonosis side. To the point where the lab-leakers of the present dismiss them immediately by ad hominem.
I personally find it encouraging that not only did they very seriously consider it (and have those who most believed it plausible to lead the papers on it), but that my belief it was initially plausible wasn't completely out there.
It does end up damaging a nice story (simple - even simplistic - with convenient baddies and a two minute hate), but on the flip side, it does forewarn us of potential future SARS-like viruses (especially with the recent uncovering of so many bat coronaviruses: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.11.23.517609v1 )
I’m sorry, but this cannot pass. Here is your hero Edward Holmes on Twitter in May 2020. He’s just a fucking liar who does most of his work in China. Enough
Coming immediately on the heels of "To the point where the lab-leakers of the present dismiss them immediately by ad hominem," that's actively funny.
You are a victim of the fallacy that ad hominem arguments are automatically fallacious. In some circumstances, say being presented with an investment proposal by Bernie Madoff, they are valid, legitimate and compelling. Or, say, Farrar describing the lab security at Wuhan as "wild west."
My issue is that they never address the questions, simply coming up with these ad hominems.
"How did you get multiple independent releases into the wet market and only the wet market and none of the other more likely super-spreader sites in Wuhan?" doesn't really get answered by ad hominems. Or provide much illumination to those who want to know what really happened.
You still haven’t explained why Jeremy Farrar went from “lab leak is 50/50” to “lab leak is evil conspiracy theory” in 18 days
I am answered. Thank you. I never considered that as how it happened.
It’s all falling apart I’m afraid. One of the main scientists who has been pushing the wet market hypothesis for three years - she’s in those emails - has finally backtracked. Remember, she’s been claiming that “lab leak is debunked” all this time.
Her then:
Her now:
You don't get it.
I can be argued around to lab leak. Just get the key questions answered. I don't care about "he said, she said, he said." I don't care that over eighteen days of discussion, people came around from believing it plausible to seeing it as implausible (albeit those eighteen days of discussion might provide a clue as to why). Any more than I care that Isaac Newton was an arsehole who was a twat to Hooke, who insisted Leibniz stole his calculus (when Leibniz obviously came up with it first), and who firmly believed in alchemy, turning base metals into gold, and the like: his Laws of Motion either work or do not work (and they work).
My big issue is the one I've outlined, and all the "he said this at this point and that at that point," or "She was present when it was said to be debunked and has recently said simply she doesn't see that the evidence weighs in favour of it."
None of that answers the question or questions. If they're plausibly answered, then you can get me around.
Farrar didn’t change his mind. He made a ridiculous double back body flip from “50/50” to “conspiracy theory”. You’re too smart not to see the insanity of this
Or maybe you aren’t that smart, and you’re just good with numbers
But I do not wish to be unkind and you’ve been a great source on Covid, and I’ll ascribe your myopia to wilful naivety with good intentions. You like science and scientists and hate the idea they might have caused a pandemic so it’s clouding your judgement. Hey Ho
Now I must get to my flints. Good day
If you have long email discussions about a proposition, starting from 50/50 and ending up at 100/0 after 18 days, hows is that a ridiculous double back body flip? Doesn't it sound more like consideration of lots of evidence?
Really there is little point debating this with Leon as he knows, knows, the truth. And the truth just happens to be the more dramatic, more exciting possibility, and this fits with his take on everything.
Its entirely possible it leaked from the lab - what Leon never addresses is if this is the case, was it (A) a natural zoonotic pathogen or (B) GM - the infamous gain of function version.
Its also possible that it was entirely natural in origin, just like MERS, flu, SARS etc.
I don't think we will ever know for certain.
The paradox is that "bad guy did it" is the comforting scenario here. If we try hard, we can locate bad guy and punish him. If we try really hard, we can reduce the chances of future bad guys getting the opportunity. There's a degree of human agency.
The idea that the world can be turned upside down for a couple of years, with aftershocks that will last our lifetimes, just because of cruel chance... that's really scary.
Yes, but we should decide whether A is true or B is true, not which of them provides a more satisfying narrative arc. I don't think you have thought things through all that far if you think that a lab leak in China is a less threatening thing than a straight from the wild outbreak, either. If you think bad guy is going to be identified and punished, ask yourself why there has not been a thorough, or any, audit published of biolab security in Wuhan, 2018-20?
For those of us genuinely interested in what happened, it's quite fascinating to watch as experts who were originally leaning towards lab escape came around to zoonosis.
There were three who were most Lab Leak (Edward Holmes (self-described as 70/30 in favour of lab), Farrar ("50/50") and Kristian Anderson ("60/40")). Rather interestingly, two of those were lead authors on the article they got published in February 2020, which seems a pretty fair way of doing it.
You get to see them all considering hypotheses, ruling out deliberate bioengineering (wherever it came about, it evolved in the presence of an immune system), then considering deliberate "pass through" in lab animals (which could reconcile that). However, they then concluded that was unlikely, but also insisted in including it as a potential consideration in the article, even if only to show it had been seriously considered (there was a discussion on whether they'd spark off conspiracy theorists by including it, but insisted they had to cover it).
All of the three who had been leaning lab-leak have ended up coming down very firmly on the zoonosis side. To the point where the lab-leakers of the present dismiss them immediately by ad hominem.
I personally find it encouraging that not only did they very seriously consider it (and have those who most believed it plausible to lead the papers on it), but that my belief it was initially plausible wasn't completely out there.
It does end up damaging a nice story (simple - even simplistic - with convenient baddies and a two minute hate), but on the flip side, it does forewarn us of potential future SARS-like viruses (especially with the recent uncovering of so many bat coronaviruses: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.11.23.517609v1 )
I’m sorry, but this cannot pass. Here is your hero Edward Holmes on Twitter in May 2020. He’s just a fucking liar who does most of his work in China. Enough
Coming immediately on the heels of "To the point where the lab-leakers of the present dismiss them immediately by ad hominem," that's actively funny.
You are a victim of the fallacy that ad hominem arguments are automatically fallacious. In some circumstances, say being presented with an investment proposal by Bernie Madoff, they are valid, legitimate and compelling. Or, say, Farrar describing the lab security at Wuhan as "wild west."
My issue is that they never address the questions, simply coming up with these ad hominems.
"How did you get multiple independent releases into the wet market and only the wet market and none of the other more likely super-spreader sites in Wuhan?" doesn't really get answered by ad hominems. Or provide much illumination to those who want to know what really happened.
You still haven’t explained why Jeremy Farrar went from “lab leak is 50/50” to “lab leak is evil conspiracy theory” in 18 days
I am answered. Thank you. I never considered that as how it happened.
It’s all falling apart I’m afraid. One of the main scientists who has been pushing the wet market hypothesis for three years - she’s in those emails - has finally backtracked. Remember, she’s been claiming that “lab leak is debunked” all this time.
Her then:
Her now:
You don't get it.
I can be argued around to lab leak. Just get the key questions answered. I don't care about "he said, she said, he said." I don't care that over eighteen days of discussion, people came around from believing it plausible to seeing it as implausible (albeit those eighteen days of discussion might provide a clue as to why). Any more than I care that Isaac Newton was an arsehole who was a twat to Hooke, who insisted Leibniz stole his calculus (when Leibniz obviously came up with it first), and who firmly believed in alchemy, turning base metals into gold, and the like: his Laws of Motion either work or do not work (and they work).
My big issue is the one I've outlined, and all the "he said this at this point and that at that point," or "She was present when it was said to be debunked and has recently said simply she doesn't see that the evidence weighs in favour of it."
None of that answers the question or questions. If they're plausibly answered, then you can get me around.
Farrar didn’t change his mind. He made a ridiculous double back body flip from “50/50” to “conspiracy theory”. You’re too smart not to see the insanity of this
Or maybe you aren’t that smart, and you’re just good with numbers
But I do not wish to be unkind and you’ve been a great source on Covid, and I’ll ascribe your myopia to wilful naivety with good intentions. You like science and scientists and hate the idea they might have caused a pandemic so it’s clouding your judgement. Hey Ho
Now I must get to my flints. Good day
You are ascribing characteristics to Andy that you have no idea that he has and slightly insulting ones at that. Scientists tend to rely on evidence so don't generally have as much clouded judgement compared to the general population (although it happens obviously). It seems to me he would just prefer to see some facts and not nonsense stuff like he describes as 'he said, she said, he said' which tends to be the line of people putting forward conspiracies.
How about trying not to do this stuff and present evidence.
I have no idea which source is correct, but my judgement IS often clouded when I see stuff like 'he said, she said' from someone who often comes out with conspiracies.
Yeah, I just want to know what the facts are. Not what he said-she-said or whatever.
My stance was:
- Starting point: All the millions of viruses throughout history (MERS, SARS, HKU1, Ebola, Rabies, Lassa, smallpox and other poxes, various influenzas, measles, mumps, rubella, polio, rotavirus, etc, etc, etc) have come through zoonosis. So it's a very well established channel and, as this is the way it's happened literally every time before, the default will be to look at this. - However: There was a virus research lab very close to where this one sparked off. Covering similar viruses. It's therefore natural to think: maybe they're linked? Bioengineering? Accidental leak?
So my starting point was that both were plausible.
There was a flurry of articles and points that purported to point to an artificial origin. The furin cleavage site was the biggest such. Later on, claims of finding "fingerprints" in it. However, the FCS turned out to be not at all a smoking gun (given that many coronaviruses have them, it could even be that when you see a coronavirus in humans, if it's evolved an FCS, it helps it to make the jump. Like with MERS, HKU1, and now SARS-CoV-2). And the "fingerprints" one fell apart rapidly.
The bit that's really pushed me away from lab leak and towards zoonosis (at the moment!) is the tracing of the spark. The fact that there are two separate strains (A and B ) and both sparked separately at the wet market and nowhere else means that it looks even more implausible a coincidence that it could be a lab leak. Which is some going (given that it's a big coincidence, in my mind, for it to happen close to such a lab). So that's my big holdup: how the hell did a random leak happen ONLY to the wet market and none of the other superspreader sites in Wuhan? I could see it happening once as sheer luck/coincidence, and more or less balance out the coincidence needed on the other argument.
But twice? Independently and separated by a fortnight?
And that's why I keep coming back to that question.
I wonder if there will be a betting market on next year's Ukrainian Presidential Election. Klitschko might run as controlled opposition to Zelensky. Although that could turn from controlled to actual opposition as they fucking despise each other.
Poroshenko will definitely be back in the fray (probably backed by Russian money).
Unlike your beloved Russia, Ukraine is an actual democracy, so no need to control the opposition.
Though they could reasonably postpone the election until the war is over, as we did in WWII.
For those of us genuinely interested in what happened, it's quite fascinating to watch as experts who were originally leaning towards lab escape came around to zoonosis.
There were three who were most Lab Leak (Edward Holmes (self-described as 70/30 in favour of lab), Farrar ("50/50") and Kristian Anderson ("60/40")). Rather interestingly, two of those were lead authors on the article they got published in February 2020, which seems a pretty fair way of doing it.
You get to see them all considering hypotheses, ruling out deliberate bioengineering (wherever it came about, it evolved in the presence of an immune system), then considering deliberate "pass through" in lab animals (which could reconcile that). However, they then concluded that was unlikely, but also insisted in including it as a potential consideration in the article, even if only to show it had been seriously considered (there was a discussion on whether they'd spark off conspiracy theorists by including it, but insisted they had to cover it).
All of the three who had been leaning lab-leak have ended up coming down very firmly on the zoonosis side. To the point where the lab-leakers of the present dismiss them immediately by ad hominem.
I personally find it encouraging that not only did they very seriously consider it (and have those who most believed it plausible to lead the papers on it), but that my belief it was initially plausible wasn't completely out there.
It does end up damaging a nice story (simple - even simplistic - with convenient baddies and a two minute hate), but on the flip side, it does forewarn us of potential future SARS-like viruses (especially with the recent uncovering of so many bat coronaviruses: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.11.23.517609v1 )
I’m sorry, but this cannot pass. Here is your hero Edward Holmes on Twitter in May 2020. He’s just a fucking liar who does most of his work in China. Enough
Coming immediately on the heels of "To the point where the lab-leakers of the present dismiss them immediately by ad hominem," that's actively funny.
You are a victim of the fallacy that ad hominem arguments are automatically fallacious. In some circumstances, say being presented with an investment proposal by Bernie Madoff, they are valid, legitimate and compelling. Or, say, Farrar describing the lab security at Wuhan as "wild west."
My issue is that they never address the questions, simply coming up with these ad hominems.
"How did you get multiple independent releases into the wet market and only the wet market and none of the other more likely super-spreader sites in Wuhan?" doesn't really get answered by ad hominems. Or provide much illumination to those who want to know what really happened.
You still haven’t explained why Jeremy Farrar went from “lab leak is 50/50” to “lab leak is evil conspiracy theory” in 18 days
I am answered. Thank you. I never considered that as how it happened.
It’s all falling apart I’m afraid. One of the main scientists who has been pushing the wet market hypothesis for three years - she’s in those emails - has finally backtracked. Remember, she’s been claiming that “lab leak is debunked” all this time.
Her then:
Her now:
You don't get it.
I can be argued around to lab leak. Just get the key questions answered. I don't care about "he said, she said, he said." I don't care that over eighteen days of discussion, people came around from believing it plausible to seeing it as implausible (albeit those eighteen days of discussion might provide a clue as to why). Any more than I care that Isaac Newton was an arsehole who was a twat to Hooke, who insisted Leibniz stole his calculus (when Leibniz obviously came up with it first), and who firmly believed in alchemy, turning base metals into gold, and the like: his Laws of Motion either work or do not work (and they work).
My big issue is the one I've outlined, and all the "he said this at this point and that at that point," or "She was present when it was said to be debunked and has recently said simply she doesn't see that the evidence weighs in favour of it."
None of that answers the question or questions. If they're plausibly answered, then you can get me around.
Farrar didn’t change his mind. He made a ridiculous double back body flip from “50/50” to “conspiracy theory”. You’re too smart not to see the insanity of this
Or maybe you aren’t that smart, and you’re just good with numbers
But I do not wish to be unkind and you’ve been a great source on Covid, and I’ll ascribe your myopia to wilful naivety with good intentions. You like science and scientists and hate the idea they might have caused a pandemic so it’s clouding your judgement. Hey Ho
Now I must get to my flints. Good day
You are ascribing characteristics to Andy that you have no idea that he has and slightly insulting ones at that. Scientists tend to rely on evidence so don't generally have as much clouded judgement compared to the general population (although it happens obviously). It seems to me he would just prefer to see some facts and not nonsense stuff like he describes as 'he said, she said, he said' which tends to be the line of people putting forward conspiracies.
How about trying not to do this stuff and present evidence.
I have no idea which source is correct, but my judgement IS often clouded when I see stuff like 'he said, she said' from someone who often comes out with conspiracies.
Yeah, I just want to know what the facts are. Not what he said-she-said or whatever.
My stance was:
- Starting point: All the millions of viruses throughout history (MERS, SARS, HKU1, Ebola, Rabies, Lassa, smallpox and other poxes, various influenzas, measles, mumps, rubella, polio, rotavirus, etc, etc, etc) have come through zoonosis. So it's a very well established channel and, as this is the way it's happened literally every time before, the default will be to look at this. - However: There was a virus research lab very close to where this one sparked off. Covering similar viruses. It's therefore natural to think: maybe they're linked? Bioengineering? Accidental leak?
So my starting point was that both were plausible.
There was a flurry of articles and points that purported to point to an artificial origin. The furin cleavage site was the biggest such. Later on, claims of finding "fingerprints" in it. However, the FCS turned out to be not at all a smoking gun (given that many coronaviruses have them, it could even be that when you see a coronavirus in humans, if it's evolved an FCS, it helps it to make the jump. Like with MERS, HKU1, and now SARS-CoV-2). And the "fingerprints" one fell apart rapidly.
The bit that's really pushed me away from lab leak and towards zoonosis (at the moment!) is the tracing of the spark. The fact that there are two separate strains (A and and both sparked separately at the wet market and nowhere else means that it looks even more implausible a coincidence that it could be a lab leak. Which is some going (given that it's a big coincidence, in my mind, for it to happen close to such a lab). So that's my big holdup: how the hell did a random leak happen ONLY to the wet market and none of the other superspreader sites in Wuhan? I could see it happening once as sheer luck/coincidence, and more or less balance out the coincidence needed on the other argument.
But twice? Independently and separated by a fortnight?
And that's why I keep coming back to that question.
That makes lab leak much more likely, not less, to me.
If it was leaking from the lab to the market then that could very plausibly have happened twice. If its accidental and there's lax security a flaw that's happened once can happen twice, if its deliberate a deliberate action once can happen twice.
If it was natural zoonosis then why would that happen coincidentally twice in the same place? And if its not a coincidence, then it is equally possibly not a coincidence with a leak.
Lightning striking twice two weeks apart in the same place makes man-made actions much more likely than just random nature.
I wonder if there will be a betting market on next year's Ukrainian Presidential Election. Klitschko might run as controlled opposition to Zelensky. Although that could turn from controlled to actual opposition as they fucking despise each other.
Poroshenko will definitely be back in the fray (probably backed by Russian money).
I think Zelensky was still leading in the polls prior to the invasion, against a presumed Poroshenko run, though not by as much.
Not much appetite for more polling right now of course. I suppose delay is out of the question.
I wonder if there will be a betting market on next year's Ukrainian Presidential Election. Klitschko might run as controlled opposition to Zelensky. Although that could turn from controlled to actual opposition as they fucking despise each other.
Poroshenko will definitely be back in the fray (probably backed by Russian money).
Unlike your beloved Russia, Ukraine is an actual democracy, so no need to control the opposition.
