Hi everyone. Today’s post is a melange, with a bit of this and a bit of that. There’s an article from The Washington Post on a new piece of the jigsaw puzzle that gives us a better understanding of how life began, plus links to two opposing articles on the origin of COVID-19, a short video by Dr. Dan McClellan on why Moses and the Exodus are probably not historical, and an interview with Dr. Amy-Jill Levine, who is Rabbi Stanley M. Kessler Distinguished Professor of New Testament and Jewish Studies at Hartford International University for Religion and Peace, on about we can know about Jesus. Enjoy, and please feel free to comment as you wish.
1. The origin of life
In an article in The Washington Post titled, How did life on Earth begin? The chemical puzzle just became clearer (Feb. 29, 2024), Kasha Patel updates her readers on the latest discovery throwing light on the conundrum that we call the origin-of-life problem. Here’s a brief excerpt:
The new lab experiment focused on the origins of another primary metabolite: coenzyme A, which sits at the heart of metabolism across all domains of life (as one of its many functions)…
Specifically, Powner and his team were looking to re-create a particular fragment of the coenzyme A molecule called pantetheine. Pantetheine is the functional arm of coenzyme A, often getting transferred and enabling other chemical reactions in our body to occur…
The team chalked up its success compared with failed studies by others to the use of nitrogen-based compounds called nitriles. These compounds provided much-needed energy to spur the reactions. Without the nitriles, it’s like having a lawn mower but no gas to get it moving…
“This is another beautiful example of how the molecules of life, even more complex ones like coenzymes, are predisposed to form,” said chemist Joseph Moran, who was not involved in the study.
2. The origin of COVID-19
In a recent article in The Wall Street Journal titled, Where did Covid come from? (Feb. 28, 2024), Nicholas Wade makes the case for the view that the COVID-19 virus was deliberately cooked up in a laboratory. As he puts it:
In the four years since the SARS-CoV-2 virus was unleashed on the world, data have steadily accumulated supporting the hypothesis that it emerged from a laboratory. The latest information, released last month, makes a formidable case that the virus is the product of laboratory synthesis, not of nature.
However, there are two sides to any story, and I thought it only fair to balance Mr. Wade’s article with a post over on The Sandwalk by biochemist Dr. Larry Moran, titled, The case for a natural origin of SARS-CoV-2. I’ll let readers draw their own conclusions.
3. The data don’t support the historicity of Jesus
In a three-minute video, Dr. Dan McClellan, a scholar of the Bible and religion, explains why most scholars don’t believe in the historicity of Moses or the Exodus, and believe that the story of the Exodus most likely sprang up between the eighth and sixth centuries BCE.
4. Jesus The Misunderstood Jew
In a fascinating and wide-ranging interview with Dr. Jacob Berman on History Valley, Dr. Amy-Jill Levine answers your questions on what we can know about Jesus and discusses her best-selling book, The Misunderstood Jew.
What do readers think? By the way, my next post will feature a video from a Youtube channel called Mindshift. Stay tuned!
1. What is Covid-19?
Since we have world experts here on this forum, can they define what covid-19 is?
I know you can’t, VJ, because you are not a clinician…
But we have SJ Swamidass and DNA_Joke who used suggest he was medical doctor…
Let the show begin!
BTW: I am being serious here.
Those who have never faced the dead virus called SARS CoV-2 and still believe it be infections via this forum, they should discontinue as soon as possible, phone conversation including.
Peace
Moran is one of my heroes, but that article is from 2021.
The animals required for a natural origin and transmission to humans did not exist at the Wuhan market.
There are animals that can be infected with covid but not capable of transmitting to humans.
The conclusion I’m sticking with is the same as that expressed by Laurence Livermore labs. The issue is unsettled, but leans toward lab leak.
Hi J-Mac,
OK, I’ll bite. Are you saying you don’t think SARS-CoV-2 is currently infectious, or are you saying you believe it never was?
Hi petrushka,
I was aware that Dr. Moran’s article was three years old when I posted it. However, I thought it made some general points that were (and still are) quite powerful, and as a cumulative case, it is not easy to answer. But then again, as J-Mac correctly pointed out, I’m not a clinician. so what would I know?
I wonder what J-Mac’s qualifications are to be discussing covid. I also wonder if he means either or both that, as vjt asks, covid is not actually infectious and never was.
Any response, J-Mac?
I have no problems with Moran’s powers of reason.
I have some questions about the facts that were available to him.
These are not rhetorical questions. I do not know or assume the answers.
I do think that if my questions have no basis, that the government laboratory tasked with determining the origin of new pathogens would not, even tentatively, suggest that the lab leak is probable.
Hi everyone,
FWIW, Wikipedia has an article titled, COVID-19 lab leak theory, which refutes some of Nicholas Wade’s arguments (which he has been putting forward for the past few years).
And here’s an article with an opposing viewpoint by James B. Meigs in Commentary magazine, titled, Retconning the Lab-Leak Lies.
And here’s a Webpage published by U.S. Right to Know, titled, Key articles on the origins of Covid-19, with lots of good links for those wanting to pursue the matter. Cheers.
Thanks, vj, that’s a long list of links. I’ve read several of them, and there seems to be three possibilities:
1) The virus originated in the wet market, and was an entirely natural jumping process from something (bats? raccoon dogs? pangolins?) to humans.
