Why the Wuhan lab leak theory shouldn't be dismissed • Hacker News Board

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

#541

Post by dillondoyle » Mon, Mar 22, 2021, 11:50 PM UTC

nickt wrote: post #528

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 probably important to point out that a “lab leak” is a result of human-clumsiness or similar, and not the sci-fi movie bad guys engineering a virus. A lot of the non-HN crowd don’t get the difference.

I get what you're saying, but it seems slightly more nuanced. From my understanding WIV did do gain of function research. e.g. purposefully make virus' more deadly or infectious to study them.

Definitely not a super villain at least I hope/highly doubt the intention was a weapon (you could surely create a better weapon?).

I'm not judging the value of that research, it does sound valuable but maybe not more so than the (small?) risk of an accident.

There is also reporting WIV was doing top secret research for CCP military.

So bad guys depends on your worldview.

https://www.newsweek.com/controversial-wuhan-lab-experiments...

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/03/08/josh-rogin...

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

#542

Post by docmars » Mon, Mar 22, 2021, 11:51 PM UTC

ckardat123 wrote: post #495

Graffur wrote: post #461

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 peo…

I would think that the reason that people calling COVID the "China virus" are accused of racism is that there is really no reason to use that term for the virus outside of trying to offend others.

I think that's a pretty loose assumption that _all people_ are using it with ill intent.

Anything can be said or used with ill intent, because intent matters and is separate from actual language. That's why we have tone in speaking and writing to help distinguish this. Our nonverbal cues say a lot more than the words themselves.

A rise in violence against Spaniards cannot sloppily be attributed to the use of "Spanish Flu" to describe a virus that some believed to either come from Spain, or affected Spain the worst.

It's morbidly irresponsible to assume negative intent when people are trying to name and classify a virus based on its best known origins, and attribute "racism" towards a people group of that same origin as being caused by the naming of a virus.

This is a fine example of: correlation does not imply causation.

A person who cannot separate the two concepts cleanly is the person who needs deep understanding for why they are wrong, especially when there is no credible data to support that assumption.

The media outlets reporting hate crimes caused by the naming of a virus are, in effect, assuming that all or most Americans are too stupid to act reasonably and understand these two very different concepts, so they declare the correlation however they see fit and expect their viewers to latch on and make the same poor and irresponsible assumptions blindly.

We are so much smarter than this. Pay close attention to the way journalists mold and shape the narrative based on assumptions and opinions to get you to believe their take. Also pay attention to the fact that CNN and others called this virus "the Chinese virus" well before our 45th President used the phrasing.

How does a media outlet get to blame behavior they created without first examining themselves?

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

#543

Post by refenestrator » Mon, Mar 22, 2021, 11:53 PM UTC

m0llusk wrote: post #483

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…

You should look up some of the leaked videos on the Internet. There was in fact a huge spike in cases early on and people were dropping dead in the street. That was the freak out that led to the Communist Party not being able to keep a lid on the whole mess. It wasn't just sick people showing up in hospitals in huge numbers, it was dead bodies lying in the streets. The thing is that whether this came from a lab or no…

People anthropomorphize the CCP far too much. It's 100 million people.

What happened politically should be straightforward to anyone who's worked in a corporation: Wuhan mayor and Hubei governor tried to keep a lid on it, counterproductively, so their reports upstairs wouldn't look bad. They couldn't, higher authorities noticed, blew up the visibility on it, instituted nationwide programs to counter it, and fired the afore-mentioned mayor and governor.

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

#544

Post by chc » Mon, Mar 22, 2021, 11:54 PM UTC

snicksnak wrote: post #503

ckardat123 wrote: post #495

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would think that the reason that people calling COVID the "China virus" are accused of racism is that there is really no reason to use that term for the virus outside of trying to offend others.

Can we call it the chinese variant then? Because we do that with the new mutations: the brazilian variant, british variant, south african variant

I don't have a position on what to call it myself, but I don't see any reason why someone would be insistent on finding some way to call it "Chinese" unless they were attempting to cast blame in a way that "Brazilian variant," "British variant," etc. do not. If most authorities are not already calling it the "Chinese variant," I don't see why you'd call it that. If they are, then obviously you can call it that.

