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Someone posted about these rumors early on, but it's getting traction again that the virus originated from an unintenional Chinese lab leak and not the wet market.
 
irvinehomeowner said:
Someone posted about these rumors early on, but it's getting traction again that the virus originated from an unintenional Chinese lab leak and not the wet market.

You think it?s coincidence that there?s a level 4 bio safety lab in Wuhan?  Also if they really thought it came from the wet market, why the heck would they let the wet markets open back up again?https://abcnews.go.com/International/wuhans-called-wet-markets-back-business/story?id=70119116
 
BY rumor you mean conspiracy theory ? Because this is a conspiracy theory.

There is overwhelming weight of evidence to support this is of natural origin. Overwhelming numbers of experts agree on this.

We are in an era of the collapse of institutional trust. We don't trust our government, we don't trust the media, we don't trust the experts, we don't even trust doctors. It's truly sad to witness.

Here's a conspiracy theory for you.

Somewhere in China there's a bat getting high-fives from every other animal he sees.
 
Kenkoko said:
BY rumor you mean conspiracy theory ? Because this is a conspiracy theory.

There is overwhelming weight of evidence to support this is of natural origin. Overwhelming numbers of experts agree on this.

We are in an era of the collapse of institutional trust. We don't trust our government, we don't trust the media, we don't trust the experts, we don't even trust doctors. It's truly sad to witness.

Here's a conspiracy theory for you.

Somewhere in China there's a bat getting high-fives from every other animal he sees.

Just like stereotypes, jokes and Internet jabs... there is usually some sliver of truth in there.

So let's pivot, is it a conspiracy theory that China knew about the virus for 6 days before warning anyone?
https://apnews.com/68a9e1b91de4ffc166acd6012d82c2f9

In the six days after top Chinese officials secretly determined they likely were facing a pandemic from a new coronavirus, the city of Wuhan at the epicenter of the disease hosted a mass banquet for tens of thousands of people; millions began traveling through for Lunar New Year celebrations.

President Xi Jinping warned the public on the seventh day, Jan. 20. But by that time, more than 3,000 people had been infected during almost a week of public silence, according to internal documents obtained by The Associated Press and expert estimates based on retrospective infection data.

...
 
Happiness said:
San Francisco Unified School District considering giving all students all A's on their report cards:
https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2...ol-officials-give-students-a-grades-closures/

If this happened to me while I was in school, I would do ZERO schoolwork and play DOOM all day.

Umm,  basically all the districts are credit or no credit.  Even better, under do no harm, any kid passing before closure, is considered to be passing whether they do anything or not.

Edit: while I suspect Universities will accept Credit/No Credit, any institution that does interviews will reflect what your kid did during closure for this years Juniors. Maybe year after for Sophmores.  Then no issue again.
https://iusd.org/article/update-april-15-2020
Dear IUSD Community,

As previously communicated, in accordance with the Governor?s Executive Order to stay at home during the COVID-19 pandemic, all IUSD schools will continue to provide emergency distance learning through the end of this academic school year. The District?s goals during this time are to provide learning activities that build appropriate grade-level skills and content knowledge, maintain a connection between students and teachers, and account for the variety of demands this unique time places on students, families and staff. This transition to distance learning requires a different approach to student grading that will hold students harmless from the difficult circumstances they may face.

We know some students may struggle to process new material or demonstrate their knowledge and understanding of course content under these extraordinary circumstances. Our lower income students and students with special needs may experience even greater challenges, while students whose families have been impacted by this disease may not have the ability to fully engage in distance learning. In recognition of the anxiety, stress and inherent educational inequities that exist across our nation, institutions of higher education are encouraging a credit/no credit model as the most equitable approach to codifying student learning.

To this end, during last night?s Board Meeting, after thorough discussion and deliberation, the Board of Education approved IUSD staff?s recommendation to move to ?credit/no credit? grades for the final reporting period of the 2019-20 school year for all students. The Board?s decision included direction from the State Board of Education that requires districts to implement grading practices that ?do no harm? to students during emergency distance learning. This decision also included guidance from UC, CSU, state community colleges, Stanford?s Challenge Success, admissions officers from elite universities and feedback from IUSD principals, teachers and leadership, the Orange County Department of Education and Orange County school districts. Please review our frequently asked questions for more information on this topic.

