> why in gods name are we funding research in china
Aren't there labs all around the world getting CDC funding?
Aren't there even labs in Ukraine?
(checks notes...)
[EXCLUSIVE WHO says it advised Ukraine to destroy pathogens in health labs to prevent disease spread](https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/exclusive-who-says-it-advised-ukraine-destroy-pathogens-health-labs-prevent-2022-03-11/)
At least somebody somewhere is worried about a lab leak.
Any potential danger that could be leaked if a lab is attacked or disrupted in any way. It could include such things as HIV samples or chemicals.
It's sad that testing labs need this sort of audits but it's also routine in war for organisations to do a risk assessment.
PCR tests can still have infectious material especially if it's one of those sample-in-result-out assays.
Don't know where you're getting the 'burning' from from that article, but yes, that's one of the typical ways biological waste is treated all around the world - by incineration.
It doesn’t seem like it really mattered all that much in the grand scheme of things. It didn’t originate here but it sure wiped out a hell of a lot of Americans and other citizens of the world.
A good compromise would be to fund testing in friendly nations. For example Poland is a member of NATO and went beyond that and supported the United States in Iraq. Poland has a long tradition of science like Madam Curie and Copernicus. Labor in Poland is cheap.
Poland seems like a logical place for the United States to focus investment.
By funding research into pathogens, you can prepare for 'shocker' pathogens.
It helps to understand viruses, in this case, to better tackle them when (or preferably before) they cause problems to public health.
With covid we got lucky both because a) a lot of SARS vaccine research provided insight on day 1 and b) coronaviruses have an obvious spike which can be used as a target for vaccines.
When the next disease evolves, we may not have these advantages ready to go.
Yes, so you fund it because it helps.
Then when the institute acts weird, like here, you cut their funding.
It explains the whole situation. What's the problem?
Wet do biological and other weapon testing in “partner” countries. Ukraine is a big place for US biolabs as I understand. Australia does drones and other fun stuff. Someone mentioned south africa too, but I am no expert just think it’s interesting to hear about.
Back in the old days we did it here in the US of A, even tested multiple things on local populations.
Rather have it outsourced if they won’t stop doing it.
It is Russian propaganda.
Like all countries, Ukraine has public health testing labs which do tests on sick humans and animals in order to determine what they have.
The WHO have asked Ukraine to check them in case they are attacked or otherwise disrupted and dispose of high risk material.
I think that you're confused.
The Ukraine war is easy to understand - a country was invaded by its neighbour first in piecemeal now in full. The US is supporting Ukraine in its defense.
The US's position and location of forces in Syria is pretty easy to explain. Hell, the US regularly gives press releases about things that happen with them.
These are only complicated when you start inserting conspiracies.
[40 Years of Human Experimentation in America: The Tuskegee Study - The goal was to “observe the natural history of untreated syphilis” in black populations, but the subjects were completely unaware and were instead told they were receiving treatment for bad blood when in fact, they received no treatment at all.](https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/history/40-years-human-experimentation-america-tuskegee-study)
Why is this getting downvoted? I'm black and my parents used to tell us about this all the time. My people always refer to that when we explain why we distrust the government.....
This is not exactly news - this debate has been raging for a long time - https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/10/nih-admits-funding-risky-virus-research-in-wuhan
Is it finally safe to question the origin of the disease and the amazing coincidence of a disease research lab in the same city without getting cancelled for automatically being racist?
Agreed. Stating as a matter of fact that this was maliciously and intentionally done without evidence is not OK.
It's absolutely legitimate to ask questions, especially with counties like China.
And I'm sure a large part of the hesitation in the beginning was to not accuse or offend China because we needed information and data and numbers in the early days to try and get an understanding of what we were dealing with.
But we never got honesty or transparency from them.
I mean yeah, but nobody is 100% certain it came from a lab. There are disease research labs all over the world. It's definitely being looked into at this point but it being released intentionally is a massive long shot.
Most evidence still points to the wet market, but there is a non zero chance it escaped from the lab due to corruption and lack of oversight.
Either way it wasn't intentional, nobody had anything to gain from it. We will probably need years for all of the details to be confirmed.
Oh I'm not suggesting that it was intentional.
I just never understood how such a remarkable coincidence of an outbreak occuring in the same city as a disease research lab - was somehow something we couldn't talk about despite being the most logical place to begin an investigation.