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

#545

Post by foxhop » Mon, Mar 22, 2021, 11:54 PM UTC

m0llusk wrote: post #483

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…

You should look up some of the leaked videos on the Internet. There was in fact a huge spike in cases early on and people were dropping dead in the street. That was the freak out that led to the Communist Party not being able to keep a lid on the whole mess. It wasn't just sick people showing up in hospitals in huge numbers, it was dead bodies lying in the streets. The thing is that whether this came from a lab or no…

It matters a real lot if it came from a lab.

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

#546

Post by ping_pong » Mon, Mar 22, 2021, 11:54 PM UTC

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…

This isn't correct. It wasn't just looked upon like the flu.

In December there were reports of an uptick of people dying of pneumonia. When they did CT scans, they saw that their lungs had glassy nodules which was not normal. This was the way that they identified something new was spreading.

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

#547

Post by SpicyLemonZest » Mon, Mar 22, 2021, 11:55 PM UTC

chc wrote: post #443

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see how any conversation could work under the standard you're proposing. The original comment was based on a wild assertion about the geographical placement of virology labs; no argument or evidence was offered, and it's not clear to me that there's any real trend it's referring to. If it's unreasonable to ask for a more detailed explanation of the assertion or specific evidence in favor of the assertion, how…

You're in a thread that was kicked off with unsourced statements about virology and epidemiology, but suddenly we have an urgent need for sources — actually, not just sources , because the demand was for proof — when we encounter the idea "Labs don't occur by chance in random locations around the globe"? I would say you're supposed to engage the same way everyone had been engaging with the entire thread up to that po…

I just don't think that "suddenly" or "urgent" or "demand" are reasonable characterizations of anyone's comments here. It's a discussion, and challenging claims you don't agree with is a routine part of any discussion.

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

#548

Post by dillondoyle » Mon, Mar 22, 2021, 11:56 PM UTC

lamontcg wrote: post #289

woodruffw wrote: post #158

My understanding of the author's central thesis is this: the US, despite its world-class virology and disease study labs, regularly has lapses in procedure that regularly lead to situations in which the public might be exposed. Given that this is happening in our own backyard, we might reasonably expect countries of similar status (like China) to experience similar lapses. That reads as reasonable to me, but raises a…

The biggest difference between all of those and this virus is that those were leaks of already-known viruses. SARS-CoV-2 wasn't known to exist before 2019 and there's no known precursor virus. There's a somewhat closely related virus that infected the miners in Yunnan but it was only 96% similar. There's nothing at all in this article on how SARS-CoV-2 was discovered or created. The problem I have is that China isn't…

CCP would also not release serology from blood banks and other blood from before dec which from what I understand would be a gold mine showing earlier spread.

Which wouldn't that be in China's interest?

I don't get why the 'cover up' (maybe i'm too biased with that term, utter lack of cooperation) beyond just the top down controlling nature of the CCP.

Their actions don't lend us any trust so we do have to ask why..

https://www.wsj.com/articles/possible-early-covid-19-cases-i...

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

#549

Post by ping_pong » Mon, Mar 22, 2021, 11:56 PM UTC

aeturnum wrote: post #514

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…

> Early on there was not a spike in cases, so that would not have sparked an interest. My understanding on this was that doctors local to Wuhan noticed a surprising and sudden uptick in pneumonia that did not respond to antibiotics. The Chinese government managed this badly[1]. Your timeline doesn't reflect how things happened at the time - there was a "slowly" (over two months?) growing problem in Wuhan that locals…

Pneumonia is both bacterial and viral. It wouldn't be surprising if it didn't respond to antibiotics. It was the CT scans of the lungs that showed glassy nodules that was the new symptoms.

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

#550

Post by wnoise » Mon, Mar 22, 2021, 11:56 PM UTC

soperj wrote: post #212

crx07 wrote: post #21

This has honestly been my unbiased opinion since essentially day 1. I believe that the release was almost certainly a complete accident, but there's just no realistic chance a novel virus coincidentally originates in the same isolated place as a lab that specializes in that exact same type of virus. The denialists, including the WHO and CDC and everyone else, need to get real and own up to what happened and figure ou…

I'm confused, do you think SARS was also escaped from the lab, or just COVID?

Covid is the COrona VIrus Disease caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which is somewhat, but not extremely closely related to the SARS-CoV-1 virus, which caused the original SARS disease.