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Why the Wuhan lab leak theory shouldn't be dismissed

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Re: Why the Wuhan lab leak theory shouldn't be dismissed

#461

Post by Graffur »

Science, like journalism, is supposed to be about facts and about getting to the truth.

No source of covid-19 has been found.

Similar lab leaks happen frequently.

BUT.. you're not allowed to discuss it with the undertones that you're a bad person. If you say china virus you could be accused of being a racist. But if you say South African or British variant it's okay. The mental acrobats are insane. If you suggest people aren't thinking critically about it you will be accused of flamebaiting or trolling. If you call out people who are trying to silence your comments you'll be accused of "making boring reading".

I think it should be discussed, debated and seriously considered. There is a suggestion in here to assume both the animal farm and the lab were the cause and to respond appropriately. With lack of further evidence I think this is the best idea.

Re: Why the Wuhan lab leak theory shouldn't be dismissed

#462

Post by tripletao »

jounker wrote: post #432
gregwebs wrote: post #397

This is a great article explaining why a lab leak should always be a suspect. The alternative theory is that a virus traveled on its own (via bats or other animals) from bat caves 900km away to Wuhan where there are 2 labs researching bats. One of the labs is lesser known but is right next to the seafood market and the hospital where the outbreak was first known. [1] This article points out that a lab outbreak could…

It’s quite possible that it’s a pangolin virus. Guess what trafficked in Chinese wet markets?

Pangolins were an early suspect, but Alina Chan discovered that the multiple pangolin papers were all from the same batch of smuggled pangolins. This makes it much more likely that the pangolins were infected by something else, in the same way that housecats get infected by their human owners.

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.07.184374v1....

Because of this, Nature has placed an editor's note on their pangolin paper:

> 11 November 2020 Editor's Note: Readers are alerted that concerns have been raised about the identity of the pangolin samples reported in this paper and their relationship to previously published pangolin samples. Appropriate editorial action will be taken once this matter is resolved.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2313-x

No one is seriously proposing pangolins anymore, not even Daszak and the Chinese. The proximal host for MERS (camels) was identified in a little over a year, and for the original SARS (palm civets) in a little less. For SARS-CoV-2, despite the much greater effort, we're still waiting.

Re: Why the Wuhan lab leak theory shouldn't be dismissed

#463

Post by xrd »

If there are "so many dangerous terrorists" worthy of trillions of dollars of military spending to protect me (I'm in the US, but all governments invoke terrorism as justification), why aren't those terrorists utilizing viral weapons like this person describes? Is there something that could stop this kind of threat, if it is as real as described?

Re: Why the Wuhan lab leak theory shouldn't be dismissed

#464

Post by kevbin »

> We need to avoid demonizing China over this if we want to ever find out the truth and learn how to prevent another pandemic outbreak.

No, we need to shame China and the Chinese people until they respect basic human dignity. Until they do, the country and its people are a dangerous, malignant threat to our civilized, Western world.

Re: Why the Wuhan lab leak theory shouldn't be dismissed

#465

Post by miemo23 »

watertom wrote: post #452

A lot of smart people in this forum. Someone please explain to me how the Chinese were able to identify that that had a new virus. I’ve done pandemic drills with homeland security. They said they way you know you’ve got a new virus floating around is either new symptoms; significantly more “flu like” cases; significantly more cases escalating to pneumonia; increased deaths. Covid presents like the flu, so much so you…

but there was a spike in pneumonia related cases... didn't a doctor sound the alarm on this (and was reprimanded for it)

Re: Why the Wuhan lab leak theory shouldn't be dismissed

#466

Post by duxup »

airhead969 wrote: post #419
duxup wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not everything reported has to be a proven fact. Theories, ideas, there's room for all sorts of things in life that aren't certain.

Conspiracy theories aren't helpful.

Outside noteworthy scummy politicians and a few partisan media outlets. I really haven't seen much in the way of MSM doing that.

