My take is that that device works through the reflection of light (or radio waves) that analyzes its spectrum, looking for a signature of *a* coronavirus. That is, I doubt that it is able to specifically detect Covid-19, but rather that it detects a specific family of coronaviruses. That, however, is a huge aid to quickly filter out the infected population.

 

My take on it is that the device is a hoax. It might be nice if it were real.

 

I guess we're gonna have to wait and see then... I agree that it sounds too good to be true. But I doubt they would've gotten this far with a hoax... and then there was Theranos, of course...

So yes, I understand the skepticism around this device... but I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt.

 

I guess we're gonna have to wait and see then... I agree that it sounds too good to be true. But I doubt they would've gotten this far with a hoax... and then there was Theranos, of course...

So yes, I understand the skepticism around this device... but I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt.

It's not that the detection systems are impossible, research into alternatives to RT-PCR is completely valid with some limited successes.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7526334/

I just don't see this device (with the limited information released on how it works) being much better than sensitive temperature scans for absolute accuracy to one specific virus like SARS-CoV-2 if it's not a hoax.

 

I just don't see this device (with the limited information released on how it works) being much better than sensitive temperature scans for absolute accuracy to one specific virus like SARS-CoV-2 if it's not a hoax.

It it is a hoax, then it will be very easy to unmask once the device is launched into the market. This because it claims it's able to detect the virus not just un people but on surfaces as well.
Anyone could then test the device in a hospital's covid ward without even needing to go near a patient.

 

My take on it is that the device is a hoax. It might be nice if it were real.

Put me down for hoax, 100%. The mass of virus supposedly being detected is beyond small. Femtograms to picograms.

The signal to noise ratio required is just not possible, especially since I don’t think there’s much signal. It’s not like the virus is intensely fluorescent or radioactive.

 

Update on the smoke from the Wuhan lab...
Steve Hilton unveils new evidence linking COVID-19 origins to US-funded research in China (msn.com)

 

But I doubt they would've gotten this far with a hoax.

How far have they genuinely got? The vid looks just like a 'wouldn't this be nice to have' advert to draw in funds.

 

Update on the smoke from the Wuhan lab...
Steve Hilton unveils new evidence linking COVID-19 origins to US-funded research in China (msn.com)

Six degrees of misdirection and misinformation from a master of prevarications that IMO were likely created by China.

https://www.businessinsider.in/inte...hind-the-coronavirus/articleshow/80473696.cms

Baseless conspiracy theories blaming the virus on work overseen by Fauci have been floated throughout the last year, and have been heavily tied to Chinese disinformation campaigns that claim the coronavirus was actually developed at the Fort Detrick Army medical base in Maryland. Both Chinese social media and Russian outlets have pushed the theories. Fox seems to be pushing this new theory via Hilton and by highlighting an editorial from New York Post writer Miranda Devine, which baselessly claimed Fauci had "deceived us on everything from masks to herd immunity."

 

Six degrees of misdirection and misinformation from a master of prevarications that IMO were likely created by China.

Maybe, but I'm a believer unless/until Fauci proves otherwise. My first impression of the guy was "snaky, grandstanding bureaucrat who will say anything to serve his own purposes". Nothing I've seen since has moved me off that position. Quite the opposite. I have no patience for posers, people that can't just admit they don't know.

 

Maybe, but I'm a believer unless/until Fauci proves otherwise. My first impression of the guy was "snaky, grandstanding bureaucrat who will say anything to serve his own purposes". Nothing I've seen since has moved me off that position. Quite the opposite. I have no patience for posers, people that can't just admit they don't know.

Fauci IMO is just a convenient public target for discontent. Nothing new there.


What exactly is the SARS-CoV-2 conspiracy? Is it different from the last SAR conspiracy? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SARS_conspiracy_theory
So we used Chinese labs to create possible US bio-weapons using Chinese research into known animal virus species that have caused cross species sickness in humans for centuries.

Thousands of scientists around the world have compete access the sequence of SARS-CoV-2 and all related coronavirus yet only some Fox New host(s) has found the smoking gun to the secret origins of the virus. This makes the Qanon conspiracy sound sensible. The ‘weaponization of COVID was the Chinese trying to hid the virus spread, control information about the spread and to punish anyone not holding the Chinese line about the virus. When these tactics exploded in their faces with a world-wide pandemic the disinformation campaign started to move blame to others.

Even if it leaked from a lab what the Chinese did to cover it up caused the actual current pandemic.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41...45_deeplink_PID100024933&utm_content=deeplink

SARS-CoV-2 is the seventh coronavirus known to infect humans; SARS-CoV, MERS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2 can cause severe disease, whereas HKU1, NL63, OC43 and 229E are associated with mild symptoms6. Here we review what can be deduced about the origin of SARS-CoV-2 from comparative analysis of genomic data. We offer a perspective on the notable features of the SARS-CoV-2 genome and discuss scenarios by which they could have arisen. Our analyses clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus.

