IMO, one of the big negatives in regards to wet market explanation has always been that the Chinese have failed to ever produce any evidence for this hypothesis. They were on the scene early, they claim that was the source of the outbreak, they certainly were looking for evidence and in many many previous situations were such vectors have been the primary source researchers have found hard evidence to connect a disease outbreak with such a location or the intermingling of species under such situations was responsible e.g evidence has been produced to give quite a clear picture of the origins of SARs. Yet no evidence has been produced that shows this for COVID, and for the Chinese this would be the most diplomatically acceptable explanation.
There are of course many other possible scenarios which aren't deliberate or even accidental leak from a lab.
WRT Gaza, I don't suppose anyone is really surprised that Trump has said something like what he has.
All politics is relative, even this one. So points:
1) Clearly Trump intends to start a new middle east negotiation start point and position, and will have achieved this.
2) Has anyone got a better one?
3) I and most of us (I imagine) have long supported a two state solution. But SFAICS none of the parties do, most supporting a one state solution. So two state stuff isn't happening, not since the October massacre and Gaza'a becoming rubble.
4) What is the best one state solution which can be regarded as possible within the obvious constraints. Is it not most likely to be a radical but reluctantly agreed modification of Trump's appaarently absurd starting point?
On (3), the Palestinian Authority, some Israeli parties in opposition, Arab states, and most UN member states support a 2-state solution.
On (4), if one is to have a 1-state solution, it doesn't have to involve ethnic cleansing. So, no.
Ethnic cleansing is a crime against humanity. It is not the solution to anything. It is not a starting point to anything.
We had ethnic cleansing in Nagorno-Karabakh in 2023.
The world accepted it as it solved the problem.
I don't think the world accepted it as it "solved the problem". The world decided it was impotent to do much about it.
Ethnic cleansing is a crime against humanity. The world has sometimes failed to stop ethnic cleansing, but that doesn't change the horrendous and barbaric nature of the act.
Of course it's barbaric. But let's get real about it. It also sometimes solves long-standing problems. That was why Germans were ethnically cleansed from lands they had lived in for centuries at the end of WW2. It's why the same happened to Greeks and Turks in Greece and Turkey at the end of WW1. What was acceptable and - oh the irony! - diverse in multi-ethnic Empires became a huge issue under nationalism.
I do not advocate it. But let's not pretend that it hasn't been very convenient indeed for Western Europe. And we did not do anything about it not because we couldn't but because we did not want to, indeed encouraged it.
And what could we have done at the time about the Armenian genocide, or Stalin's forcible redrawing of national boundaries and movement of populations at the end of WWII ?
There are indeed some shameful events we had some part in, that we could have avoided - the repatriation of the Cossacks, many murdered or sent to the gulags, being one example. But that is what they are; utterly shameful.
It is possible the combo of Chagos and Voice coach could bring down Starmer
Each on their own, unlikely. But the combination of him being a lying snake and mind blowing hypocrite at the same time as he tries to give away, to hostile foreigners, billions of pounds we don’t have is quite lethal
He looks insane
The voice coach story is dead in the water. No one cares. No one wants to bang on about the pandemic anymore. You yourself picked up on this when taking about the lack of literature of the Black Death and the Spanish Flu. I am struck by the Hundred years war being punctuated by the extreme horror of the Black Death but with the combatents seemingly carrying on as if nothing had happened. Crecy (1346) so two years before and then Poitiers (1356) six years later, as if nothing had happened.
I know that the downstream events of the Black Death in England took a generation or so to come to a head (Peasants Revolt etc) but you do wonder if people just shrugged and got on with stuff in 1350. A bit like now with Covid.
You are a scientist who until recently was adamant it came from the wet market. Now it has been universally accepted it came from the lab, “oh who cares let’s move on no one wants to think about all that”
Nonsense on a plate with gravy. There is no consensus on the origin of Covid let alone one that is universally accepted.
On the contrary, it remains generally accepted by scientists that the most likely source for Covid was the wet market.
There are many reasons to discount a lab leak, says Holmes, and many more pointing to a natural origin. “SARS-CoV-2-like viruses have natural transmission cycles in a region spanning Yunnan province [in China] and southwards into South-East Asia and were most likely imported into Wuhan via the wildlife trade,” he says. “All the scientific evidence points to this. There is no scientific evidence for any other hypothesis.”
“The lab leak theory remains completely unsupported and, worse, incoherent and inconsistent, frequently requiring complex conspiracies to be a viable hypothesis,” says David Robertson at the University of Glasgow, UK. “Indeed, it seems clear that there’s a political agenda behind much of the proponents of the lab leak theory.”
We probably won’t ever know for sure. “I honestly can’t see any other new evidence coming to light,” says Holmes. “Research on this matter in China is at a standstill as the official narrative is that the virus is not from China. Besides, it is now far too late to find any intermediate animal species that still has the virus or antibodies to it.”
Does it even matter at this point? Yes, says Robertson. “The lab leak theory has become part of a wider, anti-science disinformation landscape. This is all very unfortunate, as preparedness to virus threats requires strong international cooperation and evidence-based response.”
Wet market is favoured but there is a sizeable dissenting minority not all of whom (contrary to evidence on here) are crackpots.
Yes, the lab leak origin is certainly a possibility, but seems unlikely from what I've read. What I find a bit weird is the desperation for certainty by some people, and to have someone specific to blame. I suppose the human psyche is wired this way. People want to have reasons for events - preferably simple ones - and if none are immediately apparent, then they'll invent them. Hence religion and superstition.
And yet the “religious certainty” all came from the wet marketeers for the first year
Remember “lab leak is a racist conspiracy theory”.
Remember when just talking about it got you banned from Facebook and Twitter
You didn’t have a problem with “religious certainty” then, did you? Nor did @kinabalu when he was “99% wet market!!” You knew and you were CERTAIN
Now the overwhelming evidence points the opposite way and suddenly it’s “oh well we will never know” and “it’s too late anyway” and “who cares it’s all long ago only 20 million died let’s talk about Lucy Letby” - @turbotubbs
It’s putrid, it’s laughable, it’s wrong, it’s immoral - and worst of all it is intellectually feeble
Er, as I pointed out before when you (mis)claimed this ... no, I can't be bothered, life's too short and the cat won't feed itself.
The cat will not only feed itself on one of the many mammals they have in leafy Hampstead, but would also feed on your dead body were, perish the thought, you to choke on your own self-righteousness.
It is possible the combo of Chagos and Voice coach could bring down Starmer
Each on their own, unlikely. But the combination of him being a lying snake and mind blowing hypocrite at the same time as he tries to give away, to hostile foreigners, billions of pounds we don’t have is quite lethal
He looks insane
The voice coach story is dead in the water. No one cares. No one wants to bang on about the pandemic anymore. You yourself picked up on this when taking about the lack of literature of the Black Death and the Spanish Flu. I am struck by the Hundred years war being punctuated by the extreme horror of the Black Death but with the combatents seemingly carrying on as if nothing had happened. Crecy (1346) so two years before and then Poitiers (1356) six years later, as if nothing had happened.
I know that the downstream events of the Black Death in England took a generation or so to come to a head (Peasants Revolt etc) but you do wonder if people just shrugged and got on with stuff in 1350. A bit like now with Covid.
You are a scientist who until recently was adamant it came from the wet market. Now it has been universally accepted it came from the lab, “oh who cares let’s move on no one wants to think about all that”
It has NOT been universally accepted. Until you can understand that, there is not point discussing it. Balance of probabilities might have shifted, but we will likely never be 100%.
In reference to moving on from covid, I think that pretty much characterises what is going on in most people lives. That is not the same as ignoring lessons from the pandemic and from pursuing malfeasance from the pandemic. Go after the fraudulent suppliers of PPE. Think again about what lockdown does, should have done and what inhumanity we did in trying to save lives (funerals, births, deaths with no-one attending, kids social and academic development stunted, perhaps permanently).
Ok everyone has accepted it apart from you and @bondegezou
Two bumbling centrist dad academics, the clueless vapid inane Rory Stewarts of PB. You probably go to see The Rest is Politics when they do “gigs”
At the risk of triggering a jerk on this site, not Bondez I hasten to add, that is one hell of a cracking put down. Made me smile.
Classic Leon ad hom, which he resorts to when declaring he has 'won' an argument. I've given up debating him on this, as he simply floods the zone with shit.
It is possible the combo of Chagos and Voice coach could bring down Starmer
Each on their own, unlikely. But the combination of him being a lying snake and mind blowing hypocrite at the same time as he tries to give away, to hostile foreigners, billions of pounds we don’t have is quite lethal
He looks insane
The voice coach story is dead in the water. No one cares. No one wants to bang on about the pandemic anymore. You yourself picked up on this when taking about the lack of literature of the Black Death and the Spanish Flu. I am struck by the Hundred years war being punctuated by the extreme horror of the Black Death but with the combatents seemingly carrying on as if nothing had happened. Crecy (1346) so two years before and then Poitiers (1356) six years later, as if nothing had happened.
I know that the downstream events of the Black Death in England took a generation or so to come to a head (Peasants Revolt etc) but you do wonder if people just shrugged and got on with stuff in 1350. A bit like now with Covid.
You are a scientist who until recently was adamant it came from the wet market. Now it has been universally accepted it came from the lab, “oh who cares let’s move on no one wants to think about all that”
Nonsense on a plate with gravy. There is no consensus on the origin of Covid let alone one that is universally accepted.
On the contrary, it remains generally accepted by scientists that the most likely source for Covid was the wet market.
There are many reasons to discount a lab leak, says Holmes, and many more pointing to a natural origin. “SARS-CoV-2-like viruses have natural transmission cycles in a region spanning Yunnan province [in China] and southwards into South-East Asia and were most likely imported into Wuhan via the wildlife trade,” he says. “All the scientific evidence points to this. There is no scientific evidence for any other hypothesis.”
“The lab leak theory remains completely unsupported and, worse, incoherent and inconsistent, frequently requiring complex conspiracies to be a viable hypothesis,” says David Robertson at the University of Glasgow, UK. “Indeed, it seems clear that there’s a political agenda behind much of the proponents of the lab leak theory.”
