"the absence of evidence for a lab leak, and in the presence of evidence for the market as the source" is mere fantasy. To believe it you have to believe that circumstantial evidence is conclusive in favour of the market and inadmissible in favour of the lab, and to ignore the huge debate about whether the furin cleavage site is likely to have arisen in nature.
The evidence for the market is not circumstantial. The early cases were clustered around the market. Environmental analyses found the virus in the market. That there were two initial strains of SARS-COV-2 is consistent with a reservoir of infected animals in the market.
It is, if course, entirely possible for the wet market to be both the focal point, and it to have been a lab leak.
That., of course, it almost certainly what happened. Leaked in the lab - the CDC more likely than the WIV - simply because of proximity - 300 metres away. Infected but pre-symptomatic lab worker went from the CDC to the market to buy a chicken. Bingo. Superspreader event, clustered around the market
It's not obvious to me.
Wild -> lab -> market is plausible and you assert that the wild -> lab bit was happening (and I have no reason to disbelieve this) but the lab -> market bit still requires some lapses that are fairly rare and the timing has to be just right (they do happen, it is certainly possible)
Wild -> market is also plausible and while you assert that wild -> animal in market is unlikely (and again I have no reason to disbelieve) there's also potential for a chain of transmission through animals (or containers, surfaces, air) to market or even indeed a person infected elsewhere (not from lab, closer to large populations of bats) taking it to the market.
I don't see a strong reason to favour one of those over the other, on the available evidence.
If the outbreak had happened in any other city in China, then a purely zoonotic origin would be the most likely scenario. That it happened in the same city where bat diseases were being actively studied skews the probabilities the other way around.
Most large Chinese cities have labs studying coronaviruses. If you're worried about zoonotic infections in China, you're looking at bat diseases. So, if the outbreak had happened in any other city in China, there's a high chance there would have been a similar lab.
According the Internet "several" cities have labs studying coronaviruses ("such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen"), which is not quite the same as "most". #
Albeit I will grant you that it does change the odds slightly.
Oh I just noticed the Off Topic button has gone - excellent.
I don't think I have ever used the Flag button, but I am slightly suspicious that you want to get rid of it to delay any future ban. I suspect that might be a vain hope.
I have never knowingly used the Off Topic button and have no idea what the flag button is for.
I do like the like button though. Thank you Richard for restoring this cherished feature.
The flag button is used to welcome new users at the weekend, especially those with an informed interest in the SMO which, by all accounts, is going swimmingly.
Oh I just noticed the Off Topic button has gone - excellent.
I don't think I have ever used the Flag button, but I am slightly suspicious that you want to get rid of it to delay any future ban. I suspect that might be a vain hope.
I have never knowingly used the Off Topic button and have no idea what the flag button is for.
I do like the like button though. Thank you Richard for restoring this cherished feature.
I have also never knowingly used either (I think). I think the flag button is to warn the moderators, so where one of us goes off our trolley and starts libelling people. I could have just imagined that though.
I am also a fan of the like button. I use it a lot to show my appreciation, particularly when I have nothing to add.
"the absence of evidence for a lab leak, and in the presence of evidence for the market as the source" is mere fantasy. To believe it you have to believe that circumstantial evidence is conclusive in favour of the market and inadmissible in favour of the lab, and to ignore the huge debate about whether the furin cleavage site is likely to have arisen in nature.
The evidence for the market is not circumstantial. The early cases were clustered around the market. Environmental analyses found the virus in the market. That there were two initial strains of SARS-COV-2 is consistent with a reservoir of infected animals in the market.
It is, if course, entirely possible for the wet market to be both the focal point, and it to have been a lab leak.
That., of course, it almost certainly what happened. Leaked in the lab - the CDC more likely than the WIV - simply because of proximity - 300 metres away. Infected but pre-symptomatic lab worker went from the CDC to the market to buy a chicken. Bingo. Superspreader event, clustered around the market
It's not obvious to me.
Wild -> lab -> market is plausible and you assert that the wild -> lab bit was happening (and I have no reason to disbelieve this) but the lab -> market bit still requires some lapses that are fairly rare and the timing has to be just right (they do happen, it is certainly possible)
Wild -> market is also plausible and while you assert that wild -> animal in market is unlikely (and again I have no reason to disbelieve) there's also potential for a chain of transmission through animals (or containers, surfaces, air) to market or even indeed a person infected elsewhere (not from lab, closer to large populations of bats) taking it to the market.
I don't see a strong reason to favour one of those over the other, on the available evidence.
If the outbreak had happened in any other city in China, then a purely zoonotic origin would be the most likely scenario. That it happened in the same city where bat diseases were being actively studied skews the probabilities the other way around.
Most large Chinese cities have labs studying coronaviruses. If you're worried about zoonotic infections in China, you're looking at bat diseases. So, if the outbreak had happened in any other city in China, there's a high chance there would have been a similar lab.
This doesn't seem to be true. The number of BSL-4 labs in China is very small.
Lots of viruses are studied outside BSL-4 labs, though.
Oh I just noticed the Off Topic button has gone - excellent.
I don't think I have ever used the Flag button, but I am slightly suspicious that you want to get rid of it to delay any future ban. I suspect that might be a vain hope.
I have never knowingly used the Off Topic button and have no idea what the flag button is for.
I do like the like button though. Thank you Richard for restoring this cherished feature.
I have also never knowingly used either (I think). I think the flag button is to warn the moderators, so where one of us goes off our trolley and starts libelling people. I could have just imagined that though.
That did happen once, I think, in the dim and distant past.
Am I the only one on here who doesn't really give a shit if it was a lab leak or the wet fish market?
We will probably never know for sure, it makes littles difference now, and the Chinese government was culpable in any event.
I admit, it does all seem rather niche. I suspect some people are just very keen to establish themselves as soothsayers, fearless advocates of 'Lab Leak' when 'Science' was adamant that the wet market was the only game in town.
24 million people are dead. Economies are shattered
How is discovering the origin of this hideous, horrifying, pan-global disaster "niche"?
Would you say that if you had lost a brother, son, mother, sister, lover, friend, your entire business? Your home?
Shaun Lintern @ShaunLintern · 1m 🚨 BREAKING: Consultants strike action is on - More than 24,000 consultants in England voted in the BMA’s ballot (a turnout of 71%), with 20,741 (86%) voting for industrial action, says @TheBMA #consultantstrikes
Am I the only one on here who doesn't really give a shit if it was a lab leak or the wet fish market?
We will probably never know for sure, it makes littles difference now, and the Chinese government was culpable in any event.
I admit, it does all seem rather niche. I suspect some people are just very keen to establish themselves as soothsayers, fearless advocates of 'Lab Leak' when 'Science' was adamant that the wet market was the only game in town.
24 million people are dead. Economies are shattered
How is discovering the origin of this hideous, horrifying, pan-global disaster "niche"?
Would you say that if you had lost a brother, son, mother, sister, lover, friend, your entire business? Your home?
If it is for the purpose of blame, I think all of us agree it is China.
Shaun Lintern @ShaunLintern · 1m 🚨 BREAKING: Consultants strike action is on - More than 24,000 consultants in England voted in the BMA’s ballot (a turnout of 71%), with 20,741 (86%) voting for industrial action, says @TheBMA #consultantstrikes
What are they striking about ? They're all on a fortune with a pension the private sector can't buy.
Oh I just noticed the Off Topic button has gone - excellent.
I don't think I have ever used the Flag button, but I am slightly suspicious that you want to get rid of it to delay any future ban. I suspect that might be a vain hope.
I have never knowingly used the Off Topic button and have no idea what the flag button is for.
I do like the like button though. Thank you Richard for restoring this cherished feature.
Richard?! Where’s that WTF button gone..
A senior moment, Blanche. Thank you for pointing it out.
"the absence of evidence for a lab leak, and in the presence of evidence for the market as the source" is mere fantasy. To believe it you have to believe that circumstantial evidence is conclusive in favour of the market and inadmissible in favour of the lab, and to ignore the huge debate about whether the furin cleavage site is likely to have arisen in nature.
The evidence for the market is not circumstantial. The early cases were clustered around the market. Environmental analyses found the virus in the market. That there were two initial strains of SARS-COV-2 is consistent with a reservoir of infected animals in the market.
It is, if course, entirely possible for the wet market to be both the focal point, and it to have been a lab leak.
That., of course, it almost certainly what happened. Leaked in the lab - the CDC more likely than the WIV - simply because of proximity - 300 metres away. Infected but pre-symptomatic lab worker went from the CDC to the market to buy a chicken. Bingo. Superspreader event, clustered around the market
It's not obvious to me.
Wild -> lab -> market is plausible and you assert that the wild -> lab bit was happening (and I have no reason to disbelieve this) but the lab -> market bit still requires some lapses that are fairly rare and the timing has to be just right (they do happen, it is certainly possible)
Wild -> market is also plausible and while you assert that wild -> animal in market is unlikely (and again I have no reason to disbelieve) there's also potential for a chain of transmission through animals (or containers, surfaces, air) to market or even indeed a person infected elsewhere (not from lab, closer to large populations of bats) taking it to the market.
I don't see a strong reason to favour one of those over the other, on the available evidence.
If the outbreak had happened in any other city in China, then a purely zoonotic origin would be the most likely scenario. That it happened in the same city where bat diseases were being actively studied skews the probabilities the other way around.
Most large Chinese cities have labs studying coronaviruses. If you're worried about zoonotic infections in China, you're looking at bat diseases. So, if the outbreak had happened in any other city in China, there's a high chance there would have been a similar lab.
Absolutely wrong. Most large Chinese cities do not "have labs studying coronaviruses"
Wuhan was the very first BSL4 lab in China, opened in 2018
You can study coronavirus at BSL3, but even there coronavirus research is rare
"You need a special lab to study the coronavirus. Here’s what it takes to get one up and running
Before the pandemic, there was only a small group of researchers dedicated to studying coronaviruses."
You are making such basic, howling errors I can only presume that @Miklosvar is right and you are emotionally/professionally invested to a dangerous extent, and blundering with every sentence
In 2013, the WIV collected animal samples from which they identified the bat coronavirus RaTG13, which is 96.2 percent similar to the COVID-19 virus. By 2018, the WIV had sequenced almost all of RaTG13, which is the second closest known whole genome match to SARS-CoV-2, after BANAL-52, which is 96.8 percent similar. Neither of these viruses is close enough to SARS-CoV-2 to be a direct progenitor.
And:
We assess that some scientists at the WIV have genetically engineered coronaviruses using common laboratory practices. The IC has no information, however, indicating that any WIV genetic engineering work has involved SARS-CoV-2, a close progenitor, or a backbone virus that is closely-related enough to have been the source of the pandemic.
And:
Several WIV researchers were ill in Fall 2019 with symptoms; some of their symptoms were consistent with but not diagnostic of COVID-19. The IC continues to assess that this information neither supports nor refutes either hypothesis of the pandemic’s origins because the researchers’ symptoms could have been caused by a number of diseases and some of the symptoms were not consistent with COVID-19. Consistent with standard practices, those researchers likely completed annual health exams as part of their duties in a highcontainment biosafety laboratory. The IC assesses that the WIV maintains blood samples and health records of all of their laboratory personnel—which are standard procedures in highcontainment laboratories.
• We have no indications that any of these researchers were hospitalized because of the symptoms consistent with COVID-19. One researcher may have been hospitalized in this timeframe for treatment of a non-respiratory medical condition.
• China’s National Security Commission investigated the WIV in early 2020 and took blood samples from WIV researchers. According to the World Health Organization's March 2021 public report, WIV officials including Shi Zhengli—who leads the WIV laboratory group that conducts coronavirus research—stated lab employee samples all tested negative for SARS-CoV-2 antibodies.
Your hero, the boffin you proudly cite, went from privately saying this:
“I really can’t think of a plausible natural scenario . . . . I just can’t figure out how this [Coronavirus] gets accomplished in nature . . . . Of course, in the lab it would be easy . ."
To publicly publishing this, just 48 hours later:
"However, since we observed all notable SARS-CoV-2 features, including the optimized RBD and polybasic cleavage site, in related coronaviruses in nature, we do not believe that any type of laboratory-based scenario is plausible."
