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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

#921

Post by boringg »

DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #802
boringg wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I subscribe to this theory. I didn't subscribe to it originally because it seemed to dystopian. However on reading the recent politico article ( https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/03/08/josh-rogin... ) really changed my opinion about it. To be clear I think it would have been an accident at a Chinese government lab that was underfunded and overworked. Seems to me like the likeliest candidate. I don't think t…

The Politico article is extremely dishonest. Josh Rogin has been claiming for a year now that US diplomats raised red flags about the WIV's safety. He wrote an article to this effect a year ago, based on diplomatic cables he had seen. Then the Washington Post obtained the full cables, and it turned out that Rogin had seriously mischaracterized them. They do not claim that the WIV has unsafe practices - only that its…

Also - i did do a check on Josh Rogin and it does seem he has done some underhanded reporting practices in the past. Not saying that discredits him completely but does muddy his work. Thanks for bringing that to my attention.

That said - it doesn't yet change my priors about the likely source of outbreak which seems most plausibly at WIV.

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

#922

Post by rssoconnor »

bgandrew wrote: post #614
rssoconnor wrote: post #593

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not the correct calculation because you've selected the research lab hypothesis post-facto. The correct calculation is to roll a dice representing all the locations of possible human bat interactions and see how many of those land next to some landmark that you can form some sort of conspiracy about.

And if you add all the sane hypotheses to the equation, how many would that be? 2?

The only thing that evolves faster than this virus are the conspiracy theory memes[1] that the internet collectively weaves from circumstantial evidence where more and more compelling narratives become more and more widely shared. I'd wager that 100% of pandemics, regardless of origin, will have some compelling conspiracy attached to them. Compelling conspiracy theories is what the internet manufactures, particularly in the absence of direct evidence of anything.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme

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

#923

Post by randomopining »

If China didn't have any covering up beyond low/middle-level CCP members that wanted to save face... they would be heavily incentivized to allow a thorough investigation. This would let them save face across the world: "Thorough WHO/UN Investigation Shows China Largely Followed Proper Pandemic Procedures"

Of course, they don't allow a thorough investigation and thus are trying to hide something.

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

#924

Post by randomopining »

asmint3 wrote: post #151

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.

That's the problem with people. They hate Trump so much that when he says up, they say down. I also hate Trump, but will call a spade a spade whenever it needs to be done. The CCP's behavior with this was very suspect. And look who benefitted and who lost from it.

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

#925

Post by randomopining »

dvt wrote: post #278
echelon wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> China has absolutely no chance to meet head-to-head against a US Carrier Strike Group on neutral territory. Absolutely none, and the US has TEN Carrier Strike Groups. Right now. But take a look at the shipbuilding output they've achieved. In ten to twenty years, China could easily rival the US Navy.

> In ten to twenty years, China could easily rival the US Navy. People said this 20 years ago. We've already started to see the CCP losing ground (see HK), and I'm quite bearish on the Party going forward. Jinping is 67, and I expect to see a major power struggle which will leave the Chinese Communist Party crippled when he dies.

Why do you think so? The CCP and Xi has shown they are more than saavy enough to avoid a power struggle. He has at least 10-15 more years left as well, and the battle for Taiwan will probably take shape within that time frame.

HK they won easily. Western countries like UK and especially Europe are completely useless. Only the US can coordinate and shore up a coordinated response against China.

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

#926

Post by toxik »

loudtieblahblah wrote: post #879
ktzar wrote: post #787

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China did a harder lockdown than any other country has done. Right from the beginning. Took an immense toll to its economy, right from the beginning. A WHO team was there investigating and gathering information on public health from the beginning. I'm sorry, but in this case, China is the country who told the rest of the world what to do and the west, with its superiority mentality over the east, ignored it and got a…

I like how china's over the top, authoritarian measures, sometimes including sealing people in their homes physically, is idolized by people in the west. We could have double the death rate and I still wouldn't concede this. And I wear a mask, wife and I wfh. Kid is still at home.

Please don’t wear your wife

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

#927

Post by tim333 »

fakedang wrote: post #910
tim333 wrote: post #846

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also an interesting thing - the WIV used to put all their virus sequences in a publically available database. Around autumn 2019 they took it down they said because people were trying to hack it. I think it's still confidential even to the WHO. I mean if they were worried about hackers they could just publish a copy of the data.

Is there a source for this? My Google-fu isn't turning up anything.

> It emerged last week that the team had not even asked to see the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s online database, locked since September 2019 and taken down altogether in the spring of 2020. That database is known to contain 22,000 samples, mostly of viruses, 16,000 of them from bats. These include eight viruses very closely related to the virus causing the pandemic but whose genome sequences have not been published. They were collected in 2015 from a disused mineshaft, a thousand miles away, where in 2012 six men fell ill with a disease very like Covid.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/03/15/world-health-org...

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

#928

Post by tehjoker »

varjag wrote: post #406
tehjoker wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're alleging the CCP is covering up their role a global pandemic. That's a conspiracy as there is a group of powerful people hiding something from the public. I believe in many conspiracy theories that have substantive evidence for them (e.g. the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution was faked), so I don't dismiss the idea of a conspiracy as impossible, they happen every day. However, there is no substantive evidence presente…

It's not a conspiracy in the sense of pre-meditated plan by a group of villains. It can well be a cover-up, which is a daily life in places like China. In USSR, every technological, radiologic or biological disaster was covered up, surfacing only when it was impossible to conceal.

I urge you to google "cover-up" and "conspiracy" and see how often those words are used together.

Yes, governments tend to avoid releasing embarrassing info. Witness the way the US government failed to prepare for the virus and pretended everything would be fine and then only made changes when they couldn't possibly do anything else which probably is responsible for killing 500,000 people.

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

#929

Post by cartoonfoxes »

loudtieblahblah wrote: post #876
andrewflnr wrote: post #607

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If there was a lab leak.. The resistance to independent investigation, the disappearing of doctors who reported on this early on and such makes them just as guilty as if it was done on purpose. At this juncture maliciousness or negligence is just splitting hairs. How they handled the negligence might as well have been malicious.

Indeed. The virus itself may not have been weaponized, but the aftermath most certainly was.

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

#930

Post by soperj »

pageandrew wrote: post #444
soperj wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you then say that irresponsibly treating the virus within the US & other western countries actually caused the pandemic to be bigger than it should have been?

Even the Western countries that "responsibly" treated the virus are having pretty serious surges now. I guess anything short of a total and complete lockdown was irresponsible. I'd say that the release of a highly transmissible and moderately lethal pathogen was the primary issue.

No surges right now in NZ or Australia. Interesting that the place that it actually originated in has no current surge either.
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