We probably won’t ever know for sure. “I honestly can’t see any other new evidence coming to light,” says Holmes. “Research on this matter in China is at a standstill as the official narrative is that the virus is not from China. Besides, it is now far too late to find any intermediate animal species that still has the virus or antibodies to it.”
Does it even matter at this point? Yes, says Robertson. “The lab leak theory has become part of a wider, anti-science disinformation landscape. This is all very unfortunate, as preparedness to virus threats requires strong international cooperation and evidence-based response.”
Wet market is favoured but there is a sizeable dissenting minority not all of whom (contrary to evidence on here) are crackpots.
Yes, the lab leak origin is certainly a possibility, but seems unlikely from what I've read. What I find a bit weird is the desperation for certainty by some people, and to have someone specific to blame. I suppose the human psyche is wired this way. People want to have reasons for events - preferably simple ones - and if none are immediately apparent, then they'll invent them. Hence religion and superstition.
And yet the “religious certainty” all came from the wet marketeers for the first year
Remember “lab leak is a racist conspiracy theory”.
Remember when just talking about it got you banned from Facebook and Twitter
You didn’t have a problem with “religious certainty” then, did you? Nor did @kinabalu when he was “99% wet market!!” You knew and you were CERTAIN
Now the overwhelming evidence points the opposite way and suddenly it’s “oh well we will never know” and “it’s too late anyway” and “who cares it’s all long ago only 20 million died let’s talk about Lucy Letby” - @turbotubbs
It’s putrid, it’s laughable, it’s wrong, it’s immoral - and worst of all it is intellectually feeble
Er, as I pointed out before when you (mis)claimed this ... no, I can't be bothered, life's too short and the cat won't feed itself.
The cat will not only feed itself on one of the many mammals they have in leafy Hampstead, but would also feed on your dead body were, perish the thought, you to choke on your own self-righteousness.
Ferraris are red. That's the whole point. In fact, come to think of it, Ferraris are about the only car that is red, a colour that seems otherwise to have disappeared from our motorways.
Rich households with smart doorbells ‘to blame for unreliable jobs data’
Office for National Statistics struggles with plunging survey response rates
An increase in the use of smart doorbells by wealthy households is partly to blame for the crisis plaguing Britain’s jobs market data, the UK’s chief statistician has said.
Sir Ian Diamond told MPs that the Office for National Statistics’ (ONS) struggles with unreliable jobs data were partly caused by people in “advantaged areas” with camera doorbells who were ignoring its interviewers.
The statistics chief was questioned by MPs on the Treasury select committee amid growing fears that poor data mean politicians and the Bank of England are flying blind when making policy and setting interest rates.
Sir Ian said the ONS’s interviewers were having to contact twice as many people as before the pandemic to secure the same amount of data.
Ferraris are red. That's the whole point. In fact, come to think of it, Ferraris are about the only car that is red, a colour that seems otherwise to have disappeared from our motorways.
My car is red. It makes it easy to find in car parks, and it's unlikely to be mistaken for a Ferrari.
If the UK was about to receive, from some mad self harming foreign power the dosh we are going to give the Mauritians, then the UK would be, per capita, happily expectant of
£1,080,000,000,000
Oh no, not another bloody Chagos thread.
It's one of the most important issues going on in UK politics today. It shouldn't be, but it is. And unlike many of the challenges facing this government, it is pretty much totally under their own control.
The apparently sincere outrage about Chagos is baffling. There are a hundred other things I would get exercised about before that.
It isn't moral outrage. If it was we would close the base down and give the Chagossians their island back. The UK and US have no more moral right to the island than Mauritius, but legally it's theirs, as determined by clear and well established international law. So it's entirely transactional. The British, but in reality the Americans, get their base and the Mauritians get the money from a lease, which seems to be at the going rate for such bases. Everyone is happy, except the Chagossians, but nobody cares about them.
So Jenrick, a shadow bench member and likely next leader of the opposition calls Starmer a Quisling, and looks completely demented.
Not that significant according to More in Common:
The bus fare rise (actually reducing prices from what was budgeted for going forwards by the previous government), IHT and WFA policies should have been sold a hell of a lot better to get them out of that bottom quadrant.
WRT Gaza, I don't suppose anyone is really surprised that Trump has said something like what he has.
All politics is relative, even this one. So points:
1) Clearly Trump intends to start a new middle east negotiation start point and position, and will have achieved this.
2) Has anyone got a better one?
3) I and most of us (I imagine) have long supported a two state solution. But SFAICS none of the parties do, most supporting a one state solution. So two state stuff isn't happening, not since the October massacre and Gaza'a becoming rubble.
4) What is the best one state solution which can be regarded as possible within the obvious constraints. Is it not most likely to be a radical but reluctantly agreed modification of Trump's appaarently absurd starting point?
On (3), the Palestinian Authority, some Israeli parties in opposition, Arab states, and most UN member states support a 2-state solution.
On (4), if one is to have a 1-state solution, it doesn't have to involve ethnic cleansing. So, no.
Ethnic cleansing is a crime against humanity. It is not the solution to anything. It is not a starting point to anything.
We had ethnic cleansing in Nagorno-Karabakh in 2023.
The world accepted it as it solved the problem.
I don't think the world accepted it as it "solved the problem". The world decided it was impotent to do much about it.
Ethnic cleansing is a crime against humanity. The world has sometimes failed to stop ethnic cleansing, but that doesn't change the horrendous and barbaric nature of the act.
Of course it's barbaric. But let's get real about it. It also sometimes solves long-standing problems. That was why Germans were ethnically cleansed from lands they had lived in for centuries at the end of WW2. It's why the same happened to Greeks and Turks in Greece and Turkey at the end of WW1. What was acceptable and - oh the irony! - diverse in multi-ethnic Empires became a huge issue under nationalism.
I do not advocate it. But let's not pretend that it hasn't been very convenient indeed for Western Europe. And we did not do anything about it not because we couldn't but because we did not want to, indeed encouraged it.
And what could we have done at the time about the Armenian genocide, or Stalin's forcible redrawing of national boundaries and movement of populations at the end of WWII ?
There are indeed some shameful events we had some part in, that we could have avoided - the repatriation of the Cossacks, many murdered or sent to the gulags, being one example. But that is what they are; utterly shameful.
I've come to the conclusion that the Lienz Repatriations were mostly not unjust. The Cossack troops committed multiple atrocities against Italian and Soviet civilians.
On a related note, some graphics have been circulating of the USA’s main trade relationships - whom it imports from and exports to.
Here are the exports:
They highlight something the Americans have really understated in recent years, and which largely explains their economic outperformance vs the rest of the West. They have become a petro-state. Largest oil producer in the world. One of the largest gas producers. Forget the Saudis or Russia.
Ukraine blowing up Russian refineries is very much in US national interests. Hopefully that’ll focus Trump and Musk’s minds.
Also worth noting that the top export to us in that $158 billion of trade is crude oil.
Whilst we stop oil field developments.
Hmmmm....
We're a net exporter of crude oil overall though*. We send our stuff to the Netherlands, China, Germany etc, while importing it from Norway and the US.
*Things might have changed from 2022.
Beat you to it. Nice to know someone else had the same thought. It could however mean that it is not just me that is an idiot, but both of us. However I like to think that in reality we both put a little more thought into it. Something @leon should maybe think about before each of his posts.
I think the key thing to understand is the oil you pull out if the ground is different around the world, so there is a huge amount of trade between countries to make sure everyone gets what they need. We export 80% of our domestic production, for example.
Also that volume and value are different. On volume we've been a net importer of crude since 2005, and of refined oil since 2013. I guess that makes what we produce /refine more valuable per barrel than the stuff we import.
If the UK was about to receive, from some mad self harming foreign power the dosh we are going to give the Mauritians, then the UK would be, per capita, happily expectant of
£1,080,000,000,000
Oh no, not another bloody Chagos thread.
It's one of the most important issues going on in UK politics today. It shouldn't be, but it is. And unlike many of the challenges facing this government, it is pretty much totally under their own control.
The apparently sincere outrage about Chagos is baffling. There are a hundred other things I would get exercised about before that.
It isn't moral outrage. If it was we would close the base down and give the Chagossians their island back. The UK and US have no more moral right to the island than Mauritius, but legally it's theirs, as determined by clear and well established international law. So it's entirely transactional. The British, but in reality the Americans, get their base and the Mauritians get the money from a lease, which seems to be at the going rate for such bases. Everyone is happy, except the Chagossians, but nobody cares about them.
So Jenrick, a shadow bench member and likely next leader of the opposition calls Starmer a Quisling, and looks completely demented.
Ferraris are red. That's the whole point. In fact, come to think of it, Ferraris are about the only car that is red, a colour that seems otherwise to have disappeared from our motorways.
Giallo Modena Yellow was the original Ferrari racing color before it was red.
WRT Gaza, I don't suppose anyone is really surprised that Trump has said something like what he has.
All politics is relative, even this one. So points:
1) Clearly Trump intends to start a new middle east negotiation start point and position, and will have achieved this.
2) Has anyone got a better one?
3) I and most of us (I imagine) have long supported a two state solution. But SFAICS none of the parties do, most supporting a one state solution. So two state stuff isn't happening, not since the October massacre and Gaza'a becoming rubble.
4) What is the best one state solution which can be regarded as possible within the obvious constraints. Is it not most likely to be a radical but reluctantly agreed modification of Trump's appaarently absurd starting point?
On (3), the Palestinian Authority, some Israeli parties in opposition, Arab states, and most UN member states support a 2-state solution.
On (4), if one is to have a 1-state solution, it doesn't have to involve ethnic cleansing. So, no.
Ethnic cleansing is a crime against humanity. It is not the solution to anything. It is not a starting point to anything.
We had ethnic cleansing in Nagorno-Karabakh in 2023.
The world accepted it as it solved the problem.
I don't think the world accepted it as it "solved the problem". The world decided it was impotent to do much about it.