Though they could reasonably postpone the election until the war is over, as we did in WWII.
Pedantry: the UK didn't. The war was still very much happening in the Far East, CBI and Pacific.
For those of us genuinely interested in what happened, it's quite fascinating to watch as experts who were originally leaning towards lab escape came around to zoonosis.
There were three who were most Lab Leak (Edward Holmes (self-described as 70/30 in favour of lab), Farrar ("50/50") and Kristian Anderson ("60/40")). Rather interestingly, two of those were lead authors on the article they got published in February 2020, which seems a pretty fair way of doing it.
You get to see them all considering hypotheses, ruling out deliberate bioengineering (wherever it came about, it evolved in the presence of an immune system), then considering deliberate "pass through" in lab animals (which could reconcile that). However, they then concluded that was unlikely, but also insisted in including it as a potential consideration in the article, even if only to show it had been seriously considered (there was a discussion on whether they'd spark off conspiracy theorists by including it, but insisted they had to cover it).
All of the three who had been leaning lab-leak have ended up coming down very firmly on the zoonosis side. To the point where the lab-leakers of the present dismiss them immediately by ad hominem.
I personally find it encouraging that not only did they very seriously consider it (and have those who most believed it plausible to lead the papers on it), but that my belief it was initially plausible wasn't completely out there.
It does end up damaging a nice story (simple - even simplistic - with convenient baddies and a two minute hate), but on the flip side, it does forewarn us of potential future SARS-like viruses (especially with the recent uncovering of so many bat coronaviruses: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.11.23.517609v1 )
I’m sorry, but this cannot pass. Here is your hero Edward Holmes on Twitter in May 2020. He’s just a fucking liar who does most of his work in China. Enough
Coming immediately on the heels of "To the point where the lab-leakers of the present dismiss them immediately by ad hominem," that's actively funny.
You are a victim of the fallacy that ad hominem arguments are automatically fallacious. In some circumstances, say being presented with an investment proposal by Bernie Madoff, they are valid, legitimate and compelling. Or, say, Farrar describing the lab security at Wuhan as "wild west."
My issue is that they never address the questions, simply coming up with these ad hominems.
"How did you get multiple independent releases into the wet market and only the wet market and none of the other more likely super-spreader sites in Wuhan?" doesn't really get answered by ad hominems. Or provide much illumination to those who want to know what really happened.
You still haven’t explained why Jeremy Farrar went from “lab leak is 50/50” to “lab leak is evil conspiracy theory” in 18 days
I am answered. Thank you. I never considered that as how it happened.
It’s all falling apart I’m afraid. One of the main scientists who has been pushing the wet market hypothesis for three years - she’s in those emails - has finally backtracked. Remember, she’s been claiming that “lab leak is debunked” all this time.
Her then:
Her now:
You don't get it.
I can be argued around to lab leak. Just get the key questions answered. I don't care about "he said, she said, he said." I don't care that over eighteen days of discussion, people came around from believing it plausible to seeing it as implausible (albeit those eighteen days of discussion might provide a clue as to why). Any more than I care that Isaac Newton was an arsehole who was a twat to Hooke, who insisted Leibniz stole his calculus (when Leibniz obviously came up with it first), and who firmly believed in alchemy, turning base metals into gold, and the like: his Laws of Motion either work or do not work (and they work).
My big issue is the one I've outlined, and all the "he said this at this point and that at that point," or "She was present when it was said to be debunked and has recently said simply she doesn't see that the evidence weighs in favour of it."
None of that answers the question or questions. If they're plausibly answered, then you can get me around.
Farrar didn’t change his mind. He made a ridiculous double back body flip from “50/50” to “conspiracy theory”. You’re too smart not to see the insanity of this
Or maybe you aren’t that smart, and you’re just good with numbers
But I do not wish to be unkind and you’ve been a great source on Covid, and I’ll ascribe your myopia to wilful naivety with good intentions. You like science and scientists and hate the idea they might have caused a pandemic so it’s clouding your judgement. Hey Ho
Now I must get to my flints. Good day
You are ascribing characteristics to Andy that you have no idea that he has and slightly insulting ones at that. Scientists tend to rely on evidence so don't generally have as much clouded judgement compared to the general population (although it happens obviously). It seems to me he would just prefer to see some facts and not nonsense stuff like he describes as 'he said, she said, he said' which tends to be the line of people putting forward conspiracies.
How about trying not to do this stuff and present evidence.
I have no idea which source is correct, but my judgement IS often clouded when I see stuff like 'he said, she said' from someone who often comes out with conspiracies.
Yeah, I just want to know what the facts are. Not what he said-she-said or whatever.
My stance was:
- Starting point: All the millions of viruses throughout history (MERS, SARS, HKU1, Ebola, Rabies, Lassa, smallpox and other poxes, various influenzas, measles, mumps, rubella, polio, rotavirus, etc, etc, etc) have come through zoonosis. So it's a very well established channel and, as this is the way it's happened literally every time before, the default will be to look at this. - However: There was a virus research lab very close to where this one sparked off. Covering similar viruses. It's therefore natural to think: maybe they're linked? Bioengineering? Accidental leak?
So my starting point was that both were plausible.
There was a flurry of articles and points that purported to point to an artificial origin. The furin cleavage site was the biggest such. Later on, claims of finding "fingerprints" in it. However, the FCS turned out to be not at all a smoking gun (given that many coronaviruses have them, it could even be that when you see a coronavirus in humans, if it's evolved an FCS, it helps it to make the jump. Like with MERS, HKU1, and now SARS-CoV-2). And the "fingerprints" one fell apart rapidly.
The bit that's really pushed me away from lab leak and towards zoonosis (at the moment!) is the tracing of the spark. The fact that there are two separate strains (A and and both sparked separately at the wet market and nowhere else means that it looks even more implausible a coincidence that it could be a lab leak. Which is some going (given that it's a big coincidence, in my mind, for it to happen close to such a lab). So that's my big holdup: how the hell did a random leak happen ONLY to the wet market and none of the other superspreader sites in Wuhan? I could see it happening once as sheer luck/coincidence, and more or less balance out the coincidence needed on the other argument.
But twice? Independently and separated by a fortnight?
And that's why I keep coming back to that question.
Given this happened in China, how much of the official timeline can we actually believe?
This is the problem. There's no chain of trust for any of the supposed evidence.
In any case, surely if a lab leak could be countenanced once, why not twice? Having two strains of a novel virus turn up in the same place two weeks apart seems very odd.
“Hey guys, using the term ‘cultural Marxiism’ makes us sound like deranged, antisemitic dicks. How about ‘cultural socialism’?”
New term for "woke" or do they just mean "under the influence of being young"?
If the latter it's hard to see the remedy.
There is an answer to the problem of being young, albeit one that only takes effect gradually.
The harder question for the traditionalist right is whether the current young will turn into the current old, or into something else. The idea that the settlement defined by the current older generation might not last seems to send some commentators utterly potty.
I wonder if there will be a betting market on next year's Ukrainian Presidential Election. Klitschko might run as controlled opposition to Zelensky. Although that could turn from controlled to actual opposition as they fucking despise each other.
Poroshenko will definitely be back in the fray (probably backed by Russian money).
Unlike your beloved Russia, Ukraine is an actual democracy, so no need to control the opposition.
Though they could reasonably postpone the election until the war is over, as we did in WWII.
Pedantry: the UK didn't. The war was still very much happening in the Far East, CBI and Pacific.
Indeed, but the war for Britain [as in Britain itself being attacked/invaded] was over, even if the fighting continued abroad until Japan fell.
“Hey guys, using the term ‘cultural Marxiism’ makes us sound like deranged, antisemitic dicks. How about ‘cultural socialism’?”
New term for "woke" or do they just mean "under the influence of being young"?
If the latter it's hard to see the remedy.
There is an answer to the problem of being young, albeit one that only takes effect gradually.
The harder question for the traditionalist right is whether the current young will turn into the current old, or into something else. The idea that the settlement defined by the current older generation might not last seems to send some commentators utterly potty.
Quite. Just been reading an interview in the Graun by an actor who has his (legal) husband with him. When I were young, he'd be banged up in jail for that, twice over. Now, quite normal.
For those of us genuinely interested in what happened, it's quite fascinating to watch as experts who were originally leaning towards lab escape came around to zoonosis.
There were three who were most Lab Leak (Edward Holmes (self-described as 70/30 in favour of lab), Farrar ("50/50") and Kristian Anderson ("60/40")). Rather interestingly, two of those were lead authors on the article they got published in February 2020, which seems a pretty fair way of doing it.
You get to see them all considering hypotheses, ruling out deliberate bioengineering (wherever it came about, it evolved in the presence of an immune system), then considering deliberate "pass through" in lab animals (which could reconcile that). However, they then concluded that was unlikely, but also insisted in including it as a potential consideration in the article, even if only to show it had been seriously considered (there was a discussion on whether they'd spark off conspiracy theorists by including it, but insisted they had to cover it).
All of the three who had been leaning lab-leak have ended up coming down very firmly on the zoonosis side. To the point where the lab-leakers of the present dismiss them immediately by ad hominem.
I personally find it encouraging that not only did they very seriously consider it (and have those who most believed it plausible to lead the papers on it), but that my belief it was initially plausible wasn't completely out there.
It does end up damaging a nice story (simple - even simplistic - with convenient baddies and a two minute hate), but on the flip side, it does forewarn us of potential future SARS-like viruses (especially with the recent uncovering of so many bat coronaviruses: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.11.23.517609v1 )
I’m sorry, but this cannot pass. Here is your hero Edward Holmes on Twitter in May 2020. He’s just a fucking liar who does most of his work in China. Enough
Coming immediately on the heels of "To the point where the lab-leakers of the present dismiss them immediately by ad hominem," that's actively funny.
You are a victim of the fallacy that ad hominem arguments are automatically fallacious. In some circumstances, say being presented with an investment proposal by Bernie Madoff, they are valid, legitimate and compelling. Or, say, Farrar describing the lab security at Wuhan as "wild west."
My issue is that they never address the questions, simply coming up with these ad hominems.
"How did you get multiple independent releases into the wet market and only the wet market and none of the other more likely super-spreader sites in Wuhan?" doesn't really get answered by ad hominems. Or provide much illumination to those who want to know what really happened.
You still haven’t explained why Jeremy Farrar went from “lab leak is 50/50” to “lab leak is evil conspiracy theory” in 18 days
I am answered. Thank you. I never considered that as how it happened.
It’s all falling apart I’m afraid. One of the main scientists who has been pushing the wet market hypothesis for three years - she’s in those emails - has finally backtracked. Remember, she’s been claiming that “lab leak is debunked” all this time.
Her then:
Her now:
You don't get it.
I can be argued around to lab leak. Just get the key questions answered. I don't care about "he said, she said, he said." I don't care that over eighteen days of discussion, people came around from believing it plausible to seeing it as implausible (albeit those eighteen days of discussion might provide a clue as to why). Any more than I care that Isaac Newton was an arsehole who was a twat to Hooke, who insisted Leibniz stole his calculus (when Leibniz obviously came up with it first), and who firmly believed in alchemy, turning base metals into gold, and the like: his Laws of Motion either work or do not work (and they work).
My big issue is the one I've outlined, and all the "he said this at this point and that at that point," or "She was present when it was said to be debunked and has recently said simply she doesn't see that the evidence weighs in favour of it."
None of that answers the question or questions. If they're plausibly answered, then you can get me around.
Farrar didn’t change his mind. He made a ridiculous double back body flip from “50/50” to “conspiracy theory”. You’re too smart not to see the insanity of this
Or maybe you aren’t that smart, and you’re just good with numbers
But I do not wish to be unkind and you’ve been a great source on Covid, and I’ll ascribe your myopia to wilful naivety with good intentions. You like science and scientists and hate the idea they might have caused a pandemic so it’s clouding your judgement. Hey Ho
Now I must get to my flints. Good day
You are ascribing characteristics to Andy that you have no idea that he has and slightly insulting ones at that. Scientists tend to rely on evidence so don't generally have as much clouded judgement compared to the general population (although it happens obviously). It seems to me he would just prefer to see some facts and not nonsense stuff like he describes as 'he said, she said, he said' which tends to be the line of people putting forward conspiracies.
How about trying not to do this stuff and present evidence.
I have no idea which source is correct, but my judgement IS often clouded when I see stuff like 'he said, she said' from someone who often comes out with conspiracies.
Yeah, I just want to know what the facts are. Not what he said-she-said or whatever.
My stance was:
- Starting point: All the millions of viruses throughout history (MERS, SARS, HKU1, Ebola, Rabies, Lassa, smallpox and other poxes, various influenzas, measles, mumps, rubella, polio, rotavirus, etc, etc, etc) have come through zoonosis. So it's a very well established channel and, as this is the way it's happened literally every time before, the default will be to look at this. - However: There was a virus research lab very close to where this one sparked off. Covering similar viruses. It's therefore natural to think: maybe they're linked? Bioengineering? Accidental leak?
So my starting point was that both were plausible.
There was a flurry of articles and points that purported to point to an artificial origin. The furin cleavage site was the biggest such. Later on, claims of finding "fingerprints" in it. However, the FCS turned out to be not at all a smoking gun (given that many coronaviruses have them, it could even be that when you see a coronavirus in humans, if it's evolved an FCS, it helps it to make the jump. Like with MERS, HKU1, and now SARS-CoV-2). And the "fingerprints" one fell apart rapidly.
The bit that's really pushed me away from lab leak and towards zoonosis (at the moment!) is the tracing of the spark. The fact that there are two separate strains (A and and both sparked separately at the wet market and nowhere else means that it looks even more implausible a coincidence that it could be a lab leak. Which is some going (given that it's a big coincidence, in my mind, for it to happen close to such a lab). So that's my big holdup: how the hell did a random leak happen ONLY to the wet market and none of the other superspreader sites in Wuhan? I could see it happening once as sheer luck/coincidence, and more or less balance out the coincidence needed on the other argument.
But twice? Independently and separated by a fortnight?
And that's why I keep coming back to that question.
Given this happened in China, how much of the official timeline can we actually believe?
This is the problem. There's no chain of trust for any of the supposed evidence.
In any case, surely if a lab leak could be countenanced once, why not twice? Having two strains of a novel virus turn up in the same place two weeks apart seems very odd.
That doesn't in itself prove anything, to be sure, as it could be circulating in the local 'wildlife' (including the market merchandise). And the presence of many different animals of different sources is potentially highly significant, because of the scope for recombination of different viral strains.
For those of us genuinely interested in what happened, it's quite fascinating to watch as experts who were originally leaning towards lab escape came around to zoonosis.
There were three who were most Lab Leak (Edward Holmes (self-described as 70/30 in favour of lab), Farrar ("50/50") and Kristian Anderson ("60/40")). Rather interestingly, two of those were lead authors on the article they got published in February 2020, which seems a pretty fair way of doing it.
You get to see them all considering hypotheses, ruling out deliberate bioengineering (wherever it came about, it evolved in the presence of an immune system), then considering deliberate "pass through" in lab animals (which could reconcile that). However, they then concluded that was unlikely, but also insisted in including it as a potential consideration in the article, even if only to show it had been seriously considered (there was a discussion on whether they'd spark off conspiracy theorists by including it, but insisted they had to cover it).
All of the three who had been leaning lab-leak have ended up coming down very firmly on the zoonosis side. To the point where the lab-leakers of the present dismiss them immediately by ad hominem.
I personally find it encouraging that not only did they very seriously consider it (and have those who most believed it plausible to lead the papers on it), but that my belief it was initially plausible wasn't completely out there.
It does end up damaging a nice story (simple - even simplistic - with convenient baddies and a two minute hate), but on the flip side, it does forewarn us of potential future SARS-like viruses (especially with the recent uncovering of so many bat coronaviruses: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.11.23.517609v1 )
I’m sorry, but this cannot pass. Here is your hero Edward Holmes on Twitter in May 2020. He’s just a fucking liar who does most of his work in China. Enough
Coming immediately on the heels of "To the point where the lab-leakers of the present dismiss them immediately by ad hominem," that's actively funny.
You are a victim of the fallacy that ad hominem arguments are automatically fallacious. In some circumstances, say being presented with an investment proposal by Bernie Madoff, they are valid, legitimate and compelling. Or, say, Farrar describing the lab security at Wuhan as "wild west."
My issue is that they never address the questions, simply coming up with these ad hominems.
"How did you get multiple independent releases into the wet market and only the wet market and none of the other more likely super-spreader sites in Wuhan?" doesn't really get answered by ad hominems. Or provide much illumination to those who want to know what really happened.
You still haven’t explained why Jeremy Farrar went from “lab leak is 50/50” to “lab leak is evil conspiracy theory” in 18 days
I am answered. Thank you. I never considered that as how it happened.
It’s all falling apart I’m afraid. One of the main scientists who has been pushing the wet market hypothesis for three years - she’s in those emails - has finally backtracked. Remember, she’s been claiming that “lab leak is debunked” all this time.
Her then:
Her now:
You don't get it.
I can be argued around to lab leak. Just get the key questions answered. I don't care about "he said, she said, he said." I don't care that over eighteen days of discussion, people came around from believing it plausible to seeing it as implausible (albeit those eighteen days of discussion might provide a clue as to why). Any more than I care that Isaac Newton was an arsehole who was a twat to Hooke, who insisted Leibniz stole his calculus (when Leibniz obviously came up with it first), and who firmly believed in alchemy, turning base metals into gold, and the like: his Laws of Motion either work or do not work (and they work).
My big issue is the one I've outlined, and all the "he said this at this point and that at that point," or "She was present when it was said to be debunked and has recently said simply she doesn't see that the evidence weighs in favour of it."
