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New report suggests COVID pandemic's origins linked to raccoon dogs at Wuhan market

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On 3/21/2023 at 9:18 PM, The Real timschochet said:

Nope. We can’t prevent that. Nor can we really punish China in any meaningful way.  All we would manage to do is hype up ugly anti-Asian xenophobia. We don’t need it. 

Anti-Asian xenophobia….we should leave universities out of this….

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On 3/21/2023 at 12:30 PM, The Real timschochet said:

I don’t think anyone missed it. I believe it’s reasonable to assume at least the possibility that it came out of the lab. I don’t think it’s reasonable that it was deliberate. 
 

The likelihood that some animal origination and transmission to human occurred in the one city in the world where the lab working with these viruses just happened to be is about the same as you winning the Powerball this week.  I guess in theory it's possible, but it's pretty damn far fetched.  I think it's beyond a statistical possibility, the word probability isn't enough, "near certainty" is getting closer when referencing the likelihood this came from that lab.

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On 3/22/2023 at 7:51 AM, TBayXXXVII said:

I don't need any kind of war, that would accomplish nothing.  I think @Gepetto is on the right path.  The financial burden that this country undertook was immense.  Nothing wrong with some financial forgiveness.

Not just in raw dollars, but Biden's backers are quick to point to the pandemic as a source of inflation.  Hey, I agree with them.  You know what also happened along with that?  Higher interest rates to combat inflation.  Guess who is holding a ton of our debt and will benefit, nobody should need the length of the Jeopardy Final Answer round to figure it out.  Absolutely there should be a financial penalty.

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3 hours ago, Strike said:

Bump for @The Real timschochet.  Funny how you ask questions and run away when you don't like the answers or haven't gotten a talking point to address it yet.

Sorry I thought I already made my position clear. Attempting to punish China in any way won’t save us from the next pandemic: 

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19 minutes ago, Mark Davis said:

Not just in raw dollars, but Biden's backers are quick to point to the pandemic as a source of inflation.  Hey, I agree with them.  You know what also happened along with that?  Higher interest rates to combat inflation.  Guess who is holding a ton of our debt and will benefit, nobody should need the length of the Jeopardy Final Answer round to figure it out.  Absolutely there should be a financial penalty.

Any financial penalty on China, even if they agreed to it, would hurt us just as much. Don’t any of you guys study history? 

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37 minutes ago, The Real timschochet said:

Any financial penalty on China, even if they agreed to it, would hurt us just as much. Don’t any of you guys study history? 

That's a bizarre statement.  People agree to settlements all the time.  Whether intentional or not, the Chinese should have liability and definitely shouldn't be rewarded financially, which with rising rates they are getting a benefit.

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5 hours ago, Strike said:

Bump for @The Real timschochet.  Funny how you ask questions and run away when you don't like the answers or haven't gotten a talking point to address it yet.

No comment from you on all the posters here that thought the lab leak was intentional?

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2 hours ago, The Real timschochet said:

Sorry I thought I already made my position clear. Attempting to punish China in any way won’t save us from the next pandemic: 

Now you're moving the goalposts AGAIN.  I never used the word punish.  This is your comment I replied to:

Quote

So why pursue this any further? 

And yes there is more to the comments but I specifically bolded the above.  And the discussion wasn't about punishing China.  It was your idiotic assertion that lots of people think the leak was deliberate.  Most people don't believe that.  They just want to know HOW it happened and PREVENT it from happening again.

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10 minutes ago, TimHauck said:

No comment from you on all the posters here that thought the lab leak was intentional?

I was going to respond to that but then I found out you pulled a sh*t ton of them from a thread ASKING for conspiracy theories on this topic.  So, no, I'll pass.  If you're stupid enough to think all those people believe that, that's on you.  But I'm not surprised you do.

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1 minute ago, Strike said:

I was going to respond to that but then I found out you pulled a sh*t ton of them from a thread ASKING for conspiracy theories on this topic.  So, no, I'll pass.  If you're stupid enough to think all those people believe that, that's on you.  But I'm not surprised you do.