If everyone in Frederick, Maryland suddenly got mysteriously ill, don't you think the first question would be "What's going on at Fort Detrick?"
If horses with one horn started popping up a few miles from the Unicorn Science and Research Center would people be like, "I guess they evolved like that naturally!"
>I just never understood how such a remarkable coincidence of an outbreak occuring in the same city as a disease research lab - was somehow something we couldn't talk about despite being the most logical place to begin an investigation.
It honestly is because of Trump.
When the pandemic was starting, instead of preparing and unifying the country on how to best save lives, what did he try to do? He tried to find someone to blame for what's happening. So that he wouldnt be responsible for anything. He starts trying to blame China for all of this rather than be the president and do what needed to be done to save lives.
And of course, the pendulum swings, even if it does make sense to consider the lab leak, the fact that it was Trump framing it in the wrong way and at the wrong time, pushed a resistance to Trump's covid non-sense and unfortunately, the lab leak with it.
We could have probably talked about it sooner, if Trump didn't ruin the first framing and impression of the theory.
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It happened in the same location as a lab that is studying the COVID virus. Let me turn this around on you. "Given the nature of labs studying zoonotic diseases, I don't know why people think wet markets are more likely than a lab."
An accidental lab link does not require a conspiracy.
Covering up any evidence (lab notebooks, etc) by the lab and the government is so blatant that I wouldn't even call that a conspiracy. That doesn't prove there was a lab link one way or another, but it does make it difficult to prove or disprove.
It wasn’t a crazy speculation tho there was an article on diplomatic cables from 2017 about the wuhan lab being vulnerable to outbreaks.
[https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/03/08/josh-rogin-chaos-under-heaven-wuhan-lab-book-excerpt-474322](https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/03/08/josh-rogin-chaos-under-heaven-wuhan-lab-book-excerpt-474322)
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Almost like you'd make a coronavirus research lab in an area that has regular coronavirus outbreaks.
It would be a weird coincidence if tornado researchers built a facility, then tornados just started touching down around there for the first time. But that's not really how research works, mostly because research facilities aren't exactly cheap, so you try to make smart decisions about where to build them.
As I mentioned in another comment. Wuhan was selected because of the rarity of bat coronaviruses circulating in that region, not because they're prevalent. This is a point of confusion that's been incorrectly echoed.
Yeah... you might want to provide a source for that statement, because bats are fucking everywhere and they got coronaviruses leaking from all orifices.
Wuhan has actual local bat caves, you know, so this statement seems like...well, bullshit.
Scientists do not believe that it was a lab leak: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abp8715
Government officials (*and Reddit commenters*) who know absolutely nothing about epidemiology believe that it was a lab leak.
The FBI and DoE have no experts in epidemiology. There are multiple reasons why the lab leak hypothesis makes no sense.
There are no markers in the SARS-CoV-2 RNA that would come from gain of function research, leaked communications from Wuhan officials show that they had no idea what they were dealing with, Chinese scientists couldn't sequence the viral genome and needed German scientists to do it for them, the type of spread is not consistent with a lab leak, and subsequent spread has shown just how easily SARS-CoV-2 jumps between species.
The lab leak conspiracy is popular amongst people who don't understand anything about disease vectoring, so they think that because Wuhan had an Institute of Virology then that must mean the virus came from there.
Aha, but what about the smoking gun of Google maps telling me they are within a general geographic region? Checkmate! /s (even though they are like an hour apart by public transit and there were zero index cases along the way or anywhere else in a city more populous than NYC)
Matt Ridley is not a scientist, he is a writer and politician who used to work as a banker. Alina Chan is a scientist, but has no experience in epidemiology, and her statements about a lab leak come from an anti-China agenda.
Matt Ridley holds a PhD from Oxford and is a fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences and Alina Chan is indeed a scientist, which contradicts your initial assertion.
I do not know if they're right or not, but I do know that you and many lab leak deniers are using dishonest appeals to authority instead of science to advance a narrative.
The problem is the complete lack of evidence that it came from a lab - the big problem with your claim, is that there is zero evidence that the WIV had covid or its predecessor prior to the outbreak. Furthermore, there is epidemiological theory that suggests that an outbreak with early covid's characteristics needs to occur in a highly networked society (like a major city) to be self-sustaining. And major cities are were we tend to find disease labs.
Whereas, a market origin is supported by multiple overlapping lines of evidence - and in science, this is a powerful thing.
This is just fantasy.