Ethnic cleansing is a crime against humanity. The world has sometimes failed to stop ethnic cleansing, but that doesn't change the horrendous and barbaric nature of the act.
Of course it's barbaric. But let's get real about it. It also sometimes solves long-standing problems. That was why Germans were ethnically cleansed from lands they had lived in for centuries at the end of WW2. It's why the same happened to Greeks and Turks in Greece and Turkey at the end of WW1. What was acceptable and - oh the irony! - diverse in multi-ethnic Empires became a huge issue under nationalism.
I do not advocate it. But let's not pretend that it hasn't been very convenient indeed for Western Europe. And we did not do anything about it not because we couldn't but because we did not want to, indeed encouraged it.
And what could we have done at the time about the Armenian genocide, or Stalin's forcible redrawing of national boundaries and movement of populations at the end of WWII ?
There are indeed some shameful events we had some part in, that we could have avoided - the repatriation of the Cossacks, many murdered or sent to the gulags, being one example. But that is what they are; utterly shameful.
I've come to the conclusion that the Lienz Repatriations were mostly not unjust. The Cossack troops committed multiple atrocities against Italian and Soviet civilians.
I've little doubt that true of a large number of them. But justice didn't come into it; we forcibly deported them all, men, women and children.
Ferraris are red. That's the whole point. In fact, come to think of it, Ferraris are about the only car that is red, a colour that seems otherwise to have disappeared from our motorways.
My car is red. It makes it easy to find in car parks, and it's unlikely to be mistaken for a Ferrari.
Both our cars are red. Well, one of them is a sort of tomato orange-red.
For anyone with a brain, a new Bayesian analysis has been done of “lab leak” versus “wet market”
A very very basic “what are the chances, eh?”
The answer is
“The overall odds ratio is 14,900:1, indicating overwhelming evidence in favor of the hypothesis that the pandemic resulted from an accidental lab leak."
The halfwits still gamely batting for a non existent market origin are literally arguing against a hypothesis which is 14,900 times more likely
Thats a crock of unscientific nonsense, a bit like the Drake equation. Four variables with selected values that we have no way of knowing if they are true.
Someone may have already commented on this, but perhaps the most interesting thing about Keir From HR's voice coach is not the fact that thevoice coach is definitely not a keyworker, but the fact that they are obviously a really shit coach.
Starmer still sounds like how AI might impersonate a Chartered Accountant reading out a tax return.
Ferraris are red. That's the whole point. In fact, come to think of it, Ferraris are about the only car that is red, a colour that seems otherwise to have disappeared from our motorways.
My car is red. It makes it easy to find in car parks, and it's unlikely to be mistaken for a Ferrari.
Both our cars are red. Well, one of them is a sort of tomato orange-red.
My MGB Roadster is Brooklands Green. Also rarely mistaken for a Ferrari.
IMO, one of the big negatives in regards to wet market explanation has always been that the Chinese have failed to ever produce any evidence for this hypothesis. They were on the scene early, they claim that was the source of the outbreak, they certainly were looking for evidence and in many many previous situations were such vectors have been the primary source researchers have found hard evidence to connect a disease outbreak with such a location or the intermingling of species under such situations was responsible e.g evidence has been produced to give quite a clear picture of the origins of SARs. Yet no evidence has been produced that shows this for COVID, and for the Chinese this would be the most diplomatically acceptable explanation.
There are of course many other possible scenarios which aren't deliberate or even accidental leak from a lab.
This is wrong. We have multiple lines of evidence for the wet market. Early cases clearly cluster around and are associated with the market. Environmental samples from the market show COVID and animals that could carry COVID together. https://www.science.org/doi/full/10.1126/science.abp8715 is a key paper here. Abstract:
“Understanding how severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) emerged in 2019 is critical to preventing future zoonotic outbreaks before they become the next pandemic. The Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan, China, was identified as a likely source of cases in early reports, but later this conclusion became controversial. We show here that the earliest known COVID-19 cases from December 2019, including those without reported direct links, were geographically centered on this market. We report that live SARS-CoV-2–susceptible mammals were sold at the market in late 2019 and that within the market, SARS-CoV-2–positive environmental samples were spatially associated with vendors selling live mammals. Although there is insufficient evidence to define upstream events, and exact circumstances remain obscure, our analyses indicate that the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 occurred through the live wildlife trade in China and show that the Huanan market was the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic.”
IMO, one of the big negatives in regards to wet market explanation has always been that the Chinese have failed to ever produce any evidence for this hypothesis. They were on the scene early, they claim that was the source of the outbreak, they certainly were looking for evidence and in many many previous situations were such vectors have been the primary source researchers have found hard evidence to connect a disease outbreak with such a location or the intermingling of species under such situations was responsible e.g evidence has been produced to give quite a clear picture of the origins of SARs. Yet no evidence has been produced that shows this for COVID, and for the Chinese this would be the most diplomatically acceptable explanation.
There are of course many other possible scenarios which aren't deliberate or even accidental leak from a lab.
It is possible the combo of Chagos and Voice coach could bring down Starmer
Each on their own, unlikely. But the combination of him being a lying snake and mind blowing hypocrite at the same time as he tries to give away, to hostile foreigners, billions of pounds we don’t have is quite lethal
He looks insane
The voice coach story is dead in the water. No one cares. No one wants to bang on about the pandemic anymore. You yourself picked up on this when taking about the lack of literature of the Black Death and the Spanish Flu. I am struck by the Hundred years war being punctuated by the extreme horror of the Black Death but with the combatents seemingly carrying on as if nothing had happened. Crecy (1346) so two years before and then Poitiers (1356) six years later, as if nothing had happened.
I know that the downstream events of the Black Death in England took a generation or so to come to a head (Peasants Revolt etc) but you do wonder if people just shrugged and got on with stuff in 1350. A bit like now with Covid.
You are a scientist who until recently was adamant it came from the wet market. Now it has been universally accepted it came from the lab, “oh who cares let’s move on no one wants to think about all that”
Nonsense on a plate with gravy. There is no consensus on the origin of Covid let alone one that is universally accepted.
On the contrary, it remains generally accepted by scientists that the most likely source for Covid was the wet market.
There are many reasons to discount a lab leak, says Holmes, and many more pointing to a natural origin. “SARS-CoV-2-like viruses have natural transmission cycles in a region spanning Yunnan province [in China] and southwards into South-East Asia and were most likely imported into Wuhan via the wildlife trade,” he says. “All the scientific evidence points to this. There is no scientific evidence for any other hypothesis.”
“The lab leak theory remains completely unsupported and, worse, incoherent and inconsistent, frequently requiring complex conspiracies to be a viable hypothesis,” says David Robertson at the University of Glasgow, UK. “Indeed, it seems clear that there’s a political agenda behind much of the proponents of the lab leak theory.”
We probably won’t ever know for sure. “I honestly can’t see any other new evidence coming to light,” says Holmes. “Research on this matter in China is at a standstill as the official narrative is that the virus is not from China. Besides, it is now far too late to find any intermediate animal species that still has the virus or antibodies to it.”
Does it even matter at this point? Yes, says Robertson. “The lab leak theory has become part of a wider, anti-science disinformation landscape. This is all very unfortunate, as preparedness to virus threats requires strong international cooperation and evidence-based response.”
Wet market is favoured but there is a sizeable dissenting minority not all of whom (contrary to evidence on here) are crackpots.
Yes, the lab leak origin is certainly a possibility, but seems unlikely from what I've read. What I find a bit weird is the desperation for certainty by some people, and to have someone specific to blame. I suppose the human psyche is wired this way. People want to have reasons for events - preferably simple ones - and if none are immediately apparent, then they'll invent them. Hence religion and superstition.
And yet the “religious certainty” all came from the wet marketeers for the first year
Remember “lab leak is a racist conspiracy theory”.
Remember when just talking about it got you banned from Facebook and Twitter
You didn’t have a problem with “religious certainty” then, did you? Nor did @kinabalu when he was “99% wet market!!” You knew and you were CERTAIN
Now the overwhelming evidence points the opposite way and suddenly it’s “oh well we will never know” and “it’s too late anyway” and “who cares it’s all long ago only 20 million died let’s talk about Lucy Letby” - @turbotubbs
It’s putrid, it’s laughable, it’s wrong, it’s immoral - and worst of all it is intellectually feeble
I'll tell you whats intellectually feeble - picking the more dramatic answer and declaring 100% that it must be right. Not looking at other evidence, just trawling your socials and reddit feed. Why not look at papers proposing the wet market as the source and understand why they come to the conclusions they do?
The main type of people of who go 100% certainty tend to be religious fanatics. What's your excuse?
I'd like to know what the connection is between being a leftist and not believing the lab leak theory. I can't see it myself but there obviously must be one.
It is possible the combo of Chagos and Voice coach could bring down Starmer
Each on their own, unlikely. But the combination of him being a lying snake and mind blowing hypocrite at the same time as he tries to give away, to hostile foreigners, billions of pounds we don’t have is quite lethal
He looks insane
The voice coach story is dead in the water. No one cares. No one wants to bang on about the pandemic anymore. You yourself picked up on this when taking about the lack of literature of the Black Death and the Spanish Flu. I am struck by the Hundred years war being punctuated by the extreme horror of the Black Death but with the combatents seemingly carrying on as if nothing had happened. Crecy (1346) so two years before and then Poitiers (1356) six years later, as if nothing had happened.
I know that the downstream events of the Black Death in England took a generation or so to come to a head (Peasants Revolt etc) but you do wonder if people just shrugged and got on with stuff in 1350. A bit like now with Covid.
You are a scientist who until recently was adamant it came from the wet market. Now it has been universally accepted it came from the lab, “oh who cares let’s move on no one wants to think about all that”
Nonsense on a plate with gravy. There is no consensus on the origin of Covid let alone one that is universally accepted.
On the contrary, it remains generally accepted by scientists that the most likely source for Covid was the wet market.
There are many reasons to discount a lab leak, says Holmes, and many more pointing to a natural origin. “SARS-CoV-2-like viruses have natural transmission cycles in a region spanning Yunnan province [in China] and southwards into South-East Asia and were most likely imported into Wuhan via the wildlife trade,” he says. “All the scientific evidence points to this. There is no scientific evidence for any other hypothesis.”