None of that answers the question or questions. If they're plausibly answered, then you can get me around.
Farrar didn’t change his mind. He made a ridiculous double back body flip from “50/50” to “conspiracy theory”. You’re too smart not to see the insanity of this
Or maybe you aren’t that smart, and you’re just good with numbers
But I do not wish to be unkind and you’ve been a great source on Covid, and I’ll ascribe your myopia to wilful naivety with good intentions. You like science and scientists and hate the idea they might have caused a pandemic so it’s clouding your judgement. Hey Ho
Now I must get to my flints. Good day
You are ascribing characteristics to Andy that you have no idea that he has and slightly insulting ones at that. Scientists tend to rely on evidence so don't generally have as much clouded judgement compared to the general population (although it happens obviously). It seems to me he would just prefer to see some facts and not nonsense stuff like he describes as 'he said, she said, he said' which tends to be the line of people putting forward conspiracies.
How about trying not to do this stuff and present evidence.
I have no idea which source is correct, but my judgement IS often clouded when I see stuff like 'he said, she said' from someone who often comes out with conspiracies.
Yeah, I just want to know what the facts are. Not what he said-she-said or whatever.
My stance was:
- Starting point: All the millions of viruses throughout history (MERS, SARS, HKU1, Ebola, Rabies, Lassa, smallpox and other poxes, various influenzas, measles, mumps, rubella, polio, rotavirus, etc, etc, etc) have come through zoonosis. So it's a very well established channel and, as this is the way it's happened literally every time before, the default will be to look at this. - However: There was a virus research lab very close to where this one sparked off. Covering similar viruses. It's therefore natural to think: maybe they're linked? Bioengineering? Accidental leak?
So my starting point was that both were plausible.
There was a flurry of articles and points that purported to point to an artificial origin. The furin cleavage site was the biggest such. Later on, claims of finding "fingerprints" in it. However, the FCS turned out to be not at all a smoking gun (given that many coronaviruses have them, it could even be that when you see a coronavirus in humans, if it's evolved an FCS, it helps it to make the jump. Like with MERS, HKU1, and now SARS-CoV-2). And the "fingerprints" one fell apart rapidly.
The bit that's really pushed me away from lab leak and towards zoonosis (at the moment!) is the tracing of the spark. The fact that there are two separate strains (A and and both sparked separately at the wet market and nowhere else means that it looks even more implausible a coincidence that it could be a lab leak. Which is some going (given that it's a big coincidence, in my mind, for it to happen close to such a lab). So that's my big holdup: how the hell did a random leak happen ONLY to the wet market and none of the other superspreader sites in Wuhan? I could see it happening once as sheer luck/coincidence, and more or less balance out the coincidence needed on the other argument.
But twice? Independently and separated by a fortnight?
And that's why I keep coming back to that question.
That makes lab leak much more likely, not less, to me.
If it was leaking from the lab to the market then that could very plausibly have happened twice. If its accidental and there's lax security a flaw that's happened once can happen twice, if its deliberate a deliberate action once can happen twice.
If it was natural zoonosis then why would that happen coincidentally twice in the same place? And if its not a coincidence, then it is equally possibly not a coincidence with a leak.
Lightning striking twice two weeks apart in the same place makes man-made actions much more likely than just random nature.
If it came from an animal, then delivery of similar animals from the same source to the wet market is not only feasible, but likely. If it's been circulating in an animal reservoir, that's what you'd expect. You get multiple strains of viruses coming over zoonotically fairly regularly.
If it came from lax security, what happened? Someone deliberately and knowingly sent an infected animal to the market? Twice? And only twice? How come there weren't smaller sparks that fell apart previously of other coronaviruses?
If Trump keeps his hold on the Republican party despite the failures of the 2022 elections then Biden's age is neutralised and I think he runs again and wins. If, however, the Republicans finally recognise Trump for the loser he is and goes on to the next generation or even the generation after in De Santos, Biden will be deeply exposed. Let's face it, he was hardly articulate 20 years ago.
I very much doubt that the US as a whole is ready for an openly gay man, however articulate and capable he is, and Harris is clearly already over promoted.
With primaries kicking in in early 2024, decision time will be by next autumn at latest, on the facts on the ground at that point, both in terms of how Biden feels about running and what the Republican race is shaping up like. The Dems will not know which of the Republican nominees is likely and may not fully know Trump's prospects at the point Biden needs to announce.
The indications are he still wants the second term, so something has to change in the next 9 months with Biden's thinking, whilst over the months following that it would need a serious health event to change that course of his nomination.
If he wants it and doesn't have a specific health event, he gets it. That is the percentage to assess and I think it is probably higher than 45%.
And, I'll bring in my standard take on US presidents, that the uniting quality of pretty much every single US President post-Nixon, spanning many different characters and manifesting in different ways, was a certain affability, a whimsical quality, a perception of bar room agreeability. Biden's advancing age does little to dim that, perhaps the opposite.
Something in that, yet George Bush Senior mostly lacked that charm, and won. Trump entirely lacks it, and won
Biden is already unpopular and will grow less popular as he heads for serious, crotchetty old age
Checking back in with the thread.
No, I don't think Trump lacked it at all. He was clearly not a good man in any sense, but his off script speaking was often whimsical and homespun sounding and, for those of MAGA disposition, he spoke the language of the bar room, even if a brawl might never have been far away
Hilary not so much, and I suspect any female president will need to appear like she knows one end of a pool cue from the other.
For those of us genuinely interested in what happened, it's quite fascinating to watch as experts who were originally leaning towards lab escape came around to zoonosis.
There were three who were most Lab Leak (Edward Holmes (self-described as 70/30 in favour of lab), Farrar ("50/50") and Kristian Anderson ("60/40")). Rather interestingly, two of those were lead authors on the article they got published in February 2020, which seems a pretty fair way of doing it.
You get to see them all considering hypotheses, ruling out deliberate bioengineering (wherever it came about, it evolved in the presence of an immune system), then considering deliberate "pass through" in lab animals (which could reconcile that). However, they then concluded that was unlikely, but also insisted in including it as a potential consideration in the article, even if only to show it had been seriously considered (there was a discussion on whether they'd spark off conspiracy theorists by including it, but insisted they had to cover it).
All of the three who had been leaning lab-leak have ended up coming down very firmly on the zoonosis side. To the point where the lab-leakers of the present dismiss them immediately by ad hominem.
I personally find it encouraging that not only did they very seriously consider it (and have those who most believed it plausible to lead the papers on it), but that my belief it was initially plausible wasn't completely out there.
It does end up damaging a nice story (simple - even simplistic - with convenient baddies and a two minute hate), but on the flip side, it does forewarn us of potential future SARS-like viruses (especially with the recent uncovering of so many bat coronaviruses: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.11.23.517609v1 )
I’m sorry, but this cannot pass. Here is your hero Edward Holmes on Twitter in May 2020. He’s just a fucking liar who does most of his work in China. Enough
Coming immediately on the heels of "To the point where the lab-leakers of the present dismiss them immediately by ad hominem," that's actively funny.
You are a victim of the fallacy that ad hominem arguments are automatically fallacious. In some circumstances, say being presented with an investment proposal by Bernie Madoff, they are valid, legitimate and compelling. Or, say, Farrar describing the lab security at Wuhan as "wild west."
My issue is that they never address the questions, simply coming up with these ad hominems.
"How did you get multiple independent releases into the wet market and only the wet market and none of the other more likely super-spreader sites in Wuhan?" doesn't really get answered by ad hominems. Or provide much illumination to those who want to know what really happened.
You still haven’t explained why Jeremy Farrar went from “lab leak is 50/50” to “lab leak is evil conspiracy theory” in 18 days
I am answered. Thank you. I never considered that as how it happened.
It’s all falling apart I’m afraid. One of the main scientists who has been pushing the wet market hypothesis for three years - she’s in those emails - has finally backtracked. Remember, she’s been claiming that “lab leak is debunked” all this time.
Her then:
Her now:
You don't get it.
I can be argued around to lab leak. Just get the key questions answered. I don't care about "he said, she said, he said." I don't care that over eighteen days of discussion, people came around from believing it plausible to seeing it as implausible (albeit those eighteen days of discussion might provide a clue as to why). Any more than I care that Isaac Newton was an arsehole who was a twat to Hooke, who insisted Leibniz stole his calculus (when Leibniz obviously came up with it first), and who firmly believed in alchemy, turning base metals into gold, and the like: his Laws of Motion either work or do not work (and they work).
My big issue is the one I've outlined, and all the "he said this at this point and that at that point," or "She was present when it was said to be debunked and has recently said simply she doesn't see that the evidence weighs in favour of it."
None of that answers the question or questions. If they're plausibly answered, then you can get me around.
Farrar didn’t change his mind. He made a ridiculous double back body flip from “50/50” to “conspiracy theory”. You’re too smart not to see the insanity of this
Or maybe you aren’t that smart, and you’re just good with numbers
But I do not wish to be unkind and you’ve been a great source on Covid, and I’ll ascribe your myopia to wilful naivety with good intentions. You like science and scientists and hate the idea they might have caused a pandemic so it’s clouding your judgement. Hey Ho
Now I must get to my flints. Good day
You are ascribing characteristics to Andy that you have no idea that he has and slightly insulting ones at that. Scientists tend to rely on evidence so don't generally have as much clouded judgement compared to the general population (although it happens obviously). It seems to me he would just prefer to see some facts and not nonsense stuff like he describes as 'he said, she said, he said' which tends to be the line of people putting forward conspiracies.
How about trying not to do this stuff and present evidence.
I have no idea which source is correct, but my judgement IS often clouded when I see stuff like 'he said, she said' from someone who often comes out with conspiracies.
Yeah, I just want to know what the facts are. Not what he said-she-said or whatever.
My stance was:
- Starting point: All the millions of viruses throughout history (MERS, SARS, HKU1, Ebola, Rabies, Lassa, smallpox and other poxes, various influenzas, measles, mumps, rubella, polio, rotavirus, etc, etc, etc) have come through zoonosis. So it's a very well established channel and, as this is the way it's happened literally every time before, the default will be to look at this. - However: There was a virus research lab very close to where this one sparked off. Covering similar viruses. It's therefore natural to think: maybe they're linked? Bioengineering? Accidental leak?
So my starting point was that both were plausible.
There was a flurry of articles and points that purported to point to an artificial origin. The furin cleavage site was the biggest such. Later on, claims of finding "fingerprints" in it. However, the FCS turned out to be not at all a smoking gun (given that many coronaviruses have them, it could even be that when you see a coronavirus in humans, if it's evolved an FCS, it helps it to make the jump. Like with MERS, HKU1, and now SARS-CoV-2). And the "fingerprints" one fell apart rapidly.
The bit that's really pushed me away from lab leak and towards zoonosis (at the moment!) is the tracing of the spark. The fact that there are two separate strains (A and and both sparked separately at the wet market and nowhere else means that it looks even more implausible a coincidence that it could be a lab leak. Which is some going (given that it's a big coincidence, in my mind, for it to happen close to such a lab). So that's my big holdup: how the hell did a random leak happen ONLY to the wet market and none of the other superspreader sites in Wuhan? I could see it happening once as sheer luck/coincidence, and more or less balance out the coincidence needed on the other argument.
But twice? Independently and separated by a fortnight?
And that's why I keep coming back to that question.
That makes lab leak much more likely, not less, to me.
If it was leaking from the lab to the market then that could very plausibly have happened twice. If its accidental and there's lax security a flaw that's happened once can happen twice, if its deliberate a deliberate action once can happen twice.
If it was natural zoonosis then why would that happen coincidentally twice in the same place? And if its not a coincidence, then it is equally possibly not a coincidence with a leak.
Lightning striking twice two weeks apart in the same place makes man-made actions much more likely than just random nature.
If it came from an animal, then delivery of similar animals from the same source to the wet market is not only feasible, but likely. If it's been circulating in an animal reservoir, that's what you'd expect. You get multiple strains of viruses coming over zoonotically fairly regularly.
If it came from lax security, what happened? Someone deliberately and knowingly sent an infected animal to the market? Twice? And only twice? How come there weren't smaller sparks that fell apart previously of other coronaviruses?
For those of us genuinely interested in what happened, it's quite fascinating to watch as experts who were originally leaning towards lab escape came around to zoonosis.
There were three who were most Lab Leak (Edward Holmes (self-described as 70/30 in favour of lab), Farrar ("50/50") and Kristian Anderson ("60/40")). Rather interestingly, two of those were lead authors on the article they got published in February 2020, which seems a pretty fair way of doing it.
You get to see them all considering hypotheses, ruling out deliberate bioengineering (wherever it came about, it evolved in the presence of an immune system), then considering deliberate "pass through" in lab animals (which could reconcile that). However, they then concluded that was unlikely, but also insisted in including it as a potential consideration in the article, even if only to show it had been seriously considered (there was a discussion on whether they'd spark off conspiracy theorists by including it, but insisted they had to cover it).
All of the three who had been leaning lab-leak have ended up coming down very firmly on the zoonosis side. To the point where the lab-leakers of the present dismiss them immediately by ad hominem.
I personally find it encouraging that not only did they very seriously consider it (and have those who most believed it plausible to lead the papers on it), but that my belief it was initially plausible wasn't completely out there.
It does end up damaging a nice story (simple - even simplistic - with convenient baddies and a two minute hate), but on the flip side, it does forewarn us of potential future SARS-like viruses (especially with the recent uncovering of so many bat coronaviruses: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.11.23.517609v1 )
I’m sorry, but this cannot pass. Here is your hero Edward Holmes on Twitter in May 2020. He’s just a fucking liar who does most of his work in China. Enough
Coming immediately on the heels of "To the point where the lab-leakers of the present dismiss them immediately by ad hominem," that's actively funny.
You are a victim of the fallacy that ad hominem arguments are automatically fallacious. In some circumstances, say being presented with an investment proposal by Bernie Madoff, they are valid, legitimate and compelling. Or, say, Farrar describing the lab security at Wuhan as "wild west."
My issue is that they never address the questions, simply coming up with these ad hominems.
"How did you get multiple independent releases into the wet market and only the wet market and none of the other more likely super-spreader sites in Wuhan?" doesn't really get answered by ad hominems. Or provide much illumination to those who want to know what really happened.
You still haven’t explained why Jeremy Farrar went from “lab leak is 50/50” to “lab leak is evil conspiracy theory” in 18 days
I am answered. Thank you. I never considered that as how it happened.
It’s all falling apart I’m afraid. One of the main scientists who has been pushing the wet market hypothesis for three years - she’s in those emails - has finally backtracked. Remember, she’s been claiming that “lab leak is debunked” all this time.
Her then:
Her now:
You don't get it.
I can be argued around to lab leak. Just get the key questions answered. I don't care about "he said, she said, he said." I don't care that over eighteen days of discussion, people came around from believing it plausible to seeing it as implausible (albeit those eighteen days of discussion might provide a clue as to why). Any more than I care that Isaac Newton was an arsehole who was a twat to Hooke, who insisted Leibniz stole his calculus (when Leibniz obviously came up with it first), and who firmly believed in alchemy, turning base metals into gold, and the like: his Laws of Motion either work or do not work (and they work).
My big issue is the one I've outlined, and all the "he said this at this point and that at that point," or "She was present when it was said to be debunked and has recently said simply she doesn't see that the evidence weighs in favour of it."
None of that answers the question or questions. If they're plausibly answered, then you can get me around.
Farrar didn’t change his mind. He made a ridiculous double back body flip from “50/50” to “conspiracy theory”. You’re too smart not to see the insanity of this
Or maybe you aren’t that smart, and you’re just good with numbers
But I do not wish to be unkind and you’ve been a great source on Covid, and I’ll ascribe your myopia to wilful naivety with good intentions. You like science and scientists and hate the idea they might have caused a pandemic so it’s clouding your judgement. Hey Ho
Now I must get to my flints. Good day
You are ascribing characteristics to Andy that you have no idea that he has and slightly insulting ones at that. Scientists tend to rely on evidence so don't generally have as much clouded judgement compared to the general population (although it happens obviously). It seems to me he would just prefer to see some facts and not nonsense stuff like he describes as 'he said, she said, he said' which tends to be the line of people putting forward conspiracies.
How about trying not to do this stuff and present evidence.
I have no idea which source is correct, but my judgement IS often clouded when I see stuff like 'he said, she said' from someone who often comes out with conspiracies.
Yeah, I just want to know what the facts are. Not what he said-she-said or whatever.
My stance was:
- Starting point: All the millions of viruses throughout history (MERS, SARS, HKU1, Ebola, Rabies, Lassa, smallpox and other poxes, various influenzas, measles, mumps, rubella, polio, rotavirus, etc, etc, etc) have come through zoonosis. So it's a very well established channel and, as this is the way it's happened literally every time before, the default will be to look at this. - However: There was a virus research lab very close to where this one sparked off. Covering similar viruses. It's therefore natural to think: maybe they're linked? Bioengineering? Accidental leak?
So my starting point was that both were plausible.
There was a flurry of articles and points that purported to point to an artificial origin. The furin cleavage site was the biggest such. Later on, claims of finding "fingerprints" in it. However, the FCS turned out to be not at all a smoking gun (given that many coronaviruses have them, it could even be that when you see a coronavirus in humans, if it's evolved an FCS, it helps it to make the jump. Like with MERS, HKU1, and now SARS-CoV-2). And the "fingerprints" one fell apart rapidly.
The bit that's really pushed me away from lab leak and towards zoonosis (at the moment!) is the tracing of the spark. The fact that there are two separate strains (A and and both sparked separately at the wet market and nowhere else means that it looks even more implausible a coincidence that it could be a lab leak. Which is some going (given that it's a big coincidence, in my mind, for it to happen close to such a lab). So that's my big holdup: how the hell did a random leak happen ONLY to the wet market and none of the other superspreader sites in Wuhan? I could see it happening once as sheer luck/coincidence, and more or less balance out the coincidence needed on the other argument.