BREAKING: Walt Nauta’s arraignment has been delayed until July 6. He he has been unable to find local counsel to represent him and he was unable to be present in court today as a result of flight delays. https://twitter.com/AnnaBower/status/1673691719051689985
Trump's trial is now probably unavoidably delayed until after the start of the primaries - which was always pretty likely, but the prosecution had given him the option of a speedy trial should have have wanted it. Trumpworld is clearly going with the usual delay as long as possible template.
Given how things can collapse, his friendly judge to try to nobble over the evidence, he'd be a fool not to try to delay of course.
They are weird though. They simultaneously maintain Trumps total innocence, but also that if there is solid evidence that means it is unfair since how dare you weaponise the DOJ.
So they cover themselves to defend him whether guilty or not. Innocent and its an outrage. Guilty its an outage to find that out.
Am I the only one on here who doesn't really give a shit if it was a lab leak or the wet fish market?
We will probably never know for sure, it makes littles difference now, and the Chinese government was culpable in any event.
I admit, it does all seem rather niche. I suspect some people are just very keen to establish themselves as soothsayers, fearless advocates of 'Lab Leak' when 'Science' was adamant that the wet market was the only game in town.
24 million people are dead. Economies are shattered
How is discovering the origin of this hideous, horrifying, pan-global disaster "niche"?
Would you say that if you had lost a brother, son, mother, sister, lover, friend, your entire business? Your home?
If it is for the purpose of blame, I think all of us agree it is China.
The true origin is probably going to remain uncertain, and some of the more stupid conspiracy theories actually help China.
What China should really be castigated for is the way they hid what was going on in early 2020, allowing the virus to spread more widely internationally, and did not work with international bodies.
"the absence of evidence for a lab leak, and in the presence of evidence for the market as the source" is mere fantasy. To believe it you have to believe that circumstantial evidence is conclusive in favour of the market and inadmissible in favour of the lab, and to ignore the huge debate about whether the furin cleavage site is likely to have arisen in nature.
The evidence for the market is not circumstantial. The early cases were clustered around the market. Environmental analyses found the virus in the market. That there were two initial strains of SARS-COV-2 is consistent with a reservoir of infected animals in the market.
It is, if course, entirely possible for the wet market to be both the focal point, and it to have been a lab leak.
That., of course, it almost certainly what happened. Leaked in the lab - the CDC more likely than the WIV - simply because of proximity - 300 metres away. Infected but pre-symptomatic lab worker went from the CDC to the market to buy a chicken. Bingo. Superspreader event, clustered around the market
It's not obvious to me.
Wild -> lab -> market is plausible and you assert that the wild -> lab bit was happening (and I have no reason to disbelieve this) but the lab -> market bit still requires some lapses that are fairly rare and the timing has to be just right (they do happen, it is certainly possible)
Wild -> market is also plausible and while you assert that wild -> animal in market is unlikely (and again I have no reason to disbelieve) there's also potential for a chain of transmission through animals (or containers, surfaces, air) to market or even indeed a person infected elsewhere (not from lab, closer to large populations of bats) taking it to the market.
I don't see a strong reason to favour one of those over the other, on the available evidence.
If the outbreak had happened in any other city in China, then a purely zoonotic origin would be the most likely scenario. That it happened in the same city where bat diseases were being actively studied skews the probabilities the other way around.
Most large Chinese cities have labs studying coronaviruses. If you're worried about zoonotic infections in China, you're looking at bat diseases. So, if the outbreak had happened in any other city in China, there's a high chance there would have been a similar lab.
According the Internet "several" cities have labs studying coronaviruses ("such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen"), which is not quite the same as "most". #
Albeit I will grant you that it does change the odds slightly.
Why?
If I may repeat a previous objection to this fallacy, say I hear about a violent death in New York and I say, probably a shooting, there's lots of guns in NYC. How does it change the odds to say But there's lots of guns in Boston and LA and Detroit too?
On topic: Yes, I expect the Conservatives to lose the lot. Kicking useless Governments at by-elections is tradition, and this lot are supremely useless.
Best wishes also to OGH with the recovery. You're obviously far from the only person with the means to shell out for private treatment who has done so to avoid years waiting in considerable pain for the disintegrating NHS to do anything about it. My Mum likewise paid a fortune for private surgery earlier in the year.
Meanwhile, whilst rising interest rates result in endless column inches of handwringing in newspapers about the "mortgage timebomb," people who have been suffering much worse for much longer continue to be mostly overlooked.
The total collapse in affordability for low income private renters is alarming.
In some parts of England there are now literally no properties available to rent for households receiving housing benefit.
We’ve been working with crisis and Zoopla. The data is grim.
Amongst the miserable revelations in this thread, 25% of all households seeking homelessness support - not just struggling to pay the rent, but actually seeking help with homelessness or the imminent threat thereof - were working households. It's quite something when we've got to the point where not merely does a substantial fraction of the working population face an entire lifetime of renting (and therefore, by extension, of working until they drop to pay for it, so ruinously expensive has it become,) but that work for some people pays so badly that they can't even afford a roof over their heads.
Britain's entire socio-economic system is shot.
THat does need the WTF button.
What are they going to do? Increase pay? Bring back the workhouse? Provide free cardboard boxes?
Am I the only one on here who doesn't really give a shit if it was a lab leak or the wet fish market?
We will probably never know for sure, it makes littles difference now, and the Chinese government was culpable in any event.
More culpable if its a lab leak, IMO. If it is, they ought to be shunned as much as Russia have been since Novichok, IMO.
I don't mean to beat broken drum here, but the *kind* of lab like is also important.
At the one end of the spectrum, you have leaks that the director was unaware of, or which happened on the way to the lab. Perhaps a courier got bit by a bat while collecting samples? Or perhaps there was a guy who secretly snuck animals out of the lab and sold them at the wet market (and had done so for years), without any idea of the dangers he was putting people in.
At the other, you have the failure of a containment vessel in the lab, where genetically modified viruses were stored, and which infected half a dozen employees, and which was covered up by all and sundry.
And, of course, there are dozens of possibilities in between.
I think we'd all agree that the degree of culpability in the first scenario is dramatically less than in the last.
There's also the wider implications.
Market - well, this is a Chinese/some other countries thing and there aren't immediate implications for the West
Lab leak due to local management/procedures/incompetence - given some Western involvement/funding, it's embarassing at best
Lab leak that could have happened anywhere - major implications for bio labs everywhere
There's no denying that the market is a better outcome for parts of the science community (and it was important, early on, to avoid some mass panic/hysteria that could have shut down operations in labs urgently needed to understand the virus). Whether you see that as evidence for a great conspiracy or not is a matter of taste.
If the latter scenario from RCS, then a number of people know. I find it hard to believe we never find out about that. If it's someone selling lab animals locally, then enough people know that it should come out (in fact, should likely already have come out, bt maybe China can suppress that). Courier bit by a bat? We'll likely never know, particularly if that person didn't get very sick and put it down to a random cold.
Has any research been done on the possibility that someone Wuhan dropped a piece of toast on the floor and ignored the 5-second rule? Lots of nasty bugs about if you don’t.
Shaun Lintern @ShaunLintern · 1m 🚨 BREAKING: Consultants strike action is on - More than 24,000 consultants in England voted in the BMA’s ballot (a turnout of 71%), with 20,741 (86%) voting for industrial action, says @TheBMA #consultantstrikes
What are they striking about ? They're all on a fortune with a pension the private sector can't buy.
They're only getting an average of £122,000 pa. They want a lot more than that. Once you've paid tax, the mortgage and the private school fees, there's not much change left out of that.
Am I the only one on here who doesn't really give a shit if it was a lab leak or the wet fish market?
We will probably never know for sure, it makes littles difference now, and the Chinese government was culpable in any event.
I admit, it does all seem rather niche. I suspect some people are just very keen to establish themselves as soothsayers, fearless advocates of 'Lab Leak' when 'Science' was adamant that the wet market was the only game in town.
24 million people are dead. Economies are shattered
How is discovering the origin of this hideous, horrifying, pan-global disaster "niche"?
Would you say that if you had lost a brother, son, mother, sister, lover, friend, your entire business? Your home?
If it is for the purpose of blame, I think all of us agree it is China.
There is a huge gap between Science Did It and A horrible accident at a market, hence the panic in scientists
For the record - even tho I am 98% sure it came from the lab - I believe we should be tackling both. Eating bats is bad, close these disgusting markets. At the same time, stop all this Gain of Function bollocks until we know more. Because the next lab accident could kill us all
2 year UK gilt now at 5.24% new 15 year high, half a %age point above post mini budget peak. markets now see 70% chance of rates over 6% by end of year…
Shaun Lintern @ShaunLintern · 1m 🚨 BREAKING: Consultants strike action is on - More than 24,000 consultants in England voted in the BMA’s ballot (a turnout of 71%), with 20,741 (86%) voting for industrial action, says @TheBMA #consultantstrikes
What are they striking about ? They're all on a fortune with a pension the private sector can't buy.
They're only getting an average of £122,000 pa. They want a lot more than that.
Mostly want a truly independent pay board again. One that the government stuffs with lackeys, and ignores even that recommendation is pointless. By ignoring it the government in effect chose free collective bargaining.
"Sen. Rubio’s extraordinary comments set the tone for remarkable legislation that ends funding for illegal UAP programs and sets strict deadlines for whistleblowers.
Like the current (and a former) IC IG, key senators find Grusch’s stunning claims credible."
Cue bafflement and silence from most of the media. UFO's, culturally, are understand to be for nutters.
Tories to lose all three, and move to around 22 in the opinion polls; Putin to be deposed ; Trump to be arrested and jailed ; and aliens to arrive, and make their presence felt, on the White House lawn.
All these to happen before August, but then I also would be worried about the impact on my holiday..
Yes, these will all come to pass but not until TSE is in charge.
Like
Like your like.*
*Robert, sort this nonsense out please.
It was an edict from Leon.
I fear in order to satisfy our most notorious senior poster WTF is here to stay.
Jees. It really wasn't an edict!
I said the Like button has several significant drawbacks and negative side-effects (which it does). People go in search of Likes, it encourages herding behaviour, it inhibits fresh and unpopular opinion. There is much data to show the damage Like buttons do to people on social media
But I hardly commanded that it be Removed Forthwith or any such bollox
WTF?
"encourages herding behaviour, it inhibits fresh and unpopular opinion."
I don't think you can say that happens much on PB.
"the absence of evidence for a lab leak, and in the presence of evidence for the market as the source" is mere fantasy. To believe it you have to believe that circumstantial evidence is conclusive in favour of the market and inadmissible in favour of the lab, and to ignore the huge debate about whether the furin cleavage site is likely to have arisen in nature.
The evidence for the market is not circumstantial. The early cases were clustered around the market. Environmental analyses found the virus in the market. That there were two initial strains of SARS-COV-2 is consistent with a reservoir of infected animals in the market.
It is, if course, entirely possible for the wet market to be both the focal point, and it to have been a lab leak.
That., of course, it almost certainly what happened. Leaked in the lab - the CDC more likely than the WIV - simply because of proximity - 300 metres away. Infected but pre-symptomatic lab worker went from the CDC to the market to buy a chicken. Bingo. Superspreader event, clustered around the market
It's not obvious to me.
Wild -> lab -> market is plausible and you assert that the wild -> lab bit was happening (and I have no reason to disbelieve this) but the lab -> market bit still requires some lapses that are fairly rare and the timing has to be just right (they do happen, it is certainly possible)
Wild -> market is also plausible and while you assert that wild -> animal in market is unlikely (and again I have no reason to disbelieve) there's also potential for a chain of transmission through animals (or containers, surfaces, air) to market or even indeed a person infected elsewhere (not from lab, closer to large populations of bats) taking it to the market.
I don't see a strong reason to favour one of those over the other, on the available evidence.
If the outbreak had happened in any other city in China, then a purely zoonotic origin would be the most likely scenario. That it happened in the same city where bat diseases were being actively studied skews the probabilities the other way around.
Most large Chinese cities have labs studying coronaviruses. If you're worried about zoonotic infections in China, you're looking at bat diseases. So, if the outbreak had happened in any other city in China, there's a high chance there would have been a similar lab.
This doesn't seem to be true. The number of BSL-4 labs in China is very small.
Lots of viruses are studied outside BSL-4 labs, though.
