Greg.D.

To me, the most Interesting part was reviewing the three papers by the bat virus expert written in the last six or seven years in which she describes building human infective bat coronavirus. So much so, that Obama blocked any virus engineering in the US that included gain of function, and it turns out she had a collaborator in North Carolina.

it’s a rehash of a Nature Medicine letter that said, based on sequence, it had no evidence of human engineering. That’s important because many people, including headline writers, say that is proof it did not come out of a lab before infecting humans in Wuhan. That fails any logic test. National Review is not important. A naturally-occuring virus infected humans causing a pandemic. It began in Wuhan. There are two labs there that study those viruses. Despite people continuing to quote an unknown source that the virus moved from bat to another host before infecting humans, there is no evidence for that. Nor an explanation. China has kept everyone out of those labs and not made the staff available for interviews. Instead, they have launched an internal (in Chinese) and international propaganda campaign to say the Americans brought it to Wuhan. And, Randy, what’s your point here: Are you saying there is a remote possibility this was virus came out of one of those two US labs?

The virus CAN come from a lab without being a manipulated virus, what a garbage title on that article which is, again, just a rehash of the first article in Nature Medicine. A lot of hand waving in that article but it was very early and does not reference the article by the chinese virologists, I don’t think. The two labs in Wuhan had collections of viruses and needed to culture them in animal hosts merely to study them, which is what their jobs were. Easy to infect a worker or have an escape of a bat or some diseased tissue. it is still the most likely explanation and is a repeat of the first SARS coming out of a Beijing lab. last week people were saying “let’s don’t start throwing the blame word around”. Well, now it’s time to start throwing the blame word around.

Winston May have an ax to grind but his above video is very, very good. He does not need to move along to other topics and he is still very much in touch with modern China. Anything published in SCMP must fulfill the obligation of all state media (and there no longer is any media other than state media): Would not expect the party count everybody anyway.

Okay, so SCMP is a propaganda arm of the Chinese communist party, so I am surprised to see their commentary in the “Stateside” section of this website. There is no reason to lump Taiwan and China together as one style of culture and governance: seriously? China will come out of this uniquely tainted and seen with fresh eyes as a reprehensible system of governance. And their numbers can’t be averaged in with free countries’ numbers. China’s are totally cooked. S Korea has done better than anyone due to their greater use of testing, reporting and isolating. Taiwan can’t even be included with China as they blocked the exported cases and had a more manageable (numbers wise) population than China. Singapore and Japan actually have a resurgence of infections A better comparison would be American state or city against other American states or cities. NYC is devastated while Boston, not far away, is not overwhelmed. Ohio - already renown for early shelter at home practices - is not overwhelmed but Michigan, with a dense urban center, is. Enough of this F’ing Chinese state propaganda. Watch Winston’s video: https://youtu.be/KQaNdTKQyLY for a brief and to the point analysis of what the worst and most despicable regime since Mao has wrought and continues to perpetrate on the world.

Fish? Turtles, snakes, crabs ... seafood in general? I guess it depends on whom you ask

Great photo. Looks like a page out of “Where’s Waldo?” Saw an article that 50 recovered, testing-negative church goers in Korea are now testing positive again. There have been similar anecdotes from China since early in the epidemic. Really really hoping that China has a calm summer.

I got through 5 minutes and then had to put a kid to bed. Though it is an ugly thing the CCP is is doing there, the Uyghur contribution to terrorism was being whitewashed (as usual). I could watch it on their website but I can’t be bothered. Maybe another time.

Yes, until that Al-jazeera article I had only seen bio-safety level 2 china is coming out of this pretty damaged

Yeah, Budweiser in China is a weird, sweet fizz thing. Randy posted a video showing locals, who had scavenged used cans and bottles from KTVs and the like, refilling them with knockoff beer and resealing them. I mean, an incredibly tricky thing to re-seal a can. Agree re Heineken and a few others (Stella Artois, etc). Making a lager at home is hard. That’s why the bearded ones here make Ales - and primarily IPAs - it’s just easier. It wasn’t long ago that contract brewers in Wisconsin could make anything in the style of a european lager. Almost don’t want to know if that has died.

Tonight (April 7): Frontline “China Undercover) about the situation in Xinjiang On Amazon Prime: “The Farewell”, an American-made in China 2019 film that is basically an autobiographic story about NaiNai’s 3 month prognosis, the family gathering in China - and why they don’t tell NaiNai herself.

I really like Tsingtao: it’s an old German recipe and I really prefer lagers. We’ve kind of settled on Corona for our house beer. If you can recommend a domestic that is similar to Tsingtao or Corona, please suggest it.

My wife did our Costco run at 7 AM. Even though we were only running out of eggs and half and half, she still spent over $100, which is good news because they were stocked up on meat again. Nearly all people and staff were wearing masks and/or gloves. The coffee grinder was missing. She asked and they said they got rid of it (temporarily) because of the pandemic. Might be an excuse for us to buy a better coffee grinder off of Amazon. Hardest thing so far is keeping our 3.3 year old on the good track he was on from 2.5 months of pre-school. We’re having great weather in Denver and can’t enjoy much of it, though we do have smallish back and front yards. The kid is getting plenty of (too much) IPAD time. There are the regular weChat vid sessions to China but he is forgetting the Chinese grandma pounded into him. Working from home.

Yeah, but getting across the border to Hong Kong seemed very real. Like they said, if you’re a foreigner you will always be a foreigner there. A long term tourist. Go away. Good they’re outta there

I studied biochemistry at Cornell. A famous dude there named Ephram Racker said “Dont resort to extraordinary explanations for ordinary events”. The simplest and far and away most likely explanation is that one of the two research centers in Wuhan had an escape, a breakdown of their safety protocols. The transport via non-existent bats or the more ludicrous jump from a bat to a second host to human (each, but especially the second, being a rare event) is not impossible but highly unlikely ..... why go there? The first SARS was from an escape from a virology center in Beijing and in 2019 there are two - not one - bat coronavirus research centers in Wuhan where SARS-2 breaks out. Antibodies to Covid-19 in Yunnan people who live near the bat caves? Not surprising. I looked for, but couldn’t find, a reference I read that said for now we have to consider the human antibodies to be cross-reactive among various, highly related strains of the covid virus. Anyway, nothing changes whether it is a completely natural phenomenon or a lab accident that has caused this.