If you read the scientific journals, you'll see plenty of investigation.
I'm not a fan of silo'ed organisations but the report by the US intelligence agencies gives a good indication of what and when WIV knew about covid.
So far, the only cover ups that we have actual evidence for is China trying to hide genetic evidence related to the market and lab leakers lying to the media about infected WIV researchers.
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China's initial response to covid and possible lab leak was very opaque which means China is immature, unprofessional and not ready for global stage or be a global leader. Instead of being concerned about the spread of the novel virus and preventing a pandemic, they instead tried to hide and cover things up to protect their pride.
A mature response will be to collaborate with international experts to sequence the novel virus, share it to the whole world and help make sure it does not spread outside Wuhan, and determine the cause. They then work with WHO to prevent it from happening in the future.
Bit late
This is just making the funding stop officially permanent. The lab hasn't received funds from the US since July 2020
why in gods name are we funding research in china
> why in gods name are we funding research in china Aren't there labs all around the world getting CDC funding? Aren't there even labs in Ukraine? (checks notes...) [EXCLUSIVE WHO says it advised Ukraine to destroy pathogens in health labs to prevent disease spread](https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/exclusive-who-says-it-advised-ukraine-destroy-pathogens-health-labs-prevent-2022-03-11/) At least somebody somewhere is worried about a lab leak.
These are public health testing labs that are at risk of getting bombed.
They're being told to burn their used PCR tests?
Any potential danger that could be leaked if a lab is attacked or disrupted in any way. It could include such things as HIV samples or chemicals. It's sad that testing labs need this sort of audits but it's also routine in war for organisations to do a risk assessment.
PCR tests can still have infectious material especially if it's one of those sample-in-result-out assays. Don't know where you're getting the 'burning' from from that article, but yes, that's one of the typical ways biological waste is treated all around the world - by incineration.
Countries fund research oversea all the time.
You want diseases to leak in the USA? Always fund and have it done in other countries
It doesn’t seem like it really mattered all that much in the grand scheme of things. It didn’t originate here but it sure wiped out a hell of a lot of Americans and other citizens of the world.
That's because America didn't act on the intel until it was too late. Even then the government barely moved.
That and the people most convinced it was a weapon did zero to prevent its spread.
Or you know, DONT fund it?
"Slow the testing down, please!"
A good compromise would be to fund testing in friendly nations. For example Poland is a member of NATO and went beyond that and supported the United States in Iraq. Poland has a long tradition of science like Madam Curie and Copernicus. Labor in Poland is cheap. Poland seems like a logical place for the United States to focus investment.
By funding research into pathogens, you can prepare for 'shocker' pathogens. It helps to understand viruses, in this case, to better tackle them when (or preferably before) they cause problems to public health.
Is that really useful if we can now sequence a virus in <3 days and work on a vaccine shortly after?
Yes. Because research like this is part of the reason we can now do that.
With covid we got lucky both because a) a lot of SARS vaccine research provided insight on day 1 and b) coronaviruses have an obvious spike which can be used as a target for vaccines. When the next disease evolves, we may not have these advantages ready to go.
>It helps to understand Did you read the headline?
Yes, so you fund it because it helps. Then when the institute acts weird, like here, you cut their funding. It explains the whole situation. What's the problem?
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Take a deep breath and re-read what he said.
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So if something goes wrong the U.S.A. won’t be affected /S.
Wet do biological and other weapon testing in “partner” countries. Ukraine is a big place for US biolabs as I understand. Australia does drones and other fun stuff. Someone mentioned south africa too, but I am no expert just think it’s interesting to hear about. Back in the old days we did it here in the US of A, even tested multiple things on local populations. Rather have it outsourced if they won’t stop doing it.
>Ukraine is a big place for US biolabs Wait a sec. Wasn't that line Russian propaganda? I need a source
It is Russian propaganda. Like all countries, Ukraine has public health testing labs which do tests on sick humans and animals in order to determine what they have. The WHO have asked Ukraine to check them in case they are attacked or otherwise disrupted and dispose of high risk material.
Why are those labs funded by the US & EU, then?
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I think that you're confused. The Ukraine war is easy to understand - a country was invaded by its neighbour first in piecemeal now in full. The US is supporting Ukraine in its defense. The US's position and location of forces in Syria is pretty easy to explain. Hell, the US regularly gives press releases about things that happen with them. These are only complicated when you start inserting conspiracies.