For coronavirus - I believe - you need at least BSL3, and for pathogenising- gain of function - you need BSL4 (because it is so dangerous). Wuhan was the first and only BSL4 lab in China
"BSL-4 containment is used for work with dangerous and exotic agents that pose a high individual risk of life-threatening disease that may be transmitted via the aerosol route and for which there is no available vaccine or therapy. "
More to the point, I am fairly sure that Wuhan was, not the only BSL4, it was aso the only one studying "novel bat coronaviruses". It was famous for it. That;s why the director was called "batwoman Shi". There were no other batwomen in China fucking about with bats
Oh I just noticed the Off Topic button has gone - excellent.
I don't think I have ever used the Flag button, but I am slightly suspicious that you want to get rid of it to delay any future ban. I suspect that might be a vain hope.
I have never knowingly used the Off Topic button and have no idea what the flag button is for.
I do like the like button though. Thank you Richard for restoring this cherished feature.
Richard?! Where’s that WTF button gone..
A senior moment, Blanche. Thank you for pointing it out.
And thank you *Robert*.
Aha! So the truth comes out. But is the real boss of PB Richard_Nabavi, Richard_Tyndall or... could it be another_richard ?
All agencies continue to assess that both a natural and laboratory-associated origin remain plausible hypotheses to explain the first human infection.
The Department of Energy and the Federal Bureau of Investigation assess that a laboratory-associated incident was the most likely cause of the first human infection with SARS-CoV-2.
To put the bit you've quoted in its context:
The National Intelligence Council and four other IC agencies assess that the initial human infection with SARS-CoV-2 most likely was caused by natural exposure to an infected animal that carried SARS-CoV-2 or a close progenitor, a virus that probably would be more than 99 percent similar to SARSCoV-2.
The Department of Energy and the Federal Bureau of Investigation assess that a laboratory-associated incident was the most likely cause of the first human infection with SARS-CoV-2, although for different reasons.
The Central Intelligence Agency and another agency remain unable to determine the precise origin of the COVID-19 pandemic, as both hypotheses rely on significant assumptions or face challenges with conflicting reporting.
Almost all IC agencies assess that SARS-CoV-2 was not genetically engineered. Most agencies assess that SARS-CoV-2 was not laboratory-adapted; some are unable to make a determination. All IC agencies assess that SARS-CoV-2 was not developed as a biological weapon.
Generally, I look to the scientific literature for a question of science. US intelligence agencies have, however, weighed in and lab leak theorists claimed this proved the lab leak. Yet here is the document: 5 agencies say not, 2 say yes, 2 pass. Until we are allowed to see what the Dept of Energy (whose expertise is nuclear weapons) and the FBI (whose expertise is domestic law enforcement) wrote in detail, there's not much more to say there. The document then goes on to dismantle the various lines of evidence claimed. For example:
Prior to collaborating on a vaccine for SARS-CoV-2, the WIV collaborated with the PLA on other vaccine and therapeutics relevant to coronaviruses. The IC assesses that this work was intended for public health needs and that the coronaviruses known to be used were too distantly related to have led to the creation of SARS-CoV-2.
And:
Prior to the pandemic, we assess WIV scientists conducted extensive research on coronaviruses, which included animal sampling and genetic analysis. We continue to have no indication that the WIV’s pre-pandemic research holdings included SARSCoV-2 or a close progenitor, nor any direct evidence that a specific research-related incident occurred involving WIV personnel before the pandemic that could have caused the COVID pandemic.
It doesn't exactly justify your interpretation that, "The balance of probabilities is that it was a natural zoonotic event, as the new US intelligence document says."
The document doesn't say that at all. In fact it explicitly "does not address the merits of the two most likely pandemic origins hypotheses," but does confirm that some agencies think the lab leak origin is more likely.
It says that that's what the majority of US intelligence agencies believe, that it's more likely to be a natural zoonotic event. It also goes through the key lab leak claims one by one and shows they don't hold. But, yes, I was putting all that in my own words; you are free to interpret the document differently.
As far as I'm aware, the scientific method doesn't operate by opinion poll.
Some of the agencies, including the FBI, believe that the lab leak origin theory is more likely. Why do they still think this given that they have access to at least as much information as you do?
"the absence of evidence for a lab leak, and in the presence of evidence for the market as the source" is mere fantasy. To believe it you have to believe that circumstantial evidence is conclusive in favour of the market and inadmissible in favour of the lab, and to ignore the huge debate about whether the furin cleavage site is likely to have arisen in nature.
The evidence for the market is not circumstantial. The early cases were clustered around the market. Environmental analyses found the virus in the market. That there were two initial strains of SARS-COV-2 is consistent with a reservoir of infected animals in the market.
It is, if course, entirely possible for the wet market to be both the focal point, and it to have been a lab leak.
That., of course, it almost certainly what happened. Leaked in the lab - the CDC more likely than the WIV - simply because of proximity - 300 metres away. Infected but pre-symptomatic lab worker went from the CDC to the market to buy a chicken. Bingo. Superspreader event, clustered around the market
It's not obvious to me.
Wild -> lab -> market is plausible and you assert that the wild -> lab bit was happening (and I have no reason to disbelieve this) but the lab -> market bit still requires some lapses that are fairly rare and the timing has to be just right (they do happen, it is certainly possible)
Wild -> market is also plausible and while you assert that wild -> animal in market is unlikely (and again I have no reason to disbelieve) there's also potential for a chain of transmission through animals (or containers, surfaces, air) to market or even indeed a person infected elsewhere (not from lab, closer to large populations of bats) taking it to the market.
I don't see a strong reason to favour one of those over the other, on the available evidence.
If the outbreak had happened in any other city in China, then a purely zoonotic origin would be the most likely scenario. That it happened in the same city where bat diseases were being actively studied skews the probabilities the other way around.
Most large Chinese cities have labs studying coronaviruses. If you're worried about zoonotic infections in China, you're looking at bat diseases. So, if the outbreak had happened in any other city in China, there's a high chance there would have been a similar lab.
Is that true?
Wasn't the head of the WIV famous for her bat coronavirus studies?
Likewise, lots of people have been looking at coronaviruses. I've not seen a ranking of fame in the field. There are two viruses that were identified at Wuhan, WIV1 and WIV16, that are closely related to SARS-CoV-1 from bats, but the viruses we know of that are more closely related to SARS-CoV-2 were identified at other labs, like ZC45 identified by a team at the Third Military Medical University (Chongqing) and the Research Institute for Medicine of Nanjing Command (China); or RacCS203, identified in Thailand by a Thai/Singaporean-led collaboration, which also included the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (Changchun) and the Jiangsu Co-innovation Center for Prevention and Control of Important Animal Infectious Diseases and Zoonosis (Yangzhou). It's not certain that SARS-CoV-2 came from a bat. There are these bat viruses that are closely related, but there are also some pangolin viruses that are closely related (although I don't think anyone thinks pangolins are the reservoir).
There is now a date for the hearing - September 19 - 21. Mrs Justice Haldane will decide, which is interesting because she decided the ForWomenScotland2 case which ruled that a GRC changes a person's legal sex for all purposes. That is of course contrary to what the SNP argued in Holyrood during the passage of the Bill where they claimed this was merely a small piece of administrative tidying up. But it may make it easier for Westminster to argue that the effect of the GRR Bill does affect the EA and reserved matters and therefore is outwith Holyrood's competence. If @DavidL is around it would be interesting to get his thoughts.
More importantly, it likely means that the outcome, its implications and an almost certain appeal to the Supreme Court will be happening in the run up to a General Election, which may annoy/please different political parties, depending on the outcome, reactions etc.,.
SNP minister Shirley-Anne Somerville, announcing amended children's rights bill: "Once again we find the democratic will of this Parliament blocked by Westminster"
In 2021, judges said it seemed original bill was drafted "in terms which deliberately exceed" Holyrood's competence
Shaun Lintern @ShaunLintern · 1m 🚨 BREAKING: Consultants strike action is on - More than 24,000 consultants in England voted in the BMA’s ballot (a turnout of 71%), with 20,741 (86%) voting for industrial action, says @TheBMA #consultantstrikes
What are they striking about ? They're all on a fortune with a pension the private sector can't buy.
They're only getting an average of £122,000 pa. They want a lot more than that.
Mostly want a truly independent pay board again. One that the government stuffs with lackeys, and ignores even that recommendation is pointless. By ignoring it the government in effect chose free collective bargaining.
Do you think the public will have sympathy with very wealthy consultants?
All agencies continue to assess that both a natural and laboratory-associated origin remain plausible hypotheses to explain the first human infection.
The Department of Energy and the Federal Bureau of Investigation assess that a laboratory-associated incident was the most likely cause of the first human infection with SARS-CoV-2.
To put the bit you've quoted in its context:
The National Intelligence Council and four other IC agencies assess that the initial human infection with SARS-CoV-2 most likely was caused by natural exposure to an infected animal that carried SARS-CoV-2 or a close progenitor, a virus that probably would be more than 99 percent similar to SARSCoV-2.
The Department of Energy and the Federal Bureau of Investigation assess that a laboratory-associated incident was the most likely cause of the first human infection with SARS-CoV-2, although for different reasons.
The Central Intelligence Agency and another agency remain unable to determine the precise origin of the COVID-19 pandemic, as both hypotheses rely on significant assumptions or face challenges with conflicting reporting.
Almost all IC agencies assess that SARS-CoV-2 was not genetically engineered. Most agencies assess that SARS-CoV-2 was not laboratory-adapted; some are unable to make a determination. All IC agencies assess that SARS-CoV-2 was not developed as a biological weapon.
Generally, I look to the scientific literature for a question of science. US intelligence agencies have, however, weighed in and lab leak theorists claimed this proved the lab leak. Yet here is the document: 5 agencies say not, 2 say yes, 2 pass. Until we are allowed to see what the Dept of Energy (whose expertise is nuclear weapons) and the FBI (whose expertise is domestic law enforcement) wrote in detail, there's not much more to say there. The document then goes on to dismantle the various lines of evidence claimed. For example:
Prior to collaborating on a vaccine for SARS-CoV-2, the WIV collaborated with the PLA on other vaccine and therapeutics relevant to coronaviruses. The IC assesses that this work was intended for public health needs and that the coronaviruses known to be used were too distantly related to have led to the creation of SARS-CoV-2.
And:
Prior to the pandemic, we assess WIV scientists conducted extensive research on coronaviruses, which included animal sampling and genetic analysis. We continue to have no indication that the WIV’s pre-pandemic research holdings included SARSCoV-2 or a close progenitor, nor any direct evidence that a specific research-related incident occurred involving WIV personnel before the pandemic that could have caused the COVID pandemic.
It doesn't exactly justify your interpretation that, "The balance of probabilities is that it was a natural zoonotic event, as the new US intelligence document says."
The document doesn't say that at all. In fact it explicitly "does not address the merits of the two most likely pandemic origins hypotheses," but does confirm that some agencies think the lab leak origin is more likely.
It says that that's what the majority of US intelligence agencies believe, that it's more likely to be a natural zoonotic event. It also goes through the key lab leak claims one by one and shows they don't hold. But, yes, I was putting all that in my own words; you are free to interpret the document differently.
As far as I'm aware, the scientific method doesn't operate by opinion poll.
Some of the agencies, including the FBI, believe that the lab leak origin theory is more likely. Why do they still think this given that they have access to at least as much information as you do?
If you can get the FBI to release a report explaining their earlier conclusion, I will be thankful and read it with interest. Until then, what we have is the report discussed above representing all the US intelligence agencies and all the other evidence published in the peer-reviewed scientific literature.
On a personal note yesterday's mayhem is over and this morning I exchanged on my Dad's house and it is being cleared on Friday for the new owners to move in. I could have done without all of that. Does anyone want a fridge? I have 5 to dispose of stacked in his garage. Only joking as I assume 4 of them don't work.
Shaun Lintern @ShaunLintern · 1m 🚨 BREAKING: Consultants strike action is on - More than 24,000 consultants in England voted in the BMA’s ballot (a turnout of 71%), with 20,741 (86%) voting for industrial action, says @TheBMA #consultantstrikes
What are they striking about ? They're all on a fortune with a pension the private sector can't buy.
They're only getting an average of £122,000 pa. They want a lot more than that.
Mostly want a truly independent pay board again. One that the government stuffs with lackeys, and ignores even that recommendation is pointless. By ignoring it the government in effect chose free collective bargaining.
Do you think the public will have sympathy with very wealthy consultants?