They weren’t all from that thread 

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2 minutes ago, TimHauck said:

They weren’t all from that thread 

Not ALL?  Just most?  Exactly what percentage was it?  Maybe just don't do that?  Now I have to figure out which posts you post are disingenuous and which are not?    BTW, my assertion was NEVER that NO ONE believed in that conspiracy theory either.  Here is my original post on this:

Quote

Very few people, if any, have said it was deliberate, or even planned

Tardo 😂

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46 minutes ago, Strike said:

Not ALL?  Just most?  Exactly what percentage was it?  Maybe just don't do that?  Now I have to figure out which posts you post are disingenuous and which are not?    BTW, my assertion was NEVER that NO ONE believed in that conspiracy theory either.  Here is my original post on this:

Tardo 😂

Only 2 of the 7 quotes were from that thread.  5 is more than “a few,” especially consenting the pretty small number of people that post here.  Tardo. Take the L.

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On 3/24/2023 at 1:25 AM, Strike said:

Not ALL?  Just most?  Exactly what percentage was it?  Maybe just don't do that?  Now I have to figure out which posts you post are disingenuous and which are not?    BTW, my assertion was NEVER that NO ONE believed in that conspiracy theory either.  

The only 2 posts from that thread were the ones from 3/3/20 and 3/4/20.

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Let me try to predict @Strike’s response for the other 5 comments.

He will say @phillybear just called it a bioweapon but did not say it was released on purpose.  Although I have a feeling if you asked him he’d say it was on purpose, and he might’ve even made a stronger statement somewhere else (I mostly just searched a couple terms including “bioweapon” and those were some of the first results).

Nonetheless, that still leaves 4, @TimmySmith@lod001, @supermike80, and @NorthernVike.   No defending Timmy’s, Lod’s or NorthernVike’s comments IMO.  He may try to say “well supermike didn’t come out and say it,” but he said “anyone trying to claim it was only an accident is awful,” sorry not sorry that’s saying it was on purpose.

So let it be known that Strike was proven wrong in this thread but I’m sure will deny it, maybe by claiming that 4 posters out of 15ish that post here is “only a few” (lol).  Also lol that he says I’m “obsessed with him” yet called me out in this thread before I even posted in it.  What a fraud in multiple ways.

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30 minutes ago, TimHauck said:

Let me try to predict @Strike’s response for the other 5 comments.

He will say @phillybear just called it a bioweapon but did not say it was released on purpose.  Although I have a feeling if you asked him he’d say it was on purpose, and he might’ve even made a stronger statement somewhere else (I mostly just searched a couple terms including “bioweapon” and those were some of the first results).

Nonetheless, that still leaves 4, @TimmySmith@lod001, @supermike80, and @NorthernVike.   No defending Timmy’s, Lod’s or NorthernVike’s comments IMO.  He may try to say “well supermike didn’t come out and say it,” but he said “anyone trying to claim it was only an accident is awful,” sorry not sorry that’s saying it was on purpose.

So let it be known that Strike was proven wrong in this thread but I’m sure will deny it, maybe by claiming that 4 posters out of 15ish that post here is “only a few” (lol).  Also lol that he says I’m “obsessed with him” yet called me out in this thread before I even posted in it.  What a fraud in multiple ways.

Not sure why you're lumping me in on this and I don't pay attention to this thread all that much because covid is a thing of the past for me.  But let me be super clear..I do not have any evidence to believe it was deliberately released and I don't recall ever saying that.  Now, is it possible it was ab created and got out somehow?  Yeah..that's as plausible as the other theories being tossed around.

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4 minutes ago, supermike80 said:

Not sure why you're lumping me in on this and I don't pay attention to this thread all that much because covid is a thing of the past for me.  But let me be super clear..I do not have any evidence to believe it was deliberately released and I don't recall ever saying that.  Now, is it possible it was ab created and got out somehow?  Yeah..that's as plausible as the other theories being tossed around.

How do you explain saying “anyone trying to claim it was only an accident is awful”?

Is that not saying you believe it wasn’t an accident?

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2 minutes ago, TimHauck said:

How do you explain saying “anyone trying to claim it was only an accident is awful”?

Is that not saying you believe it wasn’t an accident?

I sincerely don't remember saying that.  If I did..I must have been drunk.

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21 minutes ago, supermike80 said:

I sincerely don't remember saying that.  If I did..I must have been drunk.