“The lab leak theory remains completely unsupported and, worse, incoherent and inconsistent, frequently requiring complex conspiracies to be a viable hypothesis,” says David Robertson at the University of Glasgow, UK. “Indeed, it seems clear that there’s a political agenda behind much of the proponents of the lab leak theory.”
We probably won’t ever know for sure. “I honestly can’t see any other new evidence coming to light,” says Holmes. “Research on this matter in China is at a standstill as the official narrative is that the virus is not from China. Besides, it is now far too late to find any intermediate animal species that still has the virus or antibodies to it.”
Does it even matter at this point? Yes, says Robertson. “The lab leak theory has become part of a wider, anti-science disinformation landscape. This is all very unfortunate, as preparedness to virus threats requires strong international cooperation and evidence-based response.”
Wet market is favoured but there is a sizeable dissenting minority not all of whom (contrary to evidence on here) are crackpots.
Yes, the lab leak origin is certainly a possibility, but seems unlikely from what I've read. What I find a bit weird is the desperation for certainty by some people, and to have someone specific to blame. I suppose the human psyche is wired this way. People want to have reasons for events - preferably simple ones - and if none are immediately apparent, then they'll invent them. Hence religion and superstition.
And yet the “religious certainty” all came from the wet marketeers for the first year
Remember “lab leak is a racist conspiracy theory”.
Remember when just talking about it got you banned from Facebook and Twitter
You didn’t have a problem with “religious certainty” then, did you? Nor did @kinabalu when he was “99% wet market!!” You knew and you were CERTAIN
Now the overwhelming evidence points the opposite way and suddenly it’s “oh well we will never know” and “it’s too late anyway” and “who cares it’s all long ago only 20 million died let’s talk about Lucy Letby” - @turbotubbs
It’s putrid, it’s laughable, it’s wrong, it’s immoral - and worst of all it is intellectually feeble
Er, as I pointed out before when you (mis)claimed this ... no, I can't be bothered, life's too short and the cat won't feed itself.
The cat will not only feed itself on one of the many mammals they have in leafy Hampstead, but would also feed on your dead body were, perish the thought, you to choke on your own self-righteousness.
Q1 2025 functional unit price average UK location - £231k/prisoner. Plus design fees, site purchase, legal costs, all external work such as fences, roads, landscaping, drainage, new sub-station, decant costs etc. So £735k/place looks a bit high, perhaps it has London 2012 style three levels of contingency at construction+project+ministry levels?
I'd like to know what the connection is between being a leftist and not believing the lab leak theory. I can't see it myself but there obviously must be one.
They think it's racist. They can only bring themselves to be critical of white westerners.
A Ferrari should be in any colour the buyer desires so long as it's red.
There are other storied Ferrari colours like Giallo Modena and Bianco Avus. Artful colour selection can really help the resale value through rarity. Tour de France Blue is usually one such. I've seen a Pino Verde 308GTB go for mad money.
It can also destroy value with a really obscure choice. That's how I got my 1 of 1 cheap (it's all relative).
If I were buying an new one, I'd get a TdF Blue/Crema 12Cilindri with no carbon fibre tat.
It is possible the combo of Chagos and Voice coach could bring down Starmer
Each on their own, unlikely. But the combination of him being a lying snake and mind blowing hypocrite at the same time as he tries to give away, to hostile foreigners, billions of pounds we don’t have is quite lethal
He looks insane
The voice coach story is dead in the water. No one cares. No one wants to bang on about the pandemic anymore. You yourself picked up on this when taking about the lack of literature of the Black Death and the Spanish Flu. I am struck by the Hundred years war being punctuated by the extreme horror of the Black Death but with the combatents seemingly carrying on as if nothing had happened. Crecy (1346) so two years before and then Poitiers (1356) six years later, as if nothing had happened.
I know that the downstream events of the Black Death in England took a generation or so to come to a head (Peasants Revolt etc) but you do wonder if people just shrugged and got on with stuff in 1350. A bit like now with Covid.
You are a scientist who until recently was adamant it came from the wet market. Now it has been universally accepted it came from the lab, “oh who cares let’s move on no one wants to think about all that”
Nonsense on a plate with gravy. There is no consensus on the origin of Covid let alone one that is universally accepted.
On the contrary, it remains generally accepted by scientists that the most likely source for Covid was the wet market.
There are many reasons to discount a lab leak, says Holmes, and many more pointing to a natural origin. “SARS-CoV-2-like viruses have natural transmission cycles in a region spanning Yunnan province [in China] and southwards into South-East Asia and were most likely imported into Wuhan via the wildlife trade,” he says. “All the scientific evidence points to this. There is no scientific evidence for any other hypothesis.”
“The lab leak theory remains completely unsupported and, worse, incoherent and inconsistent, frequently requiring complex conspiracies to be a viable hypothesis,” says David Robertson at the University of Glasgow, UK. “Indeed, it seems clear that there’s a political agenda behind much of the proponents of the lab leak theory.”
We probably won’t ever know for sure. “I honestly can’t see any other new evidence coming to light,” says Holmes. “Research on this matter in China is at a standstill as the official narrative is that the virus is not from China. Besides, it is now far too late to find any intermediate animal species that still has the virus or antibodies to it.”
Does it even matter at this point? Yes, says Robertson. “The lab leak theory has become part of a wider, anti-science disinformation landscape. This is all very unfortunate, as preparedness to virus threats requires strong international cooperation and evidence-based response.”
Wet market is favoured but there is a sizeable dissenting minority not all of whom (contrary to evidence on here) are crackpots.
Yes, the lab leak origin is certainly a possibility, but seems unlikely from what I've read. What I find a bit weird is the desperation for certainty by some people, and to have someone specific to blame. I suppose the human psyche is wired this way. People want to have reasons for events - preferably simple ones - and if none are immediately apparent, then they'll invent them. Hence religion and superstition.
And yet the “religious certainty” all came from the wet marketeers for the first year
Remember “lab leak is a racist conspiracy theory”.
Remember when just talking about it got you banned from Facebook and Twitter
You didn’t have a problem with “religious certainty” then, did you? Nor did @kinabalu when he was “99% wet market!!” You knew and you were CERTAIN
Now the overwhelming evidence points the opposite way and suddenly it’s “oh well we will never know” and “it’s too late anyway” and “who cares it’s all long ago only 20 million died let’s talk about Lucy Letby” - @turbotubbs
It’s putrid, it’s laughable, it’s wrong, it’s immoral - and worst of all it is intellectually feeble
I'll tell you whats intellectually feeble - picking the more dramatic answer and declaring 100% that it must be right. Not looking at other evidence, just trawling your socials and reddit feed. Why not look at papers proposing the wet market as the source and understand why they come to the conclusions they do?
The main type of people of who go 100% certainty tend to be religious fanatics. What's your excuse?
It is possible the combo of Chagos and Voice coach could bring down Starmer
Each on their own, unlikely. But the combination of him being a lying snake and mind blowing hypocrite at the same time as he tries to give away, to hostile foreigners, billions of pounds we don’t have is quite lethal
He looks insane
The voice coach story is dead in the water. No one cares. No one wants to bang on about the pandemic anymore. You yourself picked up on this when taking about the lack of literature of the Black Death and the Spanish Flu. I am struck by the Hundred years war being punctuated by the extreme horror of the Black Death but with the combatents seemingly carrying on as if nothing had happened. Crecy (1346) so two years before and then Poitiers (1356) six years later, as if nothing had happened.
I know that the downstream events of the Black Death in England took a generation or so to come to a head (Peasants Revolt etc) but you do wonder if people just shrugged and got on with stuff in 1350. A bit like now with Covid.
You are a scientist who until recently was adamant it came from the wet market. Now it has been universally accepted it came from the lab, “oh who cares let’s move on no one wants to think about all that”
Nonsense on a plate with gravy. There is no consensus on the origin of Covid let alone one that is universally accepted.
On the contrary, it remains generally accepted by scientists that the most likely source for Covid was the wet market.
There are many reasons to discount a lab leak, says Holmes, and many more pointing to a natural origin. “SARS-CoV-2-like viruses have natural transmission cycles in a region spanning Yunnan province [in China] and southwards into South-East Asia and were most likely imported into Wuhan via the wildlife trade,” he says. “All the scientific evidence points to this. There is no scientific evidence for any other hypothesis.”
“The lab leak theory remains completely unsupported and, worse, incoherent and inconsistent, frequently requiring complex conspiracies to be a viable hypothesis,” says David Robertson at the University of Glasgow, UK. “Indeed, it seems clear that there’s a political agenda behind much of the proponents of the lab leak theory.”
We probably won’t ever know for sure. “I honestly can’t see any other new evidence coming to light,” says Holmes. “Research on this matter in China is at a standstill as the official narrative is that the virus is not from China. Besides, it is now far too late to find any intermediate animal species that still has the virus or antibodies to it.”
Does it even matter at this point? Yes, says Robertson. “The lab leak theory has become part of a wider, anti-science disinformation landscape. This is all very unfortunate, as preparedness to virus threats requires strong international cooperation and evidence-based response.”
Wet market is favoured but there is a sizeable dissenting minority not all of whom (contrary to evidence on here) are crackpots.
Yes, the lab leak origin is certainly a possibility, but seems unlikely from what I've read. What I find a bit weird is the desperation for certainty by some people, and to have someone specific to blame. I suppose the human psyche is wired this way. People want to have reasons for events - preferably simple ones - and if none are immediately apparent, then they'll invent them. Hence religion and superstition.
And yet the “religious certainty” all came from the wet marketeers for the first year
Remember “lab leak is a racist conspiracy theory”.