Probably not, but it isn't a popularity contest, it is a strike.
The government has 3 weeks to negotiate.
Leaking that they were going to ignore the pay boards again this year wasn't very wise IMO during the balloting.
Shaun Lintern @ShaunLintern · 1m 🚨 BREAKING: Consultants strike action is on - More than 24,000 consultants in England voted in the BMA’s ballot (a turnout of 71%), with 20,741 (86%) voting for industrial action, says @TheBMA #consultantstrikes
What are they striking about ? They're all on a fortune with a pension the private sector can't buy.
They're only getting an average of £122,000 pa. They want a lot more than that.
Mostly want a truly independent pay board again. One that the government stuffs with lackeys, and ignores even that recommendation is pointless. By ignoring it the government in effect chose free collective bargaining.
Why should people earning such an amount of money plus a simply extraordinary pension package (recently uncapped) have recourse to collective bargaining?
On topic: Yes, I expect the Conservatives to lose the lot. Kicking useless Governments at by-elections is tradition, and this lot are supremely useless.
Best wishes also to OGH with the recovery. You're obviously far from the only person with the means to shell out for private treatment who has done so to avoid years waiting in considerable pain for the disintegrating NHS to do anything about it. My Mum likewise paid a fortune for private surgery earlier in the year.
Meanwhile, whilst rising interest rates result in endless column inches of handwringing in newspapers about the "mortgage timebomb," people who have been suffering much worse for much longer continue to be mostly overlooked.
The total collapse in affordability for low income private renters is alarming.
In some parts of England there are now literally no properties available to rent for households receiving housing benefit.
We’ve been working with crisis and Zoopla. The data is grim.
Amongst the miserable revelations in this thread, 25% of all households seeking homelessness support - not just struggling to pay the rent, but actually seeking help with homelessness or the imminent threat thereof - were working households. It's quite something when we've got to the point where not merely does a substantial fraction of the working population face an entire lifetime of renting (and therefore, by extension, of working until they drop to pay for it, so ruinously expensive has it become,) but that work for some people pays so badly that they can't even afford a roof over their heads.
Britain's entire socio-economic system is shot.
THat does need the WTF button.
What are they going to do? Increase pay? Bring back the workhouse? Provide free cardboard boxes?
Families with kids will be shunted around the country by local councils, in search of anywhere there might still be temporary accommodation available (that the Home Office hasn't yet filled with its immense backlog of asylum claimants.)
Adults will simply end up being thrown onto the streets. I think we can expect to see skyrocketing levels of street homelessness over the next couple of years - especially given that interest rates still have some distance left to go. If the BoE base rate really does peak above 6% then, well... 6.25% probably means 7.5% on new five year mortgage fixes for standard residential borrowers and 8% for BTL landlords. Destitution for ordinary borrowers and a further sharp contraction in the availability of private rental property (meaning that what's still available will be able to command eyewatering rents) will result.
Still, if the losers of the current settlement end up either dead or with no fixed abode then they can't vote, which will boost the Government's share of the remaining electorate, AND a fifth of Tory MPs are landlords - so I dare say that this state of affairs suits them quite nicely.
I think I've worked out why a certain type of person was so offended by the lab-leak hypothesis. It's because they viewed it as a "simplistic" explanation, and they dislike what they view as simplistic explanations for anything, even if it's most likely to be true.
"the absence of evidence for a lab leak, and in the presence of evidence for the market as the source" is mere fantasy. To believe it you have to believe that circumstantial evidence is conclusive in favour of the market and inadmissible in favour of the lab, and to ignore the huge debate about whether the furin cleavage site is likely to have arisen in nature.
The evidence for the market is not circumstantial. The early cases were clustered around the market. Environmental analyses found the virus in the market. That there were two initial strains of SARS-COV-2 is consistent with a reservoir of infected animals in the market.
It is, if course, entirely possible for the wet market to be both the focal point, and it to have been a lab leak.
That., of course, it almost certainly what happened. Leaked in the lab - the CDC more likely than the WIV - simply because of proximity - 300 metres away. Infected but pre-symptomatic lab worker went from the CDC to the market to buy a chicken. Bingo. Superspreader event, clustered around the market
It's not obvious to me.
Wild -> lab -> market is plausible and you assert that the wild -> lab bit was happening (and I have no reason to disbelieve this) but the lab -> market bit still requires some lapses that are fairly rare and the timing has to be just right (they do happen, it is certainly possible)
Wild -> market is also plausible and while you assert that wild -> animal in market is unlikely (and again I have no reason to disbelieve) there's also potential for a chain of transmission through animals (or containers, surfaces, air) to market or even indeed a person infected elsewhere (not from lab, closer to large populations of bats) taking it to the market.
I don't see a strong reason to favour one of those over the other, on the available evidence.
If the outbreak had happened in any other city in China, then a purely zoonotic origin would be the most likely scenario. That it happened in the same city where bat diseases were being actively studied skews the probabilities the other way around.
That's not entirely true. Most large cities in China have bat coronavirus labs and active research.
2 year UK gilt now at 5.24% new 15 year high, half a %age point above post mini budget peak. markets now see 70% chance of rates over 6% by end of year…
I posted yesterday that there is no alternative to the policies of Sunak and Hunt and this is hard, very hard
The last property crisis lasted from 1991 to 2001 and there is every reason to believe this could be similar
I would gently remind folks that the 1976 labour government's financial crisis needed the intervention of the IMF with big cuts in public spending, let's hope we are not on the same course today
Labour doing well at Selby because the Lib Dems do not appear to be doing much, a missed opportunity for them I think. Somerton and Frome should be a Lib Dem walk in but their candidate? What will happen when she has to appear on a panel of candidates? Maybe be ill that week.
Shaun Lintern @ShaunLintern · 1m 🚨 BREAKING: Consultants strike action is on - More than 24,000 consultants in England voted in the BMA’s ballot (a turnout of 71%), with 20,741 (86%) voting for industrial action, says @TheBMA #consultantstrikes
What are they striking about ? They're all on a fortune with a pension the private sector can't buy.
They're only getting an average of £122,000 pa. They want a lot more than that.
Mostly want a truly independent pay board again. One that the government stuffs with lackeys, and ignores even that recommendation is pointless. By ignoring it the government in effect chose free collective bargaining.
Why should people earning such an amount of money plus a simply extraordinary pension package (recently uncapped) have recourse to collective bargaining?
Because everyone is entitled to collective bargaining.
I think I've worked out why a certain type of person was so offended by the lab-leak hypothesis. It's because they viewed it as a "simplistic" explanation, and they dislike what they view as simplistic explanations for anything, even if it's most likely to be true.
I suspect it is because the theory would, they think, pin blame on non-white people and is therefore racist (regardless of whether it is true). What if the pandemic started in America and lab leak hypothesis formed there?
2 year UK gilt now at 5.24% new 15 year high, half a %age point above post mini budget peak. markets now see 70% chance of rates over 6% by end of year…
"the absence of evidence for a lab leak, and in the presence of evidence for the market as the source" is mere fantasy. To believe it you have to believe that circumstantial evidence is conclusive in favour of the market and inadmissible in favour of the lab, and to ignore the huge debate about whether the furin cleavage site is likely to have arisen in nature.
The evidence for the market is not circumstantial. The early cases were clustered around the market. Environmental analyses found the virus in the market. That there were two initial strains of SARS-COV-2 is consistent with a reservoir of infected animals in the market.
It is, if course, entirely possible for the wet market to be both the focal point, and it to have been a lab leak.
That., of course, it almost certainly what happened. Leaked in the lab - the CDC more likely than the WIV - simply because of proximity - 300 metres away. Infected but pre-symptomatic lab worker went from the CDC to the market to buy a chicken. Bingo. Superspreader event, clustered around the market
It's not obvious to me.
Wild -> lab -> market is plausible and you assert that the wild -> lab bit was happening (and I have no reason to disbelieve this) but the lab -> market bit still requires some lapses that are fairly rare and the timing has to be just right (they do happen, it is certainly possible)
Wild -> market is also plausible and while you assert that wild -> animal in market is unlikely (and again I have no reason to disbelieve) there's also potential for a chain of transmission through animals (or containers, surfaces, air) to market or even indeed a person infected elsewhere (not from lab, closer to large populations of bats) taking it to the market.
I don't see a strong reason to favour one of those over the other, on the available evidence.
If the outbreak had happened in any other city in China, then a purely zoonotic origin would be the most likely scenario. That it happened in the same city where bat diseases were being actively studied skews the probabilities the other way around.
Most large Chinese cities have labs studying coronaviruses. If you're worried about zoonotic infections in China, you're looking at bat diseases. So, if the outbreak had happened in any other city in China, there's a high chance there would have been a similar lab.
This doesn't seem to be true. The number of BSL-4 labs in China is very small.
And a lab leak can come from a BSL-3 lab. After all, WCDC is not BSL-4 lab, and that's the one Leon is most animated about. If it was artificially manipulated, then the odds change. If it was a natural sample leaked (which is where the focus now lies), then it's any BSL-3 lab or higher.
"the absence of evidence for a lab leak, and in the presence of evidence for the market as the source" is mere fantasy. To believe it you have to believe that circumstantial evidence is conclusive in favour of the market and inadmissible in favour of the lab, and to ignore the huge debate about whether the furin cleavage site is likely to have arisen in nature.
The evidence for the market is not circumstantial. The early cases were clustered around the market. Environmental analyses found the virus in the market. That there were two initial strains of SARS-COV-2 is consistent with a reservoir of infected animals in the market.
It is, if course, entirely possible for the wet market to be both the focal point, and it to have been a lab leak.
That., of course, it almost certainly what happened. Leaked in the lab - the CDC more likely than the WIV - simply because of proximity - 300 metres away. Infected but pre-symptomatic lab worker went from the CDC to the market to buy a chicken. Bingo. Superspreader event, clustered around the market
It's not obvious to me.
Wild -> lab -> market is plausible and you assert that the wild -> lab bit was happening (and I have no reason to disbelieve this) but the lab -> market bit still requires some lapses that are fairly rare and the timing has to be just right (they do happen, it is certainly possible)
Wild -> market is also plausible and while you assert that wild -> animal in market is unlikely (and again I have no reason to disbelieve) there's also potential for a chain of transmission through animals (or containers, surfaces, air) to market or even indeed a person infected elsewhere (not from lab, closer to large populations of bats) taking it to the market.
I don't see a strong reason to favour one of those over the other, on the available evidence.
If the outbreak had happened in any other city in China, then a purely zoonotic origin would be the most likely scenario. That it happened in the same city where bat diseases were being actively studied skews the probabilities the other way around.
Most large Chinese cities have labs studying coronaviruses. If you're worried about zoonotic infections in China, you're looking at bat diseases. So, if the outbreak had happened in any other city in China, there's a high chance there would have been a similar lab.
Is that true?
Wasn't the head of the WIV famous for her bat coronavirus studies?
Likewise, lots of people have been looking at coronaviruses. I've not seen a ranking of fame in the field. There are two viruses that were identified at Wuhan, WIV1 and WIV16, that are closely related to SARS-CoV-1 from bats, but the viruses we know of that are more closely related to SARS-CoV-2 were identified at other labs, like ZC45 identified by a team at the Third Military Medical University (Chongqing) and the Research Institute for Medicine of Nanjing Command (China); or RacCS203, identified in Thailand by a Thai/Singaporean-led collaboration, which also included the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (Changchun) and the Jiangsu Co-innovation Center for Prevention and Control of Important Animal Infectious Diseases and Zoonosis (Yangzhou). It's not certain that SARS-CoV-2 came from a bat. There are these bat viruses that are closely related, but there are also some pangolin viruses that are closely related (although I don't think anyone thinks pangolins are the reservoir).
Wuhan was and is one of the only three BSL4 labs in China (and it is disputed if the others are operational) and it is therefore one of the only 1, 2 or 3 labs allowed to do Gain of Function. It was also the only one doing research on bats.
So far from "most Chinese cities have labs studying coronaviruses" we're down to one, just one lab, studying Gain of Fuction in novel bat coronaviruses. And it is in Wuhan
2 year UK gilt now at 5.24% new 15 year high, half a %age point above post mini budget peak. markets now see 70% chance of rates over 6% by end of year…
Labour doing well at Selby because the Lib Dems do not appear to be doing much, a missed opportunity for them I think. Somerton and Frome should be a Lib Dem walk in but their candidate? What will happen when she has to appear on a panel of candidates? Maybe be ill that week.