But twice? Independently and separated by a fortnight?
And that's why I keep coming back to that question.
Given this happened in China, how much of the official timeline can we actually believe?
This is the problem. There's no chain of trust for any of the supposed evidence.
In any case, surely if a lab leak could be countenanced once, why not twice? Having two strains of a novel virus turn up in the same place two weeks apart seems very odd.
That doesn't in itself prove anything, to be sure, as it could be circulating in the local 'wildlife' (including the market merchandise). And the presence of many different animals of different sources is potentially highly significant, because of the scope for recombination of different viral strains.
No, I agree. I don't think anyone has or is likely to produce any definitive evidence any time soon.
I don't think either side will ever be proven right unless someone already knows and isn't yet telling.
For those of us genuinely interested in what happened, it's quite fascinating to watch as experts who were originally leaning towards lab escape came around to zoonosis.
There were three who were most Lab Leak (Edward Holmes (self-described as 70/30 in favour of lab), Farrar ("50/50") and Kristian Anderson ("60/40")). Rather interestingly, two of those were lead authors on the article they got published in February 2020, which seems a pretty fair way of doing it.
You get to see them all considering hypotheses, ruling out deliberate bioengineering (wherever it came about, it evolved in the presence of an immune system), then considering deliberate "pass through" in lab animals (which could reconcile that). However, they then concluded that was unlikely, but also insisted in including it as a potential consideration in the article, even if only to show it had been seriously considered (there was a discussion on whether they'd spark off conspiracy theorists by including it, but insisted they had to cover it).
All of the three who had been leaning lab-leak have ended up coming down very firmly on the zoonosis side. To the point where the lab-leakers of the present dismiss them immediately by ad hominem.
I personally find it encouraging that not only did they very seriously consider it (and have those who most believed it plausible to lead the papers on it), but that my belief it was initially plausible wasn't completely out there.
It does end up damaging a nice story (simple - even simplistic - with convenient baddies and a two minute hate), but on the flip side, it does forewarn us of potential future SARS-like viruses (especially with the recent uncovering of so many bat coronaviruses: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.11.23.517609v1 )
I’m sorry, but this cannot pass. Here is your hero Edward Holmes on Twitter in May 2020. He’s just a fucking liar who does most of his work in China. Enough
Coming immediately on the heels of "To the point where the lab-leakers of the present dismiss them immediately by ad hominem," that's actively funny.
You are a victim of the fallacy that ad hominem arguments are automatically fallacious. In some circumstances, say being presented with an investment proposal by Bernie Madoff, they are valid, legitimate and compelling. Or, say, Farrar describing the lab security at Wuhan as "wild west."
My issue is that they never address the questions, simply coming up with these ad hominems.
"How did you get multiple independent releases into the wet market and only the wet market and none of the other more likely super-spreader sites in Wuhan?" doesn't really get answered by ad hominems. Or provide much illumination to those who want to know what really happened.
You still haven’t explained why Jeremy Farrar went from “lab leak is 50/50” to “lab leak is evil conspiracy theory” in 18 days
I am answered. Thank you. I never considered that as how it happened.
It’s all falling apart I’m afraid. One of the main scientists who has been pushing the wet market hypothesis for three years - she’s in those emails - has finally backtracked. Remember, she’s been claiming that “lab leak is debunked” all this time.
Her then:
Her now:
You don't get it.
I can be argued around to lab leak. Just get the key questions answered. I don't care about "he said, she said, he said." I don't care that over eighteen days of discussion, people came around from believing it plausible to seeing it as implausible (albeit those eighteen days of discussion might provide a clue as to why). Any more than I care that Isaac Newton was an arsehole who was a twat to Hooke, who insisted Leibniz stole his calculus (when Leibniz obviously came up with it first), and who firmly believed in alchemy, turning base metals into gold, and the like: his Laws of Motion either work or do not work (and they work).
My big issue is the one I've outlined, and all the "he said this at this point and that at that point," or "She was present when it was said to be debunked and has recently said simply she doesn't see that the evidence weighs in favour of it."
None of that answers the question or questions. If they're plausibly answered, then you can get me around.
Farrar didn’t change his mind. He made a ridiculous double back body flip from “50/50” to “conspiracy theory”. You’re too smart not to see the insanity of this
Or maybe you aren’t that smart, and you’re just good with numbers
But I do not wish to be unkind and you’ve been a great source on Covid, and I’ll ascribe your myopia to wilful naivety with good intentions. You like science and scientists and hate the idea they might have caused a pandemic so it’s clouding your judgement. Hey Ho
Now I must get to my flints. Good day
You are ascribing characteristics to Andy that you have no idea that he has and slightly insulting ones at that. Scientists tend to rely on evidence so don't generally have as much clouded judgement compared to the general population (although it happens obviously). It seems to me he would just prefer to see some facts and not nonsense stuff like he describes as 'he said, she said, he said' which tends to be the line of people putting forward conspiracies.
How about trying not to do this stuff and present evidence.
I have no idea which source is correct, but my judgement IS often clouded when I see stuff like 'he said, she said' from someone who often comes out with conspiracies.
Yeah, I just want to know what the facts are. Not what he said-she-said or whatever.
My stance was:
- Starting point: All the millions of viruses throughout history (MERS, SARS, HKU1, Ebola, Rabies, Lassa, smallpox and other poxes, various influenzas, measles, mumps, rubella, polio, rotavirus, etc, etc, etc) have come through zoonosis. So it's a very well established channel and, as this is the way it's happened literally every time before, the default will be to look at this. - However: There was a virus research lab very close to where this one sparked off. Covering similar viruses. It's therefore natural to think: maybe they're linked? Bioengineering? Accidental leak?
So my starting point was that both were plausible.
There was a flurry of articles and points that purported to point to an artificial origin. The furin cleavage site was the biggest such. Later on, claims of finding "fingerprints" in it. However, the FCS turned out to be not at all a smoking gun (given that many coronaviruses have them, it could even be that when you see a coronavirus in humans, if it's evolved an FCS, it helps it to make the jump. Like with MERS, HKU1, and now SARS-CoV-2). And the "fingerprints" one fell apart rapidly.
The bit that's really pushed me away from lab leak and towards zoonosis (at the moment!) is the tracing of the spark. The fact that there are two separate strains (A and and both sparked separately at the wet market and nowhere else means that it looks even more implausible a coincidence that it could be a lab leak. Which is some going (given that it's a big coincidence, in my mind, for it to happen close to such a lab). So that's my big holdup: how the hell did a random leak happen ONLY to the wet market and none of the other superspreader sites in Wuhan? I could see it happening once as sheer luck/coincidence, and more or less balance out the coincidence needed on the other argument.
But twice? Independently and separated by a fortnight?
And that's why I keep coming back to that question.
That makes lab leak much more likely, not less, to me.
If it was leaking from the lab to the market then that could very plausibly have happened twice. If its accidental and there's lax security a flaw that's happened once can happen twice, if its deliberate a deliberate action once can happen twice.
If it was natural zoonosis then why would that happen coincidentally twice in the same place? And if its not a coincidence, then it is equally possibly not a coincidence with a leak.
Lightning striking twice two weeks apart in the same place makes man-made actions much more likely than just random nature.
If it came from an animal, then delivery of similar animals from the same source to the wet market is not only feasible, but likely. If it's been circulating in an animal reservoir, that's what you'd expect. You get multiple strains of viruses coming over zoonotically fairly regularly.
If it came from lax security, what happened? Someone deliberately and knowingly sent an infected animal to the market? Twice? And only twice? How come there weren't smaller sparks that fell apart previously of other coronaviruses?
Added: bear in mind that both SARS and MERS involved multiple zoonotic introductions.
For those of us genuinely interested in what happened, it's quite fascinating to watch as experts who were originally leaning towards lab escape came around to zoonosis.
There were three who were most Lab Leak (Edward Holmes (self-described as 70/30 in favour of lab), Farrar ("50/50") and Kristian Anderson ("60/40")). Rather interestingly, two of those were lead authors on the article they got published in February 2020, which seems a pretty fair way of doing it.
You get to see them all considering hypotheses, ruling out deliberate bioengineering (wherever it came about, it evolved in the presence of an immune system), then considering deliberate "pass through" in lab animals (which could reconcile that). However, they then concluded that was unlikely, but also insisted in including it as a potential consideration in the article, even if only to show it had been seriously considered (there was a discussion on whether they'd spark off conspiracy theorists by including it, but insisted they had to cover it).
All of the three who had been leaning lab-leak have ended up coming down very firmly on the zoonosis side. To the point where the lab-leakers of the present dismiss them immediately by ad hominem.
I personally find it encouraging that not only did they very seriously consider it (and have those who most believed it plausible to lead the papers on it), but that my belief it was initially plausible wasn't completely out there.
It does end up damaging a nice story (simple - even simplistic - with convenient baddies and a two minute hate), but on the flip side, it does forewarn us of potential future SARS-like viruses (especially with the recent uncovering of so many bat coronaviruses: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.11.23.517609v1 )
I’m sorry, but this cannot pass. Here is your hero Edward Holmes on Twitter in May 2020. He’s just a fucking liar who does most of his work in China. Enough
Coming immediately on the heels of "To the point where the lab-leakers of the present dismiss them immediately by ad hominem," that's actively funny.
You are a victim of the fallacy that ad hominem arguments are automatically fallacious. In some circumstances, say being presented with an investment proposal by Bernie Madoff, they are valid, legitimate and compelling. Or, say, Farrar describing the lab security at Wuhan as "wild west."
My issue is that they never address the questions, simply coming up with these ad hominems.
"How did you get multiple independent releases into the wet market and only the wet market and none of the other more likely super-spreader sites in Wuhan?" doesn't really get answered by ad hominems. Or provide much illumination to those who want to know what really happened.
You still haven’t explained why Jeremy Farrar went from “lab leak is 50/50” to “lab leak is evil conspiracy theory” in 18 days
I am answered. Thank you. I never considered that as how it happened.
It’s all falling apart I’m afraid. One of the main scientists who has been pushing the wet market hypothesis for three years - she’s in those emails - has finally backtracked. Remember, she’s been claiming that “lab leak is debunked” all this time.
Her then:
Her now:
You don't get it.
I can be argued around to lab leak. Just get the key questions answered. I don't care about "he said, she said, he said." I don't care that over eighteen days of discussion, people came around from believing it plausible to seeing it as implausible (albeit those eighteen days of discussion might provide a clue as to why). Any more than I care that Isaac Newton was an arsehole who was a twat to Hooke, who insisted Leibniz stole his calculus (when Leibniz obviously came up with it first), and who firmly believed in alchemy, turning base metals into gold, and the like: his Laws of Motion either work or do not work (and they work).
My big issue is the one I've outlined, and all the "he said this at this point and that at that point," or "She was present when it was said to be debunked and has recently said simply she doesn't see that the evidence weighs in favour of it."
None of that answers the question or questions. If they're plausibly answered, then you can get me around.
Farrar didn’t change his mind. He made a ridiculous double back body flip from “50/50” to “conspiracy theory”. You’re too smart not to see the insanity of this
Or maybe you aren’t that smart, and you’re just good with numbers
But I do not wish to be unkind and you’ve been a great source on Covid, and I’ll ascribe your myopia to wilful naivety with good intentions. You like science and scientists and hate the idea they might have caused a pandemic so it’s clouding your judgement. Hey Ho
Now I must get to my flints. Good day
You are ascribing characteristics to Andy that you have no idea that he has and slightly insulting ones at that. Scientists tend to rely on evidence so don't generally have as much clouded judgement compared to the general population (although it happens obviously). It seems to me he would just prefer to see some facts and not nonsense stuff like he describes as 'he said, she said, he said' which tends to be the line of people putting forward conspiracies.
How about trying not to do this stuff and present evidence.
I have no idea which source is correct, but my judgement IS often clouded when I see stuff like 'he said, she said' from someone who often comes out with conspiracies.
Yeah, I just want to know what the facts are. Not what he said-she-said or whatever.
My stance was:
- Starting point: All the millions of viruses throughout history (MERS, SARS, HKU1, Ebola, Rabies, Lassa, smallpox and other poxes, various influenzas, measles, mumps, rubella, polio, rotavirus, etc, etc, etc) have come through zoonosis. So it's a very well established channel and, as this is the way it's happened literally every time before, the default will be to look at this. - However: There was a virus research lab very close to where this one sparked off. Covering similar viruses. It's therefore natural to think: maybe they're linked? Bioengineering? Accidental leak?
So my starting point was that both were plausible.
There was a flurry of articles and points that purported to point to an artificial origin. The furin cleavage site was the biggest such. Later on, claims of finding "fingerprints" in it. However, the FCS turned out to be not at all a smoking gun (given that many coronaviruses have them, it could even be that when you see a coronavirus in humans, if it's evolved an FCS, it helps it to make the jump. Like with MERS, HKU1, and now SARS-CoV-2). And the "fingerprints" one fell apart rapidly.
The bit that's really pushed me away from lab leak and towards zoonosis (at the moment!) is the tracing of the spark. The fact that there are two separate strains (A and and both sparked separately at the wet market and nowhere else means that it looks even more implausible a coincidence that it could be a lab leak. Which is some going (given that it's a big coincidence, in my mind, for it to happen close to such a lab). So that's my big holdup: how the hell did a random leak happen ONLY to the wet market and none of the other superspreader sites in Wuhan? I could see it happening once as sheer luck/coincidence, and more or less balance out the coincidence needed on the other argument.
But twice? Independently and separated by a fortnight?
And that's why I keep coming back to that question.
That makes lab leak much more likely, not less, to me.
If it was leaking from the lab to the market then that could very plausibly have happened twice. If its accidental and there's lax security a flaw that's happened once can happen twice, if its deliberate a deliberate action once can happen twice.
If it was natural zoonosis then why would that happen coincidentally twice in the same place? And if its not a coincidence, then it is equally possibly not a coincidence with a leak.
Lightning striking twice two weeks apart in the same place makes man-made actions much more likely than just random nature.
If it came from an animal, then delivery of similar animals from the same source to the wet market is not only feasible, but likely. If it's been circulating in an animal reservoir, that's what you'd expect. You get multiple strains of viruses coming over zoonotically fairly regularly.
If it came from lax security, what happened? Someone deliberately and knowingly sent an infected animal to the market? Twice? And only twice? How come there weren't smaller sparks that fell apart previously of other coronaviruses?
There's many plausible explanations from a lab. Someone working on or with the virus samples certainly could have attended repeatedly the market near to where they worked. And a lab certainly could have multiple strains of whatever they're working with too.
As for your second question, you're taking a tremendous leap of faith that there weren't. Also that we can trust the word of the Chinese that this only sparked at the market and not anywhere else.
Given the Chinese tried to cover this up and its only due to the severe nature of the virus that they failed to do so, how many other sparks previously were they able to successfully cover up?
Occam's Razor says that the most likely behaviour given they tried to cover this up and got away with it for a while, is that they would have covered up previous sparks until there was finally one they failed to cover up.
“Hey guys, using the term ‘cultural Marxiism’ makes us sound like deranged, antisemitic dicks. How about ‘cultural socialism’?”
New term for "woke" or do they just mean "under the influence of being young"?
If the latter it's hard to see the remedy.
This stuff is nuts. If young people are left wing it's because the fundamentals - things like property ownership, climate change and Brexit - are pushing them that way. And in all seriousness, is there anything at all that the right has done recently to try to appeal to them? Anything? Or has the right simply played to their elderly base with socialism for pensioners and scorched earth Thatcherism for anyone under 40? Blaming "school indoctrination" when central government has greater control over the curriculum than at any time in history and the Tories have been in charge of it for the last decade is pure bollocks. If you want young people to be more right-wing, then change right-wing politics so it means something other than fuck the young.
For those of us genuinely interested in what happened, it's quite fascinating to watch as experts who were originally leaning towards lab escape came around to zoonosis.
There were three who were most Lab Leak (Edward Holmes (self-described as 70/30 in favour of lab), Farrar ("50/50") and Kristian Anderson ("60/40")). Rather interestingly, two of those were lead authors on the article they got published in February 2020, which seems a pretty fair way of doing it.
You get to see them all considering hypotheses, ruling out deliberate bioengineering (wherever it came about, it evolved in the presence of an immune system), then considering deliberate "pass through" in lab animals (which could reconcile that). However, they then concluded that was unlikely, but also insisted in including it as a potential consideration in the article, even if only to show it had been seriously considered (there was a discussion on whether they'd spark off conspiracy theorists by including it, but insisted they had to cover it).
All of the three who had been leaning lab-leak have ended up coming down very firmly on the zoonosis side. To the point where the lab-leakers of the present dismiss them immediately by ad hominem.
I personally find it encouraging that not only did they very seriously consider it (and have those who most believed it plausible to lead the papers on it), but that my belief it was initially plausible wasn't completely out there.
It does end up damaging a nice story (simple - even simplistic - with convenient baddies and a two minute hate), but on the flip side, it does forewarn us of potential future SARS-like viruses (especially with the recent uncovering of so many bat coronaviruses: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.11.23.517609v1 )
I’m sorry, but this cannot pass. Here is your hero Edward Holmes on Twitter in May 2020. He’s just a fucking liar who does most of his work in China. Enough
Coming immediately on the heels of "To the point where the lab-leakers of the present dismiss them immediately by ad hominem," that's actively funny.