In response to the pandemic, colleges and universities are leading the way in the transition to credit/no credit option. In order to eliminate the inevitable inequalities presented by distance learning, CSUs and UCs will accept credit or passing grades for A-G courses in winter/spring/summer 2020. The message from higher education institutions is clear: students will NOT be penalized for grading changes enacted by school districts in response to COVID-19.

Colleges lean heavily on an official document from all high schools called the School Profile. School Profiles explain circumstances to colleges, including graduation requirements, grade point average calculations, honors courses, average SAT/ACT scores, and other elements that make schools unique. In this case, the shift to credit/no credit in the face of a national pandemic will be described and accepted without penalty. The move is temporary and will be discontinued when students and staff return to school in 2020-21.

Furthermore, Stanford?s Challenge Success program and Joe Feldman, author of Grading for Equity have issued grading guidelines for distance learning:  Guidance on Grading/Crediting Policies During COVID-19  and Recommendations for Grading During COVID-19 . Their research suggests that stress related to COVID-19 will negatively impact student academic performance. In order to ease this negative impact, our District?s transition to credit/no credit will allow students and families to eliminate the pressure of performing competitively in this altered school environment. It reassures families that student work during this pandemic will be valued, but students will not be penalized for not being able to perform competitively under these circumstances. Our goal is to continue to support our students? learning, build connections with them, and find ways to support them during distance learning.

Teachers, staff and administrators will remain focused on keeping our students highly engaged, connected, and invested in their learning. Teachers will continue to have daily contact, to assign work, to provide feedback on the work, to host online discussion forums when age appropriate, and provide resources to ensure that our students have a variety of opportunities to strengthen their understanding of essential learning targets. IUSD remains committed to preparing students to be successful at the next level.

For more information and resources, please continue to visit our dedicated COVID-19 resource webpage at iusd.org/COVID19. Included on this page is information about distance learning, mental health and wellness resources and contacts, food and other assistance for families in need, enrichment resources, and more.

Thank you for your understanding and partnership.

Sincerely,

Terry L. Walker
Superintendent of Schools
Irvine Unified School District
 
nosuchreality said:
Happiness said:
San Francisco Unified School District considering giving all students all A's on their report cards:
https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2...ol-officials-give-students-a-grades-closures/

If this happened to me while I was in school, I would do ZERO schoolwork and play DOOM all day.

Umm,  basically all the districts are credit or no credit.  Even better, under do no harm, any kid passing before closure, is considered to be passing whether they do anything or not.

Edit: while I suspect Universities will accept Credit/No Credit, any institution that does interviews will reflect what your kid did during closure for this years Juniors. Maybe year after for Sophmores.  Then no issue again.
https://iusd.org/article/update-april-15-2020

Everyone gets As is not the same as credit/no credit.
 
irvinehomeowner said:
Just like stereotypes, jokes and Internet jabs... there is usually some sliver of truth in there.

So let's pivot, is it a conspiracy theory that China knew about the virus for 6 days before warning anyone?
https://apnews.com/68a9e1b91de4ffc166acd6012d82c2f9

In the six days after top Chinese officials secretly determined they likely were facing a pandemic from a new coronavirus, the city of Wuhan at the epicenter of the disease hosted a mass banquet for tens of thousands of people; millions began traveling through for Lunar New Year celebrations.

President Xi Jinping warned the public on the seventh day, Jan. 20. But by that time, more than 3,000 people had been infected during almost a week of public silence, according to internal documents obtained by The Associated Press and expert estimates based on retrospective infection data.

...

Not a conspiracy.

The entire world should be calling out the Chinese government?s role in stifling early info and worsening the coronavirus crisis.

 
irvinehomeowner said:
So... if some information can be withheld... so can other information. :)

#tinfoilhat

Completely different things.

The origin of COVID can be verified by science.

If you are interested, listen to Michael Osterholm. He is an internationally recognized expert in infectious disease epidemiology and he was recently on Joe Rogan.
 
Kenkoko said:
irvinehomeowner said:
So... if some information can be withheld... so can other information. :)

#tinfoilhat

Completely different things.

The origin of COVID can be verified by science.

If you are interested, listen to Michael Osterholm. He is an internationally recognized expert in infectious disease epidemiology and he was recently on Joe Rogan.