Remember when just talking about it got you banned from Facebook and Twitter
You didn’t have a problem with “religious certainty” then, did you? Nor did @kinabalu when he was “99% wet market!!” You knew and you were CERTAIN
Now the overwhelming evidence points the opposite way and suddenly it’s “oh well we will never know” and “it’s too late anyway” and “who cares it’s all long ago only 20 million died let’s talk about Lucy Letby” - @turbotubbs
It’s putrid, it’s laughable, it’s wrong, it’s immoral - and worst of all it is intellectually feeble
I'll tell you whats intellectually feeble - picking the more dramatic answer and declaring 100% that it must be right. Not looking at other evidence, just trawling your socials and reddit feed. Why not look at papers proposing the wet market as the source and understand why they come to the conclusions they do?
The main type of people of who go 100% certainty tend to be religious fanatics. What's your excuse?
A lot of people have a psychological need for certainty, maybe rooted in their childhood experiences. Personally I am very comfortable with uncertainty - I have always thought a lab leak is the most likely explanation for Covid but the wet market theory could be right and I doubt we will ever know either way.
I'd like to know what the connection is between being a leftist and not believing the lab leak theory. I can't see it myself but there obviously must be one.
I don't think there is such a link. I'm not exactly a 'leftist', and I don't 'believe' the lab leak theory. I don't 'believe' the wet market theory either.
We're not dealing in faith; in certainties. We're dealing with probabilities, and the question is where you position that probability.
Although if I see a split on here, I'd say those who were more scientifically-based are more sceptical of the lab leak theory...
A Ferrari should be in any colour the buyer desires so long as it's red.
There are other storied Ferrari colours like Giallo Modena and Bianco Avus. Artful colour selection can really help the resale value through rarity. Tour de France Blue is usually one such. I've seen a Pino Verde 308GTB go for mad money.
It can also destroy value with a really obscure choice. That's how I got my 1 of 1 cheap (it's all relative).
If I were buying an new one, I'd get a TdF Blue/Crema 12Cilindri with no carbon fibre tat.
Owning such a car would never bring me happiness. I'd spend every waking hour worried about it getting scratched.
Ferraris are red. That's the whole point. In fact, come to think of it, Ferraris are about the only car that is red, a colour that seems otherwise to have disappeared from our motorways.
My car is red. It makes it easy to find in car parks, and it's unlikely to be mistaken for a Ferrari.
Both our cars are red. Well, one of them is a sort of tomato orange-red.
My MGB Roadster is Brooklands Green. Also rarely mistaken for a Ferrari.
I'd like to know what the connection is between being a leftist and not believing the lab leak theory. I can't see it myself but there obviously must be one.
They think it's racist. They can only bring themselves to be critical of white westerners.
Also, Trump was one of the first to propose Lab Leak, and this is a main reason the US Establishment tried to stifle discussion of it, let alone admit its high probability. The other reason is that the US, via Fauci, funded the Gain of Function bat coronavirus research at the Wuhan lab which led to a pathogenised bat coronavirus leaking out of the lab at Wuhan, which, of all cities in the world, is the one place the virus chose to emerge, well knock me down
The NHS is not the 'lifeblood of our country', FFS.
It is a health service, not a religion.
See Times front page today.
Some service. Not fit for purpose.
It never has been. It is an oligarchy of the self-interest groups, most particularly the BMA. It is run for the benefit of it's most highly paid staff. Patients are a necessary irritant.
Layla Moran says, “Gaza is our land.” If she’s speaking as a British politician then it’s imperialism and if she’s speaking as a Palestinian then it’s blood and soil nationalism.
The Davey-Starmer dialogue is very civilised and an answer is often elicited from the PM.
The shouty Badenoch -Starmer nonsense elicits nothing. Both were poor, but Badenoch missed all her own goals.
Badenoch was quite good last week. I wonder if the variability is down to how much she practises. This week she probably felt ultra confident - open goals all round, Starmer on the ropes etc. so breezed in without much preparation. Whereas he was presumably quite worried so prepared hard.
I'd like to know what the connection is between being a leftist and not believing the lab leak theory. I can't see it myself but there obviously must be one.
I'm not sure I'd describe turbotubbs or JosiasJessop as leftists.
No, the split is more between those who are and aren't scientifically minded. The latter believe stuff; the former don't.
A Ferrari should be in any colour the buyer desires so long as it's red.
There are other storied Ferrari colours like Giallo Modena and Bianco Avus. Artful colour selection can really help the resale value through rarity. Tour de France Blue is usually one such. I've seen a Pino Verde 308GTB go for mad money.
It can also destroy value with a really obscure choice. That's how I got my 1 of 1 cheap (it's all relative).
If I were buying an new one, I'd get a TdF Blue/Crema 12Cilindri with no carbon fibre tat.
I remember the James Coburn Spyder in blue at the time was the World's most expensive Ferrari. I hate Ferraris in Ford Escort Daytona Yellow. They all look colour correct in red.
It is possible the combo of Chagos and Voice coach could bring down Starmer
Each on their own, unlikely. But the combination of him being a lying snake and mind blowing hypocrite at the same time as he tries to give away, to hostile foreigners, billions of pounds we don’t have is quite lethal
He looks insane
The voice coach story is dead in the water. No one cares. No one wants to bang on about the pandemic anymore. You yourself picked up on this when taking about the lack of literature of the Black Death and the Spanish Flu. I am struck by the Hundred years war being punctuated by the extreme horror of the Black Death but with the combatents seemingly carrying on as if nothing had happened. Crecy (1346) so two years before and then Poitiers (1356) six years later, as if nothing had happened.
I know that the downstream events of the Black Death in England took a generation or so to come to a head (Peasants Revolt etc) but you do wonder if people just shrugged and got on with stuff in 1350. A bit like now with Covid.
You are a scientist who until recently was adamant it came from the wet market. Now it has been universally accepted it came from the lab, “oh who cares let’s move on no one wants to think about all that”
Nonsense on a plate with gravy. There is no consensus on the origin of Covid let alone one that is universally accepted.
On the contrary, it remains generally accepted by scientists that the most likely source for Covid was the wet market.
There are many reasons to discount a lab leak, says Holmes, and many more pointing to a natural origin. “SARS-CoV-2-like viruses have natural transmission cycles in a region spanning Yunnan province [in China] and southwards into South-East Asia and were most likely imported into Wuhan via the wildlife trade,” he says. “All the scientific evidence points to this. There is no scientific evidence for any other hypothesis.”
“The lab leak theory remains completely unsupported and, worse, incoherent and inconsistent, frequently requiring complex conspiracies to be a viable hypothesis,” says David Robertson at the University of Glasgow, UK. “Indeed, it seems clear that there’s a political agenda behind much of the proponents of the lab leak theory.”
We probably won’t ever know for sure. “I honestly can’t see any other new evidence coming to light,” says Holmes. “Research on this matter in China is at a standstill as the official narrative is that the virus is not from China. Besides, it is now far too late to find any intermediate animal species that still has the virus or antibodies to it.”
Does it even matter at this point? Yes, says Robertson. “The lab leak theory has become part of a wider, anti-science disinformation landscape. This is all very unfortunate, as preparedness to virus threats requires strong international cooperation and evidence-based response.”
Wet market is favoured but there is a sizeable dissenting minority not all of whom (contrary to evidence on here) are crackpots.
Yes, the lab leak origin is certainly a possibility, but seems unlikely from what I've read. What I find a bit weird is the desperation for certainty by some people, and to have someone specific to blame. I suppose the human psyche is wired this way. People want to have reasons for events - preferably simple ones - and if none are immediately apparent, then they'll invent them. Hence religion and superstition.
And yet the “religious certainty” all came from the wet marketeers for the first year
Remember “lab leak is a racist conspiracy theory”.
Remember when just talking about it got you banned from Facebook and Twitter
You didn’t have a problem with “religious certainty” then, did you? Nor did @kinabalu when he was “99% wet market!!” You knew and you were CERTAIN
Now the overwhelming evidence points the opposite way and suddenly it’s “oh well we will never know” and “it’s too late anyway” and “who cares it’s all long ago only 20 million died let’s talk about Lucy Letby” - @turbotubbs
It’s putrid, it’s laughable, it’s wrong, it’s immoral - and worst of all it is intellectually feeble
I'll tell you whats intellectually feeble - picking the more dramatic answer and declaring 100% that it must be right. Not looking at other evidence, just trawling your socials and reddit feed. Why not look at papers proposing the wet market as the source and understand why they come to the conclusions they do?
The main type of people of who go 100% certainty tend to be religious fanatics. What's your excuse?
Layla Moran says, “Gaza is our land.” If she’s speaking as a British politician then it’s imperialism and if she’s speaking as a Palestinian then it’s blood and soil nationalism.
IMO, one of the big negatives in regards to wet market explanation has always been that the Chinese have failed to ever produce any evidence for this hypothesis. They were on the scene early, they claim that was the source of the outbreak, they certainly were looking for evidence and in many many previous situations were such vectors have been the primary source researchers have found hard evidence to connect a disease outbreak with such a location or the intermingling of species under such situations was responsible e.g evidence has been produced to give quite a clear picture of the origins of SARs. Yet no evidence has been produced that shows this for COVID, and for the Chinese this would be the most diplomatically acceptable explanation.
There are of course many other possible scenarios which aren't deliberate or even accidental leak from a lab.
This is wrong. We have multiple lines of evidence for the wet market. Early cases clearly cluster around and are associated with the market. Environmental samples from the market show COVID and animals that could carry COVID together. https://www.science.org/doi/full/10.1126/science.abp8715 is a key paper here. Abstract:
“Understanding how severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) emerged in 2019 is critical to preventing future zoonotic outbreaks before they become the next pandemic. The Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan, China, was identified as a likely source of cases in early reports, but later this conclusion became controversial. We show here that the earliest known COVID-19 cases from December 2019, including those without reported direct links, were geographically centered on this market. We report that live SARS-CoV-2–susceptible mammals were sold at the market in late 2019 and that within the market, SARS-CoV-2–positive environmental samples were spatially associated with vendors selling live mammals. Although there is insufficient evidence to define upstream events, and exact circumstances remain obscure, our analyses indicate that the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 occurred through the live wildlife trade in China and show that the Huanan market was the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic.”