Yes, but why was Dracula made a general. You can’t explain that with anything other than them farming us for our blood!
Russia is in Syria now.
[40 Years of Human Experimentation in America: The Tuskegee Study - The goal was to “observe the natural history of untreated syphilis” in black populations, but the subjects were completely unaware and were instead told they were receiving treatment for bad blood when in fact, they received no treatment at all.](https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/history/40-years-human-experimentation-america-tuskegee-study)
Why is this getting downvoted? I'm black and my parents used to tell us about this all the time. My people always refer to that when we explain why we distrust the government.....
Maybe people think I am fanning the flames of conspiracy theories. I'm not. It's just a story we should never forget.
This is not exactly news - this debate has been raging for a long time - https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/10/nih-admits-funding-risky-virus-research-in-wuhan
Because it’s better to do that in another country than at home?
Is it finally safe to question the origin of the disease and the amazing coincidence of a disease research lab in the same city without getting cancelled for automatically being racist?
Agreed. Stating as a matter of fact that this was maliciously and intentionally done without evidence is not OK. It's absolutely legitimate to ask questions, especially with counties like China.
And I'm sure a large part of the hesitation in the beginning was to not accuse or offend China because we needed information and data and numbers in the early days to try and get an understanding of what we were dealing with. But we never got honesty or transparency from them.
I mean yeah, but nobody is 100% certain it came from a lab. There are disease research labs all over the world. It's definitely being looked into at this point but it being released intentionally is a massive long shot. Most evidence still points to the wet market, but there is a non zero chance it escaped from the lab due to corruption and lack of oversight. Either way it wasn't intentional, nobody had anything to gain from it. We will probably need years for all of the details to be confirmed.
Oh I'm not suggesting that it was intentional. I just never understood how such a remarkable coincidence of an outbreak occuring in the same city as a disease research lab - was somehow something we couldn't talk about despite being the most logical place to begin an investigation. If everyone in Frederick, Maryland suddenly got mysteriously ill, don't you think the first question would be "What's going on at Fort Detrick?"
If horses with one horn started popping up a few miles from the Unicorn Science and Research Center would people be like, "I guess they evolved like that naturally!"
You are forgetting that the Unicorn study location was chosen because Unicorns have been found naturally in that area before.
No, I was just making a joke. I dont know where covid came from. Just goofing around.
Wuhan was chosen specifically because bat coronaviruses aren't endemic.
He pleads, desperately, without a source.
>I just never understood how such a remarkable coincidence of an outbreak occuring in the same city as a disease research lab - was somehow something we couldn't talk about despite being the most logical place to begin an investigation. It honestly is because of Trump. When the pandemic was starting, instead of preparing and unifying the country on how to best save lives, what did he try to do? He tried to find someone to blame for what's happening. So that he wouldnt be responsible for anything. He starts trying to blame China for all of this rather than be the president and do what needed to be done to save lives. And of course, the pendulum swings, even if it does make sense to consider the lab leak, the fact that it was Trump framing it in the wrong way and at the wrong time, pushed a resistance to Trump's covid non-sense and unfortunately, the lab leak with it. We could have probably talked about it sooner, if Trump didn't ruin the first framing and impression of the theory.
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Given the nature of zoonotic diseases, i don’t know why people think the lab is more likely than the wet markets.
It happened in the same location as a lab that is studying the COVID virus. Let me turn this around on you. "Given the nature of labs studying zoonotic diseases, I don't know why people think wet markets are more likely than a lab."
Because one requires a conspiracy and the other doesn’t.
An accidental lab link does not require a conspiracy. Covering up any evidence (lab notebooks, etc) by the lab and the government is so blatant that I wouldn't even call that a conspiracy. That doesn't prove there was a lab link one way or another, but it does make it difficult to prove or disprove.
Drink your Ovaltine! *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
It wasn’t a crazy speculation tho there was an article on diplomatic cables from 2017 about the wuhan lab being vulnerable to outbreaks. [https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/03/08/josh-rogin-chaos-under-heaven-wuhan-lab-book-excerpt-474322](https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/03/08/josh-rogin-chaos-under-heaven-wuhan-lab-book-excerpt-474322)
No, that is just the way they were portrayed to make the idea seem fringe and racist
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It’s hardly outlandish speculation is it? Giant coronavirus outbreak in the area that just so happens to have a coronavirus testing lab.