I think you may be misunderstanding what the alternate theory is. It's not that the Chinese engineered this virus, it could be they were studying it and someone in the lab accidentally got infected. So, it was a naturally occurring virus but ground zero was not the wet market:

Check out this article (which also quotes Michael Osterholm):
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/b...sed-chinese-lab-heres-four-things-know-143987

1. Not a Biological Weapon
First, what it?s almost certainly not.

Although early internet gossip pushed the coronavirus as a biological weapon engineered in a Chinese lab, many experts say there is no credible evidence of that.

A study in mid-March by Scripps Research, published by the journal Nature Medicine, strongly states that COVID-19?also referred to as SARS-CoV-2?follows the natural process similar to related strains of coronavirus.

?This evidence for natural evolution was supported by data on SARS-CoV-2?s backbone?its overall molecular structure,? a statement from Scripps Research says, adding:

If someone were seeking to engineer a new coronavirus as a pathogen, they would have constructed it from the backbone of a virus known to cause illness. But the scientists found that the SARS-CoV-2 backbone differed substantially from those of already known coronaviruses and mostly resembled related viruses found in bats and pangolins.

A leading expert on bioweapons is definitive on the matter.

?There is no evidence whatsoever that this is a bioweapon or that it was accidentally released from the Wuhan lab,? said Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research Policy at the University of Minnesota and author of ?Living Terrors: What Our Country Needs to Survive the Coming Bioterrorist Catastrophe.?

?Today, with the genetics we have on these viruses and how we can do testing, we can almost date them almost like carbon testing so radiocarbon and you want to know how old a block is or something like that,? Osterholm said during an interview in March on ?The Joe Rogan Experience? podcast.
Osterholm said the new coronavirus ?clearly jumped from an animal species, probably the third week of November to humans.?     

?I don?t believe that there?s any evidence linking this to ? an intentional release or an accidental release, or that it?s an engineered bug. It?s not,? he said.       

But the theory that the coronavirus came from an animal does not entirely back up the prevailing wisdom that the virus originated in a wet market in Wuhan, according to recent studies.

About 1.5 million cases of COVID-19 have been confirmed around the world, with 100,000 deaths. The U.S. government has projected at least 100,000 deaths in America before the pandemic passes.

But far deadlier pathogens exist. If the Chinese wanted to develop a biological weapon, Cheng said, it?s likely its communist government would have aimed for something far more lethal than COVID-19.

2. Doubts About Seafood Market in Wuhan
The prevailing wisdom that the virus ?was spread by people who ate contaminated animals at the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan,? Ignatius wrote in the Post, ?is shaky.?

He noted that ?bats weren?t sold at the seafood market, although that market or others could have sold animals that had contact with bats.?     

Wuhan authorities closed that seafood market and disinfected it without swabbing individual animals and cages, or drawing blood from workers, according to The New York Times.

?It is absolutely clear the market had no connection with the origin of the outbreak virus, and, instead, only was involved in amplification of an outbreak that had started elsewhere in Wuhan almost a full month earlier,? Richard Ebright, a Rutgers University professor of chemistry and chemical biology, told CNN.     

A study published Jan. 24 found that the early coronavirus cases were not connected to the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan. The study was published in February by The Lancet, a weekly peer-reviewed medical journal.

The study found that the first case was reported Dec. 1, 2019 by an elderly man who had no contact with the Huanan Seafood Market.     

One of the report?s co-authors, Wu Wenjuan, a senior doctor at Wuhan?s Jinyintan Hospital, reportedly said the man had Alzheimer?s disease, ?lived four or five buses from the seafood market, and because he was sick he basically didn?t go out.?       

3. Accidentally Caught in Lab and Spread?
Research labs exist close to the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan,  prompting what Ignatius referred to as a ?competing theory.?

?Less than 300 yards from the seafood market is the Wuhan branch of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention,? Ignatius wrote in the Post:

Researchers from that facility and the nearby Wuhan Institute of Virology have posted articles about collecting bat coronaviruses from around China, for study to prevent future illness. Did one of those samples leak, or was hazardous waste deposited in a place where it could spread?

COVID-19 ?also could have occurred as a laboratory accident, with, for example, an accidental infection of a laboratory worker,? Ebright, of Rutgers University, told the Post columnist.

Coronaviruses in bats were being studied in Wuhan only at Biosafety Level 2, ?which provides only minimal protection,? Ebright said. Biosafety Level 4 is the highest level of security.

