Yes - I wondered why you raised serving in Desert Storm when the main denial of WMD's kicks in for the second Gulf War - please tell me you knew that's what I was responding to the whole time? After your first long post to me I already admitted that the media 'sanitise' the news about wars - because if the public knew what actually happened - politicians probably wouldn't be allowed to start them!
So they'll get embedded journalists to film all the "Kablamo" and "Shock and Awe" moments. But as to what you saw way back in the FIRST GULF WAR - it's entirely irrelevant to the WMD's I've been discussing this whole time. I thought the links you put up were footage of WMD's found during the Second Gulf War - and explicitly told you to verify when the footage came from because I wasn't buying it!
Yes - there's a huge difference between the First and Second Gulf Wars. One had WMD's - the other didn't. D'uh! It seems we have been talking at cross purposes the whole time. Didn't you wonder why I kept asking you to verify the dates of any WMD footage? Wasn't it absolutely obvious to a blind monk isolated in desert cave that Iraq had chemical weapons
and Saddam used them on rebels frequently? And I'm not surprised that you assert some of the stuff came from Uncle Sam - America's always training up terrorist groups that then turn against America. I guess it just depends on what you're asserting America actually created - but again - that's 30 years ago and we're talking about today's pandemic! I don't have time to follow you down a personal history of all your Desert Storm activities - it's absolutely annoying and wasting my time when we should be talking about today's pandemic - the OP!
I'm actually beginning to wonder what I've accidentally stumbled into with you - as your longer opening salvo all about your personal baggage from Desert Storm should have warned me I was going to waste the next few days talking about everything BUT the pandemic. You want me to follow you down your personal history of internet rabbit holes. Sorry lady - ain't gonna happen!
Sadly, Desert Storm seems to have overly troubled you and sent you down the Youtube paranoia algorithm. The New York Times has a great series on this called "Down the Rabbit hole." I suggest you listen to it.
Several months ago, there was speculation that SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, was created in a Chinese bioweapons laboratory. It's not true, but the conspiracy theory has gained renewed interest following a paper by a Hong Kong scientist who claims that, indeed, the virus is man-made.
This conspiracy theory is particularly tempting for several reasons. First, China is a secretive, authoritarian country, and it wouldn't really be much of a surprise if the government had a bioweapons program. Second, China has
suppressed research on the origins of the coronavirus. Third, SARS-CoV-2 is really weird for a respiratory virus, since it has the ability to spread throughout the body and damage other organs. Combined, many people see a conspiracy.
But circumstantial evidence doesn't make it true. Either the coronavirus naturally worked its way into the human population or, if a Chinese laboratory really was involved, the virus was probably being studied by researchers and accidentally infected one of them. (This would explain why China wants to cover up the origin of the virus; if it escaped from a lab, Chinese scientists would look incompetent.) There is simply insufficient reason to believe that malicious forces were at play. An extraordinary claim requires extraordinary evidence, and the "man-made virus" theory fails that test.
Genetics Shows Why the Coronavirus Evolved and Was Not Man-Made
In March, a team of scientists
published genome sequence data from SARS-CoV-2 in the highly reputable journal
Nature Medicine. The main argument for why the virus was not man-made is that the spike protein (which binds to a human cell receptor called ACE2) was shown to be non-ideal for binding to the receptor. While it does bind tightly, computer simulations suggest that other sequences would be better for binding.
This is evidence against the virus being man-made because, presumably, a bioengineer would have chosen a different spike protein gene sequence.
Red Flags in the New Pre-Print Paper
A new
pre-print paper (which means it has not yet been peer reviewed or published in a journal) claims that SARS-CoV-2 was genetically engineered. It provides both data and reasoning that sound plausible. (The technical aspects go beyond the scope of this article.) The gist of the paper is that the authors believe the genome displays "suspicious" sequences that suggest manipulation.
There are problems with that argument. The most straightforward explanation for the "suspicious" genetic traits is natural recombination with other coronaviruses. Just like influenza, if two different coronaviruses infect the same animal (or human) at the same time, the gene sequences can be swapped. As a result, a new virus pops out that has a completely unique gene sequence. Then, like everything else, the virus undergoes natural selection. If the gene sequence helps the virus spread, then the virus will be selected through evolutionary forces. A July 2020
paper in
Science makes precisely that argument.
Another major problem with the pre-print paper is that the authors come out of the gate throwing punches, alleging censorship by scientific journals and accusing those who disagree with them of having a conflict of interest. This is not how serious scientists behave in the literature. Unless there is overwhelming reason to believe otherwise, the assumption is always that another team of scientists acted in good faith but drew the wrong conclusion.
Finally, as
others have pointed out, the pre-print authors are part of an organization called the Rule of Law Society, which is not a scientific organization. It also is associated with some rather unsavory characters. That doesn't automatically mean the authors are wrong, but it raises enough doubts about their credibility. The Society's
stated mission is, "To expose corruption, obstruction, illegality, brutality, false imprisonment, excessive sentencing, harassment, and inhumanity pervasive in the political, legal, business and financial systems of China." That's fine, but we probably shouldn't trust an organization like this to perform objective scientific analysis.
The Trouble with Pre-Print Papers
In a fast moving world, the scientific method drags along at a snail's pace. To keep up with the changing times, many scientists are now posting papers online without any peer review. The upside is that this allows the quick dissemination of vital information during a time like now (i.e., the COVID pandemic). The downside is that it allows a lot of garbage to make international headlines, throwing us off into a wild goose chase.
COVID: No, Coronavirus Wasn't Created in a Laboratory. Genetics Shows Why.