The importance of the candidate is almost always overstated. Just so long as no video emerges prior to polling day of her drowning a sack full of kittens or something, then she'll walk it.
I think I've worked out why a certain type of person was so offended by the lab-leak hypothesis. It's because they viewed it as a "simplistic" explanation, and they dislike what they view as simplistic explanations for anything, even if it's most likely to be true.
I suspect it is because the theory would, they think, pin blame on non-white people and is therefore racist (regardless of whether it is true). What if the pandemic started in America and lab leak hypothesis formed there?
Though the alternative is to blame the Wet Market, which was run by non-white people with a cavalier attitude to sanitation and animal welfare.
It looks like your racial theory falls at the first step.
2 year UK gilt now at 5.24% new 15 year high, half a %age point above post mini budget peak. markets now see 70% chance of rates over 6% by end of year…
2 year UK gilt now at 5.24% new 15 year high, half a %age point above post mini budget peak. markets now see 70% chance of rates over 6% by end of year…
Well it is not helped by the BMA and other militant unions seeking high pay awards
Aside from the broader economic debate over links between public sector pay and inflation, does *seeking* high pay awards contribute to higher inflation? Surely it's *getting* high pay awards?
I think I've worked out why a certain type of person was so offended by the lab-leak hypothesis. It's because they viewed it as a "simplistic" explanation, and they dislike what they view as simplistic explanations for anything, even if it's most likely to be true.
I suspect it is because the theory would, they think, pin blame on non-white people and is therefore racist (regardless of whether it is true). What if the pandemic started in America and lab leak hypothesis formed there?
That surely makes no sense. The main alternative - wet market - is surely even more putting the blame on people and practices 'not like us'. Scientists in a lab in Wuhan are, to my mind, very much like us (I admit the fact I'm a scientist gives me some bias here).
2 year UK gilt now at 5.24% new 15 year high, half a %age point above post mini budget peak. markets now see 70% chance of rates over 6% by end of year…
I posted yesterday that there is no alternative to the policies of Sunak and Hunt and this is hard, very hard
The last property crisis lasted from 1991 to 2001 and there is every reason to believe this could be similar
I would gently remind folks that the 1976 labour government's financial crisis needed the intervention of the IMF with big cuts in public spending, let's hope we are not on the same course today
BoE is supposed to handle inflation and they have failed utterly.
On topic: Yes, I expect the Conservatives to lose the lot. Kicking useless Governments at by-elections is tradition, and this lot are supremely useless.
Best wishes also to OGH with the recovery. You're obviously far from the only person with the means to shell out for private treatment who has done so to avoid years waiting in considerable pain for the disintegrating NHS to do anything about it. My Mum likewise paid a fortune for private surgery earlier in the year.
Meanwhile, whilst rising interest rates result in endless column inches of handwringing in newspapers about the "mortgage timebomb," people who have been suffering much worse for much longer continue to be mostly overlooked.
The total collapse in affordability for low income private renters is alarming.
In some parts of England there are now literally no properties available to rent for households receiving housing benefit.
We’ve been working with crisis and Zoopla. The data is grim.
Amongst the miserable revelations in this thread, 25% of all households seeking homelessness support - not just struggling to pay the rent, but actually seeking help with homelessness or the imminent threat thereof - were working households. It's quite something when we've got to the point where not merely does a substantial fraction of the working population face an entire lifetime of renting (and therefore, by extension, of working until they drop to pay for it, so ruinously expensive has it become,) but that work for some people pays so badly that they can't even afford a roof over their heads.
Britain's entire socio-economic system is shot.
THat does need the WTF button.
What are they going to do? Increase pay? Bring back the workhouse? Provide free cardboard boxes?
Families with kids will be shunted around the country by local councils, in search of anywhere there might still be temporary accommodation available (that the Home Office hasn't yet filled with its immense backlog of asylum claimants.)
Adults will simply end up being thrown onto the streets. I think we can expect to see skyrocketing levels of street homelessness over the next couple of years - especially given that interest rates still have some distance left to go. If the BoE base rate really does peak above 6% then, well... 6.25% probably means 7.5% on new five year mortgage fixes for standard residential borrowers and 8% for BTL landlords. Destitution for ordinary borrowers and a further sharp contraction in the availability of private rental property (meaning that what's still available will be able to command eyewatering rents) will result.
Still, if the losers of the current settlement end up either dead or with no fixed abode then they can't vote, which will boost the Government's share of the remaining electorate, AND a fifth of Tory MPs are landlords - so I dare say that this state of affairs suits them quite nicely.
Am I the only one on here who doesn't really give a shit if it was a lab leak or the wet fish market?
We will probably never know for sure, it makes littles difference now, and the Chinese government was culpable in any event.
It matters somewhat. If the origin was the market, as is most likely, it means the Chinese authorities, far from having learnt their lesson from the last SARS epidemic less than 20 years earlier that definitely originated in a similar market, allowed another completely avoidable epidemic to happen due to poor food hygiene that killed millions worldwide. And furthermore we're just waiting for yet another avoidable epidemic to do the same again in the future.
If on the other hand it was a lab leak, as is possible but less likely, that too was probably avoidable.
Now it doesn't have to be either/or. China should tighten up processes in both its labs and markets. But in practice the focus does make a difference.
"the absence of evidence for a lab leak, and in the presence of evidence for the market as the source" is mere fantasy. To believe it you have to believe that circumstantial evidence is conclusive in favour of the market and inadmissible in favour of the lab, and to ignore the huge debate about whether the furin cleavage site is likely to have arisen in nature.
The evidence for the market is not circumstantial. The early cases were clustered around the market. Environmental analyses found the virus in the market. That there were two initial strains of SARS-COV-2 is consistent with a reservoir of infected animals in the market.
It is, if course, entirely possible for the wet market to be both the focal point, and it to have been a lab leak.
That., of course, it almost certainly what happened. Leaked in the lab - the CDC more likely than the WIV - simply because of proximity - 300 metres away. Infected but pre-symptomatic lab worker went from the CDC to the market to buy a chicken. Bingo. Superspreader event, clustered around the market
It's not obvious to me.
Wild -> lab -> market is plausible and you assert that the wild -> lab bit was happening (and I have no reason to disbelieve this) but the lab -> market bit still requires some lapses that are fairly rare and the timing has to be just right (they do happen, it is certainly possible)
Wild -> market is also plausible and while you assert that wild -> animal in market is unlikely (and again I have no reason to disbelieve) there's also potential for a chain of transmission through animals (or containers, surfaces, air) to market or even indeed a person infected elsewhere (not from lab, closer to large populations of bats) taking it to the market.
I don't see a strong reason to favour one of those over the other, on the available evidence.
If the outbreak had happened in any other city in China, then a purely zoonotic origin would be the most likely scenario. That it happened in the same city where bat diseases were being actively studied skews the probabilities the other way around.
Most large Chinese cities have labs studying coronaviruses. If you're worried about zoonotic infections in China, you're looking at bat diseases. So, if the outbreak had happened in any other city in China, there's a high chance there would have been a similar lab.
This doesn't seem to be true. The number of BSL-4 labs in China is very small.
And a lab leak can come from a BSL-3 lab. After all, WCDC is not BSL-4 lab, and that's the one Leon is most animated about. If it was artificially manipulated, then the odds change. If it was a natural sample leaked (which is where the focus now lies), then it's any BSL-3 lab or higher.
(Edited - BSL-3)
The CDC was, I believe, operating at BSL 2
That's why Jeremy Farrar's first reaction, on hearing about Covid, was that the lab work in China was "like the Wild West". He also believed it probably came from the lab
Yet weirdly enough about six minutes after writing that email he signed a letter to the Lancet calling "lab leak" a baseless conspiracy theory
Funny, huh
Proof that some of this terrifying bat research was done at BSL2 level (I reckon this is the Wuhan CDC they are talking about)
"In EHA-led work conducted in Wuhan, scientists infected humanized mice with engineered novel bat coronaviruses in a BSL-3 facility, according to grant documents EHA submitted to the NIH. Some collection and engineering of bat coronaviruses were done in a BSL-2, with less stringent protocols and containment, according to multiple sources including a paper in the Journal of Virology ."
2 year UK gilt now at 5.24% new 15 year high, half a %age point above post mini budget peak. markets now see 70% chance of rates over 6% by end of year…
I think I've worked out why a certain type of person was so offended by the lab-leak hypothesis. It's because they viewed it as a "simplistic" explanation, and they dislike what they view as simplistic explanations for anything, even if it's most likely to be true.
I suspect it is because the theory would, they think, pin blame on non-white people and is therefore racist (regardless of whether it is true). What if the pandemic started in America and lab leak hypothesis formed there?
Though the alternative is to blame the Wet Market, which was run by non-white people with a cavalier attitude to sanitation and animal welfare.
It looks like your racial theory falls at the first step.
Yes, I don't buy the racist theory. Bat soup is even more racist
The Lab Leak hypothesis also implicates America (via Fauci and the NIH) and western science in general, along with the Chinese boffins
2 year UK gilt now at 5.24% new 15 year high, half a %age point above post mini budget peak. markets now see 70% chance of rates over 6% by end of year…
Well it is not helped by the BMA and other militant unions seeking high pay awards
Or the pension triple lock...
I agree and have said so on numerous occasions
Well, I am sure you see that our real terms pay cuts of 6-8% last year depending on grade haven't stopped inflation, just accelerated people leaving the profession.
2 year UK gilt now at 5.24% new 15 year high, half a %age point above post mini budget peak. markets now see 70% chance of rates over 6% by end of year…
I posted yesterday that there is no alternative to the policies of Sunak and Hunt and this is hard, very hard
The last property crisis lasted from 1991 to 2001 and there is every reason to believe this could be similar
I would gently remind folks that the 1976 labour government's financial crisis needed the intervention of the IMF with big cuts in public spending, let's hope we are not on the same course today
BoE is supposed to handle inflation and they have failed utterly.
2% target?
WTF.
Liz Truss was right in the first place that the monetary policy framework needs to be looked at again. Depoliticised CPI targetting was a superficially attractive policy but has been one of the root causes of two major crises in a row.
2 year UK gilt now at 5.24% new 15 year high, half a %age point above post mini budget peak. markets now see 70% chance of rates over 6% by end of year…
Well it is not helped by the BMA and other militant unions seeking high pay awards
Aside from the broader economic debate over links between public sector pay and inflation, does *seeking* high pay awards contribute to higher inflation? Surely it's *getting* high pay awards?
The problem is the refusal to discuss sensible awards
I think I've worked out why a certain type of person was so offended by the lab-leak hypothesis. It's because they viewed it as a "simplistic" explanation, and they dislike what they view as simplistic explanations for anything, even if it's most likely to be true.
I may be misremembering - I probably am, as I never really paid it much attention - but weren't many of the early adopters of the lab theory anti-vaxxers on the far right? If so, my guess is that it was the messenger that was the problem.
2 year UK gilt now at 5.24% new 15 year high, half a %age point above post mini budget peak. markets now see 70% chance of rates over 6% by end of year…
Well it is not helped by the BMA and other militant unions seeking high pay awards
Or the pension triple lock...
I agree and have said so on numerous occasions
I don't then fully understand your defence of the Sunak/Hunt "plan" on inflation (such as it is) as the only way.
Even if you're very kind and conclude that the failure satisfactorily to resolve public sector pay disputes is due to one side (the unions) and not the other (the Government), surely the continuation or not of the triple lock is wholly within the control of the PM and Chancellor?
"the absence of evidence for a lab leak, and in the presence of evidence for the market as the source" is mere fantasy. To believe it you have to believe that circumstantial evidence is conclusive in favour of the market and inadmissible in favour of the lab, and to ignore the huge debate about whether the furin cleavage site is likely to have arisen in nature.
The evidence for the market is not circumstantial. The early cases were clustered around the market. Environmental analyses found the virus in the market. That there were two initial strains of SARS-COV-2 is consistent with a reservoir of infected animals in the market.
It is, if course, entirely possible for the wet market to be both the focal point, and it to have been a lab leak.
That., of course, it almost certainly what happened. Leaked in the lab - the CDC more likely than the WIV - simply because of proximity - 300 metres away. Infected but pre-symptomatic lab worker went from the CDC to the market to buy a chicken. Bingo. Superspreader event, clustered around the market
It's not obvious to me.