Sorry my post was very poorly worded. AFAIK, I was specifically talking about evidence of the genetic lineage rather than evidence of spread from that location. Previous diseases they have managed to trace the origins of the disease back to the exact animal(s) and then gone out and found it in those species e.g. SARs comes from camels, they traced it back through outbreaks and then were able to identify its origins in the wild.
As far as I understand, the evidence for the wet market is susceptible animals were there and many cases have been found to originate there. That doesn't mean that was necessarily the original origin of the disease, rather its a busy crowded location so its unsurprising of high rates of spread.
My point was that in previous disease, they find epicentres of outbreaks, found which animals were present, and managed to work back to find the exact animal(s) that produced it. AFAIK, 5 years on, this hasn't been achieved, rather everybody is still stuck at the point of there was a evidence of large spreading incident.
We do know that bats from a region far from Wuhan have been found to carry things diseases similar to COVID and they had been collected and taken to the labs in Wuhan in the past. We don't know if those bats carry were the origins of COVID itself. Do we know if those rare bats in the wet market?
It is possible the combo of Chagos and Voice coach could bring down Starmer
Each on their own, unlikely. But the combination of him being a lying snake and mind blowing hypocrite at the same time as he tries to give away, to hostile foreigners, billions of pounds we don’t have is quite lethal
He looks insane
The voice coach story is dead in the water. No one cares. No one wants to bang on about the pandemic anymore. You yourself picked up on this when taking about the lack of literature of the Black Death and the Spanish Flu. I am struck by the Hundred years war being punctuated by the extreme horror of the Black Death but with the combatents seemingly carrying on as if nothing had happened. Crecy (1346) so two years before and then Poitiers (1356) six years later, as if nothing had happened.
I know that the downstream events of the Black Death in England took a generation or so to come to a head (Peasants Revolt etc) but you do wonder if people just shrugged and got on with stuff in 1350. A bit like now with Covid.
You are a scientist who until recently was adamant it came from the wet market. Now it has been universally accepted it came from the lab, “oh who cares let’s move on no one wants to think about all that”
Nonsense on a plate with gravy. There is no consensus on the origin of Covid let alone one that is universally accepted.
On the contrary, it remains generally accepted by scientists that the most likely source for Covid was the wet market.
There are many reasons to discount a lab leak, says Holmes, and many more pointing to a natural origin. “SARS-CoV-2-like viruses have natural transmission cycles in a region spanning Yunnan province [in China] and southwards into South-East Asia and were most likely imported into Wuhan via the wildlife trade,” he says. “All the scientific evidence points to this. There is no scientific evidence for any other hypothesis.”
“The lab leak theory remains completely unsupported and, worse, incoherent and inconsistent, frequently requiring complex conspiracies to be a viable hypothesis,” says David Robertson at the University of Glasgow, UK. “Indeed, it seems clear that there’s a political agenda behind much of the proponents of the lab leak theory.”
We probably won’t ever know for sure. “I honestly can’t see any other new evidence coming to light,” says Holmes. “Research on this matter in China is at a standstill as the official narrative is that the virus is not from China. Besides, it is now far too late to find any intermediate animal species that still has the virus or antibodies to it.”
Does it even matter at this point? Yes, says Robertson. “The lab leak theory has become part of a wider, anti-science disinformation landscape. This is all very unfortunate, as preparedness to virus threats requires strong international cooperation and evidence-based response.”
Wet market is favoured but there is a sizeable dissenting minority not all of whom (contrary to evidence on here) are crackpots.
Yes, the lab leak origin is certainly a possibility, but seems unlikely from what I've read. What I find a bit weird is the desperation for certainty by some people, and to have someone specific to blame. I suppose the human psyche is wired this way. People want to have reasons for events - preferably simple ones - and if none are immediately apparent, then they'll invent them. Hence religion and superstition.
And yet the “religious certainty” all came from the wet marketeers for the first year
Remember “lab leak is a racist conspiracy theory”.
Remember when just talking about it got you banned from Facebook and Twitter
You didn’t have a problem with “religious certainty” then, did you? Nor did @kinabalu when he was “99% wet market!!” You knew and you were CERTAIN
Now the overwhelming evidence points the opposite way and suddenly it’s “oh well we will never know” and “it’s too late anyway” and “who cares it’s all long ago only 20 million died let’s talk about Lucy Letby” - @turbotubbs
It’s putrid, it’s laughable, it’s wrong, it’s immoral - and worst of all it is intellectually feeble
I'll tell you whats intellectually feeble - picking the more dramatic answer and declaring 100% that it must be right. Not looking at other evidence, just trawling your socials and reddit feed. Why not look at papers proposing the wet market as the source and understand why they come to the conclusions they do?
The main type of people of who go 100% certainty tend to be religious fanatics. What's your excuse?
A lot of people have a psychological need for certainty, maybe rooted in their childhood experiences. Personally I am very comfortable with uncertainty - I have always thought a lab leak is the most likely explanation for Covid but the wet market theory could be right and I doubt we will ever know either way.
I think that is the most sensible position that many of us have taken all along. There were some vested interests who wanted to deny the possibility, but there were/are also a number of nutters with no knowledge of science who oh so want to believe that it MUST be a lab leak even though they have no evidence and wouldn't stand a chance of understanding it even if some bulletproof Chinese lab worker wafted said evidence under their unscientific nose.
I'd like to know what the connection is between being a leftist and not believing the lab leak theory. I can't see it myself but there obviously must be one.
I'm not sure I'd describe turbotubbs or JosiasJessop as leftists.
No, the split is more between those who are and aren't scientifically minded. The latter believe stuff; the former don't.
Is it scientifically minded to publish a letter in February 2020 in the Lancet dismissing all lab leak theories as “racist conspiracy”?
Is it scientifically minded to declare, for all the co-signatories of that letter, that you have no conflict of interest - thereby NOT revealing to the readers of that letter that the guy who organized the letter and co-signed it was director of EcoHealth Alliance, who funded the bat coronavirus gain of function research at Wuhan?
Was that “scientifically minded”? Was it? Well was it? Or was it in fact a fucking cover up by a bunch of scientists terrified of getting blamed for the plague they made and leaked?
“Under-fire Lancet admits conflict of interest on lab-leak letter After criticism that it failed to declare Peter Daszak’s work with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, journal has also ‘recused’ zoologist from its coronavirus origins taskforce”
Layla Moran says, “Gaza is our land.” If she’s speaking as a British politician then it’s imperialism and if she’s speaking as a Palestinian then it’s blood and soil nationalism.
Layla Moran says, “Gaza is our land.” If she’s speaking as a British politician then it’s imperialism and if she’s speaking as a Palestinian then it’s blood and soil nationalism.
Layla Moran says, “Gaza is our land.” If she’s speaking as a British politician then it’s imperialism and if she’s speaking as a Palestinian then it’s blood and soil nationalism.
Layla Moran says, “Gaza is our land.” If she’s speaking as a British politician then it’s imperialism and if she’s speaking as a Palestinian then it’s blood and soil nationalism.
Layla Moran says, “Gaza is our land.” If she’s speaking as a British politician then it’s imperialism and if she’s speaking as a Palestinian then it’s blood and soil nationalism.
Layla Moran says, “Gaza is our land.” If she’s speaking as a British politician then it’s imperialism and if she’s speaking as a Palestinian then it’s blood and soil nationalism.
Layla Moran says, “Gaza is our land.” If she’s speaking as a British politician then it’s imperialism and if she’s speaking as a Palestinian then it’s blood and soil nationalism.
IMO, one of the big negatives in regards to wet market explanation has always been that the Chinese have failed to ever produce any evidence for this hypothesis. They were on the scene early, they claim that was the source of the outbreak, they certainly were looking for evidence and in many many previous situations were such vectors have been the primary source researchers have found hard evidence to connect a disease outbreak with such a location or the intermingling of species under such situations was responsible e.g evidence has been produced to give quite a clear picture of the origins of SARs. Yet no evidence has been produced that shows this for COVID, and for the Chinese this would be the most diplomatically acceptable explanation.
There are of course many other possible scenarios which aren't deliberate or even accidental leak from a lab.
This is wrong. We have multiple lines of evidence for the wet market. Early cases clearly cluster around and are associated with the market. Environmental samples from the market show COVID and animals that could carry COVID together. https://www.science.org/doi/full/10.1126/science.abp8715 is a key paper here. Abstract:
“Understanding how severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) emerged in 2019 is critical to preventing future zoonotic outbreaks before they become the next pandemic. The Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan, China, was identified as a likely source of cases in early reports, but later this conclusion became controversial. We show here that the earliest known COVID-19 cases from December 2019, including those without reported direct links, were geographically centered on this market. We report that live SARS-CoV-2–susceptible mammals were sold at the market in late 2019 and that within the market, SARS-CoV-2–positive environmental samples were spatially associated with vendors selling live mammals. Although there is insufficient evidence to define upstream events, and exact circumstances remain obscure, our analyses indicate that the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 occurred through the live wildlife trade in China and show that the Huanan market was the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic.”
Sorry my post was very poorly worded. AFAIK, I was specifically talking about evidence of the genetic lineage rather than evidence of spread from that location. Previous diseases they have managed to trace the origins of the disease back to the exact animal(s) and then gone out and found it in those species e.g. SARs comes from camels, they traced it back through outbreaks and then were able to identify its origins in the wild.
As far as I understand, the evidence for the wet market is susceptible animals were there and many cases have been found to originate there. That doesn't mean that was necessarily the original origin of the disease, rather its a busy crowded location so its unsurprising of high rates of spread.
My point was that in previous disease, they find epicentres of outbreaks, found which animals were present, and managed to work back to find the exact animal(s) that produced it. AFAIK, 5 years on, this hasn't been achieved, rather everybody is still stuck at the point of there was a evidence of large spreading incident.
We do know that bats from a region far from Wuhan have been found to carry things diseases similar to COVID and they had been collected and taken to the labs in Wuhan in the past. We don't know if those bats carry were the origins of COVID itself. Do we know if those rare bats in the wet market?
Correction - Not SARs, MERS-CoV was camels. SARs was bats.
Layla Moran says, “Gaza is our land.” If she’s speaking as a British politician then it’s imperialism and if she’s speaking as a Palestinian then it’s blood and soil nationalism.