You are a victim of the fallacy that ad hominem arguments are automatically fallacious. In some circumstances, say being presented with an investment proposal by Bernie Madoff, they are valid, legitimate and compelling. Or, say, Farrar describing the lab security at Wuhan as "wild west."
My issue is that they never address the questions, simply coming up with these ad hominems.
"How did you get multiple independent releases into the wet market and only the wet market and none of the other more likely super-spreader sites in Wuhan?" doesn't really get answered by ad hominems. Or provide much illumination to those who want to know what really happened.
You still haven’t explained why Jeremy Farrar went from “lab leak is 50/50” to “lab leak is evil conspiracy theory” in 18 days
I am answered. Thank you. I never considered that as how it happened.
It’s all falling apart I’m afraid. One of the main scientists who has been pushing the wet market hypothesis for three years - she’s in those emails - has finally backtracked. Remember, she’s been claiming that “lab leak is debunked” all this time.
Her then:
Her now:
You don't get it.
I can be argued around to lab leak. Just get the key questions answered. I don't care about "he said, she said, he said." I don't care that over eighteen days of discussion, people came around from believing it plausible to seeing it as implausible (albeit those eighteen days of discussion might provide a clue as to why). Any more than I care that Isaac Newton was an arsehole who was a twat to Hooke, who insisted Leibniz stole his calculus (when Leibniz obviously came up with it first), and who firmly believed in alchemy, turning base metals into gold, and the like: his Laws of Motion either work or do not work (and they work).
My big issue is the one I've outlined, and all the "he said this at this point and that at that point," or "She was present when it was said to be debunked and has recently said simply she doesn't see that the evidence weighs in favour of it."
None of that answers the question or questions. If they're plausibly answered, then you can get me around.
Farrar didn’t change his mind. He made a ridiculous double back body flip from “50/50” to “conspiracy theory”. You’re too smart not to see the insanity of this
Or maybe you aren’t that smart, and you’re just good with numbers
But I do not wish to be unkind and you’ve been a great source on Covid, and I’ll ascribe your myopia to wilful naivety with good intentions. You like science and scientists and hate the idea they might have caused a pandemic so it’s clouding your judgement. Hey Ho
Now I must get to my flints. Good day
You are ascribing characteristics to Andy that you have no idea that he has and slightly insulting ones at that. Scientists tend to rely on evidence so don't generally have as much clouded judgement compared to the general population (although it happens obviously). It seems to me he would just prefer to see some facts and not nonsense stuff like he describes as 'he said, she said, he said' which tends to be the line of people putting forward conspiracies.
How about trying not to do this stuff and present evidence.
I have no idea which source is correct, but my judgement IS often clouded when I see stuff like 'he said, she said' from someone who often comes out with conspiracies.
"Scientists tend to rely on evidence" is utter gibberish for starters. What job do you do that doesn't? Even if you are unemployed, life is a pretty evidence based enterprise anyway (water is falling on my head; this evidence of rain prompts me to put my umbrella up.) He is treating the non lab leak theory as the default from which he needs to be swayed, which is not an evidence-based position, and you are actually doing he said, she said stuff under the illusion that you are criticising it, in a beautiful example of circular logic.
That has to be one of the most bonkers posts I have ever seen.
Starting with the statement 'Scientists tend to rely on evidence is utter gibberish for starters'. Great start.
Then suggesting that everyone does. No they don't. Scientist rely on evidence much more than the rest of people do in every day life. It is sort of what science is. In everyday life we jump to conclusions all the time and there are masses of people out there who just ignore evidence completely. Astrologers for instance and of course conspiracy theories rely on ignoring evidence.
And nowhere did I use circular logic and nowhere did I rely on 'he says, she says'. God knows where you got that from.
“Hey guys, using the term ‘cultural Marxiism’ makes us sound like deranged, antisemitic dicks. How about ‘cultural socialism’?”
New term for "woke" or do they just mean "under the influence of being young"?
If the latter it's hard to see the remedy.
This stuff is nuts. If young people are left wing it's because the fundamentals - things like property ownership, climate change and Brexit - are pushing them that way. And in all seriousness, is there anything at all that the right has done recently to try to appeal to them? Anything? Or has the right simply played to their elderly base with socialism for pensioners and scorched earth Thatcherism for anyone under 40? Blaming "school indoctrination" when central government has greater control over the curriculum than at any time in history and the Tories have been in charge of it for the last decade is pure bollocks. If you want young people to be more right-wing, then change right-wing politics so it means something other than fuck the young.
David Cameron and Osborne did more for the young in six years than Blair and Brown did in 13.
The explosion in BTL and the explosion in house price to earnings ratios happened under Blair and Brown.
Cameron and Osborne introduced BTL taxes and liberated [by not enough to be fair] the planning system to encourage more building and had schemes like Help to Buy introduced to help the young onto the property ladder despite the damage Blair and Brown inflicted.
As a result young people being able to get their own home troughed after Blair and Brown and has been recovering a bit in recent years though much more still should be done of course.
Unfortunately the Tories don't seem to be doing anything much recently and Labour don't seem to be willing to turn their backs on the damage that Blair and Brown inflicted on the young.
“Hey guys, using the term ‘cultural Marxiism’ makes us sound like deranged, antisemitic dicks. How about ‘cultural socialism’?”
New term for "woke" or do they just mean "under the influence of being young"?
If the latter it's hard to see the remedy.
I think it's just a reflection of how hard it is nowadays to find a self-proclaimed socialist who actually cares about workers owning their means of production. "Socialism" seems to have transmogrified into a catch-all for whatever left-wing social policies are currently in vogue.
No doubt the same people believe anyone who lives in London is a capitalist, and seance goers are communists.
For those of us genuinely interested in what happened, it's quite fascinating to watch as experts who were originally leaning towards lab escape came around to zoonosis.
There were three who were most Lab Leak (Edward Holmes (self-described as 70/30 in favour of lab), Farrar ("50/50") and Kristian Anderson ("60/40")). Rather interestingly, two of those were lead authors on the article they got published in February 2020, which seems a pretty fair way of doing it.
You get to see them all considering hypotheses, ruling out deliberate bioengineering (wherever it came about, it evolved in the presence of an immune system), then considering deliberate "pass through" in lab animals (which could reconcile that). However, they then concluded that was unlikely, but also insisted in including it as a potential consideration in the article, even if only to show it had been seriously considered (there was a discussion on whether they'd spark off conspiracy theorists by including it, but insisted they had to cover it).
All of the three who had been leaning lab-leak have ended up coming down very firmly on the zoonosis side. To the point where the lab-leakers of the present dismiss them immediately by ad hominem.
I personally find it encouraging that not only did they very seriously consider it (and have those who most believed it plausible to lead the papers on it), but that my belief it was initially plausible wasn't completely out there.
It does end up damaging a nice story (simple - even simplistic - with convenient baddies and a two minute hate), but on the flip side, it does forewarn us of potential future SARS-like viruses (especially with the recent uncovering of so many bat coronaviruses: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.11.23.517609v1 )
I’m sorry, but this cannot pass. Here is your hero Edward Holmes on Twitter in May 2020. He’s just a fucking liar who does most of his work in China. Enough
Coming immediately on the heels of "To the point where the lab-leakers of the present dismiss them immediately by ad hominem," that's actively funny.
You are a victim of the fallacy that ad hominem arguments are automatically fallacious. In some circumstances, say being presented with an investment proposal by Bernie Madoff, they are valid, legitimate and compelling. Or, say, Farrar describing the lab security at Wuhan as "wild west."
My issue is that they never address the questions, simply coming up with these ad hominems.
"How did you get multiple independent releases into the wet market and only the wet market and none of the other more likely super-spreader sites in Wuhan?" doesn't really get answered by ad hominems. Or provide much illumination to those who want to know what really happened.
You still haven’t explained why Jeremy Farrar went from “lab leak is 50/50” to “lab leak is evil conspiracy theory” in 18 days
I am answered. Thank you. I never considered that as how it happened.
It’s all falling apart I’m afraid. One of the main scientists who has been pushing the wet market hypothesis for three years - she’s in those emails - has finally backtracked. Remember, she’s been claiming that “lab leak is debunked” all this time.
Her then:
Her now:
You don't get it.
I can be argued around to lab leak. Just get the key questions answered. I don't care about "he said, she said, he said." I don't care that over eighteen days of discussion, people came around from believing it plausible to seeing it as implausible (albeit those eighteen days of discussion might provide a clue as to why). Any more than I care that Isaac Newton was an arsehole who was a twat to Hooke, who insisted Leibniz stole his calculus (when Leibniz obviously came up with it first), and who firmly believed in alchemy, turning base metals into gold, and the like: his Laws of Motion either work or do not work (and they work).
My big issue is the one I've outlined, and all the "he said this at this point and that at that point," or "She was present when it was said to be debunked and has recently said simply she doesn't see that the evidence weighs in favour of it."
None of that answers the question or questions. If they're plausibly answered, then you can get me around.
Farrar didn’t change his mind. He made a ridiculous double back body flip from “50/50” to “conspiracy theory”. You’re too smart not to see the insanity of this
Or maybe you aren’t that smart, and you’re just good with numbers
But I do not wish to be unkind and you’ve been a great source on Covid, and I’ll ascribe your myopia to wilful naivety with good intentions. You like science and scientists and hate the idea they might have caused a pandemic so it’s clouding your judgement. Hey Ho
Now I must get to my flints. Good day
You are ascribing characteristics to Andy that you have no idea that he has and slightly insulting ones at that. Scientists tend to rely on evidence so don't generally have as much clouded judgement compared to the general population (although it happens obviously). It seems to me he would just prefer to see some facts and not nonsense stuff like he describes as 'he said, she said, he said' which tends to be the line of people putting forward conspiracies.
How about trying not to do this stuff and present evidence.
I have no idea which source is correct, but my judgement IS often clouded when I see stuff like 'he said, she said' from someone who often comes out with conspiracies.
Yeah, I just want to know what the facts are. Not what he said-she-said or whatever.
My stance was:
- Starting point: All the millions of viruses throughout history (MERS, SARS, HKU1, Ebola, Rabies, Lassa, smallpox and other poxes, various influenzas, measles, mumps, rubella, polio, rotavirus, etc, etc, etc) have come through zoonosis. So it's a very well established channel and, as this is the way it's happened literally every time before, the default will be to look at this. - However: There was a virus research lab very close to where this one sparked off. Covering similar viruses. It's therefore natural to think: maybe they're linked? Bioengineering? Accidental leak?
So my starting point was that both were plausible.
There was a flurry of articles and points that purported to point to an artificial origin. The furin cleavage site was the biggest such. Later on, claims of finding "fingerprints" in it. However, the FCS turned out to be not at all a smoking gun (given that many coronaviruses have them, it could even be that when you see a coronavirus in humans, if it's evolved an FCS, it helps it to make the jump. Like with MERS, HKU1, and now SARS-CoV-2). And the "fingerprints" one fell apart rapidly.
The bit that's really pushed me away from lab leak and towards zoonosis (at the moment!) is the tracing of the spark. The fact that there are two separate strains (A and and both sparked separately at the wet market and nowhere else means that it looks even more implausible a coincidence that it could be a lab leak. Which is some going (given that it's a big coincidence, in my mind, for it to happen close to such a lab). So that's my big holdup: how the hell did a random leak happen ONLY to the wet market and none of the other superspreader sites in Wuhan? I could see it happening once as sheer luck/coincidence, and more or less balance out the coincidence needed on the other argument.
But twice? Independently and separated by a fortnight?
And that's why I keep coming back to that question.
That makes lab leak much more likely, not less, to me.
If it was leaking from the lab to the market then that could very plausibly have happened twice. If its accidental and there's lax security a flaw that's happened once can happen twice, if its deliberate a deliberate action once can happen twice.
If it was natural zoonosis then why would that happen coincidentally twice in the same place? And if its not a coincidence, then it is equally possibly not a coincidence with a leak.
Lightning striking twice two weeks apart in the same place makes man-made actions much more likely than just random nature.
If it came from an animal, then delivery of similar animals from the same source to the wet market is not only feasible, but likely. If it's been circulating in an animal reservoir, that's what you'd expect. You get multiple strains of viruses coming over zoonotically fairly regularly.
If it came from lax security, what happened? Someone deliberately and knowingly sent an infected animal to the market? Twice? And only twice? How come there weren't smaller sparks that fell apart previously of other coronaviruses?
Lab employee side hustle selling bats to market.
Bear in mind this doesn't entail that "Someone deliberately and knowingly sent an infected animal to the market? Twice?" From what I understand the lab is shipping in random lots of bats, and testing them for viruses. No more or less random than other lots of bats shipped straight to the market. So diverting them *as they come in* is no riskier than the straight bats-for-food trade.
“Hey guys, using the term ‘cultural Marxiism’ makes us sound like deranged, antisemitic dicks. How about ‘cultural socialism’?”
New term for "woke" or do they just mean "under the influence of being young"?
If the latter it's hard to see the remedy.
This stuff is nuts. If young people are left wing it's because the fundamentals - things like property ownership, climate change and Brexit - are pushing them that way. And in all seriousness, is there anything at all that the right has done recently to try to appeal to them? Anything? Or has the right simply played to their elderly base with socialism for pensioners and scorched earth Thatcherism for anyone under 40? Blaming "school indoctrination" when central government has greater control over the curriculum than at any time in history and the Tories have been in charge of it for the last decade is pure bollocks. If you want young people to be more right-wing, then change right-wing politics so it means something other than fuck the young.
David Cameron and Osborne did more for the young in six years than Blair and Brown did in 13.
The explosion in BTL and the explosion in house price to earnings ratios happened under Blair and Brown.
Cameron and Osborne introduced BTL taxes and liberated [by not enough to be fair] the planning system to encourage more building and had schemes like Help to Buy introduced to help the young onto the property ladder despite the damage Blair and Brown inflicted.
As a result young people being able to get their own home troughed after Blair and Brown and has been recovering a bit in recent years though much more still should be done of course.
Unfortunately the Tories don't seem to be doing anything much recently and Labour don't seem to be willing to turn their backs on the damage that Blair and Brown inflicted on the young.
I don't think your average 15-16yr old is leaning left wing because they can't buy a three bedroom semi on the new estate.
“Hey guys, using the term ‘cultural Marxiism’ makes us sound like deranged, antisemitic dicks. How about ‘cultural socialism’?”
New term for "woke" or do they just mean "under the influence of being young"?
If the latter it's hard to see the remedy.
This stuff is nuts. If young people are left wing it's because the fundamentals - things like property ownership, climate change and Brexit - are pushing them that way. And in all seriousness, is there anything at all that the right has done recently to try to appeal to them? Anything? Or has the right simply played to their elderly base with socialism for pensioners and scorched earth Thatcherism for anyone under 40? Blaming "school indoctrination" when central government has greater control over the curriculum than at any time in history and the Tories have been in charge of it for the last decade is pure bollocks. If you want young people to be more right-wing, then change right-wing politics so it means something other than fuck the young.
David Cameron and Osborne did more for the young in six years than Blair and Brown did in 13.
The explosion in BTL and the explosion in house price to earnings ratios happened under Blair and Brown.
Cameron and Osborne introduced BTL taxes and liberated [by not enough to be fair] the planning system to encourage more building and had schemes like Help to Buy introduced to help the young onto the property ladder despite the damage Blair and Brown inflicted.
As a result young people being able to get their own home troughed after Blair and Brown and has been recovering a bit in recent years though much more still should be done of course.
Unfortunately the Tories don't seem to be doing anything much recently and Labour don't seem to be willing to turn their backs on the damage that Blair and Brown inflicted on the young.
I don't think your average 15-16yr old is leaning left wing because they can't buy a three bedroom semi on the new estate.
I don't think your average 15-16yr old is voting.
Those who actually are voting, if they can't buy a home of their own [and young adults could and did pre-Blair and Brown] then its an issue.
Labour trashed the opportunities for the young and now seek to benefit from that electorally. Unfortunately nobody else seems to be doing much better anymore given the Tories are turning their backs on aspiration too.
For those of us genuinely interested in what happened, it's quite fascinating to watch as experts who were originally leaning towards lab escape came around to zoonosis.
There were three who were most Lab Leak (Edward Holmes (self-described as 70/30 in favour of lab), Farrar ("50/50") and Kristian Anderson ("60/40")). Rather interestingly, two of those were lead authors on the article they got published in February 2020, which seems a pretty fair way of doing it.
You get to see them all considering hypotheses, ruling out deliberate bioengineering (wherever it came about, it evolved in the presence of an immune system), then considering deliberate "pass through" in lab animals (which could reconcile that). However, they then concluded that was unlikely, but also insisted in including it as a potential consideration in the article, even if only to show it had been seriously considered (there was a discussion on whether they'd spark off conspiracy theorists by including it, but insisted they had to cover it).
All of the three who had been leaning lab-leak have ended up coming down very firmly on the zoonosis side. To the point where the lab-leakers of the present dismiss them immediately by ad hominem.
I personally find it encouraging that not only did they very seriously consider it (and have those who most believed it plausible to lead the papers on it), but that my belief it was initially plausible wasn't completely out there.
It does end up damaging a nice story (simple - even simplistic - with convenient baddies and a two minute hate), but on the flip side, it does forewarn us of potential future SARS-like viruses (especially with the recent uncovering of so many bat coronaviruses: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.11.23.517609v1 )
I’m sorry, but this cannot pass. Here is your hero Edward Holmes on Twitter in May 2020. He’s just a fucking liar who does most of his work in China. Enough
Coming immediately on the heels of "To the point where the lab-leakers of the present dismiss them immediately by ad hominem," that's actively funny.
You are a victim of the fallacy that ad hominem arguments are automatically fallacious. In some circumstances, say being presented with an investment proposal by Bernie Madoff, they are valid, legitimate and compelling. Or, say, Farrar describing the lab security at Wuhan as "wild west."