Wild -> lab -> market is plausible and you assert that the wild -> lab bit was happening (and I have no reason to disbelieve this) but the lab -> market bit still requires some lapses that are fairly rare and the timing has to be just right (they do happen, it is certainly possible)
Wild -> market is also plausible and while you assert that wild -> animal in market is unlikely (and again I have no reason to disbelieve) there's also potential for a chain of transmission through animals (or containers, surfaces, air) to market or even indeed a person infected elsewhere (not from lab, closer to large populations of bats) taking it to the market.
I don't see a strong reason to favour one of those over the other, on the available evidence.
If the outbreak had happened in any other city in China, then a purely zoonotic origin would be the most likely scenario. That it happened in the same city where bat diseases were being actively studied skews the probabilities the other way around.
Most large Chinese cities have labs studying coronaviruses. If you're worried about zoonotic infections in China, you're looking at bat diseases. So, if the outbreak had happened in any other city in China, there's a high chance there would have been a similar lab.
Is that true?
Wasn't the head of the WIV famous for her bat coronavirus studies?
Likewise, lots of people have been looking at coronaviruses. I've not seen a ranking of fame in the field. There are two viruses that were identified at Wuhan, WIV1 and WIV16, that are closely related to SARS-CoV-1 from bats, but the viruses we know of that are more closely related to SARS-CoV-2 were identified at other labs, like ZC45 identified by a team at the Third Military Medical University (Chongqing) and the Research Institute for Medicine of Nanjing Command (China); or RacCS203, identified in Thailand by a Thai/Singaporean-led collaboration, which also included the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (Changchun) and the Jiangsu Co-innovation Center for Prevention and Control of Important Animal Infectious Diseases and Zoonosis (Yangzhou). It's not certain that SARS-CoV-2 came from a bat. There are these bat viruses that are closely related, but there are also some pangolin viruses that are closely related (although I don't think anyone thinks pangolins are the reservoir).
Wuhan was and is one of the only three BSL4 labs in China (and it is disputed if the others are operational) and it is therefore one of the only 1, 2 or 3 labs allowed to do Gain of Function. It was also the only one doing research on bats.
So far from "most Chinese cities have labs studying coronaviruses" we're down to one, just one lab, studying Gain of Fuction in novel bat coronaviruses. And it is in Wuhan
I'm finding it difficult to keep up. Earlier, you were dismissive over the distance of WIV (the BSL-4 lab with the research you mentioned above) and highlighted the distance of WCDC (the BSL-3 lab NOT doing gain of function research) to the marketplace.
Which one are you saying leaked?
There doesn't seem to be a single coherent lab leak theory. The FBI point to WIV. The DoE to WCDC. They can't both be right (Four other agencies plus the Intelligence Council to zoonosis. Two more to "don't know either way.").
It's agreed between them that it's not artificially manipulated - which would allow the WCDC leak hypothesis (as the closest lab and at BSL-3, which "not manipulated" would allow), but remove almost all the specialness of Wuhan (as so many large cities have BSL-3 labs).
If it was manipulated, then that goes against the intelligence report and the overwhelming consensus of virologists, but would make the discussion on BSL-4 labs and WIV specifically far more salient. But it does not appear manipulated, furin cleavage sites are not uncommon in wild coronaviruses, WIV is not nearly as close to the market in question, and that would indicate Wuhan being no more or less likely than any other large city in China.
(And it needs a pretty large city to properly spark an epidemic following zoonosis)
2 year UK gilt now at 5.24% new 15 year high, half a %age point above post mini budget peak. markets now see 70% chance of rates over 6% by end of year…
Well it is not helped by the BMA and other militant unions seeking high pay awards
Aside from the broader economic debate over links between public sector pay and inflation, does *seeking* high pay awards contribute to higher inflation? Surely it's *getting* high pay awards?
The problem is the refusal to discuss sensible awards
Yes, the government have refused to do so. 6-8% real terms pay cuts last year.
The BMA have been clear that they expect pay restoration to take some years rather than be in a single year, but also that the independence of the payload must be restored, and its recommendations accepted.
2 year UK gilt now at 5.24% new 15 year high, half a %age point above post mini budget peak. markets now see 70% chance of rates over 6% by end of year…
Well it is not helped by the BMA and other militant unions seeking high pay awards
Aside from the broader economic debate over links between public sector pay and inflation, does *seeking* high pay awards contribute to higher inflation? Surely it's *getting* high pay awards?
The problem is the refusal to discuss sensible awards
Presumably "sensible" in your world means "what a Tory government wants". Real human sentient people just want their pay to get back to what it was 1, or 2, or 3, or 4 years ago.
Also - these people of whatever trade are responding to *past* inflation, not what some Tory thinks it might be next year (and has probably got wrong already). Even having a 10% (or whatever) to match an annual 10% in CPI means they have suffered something like 4-5% off their income [edit: for that year] which they'll never get back.
Ah, this was the play? To beat the all time site 'like' record?
The all time record holder is JohnO, with 60 likes.
Ah, some way to go yet then!
What was JohnO's post? I've no idea if there's any way of searching that.
ETA: Who holds the WTF record?
A note thanking all pb for their kind words and thoughts following a sudden cardiac arrest three days after being reelected in May 2021. (Didn't want to be the cause of a very early by-election!)
I think I've worked out why a certain type of person was so offended by the lab-leak hypothesis. It's because they viewed it as a "simplistic" explanation, and they dislike what they view as simplistic explanations for anything, even if it's most likely to be true.
I suspect it is because the theory would, they think, pin blame on non-white people and is therefore racist (regardless of whether it is true). What if the pandemic started in America and lab leak hypothesis formed there?
That surely makes no sense. The main alternative - wet market - is surely even more putting the blame on people and practices 'not like us'. Scientists in a lab in Wuhan are, to my mind, very much like us (I admit the fact I'm a scientist gives me some bias here).
So why do you think the lab leak theory was treated with utter disdain by the left?
2 year UK gilt now at 5.24% new 15 year high, half a %age point above post mini budget peak. markets now see 70% chance of rates over 6% by end of year…
Well it is not helped by the BMA and other militant unions seeking high pay awards
Aside from the broader economic debate over links between public sector pay and inflation, does *seeking* high pay awards contribute to higher inflation? Surely it's *getting* high pay awards?
The problem is the refusal to discuss sensible awards
Awards which drive people away from professions we rely on to run our health and education services are not sensible.
2 year UK gilt now at 5.24% new 15 year high, half a %age point above post mini budget peak. markets now see 70% chance of rates over 6% by end of year…
Well it is not helped by the BMA and other militant unions seeking high pay awards
The junior quacks haven't got their enormous raise, so that doesn't count for starters.
More broadly, the role of the wage-price spiral in this is vastly overstated. It's made by businesses that don't want their margins squeezed, a Government that doesn't want to have to tax its wealthy core vote to fund decent settlements, and above all a Bank of England incapable of doing its job properly.
Meanwhile, in actual reality, here is the true picture from the latest ONS statistical release on pay growth:
Growth in total and regular pay fell in real terms (adjusted for inflation) on the year in February to April 2023, by 2.0% for total pay and 1.3% for regular pay.
Pay rises have gone up in the current environment (but why shouldn't they - state pensioners have received compensation for inflation in full, but nobody in Government ever moans about the effing triple lock being inflationary, do they?) But if wages were driving further inflation, how come they're below the rate of inflation and most workers are, therefore, still getting poorer? Is it just possible that the real explanations for inflation might be (a) the ongoing fallout from Ukraine, (b) profiteering by some businesses, (c) the deployment of pandemic savings by wealthier households to buttress their standards of living, and (d) vast asset price inflation caused by a combination of the totally, irredeemably bent housing market and the incomprehensibly vast sums of liquidity injected into the economy via QE?
Not everything that the unions demand is always reasonable, but remember that for every highly paid train driver (and the rail strikes piss me off as much as anyone, but would train drivers be highly paid if they didn't have "militant unions" - I'm not convinced,) there are probably half-a-dozen nurses who have already been reduced to visiting food banks to survive. Please, therefore, desist from the Marie Antoinette act and stop blaming employees for demanding enough remuneration to be able to afford to eat.
Somerton and Frome will be a LD gain I think. Uxbridge I think could be a Tory hold due to a more local Tory candidate who is a Hillingdon councillor than the Camden councillor Labour candidate and the high Hindu vote.
Selby could go either way, narrow Tory hold or narrow Labour gain
Really – the Tories are available at 10/1 to hold the seat, also presume you'll be stacking your wads on that?
I think I've worked out why a certain type of person was so offended by the lab-leak hypothesis. It's because they viewed it as a "simplistic" explanation, and they dislike what they view as simplistic explanations for anything, even if it's most likely to be true.
I suspect it is because the theory would, they think, pin blame on non-white people and is therefore racist (regardless of whether it is true). What if the pandemic started in America and lab leak hypothesis formed there?
That surely makes no sense. The main alternative - wet market - is surely even more putting the blame on people and practices 'not like us'. Scientists in a lab in Wuhan are, to my mind, very much like us (I admit the fact I'm a scientist gives me some bias here).
So why do you think the lab leak theory was treated with utter disdain by the left?
"the absence of evidence for a lab leak, and in the presence of evidence for the market as the source" is mere fantasy. To believe it you have to believe that circumstantial evidence is conclusive in favour of the market and inadmissible in favour of the lab, and to ignore the huge debate about whether the furin cleavage site is likely to have arisen in nature.
The evidence for the market is not circumstantial. The early cases were clustered around the market. Environmental analyses found the virus in the market. That there were two initial strains of SARS-COV-2 is consistent with a reservoir of infected animals in the market.
It is, if course, entirely possible for the wet market to be both the focal point, and it to have been a lab leak.
That., of course, it almost certainly what happened. Leaked in the lab - the CDC more likely than the WIV - simply because of proximity - 300 metres away. Infected but pre-symptomatic lab worker went from the CDC to the market to buy a chicken. Bingo. Superspreader event, clustered around the market
It's not obvious to me.
Wild -> lab -> market is plausible and you assert that the wild -> lab bit was happening (and I have no reason to disbelieve this) but the lab -> market bit still requires some lapses that are fairly rare and the timing has to be just right (they do happen, it is certainly possible)
Wild -> market is also plausible and while you assert that wild -> animal in market is unlikely (and again I have no reason to disbelieve) there's also potential for a chain of transmission through animals (or containers, surfaces, air) to market or even indeed a person infected elsewhere (not from lab, closer to large populations of bats) taking it to the market.
I don't see a strong reason to favour one of those over the other, on the available evidence.
If the outbreak had happened in any other city in China, then a purely zoonotic origin would be the most likely scenario. That it happened in the same city where bat diseases were being actively studied skews the probabilities the other way around.
Most large Chinese cities have labs studying coronaviruses. If you're worried about zoonotic infections in China, you're looking at bat diseases. So, if the outbreak had happened in any other city in China, there's a high chance there would have been a similar lab.
This doesn't seem to be true. The number of BSL-4 labs in China is very small.
And a lab leak can come from a BSL-3 lab. After all, WCDC is not BSL-4 lab, and that's the one Leon is most animated about. If it was artificially manipulated, then the odds change. If it was a natural sample leaked (which is where the focus now lies), then it's any BSL-3 lab or higher.
(Edited - BSL-3)
The CDC was, I believe, operating at BSL 2
That's why Jeremy Farrar's first reaction, on hearing about Covid, was that the lab work in China was "like the Wild West". He also believed it probably came from the lab
Yet weirdly enough about six minutes after writing that email he signed a letter to the Lancet calling "lab leak" a baseless conspiracy theory
Funny, huh
Proof that some of this terrifying bat research was done at BSL2 level (I reckon this is the Wuhan CDC they are talking about)
"In EHA-led work conducted in Wuhan, scientists infected humanized mice with engineered novel bat coronaviruses in a BSL-3 facility, according to grant documents EHA submitted to the NIH. Some collection and engineering of bat coronaviruses were done in a BSL-2, with less stringent protocols and containment, according to multiple sources including a paper in the Journal of Virology ."
I think I've worked out why a certain type of person was so offended by the lab-leak hypothesis. It's because they viewed it as a "simplistic" explanation, and they dislike what they view as simplistic explanations for anything, even if it's most likely to be true.