Ferraris are red. That's the whole point. In fact, come to think of it, Ferraris are about the only car that is red, a colour that seems otherwise to have disappeared from our motorways.
My car is red. It makes it easy to find in car parks, and it's unlikely to be mistaken for a Ferrari.
Both our cars are red. Well, one of them is a sort of tomato orange-red.
My MGB Roadster is Brooklands Green. Also rarely mistaken for a Ferrari.
I just sharted in horror.
When they were teenagers, my brother bought my sister a lovely green MG Midget. It had a tiny bit of rust in the footwell, so he started to tackle it with his welder. The rust was everywhere, and in the end he patched out the vast majority of the bottom of the bodyshell.
When he came to do his own MG B, he just bought a new bodyshell...
Layla Moran says, “Gaza is our land.” If she’s speaking as a British politician then it’s imperialism and if she’s speaking as a Palestinian then it’s blood and soil nationalism.
Layla Moran says, “Gaza is our land.” If she’s speaking as a British politician then it’s imperialism and if she’s speaking as a Palestinian then it’s blood and soil nationalism.
I suspect she is speaking as a Gazan. Are you gaslighting?
A Gazan? She was born in Hammersmith.
Your strategy here is to play the fool in defence of the indefensible. At least Leon states it directly: for Stephen Yaxley Lennon, against Muslims in Europe, etc.
Layla Moran says, “Gaza is our land.” If she’s speaking as a British politician then it’s imperialism and if she’s speaking as a Palestinian then it’s blood and soil nationalism.
Layla Moran says, “Gaza is our land.” If she’s speaking as a British politician then it’s imperialism and if she’s speaking as a Palestinian then it’s blood and soil nationalism.
Layla Moran says, “Gaza is our land.” If she’s speaking as a British politician then it’s imperialism and if she’s speaking as a Palestinian then it’s blood and soil nationalism.
The Davey-Starmer dialogue is very civilised and an answer is often elicited from the PM.
The shouty Badenoch -Starmer nonsense elicits nothing. Both were poor, but Badenoch missed all her own goals.
Isn't missing an own goal a good thing? Not a soccer fan but just saying.
Fair point.
Open, she scored an own goal when she didn't follow up on the £18b
Did she mock Starmer for having a voice coach and still sounding like Keir From HR? Or did she miss that very obvious goal too?
If the voice coach story has legs wouldn't a question have been helpful? The conflation of Chagos and Milliband's net zero policy seemed odd too. I can understand the relationship, but her statements were very clunky. Starmer was better prepared than Badenoch today. She should have aced him.
I'd like to know what the connection is between being a leftist and not believing the lab leak theory. I can't see it myself but there obviously must be one.
I'm not sure I'd describe turbotubbs or JosiasJessop as leftists.
No, the split is more between those who are and aren't scientifically minded. The latter believe stuff; the former don't.
Is it scientifically minded to publish a letter in February 2020 in the Lancet dismissing all lab leak theories as “racist conspiracy”?
Is it scientifically minded to declare, for all the co-signatories of that letter, that you have no conflict of interest - thereby NOT revealing to the readers of that letter that the guy who organized the letter and co-signed it was director of EcoHealth Alliance, who funded the bat coronavirus gain of function research at Wuhan?
Was that “scientifically minded”? Was it? Well was it? Or was it in fact a fucking cover up by a bunch of scientists terrified of getting blamed for the plague they made and leaked?
“Under-fire Lancet admits conflict of interest on lab-leak letter After criticism that it failed to declare Peter Daszak’s work with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, journal has also ‘recused’ zoologist from its coronavirus origins taskforce”
The Lancet has a long history of being a bit rubbish. On the 'its racist' stuff, to be honest I suspect quite a lot of what goes on in other countries is not being done to the same levels of safety that we expect in the UK. (And I include the USA in that, certainly in areas of research that are my expertise - chemistry. They are notorious in US Unis for poor chemical safety). I also suspect a lot of research from everywhere has at best 'tidied up' data, and at worst fabricated or fake data. Retraction watch probably has the tip of the ice berg because so many papers are hardly read by anyone and the science tends to self correct. As an example I came across fake data (impossible data, really) in a decent journal. The editor was not that helpful and the lead author was very shifty. The things he published were essentially made up. We later published the genuine information. I was angry that the editor hadn't wanted to take action, but life is too short. Lab leak has many guises. To the thriller writer you have Fauci getting the Chinese to perform gain of function experiments on viruses to see what happens if they become more infectious to humans, it works, a lab worker becomes infected and, visbibly ill (sweating, got the shakes, grey pallour) visits the market on the way home to buy his fish. He recovers (most young people did) but the modified virus is now out there and the source is that wet market. Plausible for sure. As is a naturally mutated covid emerging from the lab via the same route. As is covid emerging naturally in the way that SARS and MERS did.
Incidently, and most know this already, we have had leaks in the UK, such as Foot and Mouth from Pirbright. I also know of an incident at DSTL (Porton Down - the group that did all the Novichock work) where someone contaminated entire corridors of the building with nerve agent from a lab... Its no coincidence that emergency repsonse at Salisbury where able to treat victims of a nerve agent attack - they've seen similar symptoms before...
The Davey-Starmer dialogue is very civilised and an answer is often elicited from the PM.
The shouty Badenoch -Starmer nonsense elicits nothing. Both were poor, but Badenoch missed all her own goals.
Isn't missing an own goal a good thing? Not a soccer fan but just saying.
Fair point.
Open, she scored an own goal when she didn't follow up on the £18b
Did she mock Starmer for having a voice coach and still sounding like Keir From HR? Or did she miss that very obvious goal too?
If the voice coach story has legs wouldn't a question have been helpful? The conflation of Chagos and Milliband's net zero policy seemed odd too. I can understand the relationship, but her statements were very clunky. Starmer was better prepared than Badenoch today. She should have aced him.
The thing I haven’t understood is why
1) Labour talked about a £22 billion Tory black hole then announced a £22 billion carbon capture plan
It is possible the combo of Chagos and Voice coach could bring down Starmer
Each on their own, unlikely. But the combination of him being a lying snake and mind blowing hypocrite at the same time as he tries to give away, to hostile foreigners, billions of pounds we don’t have is quite lethal
He looks insane
The voice coach story is dead in the water. No one cares. No one wants to bang on about the pandemic anymore. You yourself picked up on this when taking about the lack of literature of the Black Death and the Spanish Flu. I am struck by the Hundred years war being punctuated by the extreme horror of the Black Death but with the combatents seemingly carrying on as if nothing had happened. Crecy (1346) so two years before and then Poitiers (1356) six years later, as if nothing had happened.
I know that the downstream events of the Black Death in England took a generation or so to come to a head (Peasants Revolt etc) but you do wonder if people just shrugged and got on with stuff in 1350. A bit like now with Covid.
You are a scientist who until recently was adamant it came from the wet market. Now it has been universally accepted it came from the lab, “oh who cares let’s move on no one wants to think about all that”
Nonsense on a plate with gravy. There is no consensus on the origin of Covid let alone one that is universally accepted.
On the contrary, it remains generally accepted by scientists that the most likely source for Covid was the wet market.
There are many reasons to discount a lab leak, says Holmes, and many more pointing to a natural origin. “SARS-CoV-2-like viruses have natural transmission cycles in a region spanning Yunnan province [in China] and southwards into South-East Asia and were most likely imported into Wuhan via the wildlife trade,” he says. “All the scientific evidence points to this. There is no scientific evidence for any other hypothesis.”
“The lab leak theory remains completely unsupported and, worse, incoherent and inconsistent, frequently requiring complex conspiracies to be a viable hypothesis,” says David Robertson at the University of Glasgow, UK. “Indeed, it seems clear that there’s a political agenda behind much of the proponents of the lab leak theory.”
We probably won’t ever know for sure. “I honestly can’t see any other new evidence coming to light,” says Holmes. “Research on this matter in China is at a standstill as the official narrative is that the virus is not from China. Besides, it is now far too late to find any intermediate animal species that still has the virus or antibodies to it.”
Does it even matter at this point? Yes, says Robertson. “The lab leak theory has become part of a wider, anti-science disinformation landscape. This is all very unfortunate, as preparedness to virus threats requires strong international cooperation and evidence-based response.”
Wet market is favoured but there is a sizeable dissenting minority not all of whom (contrary to evidence on here) are crackpots.
Yes, the lab leak origin is certainly a possibility, but seems unlikely from what I've read. What I find a bit weird is the desperation for certainty by some people, and to have someone specific to blame. I suppose the human psyche is wired this way. People want to have reasons for events - preferably simple ones - and if none are immediately apparent, then they'll invent them. Hence religion and superstition.
And yet the “religious certainty” all came from the wet marketeers for the first year
Remember “lab leak is a racist conspiracy theory”.
Remember when just talking about it got you banned from Facebook and Twitter
You didn’t have a problem with “religious certainty” then, did you? Nor did @kinabalu when he was “99% wet market!!” You knew and you were CERTAIN
Now the overwhelming evidence points the opposite way and suddenly it’s “oh well we will never know” and “it’s too late anyway” and “who cares it’s all long ago only 20 million died let’s talk about Lucy Letby” - @turbotubbs
It’s putrid, it’s laughable, it’s wrong, it’s immoral - and worst of all it is intellectually feeble
Er, as I pointed out before when you (mis)claimed this ... no, I can't be bothered, life's too short and the cat won't feed itself.
The cat will not only feed itself on one of the many mammals they have in leafy Hampstead, but would also feed on your dead body were, perish the thought, you to choke on your own self-righteousness.
They usually eat the lips first.
I'm sure mine wouldn't. He'd grieve and make the necessary arrangements.
Layla Moran says, “Gaza is our land.” If she’s speaking as a British politician then it’s imperialism and if she’s speaking as a Palestinian then it’s blood and soil nationalism.
Layla Moran says, “Gaza is our land.” If she’s speaking as a British politician then it’s imperialism and if she’s speaking as a Palestinian then it’s blood and soil nationalism.
