I would take anything in Epoch Times with an enormous grain of salt. It is a right wing conspiracy rag.
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The Epoch Times makes Breitbart look like Huffpost.
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I agree that the panicky headlines are misleading and that this research isnāt quite as dangerous as some are making it out to be, but itās still a legitimate question whether itās a good idea to make new strains in labs like this. What Iāve read before is that much of the justification for creating and studying āhypotheticalā new strains had been negated by the fact that itās way, way easier and quicker to identify and sequence new strains in the wild than it was 10 or 20 years ago, so thereās less of an upside to trying to get an early start than there used to be, and thereās always a non-zero risk of something escaping the lab.
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there is never any shortage of these dudes
where do they all come from 
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Sacramento.
āFor instance, Derek Verrett, as he was born in Sacramento, California, in 1974 and grew up in nearby Foster City, is sometimes a sixth-generation shaman and other times a third-generation shaman. Some of his elders had powers but chose to stay away from them in order to follow more traditional paths. Regardless, his lineage is āmystical AF.ā He says his great-grandmother was a medicine woman who grew up in Ghana before fleeing to Haiti and eventually settling in New Orleans. Her son, Durekās grandfather, had powers too, as did his father, but they were traditional Seventh-Day Adventists.ā
Heās Gwyneth Paltrowās shaman. āThe shaman to the starsā.
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āHealth Bosses,ā band name. Calling it.
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While the question is legitimate, it has also been answered.
Personally, I agree on the idea of a non-zero risk. However, I nowadays tend to believe the specialists in the field who tell us that the risk is so extremely low that the benefits outweigh said risk massively.
FTR, sequencing is a different branch of research, and outside of Denmark (and some focal points in the UK) very rare. Studying specific changes in the genome of a virus in a targeted setting is something else entirely. The bottom line is: while I ask myself the same questions, I ask them differently. Cutting through the bullshit is difficult, and the FUD sown by the outlets with a clear agenda must be called out and de-amplified.
In other words: question are legitimate, but the way it is asked and the way answers are listened to are of great importance. The noise does not need to be emphasized as ālegitimateā questions. The questions were already there, in our layperson heads, and in the heads and hearts of the researchers, the oversight bodies, the funding bodiesā¦ and they have been answered, I am sure. I can ask the same question again, but then it is my duty to look up and scrutinize and weigh the answers which were given. And not, and I cannot emphasize this enough, sow doubts in the general public before doing my part.
I think we can agree to fuck that noise again and again and again and call out conspiracy bullshit, right?
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Thatās fine, but thatās definitely not an opinion universally held among respected experts and it was plenty controversial well before Covid and conspiracy theories about an engineered virus from a Wuhan lab came along.
As for this specific study, NIAID is looking into it right now because the grant application didnāt make clear some of the work they were doing and therefore NIAID didnāt submit it to a safety committee review that it might normally be subject to:
Edit to add: hereās a more nuanced discussion of the current study than whatās being described in the alarmist news stories.
https://www.science.org/content/article/was-study-created-hybrid-covid-19-virus-too-risky
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If you are are using universally, you do not mean unanimously accepted, am I correct? And I fully expect that experts hold different views, and at the same time that a scientific consensus exists which is a bit more evidence-based than anything I can contribute to the matter with my doubts and questions.
More nuanced views are very much welcome in complicated matters, but I vote for calling horseshit like that Daily Mail-referencing piece linked above by itās name. Thatās propaganda, plain an simple.
I donāt want this in the news. I donāt like their stupid views. I donāt expect them to relent, I donāt expect them to repent. They donāt deserve all the attention. They donāt deserve, at all, the @ . They deserve in hell to rot, and thatās the best rhyme that Iāve got.
I suggest we leave it that for moment? Do you agree?
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No disagreement there. I always try to be careful about what sources I read and share, and I never referenced The Daily Mail, The Epoch Times, The NY Post, etc. in any of my discussion. Even a lot of relatively respected mainstream news sources arenāt that great at nuanced science reporting which is why I try to link to sources such as Science or other specialized publications as I did above.
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Well this is (not) a cheerful take. I hope sheās exaggerating. 
(thread)
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Yes and no. Sheās right that it attacks the endothelial cells (not just of blood vessels, in my understanding, but also lungs and maybe lymph vessels) but itās not really a blood borne virus, so it doesnāt spread quickly through the bloodstream. It has to pass cell-to-cell, and the endothelium is a single cell-layer thick. It would be like dissolving a massive mosaic working one tile at a time.
Sheās also right that the endothelium does not have nerves, but the layer below it, the media, does. It doesnāt like being exposed, so when the endothelial layer is gone, the media āfeels it.ā
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Yup, here we go. Flu, RSV, covid and a multitude of ānormalā upper respiratory and GI viruses all looking to make up for the last 2+ years of low numbers. A full schedule for me is 25 patients. We are running 35-40 per day with uncounted more turned away. UVA is full and frequently on divert. And we have not hit sick season yet. None of this is being covered, most parents seem blissfully ignorant and blame us for being behind and hurried. This winter is going to suck.
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