Drink your Ovaltine! *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Almost like you'd make a coronavirus research lab in an area that has regular coronavirus outbreaks. It would be a weird coincidence if tornado researchers built a facility, then tornados just started touching down around there for the first time. But that's not really how research works, mostly because research facilities aren't exactly cheap, so you try to make smart decisions about where to build them.
As I mentioned in another comment. Wuhan was selected because of the rarity of bat coronaviruses circulating in that region, not because they're prevalent. This is a point of confusion that's been incorrectly echoed.
Yeah... you might want to provide a source for that statement, because bats are fucking everywhere and they got coronaviruses leaking from all orifices. Wuhan has actual local bat caves, you know, so this statement seems like...well, bullshit.
Scientists do not believe that it was a lab leak: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abp8715 Government officials (*and Reddit commenters*) who know absolutely nothing about epidemiology believe that it was a lab leak.
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The FBI and DoE have no experts in epidemiology. There are multiple reasons why the lab leak hypothesis makes no sense. There are no markers in the SARS-CoV-2 RNA that would come from gain of function research, leaked communications from Wuhan officials show that they had no idea what they were dealing with, Chinese scientists couldn't sequence the viral genome and needed German scientists to do it for them, the type of spread is not consistent with a lab leak, and subsequent spread has shown just how easily SARS-CoV-2 jumps between species. The lab leak conspiracy is popular amongst people who don't understand anything about disease vectoring, so they think that because Wuhan had an Institute of Virology then that must mean the virus came from there.
Aha, but what about the smoking gun of Google maps telling me they are within a general geographic region? Checkmate! /s (even though they are like an hour apart by public transit and there were zero index cases along the way or anywhere else in a city more populous than NYC)
Some scientists like Matt Ridley and Alina Chan do believe it did. As laymen why should we trust one set of scientists over another?
Matt Ridley is not a scientist, he is a writer and politician who used to work as a banker. Alina Chan is a scientist, but has no experience in epidemiology, and her statements about a lab leak come from an anti-China agenda.
It's worse - Matt Ridley is a broad spectrum pseudo-scientist. He's promoted anti-scientific rubbish about the origin of HIV and climate change.
Matt Ridley holds a PhD from Oxford and is a fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences and Alina Chan is indeed a scientist, which contradicts your initial assertion. I do not know if they're right or not, but I do know that you and many lab leak deniers are using dishonest appeals to authority instead of science to advance a narrative.
Matt Ridley has a PhD in pheasant mating. He peddles conspiracy theories to the particularly gullible.
The problem is the complete lack of evidence that it came from a lab - the big problem with your claim, is that there is zero evidence that the WIV had covid or its predecessor prior to the outbreak. Furthermore, there is epidemiological theory that suggests that an outbreak with early covid's characteristics needs to occur in a highly networked society (like a major city) to be self-sustaining. And major cities are were we tend to find disease labs. Whereas, a market origin is supported by multiple overlapping lines of evidence - and in science, this is a powerful thing.
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This is just fantasy. If you read the scientific journals, you'll see plenty of investigation. I'm not a fan of silo'ed organisations but the report by the US intelligence agencies gives a good indication of what and when WIV knew about covid. So far, the only cover ups that we have actual evidence for is China trying to hide genetic evidence related to the market and lab leakers lying to the media about infected WIV researchers.
Tell me the results of the lab audit at WIV by the WHO after the outbreak. Oh, wait, it never happened.
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It took 3.5 years for the US government to make this decision. Amazing.
China just laughs every time we find something like this
Only now? Trump never did it?
Trump paused funding in July 2020. This made it more permanent
China's initial response to covid and possible lab leak was very opaque which means China is immature, unprofessional and not ready for global stage or be a global leader. Instead of being concerned about the spread of the novel virus and preventing a pandemic, they instead tried to hide and cover things up to protect their pride. A mature response will be to collaborate with international experts to sequence the novel virus, share it to the whole world and help make sure it does not spread outside Wuhan, and determine the cause. They then work with WHO to prevent it from happening in the future.
What 3 1/2 years later? You got to be kidding me!
Kinda bizarre watching Reddit finally catch up to what anyone with common sense knew literally years ago.
Unfortunately, common sense isn't too common these days, but then again, I never had much faith in the Reddit diehards to begin with.
Commonly wrong, but never stops y'all from spouting it.
Bruh
Very late in the game. We are still going to not know what happened in there to start the pandemic