 

Fact check: Did coronavirus originate in a Chinese laboratory? (usatoday.com)

Corrections & Clarifications: This fact-check has been revised based on updated reporting since it was first published in March. The rating on the claim has been changed to Partly False to reflect that reporting.

 

Fauci IMO is just a convenient public target for discontent.

The guy advocated for and sponsored "gain of function" research on bat coronaviruses, to be performed in a lab in Wuhan. That much is not disputed. The virus killing people around the world escaped from the Wuhan lab. The Chinese dispute that (I think they still do?) but I think the rest of the world accepts it.

It's the Fauci Flu.

 

Lots of misinformation and outright lies floating about. I should have linked it, but one news article I read recently stated that the origin in the fishmarket theory had been abandoned by the WHO. It was an article on the WHO investigations in china and their visit to the market even though yada yada yada.

EDIT: here is the article WHO teams visits Wuhan food market in search of virus clues (apnews.com)
Scientists initially suspected the virus came from wild animals sold in the market. The market has since been largely ruled out but it could provide hints to how the virus spread so widely.

 

The guy advocated for and sponsored "gain of function" research on bat coronaviruses, to be performed in a lab in Wuhan. That much is not disputed. The virus killing people around the world escaped from the Wuhan lab. The Chinese dispute that (I think they still do?) but I think the rest of the world accepts it.

It's the Fauci Flu.

'The virus killing people around the world escaped from the Wuhan lab' That's just not supported by actual facts when looked at by actual people who are experts instead of a talk show host with an axe to grind.

You, I and just about everyone else on the planet have almost certainly had a coronavirus. "Gain of function" is just another scientific code-word the conspiracy groups have latched on in an attempt to slander IMO good people.

https://mbio.asm.org/content/5/4/e01730-14

For example, passage of H5N1 virus in ferrets allowed selection for variants with ferret-to-ferret transmissibility, and the GOF was the acquisition of mammalian transmission. However, the same type of experiment can be beneficial to humanity, since the principle of passage in a nonnative host can be used to generate attenuated vaccines. For example, some human-pathogenic viruses, such as poliovirus, were attenuated by passage in cells of another species, such as monkey cells. In those experiments, the GOF was replication in another species, and this property reduced the efficiency of replication in human cells, thus resulting in a new attenuated strain that could be used as a vaccine. Indeed, those attenuated viruses manifested a GOF, namely, attenuation. One of us recently published a GOF experiment with BK polyomavirus, in which mutation of a regulatory microRNA (miRNA) greatly enhanced replication (10). Hence, GOF is a powerful experimental tool that is routinely used in biomedical research, and the concern with influenza virus research is not gain of function per se but rather the selection of variants with increased mammalian transmissibility and virulence that could affect human populations if there were deliberate or accidental release. It is clear that GOF is a problematic phrase, and this term has acquired a particular meaning in the ongoing debate and particularly in the lay media. Unfortunately, the term GOF has come to only represent something that can be used to confer dangerous properties to a microbe. Despite these problems in terminology, we use the expression GOF in this essay with the understanding that we are referring to the narrow category of experiments that involve primarily changes to the virulence and transmissibility of PPP, such as influenza virus. Although influenza virus is the subject of the ongoing debate, it is important to note that these issues extend to other PPP, such as severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) coronavirus.

THE VALUE OF INFLUENZA VIRUS GOF EXPERIMENTS
Recent history has shown that GOF experiments in influenza virus research can provide unique insights into the potential threat posed by influenza virus strains and mechanisms of viral pathogenesis. Much of the debate involving the H5N1 experiments which demonstrated the “gain” of ferret transmissibility focused on the publication of the specific mutations that conferred this property. However, the major scientific finding was the observation that this virus had the biological capacity to be transmitted between mammals after alterations in a few amino acids. In fact, this finding is of great value to humanity, because it suggested that a human H5N1 pandemic might be able to occur if and when similar mutations occurred spontaneously, as is characteristic of influenza viruses, along with conditions favorable for bird-to-mammal transmission. In another set of GOF experiments, the HPAIV H7N1 was shown to be capable of mammalian transmission due to mutations that did not change receptor specificity (5). As a result of these experiments humanity has much more knowledge and stands warned of the potential perils these viruses pose. This information emerged from GOF experiments. In fact, it is difficult to imagine another mechanism for obtaining the information that has been gained from GOF-type experiments, particularly because it is only through experiments that can control the expression of given determinants that proof can be obtained. Since proof of the germ theory, modern scientific proof generally requires the use of approaches that attribute a given property to a given determinant. Hence, GOF-type experiments are of particular epistemological value because they directly imply causality. Apart from informing on the potential for virulence and transmissibility, GOF experiments are powerful tools for dissecting questions concerning viral pathogenesis. For example, H5N1 mutational analysis showed that the efficiency of viral replication in avian and mammalian cells is dependent on hemagglutinin polymorphisms that facilitate activation at lower pH (7, 8). This finding could be exploited to increase the yield of virus during preparation of vaccine stocks. Furthermore, the identification of sequence changes associated with GOF could in theory lead to the identification of new antiviral targets, thus providing a potential societal benefit. The power of GOF experiments is that they are a highly efficient, reliable, and effective tool that can identify certain phenotypes that often cannot be identified by using other scientific approaches. Hence, we feel that there is ample evidence that GOF experiments can provide important information and are useful tools for investigation of influenza virus-related questions. In fact, we believe that the crux of the debate surrounding GOF experiments is not their value but their potential risk.

