Covid Origins
- Thread starter Nicholas Weeks
- Start date
Mmmm .. and Trump told us that drinking bleach would cure it, a few years ago.
Naturally, he later claimed that he was being sarcastic.
Almighty God knows best exactly what happened .. one shouldn't jump to conclusions.
I do believe that China holds responsibility for the pandemic, but other than that..
Political opinions can be biased.
Nicholas Weeks
Bodhicitta
Epoch Times has coverage of story.
TheLightWithin
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Yeah and his photo there looking like a movie promo? Just-- why??
TheLightWithin
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The Epoch Times - Bias and Credibility
QUESTIONABLE SOURCE A questionable source exhibits one or more of the following: extreme bias, consistent promotion of propaganda/conspiracies, poor or no
mediabiasfactcheck.com
Faithfulservant
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Why is it so easy to believe one side and not the other? I feel like we are sheep led to the slaughter. Dont we all agree that all media has a bias.. why believe one bias and not the other? I guess its easier to believe a lie if you fell for it then open your eyes and admit something nefarious was going on. Ill keep my eyes open and always assume im being lied to rather than be gullible and believe my government has my best interests in mind. When has that ever been the case? Honestly
Pretty much every word uttered or written does... this is a great book tho...despite being influenced by his bias!
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Certainly not now
TheLightWithin
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Indeed. There's no getting around the existence of bias, it's about understanding the bias and contextualizing it. It's about critical thinking and being able ti recognize where something is coming from, and if its bias leans very far in any direction, maybe you take it with a grain of salt, or balance it with something from an opposing view. The more widely you read the better. I listen to or read opposing viewpoints all the time, but I have become very picky about how much time I spend on anything that seems polemical or dogmatic.
For example, despite Bernard Goldberg's seemingly right-ish leanings, @wil posted the link to the book and I found a used copy for an incredible price and ordered it. Also, curious to know a little more about him, I looked up his name and it seems he sees himself in perhaps more of a libertarian or classical liberal mode. Intriguing! I look forward to reading the book.
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TheLightWithin
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On the broader topic of bias, I just ordered cheap copies of these, they look good.
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And then these guys claim to collect stories from every viewpoint.
You can read some of their content for free but have to subscribe to get very much of their material I think.
You can read some of their content for free but have to subscribe to get very much of their material I think.
TheLightWithin
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Well, why do you think? Do you prefer one side over the other? Why? Do you think you have a good reason? Do you think others might have reasons for their preferences? Are you aware of your own biases? I mean I would imagine so but... ?
ALSO - IF you looked at the link... Media Bias Fact Check - They assess more than whether or not something has a right/left bias. They ALSO look at factual reporting, citing of reliable sources and or otherwise passing or failing fact checks, promotion of propaganda and conspiracy theories, or commercial or profit based influences. Those matter.
If a source was extremely left or right but very well fact checked, you might look at it differently than if it weren't.
If something seemed nice and reasonable and centrist, but had heavy commercial influence by a sponsor or a set of sponsors, that's something yet again.
Reading / listening broadly and widely, but hopefully to things that are reliably factual and not too polemical, are key.
Faithfulservant
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Did you even watch the briefing on the covid.gov website?
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White House changes COVID.gov web page to page supporting lab leak theory
The site has been directed to a new landing page that argues for the theory that COVID-19 originated from a mistaken lab leak in Wuhan, China.
abcnews.go.com
The idea that covid leaked from the Chinese lab at Wuhan, while carrying out US-sponsored research that would have been illegal to do in the US, I thought was widely known and accepted. It's hard to quickly follow all of the details on the Whitehouse page, though - I've only had time to skim through.
In August 2024 the Lancet Microbe published an editorial saying it is "simply wrong" to assert that SARS-CoV-2 is of unnatural origin, and ascribed continued interest in the unnatural origin idea to irresponsible journalism and political motivation. The editorial expressed concern that the furore around the virus's origins had a "chilling effect" on legitimate virology research and could jeopardise mankind's safety from pathogens in the future.
...
On April 18, 2025, the second administration of Donald Trump removed the online hub for federal COVID-19 resources, including COVID.gov and COVIDtests.gov, and redirected the domains to a whitehouse.gov landing page entitled "Lab Leak: The True Origins of COVID-19" endorsing the theory. Virologist Angela Rasmussen called the White House's website "pure propaganda, intended to justify the systematic devastation of... programs devoted to public health and biomedical research," and she said every claim made by the Trump administration was false or misleading.
COVID-19_lab_leak_theory -Wikipedia
I don't think the majority of scientists believe COVID originated in a laboratory.
talib-al-kalim
Well-Known Member
I have read articles from two different virologists, one who kept contact to the Wuhan group as long as this was allowed by the Chinese government, and he had the impression that they felt unguilty and researched eagerly to fight the disease, whereas the other had been there some time earlier and said that they did research on similar viruses and that they had insufficient security rules.
I don't know who's right.
The trouble with the editorial is that there is so much government money invested in health services, that if they want medical professions to subscribe to a natural cause origin for covid, they will ensure that is promoted. Also note that the Lancet editorial is exactly that - someone promoting an opinion, not providing a scientific basis for it.
If there is evidence that covid arose naturally - and entirely coincidentally within a mile of a lab specifically investing how to make coronaviruses more virulent - then I'm open to that argument. However, if it were that simple you have to ask why the Chinese government was so intent on preventing any real investigation, and why US government officials tried to lie about the sort of coronavirus research they were funding at Wuhan.
Governments often try to cover up their inadequacies.
There could be many reasons for that, and not the result of one politically motivated
conspiracy theory.
"Without evidence, some people have claimed the virus is a bioweapon accidentally or deliberately leaked from a laboratory, a population control scheme, the result of a spy operation, or the side effect of 5G upgrades to cellular networks."
..yeah, and Apollo 11 moon landing was really filmed in a studio.
No one in this thread is advocating any of those things.
Don't you think it's a bit disconcerting that the only counter to the lab leak theory is to use ridicule - rather than science?
What I find so strange is that when a lab experimenting on coronaviruses finds itself at the center of a new coronavirus outbreak, people would rather believe the same governments who both tried to cover up and lie about it, rather than what appears to be a more common sense conclusion.
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