That’s just wild. The one silver lining to T2 is that I’m not shocked by anything anymore. It’s still outrageous, but the surprise is gone.

    • Rose
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      515 days ago

      Yeah, I agree with that, seems to me the most recent plot twists in The Story of America certainly makes people to feel Free… after they are no longer in America. I’m not American, I feel pretty Free, and I do hope Americans one day feel Free again.

  • Queen HawlSera
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    115 days ago

    So did it originate in a Wuhan Lab or not? I keep hearing one thing then another.

    Not trying to confuse the issue, I legitimately don’t know.

    • @Doorbook@lemmy.world
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      214 days ago

      No one know because China are not going to admit if it was a lab leak. Also lab leaks doesn’t mean the virus is human made. However there are some un-answerd questions. There were scientists spies that got caught with sample from Canadian labs flying to China, and there was some concern about military funding and other few things that support the leak theory. However it is not conclusive evidence. So it stay at the theory level.

  • @CmdrShepard42@lemm.ee
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    15716 days ago

    But I thought conservatives said COVID was all made up and a plot by the democrats to control the populace through mask-wearing?

    • Nougat
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      8716 days ago

      Note that mask-wearing only makes it so you can’t breathe if Democrats want you to do it for public health reasons. Mask-wearing is hunky dory if you’re doing it because you’re a Nazi who doesn’t want to be personally identified.

      • @CmdrShepard42@lemm.ee
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        2716 days ago

        Oh sure this is like them claiming that nanograms of mercury in vaccines cause autism but they argue that companies dumping mercury into their local atmosphere, soil, and water are overburdened by liberal government regulations and shouldn’t be regulated.

        • @vividspecter@lemm.ee
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          1616 days ago

          Then in order to “cure” said autism, they pump their children with any manner of completely worthless and dangerous interventions from the same pharma companies they claim to hate.

          • @CmdrShepard42@lemm.ee
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            915 days ago

            Yeah I just listened to the newest Behind the Bastards about this and Robert Evans describes numerous examples of parents treating their kids like lab rats and pumping them full of expiramental drugs until they died. It’s awful shit all around.

            • @dethedrus@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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              115 days ago

              Is that this week or the nightmare chelation therapy and exploding death chambers to cure ‘heavy metal toxicity’ from last week?

              The child murder episodes are rather hard to handle.

        • @SparroHawc@lemm.ee
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          315 days ago

          Well you see, there’s a simple explanation for this. When we do it, it’s good, and when you do it, it’s bad.

      • @dman87@sh.itjust.works
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        616 days ago

        Such a good song. I have not thought about or listened to that song or album in at least a decade. Thanks for the reference to rekindle my fond memories. Time to go listen to some Bad Religion… :-)

        • Ben Hur Horse Race
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          516 days ago

          They released a record called Age of Unreason during the first trump term. Its some of the strongest material of their career imo.

          New Maps of Hell was pretty killer though

      • Ultragramps
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        114 days ago

        “We’ve got the American Jesus. He helped build the President’s estate.”

      • @SendMePhotos@lemmy.world
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        2916 days ago

        I feel like I’m screaming, “help” at the top of a mountain, yet nobody can hear me. I feel like almost all online interactions are false. I feel like my day to day life is shrinking from country scale to community to household scale. This is where we are divided and we don’t care for another, but only ourselves. Not out of greed, but out of perceived necessity. It’s all fake.

        • guldukat
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          15 days ago

          I’m with you. Corporations have figured out how to fully monetize the internet and information in general. Knowledge and education have been paywalled. What does filter through is manipulation and brainwashing in some form.

        • Franklin
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          1616 days ago

          I completely understand sometimes it feels like everyone has their head buried in the sand or worse is lapping up the misinformation without a second thought, living in a post truth society is truly hell for the analytical.

  • @Daggity@lemm.ee
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    1015 days ago

    So… Chinese Americans (and anyone vaguely Asian looking) the next to be sent to concentration camps?

    • @Bloomcole@lemm.ee
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      615 days ago

      Sinophobia was already rampant and bipartisan.
      Deliberately fueled by the government.
      Like the embarrassing ‘spy’ balloon farce as an example.

      • @Daggity@lemm.ee
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        15 days ago

        Not going to make excuses for the democrats, I am saying our nazi government needs more scapegoats, and they’re back to spreading lies about them. It’s the first step like calling all immigrants ms13.

  • @Valorie12@lemmy.world
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    5116 days ago

    I saw a billboard outside of my city yesterday saying something like “did your loved ones really die of COVID-19?” and had some “covid is a hoax” website named on it. What a fucking dark timeline we’re in.

