(03-01-2022, 04:34 AM)dodge date Wrote:Ahh - it's our turn.

Our boy (10) tested -ve on a RAT before school yesterday.  Got home, looked like crap.  Had a temp of 39, tested again and +ve.

Quote:A test for a certain rare disease is assumed to be correct 95% of the time: if a person has the disease, the test result is +ve with a probability of 0.95  & if the person doesn't have the disease the test result is negative with probability 0.95. A person drawn at random from a certain population has a 0.1% chance of having the disease.

Q. What's the probability that a random person who tests positive actually has the disease?

Quote:At the center of this theory is the allegation that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) at one point provided a grant to the Wuhan Institute of Virology for "gain-of-function" research, a process in which a virus is genetically altered in order to anticipate ways it may mutate in the future. Supporters of the lab leak theory contend, by that logic, that the coronavirus which causes COVID-19 is a man-made "supervirus," generated in a lab, whose origins have been covered up by leading health officials, including Fauci.

According to the Washington Post, there is no clear evidence that the NIH funded any such research. Furthermore, most scientists have concluded that the lab leak theory is unlikely, although it cannot entirely be ruled out. The dearth of evidence for the claim hasn't stopped conservatives from repeatedly accusing Fauci of masterminding the pandemic.

...

On Sunday, the New York Times cited two extensive new studies backing the idea that COVID-19 originated from a live animal market in Wuhan, China. This was largely the consensus earlier into the pandemic.

Jordan appeared unconvinced, writing of the report this week: "These aren't new facts or new studies. This 'new' info is from the same crew that told Fauci it came from a lab but suspiciously changed their tune and were rewarded with a 9 million dollar grant."

According to the Times, the two novel studies have been verified by multiple independent experts, which renders the lab leak increasingly unlikely.

"When you look at all of the evidence together, it's an extraordinarily clear picture that the pandemic started at the Huanan market," said Michael Worobey, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Arizona.

(03-01-2022, 10:12 PM)Mav date Wrote:But let's face it, the reflex of the Chinese is to deny & control the story. I'd imagine stray comments about who farted in the lift would see the loose lips sent off for "re-education", let alone more substantial criticisms (e.g. Peng Shuai).

Quote:In normal scientific inquiry, as evidence emerges, the remaining space for plausible hypotheses narrows. Some facets continue to be supported, and others are contradicted and eventually precluded altogether. Some of the strongest advocates for a lab origin for SARS-CoV-2 changed their views as they learned more. Baltimore, for instance, withdrew his “smoking gun” comment when challenged by additional evidence, conceding that a natural origin was also possible. Revising or rejecting failed hypotheses in light of refuting evidence is central to the scientific process. Not so with conspiracy theories and pseudoscience. One of their hallmarks is that they are self-sealing: as more evidence against the conspiracy emerges, adherents keep the theory alive by dismissing contrary evidence as further proof of the conspiracy, creating an ever more elaborate and complicated theory.

Quote:Another feature of SARS-CoV-2 that has drawn attention is a combination of nucleotides that underlie a segment of the furin cleavage site: CGG (these encode the amino acid arginine). A Medium article that speculates on a lab origin for SARS-CoV-2 quotes David Baltimore, a Nobel laureate and professor emeritus at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, as saying that viruses don’t usually have that particular code for arginine, but humans often do — a “smoking gun”, hinting that researchers might have tampered with SARS-CoV-2’s genome.

Andersen says that Baltimore was incorrect about that detail, however. In SARS-CoV-2, about 3% of the nucleotides encoding arginine are CGG, he says. And he points out that around 5% of those encoding arginine in the virus that caused the original SARS epidemic are CGG, too. In an e-mail to Nature, Baltimore says Andersen could be correct that evolution produced SARS-CoV-2, but adds that “there are other possibilities and they need careful consideration, which is all I meant to be saying”.

Quote:As Biden's investigation commences and the WHO considers the next phase in its origin study, pandemic experts are bracing themselves for a long road ahead. “We want an answer,” says Jason Kindrachuk, a virologist at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Canada. “But we may have to keep piecing bits of evidence together as weeks and months and years move forward.”