Not many experts have openly endorsed the lab leak theory of Covid origins.
There are the ‘internet sleuths’ who make up DRASTIC (several of whom remain anonymous). There’s the science writer Nicholas Wade. And there’s Matt Ridley and Alina Chan – co-authors of Viral: The Search for the Origin of COVID-19. (In a recent interview, Ridley told me that both he and Chan now think a lab leak is “more likely”.)
Few others have been willing to come out and say that, yes, the balance of evidence favours a lab leak. This may be because they’re genuinely undecided, or because they hold the opposite view (that the evidence favours a natural spillover).
However, I suspect that many experts are scared of endorsing an idea their colleagues have gone to great lengths to suppress – an idea the Chinese government has called “a lie concocted by anti-China forces”.
Which makes a recent blog post by the biologist Nick Patterson something of a bombshell. Patterson is highly respected for his contributions to mathematical and computational biology. He’s also a polymath.
After obtaining his PhD in mathematics from Cambridge, he worked as code-breaker for GCHQ. He then moved to the hedge fund Renaissance Technologies, where he developed mathematics models for market prediction. And for the last 20 years, he’s been analysing human genetic data at MIT.
In his recent article, Patterson states that “by far the most likely cause of the pandemic was an accidental leak of an engineered virus”. So he not only believes that Covid leaked from a lab, but also that it was engineered beforehand.
According to Patterson, the “smoking gun” is a grant application by EcoHealth Alliance to DARPA (the research agency of the U.S. Department of Defence). “As far as I can make out,” he writes, “the plan here was for WIV to collect live virus, ship it to the USA, have US scientists genetically modify the virus, and then ship modified virus … back to China”.
Although the grant application was rejected, Patterson notes, “a dirty not-so-secret is that often a good slice of work proposed in a grant application has in fact already been done and for sure when a grant is rejected the scientists involved consider how they can proceed anyway”.
Patterson clarifies that he’s not claiming “the proposed research was directed towards biowarfare”, only that it had the effect of enhancing viral pathogenicity.
Will other experts now speak up? We’ll have to see. In the meantime, Patterson’s article is worth reading in full.
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So let me get this right: it’s OK to blow the enemy into small pieces with a tank.
But it has to be done in an environmentally friendly, net-zero way.
Tanks have always been prone to brewing up when hit. Seems to me, given the experience with EVs that risk is multiplied by around 10, possibly even given a hit from a modest hand held weapon.
It’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve seen today, in a crowded field.
Oh yes, and how many of us have any faith at all in the competence and freedom from corruption of MoD procurement?
Hmm thought not.
Are the latest high explosive tank shells environmentally friendly? I’d hate to think my country was polluting the environment (while killing people)
Armour piercing shells more often use depleted Uranium (DU) whose density is such that the shell has nearly 70% more kinetic energy than a lead projectile of same size. From Wikipedia “The actual level of acute and chronic toxicity of DU is also controversial. Several studies using cultured cells and laboratory rodents suggest the possibility of leukemogenic, genetic, reproductive, and neurological effects from chronic exposure. According to an article in Al Jazeera, DU from American artillery is suspected to be one of the major causes of an increase in the general mortality rate in Iraq since 1991. A 2005 epidemiology review concluded “In aggregate the human epidemiological evidence is consistent with increased risk of birth defects in offspring of persons exposed to DU.”
An electric tank is a superb idea
Better reliability
Easy maintenance
Quick replenishment – slide battery pack out, slide new one in….and away.
Simpler, less vulnerable logistics
Survivability via system redundancy, several separate electric motors.
Lower heat signature
Improved mobility, acceleration
Deep fording capability
Only one problem – sufficiently reliable, quick charging and reasonably light battery technology does not yet exist.
But, apart from that, quite brilliant.
Or not really………
Or you could fit them with solar panels and make them self sufficient solar powered, you would just have to re-negotiate the rules of war, compulsory ceasefire on dull gloomy days.
And compulsory ceasefire on most sunny days, too.
Nah, big windmills on the roof. A devil to hide in a ditch though.
Paint them camo green!
Just ask the enemy to wait for a day or two until the sun comes out!
They could put a windmill on the top for when the sun isn’t shining.
They could play football while they’re waiting for the tanks to charge up!
And a windmill on top to take over on gloomy days.
You almost had me there, Monro
But seriously, yes, if the weight and charging issues could be solved (I don’t believe they ever will be) an electric tank would be an improvement. A big improvement.
I am waiting for the best mix of CVT and traditional gearbox (with ICE powerplant, obviously). It’s entering exhaustive user acceptance testing.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mWJHI7UHuys
One small additional problem – er, ammunition? Tanks need ammo, if they’re going to be effective, and the only carbon-friendly ammunition I’m familiar with are arrows or the rocks that terrorist are said to be fond of deploying in close combat roles in battle. But they’re not very effective against conventional carbon-belching enemy tanks. But that’s just me being picky.
Get real, you idiots.
You could fire the depleted batteries at the enemy and this would reduce your own catastrophic fire risk when you did run out of power.
Thanks for that link – interesting! What would we do without engineers? All we need to do is let them get on with solving actual problems that need solving.