    • @some_guy@lemmy.sdf.orgOP
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      715 days ago

      I overheard a guy in 2021 say to someone that his brother said, “I just came from a funeral for a friend who died from covid.” The next thing the guy said was, "I told him, no, your friend died with covid, not from covid.

      It really upset me. I just tried to ignore him but it actually kinda ruined my day.

    • HobbitFoot
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      1016 days ago

      Yeah, fuck Cuomo, but a lot of the reasons for New York’s poor performance at the start of COVID were structural issues that were out of his control.

  • @null_dot@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    315 days ago

    Can someone help me understand what’s going on here?

    Are they trying to throw shade on China because… they think it will help win the trade war?

    • @monotremata@lemmy.ca
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      115 days ago

      So, this is wild speculation, but I’ll tell you my guess. I think it’s about TSMC, the world’s leading semiconductor manufacturer. China has, for years, been saying that Taiwan isn’t an independent country, but is instead “Chinese Taipei,” a part of China. They’ve been using this idea for years to gradually build towards an invasion of Taiwan. Taiwan, of course, does consider itself an independent nation. The US officially holds no position on this question, which is kinda bonkers; there’s this whole diplomatic dance about whether the US would defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion. The US might not care if it weren’t for TSMC, which runs the plants that produce a huge proportion of the world’s CPUs and GPUs and AI chips. All the best chip-making technology and know-how is with TSMC. It’s a major vulnerability in the US supply chain.

      China has been ramping things up in the past several years. It’s suspected that a big part of why they’re going along with the Russian invasion of Ukraine is that Russia probably promised to go along with China invading Taiwan in exchange. It’s all very sub-rosa, but there’s been so much military maneuvering and posturing and so on back and forth around Taiwan that it’s been kind of dizzying.

      This is, unfortunately, part of why China was enthusiastic about getting Trump back into the White House. Trump’s policies of isolating the US from its military allies, instigating worldwide trade chaos, and cozying up to dictators make the conditions a lot more ripe for China to make a move on Taiwan. And since the US has never been able to actually talk about Taiwan before, it’s gonna look absolutely batshit to the majority of Americans if China invades Taiwan and the US government suddenly wants to go to war against China over this, which seems like a huge risk. But since, as Trump so eloquently put it, “everything is computer,” we basically can’t stand by and let China take Taiwan without a fight.

      So he’s trying to gin up sentiment against China on his own terms to lay the groundwork for a war that seems increasingly inevitable.

        • @SparroHawc@lemm.ee
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          115 days ago

          It’s possible to have a poor opinion of the Chinese government without having a bigoted opinion about the Chinese people.

          • @Bloomcole@lemm.ee
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            215 days ago

            Possible but not common.
            Don’t tell me you haven’t seen plenty of racist comments online directed at Chinese people.
            Same for Russians or whatever country/people we’re supposed to hate.

    • @Doorbook@lemmy.world
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      15 days ago

      Actually this news makes me have a conspiracy theory now.

      • Trump started trade war with china early January 2018
      • The Wuhan was studying the corona virus in the wild as usually, mostly with relax work
      • Wuhan lab start publishing about covid in mid 2018 studying different variation
      • Wuhan lab start testing mixing covid with hiv and stuff
      • Trump loses the Trade war around late 2019
      • 2019 Military World Games is happening in Wuhan October 18–27, 2019 .

      Here is my new conspiracy theory:

      • “Ordered by trump - CIA cause the leak to happen from the lab to the market to damage the Chinese economy”

      .

      • First report of covid patient around November 2019
      • First Cluster of patient around December 2019

      Considering how the US government has been consistent of disregards of human life I see this as realistic case of why Trump keep circling back to this.

  • I always wondered what it would be like to live in oppressive regimes like Russia or China. Also never thought I’d live through a pandemic. Checking all the boxes lately.

  • SeaJ
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    15 days ago

    That website is batshit. It looks like a tabloid website. It’s not just promoting the lab leak theory. It also calls out Fauci, Andrew Cuomo, and Biden. It is basically a political hit piece. Fucking embarrassing.

    It would basically be like Biden changing a site about Russia to include info about Trump’s pee tape.

  • @rusticus@lemm.ee
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    2715 days ago

    It is insane how many comments here believe that humans somehow made COVID-19 in a lab and leaked it. It is obvious and clear that the critical sequences responsible for the jump to humans exist in wild type form in nature. In fact, the critical spike protein sequence is so similar between coronavirus that the antigen work which the vaccine was based upon was done BEFORE COVID-19 in Jason McClellan’s lab at Dartmouth.

