The original grant was to the EcoHealth Alliance, which then subcontracted the Wuhan institute to collect wild samples from bats. In other words, the whole point of the research was to try and catalogue viruses that existed in the wild with pandemic potential.

It’s not coincidence that lab samples there or in other facilities exist that are close in sequence to viruses later identified in humans. That was, in fact, the goddamn point of surveying bat coronaviruses: to identify those with spillover potential. And it’s absolutely possible one of these collected samples was mishandled and leaked from the lab. After all, lab leaked viral outbreaks happen almost every other year, and there were already safety concerns at this particular site published long before the pandemic.

But what you and every other mouthbreathing idiot is trying to say is that Fauci, a director of the NIAID at the time, personally directed gain of function research to engineer new viruses to infect humans and then that virus escaped. Which, speaking as a molecular biologist myself, is laughably backwards.

No self-respecting scientist concluded that either a natural origin or a lab leak were the definitive cause of the pandemic. This is clear if you actually read scientific literature. It’s why phrases akin to “the most supported hypothesis is X” or “the Y theory is unlikely without more supporting evidence” are used. Both hypotheses were and are still possible explanations.

It’s people who get their scientific info from sources like the Telegraph that keep jumping to conclusions. Or people who don’t understand what a section leader at the NIH does, how research grants work, or what gain of function research is. You know, like yourself.

It’s a red flag when I’m making new friends too.

It just screams “I don’t read up on any viewpoints presented to me”

Just a very small correction- as with all biology, natural selection will drive a virus to replicate more effectively, that’s it. This does NOT mean a virus will automatically become less lethal over time. That’s an older hypothesis that scientists found was not in line with observation.

The newer hypothesis is known as “virulence-transmission trade-off”. The oversimplification of the idea is that if a mutation increases both transmission and virulence, it will also tend to be selected for. COVID is inconsistent with both hypotheses in certain ways though, so really predicting its virulence in the short or long term has proven difficult. Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10066022/

Can we take a moment to appreciate the very real possibility that the Soviet space program of the 50s would have been able to land a lunar probe better than the current Russian program?

(Obligatory /s, space is hard and shit goes wrong sometimes)

The admin note there was pretty hilarious.

“We’re being censored because big instances defederated from us!” Bitch you can still scream your shit into whatever instances that still want to share the cesspool with you.

This is the real world equivalent of shouting into a megaphone outside a bar and claiming censorship when they close their doors to shut out the noise.

This is an obvious exaggeration, but I can’t help but feel like we’re witnessing a death match between American democracy and the Republican Party.

So I have something of an unhealthy obsession with finding out just how dumb this guy is. I don’t know why.

I’ve pirated a couple of his books and found he appeals to a very specific type of person- that being, the person who wants to appeal to science without understanding a single thing about it. He cites HUNDREDS of reputable sources, and sprinkles in his own bullshit website to give the appearance of legitimacy by proximity to real scientists. But even funnier than that, it’s clear he only ever reads the headline of the studies and never goes past that. Without fail, he’ll just straight up make up fantasies about what the study actually is and what the researchers think. Hilarious, if so many people didn’t buy into it.

3 hour deep dive of book screenshots and debunking coming soon to a YouTube channel with single digit subscribers near you

Don’t forget making a dating profile where I took six pictures in different corners of my house wearing the same outfit.

Every time I see a picture of him I think it has to be edited or something. He’s like a walking Snapchat filter.

Copium should be a controlled substance

One point to keep in mind is that drama also brings engagement IN, not just out. When the drama subsides, the temporary boost in activity from new users or lurkers will go down too.

That being said, the percent decrease was always gonna be in the single digits. The average redditor was never gonna stick with a prolonged protest of a service that remains free to use.