What is the relationship between laboratory-engineered and naturally selected influenza viruses with regard to pathogenicity?GOF opponents worry about laboratory-engineered viruses, while GOF proponents argue that nature is far more effective in selecting new dangerous variants than any laboratory experiment. However, this point and counterpoint misses important biological questions. Viruses recovered in the laboratory can be evolved in the absence of natural hosts and thus are not constrained by the environment of those hosts. Without host selection, such viruses may be more or less pathogenic, and there is no way of predicting their capacity for pathogenicity unless we understand the parameters that determine virulence. Consequently, efforts to understand the mechanism of virulence pertaining to naturally derived and laboratory-derived viruses could provide valuable insights, with the important caveat that virulence is an emergent property and as such may not be predictable

 

Fact check: Did coronavirus originate in a Chinese laboratory? (usatoday.com)

Corrections & Clarifications: This fact-check has been revised based on updated reporting since it was first published in March. The rating on the claim has been changed to Partly False to reflect that reporting.

The first paragraph begins:
"One of the most prominent initial reports on the virus is an article published in January by the right-leaning Washington Times that suggests the coronavirus may have originated in a research laboratory in Wuhan, China"'.
The wording alone stopped me from reading any further. I have to wonder if there is any journalism out there which is not biased. Why were the words right leaning even tossed in there? The sentence would have read fine less those two words which someone apparently felt were required. When I see crap like that I read no further and if it had read left leaning Washington Post I would have felt the same way.

Currently here in the US exist a large collection of people in government, on capitol hill who lobbied strong for less restrictive trade with China. People who certainly don't want to see China faulted for anything. Really hard to trust anything we read and truth in journalism is long dead. However, one need not read far to see if a story is biased or not.

Ron

 

You're right. Fact-reporting journalism no longer exists. And now almost every single bit of news presented in main media is an essay at best, or an opinion piece at worst.

It has become impossible nowadays to find an "objective-leaning" source of news.

 

Really hard to trust anything we read and truth in journalism is long dead.

Another one that bugs me is when they report what someone said and then add "without evidence" or call it "baseless". Of course those are only applied in one direction and NEVER to the favored, no matter how outlandish. It interjects the opinion of the writer (or editor) as if we give a crap what they think. Just report the news!!

 

'The virus killing people around the world escaped from the Wuhan lab' That's just not supported by actual facts when looked at by actual people who are experts ...

It's the leading theory in that group, although the smoking gun to "prove" it may never be found. The samples from the Mojiang mine were stored in the Wuhan lab and appear to have escaped in the October incident.

 

Did people in that group even think the Wuhan lab active involvement was taking in samples of a unknown virus in 2019 that was infecting people in the town to isolate the source that might have been from the same cave area? I'm sure they had samples from 2012 also but it really means nothing about the origin of the current virus.

This lab actually helped the world identify the virus by releasing the first sequence.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/inside-wuhan-lab-center-coronavirus-storm-n1236254

"I have repeatedly emphasized that it was on Dec. 30 that we got contact with the samples of SARS-like pneumonia or pneumonia of unknown cause sent from the hospital," Yuan said. "We have not encountered the novel coronavirus before that, and without this virus, there is no way that it is leaked from the lab."

Wang said none of the institute's scientists contracted the virus, which she said made it extremely unlikely that the pathogen could have escaped from the facility.

NBC News was not able to verify her statements on when the lab first received live samples of the virus or whether any of its scientists were sickened by it.

Peter Daszak, president of EcoHealth Alliance, a New York City-based nonprofit dedicated to studying and preventing pandemics, worked with the Wuhan institute for 16 years until the U.S. government cut funding this year. He also rejected the idea that the virus could have leaked from the lab.

"The fact that they published the sequence so quickly suggests to me that they weren't trying to cover up anything," he said.