    This WILL happen again, and conspiracy theories that have now shut down labs and funding are likely to cause millions of lost lives next time. We got lucky and the tinfoil hats are going to guarantee we’ll be unlucky next time.

    • @Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In@lemmy.world
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      15 days ago

      It is obvious and clear that the critical sequences responsible for the jump to humans exist in wild type form in nature.

      In theory. In practice no evidence of these stages has been found.

      However it would be feasible to simulate the conditions required in a lab environment.

      Controlled funding for gain of function research does not mean all lab work should stop.

      • @rusticus@lemm.ee
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        215 days ago

        Let me know how “gain of function” research is different than using plasmids. I’ll wait.

    • @HiddenLife@lemmy.world
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      615 days ago

      Yeah, I used to believe that too. Until I read how irresponsible these scientists were. Before the outbreak, they were planning to release an enhanced version into bat caves filled with bats to observe how the coronavirus mutated. They were infecting bats in the lab with coronavirus. Nobody said they created this from scratch, but they could have definitely helped evolution along. Even the CIA suspects it could have been a lab leak. I think the problem is that thinking it is “man-made” is hard for many, but it’s not difficult to believe that the evolution of the virus was influenced by humans.

      https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/cia-shifts-assessment-covid-origins-saying-lab-leak-likely-caused-outb-rcna189284

      • @rusticus@lemm.ee
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        1415 days ago

        it’s not difficult to believe that the evolution of the virus was influenced by humans.

        Only for the ignorant. This is how research has worked for decades. Even the CIA (who are not scientists) have “low confidence”. Since when does “low confidence” mean it happened or you believe it??

        All sequence data, wild type virus, and previous research history clearly show this virus existed in nature and because it is a highly mutable RNA virus, was able to infect humans. No credible scientist says otherwise. Let’s be clear - if they were studying the virus in a lab and it “got out” from the lab or from the wild what difference does it make? This is NOT a man made virus and to make the leap to that is just plain ignorance.

        So the ignorant human response is to shut down all research on viruses because of the fear of it being “man made”. The result? When this happens again in 3 or 100 years (which it will), we will have no R&D to lean on LIKE WE DID FOR THE COVID19 VACCINE. We’ve ALREADY discovered a number of viruses in the wild that are likely to mutate and cause another pandemic. We should be celebrating research because the previous decade of work on antigen presentation of the spike protein gave us a vaccine in 11 months that we would otherwise likely not have EVEN TODAY.

        I guess this is why ancient civilizations had human sacrifice when there was an eclipse. The stupid scared ignorant people determined public policy.

        • All sequence data, wild type virus, and previous research history clearly show this virus existed in nature

          This is an exaggeration. There was a strain logged that was 96% similar (BatCoV RaTG13) but this lacked the proteins at the S1/S2 furin cleavage site.

          This is NOT a man made virus

          But it could be a man influenced virus.

          we will have no R&D to lean on LIKE WE DID FOR THE COVID19 VACCINE

          Vaccine research does not require gain of function studies.

        • @lmmarsano@lemmynsfw.com
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          15 days ago

          Let’s be clear - if they were studying the virus in a lab and it “got out” from the lab or from the wild what difference does it make?

          Firmer policies & enforcement of safety protocols? Informed selection of safety protocols?

          • @rusticus@lemm.ee
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            515 days ago

            These things already happen to an insane degree, which is good. Others are using this argument to either jump to the conclusion that it’s man made or that we should shut down all coronavirus research. There is a clear distinction between these thoughts that are being intentionally blurred by those with an agenda.

            • @lmmarsano@lemmynsfw.com
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              15 days ago

              We ought to be vigilant about leaping to conclusions or letting biases creep in, and I can’t control others doing that.

              Contrary to these things happening to an insane degree, it’s not clear the laboratories in question took adequate precautions.

              Concerns about biosafety standards first caught my notice with this report stating that the laboratory may have been working with coronavirus at inappropriate biosafety levels as low as 2 (eg, unblocked respiratory paths of infection). Questioning the source (even though it seems coherent), I noticed other corroborating reports with references. If the reports are true, then these laboratories in the Wuhan Institute worked with infectious coronaviruses at inappropriate biosafety levels lower than their US counterparts.

              • @rusticus@lemm.ee
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                215 days ago

                Okay you’ve refused to acknowledge or read my more important points so it appears you don’t want a conversation with perseverations on your agenda. Good luck.

                • @lmmarsano@lemmynsfw.com
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                  -215 days ago

                  I don’t know what logically led you to that conclusion. Maybe you ought to self-reflect & work on your own biases/not jump to conclusions?

                  I’m linking to supporting references, and you’re not, so 🤷.