My issue is that they never address the questions, simply coming up with these ad hominems.
"How did you get multiple independent releases into the wet market and only the wet market and none of the other more likely super-spreader sites in Wuhan?" doesn't really get answered by ad hominems. Or provide much illumination to those who want to know what really happened.
You still haven’t explained why Jeremy Farrar went from “lab leak is 50/50” to “lab leak is evil conspiracy theory” in 18 days
I am answered. Thank you. I never considered that as how it happened.
It’s all falling apart I’m afraid. One of the main scientists who has been pushing the wet market hypothesis for three years - she’s in those emails - has finally backtracked. Remember, she’s been claiming that “lab leak is debunked” all this time.
Her then:
Her now:
You don't get it.
I can be argued around to lab leak. Just get the key questions answered. I don't care about "he said, she said, he said." I don't care that over eighteen days of discussion, people came around from believing it plausible to seeing it as implausible (albeit those eighteen days of discussion might provide a clue as to why). Any more than I care that Isaac Newton was an arsehole who was a twat to Hooke, who insisted Leibniz stole his calculus (when Leibniz obviously came up with it first), and who firmly believed in alchemy, turning base metals into gold, and the like: his Laws of Motion either work or do not work (and they work).
My big issue is the one I've outlined, and all the "he said this at this point and that at that point," or "She was present when it was said to be debunked and has recently said simply she doesn't see that the evidence weighs in favour of it."
None of that answers the question or questions. If they're plausibly answered, then you can get me around.
Farrar didn’t change his mind. He made a ridiculous double back body flip from “50/50” to “conspiracy theory”. You’re too smart not to see the insanity of this
Or maybe you aren’t that smart, and you’re just good with numbers
But I do not wish to be unkind and you’ve been a great source on Covid, and I’ll ascribe your myopia to wilful naivety with good intentions. You like science and scientists and hate the idea they might have caused a pandemic so it’s clouding your judgement. Hey Ho
Now I must get to my flints. Good day
You are ascribing characteristics to Andy that you have no idea that he has and slightly insulting ones at that. Scientists tend to rely on evidence so don't generally have as much clouded judgement compared to the general population (although it happens obviously). It seems to me he would just prefer to see some facts and not nonsense stuff like he describes as 'he said, she said, he said' which tends to be the line of people putting forward conspiracies.
How about trying not to do this stuff and present evidence.
I have no idea which source is correct, but my judgement IS often clouded when I see stuff like 'he said, she said' from someone who often comes out with conspiracies.
"Scientists tend to rely on evidence" is utter gibberish for starters. What job do you do that doesn't? Even if you are unemployed, life is a pretty evidence based enterprise anyway (water is falling on my head; this evidence of rain prompts me to put my umbrella up.) He is treating the non lab leak theory as the default from which he needs to be swayed, which is not an evidence-based position, and you are actually doing he said, she said stuff under the illusion that you are criticising it, in a beautiful example of circular logic.
That has to be one of the most bonkers posts I have ever seen.
Starting with the statement 'Scientists tend to rely on evidence is utter gibberish for starters'. Great start.
Then suggesting that everyone does. No they don't. Scientist rely on evidence much more than the rest of people do in every day life. It is sort of what science is. In everyday life we jump to conclusions all the time and there are masses of people out there who just ignore evidence completely. Astrologers for instance and of course conspiracy theories rely on ignoring evidence.
And nowhere did I use circular logic and nowhere did I rely on 'he says, she says'. God knows where you got that from.
"which tends to be the line of people putting forward conspiracy theories" is, whether you like it or not, an ad hominem argument based on what "he said."
Saying that "In everyday life we jump to conclusions all the time and there are masses of people out there who just ignore evidence completely" is either ad hominem (Leon is in your view one of these people) or irrelevant (he is not.)
I note you dodge the question of what your evidence free occupation actually is.
It's like "rock, paper, scissors". Biden beats Trump, Trump beats not-Biden, not-Biden beats De Santis, De Santis beats Biden.
Nice construct but I don't agree. I have something more pure and distilled:
Any Dem* is 50/50 against DeSantis. Any Dem* beats Trump.
* within reason.
Hence why I think the Dems are value @ 2.4.
Yes, I think Trump loses to almost any Dem.
It's worth noting how narrow his victory path was in 2016, probably only a 10% shot, and that was against a truly diabolical Dem candidate.
It's probably sub 5% to happen again.
Not sure if H. Clinton was any worse a candidate than Biden, and while neither are great candidates, neither seem truly diabolical.
Biden outperformed the Democrat House national vote margin over Republicans in 2020 by 1.4%. Clinton outperformed the Democrat House national vote margin in 2016 by 3.2%.
I'm sure there are reasons why this is an overly-simplistic analysis, but if Clinton was really a much worse candidate than Biden, you'd expect her to do worse compared to her party nationally than Biden did, rather than better.
“Hey guys, using the term ‘cultural Marxiism’ makes us sound like deranged, antisemitic dicks. How about ‘cultural socialism’?”
New term for "woke" or do they just mean "under the influence of being young"?
If the latter it's hard to see the remedy.
This stuff is nuts. If young people are left wing it's because the fundamentals - things like property ownership, climate change and Brexit - are pushing them that way. And in all seriousness, is there anything at all that the right has done recently to try to appeal to them? Anything? Or has the right simply played to their elderly base with socialism for pensioners and scorched earth Thatcherism for anyone under 40? Blaming "school indoctrination" when central government has greater control over the curriculum than at any time in history and the Tories have been in charge of it for the last decade is pure bollocks. If you want young people to be more right-wing, then change right-wing politics so it means something other than fuck the young.
David Cameron and Osborne did more for the young in six years than Blair and Brown did in 13.
The explosion in BTL and the explosion in house price to earnings ratios happened under Blair and Brown.
Cameron and Osborne introduced BTL taxes and liberated [by not enough to be fair] the planning system to encourage more building and had schemes like Help to Buy introduced to help the young onto the property ladder despite the damage Blair and Brown inflicted.
As a result young people being able to get their own home troughed after Blair and Brown and has been recovering a bit in recent years though much more still should be done of course.
Unfortunately the Tories don't seem to be doing anything much recently and Labour don't seem to be willing to turn their backs on the damage that Blair and Brown inflicted on the young.
I don't think your average 15-16yr old is leaning left wing because they can't buy a three bedroom semi on the new estate.
“Hey guys, using the term ‘cultural Marxiism’ makes us sound like deranged, antisemitic dicks. How about ‘cultural socialism’?”
New term for "woke" or do they just mean "under the influence of being young"?
If the latter it's hard to see the remedy.
This stuff is nuts. If young people are left wing it's because the fundamentals - things like property ownership, climate change and Brexit - are pushing them that way. And in all seriousness, is there anything at all that the right has done recently to try to appeal to them? Anything? Or has the right simply played to their elderly base with socialism for pensioners and scorched earth Thatcherism for anyone under 40? Blaming "school indoctrination" when central government has greater control over the curriculum than at any time in history and the Tories have been in charge of it for the last decade is pure bollocks. If you want young people to be more right-wing, then change right-wing politics so it means something other than fuck the young.
David Cameron and Osborne did more for the young in six years than Blair and Brown did in 13.
The explosion in BTL and the explosion in house price to earnings ratios happened under Blair and Brown.
Cameron and Osborne introduced BTL taxes and liberated [by not enough to be fair] the planning system to encourage more building and had schemes like Help to Buy introduced to help the young onto the property ladder despite the damage Blair and Brown inflicted.
As a result young people being able to get their own home troughed after Blair and Brown and has been recovering a bit in recent years though much more still should be done of course.
Unfortunately the Tories don't seem to be doing anything much recently and Labour don't seem to be willing to turn their backs on the damage that Blair and Brown inflicted on the young.
I don't think your average 15-16yr old is leaning left wing because they can't buy a three bedroom semi on the new estate.
They might be, because their Mum and Dad can't.
What the average 15 year old thinks doesn't affect voting at all.
If your average 25 year old has a job and a mortgage they'll be more open to Conservative viewpoints than if they have a job and rent to pay and no hopes of getting a home on a new estate or anywhere else.
If your average 35 year old still is paying rent and still can't get a home of their own, then that is a serious problem.
It's like "rock, paper, scissors". Biden beats Trump, Trump beats not-Biden, not-Biden beats De Santis, De Santis beats Biden.
Nice construct but I don't agree. I have something more pure and distilled:
Any Dem* is 50/50 against DeSantis. Any Dem* beats Trump.
* within reason.
Hence why I think the Dems are value @ 2.4.
Yes, I think Trump loses to almost any Dem.
It's worth noting how narrow his victory path was in 2016, probably only a 10% shot, and that was against a truly diabolical Dem candidate.
It's probably sub 5% to happen again.
Not sure if H. Clinton was any worse a candidate than Biden, and while neither are great candidates, neither seem truly diabolical.
Biden outperformed the Democrat House national vote margin over Republicans in 2020 by 1.4%. Clinton outperformed the Democrat House national vote margin in 2016 by 3.2%.
I'm sure there are reasons why this is an overly-simplistic analysis, but if Clinton was really a much worse candidate than Biden, you'd expect her to do worse compared to her party nationally than Biden did, rather than better.
The main reason why this is overly simplistic is that POTUS isn't elected by popular vote. Clinton spent too long campaigning in the wrong places.
For those of us genuinely interested in what happened, it's quite fascinating to watch as experts who were originally leaning towards lab escape came around to zoonosis.
There were three who were most Lab Leak (Edward Holmes (self-described as 70/30 in favour of lab), Farrar ("50/50") and Kristian Anderson ("60/40")). Rather interestingly, two of those were lead authors on the article they got published in February 2020, which seems a pretty fair way of doing it.
You get to see them all considering hypotheses, ruling out deliberate bioengineering (wherever it came about, it evolved in the presence of an immune system), then considering deliberate "pass through" in lab animals (which could reconcile that). However, they then concluded that was unlikely, but also insisted in including it as a potential consideration in the article, even if only to show it had been seriously considered (there was a discussion on whether they'd spark off conspiracy theorists by including it, but insisted they had to cover it).
All of the three who had been leaning lab-leak have ended up coming down very firmly on the zoonosis side. To the point where the lab-leakers of the present dismiss them immediately by ad hominem.
I personally find it encouraging that not only did they very seriously consider it (and have those who most believed it plausible to lead the papers on it), but that my belief it was initially plausible wasn't completely out there.
It does end up damaging a nice story (simple - even simplistic - with convenient baddies and a two minute hate), but on the flip side, it does forewarn us of potential future SARS-like viruses (especially with the recent uncovering of so many bat coronaviruses: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.11.23.517609v1 )
You regard it as a sign of confidence in one's own argument, to dismiss opponents "immediately by ad hominem"? And you think zoonosis is incompatible with lab leak?
No, and no.
I find it detracts from the lab-leakers case to immediately dismiss their arguments by ad hominem. Don't you?
And that zoonosis could be compatible with lab leak has been looked at (you'd require multiple independent leaks to the same spot (in the wet market) only, with no leaks/super-spreader events at any of the many other more likely super-spreader locations in Wuhan).
Ah, sorry, misread you. But there's ad hominems and ad hominems. The mainstreamers are saying "hysterical conspiracy theorists," the lab leakers are saying "well, you condemned the appalling lab security at Wuhan, and you made research proposals about artificial furin cleavage sites in 2018." The second lot looks more compelling to me.
No, it's usually: "You can't believe HIM/HER!"
It's You can't believe HIM/HER because... Again, the lab leak theorists are saying because you did or said this highly inconsistent thing in the couple of years before the outbreak, their opponents are saying, because you're a conspiracy theorist and your mum smells funny.
You think the lab leak proponents have been consistent in their arguments ?
PRIOR inconsistent actions. Inconsistencies within the argument itself are a separate point.
Jeffrey Sachs, for example ? LOL.
Just a name, and then LOL, is the most perfectly reductive example of the gormless ad hominem I can imagine.
Here's a tweet you linked to (approvingly) a couple of days ago
"It makes clear that the defeatist, knee-jerk, or gaslighting reactions surrounding this pandemic have to stop (& that includes very much the #lableak conspiracy myth)."
Don't know about you but I make that six content-free ad hominems in one sentence. And the guy is not even making the point you want him,to make. Pathetically, he does not even try to refute a lab leak. All he is saying is Yebbut a naturally evolved virus might be really really bad too.
I was linking to the paper, which I came across via the link, as I recall. Its relevance, again as I recall, was that Covid style viral traits (targeting of the ACE receptor) were clearly possible in wild viruses.
And those are, I think, hominem free 'ad hominems' ?
"Possible in wild viruses" doesn't preclude lab leak, though, does it?
No, of course not. AFAIAC, the only 'conspiracy theory' is the one that insists the lab leak is the explanation of the pandemic, and that it has been covered up. It remains a possibility, but that is all.
For those of us genuinely interested in what happened, it's quite fascinating to watch as experts who were originally leaning towards lab escape came around to zoonosis.
There were three who were most Lab Leak (Edward Holmes (self-described as 70/30 in favour of lab), Farrar ("50/50") and Kristian Anderson ("60/40")). Rather interestingly, two of those were lead authors on the article they got published in February 2020, which seems a pretty fair way of doing it.
You get to see them all considering hypotheses, ruling out deliberate bioengineering (wherever it came about, it evolved in the presence of an immune system), then considering deliberate "pass through" in lab animals (which could reconcile that). However, they then concluded that was unlikely, but also insisted in including it as a potential consideration in the article, even if only to show it had been seriously considered (there was a discussion on whether they'd spark off conspiracy theorists by including it, but insisted they had to cover it).
All of the three who had been leaning lab-leak have ended up coming down very firmly on the zoonosis side. To the point where the lab-leakers of the present dismiss them immediately by ad hominem.
I personally find it encouraging that not only did they very seriously consider it (and have those who most believed it plausible to lead the papers on it), but that my belief it was initially plausible wasn't completely out there.
It does end up damaging a nice story (simple - even simplistic - with convenient baddies and a two minute hate), but on the flip side, it does forewarn us of potential future SARS-like viruses (especially with the recent uncovering of so many bat coronaviruses: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.11.23.517609v1 )
I’m sorry, but this cannot pass. Here is your hero Edward Holmes on Twitter in May 2020. He’s just a fucking liar who does most of his work in China. Enough
Coming immediately on the heels of "To the point where the lab-leakers of the present dismiss them immediately by ad hominem," that's actively funny.
You are a victim of the fallacy that ad hominem arguments are automatically fallacious. In some circumstances, say being presented with an investment proposal by Bernie Madoff, they are valid, legitimate and compelling. Or, say, Farrar describing the lab security at Wuhan as "wild west."
My issue is that they never address the questions, simply coming up with these ad hominems.
"How did you get multiple independent releases into the wet market and only the wet market and none of the other more likely super-spreader sites in Wuhan?" doesn't really get answered by ad hominems. Or provide much illumination to those who want to know what really happened.
You still haven’t explained why Jeremy Farrar went from “lab leak is 50/50” to “lab leak is evil conspiracy theory” in 18 days
I am answered. Thank you. I never considered that as how it happened.
It’s all falling apart I’m afraid. One of the main scientists who has been pushing the wet market hypothesis for three years - she’s in those emails - has finally backtracked. Remember, she’s been claiming that “lab leak is debunked” all this time.
Her then:
Her now:
You don't get it.
I can be argued around to lab leak. Just get the key questions answered. I don't care about "he said, she said, he said." I don't care that over eighteen days of discussion, people came around from believing it plausible to seeing it as implausible (albeit those eighteen days of discussion might provide a clue as to why). Any more than I care that Isaac Newton was an arsehole who was a twat to Hooke, who insisted Leibniz stole his calculus (when Leibniz obviously came up with it first), and who firmly believed in alchemy, turning base metals into gold, and the like: his Laws of Motion either work or do not work (and they work).
My big issue is the one I've outlined, and all the "he said this at this point and that at that point," or "She was present when it was said to be debunked and has recently said simply she doesn't see that the evidence weighs in favour of it."
None of that answers the question or questions. If they're plausibly answered, then you can get me around.
Farrar didn’t change his mind. He made a ridiculous double back body flip from “50/50” to “conspiracy theory”. You’re too smart not to see the insanity of this
Or maybe you aren’t that smart, and you’re just good with numbers
But I do not wish to be unkind and you’ve been a great source on Covid, and I’ll ascribe your myopia to wilful naivety with good intentions. You like science and scientists and hate the idea they might have caused a pandemic so it’s clouding your judgement. Hey Ho
Now I must get to my flints. Good day
You are ascribing characteristics to Andy that you have no idea that he has and slightly insulting ones at that. Scientists tend to rely on evidence so don't generally have as much clouded judgement compared to the general population (although it happens obviously). It seems to me he would just prefer to see some facts and not nonsense stuff like he describes as 'he said, she said, he said' which tends to be the line of people putting forward conspiracies.
How about trying not to do this stuff and present evidence.
I have no idea which source is correct, but my judgement IS often clouded when I see stuff like 'he said, she said' from someone who often comes out with conspiracies.
Yeah, I just want to know what the facts are. Not what he said-she-said or whatever.
My stance was:
- Starting point: All the millions of viruses throughout history (MERS, SARS, HKU1, Ebola, Rabies, Lassa, smallpox and other poxes, various influenzas, measles, mumps, rubella, polio, rotavirus, etc, etc, etc) have come through zoonosis. So it's a very well established channel and, as this is the way it's happened literally every time before, the default will be to look at this. - However: There was a virus research lab very close to where this one sparked off. Covering similar viruses. It's therefore natural to think: maybe they're linked? Bioengineering? Accidental leak?