You’ve hit the point right there… ‘actual problems’ vs stupid and pointless made up virtue signalling one’s that don’t actually make FA difference (apart from getting some senior bod a gold star from the people that run the world)
wonder how many EV chargers there are across the desert or in the mountain ranges
And in a war situation, where would the battery packs be recharged,
Solar? Wind? Wind seems to be the most likely given the average squaddies propensity for gaseous discharge after a week on compo rations. ‘Nah then, nah then! Line up, drop your keks and fart into this little tube to recharge the battery things’. It could work.
Will charging stations be installed on battle-fields?
Most of that is a good idea – bolt a generator to bloody big diesel and perhaps a small battery, and it could work well, with no recharging – a hybrid tank! The weight issue tends not to be such a problem with a 70 ton tank already…
What next, solar powered hand grenades and vegan bullets?
“Sarge, we need an extension lead. ”
FFS!
“[electric tanks would reduce] the supply chain vulnerability of liquid fuel”
Nonsense. The National Grid is far more fragile and vulnerable to attack than lots of self contained fuel tanks distributed over multiple bases.
One of the many beauties of liquid “fossil” fuel is that you only need a plastic or metal bottle to store it safely and for the long term, in as large or small a quantity as you wish, wherever you wish, and you can move it at a moment’s notice.
That’s the end of western defence.
An EV tank with a big battery is going to ‘cook off’ quite spectacularly.
saving the planet one genocide at a time
Hit one electric vehicle and take out the whole base! Perfect
So let me get this right, the Government is buying electric tanks which are used in battle fields wherby one set of people try to kill and destroy the people of another territory, country, using bombs, artillery, missiles and nuclear devices, all of which cause death, destruction, pollution and lots and lots of nasty gasses and chemicals into the atmosphere intended to cause death. BUT meanwhile they are helping to save the planet by one less litre of diesel at a time.
God give me strength these people are beyond stupid!
No doubt the same set of morons who believe preventing farts will clean up the planet, can I suggest the Government issues itself, its advisors and all civil servants with corks or butt plugs as it appears the amount of hot air issued from their backsides beats anything the worlds cow population can produce.
To these people, tanks are just government owned and staffed vehicles driving around in Britain. This means they obviously suggest themselves as further vehicles for turning Britain into a clean energy soup power and – that’s the important bit – the guys who want to sell the EVs pay the MPs supposed to implement this plan.
Nothing of this is anyhow for real. It’s just about pour £££ down drain for as long as we physically can.
The money for this comedy is not being poured down the drain it is being directed upwards and ultimately in to the pockets of people like Finky at Blackrock. This activity is all about draining taxpayers pockets. Immiseration in other words. All part of the plan.
I doubt that there’s much of a plan behind this beyond abusing our optimzied-for-corruption so-called representative democracy to fleece taxpayers as hard as they can be fleeced.
Reward the wrong things and you get these crazy behaviours…
Sod disadvantage; how about getting us killed. Dead, off the twig! Kicking the bucket, shuffling off ‘is mortal coil, running down the curtain and joining the bleedin’ choir invisible!
I say us, although I haven’t been in since 1987. MOD were shit then but not as bad as this. Scum!
We are performing seals for China.
I think you have all nailed this mental bollocks but I need to vent & if I get blocked it’s worth the risk ! Soz Tobes!! – this is possibly the most insane rubbish ever
This must come under the scope of TREASON to deliberately cripple your armed forces ability to defend the nation.
Not just loons but EVIL loons.
Much more sensible to put a wind turbine on top of the gun turret. That way soldiers and other tanks would know exactly where they were. The enemy……..oh.
The race to the bottom is battery powered.
The UK will only fight against low carbon enemy’s. —-We are governed by imbeciles that have lost the plot entirely and think the only thing that is important in the whole world emissions, while most of the rest of the world could not give a shit about that.
Pathetic!
Let me see, a tank is heavy, has tracks, and needs to travel 200 miles in a day at 50 MPH. 500 litres of diesel should do that OK. That is about 2 MWhrs of energy. A battery (lithium of course) to store this would weigh about 20 tons, which would need another 1MWhr to move it with the tank, so would have to weigh 30 tons, etc. Does this sound completely impossible to you, because it does to me! Oh and you would need 750 litres of diesel in the generator to charge it up at the destination. So green…. and the crew would not be happy sitting very close to that bomb either.
Excellent approach The Real Engineer. I see too few using numbers to define real performance before coming out with unsupported nonsense. Our main battle tank,a Challenger 2, looks even worse. Weighing in at 65-75 tonnes and carries 1590 litres of diesel to travel a mere 160 miles off-road. Thats about 7.1MWh.developed by the V12 diesel for a fuel load of 1.3 tonnes.
To match that energy capacity would need around 80 Tesla Model X batteries ( capacity 90kWh and 535kg) weighing an extra 43 tonnes. The tracks which already occupy 37 % of the width of the vehicle would need to be nearly 60% wider again to maintain a ground pressure that avoids the tank sinking in soft ground. The tank cannot be made much wider so the small volume available for the batteries is almost eliminated. Oh, and the range is reduced by about 45-50 miles.
As to “….they added: “Never say never.”” I think ” never ever” is more likely.
British General, pointing at a map: “The enemy is vulnerable here. There’s a small window of opportunity. We need the tanks to quickly push an advance at X point. Give the Orders …. Advance NOW.”
Batman. “Yes Sir. We’re just charging them up; it’ll take about 10 hours to get them all done.”
This is hilarious. Or it would be, if this was the subject of a satirical film. Instead, it is a reminder of just how insane the previous conservative, and current Labour governments are.