771–780 of 1001 posts
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I’m baffled at what branch of science involves being able to call it the “China virus” rather than COVID. When was Science about prescribing blame?
Gee I don't know.. maybe going 100 years back with the Spanish Flu? West Nile virus, Zika virus, Ebola.. all those are okay but saying Wuhan virus is considered racist.
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That's been my impression too fwiw. There's now a large segment of people who are primed to immediately accept the conspiracy theory over the Hanlon's Razor principle: "Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity (or accident)".
Sure. We could also invoke Occam's Razor. The simplest explanation is usually the correct one. A coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan China miles away from a Virology Lab that studies coronavirus and has in the past exercised gain of function research on cornoviruses specifically with novel lung ACE2 bind may have had a lab accident and a live virus broke out if the lab. The problem is the media labeling common sense as con…
That we’re finally seeing some mainstream discussion around this hypothesis should not change the scary fact that months ago governments, scientists and media happily and immediately rejected it as a xenophobic conspiracy theory. The messaging and subsequent ease at which public opinion was influenced should make everyone pause and think hard about other ways they might be being manipulated.
It's amazing how much ridicule I took for seriously suggesting this theory last year. My friends twisted and exaggerated the extent of my claims (implying I thought it was an intentional action on China's part, or an engineered virus, and not a result of mundane research + accidental containment failure), and called me a crazy conspiracy theorist. I had been reading every journal article I could get my hands on about…
Ive no axe to grind politically, simply think its interesting to explore and understand what indicators/benchmarks there would be etc. One of the claimants to human manufactured was a Nobel prize winner, which doesnt mean he is correct but to me seems to add weight to its worth discussing.
I did not see any real 'lets talk about the science' discussion anywhere. And on my post on /r/askscience I could see my post in new list logged in but not when I went in via a new browser... so not sure if a glitch/timing/etc or they have some ninja ban system but it triggered my interest for sure.
While I have no idea what the truth is this kind of thing and not trying to push views down any path, this lack of discussion and that maybe ninja removal really pushes me to more consider something is being actively obscured and therefore why. Ultimately, I suspect we'll never know the truth.
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My impression was that "lab escape" was conflated with "deliberate release" by conspiracy types early on, and once that took hold it became impossible to talk rationally about the accidental escape hypothesis.
Conspiracy theorists are always going to weave conspiracy theories, though. That doesn't absolve the media or the rest of us from being the adults in the room.
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…
I remember seeing these videos in January 2020 at the beginning of the pandemic. Young, healthy-looking people, too. I'm very surprised that there were not similar instances outside of China.
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The fact that they didn't find an intermediate host after more than a year of search should tell you something.
It took nearly a century to somewhat establish the geographical origin of the Spanish flu and even these results are still a bit controversial to this day [0]. The reality is that epidemiology is not a straight forward nor simple field of research, finding concrete and solid answers is usually way more difficult than most people assume when they want answers to point fingers. [0] https://academic.oup.com/emph/article…
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…
China is demonized not because of an accident (if it was one). Even if it's confirmed that a lab accident was the cause, China holds the blame for hiding the truth, telling the world it's all okay, and arresting people that dared to speak out (even causing their deaths). No matter what was the origin, China is responsible for the outbreak. Btw, I don't think we can ever find out the truth. It's been over a year, and…
They had a choice to make: country-wide lockdown and travel ban or lie about it and make it spread worldwide. The former would leave their economy in a disadvantaged state while the latter would level the playing field for the rest of the world and give China opportunity to even earn some dough in the process (PTE sales). Now, this may be a cynical view but so are China's leaders. If you're someone who strongly believes this scenario could not have transpired, you're just naive.
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That's not a cultural thing, it's a universal human/organizational thing.
It’s certainly widespread but the cultural component is important to how strong the reaction is. China certainly isn’t alone in having it but the political stakes are a powerful amplifier.
When looking at some German Epidemiologist blog I found something like: "Next thing on the list is to proof that government measures worked"
I would have expected something like: "I'm looking at data - and want to find out what helps"
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Conspiracy theorists are always going to weave conspiracy theories, though. That doesn't absolve the media or the rest of us from being the adults in the room.
But some things make no sense at all. The most populated country on the planet - a vast, vast population across the area almost as big as the US - has been inexplicably reporting almost zero infections since like March 10, 2020 (way before any vaccines) while the rest of the world (except small and isolated regions), the richest and presumably the most advanced societies still can't get their shit together, are still…