So my starting point was that both were plausible.
There was a flurry of articles and points that purported to point to an artificial origin. The furin cleavage site was the biggest such. Later on, claims of finding "fingerprints" in it. However, the FCS turned out to be not at all a smoking gun (given that many coronaviruses have them, it could even be that when you see a coronavirus in humans, if it's evolved an FCS, it helps it to make the jump. Like with MERS, HKU1, and now SARS-CoV-2). And the "fingerprints" one fell apart rapidly.
The bit that's really pushed me away from lab leak and towards zoonosis (at the moment!) is the tracing of the spark. The fact that there are two separate strains (A and and both sparked separately at the wet market and nowhere else means that it looks even more implausible a coincidence that it could be a lab leak. Which is some going (given that it's a big coincidence, in my mind, for it to happen close to such a lab). So that's my big holdup: how the hell did a random leak happen ONLY to the wet market and none of the other superspreader sites in Wuhan? I could see it happening once as sheer luck/coincidence, and more or less balance out the coincidence needed on the other argument.
But twice? Independently and separated by a fortnight?
And that's why I keep coming back to that question.
That makes lab leak much more likely, not less, to me.
If it was leaking from the lab to the market then that could very plausibly have happened twice. If its accidental and there's lax security a flaw that's happened once can happen twice, if its deliberate a deliberate action once can happen twice.
If it was natural zoonosis then why would that happen coincidentally twice in the same place? And if its not a coincidence, then it is equally possibly not a coincidence with a leak.
Lightning striking twice two weeks apart in the same place makes man-made actions much more likely than just random nature.
If it came from an animal, then delivery of similar animals from the same source to the wet market is not only feasible, but likely. If it's been circulating in an animal reservoir, that's what you'd expect. You get multiple strains of viruses coming over zoonotically fairly regularly.
If it came from lax security, what happened? Someone deliberately and knowingly sent an infected animal to the market? Twice? And only twice? How come there weren't smaller sparks that fell apart previously of other coronaviruses?
Lab employee side hustle selling bats to market.
Bear in mind this doesn't entail that "Someone deliberately and knowingly sent an infected animal to the market? Twice?" From what I understand the lab is shipping in random lots of bats, and testing them for viruses. No more or less random than other lots of bats shipped straight to the market. So diverting them *as they come in* is no riskier than the straight bats-for-food trade.
This is the best plausible explanation for that I've yet seen. It's possibly a perfect fusing of both stances. It's a zoonotic origin. It involves the lab. And explains why how the bats got there.
Arguably, it would simply displace the origin event from wherever it would otherwise have occurred to Wuhan (the animals were already infected with SARS-CoV-2), and I think they're more looking for intermediary animals (sc. pangolins), but one could argue that the lab might plausibly bring in possible intermediary animals to see how and where zoonotic evolution could occur.
For those of us genuinely interested in what happened, it's quite fascinating to watch as experts who were originally leaning towards lab escape came around to zoonosis.
There were three who were most Lab Leak (Edward Holmes (self-described as 70/30 in favour of lab), Farrar ("50/50") and Kristian Anderson ("60/40")). Rather interestingly, two of those were lead authors on the article they got published in February 2020, which seems a pretty fair way of doing it.
You get to see them all considering hypotheses, ruling out deliberate bioengineering (wherever it came about, it evolved in the presence of an immune system), then considering deliberate "pass through" in lab animals (which could reconcile that). However, they then concluded that was unlikely, but also insisted in including it as a potential consideration in the article, even if only to show it had been seriously considered (there was a discussion on whether they'd spark off conspiracy theorists by including it, but insisted they had to cover it).
All of the three who had been leaning lab-leak have ended up coming down very firmly on the zoonosis side. To the point where the lab-leakers of the present dismiss them immediately by ad hominem.
I personally find it encouraging that not only did they very seriously consider it (and have those who most believed it plausible to lead the papers on it), but that my belief it was initially plausible wasn't completely out there.
It does end up damaging a nice story (simple - even simplistic - with convenient baddies and a two minute hate), but on the flip side, it does forewarn us of potential future SARS-like viruses (especially with the recent uncovering of so many bat coronaviruses: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.11.23.517609v1 )
I’m sorry, but this cannot pass. Here is your hero Edward Holmes on Twitter in May 2020. He’s just a fucking liar who does most of his work in China. Enough
Coming immediately on the heels of "To the point where the lab-leakers of the present dismiss them immediately by ad hominem," that's actively funny.
You are a victim of the fallacy that ad hominem arguments are automatically fallacious. In some circumstances, say being presented with an investment proposal by Bernie Madoff, they are valid, legitimate and compelling. Or, say, Farrar describing the lab security at Wuhan as "wild west."
My issue is that they never address the questions, simply coming up with these ad hominems.
"How did you get multiple independent releases into the wet market and only the wet market and none of the other more likely super-spreader sites in Wuhan?" doesn't really get answered by ad hominems. Or provide much illumination to those who want to know what really happened.
You still haven’t explained why Jeremy Farrar went from “lab leak is 50/50” to “lab leak is evil conspiracy theory” in 18 days
I am answered. Thank you. I never considered that as how it happened.
It’s all falling apart I’m afraid. One of the main scientists who has been pushing the wet market hypothesis for three years - she’s in those emails - has finally backtracked. Remember, she’s been claiming that “lab leak is debunked” all this time.
Her then:
Her now:
You don't get it.
I can be argued around to lab leak. Just get the key questions answered. I don't care about "he said, she said, he said." I don't care that over eighteen days of discussion, people came around from believing it plausible to seeing it as implausible (albeit those eighteen days of discussion might provide a clue as to why). Any more than I care that Isaac Newton was an arsehole who was a twat to Hooke, who insisted Leibniz stole his calculus (when Leibniz obviously came up with it first), and who firmly believed in alchemy, turning base metals into gold, and the like: his Laws of Motion either work or do not work (and they work).
My big issue is the one I've outlined, and all the "he said this at this point and that at that point," or "She was present when it was said to be debunked and has recently said simply she doesn't see that the evidence weighs in favour of it."
None of that answers the question or questions. If they're plausibly answered, then you can get me around.
Farrar didn’t change his mind. He made a ridiculous double back body flip from “50/50” to “conspiracy theory”. You’re too smart not to see the insanity of this
Or maybe you aren’t that smart, and you’re just good with numbers
But I do not wish to be unkind and you’ve been a great source on Covid, and I’ll ascribe your myopia to wilful naivety with good intentions. You like science and scientists and hate the idea they might have caused a pandemic so it’s clouding your judgement. Hey Ho
Now I must get to my flints. Good day
You are ascribing characteristics to Andy that you have no idea that he has and slightly insulting ones at that. Scientists tend to rely on evidence so don't generally have as much clouded judgement compared to the general population (although it happens obviously). It seems to me he would just prefer to see some facts and not nonsense stuff like he describes as 'he said, she said, he said' which tends to be the line of people putting forward conspiracies.
How about trying not to do this stuff and present evidence.
I have no idea which source is correct, but my judgement IS often clouded when I see stuff like 'he said, she said' from someone who often comes out with conspiracies.
Yeah, I just want to know what the facts are. Not what he said-she-said or whatever.
My stance was:
- Starting point: All the millions of viruses throughout history (MERS, SARS, HKU1, Ebola, Rabies, Lassa, smallpox and other poxes, various influenzas, measles, mumps, rubella, polio, rotavirus, etc, etc, etc) have come through zoonosis. So it's a very well established channel and, as this is the way it's happened literally every time before, the default will be to look at this. - However: There was a virus research lab very close to where this one sparked off. Covering similar viruses. It's therefore natural to think: maybe they're linked? Bioengineering? Accidental leak?
So my starting point was that both were plausible.
There was a flurry of articles and points that purported to point to an artificial origin. The furin cleavage site was the biggest such. Later on, claims of finding "fingerprints" in it. However, the FCS turned out to be not at all a smoking gun (given that many coronaviruses have them, it could even be that when you see a coronavirus in humans, if it's evolved an FCS, it helps it to make the jump. Like with MERS, HKU1, and now SARS-CoV-2). And the "fingerprints" one fell apart rapidly.
The bit that's really pushed me away from lab leak and towards zoonosis (at the moment!) is the tracing of the spark. The fact that there are two separate strains (A and B ) and both sparked separately at the wet market and nowhere else means that it looks even more implausible a coincidence that it could be a lab leak. Which is some going (given that it's a big coincidence, in my mind, for it to happen close to such a lab). So that's my big holdup: how the hell did a random leak happen ONLY to the wet market and none of the other superspreader sites in Wuhan? I could see it happening once as sheer luck/coincidence, and more or less balance out the coincidence needed on the other argument.
But twice? Independently and separated by a fortnight?
And that's why I keep coming back to that question.
Some disposal worker at the lab making a little extra money on the side selling on bats to the market would fit the pattern. Two separate strains making the jump from the bats to humans from the wild is just as much of a huge coincidence
For those of us genuinely interested in what happened, it's quite fascinating to watch as experts who were originally leaning towards lab escape came around to zoonosis.
There were three who were most Lab Leak (Edward Holmes (self-described as 70/30 in favour of lab), Farrar ("50/50") and Kristian Anderson ("60/40")). Rather interestingly, two of those were lead authors on the article they got published in February 2020, which seems a pretty fair way of doing it.
You get to see them all considering hypotheses, ruling out deliberate bioengineering (wherever it came about, it evolved in the presence of an immune system), then considering deliberate "pass through" in lab animals (which could reconcile that). However, they then concluded that was unlikely, but also insisted in including it as a potential consideration in the article, even if only to show it had been seriously considered (there was a discussion on whether they'd spark off conspiracy theorists by including it, but insisted they had to cover it).
All of the three who had been leaning lab-leak have ended up coming down very firmly on the zoonosis side. To the point where the lab-leakers of the present dismiss them immediately by ad hominem.
I personally find it encouraging that not only did they very seriously consider it (and have those who most believed it plausible to lead the papers on it), but that my belief it was initially plausible wasn't completely out there.
It does end up damaging a nice story (simple - even simplistic - with convenient baddies and a two minute hate), but on the flip side, it does forewarn us of potential future SARS-like viruses (especially with the recent uncovering of so many bat coronaviruses: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.11.23.517609v1 )
You regard it as a sign of confidence in one's own argument, to dismiss opponents "immediately by ad hominem"? And you think zoonosis is incompatible with lab leak?
No, and no.
I find it detracts from the lab-leakers case to immediately dismiss their arguments by ad hominem. Don't you?
And that zoonosis could be compatible with lab leak has been looked at (you'd require multiple independent leaks to the same spot (in the wet market) only, with no leaks/super-spreader events at any of the many other more likely super-spreader locations in Wuhan).
Ah, sorry, misread you. But there's ad hominems and ad hominems. The mainstreamers are saying "hysterical conspiracy theorists," the lab leakers are saying "well, you condemned the appalling lab security at Wuhan, and you made research proposals about artificial furin cleavage sites in 2018." The second lot looks more compelling to me.
No, it's usually: "You can't believe HIM/HER!"
It's You can't believe HIM/HER because... Again, the lab leak theorists are saying because you did or said this highly inconsistent thing in the couple of years before the outbreak, their opponents are saying, because you're a conspiracy theorist and your mum smells funny.
You think the lab leak proponents have been consistent in their arguments ?
PRIOR inconsistent actions. Inconsistencies within the argument itself are a separate point.
Jeffrey Sachs, for example ? LOL.
Just a name, and then LOL, is the most perfectly reductive example of the gormless ad hominem I can imagine.
Here's a tweet you linked to (approvingly) a couple of days ago
"It makes clear that the defeatist, knee-jerk, or gaslighting reactions surrounding this pandemic have to stop (& that includes very much the #lableak conspiracy myth)."
Don't know about you but I make that six content-free ad hominems in one sentence. And the guy is not even making the point you want him,to make. Pathetically, he does not even try to refute a lab leak. All he is saying is Yebbut a naturally evolved virus might be really really bad too.
I was linking to the paper, which I came across via the link, as I recall. Its relevance, again as I recall, was that Covid style viral traits (targeting of the ACE receptor) were clearly possible in wild viruses.
And those are, I think, hominem free 'ad hominems' ?
"Possible in wild viruses" doesn't preclude lab leak, though, does it?
No, of course not. AFAIAC, the only 'conspiracy theory' is the one that insists the lab leak is the explanation of the pandemic, and that it has been covered up. It remains a possibility, but that is all.
Given where we are now, an open and responsible response would have been a voluntary independent audit of the lab's security systems. The absence of that is a cover up in itself.
It's like "rock, paper, scissors". Biden beats Trump, Trump beats not-Biden, not-Biden beats De Santis, De Santis beats Biden.
Nice construct but I don't agree. I have something more pure and distilled:
Any Dem* is 50/50 against DeSantis. Any Dem* beats Trump.
* within reason.
Hence why I think the Dems are value @ 2.4.
Yes, I think Trump loses to almost any Dem.
It's worth noting how narrow his victory path was in 2016, probably only a 10% shot, and that was against a truly diabolical Dem candidate.
It's probably sub 5% to happen again.
Not sure if H. Clinton was any worse a candidate than Biden, and while neither are great candidates, neither seem truly diabolical.
Biden outperformed the Democrat House national vote margin over Republicans in 2020 by 1.4%. Clinton outperformed the Democrat House national vote margin in 2016 by 3.2%.
I'm sure there are reasons why this is an overly-simplistic analysis, but if Clinton was really a much worse candidate than Biden, you'd expect her to do worse compared to her party nationally than Biden did, rather than better.
The main reason why this is overly simplistic is that POTUS isn't elected by popular vote. Clinton spent too long campaigning in the wrong places.
So the main reason Clinton was "truly diabolical" because she spent too long campaigning in the wrong places? Seems a bit strong.
And if you look at the figures, Biden didn't improve the Dem margin in the Midwest (for example) by more than he improved it nationally, so I still think it probably doesn't stack up (though I haven't looked at the figures in detail).
“Hey guys, using the term ‘cultural Marxiism’ makes us sound like deranged, antisemitic dicks. How about ‘cultural socialism’?”
New term for "woke" or do they just mean "under the influence of being young"?
If the latter it's hard to see the remedy.
I think it's just a reflection of how hard it is nowadays to find a self-proclaimed socialist who actually cares about workers owning their means of production. "Socialism" seems to have transmogrified into a catch-all for whatever left-wing social policies are currently in vogue.
No doubt the same people believe anyone who lives in London is a capitalist, and seance goers are communists.
Well that's the Telegraph for you. Not the most rigorous of organs these days.
Labour should move Britain closer to the EU by granting ministers the power to copy EU rules, Tony Blair’s think tank has said.
The institute set up by the former prime minister said the UK must mirror Brussels standards to rebuild trade ties with the continent.
Tory MPs warned the plan would be a betrayal of Brexit and see the country effectively taken back into the single market by stealth.
Under the proposals, Britain would dynamically align with EU rules covering swathes of the economy, most notably food production.
Ministers would be given “keeping pace” powers to update the UK statute books and take account of new laws made in Brussels. Parliament would be able to either accept or reject the changes but not amend them.
For those of us genuinely interested in what happened, it's quite fascinating to watch as experts who were originally leaning towards lab escape came around to zoonosis.
There were three who were most Lab Leak (Edward Holmes (self-described as 70/30 in favour of lab), Farrar ("50/50") and Kristian Anderson ("60/40")). Rather interestingly, two of those were lead authors on the article they got published in February 2020, which seems a pretty fair way of doing it.
You get to see them all considering hypotheses, ruling out deliberate bioengineering (wherever it came about, it evolved in the presence of an immune system), then considering deliberate "pass through" in lab animals (which could reconcile that). However, they then concluded that was unlikely, but also insisted in including it as a potential consideration in the article, even if only to show it had been seriously considered (there was a discussion on whether they'd spark off conspiracy theorists by including it, but insisted they had to cover it).
All of the three who had been leaning lab-leak have ended up coming down very firmly on the zoonosis side. To the point where the lab-leakers of the present dismiss them immediately by ad hominem.
I personally find it encouraging that not only did they very seriously consider it (and have those who most believed it plausible to lead the papers on it), but that my belief it was initially plausible wasn't completely out there.
It does end up damaging a nice story (simple - even simplistic - with convenient baddies and a two minute hate), but on the flip side, it does forewarn us of potential future SARS-like viruses (especially with the recent uncovering of so many bat coronaviruses: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.11.23.517609v1 )
I’m sorry, but this cannot pass. Here is your hero Edward Holmes on Twitter in May 2020. He’s just a fucking liar who does most of his work in China. Enough
Coming immediately on the heels of "To the point where the lab-leakers of the present dismiss them immediately by ad hominem," that's actively funny.
You are a victim of the fallacy that ad hominem arguments are automatically fallacious. In some circumstances, say being presented with an investment proposal by Bernie Madoff, they are valid, legitimate and compelling. Or, say, Farrar describing the lab security at Wuhan as "wild west."
My issue is that they never address the questions, simply coming up with these ad hominems.
"How did you get multiple independent releases into the wet market and only the wet market and none of the other more likely super-spreader sites in Wuhan?" doesn't really get answered by ad hominems. Or provide much illumination to those who want to know what really happened.
You still haven’t explained why Jeremy Farrar went from “lab leak is 50/50” to “lab leak is evil conspiracy theory” in 18 days
I am answered. Thank you. I never considered that as how it happened.
It’s all falling apart I’m afraid. One of the main scientists who has been pushing the wet market hypothesis for three years - she’s in those emails - has finally backtracked. Remember, she’s been claiming that “lab leak is debunked” all this time.
Her then:
Her now:
You don't get it.