Fair enough, don’t worry @Strike will be in shortly to say I misquoted you. Sorry I used quotation marks despite taking out a couple words for brevity, but I feel strongly the context of your original quote which of course I provided also was kept in tact

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2 minutes ago, TimHauck said:

Fair enough, don’t worry @Strike will be in shortly to say I misquoted you. Sorry I used quotation marks despite taking out a couple words for brevity, but I feel strongly the context of your original quote which of course I provided also was kept in tact

Yeah I don't remember saying that because I don't ever really feel like I believed it.  Not willing to go back and look for it, but it doesn't match with  how I felt nor ever have

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Raccoon dog paper is debunked.

Long read, I've pasted what I think is the relevant info here. Click link for full article:

Quote

In 2021, computational virologist Jesse Bloom of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center gained acclaim (and notoriety) by discovering that coronavirus genetic sequences from the early days of the pandemic had been deleted from a National Institutes of Health archive — at the request of Chinese scientists, it would turn out. Those sequences, Bloom noted in a paper, bore unusual similarity to bat coronaviruses.

Unlike some other researchers looking for the pandemic’s origins, Bloom was not a self-promoter. He did not attack critics on Twitter or make wild, unsupportable claims. “He is the most ethical scientist I know. He wants to dig deep and discover the truth,” a fellow scientist told Vanity Fair.

The raccoon dog revelation gave Bloom a new project. The data used by the Worobey group had been removed from GISAID, only to materialize there again in more fulsome form in late March. Whereas the raccoon dog group had worked with 227 FASTQ files — the format used to store long strings of genetic code — there were 696 FASTQ files in the Huanan sequences that reappeared on GISAID several weeks later.

Working with the bigger database, Bloom processed an astonishing three terabytes of data from the Huanan Market — genetic sequences from the same swabs taken in early 2020 that Worobey and his collaborators thought pointed to raccoon dogs.

Bloom’s analysis did not merely look at where coronavirus and animal genetic material commingled but also at how thorough that commingling had been. And while the Worobey group had only examined mammalian DNA, Bloom sifted through every strand of genetic material, regardless of whether it came from a chicken, a human or a cut of beef.

In a paper published in late April, Bloom wrote that “the samples that contain abundant material from raccoon dogs and other non-human susceptible species generally contain little or no SARS-CoV-2 reads.”

Bloom paid particular attention to sample Q61, which had been collected on Jan. 12, 2020. That day, Chinese investigators had taken 70 samples from the western edge of the market, a hot spot of viral activity, including from the infamous 29th stall that housed raccoon dogs.

Six of those samples had tested positive for SARS-CoV-2. And of the six, a single one — Q61 — also contained the DNA of raccoon dogs, as well as ducks.

It seemed that the raccoon dog claim originated from Q61. But in his own sequencing, Bloom found that out of 200 million “reads,” or discrete viral samples, on the swab, only a single one was positive for the coronavirus. Given that the coronavirus was already spreading throughout Wuhan for several months by then, that particle was far more likely deposited by an unsuspecting human than by a sick animal.

In other words, the Chinese researchers who had been the first to study the swabs, and had concluded that humans carried the virus to the market, appeared to have been correct all along.

As for the raccoon dog, it was unquestionably innocent. “There is a negative correlation between the abundance of SARS-CoV-2 and mitochondrial material from raccoon dogs,” Bloom wrote.

The most viral material came from swabs with DNA from stalls where seafood such as catfish and largemouth bass were sold.

“Obviously largemouth bass did not start the pandemic,” Bloom told Yahoo News. “What these findings suggest is simply that by the time the Huanan market environmental samples were collected, the virus had been spread widely across the market by humans, so colocalization of viral and animal genetic material in samples cannot indicate whether or not any animal was infected.”

Worobey, Andersen and Holmes did not respond to a request for comment. Nor did several other researchers listed as co-authors on the raccoon dog paper. Alexander Crits-Christoph of Johns Hopkins was the sole respondent. He sent Yahoo News an insulting email in response to questions raised by the new study.

https://news.yahoo.com/raccoon-dogs-did-not-start-covid-19-new-study-says-165128681.html?.tsrc=1013

 

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I remember going to a minor league baseball game in west virginia. The raccoon dogs were delicious.

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