The Lab Virus: WLV19

[babe]

It is not the CDC, but the NIH, and yes they would advise a sitting president. They'd also issue press releases that Gain-of-Function funding was once again starting to flow.

Feds lift gain-of-function research pause, offer guidance

www.cidrap.umn.edu

Looks like CIDRAP is under HHS as well. That link is 2017, and has been referenced by others indiscussing this event in relation to CoViD-19 outbreak.

I've heard of some concerns going back to August 2019.

I imagine I got it in November 2019. One year later my wife and kids were impressively exposed to a family that the next day got all diagnosed, but it was a dud for my family. I thought of just getting the antibody test before doing the shot. My doctor got all panicky saying the antibody tests aren't reliable......

 

[gandalfe]

I just realized this is a Babe thread, and, therefore, pointless.

 

[Hax0rs]

I just realized this is a Babe thread, and, therefore, pointless.

Makes sense that you'd respond to it then, especially with such a great take.

 

[babe]

Okay, I just read that.

In 2014 Obama stopped GOF research until they could come up with stricter guidelines. In 2017, days before he left office, he approved those guidelines.

I'm not seeing where it got re-approval from a president...Tom Inglesby said later in the article "the requirements for the multidisciplinary, department-level pre-funding review and the involvement of the White House OSTP are excellent."

WTF does that mean, would Trump have been notified that they had restarted GOF research or this OSTP? I'm not seeing anywhere in the article where GOF was re-approved, just the release of the funding.

These are good points.

I've heard fairly knowledgeable claims that approving research on this class of projects, on a case by case basis, could be authorized by Fauci or the NIH chief. Obama, in lifting the ban in Oct 2017, was setting things up for plausible deniability. Like all those election spying projects.

For sure, no one told Trump anything here.

If we don't do a special prosecutor on these things, we have no claim of honestgovernance.

 

[babe]

Makes sense that you'd respond it it then, especially with such a great take.

I just realized this is a Babe thread, and, therefore, pointless.

You really stepped in it this time. kidding. This is a rare reprise performance
.
You should at least study this question. It's not going away anytime soon. Just try to realize what quicksand political advocacy is.

I think the reason this cat was let out of the bag is because a lot of people are getting nervous about China right now. But it's gonna get stuffed right back in that bag because China is going to take it right back to us.

 

[gandalfe]

Makes sense that you'd respond to it then, especially with such a great take.

Normally, I don't see Babe's drivel, but if you've noticed when you're on the main page, it shows you the most recent threads in each forum, even if you have the initial post blocked. I responded to someone else's post, and then realized it wasn't showing up in the thread list, and, well, here we are. Both of us in a conversation that is, as I said above, pointless.

 

[Hax0rs]

https://tv.gab.com/channel/davidkir...rter-admits-trump-is-60b3d5ada1a826de67309d58

This is just laughable now, after two years of telling us this came from a Wuhan wet market. You can taste the salt in having to admit Trump may have been right.

 

[Al-O-Meter]

I'm not seeing where it got re-approval from a president.

What I wrote was “The $600k NIH grant, which is part of the Executive Branch of the US Government, happened in 2018 under the subsequent administration.” I can’t know exactly what the President was told and I don’t claim to. Given the wording of the grant in question, I doubt the President had any clue at what this money was paying for.

If you read the text of the grant, there is nothing about Gain-of-Function and Fauci is playing that for all it is worth to claim ignorance. From the use of very private intermediary EcoHealth Alliance to the vague wording on the grant, there is a lot of deniability. It will take a serious investigation to uncover who knew what. If you are curious, you can read the grant yourself on the NIH website.

