This isn't true, I found a paper specifically about SARS-like coronaviruses that Shi Zheng-Li (the person mentioned as "batwoman" in the video) was an author on from 2016:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27170748

and there are at least 20 total just in the last couple of years as well:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/...=DetailsSearch

Also, Wei Hongping works in the department of the Wuhan Institute of Virology that Shi Zheng-Li runs:

http://english.whiov.cas.cn/Research...14_130855.html

I have realised that it's actually somewhat difficult to find publications by specific authors though, since some places list full names and some just use family name and initials. Searching for full names potentially misses loads of papers, but searching for family name and initials potentially finds loads of papers by other people who happen to share the same family name and initials.

Ok. There is another author with the last name "Li" publishing in the same lab, that stopped in 2008. I assumed she was the "bat woman". But you are saying it is the person cited as Shi Z, and I guess she publishes under her first name.

Anyways, the point isn't that it is the most airtight conspiracy hypothesis every created. The point is it should be extremely easy to shut down if it is bullshit, and it appears there is a lot of energy being focused towards suppressing the theory (lots of scrubbing of discussion talking about it on the i-net and the "official response" Huang Yan Ling moved on in 2015) without doing any of the shutdown part.

What? It’s not at all common for grad students to keep working in the same lab after they get their degree. Like, people typically graduate and leave, I feel like you should know at least this much about higher ed.

I personally know a number of people who stayed in the same location after graduating. Some stayed in the same lab and some moved into other labs at the same location.

It is definitely in the realm of possibility she got her PhD and stayed in Wuhan working on bat coronaviruses.

It is also in the realm of possibility she graduated and moved off into the world. If it is option #B, the Chinese govt handling of this apparently widespread conspiracy, when it would be so easy to discredit, is peculiar.

This isn't even getting into the issue there is apparently a picture of her as a member of a Wuhan lab in 2018, and they scrubbed her profile for no apparent reason.

“Because we’ve been lied to and lied to, and it hurts to be lied to. It’s ultimately just about that complicated: it hurts. It denies you respect for yourself, for the liar, for the world. Especially if the lies are chronic, systemic, if hard experience seems to teach that everything you’re supposed to believe in’s really a game based on lies. Young Voters have been taught well and thoroughly. You may not personally remember Vietnam or Watergate, but it’s a good bet you remember ‘No new taxes’ and ‘Out of the loop’ and ‘No direct knowledge of any impropriety at this time’ and Did not inhale’ and ‘Did not have sex with that woman’ and etc. etc. It’s depressing and painful to believe that the would-be ‘public servants’ you’re forced to choose between are all phonies whose only real concern is their own care and feeding and who will lie so outrageously with such a straight face that you just know they have to believe you’re an idiot. So who wouldn’t fall all over themselves for a top politician who actually seemed to talk to you like you were a person, an intelligent adult worthy of respect?”

― David Foster Wallace, The Best American Essays 2007

Chinese names are reversed from English names. Shi is the family name and Zhengli is the given name but Chinese names are written [family name] [given name], hence it's written Shi Zhengli. A lot of given names seem to be sort of double-barrelled but I see a lot of inconsistency in how those names are written and I'm not sure what is technically correct, so it wouldn't surprise me to see any of Shi Zhengli, Shi Zheng-Li, or Shi Zheng Li.

Like I said, the fact that Huang Yanling hasn't been found to make a public appearance is the one piece of evidence from that video that I consider more than circumstantial. That's not to say that the circumstantial evidence doesn't give some weight to the theory, I just don't think that it's as clear cut as the video made it out to be.

This isn't meant as much more than an interesting aside that happens to be topical this close to Easter, but this is a very common argument that Christian apologetics use as evidence for Jesus's resurrection. Specifically Roman authorities hated that people were going around claiming that Jesus had risen but if it wasn't true then they could easily have just shown that the body was still in the tomb.

Maybe because she graduated in 2015? Like, there used to be a profile of me on my department's website when I was in grad school and now there isn't anymore. So mysterious!

When did you get that impression?