2) The virus was captured in nature and taken to the Wuhan lab, either deliberately or inadvertently, and from there escaped into the public.
3) The virus was originally something quite different, and the variation that became a pandemic was altered/engineered by the lab to be more dangerous for some reason. After which it was either accidentally or deliberately released.
As far as I can tell from these many articles, it’s likely we may never know exactly how the virus came to be, or where it did so. Today we are immersed in an epidemic of political blaming and finger pointing, with suggestions that everyone involved, from politicians to scientists to journalists to bloggers, is involved in covering up the truth, just in case it turns out to be their tribe that was responsible.
However, there seems to be no question that something answering to the description of a particular coronavirus, whatever name we might attach to it, has been highly infectious and quite deadly. There also seems to be no question that the vaccines, once developed and distributed, were highly effective in slowing the spread and boosting immune responses. Finally there seems no question that the effectiveness of the vaccines has diminished not for immunological but rather for political reasons, as the far right and the conspiracy folks (with Trump’s help) got hold of the narrative and the vaccination rate dropped to nearly nothing. So the virus continues to mutate, and be given new version designations, and both hospitalizations and deaths are back on the rise.
The current lab theory is the virus was engineered at UNC to be a bat vaccine. At this stage it was a completely safe vaccine. This work was financed by a DARPA grant.
The vaccine grant was terminated because it is impractical to vaccine whole colonies of bats. I think this part of the story is true.
Stage two: the vaccine development moves to Montana, where it is morphed into a self spreading bat vaccine. Perhaps far fetched, but the Sabin polio vaccine is contagious. It has mostly been discontinued, because it can mutate into a virulent form.
Stage three: research moves to China, because there is only one person who has successfully raised the target bats in captivity.
Stage four: a lab worker is bitten, or some similar accident occurs.
Stage five. The virus becomes transmissible days before symptoms appear.
Stage six. The first cases are not seen as an unmanageable crisis.
This is making the rounds. I do not present it as fact, but I will point out that Reuters and the LondonTimes are taking the lab accident scenario seriously, and neither are right wing tabloids.
There are some points of interest in this story.
When covid was first revealed, China said it was developed in the United States.
In the scenario making the rounds, no one in China participates in any way to the development of the doomed vaccine. Their role is limited to testing a “finished” product.
No one has any evil intentions.
Here’s a photo of graves being dug in Brazil for victims of this non-infectious virus.
Here are more covid graves being prepared. Brazil was hit hard:
That is not how I remember it. What I remember is that you for some unfathomable reason had got it in your head that Jock and I were clinicians and that me and thereafter Jock both corrected you. I don’t recall Jock ever claiming he was an MD.
But seriously, do you think your qualifications would matter to J-Mac regardless of what they were?
Oh yes, the guy is obsessed by them. That’s why he keeps going on and on about clinicians. He even claimed to have “clinical experience” himself at some point.
But you probably meant whether my qualifications would help convince him, rather than just annoy him. No, clearly not. J-Mac seems to have descended into some alternative reality where nobody can reach him.
Yes. I can read. Do you have the same qualification?
Are you?
This is a prefect opportunity for clearing it. Are you an MD Jock_DNA? If not, what is your status? What is, or was your, work capacity, before you retired? Our Dutch friend who “saw the novel virus” coming would like to know..
Were you involved in any of the great pandemic of covid-19 planning in any way?
If yes, other than getting jabbed with gene therapies against the not so new virus, let us know. Loll
I know there was nothing more infectious what I is called the flu. If you would like proof of this, I have it. Why don’t you explain how dead particles called viruses kill?
Viruses are stil dead in Japan, aren’t they?
Your response makes this claim doubtful, since it fails to address something that would have to be read.
No. And I have never implied that I was. We have explained this to you on a number of occasions, but you appear impervious. (That’s Factor VIII with a Furin cleavage site [!!] engineered in, BTW).
I have a Ph.D. in Molecular Biology; I worked as a non-clinical medical researcher and now I work as a consultant.
As I mentioned on this site, I was paid to build a COVID epidemiology forecast for a company that was developing COVID treatments; but don’t you worry about my independence — I get paid the same whether COVID is real or not. 😉
Almost all of my work in the last three years has been in oncology.
Still not a gene therapy, silly. I built that Factor VIII gene for a gene therapy trial. Stay out of my lane.
But it is long overdue for you to return the favor. I think your wife is a radiography technician but, based on what you write here, I suspect you work in food services at the hospital. Tell me otherwise:
What qualifications do you have, academic and professional. Please be very specific.What do you get paid to do? And no, “discovering a metabolic pathway that is responsible for most cancers” is not a credible answer.
ETA: sorry, that should be “…a metabolic pathway responsible for the disorders prevalent in millions of people…” which is even better.
DNA_Jock,
I’m not sure what to say …
You don’t seem like a stupid guy …but I have always suspected you had no clinical experience even though you have made it seem that …
You got paid to build a Covid epidemiology forecast??? Good for you! Based on what evidence? It must have been the very one case out of Wuhan, right? It had to be or you wouldn’t get paid, right? Any other evidence coming out of say …Italy, where the supposed deadly novel virus was circulating way before 2019 would have meant what, DNA_jock???
J-Mac,
It’s your turn.
What qualifications do you have, academic and professional, from what institutions?. Please be very specific. What is you full-time job?