I may be misremembering - I probably am, as I never really paid it much attention - but weren't many of the early adopters of the lab theory anti-vaxxers on the far right? If so, my guess is that it was the messenger that was the problem.
I think you're right; I think there was also an element of "lab leak = blaming the Chinese = racist".
Finally, for proof that Wuhan was uniquely dangerous:
"Inside the Chinese lab poised to study world's most dangerous pathogens
A laboratory in Wuhan is on the cusp of being cleared to work with the world’s most dangerous pathogens. The move is part of a plan to build between five and seven biosafety level-4 (BSL-4) labs across the Chinese mainland by 2025, and has generated much excitement, as well as some concerns.
Some scientists outside China worry about pathogens escaping, and the addition of a biological dimension to geopolitical tensions between China and other nations. But Chinese microbiologists are celebrating their entrance to the elite cadre empowered to wrestle with the world’s greatest biological threats.
Future plans include studying the pathogen that causes SARS, which also doesn’t require a BSL-4 lab, before moving on to Ebola and the West African Lassa virus, which do. Some one million Chinese people work in Africa; the country needs to be ready for any eventuality, says Yuan. “Viruses don’t know borders.”
2 year UK gilt now at 5.24% new 15 year high, half a %age point above post mini budget peak. markets now see 70% chance of rates over 6% by end of year…
I posted yesterday that there is no alternative to the policies of Sunak and Hunt and this is hard, very hard
The last property crisis lasted from 1991 to 2001 and there is every reason to believe this could be similar
I would gently remind folks that the 1976 labour government's financial crisis needed the intervention of the IMF with big cuts in public spending, let's hope we are not on the same course today
BoE is supposed to handle inflation and they have failed utterly.
2% target?
WTF.
Liz Truss was right in the first place that the monetary policy framework needs to be looked at again. Depoliticised CPI targetting was a superficially attractive policy but has been one of the root causes of two major crises in a row.
I'm not sure politicised inflation targeting would have led to the brakes being applied sooner and harder (as it is now clear they should have been).
If Bailey at the BoE felt the pressure to understeer on inflation due to the relatively short term economic threat of COVID, I find the idea that PM Johnson or Chancellor Sunak would have held their nerve more firmly rather fanciful.
I think I've worked out why a certain type of person was so offended by the lab-leak hypothesis. It's because they viewed it as a "simplistic" explanation, and they dislike what they view as simplistic explanations for anything, even if it's most likely to be true.
I suspect it is because the theory would, they think, pin blame on non-white people and is therefore racist (regardless of whether it is true). What if the pandemic started in America and lab leak hypothesis formed there?
That surely makes no sense. The main alternative - wet market - is surely even more putting the blame on people and practices 'not like us'. Scientists in a lab in Wuhan are, to my mind, very much like us (I admit the fact I'm a scientist gives me some bias here).
So why do you think the lab leak theory was treated with utter disdain by the left?
Honestly? Due to the people pushing it, being largely the right's nutters rather than the left's nutters. Particularly Trump/Trump hangers on and supporters.
There was no good reason for anyone to have strong views early on (or even now) given the lack of evidence.
Somerton and Frome will be a LD gain I think. Uxbridge I think could be a Tory hold due to a more local Tory candidate who is a Hillingdon councillor than the Camden councillor Labour candidate and the high Hindu vote.
Selby could go either way, narrow Tory hold or narrow Labour gain
Really – the Tories are available at 10/1 to hold the seat, also presume you'll be stacking your wads on that?
I just took a bit of 15.5 (bf). I'll be surprised if CP holds it but 15.5 is too big.
"the absence of evidence for a lab leak, and in the presence of evidence for the market as the source" is mere fantasy. To believe it you have to believe that circumstantial evidence is conclusive in favour of the market and inadmissible in favour of the lab, and to ignore the huge debate about whether the furin cleavage site is likely to have arisen in nature.
The evidence for the market is not circumstantial. The early cases were clustered around the market. Environmental analyses found the virus in the market. That there were two initial strains of SARS-COV-2 is consistent with a reservoir of infected animals in the market.
It is, if course, entirely possible for the wet market to be both the focal point, and it to have been a lab leak.
That., of course, it almost certainly what happened. Leaked in the lab - the CDC more likely than the WIV - simply because of proximity - 300 metres away. Infected but pre-symptomatic lab worker went from the CDC to the market to buy a chicken. Bingo. Superspreader event, clustered around the market
It's not obvious to me.
Wild -> lab -> market is plausible and you assert that the wild -> lab bit was happening (and I have no reason to disbelieve this) but the lab -> market bit still requires some lapses that are fairly rare and the timing has to be just right (they do happen, it is certainly possible)
Wild -> market is also plausible and while you assert that wild -> animal in market is unlikely (and again I have no reason to disbelieve) there's also potential for a chain of transmission through animals (or containers, surfaces, air) to market or even indeed a person infected elsewhere (not from lab, closer to large populations of bats) taking it to the market.
I don't see a strong reason to favour one of those over the other, on the available evidence.
If the outbreak had happened in any other city in China, then a purely zoonotic origin would be the most likely scenario. That it happened in the same city where bat diseases were being actively studied skews the probabilities the other way around.
Most large Chinese cities have labs studying coronaviruses. If you're worried about zoonotic infections in China, you're looking at bat diseases. So, if the outbreak had happened in any other city in China, there's a high chance there would have been a similar lab.
This doesn't seem to be true. The number of BSL-4 labs in China is very small.
And a lab leak can come from a BSL-3 lab. After all, WCDC is not BSL-4 lab, and that's the one Leon is most animated about. If it was artificially manipulated, then the odds change. If it was a natural sample leaked (which is where the focus now lies), then it's any BSL-3 lab or higher.
(Edited - BSL-3)
The CDC was, I believe, operating at BSL 2
That's why Jeremy Farrar's first reaction, on hearing about Covid, was that the lab work in China was "like the Wild West". He also believed it probably came from the lab
Yet weirdly enough about six minutes after writing that email he signed a letter to the Lancet calling "lab leak" a baseless conspiracy theory
Funny, huh
Proof that some of this terrifying bat research was done at BSL2 level (I reckon this is the Wuhan CDC they are talking about)
"In EHA-led work conducted in Wuhan, scientists infected humanized mice with engineered novel bat coronaviruses in a BSL-3 facility, according to grant documents EHA submitted to the NIH. Some collection and engineering of bat coronaviruses were done in a BSL-2, with less stringent protocols and containment, according to multiple sources including a paper in the Journal of Virology ."
"the absence of evidence for a lab leak, and in the presence of evidence for the market as the source" is mere fantasy. To believe it you have to believe that circumstantial evidence is conclusive in favour of the market and inadmissible in favour of the lab, and to ignore the huge debate about whether the furin cleavage site is likely to have arisen in nature.
The evidence for the market is not circumstantial. The early cases were clustered around the market. Environmental analyses found the virus in the market. That there were two initial strains of SARS-COV-2 is consistent with a reservoir of infected animals in the market.
It is, if course, entirely possible for the wet market to be both the focal point, and it to have been a lab leak.
That., of course, it almost certainly what happened. Leaked in the lab - the CDC more likely than the WIV - simply because of proximity - 300 metres away. Infected but pre-symptomatic lab worker went from the CDC to the market to buy a chicken. Bingo. Superspreader event, clustered around the market
It's not obvious to me.
Wild -> lab -> market is plausible and you assert that the wild -> lab bit was happening (and I have no reason to disbelieve this) but the lab -> market bit still requires some lapses that are fairly rare and the timing has to be just right (they do happen, it is certainly possible)
Wild -> market is also plausible and while you assert that wild -> animal in market is unlikely (and again I have no reason to disbelieve) there's also potential for a chain of transmission through animals (or containers, surfaces, air) to market or even indeed a person infected elsewhere (not from lab, closer to large populations of bats) taking it to the market.
I don't see a strong reason to favour one of those over the other, on the available evidence.
If the outbreak had happened in any other city in China, then a purely zoonotic origin would be the most likely scenario. That it happened in the same city where bat diseases were being actively studied skews the probabilities the other way around.
Most large Chinese cities have labs studying coronaviruses. If you're worried about zoonotic infections in China, you're looking at bat diseases. So, if the outbreak had happened in any other city in China, there's a high chance there would have been a similar lab.
This doesn't seem to be true. The number of BSL-4 labs in China is very small.
And a lab leak can come from a BSL-3 lab. After all, WCDC is not BSL-4 lab, and that's the one Leon is most animated about. If it was artificially manipulated, then the odds change. If it was a natural sample leaked (which is where the focus now lies), then it's any BSL-3 lab or higher.
(Edited - BSL-3)
The CDC was, I believe, operating at BSL 2
That's why Jeremy Farrar's first reaction, on hearing about Covid, was that the lab work in China was "like the Wild West". He also believed it probably came from the lab
Yet weirdly enough about six minutes after writing that email he signed a letter to the Lancet calling "lab leak" a baseless conspiracy theory
Funny, huh
Proof that some of this terrifying bat research was done at BSL2 level (I reckon this is the Wuhan CDC they are talking about)
"In EHA-led work conducted in Wuhan, scientists infected humanized mice with engineered novel bat coronaviruses in a BSL-3 facility, according to grant documents EHA submitted to the NIH. Some collection and engineering of bat coronaviruses were done in a BSL-2, with less stringent protocols and containment, according to multiple sources including a paper in the Journal of Virology ."
2 year UK gilt now at 5.24% new 15 year high, half a %age point above post mini budget peak. markets now see 70% chance of rates over 6% by end of year…
I posted yesterday that there is no alternative to the policies of Sunak and Hunt and this is hard, very hard
The last property crisis lasted from 1991 to 2001 and there is every reason to believe this could be similar
I would gently remind folks that the 1976 labour government's financial crisis needed the intervention of the IMF with big cuts in public spending, let's hope we are not on the same course today
BoE is supposed to handle inflation and they have failed utterly.
2% target?
WTF.
Liz Truss was right in the first place that the monetary policy framework needs to be looked at again. Depoliticised CPI targetting was a superficially attractive policy but has been one of the root causes of two major crises in a row.
Liz Truss - BOE was wrong to have such accommodative policy settings!
Also Liz Truss - we need tax cuts to make the economy grow faster!
I think I've worked out why a certain type of person was so offended by the lab-leak hypothesis. It's because they viewed it as a "simplistic" explanation, and they dislike what they view as simplistic explanations for anything, even if it's most likely to be true.
I suspect it is because the theory would, they think, pin blame on non-white people and is therefore racist (regardless of whether it is true). What if the pandemic started in America and lab leak hypothesis formed there?
That surely makes no sense. The main alternative - wet market - is surely even more putting the blame on people and practices 'not like us'. Scientists in a lab in Wuhan are, to my mind, very much like us (I admit the fact I'm a scientist gives me some bias here).
So why do you think the lab leak theory was treated with utter disdain by the left?
Comments
Albeit I will grant you that it does change the odds slightly.
I am also a fan of the like button. I use it a lot to show my appreciation, particularly when I have nothing to add.
How is discovering the origin of this hideous, horrifying, pan-global disaster "niche"?
Would you say that if you had lost a brother, son, mother, sister, lover, friend, your entire business? Your home?
@ShaunLintern
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1m
🚨 BREAKING: Consultants strike action is on - More than 24,000 consultants in England voted in the BMA’s ballot (a turnout of 71%), with 20,741 (86%) voting for industrial action, says @TheBMA
#consultantstrikes
Get the feeling - I'm 2 days into two weeks of daily and varied medical appointments.
And thank you *Robert*.
Wuhan was the very first BSL4 lab in China, opened in 2018
https://context-cdn.washingtonpost.com/notes/prod/default/documents/109d57ba-42dd-4215-9f4e-39d068ceed31/note/4f90a905-2b3f-44e0-8cb5-2d9ea5dfc62a.
You can study coronavirus at BSL3, but even there coronavirus research is rare
"You need a special lab to study the coronavirus. Here’s what it takes to get one up and running
Before the pandemic, there was only a small group of researchers dedicated to studying coronaviruses."
You are making such basic, howling errors I can only presume that @Miklosvar is right and you are emotionally/professionally invested to a dangerous extent, and blundering with every sentence
https://www.statnews.com/2020/04/09/coronavirus-bsl-3-lab/
They are weird though. They simultaneously maintain Trumps total innocence, but also that if there is solid evidence that means it is unfair since how dare you weaponise the DOJ.