The "report", which is only one page, questions the more popular theory that the outbreak occurred at the food market. It's news to me that they do not sell bats at that market, plus I read somewhere that the bats Chinese people eat are not wild, so I guess the only way would have to be for a wild bat to have flown into the market and golden showered a bunch of caged animals or food. One theory that comes from Sonia Shah who wrote a book on pandemics, as to how/why wild bats would fly into these areas is that since humans are disrupting and destroying wild life habitats of animals, they are forced to move from their natural habitat into areas closer to where humans interact which, in turn, increases our potential to come into contact with their excretions. So a 2 year old could play by a tree populated by bats that were forced out of there habitat, and then we have ebola, or bats could be chilling in a food market and pee on a mother ****ing snake, and we have covid-19. What's written in the paper by the two Chinese scientists is definitely plausible, even though it may at best be an educated guess, it is just as plausible as the intermediate host theory; so, I'd put my money on one or the other being true, but I doubt any country in the world, let alone China, would admit to accidentally releasing a virus into the world from a lab.

Wapo did an oped on this a couple days ago but it's unfortunately behind a paywall so haven't read it.

apparently most of the Dem primary and indeed all of the media and all of the politicians and even the leaders of the primary.

So this take, made by Wiild on 3/28/19, doesn't appear to have aged very well, exactly as I predicted. (Note: I am not picking on wiild, the was just a post I remembered, lots of neoliberal elite apologists were parroting the CDC, Surgeon General and WHO, making the same arguments at the same time)

So what happened? Did the population suddenly learn how to use masks effectively? NO
Dd we suddenly make a breakthrough in knowledge of respiration or virology? NO

-What happened is the "expert" liars stopped lying, once there was enough equipment available they didn't need to cover their asses anymore for their lack of preparedness. Exactly as I predicted.

As far as Biden being nominated by the Dem Party, I heard an interesting take that I think has a lot of validity. Clearly everyone knows that Biden is cognitively compromised, and this is only going to get worse, not better, and potentially the inevitable decline could happen very fast. By nominating him, what the DNC is signaling is they are interested in DNC party rule with Biden nothing more than a figurehead.

So in deciding who to vote for, the question you should ask yourself shouldn't be Biden vs Trump; but the DNC versus Trump? (although I guess once he nominates a running mate, you have to factor in what would happen if/when they take over.

What changed is a combination of more equipment being available, yes, but also it being obvious that there was a large risk of asymptomatic spread. I still think everything in that post is generally accurate - wearing a (non-medical) mask is largely ineffective at preventing the wearer being infected - but the prevalence of asymptomatic cases means that changing the advice is beneficial.

You're right that the advice very probably would have changed a lot sooner if there weren't shortages but that doesn't mean the original arguments were simply lies.

Except by this point we already had plenty of empirical evidence that there was lots of asymptomatic cases and that the places instituting widespread mask wearing were effectively reducing transmission (China, Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong etc). This, taken along with known data on how fast the virus spread, which only makes sense in a context of significant asymptotic spread, would lead anyone not completely compromised by ideology and intentional misdirection from "experts" to make the correct deduction asymptomatic spread was occurring and widespread mask wearing was an essential step in viral containment.

Or maybe I just got real lucky when I predicted exactly how this would play out?

And this doesn't even get into what a bad idea it is from a scientific perspective to assume and tell people to prepare for the best case scenario, when there is so many unknowns. Such incompetence would actually be worse than lying.

What kind of science assumes a best case scenario with unknowns, especially when human lives are at stake?

If you really think about it my argument they were lying the whole time is actually giving the "experts" the benefit of the doubt; because the alternative is gross homicidal negligence and incompetence.

Kelhus priming the pump for justifying his Trump vote.

Not voting for Trump. But I live in CA so it doesn't really matter what I do. But thanks for playing anyways.

Just lobbying for Trump. Got it.

I am not the one who elected a senile candidate. Look at how Cuomo and Newsom's popoularity is skyrocketing right now for how they are responding. That should be Biden, except he is too senile to get in front of a camera and say anything coherent.

I think it's a fair enough take. It's kind of the reality of how it works anyway. The Ds may have their issues--but uhh I think I'll pass on the Sessions/Barrs, the big dick toilet guy, that speaking in tongues wacko, the evangelical psychos and various other fruits and nuts. I love a good circus but this is more a bunch of methed out carnies.

^ This. It's beyond ****ed up that Biden is the nom. That that many people voted for him. That the DNC/media bias is that influential. It sucks. We're ****ed because of it. All that being said, and probably some bad **** I left out, there is no need to weigh what would happen if Biden were to not serve his full term.

I mean, this has been known since the day before Super Tuesday. also, he proly makes Kamala his running mate. basically right wing authoritarian corporatists. only different from Trump in tone.

senility is clearly not a disqualifying factor for a president as can be seen on tv every day right now..

It's time for the annual lovemuffin household screening of Jesus Christ Superstar.

Prepare the wine!