Re: Why the Wuhan lab leak theory shouldn't be dismissed

#467

Post by dang »

btilly wrote: post #210
temp8964 wrote: post #140

Wow. Why every comment questioned your argument is downvoted or even dead? > is-ought 34 minutes ago [dead] [–] > Can you link to something that proves this is the criteria used for lab placement? How is this even dead? It's only asking for a reference.

Clearly there are a bunch of people voting down anything that is too critical of China. WHY there are a bunch of people voting that down I leave to others to speculate. But I'm going to vote up any verifiable factual statements that have been voted down.

HN has plenty of people who feel strongly on both sides of this issue. In my experience there are many more on your side than the other (probably by an order of magnitude)—certainly the number of times I've had to moderate comments breaking the site guidelines on China-related topics is over 10x lopsided, and no we're not looking to moderate one side more than the other. (Just the unpleasantness of being accused of ugly prejudice from every conceivable angle is enough to make one scrupulous to the point of paranoia about this.)

Each side is utterly convinced that the other side dominates the site and is sinisterly manipulating/astroturfing the community. None of these feelings is based on any reality that I've ever been able to observe. It's all imagination driven by emotion. When it comes to this topic, the main impression I gets from trying to keep this place in some semblance of guidelines-respecting order is one of mass-psychological, tribally motivated insanity.

Re: Why the Wuhan lab leak theory shouldn't be dismissed

#468

Post by strogonoff »

gregwebs wrote: post #397

This is a great article explaining why a lab leak should always be a suspect. The alternative theory is that a virus traveled on its own (via bats or other animals) from bat caves 900km away to Wuhan where there are 2 labs researching bats. One of the labs is lesser known but is right next to the seafood market and the hospital where the outbreak was first known. [1] This article points out that a lab outbreak could…

An eerily prescient quote from a paper[0] published in 2015, two of the authors of which are with Wuhan Institute of Virology:

> Understanding the bat origin of human coronaviruses is helpful for the prediction and prevention of another pandemic emergence in the future.

China has clearly contributed valuable research into bat coronaviruses. They had all the motivation to look into these after the first deadly SARS. I think it’s silly to presume CCP engineered a virus as part of some warfare strategy, or even to vilify/sanction them for a lab leak if it indeed was the cause (mistakes happen). However, CCP’s resistance to a proper thorough study of the origins of COVID is IMO not exactly appropriate.

Active research was taking place in the vicinity of suspected ground zero. Lab escapes happen—there are well-documented cases of the original SARS virus leaking from a lab in Beijing in 2004 (killing at least one person). Why was this time such a scenario discarded as so ridiculously impossible at first, and is still considered “extremely unlikely”? Is it politics?

[0] https://virologyj.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12985-...

Re: Why the Wuhan lab leak theory shouldn't be dismissed

#469

Post by hfjfktkrkf »

watertom wrote: post #452

A lot of smart people in this forum. Someone please explain to me how the Chinese were able to identify that that had a new virus. I’ve done pandemic drills with homeland security. They said they way you know you’ve got a new virus floating around is either new symptoms; significantly more “flu like” cases; significantly more cases escalating to pneumonia; increased deaths. Covid presents like the flu, so much so you…

From what I've read when you have pneumonia you receive antibiotics. If that doesn't work, they test a lung wash sample against the usual bacterias/viruses. If that doesn't match anything, it's called unexplained pneumonia, and that gets escalated and the sample is sent to top labs for sequencing. When they did this, they got a 90% match to SARS and raised the alarm.

Re: Why the Wuhan lab leak theory shouldn't be dismissed

#470

Post by dang »

temp8964 wrote: post #140

Wow. Why every comment questioned your argument is downvoted or even dead? > is-ought 34 minutes ago [dead] [–] > Can you link to something that proves this is the criteria used for lab placement? How is this even dead? It's only asking for a reference.

That comment was killed by software, similarly to how comments by banned accounts are killed. It was later vouched for by other users, which unkilled it.

Please don't take HN threads on these lame meta tangents. They never go anywhere interesting, and people invariably just imagine scenarios that confirm whatever they already believe and get even more upset about it.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26544490.

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