I can be argued around to lab leak. Just get the key questions answered. I don't care about "he said, she said, he said." I don't care that over eighteen days of discussion, people came around from believing it plausible to seeing it as implausible (albeit those eighteen days of discussion might provide a clue as to why). Any more than I care that Isaac Newton was an arsehole who was a twat to Hooke, who insisted Leibniz stole his calculus (when Leibniz obviously came up with it first), and who firmly believed in alchemy, turning base metals into gold, and the like: his Laws of Motion either work or do not work (and they work).
My big issue is the one I've outlined, and all the "he said this at this point and that at that point," or "She was present when it was said to be debunked and has recently said simply she doesn't see that the evidence weighs in favour of it."
None of that answers the question or questions. If they're plausibly answered, then you can get me around.
Farrar didn’t change his mind. He made a ridiculous double back body flip from “50/50” to “conspiracy theory”. You’re too smart not to see the insanity of this
Or maybe you aren’t that smart, and you’re just good with numbers
But I do not wish to be unkind and you’ve been a great source on Covid, and I’ll ascribe your myopia to wilful naivety with good intentions. You like science and scientists and hate the idea they might have caused a pandemic so it’s clouding your judgement. Hey Ho
Now I must get to my flints. Good day
You are ascribing characteristics to Andy that you have no idea that he has and slightly insulting ones at that. Scientists tend to rely on evidence so don't generally have as much clouded judgement compared to the general population (although it happens obviously). It seems to me he would just prefer to see some facts and not nonsense stuff like he describes as 'he said, she said, he said' which tends to be the line of people putting forward conspiracies.
How about trying not to do this stuff and present evidence.
I have no idea which source is correct, but my judgement IS often clouded when I see stuff like 'he said, she said' from someone who often comes out with conspiracies.
Yeah, I just want to know what the facts are. Not what he said-she-said or whatever.
My stance was:
- Starting point: All the millions of viruses throughout history (MERS, SARS, HKU1, Ebola, Rabies, Lassa, smallpox and other poxes, various influenzas, measles, mumps, rubella, polio, rotavirus, etc, etc, etc) have come through zoonosis. So it's a very well established channel and, as this is the way it's happened literally every time before, the default will be to look at this. - However: There was a virus research lab very close to where this one sparked off. Covering similar viruses. It's therefore natural to think: maybe they're linked? Bioengineering? Accidental leak?
So my starting point was that both were plausible.
There was a flurry of articles and points that purported to point to an artificial origin. The furin cleavage site was the biggest such. Later on, claims of finding "fingerprints" in it. However, the FCS turned out to be not at all a smoking gun (given that many coronaviruses have them, it could even be that when you see a coronavirus in humans, if it's evolved an FCS, it helps it to make the jump. Like with MERS, HKU1, and now SARS-CoV-2). And the "fingerprints" one fell apart rapidly.
The bit that's really pushed me away from lab leak and towards zoonosis (at the moment!) is the tracing of the spark. The fact that there are two separate strains (A and B ) and both sparked separately at the wet market and nowhere else means that it looks even more implausible a coincidence that it could be a lab leak. Which is some going (given that it's a big coincidence, in my mind, for it to happen close to such a lab). So that's my big holdup: how the hell did a random leak happen ONLY to the wet market and none of the other superspreader sites in Wuhan? I could see it happening once as sheer luck/coincidence, and more or less balance out the coincidence needed on the other argument.
But twice? Independently and separated by a fortnight?
And that's why I keep coming back to that question.
Some disposal worker at the lab making a little extra money on the side selling on bats to the market would fit the pattern. Two separate strains making the jump from the bats to humans from the wild is just as much of a huge coincidence
But that happens all the time with zoonotic origins. If you have an animal reservoir and a pipeline from it, you're going to get similar mutations within the animal reservoir (we have a huge animal reservoir in humans and loads of mutations of the virus within that and many introductions from that human reservoir).
As before, both SARS and MERS had multiple zoonotic introductions.
Comments
But I am guided by my own family experience. My mother went from slightly confused to double incontinent and away with the fairies between 80 and 82. She died a couple of years later after a series of ailments that required hospitalisation and for which she was very poorly equipped to understand the changes going on around her.
In an ideal world, America would benefit from younger, sharper politicians. Keeping the old guy in place for fear of what comes next tends to be the preserve of authoritarian regimes.
Miss Vance, the social credit system and COVID passport in China is absolutely tyrannical.
I wish the protestors all the best. But I think most of them will end up dead or incarcerated.
militarymotoring expert, Dura AceBiden beats Trump, Trump beats not-Biden, not-Biden beats De Santis, De Santis beats Biden.
A long thread that details a tiny part of Ukrainian resilience. When the Mayor of Irpin said he needed homes for 7,000 people, the railway company provided five coaches and made what seems a very livable space:
https://twitter.com/AKamyshin/status/1596982688652873728
They cold only house a relatively small number, but it was something. And what's better: the facility is being closed down, as temporary houses have already been built.
These are not the actions of a people who are about to break.
Her then:
Her now:
@Dura_Ace does know his stuff about mil aircraft and cars, but has always been very doveish on Western power - his cynicism likely coming from his time in the service. He’s also quite Russophile, having spent time there.
We are all now realising, that the Russian military is a real paper tiger bear, incapable of serious damage to what the rest of the world has to offer militarily.
“Do you want to be part of the country that’s about to receive $1,000,000,000,000 of international goodwill, or the country that’s still getting $1,000,000,000,000 of sanctions for the next decade? ”
Any Dem* is 50/50 against DeSantis.
Any Dem* beats Trump.
* within reason.
Hence why I think the Dems are value @ 2.4.
And those are, I think, hominem free 'ad hominems' ?
It'll all be over by (Orthodox) Christmas.
It’s increasingly likely to be over by (Orthodox) Christmas.
Reminded me of the story in 1940 - I think it was Manchester, where the military and local authorities were having a meeting about what to do in the event of invasion. The commander of the heavy AA guns around the city turned up. And stated that he’d got all his guns setup for anti tank work, plus they’d started practising as land artillery. While they weren’t trained for it, he’d found a couple of trained men and got the manuals out…
Compare and contrast with France - The commander of an airfield full of Dewoitine D.520, which just lacked guns, said that it wasn’t his job to get the planes armed and he was busy with paperwork anyway.
Starts with this quote:
‘When a regime has been in power too long, when it has fatally exhausted the patience of the people, and when oblivion finally beckons – I am afraid that across the world you can rely on the leaders of that regime to act solely in the interests of self-preservation, and not in the interests of the electorate.’ – BORIS JOHNSON
I can be argued around to lab leak. Just get the key questions answered. I don't care about "he said, she said, he said."
I don't care that over eighteen days of discussion, people came around from believing it plausible to seeing it as implausible (albeit those eighteen days of discussion might provide a clue as to why).
Any more than I care that Isaac Newton was an arsehole who was a twat to Hooke, who insisted Leibniz stole his calculus (when Leibniz obviously came up with it first), and who firmly believed in alchemy, turning base metals into gold, and the like: his Laws of Motion either work or do not work (and they work).
My big issue is the one I've outlined, and all the "he said this at this point and that at that point," or "She was present when it was said to be debunked and has recently said simply she doesn't see that the evidence weighs in favour of it."
None of that answers the question or questions. If they're plausibly answered, then you can get me around.
Or maybe you aren’t that smart, and you’re just good with numbers
But I do not wish to be unkind and you’ve been a great source on Covid, and I’ll ascribe your myopia to wilful naivety with good intentions. You like science and scientists and hate the idea they might have caused a pandemic so it’s clouding your judgement. Hey Ho
Now I must get to my flints. Good day
(Optimists are not necessarily more likely to be right, many predictions of Russian collapse spring to mind, but there's a strand of lazy opinion which is just 'pick the worst outcome and call it realpolitik')
For Emperor Xi one wonders how well he has indeed neutered the rest of the apparatus, as under the system if the last 40 years it would have been someone else's turn now.
Yet
Royal Town Planning Institute
@RTPIPlanners
·
10m
A 43% fall in resources to the planning system from Local Authorities since 2009/10 has led to a tangible and damaging impact on planning enforcement, creating major delays, and negatively affecting both officers and the public.
https://twitter.com/RTPIPlanners/status/1597170531983577088
So if you wondered why people were happy to build things without permission knowing that nowt would be done - you now know why.
The difference between late 70s and late 80s is often (not always, but often) very large indeed. I suspect, in his heart, Biden knows that. I suspect Jill Biden knows it even better. That's why I continue to believe he'll ultimately not be on the ballot.
On the flip-side, I note some of the more obvious challengers to Biden if he did go again have melted away. You're probably looking at someone in their 50s or 60s, as the younger ones will think they can wait (they might be misjudging it, but it's what they believe). Of those, Gavin Newsom was the most obvious and clearly considered it but has firmly ruled himself out. Klobucher and Booker both kind of fit the bill but didn't wow in 2020 and are close to Biden. Someone on the left may go for it but they've not had a great mid-term.
Really there is little point debating this with Leon as he knows, knows, the truth. And the truth just happens to be the more dramatic, more exciting possibility, and this fits with his take on everything.
Its entirely possible it leaked from the lab - what Leon never addresses is if this is the case, was it (A) a natural zoonotic pathogen or (B) GM - the infamous gain of function version.
Its also possible that it was entirely natural in origin, just like MERS, flu, SARS etc.
I don't think we will ever know for certain.
How about trying not to do this stuff and present evidence.
I have no idea which source is correct, but my judgement IS often clouded when I see stuff like 'he said, she said' from someone who often comes out with conspiracies.
The idea that the world can be turned upside down for a couple of years, with aftershocks that will last our lifetimes, just because of cruel chance... that's really scary.
That all 3 of Russia, China and Iran are showing signs of destabilisation (albeit for different reasons) does feel significant, but early days.
Win/win. 👍
Poroshenko will definitely be back in the fray (probably backed by Russian money).
It's worth noting how narrow his victory path was in 2016, probably only a 10% shot, and that was against a truly diabolical Dem candidate.
It's probably sub 5% to happen again.
My stance was:
- Starting point: All the millions of viruses throughout history (MERS, SARS, HKU1, Ebola, Rabies, Lassa, smallpox and other poxes, various influenzas, measles, mumps, rubella, polio, rotavirus, etc, etc, etc) have come through zoonosis. So it's a very well established channel and, as this is the way it's happened literally every time before, the default will be to look at this.
- However: There was a virus research lab very close to where this one sparked off. Covering similar viruses. It's therefore natural to think: maybe they're linked? Bioengineering? Accidental leak?
So my starting point was that both were plausible.
There was a flurry of articles and points that purported to point to an artificial origin. The furin cleavage site was the biggest such. Later on, claims of finding "fingerprints" in it. However, the FCS turned out to be not at all a smoking gun (given that many coronaviruses have them, it could even be that when you see a coronavirus in humans, if it's evolved an FCS, it helps it to make the jump. Like with MERS, HKU1, and now SARS-CoV-2). And the "fingerprints" one fell apart rapidly.
The bit that's really pushed me away from lab leak and towards zoonosis (at the moment!) is the tracing of the spark. The fact that there are two separate strains (A and B ) and both sparked separately at the wet market and nowhere else means that it looks even more implausible a coincidence that it could be a lab leak. Which is some going (given that it's a big coincidence, in my mind, for it to happen close to such a lab). So that's my big holdup: how the hell did a random leak happen ONLY to the wet market and none of the other superspreader sites in Wuhan? I could see it happening once as sheer luck/coincidence, and more or less balance out the coincidence needed on the other argument.
But twice? Independently and separated by a fortnight?
And that's why I keep coming back to that question.
Though they could reasonably postpone the election until the war is over, as we did in WWII.
If it was leaking from the lab to the market then that could very plausibly have happened twice. If its accidental and there's lax security a flaw that's happened once can happen twice, if its deliberate a deliberate action once can happen twice.
If it was natural zoonosis then why would that happen coincidentally twice in the same place? And if its not a coincidence, then it is equally possibly not a coincidence with a leak.
Lightning striking twice two weeks apart in the same place makes man-made actions much more likely than just random nature.
Who does he think he is, Rishi Sunak?
Not much appetite for more polling right now of course. I suppose delay is out of the question.
If the latter it's hard to see the remedy.
https://twitter.com/hellogcoo/status/1596363003846627328?s=48&t=-9m_9LdrGjq-1Y0dheUEqA
This is the problem. There's no chain of trust for any of the supposed evidence.
In any case, surely if a lab leak could be countenanced once, why not twice? Having two strains of a novel virus turn up in the same place two weeks apart seems very odd.
The harder question for the traditionalist right is whether the current young will turn into the current old, or into something else. The idea that the settlement defined by the current older generation might not last seems to send some commentators utterly potty.
If it came from lax security, what happened? Someone deliberately and knowingly sent an infected animal to the market? Twice? And only twice? How come there weren't smaller sparks that fell apart previously of other coronaviruses?
No, I don't think Trump lacked it at all. He was clearly not a good man in any sense, but his off script speaking was often whimsical and homespun sounding and, for those of MAGA disposition, he spoke the language of the bar room, even if a brawl might never have been far away
Hilary not so much, and I suspect any female president will need to appear like she knows one end of a pool cue from the other.
I don't think either side will ever be proven right unless someone already knows and isn't yet telling.
Disappointing though that is.
As for your second question, you're taking a tremendous leap of faith that there weren't. Also that we can trust the word of the Chinese that this only sparked at the market and not anywhere else.
Given the Chinese tried to cover this up and its only due to the severe nature of the virus that they failed to do so, how many other sparks previously were they able to successfully cover up?
Occam's Razor says that the most likely behaviour given they tried to cover this up and got away with it for a while, is that they would have covered up previous sparks until there was finally one they failed to cover up.
Blaming "school indoctrination" when central government has greater control over the curriculum than at any time in history and the Tories have been in charge of it for the last decade is pure bollocks. If you want young people to be more right-wing, then change right-wing politics so it means something other than fuck the young.
Starting with the statement 'Scientists tend to rely on evidence is utter gibberish for starters'. Great start.
Then suggesting that everyone does. No they don't. Scientist rely on evidence much more than the rest of people do in every day life. It is sort of what science is. In everyday life we jump to conclusions all the time and there are masses of people out there who just ignore evidence completely. Astrologers for instance and of course conspiracy theories rely on ignoring evidence.
And nowhere did I use circular logic and nowhere did I rely on 'he says, she says'. God knows where you got that from.
The explosion in BTL and the explosion in house price to earnings ratios happened under Blair and Brown.
Cameron and Osborne introduced BTL taxes and liberated [by not enough to be fair] the planning system to encourage more building and had schemes like Help to Buy introduced to help the young onto the property ladder despite the damage Blair and Brown inflicted.
As a result young people being able to get their own home troughed after Blair and Brown and has been recovering a bit in recent years though much more still should be done of course.
Unfortunately the Tories don't seem to be doing anything much recently and Labour don't seem to be willing to turn their backs on the damage that Blair and Brown inflicted on the young.
No doubt the same people believe anyone who lives in London is a capitalist, and seance goers are communists.
Those who actually are voting, if they can't buy a home of their own [and young adults could and did pre-Blair and Brown] then its an issue.
Labour trashed the opportunities for the young and now seek to benefit from that electorally. Unfortunately nobody else seems to be doing much better anymore given the Tories are turning their backs on aspiration too.
Saying that "In everyday life we jump to conclusions all the time and there are masses of people out there who just ignore evidence completely" is either ad hominem (Leon is in your view one of these people) or irrelevant (he is not.)
I note you dodge the question of what your evidence free occupation actually is.
Biden outperformed the Democrat House national vote margin over Republicans in 2020 by 1.4%.
Clinton outperformed the Democrat House national vote margin in 2016 by 3.2%.
I'm sure there are reasons why this is an overly-simplistic analysis, but if Clinton was really a much worse candidate than Biden, you'd expect her to do worse compared to her party nationally than Biden did, rather than better.
If your average 25 year old has a job and a mortgage they'll be more open to Conservative viewpoints than if they have a job and rent to pay and no hopes of getting a home on a new estate or anywhere else.
If your average 35 year old still is paying rent and still can't get a home of their own, then that is a serious problem.
AFAIAC, the only 'conspiracy theory' is the one that insists the lab leak is the explanation of the pandemic, and that it has been covered up.
It remains a possibility, but that is all.
Arguably, it would simply displace the origin event from wherever it would otherwise have occurred to Wuhan (the animals were already infected with SARS-CoV-2), and I think they're more looking for intermediary animals (sc. pangolins), but one could argue that the lab might plausibly bring in possible intermediary animals to see how and where zoonotic evolution could occur.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11476441/Scotland-Yard-says-officers-fully-prepared-tackle-Just-Stop-Oil-activists.html
Why don't you get them lunch while you are at it...Perhaps a foot rub for any of the protestors who feet are a bit sore...
Yeah that will do it....
And if you look at the figures, Biden didn't improve the Dem margin in the Midwest (for example) by more than he improved it nationally, so I still think it probably doesn't stack up (though I haven't looked at the figures in detail).
The institute set up by the former prime minister said the UK must mirror Brussels standards to rebuild trade ties with the continent.
Tory MPs warned the plan would be a betrayal of Brexit and see the country effectively taken back into the single market by stealth.
Under the proposals, Britain would dynamically align with EU rules covering swathes of the economy, most notably food production.
Ministers would be given “keeping pace” powers to update the UK statute books and take account of new laws made in Brussels. Parliament would be able to either accept or reject the changes but not amend them.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/11/28/labour-should-copy-paste-eu-rules-britain-says-tony-blair-think/
As before, both SARS and MERS had multiple zoonotic introductions.