Layla Moran says, “Gaza is our land.” If she’s speaking as a British politician then it’s imperialism and if she’s speaking as a Palestinian then it’s blood and soil nationalism.
The Davey-Starmer dialogue is very civilised and an answer is often elicited from the PM.
The shouty Badenoch -Starmer nonsense elicits nothing. Both were poor, but Badenoch missed all her own goals.
Isn't missing an own goal a good thing? Not a soccer fan but just saying.
Fair point.
Open, she scored an own goal when she didn't follow up on the £18b
Did she mock Starmer for having a voice coach and still sounding like Keir From HR? Or did she miss that very obvious goal too?
If the voice coach story has legs wouldn't a question have been helpful? The conflation of Chagos and Milliband's net zero policy seemed odd too. I can understand the relationship, but her statements were very clunky. Starmer was better prepared than Badenoch today. She should have aced him.
The thing I haven’t understood is why
1) Labour talked about a £22 billion Tory black hole then announced a £22 billion carbon capture plan
2) Why the Tories haven’t linked the two?
We are led by pygmies.
There are loads of open goals like that....all the talk of putting AI first, while cutting funding for super computer that would have made UK 1 of only 3 in the world capable of working towards solving very complex scientific problems and cutting maths scheme.
Not stumping up another fiver for the vaccine plant in Liverpool
Layla Moran says, “Gaza is our land.” If she’s speaking as a British politician then it’s imperialism and if she’s speaking as a Palestinian then it’s blood and soil nationalism.
Layla Moran says, “Gaza is our land.” If she’s speaking as a British politician then it’s imperialism and if she’s speaking as a Palestinian then it’s blood and soil nationalism.
If the Chagos deal has been debated in parliament in Mauritius, it is vital that we get our own parliamentary debate and vote *before* anything is signed.
Kay Burley has announced, live on air, her departure from the increasingly irrelevant Sky News.
Retirement or heave-ho? Ian King has been given his P45 in the past week. Talk is plenty more of the high profile ones are going to be also out of a job due to loses of £100 million a year.
I believe the deal new owners struck with government to ensure Sky News exists runs out in 2-3 years.
If you're the Leader of the Opposition and you are offered security briefings, don't you take them?
It’s one of the things that works really well in our country.
PMs and their governments give LOTOs and other party leaders/relevant spokesman security briefings on Privy Council terms and LOTOs can request them.
I know David Cameron invited Ed Miliband and Jim Murphy into a National Security Council meeting in 2011 ahead of the Libya intervention.
Jeremy Corbyn refused them, the one he attended was the Salisbury attack one, and every other party including the SNP were all in agreement that Russia was behind it and the evidence confirmed that but Corbyn was like nah.
Comments
There are of course many other possible scenarios which aren't deliberate or even accidental leak from a lab.
There are indeed some shameful events we had some part in, that we could have avoided - the repatriation of the Cossacks, many murdered or sent to the gulags, being one example. But that is what they are; utterly shameful.
Is it some super-sophisticated play to force someone to do something about something.
An Iranian (father = exile) friend of mine commented that he thinks it's a good idea, if that brings any cogent analysis to the issue.
I've given up debating him on this, as he simply floods the zone with shit.
Ferrari boss vows to crack down on ‘strange’ bling requests from super-rich buyers
Italian carmaker says garish colour schemes damage the luxury brand
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/02/05/ferrari-boss-vows-crack-down-on-customisation-requests/
Trump loves Bibi as a role model, but the Saudis give him lots of money, so I presume he'll reverse course now.
Rich households with smart doorbells ‘to blame for unreliable jobs data’
Office for National Statistics struggles with plunging survey response rates
An increase in the use of smart doorbells by wealthy households is partly to blame for the crisis plaguing Britain’s jobs market data, the UK’s chief statistician has said.
Sir Ian Diamond told MPs that the Office for National Statistics’ (ONS) struggles with unreliable jobs data were partly caused by people in “advantaged areas” with camera doorbells who were ignoring its interviewers.
The statistics chief was questioned by MPs on the Treasury select committee amid growing fears that poor data mean politicians and the Bank of England are flying blind when making policy and setting interest rates.
Sir Ian said the ONS’s interviewers were having to contact twice as many people as before the pandemic to secure the same amount of data.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/02/04/rich-households-with-ring-doorbells-to-blame-for-unreliable/
Also that volume and value are different. On volume we've been a net importer of crude since 2005, and of refined oil since 2013. I guess that makes what we produce /refine more valuable per barrel than the stuff we import.
But justice didn't come into it; we forcibly deported them all, men, women and children.
@DPJHodges
·
2m
Keir Starmer currently shredding Kemi Badenoch over the Chagos Islands.
It is a health service, not a religion.
Starmer still sounds like how AI might impersonate a Chartered Accountant reading out a tax return.
“Understanding how severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) emerged in 2019 is critical to preventing future zoonotic outbreaks before they become the next pandemic. The Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan, China, was identified as a likely source of cases in early reports, but later this conclusion became controversial. We show here that the earliest known COVID-19 cases from December 2019, including those without reported direct links, were geographically centered on this market. We report that live SARS-CoV-2–susceptible mammals were sold at the market in late 2019 and that within the market, SARS-CoV-2–positive environmental samples were spatially associated with vendors selling live mammals. Although there is insufficient evidence to define upstream events, and exact circumstances remain obscure, our analyses indicate that the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 occurred through the live wildlife trade in China and show that the Huanan market was the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic.”
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2448671-evidence-points-to-wuhan-market-as-source-of-covid-19-outbreak/
The main type of people of who go 100% certainty tend to be religious fanatics. What's your excuse?
The shouty Badenoch -Starmer nonsense elicits nothing. Both were poor, but Badenoch missed all her own goals.
It can also destroy value with a really obscure choice. That's how I got my 1 of 1 cheap (it's all relative).
If I were buying an new one, I'd get a TdF Blue/Crema 12Cilindri with no carbon fibre tat.
We're not dealing in faith; in certainties. We're dealing with probabilities, and the question is where you position that probability.
Although if I see a split on here, I'd say those who were more scientifically-based are more sceptical of the lab leak theory...
Some service. Not fit for purpose.
https://x.com/laylamoran/status/1887058366960161067
No, the split is more between those who are and aren't scientifically minded. The latter believe stuff; the former don't.
Open, she scored an own goal when she didn't follow up on the £18b
As far as I understand, the evidence for the wet market is susceptible animals were there and many cases have been found to originate there. That doesn't mean that was necessarily the original origin of the disease, rather its a busy crowded location so its unsurprising of high rates of spread.
My point was that in previous disease, they find epicentres of outbreaks, found which animals were present, and managed to work back to find the exact animal(s) that produced it. AFAIK, 5 years on, this hasn't been achieved, rather everybody is still stuck at the point of there was a evidence of large spreading incident.
We do know that bats from a region far from Wuhan have been found to carry things diseases similar to COVID and they had been collected and taken to the labs in Wuhan in the past. We don't know if those bats carry were the origins of COVID itself. Do we know if those rare bats in the wet market?
Is it scientifically minded to declare, for all the co-signatories of that letter, that you have no conflict of interest - thereby NOT revealing to the readers of that letter that the guy who organized the letter and co-signed it was director of EcoHealth Alliance, who funded the bat coronavirus gain of function research at Wuhan?
Was that “scientifically minded”? Was it? Well was it? Or was it in fact a fucking cover up by a bunch of scientists terrified of getting blamed for the plague they made and leaked?
“Under-fire Lancet admits conflict of interest on lab-leak letter
After criticism that it failed to declare Peter Daszak’s work with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, journal has also ‘recused’ zoologist from its coronavirus origins taskforce”
https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/under-fire-lancet-admits-conflict-interest-lab-leak-letter
IIRC one of her parents is a Palestinian.
If not, what's your excuse ?
When he came to do his own MG B, he just bought a new bodyshell...
Atrocity follows escape of thousands of male inmates amid chaos as Rwandan-backed M23 rebels seize eastern DRC city
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/feb/05/democratic-republic-congo-goma-women-raped-burned-death-prison-m23-rebels-rwanda
I am not going to waste my time with you.
As an example I came across fake data (impossible data, really) in a decent journal. The editor was not that helpful and the lead author was very shifty. The things he published were essentially made up. We later published the genuine information. I was angry that the editor hadn't wanted to take action, but life is too short.
Lab leak has many guises. To the thriller writer you have Fauci getting the Chinese to perform gain of function experiments on viruses to see what happens if they become more infectious to humans, it works, a lab worker becomes infected and, visbibly ill (sweating, got the shakes, grey pallour) visits the market on the way home to buy his fish. He recovers (most young people did) but the modified virus is now out there and the source is that wet market.
Plausible for sure. As is a naturally mutated covid emerging from the lab via the same route.
As is covid emerging naturally in the way that SARS and MERS did.
Incidently, and most know this already, we have had leaks in the UK, such as Foot and Mouth from Pirbright. I also know of an incident at DSTL (Porton Down - the group that did all the Novichock work) where someone contaminated entire corridors of the building with nerve agent from a lab... Its no coincidence that emergency repsonse at Salisbury where able to treat victims of a nerve agent attack - they've seen similar symptoms before...
On the cheap.
(Although, if built I suspect it would be a destination for terrorism tourism for many decades to come...)
1) Labour talked about a £22 billion Tory black hole then announced a £22 billion carbon capture plan
2) Why the Tories haven’t linked the two?
We are led by pygmies.
Not stumping up another fiver for the vaccine plant in Liverpool
etc.
* And I was born in Solihull.
I believe the deal new owners struck with government to ensure Sky News exists runs out in 2-3 years.
PMs and their governments give LOTOs and other party leaders/relevant spokesman security briefings on Privy Council terms and LOTOs can request them.
I know David Cameron invited Ed Miliband and Jim Murphy into a National Security Council meeting in 2011 ahead of the Libya intervention.
Jeremy Corbyn refused them, the one he attended was the Salisbury attack one, and every other party including the SNP were all in agreement that Russia was behind it and the evidence confirmed that but Corbyn was like nah.