This piece is essentially a 'people' article, with a rather defiant 'I've done nothing wrong' message. science.org/content/articl…
As any 'people' piece, it starts with the violins, the story of a 'brave' scientist born out of the post war ashes and northern England post-industrial glum, all pouring out in a falsetto voice.
That should hopefully warm up the readers and predispose them to shed a tear for the description of the martyr of Saint Daszak that soon follows.
So we get the image of the crucifiction thrown in too.
But unfortunately when you start looking at the weakness of Peter's arguments and his staunch defiance when confronted with incredibly stupid decisions and at best abysmal judgement, it certainly looks more like a Monty Python scene than Jesus on the Calvary.
Even Holmes had enough of our character and his slippery ways:
Anyway, thanks for for the effort John, but I would rather return to the original:
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Just stating the obvious that THE FIRST CASE WAS NOT IN DECEMBER exposes the mendicant analysis of that recent piece, which feeds of the scraps of data left by China and then props itself up on odd logical shortcuts.
One could hardly think of a more conflicted sentence than this one for instance:
First, if indeed Mr Chen was infected during his hospital trip on the 8th Dec (as he suspect may be the case), then the whole logic implodes. @MichaelWorobey
It would mean that Jinxia, about 28km away from the market, had community transmission in hospital setting by the 8th.
(by the way our DRASTIC map had these documents and the 16th as likely onset date - and we all made it public ages ago) @sciencecohen
One should add Mark Honigsbaum’s recent article in the Guardian to the list of politically motivated disinformation pieces that abuse the Laos findings:
The opening sets an unfortunate political tone, which is rather trite and totally unnecessary, unless Mark aims to please a political tribe instead of going through a rigorous review:
"Ridley, a Conservative hereditary peer.."
Is Matt now guilty of being born?
Very fancy ideas about hereditary responsibility here for a science writer. The last time this was fashionable it did not work out very well.
Seriously, it's better to abstain from taking cheap political swipes at someone.
There are a lot of fallacies peddled by 'experts' when they tell you that based on an historical argument, the most likely explanation for Covid-19 is a zoonosis and not a research-related accident.
1/ Cargo Cult:
First, it is interesting to note that some of these experts happily follow a kind of cargo cult whereby sampling left and right on an industrial scale and tweaking viruses will get you to eco-health nirvana..
all achieved by bringing science to dark corners of the world, educating local populations, fighting bad local habits and the like. (Wait, did I read that somewhere else?)
And so one can go sample in some caves in these 'wild' places, occasionally with minimal PPEs, and bring..
Due to some unexpected problem with the casting, Daszak was unfortunately not available for the new production.
We will miss his bumbling gruffness and natural sense of comedy, but watch for the new names - plenty of great talents there:
Anyway, it looks like the someone took a leaf from the "Second China-U.S. Workshop on the Challenges of Emerging Infections, Laboratory Safety and Global Health Security" (May 2017)