So they cover themselves to defend him whether guilty or not. Innocent and its an outrage. Guilty its an outage to find that out.
What China should really be castigated for is the way they hid what was going on in early 2020, allowing the virus to spread more widely internationally, and did not work with international bodies.
If I may repeat a previous objection to this fallacy, say I hear about a violent death in New York and I say, probably a shooting, there's lots of guns in NYC. How does it change the odds to say But there's lots of guns in Boston and LA and Detroit too?
What are they going to do? Increase pay? Bring back the workhouse? Provide free cardboard boxes?
Market - well, this is a Chinese/some other countries thing and there aren't immediate implications for the West
Lab leak due to local management/procedures/incompetence - given some Western involvement/funding, it's embarassing at best
Lab leak that could have happened anywhere - major implications for bio labs everywhere
There's no denying that the market is a better outcome for parts of the science community (and it was important, early on, to avoid some mass panic/hysteria that could have shut down operations in labs urgently needed to understand the virus). Whether you see that as evidence for a great conspiracy or not is a matter of taste.
If the latter scenario from RCS, then a number of people know. I find it hard to believe we never find out about that. If it's someone selling lab animals locally, then enough people know that it should come out (in fact, should likely already have come out, bt maybe China can suppress that). Courier bit by a bat? We'll likely never know, particularly if that person didn't get very sick and put it down to a random cold.
https://twitter.com/BMA_Consultants/status/1673707055633379328?t=JET0maI990FQRX87KnwSDQ&s=19
(I am not in the BMA so did not vote)
For the record - even tho I am 98% sure it came from the lab - I believe we should be tackling both. Eating bats is bad, close these disgusting markets. At the same time, stop all this Gain of Function bollocks until we know more. Because the next lab accident could kill us all
https://twitter.com/faisalislam/status/1673700753779613698
What was JohnO's post? I've no idea if there's any way of searching that.
ETA: Who holds the WTF record?
"Sen. Rubio’s extraordinary comments set the tone for remarkable legislation that ends funding for illegal UAP programs and sets strict deadlines for whistleblowers.
Like the current (and a former) IC IG, key senators find Grusch’s stunning claims credible."
Cue bafflement and silence from most of the media. UFO's, culturally, are understand to be for nutters.
I don't think you can say that happens much on PB.
"BSL-4 containment is used for work with dangerous and exotic agents that pose a high individual risk of life-threatening disease that may be transmitted via the aerosol route and for which there is no available vaccine or therapy. "
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3484385/
More to the point, I am fairly sure that Wuhan was, not the only BSL4, it was aso the only one studying "novel bat coronaviruses". It was famous for it. That;s why the director was called "batwoman Shi". There were no other batwomen in China fucking about with bats
Some of the agencies, including the FBI, believe that the lab leak origin theory is more likely. Why do they still think this given that they have access to at least as much information as you do?
https://gillesdemaneuf.medium.com/a-count-of-bsl-3-labs-in-china-664f2b354276 ), although there are far fewer BSL-4, which the Wuhan lab is also. That said, China is big, as you may have noticed, so that's still less than one per city.
Likewise, lots of people have been looking at coronaviruses. I've not seen a ranking of fame in the field. There are two viruses that were identified at Wuhan, WIV1 and WIV16, that are closely related to SARS-CoV-1 from bats, but the viruses we know of that are more closely related to SARS-CoV-2 were identified at other labs, like ZC45 identified by a team at the Third Military Medical University (Chongqing) and the Research Institute for Medicine of Nanjing Command (China); or RacCS203, identified in Thailand by a Thai/Singaporean-led collaboration, which also included the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (Changchun) and the Jiangsu Co-innovation Center for Prevention and Control of Important Animal Infectious Diseases and Zoonosis (Yangzhou). It's not certain that SARS-CoV-2 came from a bat. There are these bat viruses that are closely related, but there are also some pangolin viruses that are closely related (although I don't think anyone thinks pangolins are the reservoir).
The government has 3 weeks to negotiate.
Leaking that they were going to ignore the pay boards again this year wasn't very wise IMO during the balloting.
Adults will simply end up being thrown onto the streets. I think we can expect to see skyrocketing levels of street homelessness over the next couple of years - especially given that interest rates still have some distance left to go. If the BoE base rate really does peak above 6% then, well... 6.25% probably means 7.5% on new five year mortgage fixes for standard residential borrowers and 8% for BTL landlords. Destitution for ordinary borrowers and a further sharp contraction in the availability of private rental property (meaning that what's still available will be able to command eyewatering rents) will result.
Still, if the losers of the current settlement end up either dead or with no fixed abode then they can't vote, which will boost the Government's share of the remaining electorate, AND a fifth of Tory MPs are landlords - so I dare say that this state of affairs suits them quite nicely.
I am in another union which has not yet balloted so cannot strike, though it seems as if I could strike if I wasn't in a union.
I am actually on holiday on the strike days anyway, at the Latitude Festival.
Most large cities in China have bat coronavirus labs and active research.
The last property crisis lasted from 1991 to 2001 and there is every reason to believe this could be similar
I would gently remind folks that the 1976 labour government's financial crisis needed the intervention of the IMF with big cuts in public spending, let's hope we are not on the same course today
https://vf.politicalbetting.com/discussion/comment/3404262/#Comment_3404262
After all, WCDC is not BSL-4 lab, and that's the one Leon is most animated about.
If it was artificially manipulated, then the odds change. If it was a natural sample leaked (which is where the focus now lies), then it's any BSL-3 lab or higher.
(Edited - BSL-3)
https://gillesdemaneuf.medium.com/bsl-4-laboratories-in-china-kunming-wuhan-harbin-109c01d71537
So far from "most Chinese cities have labs studying coronaviruses" we're down to one, just one lab, studying Gain of Fuction in novel bat coronaviruses. And it is in Wuhan
WTF.
A consultant who cannot even fill in a ballot paper.
Or is it a handwriting problem?
Now wondering what I was up to in May 2021...
It looks like your racial theory falls at the first step.
2% target?
WTF.
If on the other hand it was a lab leak, as is possible but less likely, that too was probably avoidable.
Now it doesn't have to be either/or. China should tighten up processes in both its labs and markets. But in practice the focus does make a difference.
That's why Jeremy Farrar's first reaction, on hearing about Covid, was that the lab work in China was "like the Wild West". He also believed it probably came from the lab
Yet weirdly enough about six minutes after writing that email he signed a letter to the Lancet calling "lab leak" a baseless conspiracy theory
Funny, huh
Proof that some of this terrifying bat research was done at BSL2 level (I reckon this is the Wuhan CDC they are talking about)
"In EHA-led work conducted in Wuhan, scientists infected humanized mice with engineered novel bat coronaviruses in a BSL-3 facility, according to grant documents EHA submitted to the NIH. Some collection and engineering of bat coronaviruses were done in a BSL-2, with less stringent protocols and containment, according to multiple sources including a paper in the Journal of Virology ."
https://usrtk.org/risky-research/wuhans-lower-biosafety-level-labs-posed-greater-risk-for-coronavirus-lab-leak/
John Rentoul @JohnRentoul
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2h
16 years ago today, the skies darkened, never to brighten again
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See if you can guess what happened that day.
No cheating on twitter or google.
The Lab Leak hypothesis also implicates America (via Fauci and the NIH) and western science in general, along with the Chinese boffins
Even if you're very kind and conclude that the failure satisfactorily to resolve public sector pay disputes is due to one side (the unions) and not the other (the Government), surely the continuation or not of the triple lock is wholly within the control of the PM and Chancellor?
Earlier, you were dismissive over the distance of WIV (the BSL-4 lab with the research you mentioned above) and highlighted the distance of WCDC (the BSL-3 lab NOT doing gain of function research) to the marketplace.
Which one are you saying leaked?
There doesn't seem to be a single coherent lab leak theory. The FBI point to WIV. The DoE to WCDC. They can't both be right (Four other agencies plus the Intelligence Council to zoonosis. Two more to "don't know either way.").
It's agreed between them that it's not artificially manipulated - which would allow the WCDC leak hypothesis (as the closest lab and at BSL-3, which "not manipulated" would allow), but remove almost all the specialness of Wuhan (as so many large cities have BSL-3 labs).
If it was manipulated, then that goes against the intelligence report and the overwhelming consensus of virologists, but would make the discussion on BSL-4 labs and WIV specifically far more salient. But it does not appear manipulated, furin cleavage sites are not uncommon in wild coronaviruses, WIV is not nearly as close to the market in question, and that would indicate Wuhan being no more or less likely than any other large city in China.
(And it needs a pretty large city to properly spark an epidemic following zoonosis)
The BMA have been clear that they expect pay restoration to take some years rather than be in a single year, but also that the independence of the payload must be restored, and its recommendations accepted.
Also - these people of whatever trade are responding to *past* inflation, not what some Tory thinks it might be next year (and has probably got wrong already). Even having a 10% (or whatever) to match an annual 10% in CPI means they have suffered something like 4-5% off their income [edit: for that year] which they'll never get back.
More broadly, the role of the wage-price spiral in this is vastly overstated. It's made by businesses that don't want their margins squeezed, a Government that doesn't want to have to tax its wealthy core vote to fund decent settlements, and above all a Bank of England incapable of doing its job properly.
Meanwhile, in actual reality, here is the true picture from the latest ONS statistical release on pay growth:
Growth in total and regular pay fell in real terms (adjusted for inflation) on the year in February to April 2023, by 2.0% for total pay and 1.3% for regular pay.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetypes/bulletins/averageweeklyearningsingreatbritain/june2023
Pay rises have gone up in the current environment (but why shouldn't they - state pensioners have received compensation for inflation in full, but nobody in Government ever moans about the effing triple lock being inflationary, do they?) But if wages were driving further inflation, how come they're below the rate of inflation and most workers are, therefore, still getting poorer? Is it just possible that the real explanations for inflation might be (a) the ongoing fallout from Ukraine, (b) profiteering by some businesses, (c) the deployment of pandemic savings by wealthier households to buttress their standards of living, and (d) vast asset price inflation caused by a combination of the totally, irredeemably bent housing market and the incomprehensibly vast sums of liquidity injected into the economy via QE?
Not everything that the unions demand is always reasonable, but remember that for every highly paid train driver (and the rail strikes piss me off as much as anyone, but would train drivers be highly paid if they didn't have "militant unions" - I'm not convinced,) there are probably half-a-dozen nurses who have already been reduced to visiting food banks to survive. Please, therefore, desist from the Marie Antoinette act and stop blaming employees for demanding enough remuneration to be able to afford to eat.
It has header sections including "Bill Gates", "Pesticides" and "ultra-processed foods"
Which *really* set my spider-senses tingling.
"Inside the Chinese lab poised to study world's most dangerous pathogens
A laboratory in Wuhan is on the cusp of being cleared to work with the world’s most dangerous pathogens. The move is part of a plan to build between five and seven biosafety level-4 (BSL-4) labs across the Chinese mainland by 2025, and has generated much excitement, as well as some concerns.
Some scientists outside China worry about pathogens escaping, and the addition of a biological dimension to geopolitical tensions between China and other nations. But Chinese microbiologists are celebrating their entrance to the elite cadre empowered to wrestle with the world’s greatest biological threats.
Future plans include studying the pathogen that causes SARS, which also doesn’t require a BSL-4 lab, before moving on to Ebola and the West African Lassa virus, which do. Some one million Chinese people work in Africa; the country needs to be ready for any eventuality, says Yuan. “Viruses don’t know borders.”
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2017.21487
It's like an opening scene from a Michael Crichton novel, establishing Hubris, for the Nemesis to come
It came from the Lab
If Bailey at the BoE felt the pressure to understeer on inflation due to the relatively short term economic threat of COVID, I find the idea that PM Johnson or Chancellor Sunak would have held their nerve more firmly rather fanciful.
There was no good reason for anyone to have strong views early on (or even now) given the lack of evidence.
What a bunch of cranks
Turns out it's funded by a group (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_Consumers_Association ) linked to the antivaxxer Mercola and RFK Jr, and who worked with Wakefield to mislead the Somali community about vaccines.
Curious that Leon, so assiduous in finding out any controversy amongst those looking into things, missed this.
Also Liz Truss - we need tax cuts to make the economy grow faster!