In a December video from the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention lab, staffers are seen ?collecting bat coronaviruses with inadequate [personal protective equipment] and unsafe operational practices,? the Rutgers microbiologist is quoted as saying in the Post.

Cheng noted that COVID-19 is a new strain of coronavirus, and that Chinese researchers likely didn?t anticipate the need for the highest security level.

Tinfoil hat or not, that sounds like plausible alternative to how this got out.

I don't know which is true but I wasn't arguing the science of whether it was a naturally occurring virus... just the origin of the infection.
 
Thanks IHO for posting the article. I thought you were referring to the internet rumor that COVID was an engineered bio weapon.

Your posted scenario certainly falls into the realm of possibility.
 
I sort of believe it could have been leaked from Wuhan lab, not the wet market. Last time I was saying that, eyephone thought I was crazy fake or something ;D. IHO was questioning me also.

Well, we still don't know where it originated. You can believe whatever you want to believe on the origin of this disease. It won't change much of what we can do here at this point anyways. But isn't it odd that they've been eating exotic stuff forever there and now it broke out? I don't know. It's just too simple for me to accept that it just came from the wet market.

However, I don't believe it was an engineered bio weapon either. I hope not.

 
How and where did the SARS-COV outbreak start?
Cases started in Southern China by civet cats. The tests revealed on each civets cage that were tested the SARS coronavirus.
From what I read, China banned wild animal trade and selling and markets. But later relaxed the policy.

FYI: SARS is similar to Covid-19.
 
The Hill Article: Fauci: It's mind-boggling that China's wet markets are still operating during coronavirus pandemic

The Chinese government has allowed some wet markets in the country to reopen as the coronavirus threat has reportedly decreased, but the one in Wuhan remains closed, according to Fox News. The Hunan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan was linked to an early large cluster of coronavirus cases, according to The Washington Post. China?s wet markets sell dead and living animals for human consumption and are known for lack of hygiene and government oversight.

?Bringing wild and exotic animals to open markets to interact with humans and other food supplies is both crazy and dangerous,? Graham tweeted. ?Hope my Republican and Democratic Senate colleagues will sign onto my letter to the Chinese Ambassador to the U.S. urging the immediate closure of these wet markets for the safety of the world at large.?
https://thehill.com/changing-americ...5-fauci-mind-boggling-that-chinas-wet-markets

 
woodburyowner said:
Ready2Downsize said:
so we wouldn't have mandatory distributions when we collect social security which would reduce our social security benefits. C'est la vie. Best laid plans....

I've never heard of this.  I thought it was earned income that would reduce SS benefits.  IRA RMDs should be exempt.  It would boost your income so more of your SS income would be taxed.

IRA/401K distributions are income. You didn't pay income tax on it when you contributed to the IRA so you have to pay when you withdraw it. We had mandatory distributions from my hubby's dad's ira. Been taking money out of it since he died in 2003. If you are subject to mandatory distributions (due to the age of the decedent at his death) and you do not take them, you owe a huge penalty. I think the stimulus package may have made it so you don't have to take RMD's for a while but oh well...?? we withdrew all the inherited money by end of last year. We still have our 401ks/IRAs/403b and sep iras but we won't be subject to mandatory distributions for a few years. If we only had our retirement accounts, we wouldn't be required to take some of the money out.

That income gets counted along with any other income you happen to have when you collect social security. If you have enough (which is not a lot for this area), the government is happy to give you less social security, nice folks that they are and all.
 
If it's research next door, the wet markets can remain open and China won't have so much social disruption trying to close down one of it's long traditions.  Perhaps they should just say it was a virus that got out during research at the Wuhan Bio Lab.  But will that open them up to liability?


In any case, the world is pinning this pandemic on the CCP and their enablers.  It is their fault and I dunno how they will pay the world back.


I calculate about 20 trillion dollars...I'll send you an invoice.
 
I wonder how many would have died if it originated here or one of the first patients was one of our tourist coming bome here?

Given our cavalier nature towards the flu, how many would have died with penumonia-like before we realised something was wrong with the excess 1000s of deaths a week from flu-like and pneumonia from the normal 1000s of dead a week?

Its a good deflection and distraction for everyone blaming China, but we still have States arguing about social distancing and people protesting their right not to.

No disrescpect to the quality of work our healthcare people are doing, this presents as a flu like respiratory issue during flu season.
 
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