RePORT 〉 RePORTER

reporter.nih.gov

Maybe everyone is telling the truth and no one knew what the Wuhan Institute of Virology was working on, but Dr. Ralph S Baric leads me to believe otherwise. Dr. Baric’s name was mentioned in the exchange between Fauci and Rand Paul as someone who knew what WIV was working on, and Fauci didn’t deny it. Peter Daszak of EcoHealth Alliance, in an interview in late-2019, also said Dr. Baric was working with WIV on this project. Being that he had co-authored academic papers on bat coronaviruses with the team of WIV scientists, there isn’t much use in denying it and to Dr. Baric’s credit he didn’t deny it.

What Dr. Ralph S. Baric did was co-author the linked letter with his name prominently displayed and published it in Science, arguably the most prestigious academic journal on the planet.

Investigate the origins of COVID-19

On 30 December 2019, the Program for Monitoring Emerging Diseases notified the world about a pneumonia of unknown cause in Wuhan, China (1). Since then, scientists have made remarkable progress in understanding the causative agent, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2)...

science.sciencemag.org

It is titled “Investigate the origins of COVID-19”. It says in very plain terms the “accidental release from a lab” is a viable theory and an investigation needs to happen. If the gain-of-function PhD researcher who has received more GoF research funding than anyone on the planet, who specializes in bat coronaviruses, and who knows exactly what WIV was working on sees the genetic sequence of SARS-CoV-2 and publically says “Oh yeah, this could totally be a WIV-made pathogen”, I’m not about to argue with him. As for who else knew what, it is a question I would very much like to see answered.

 

[Avery]

I will be interested in what the result of this will be. I doubt any actual repercussions ever happen nor will China ever admit anything.

I also won't be giving 'credit' or whatever we call it to Trump as his entire MO is to blame someone for anything that he doesn't like or goes wrong as can be seen in every policy decision he's ever made. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day and all that.

Also probably a good reminder that nuclear war scares a lot of people, but germ warfare is a much more realistic and deadly threat in the long run.

 

[One Brow]

Any of the 6 makes arginine, but coronaviruses have a natural bias into which codons are used for arginine and rarely use the CGG codon.

You forgot to include the word "human", that is, human coronaviruses have this bias. Non-human coronaviruses often show a different bias.

Characterization of codon usage pattern in SARS-CoV-2 - Virology Journal

The outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) due to severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has posed significant threats to international health. The genetic traits as well as evolutionary processes in this novel coronavirus are not fully characterized, and their...

virologyj.biomedcentral.com

The heatmap analysis (Fig. 4b) revealed that SARS-CoV-2 and all the non-human coronaviruses analyzed in this study shared the over-represented codons (GGU, UCU, CCU) and all ended with U, meanwhile they shared the under-represented codons (UCG, GGG, GCG, CCG, CGG, ACG, CGA) and most ended with G except for CGA. Codon usage pattern of SARS-CoV-2 was generally found a high similarity to that of betacoronaviruses except for Bat coronavirus HKU4–1, Bat coronavirus HKU5–1(Fig. 4c, Supplementary Figures 5, 6, 7, 8).

I don't think you are going to be able to use codon usage as a means of deciding whether this virus was produced in a laboratory.

 

[Al-O-Meter]

You forgot to include the word "human", that is, human coronaviruses have this bias. Non-human coronaviruses often show a different bias.

That is an interesting paper and thank you for quoting the relevant section. When the authors wrote “all the non-human coronaviruses analyzed … shared the under-represented codons (UCG, GGG, GCG, CCG, CGG, ACG, CGA)”, they’re saying non-human coronaviruses don’t use CGG either. Human coronaviruses rarely use CGG. Non-human coronaviruses shared the rare use of CGG. Beta-coronaviruses in general rarely use CGG, and no beta-coronavirus has ever been found in nature that used a back-to-back CGG codon.

I don't think you are going to be able to use codon usage as a means of deciding whether this virus was produced in a laboratory.

There is at least one PhD with a Nobel Prize in this field who disagrees with you.

 

[One Brow]

Thank you for pointing out my error.

There is at least one PhD with a Nobel Prize in this field who disagrees with you.

There always is. I'm sure there is at least one who agrees, as well.