The WHO-China search for the origins of the coronavirus • Hacker News Board

Re: The WHO-China search for the origins of the coronavirus

#201

Post by drran » Mon, Mar 29, 2021, 9:40 AM UTC

EMM_386 wrote: post #98

drran wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You forgot about another country, which was not so lucky before, and which had an incident in their 4 level biolab just before the start of epidemic.

So that is more likely than a level 4 biolab that happened to be IN Wuhan and was being warned about by US State Department officials years before this happened? https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/03/08/josh-rogin...

See investigation here (in Russian): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4Ny_TtcYc8 . At 3:00 I see photo of typical Covid-19 lungs and description of typical Covid-19 symptoms at November 2019.

Re: The WHO-China search for the origins of the coronavirus

#202

Post by DiogenesKynikos » Mon, Mar 29, 2021, 10:54 AM UTC

analyte123 wrote: post #130

sudosysgen wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see why 1) is unlikely - people that work with bats have antibodies to bat (corona)viruses already, and we know that even in a vacuum people often have very mild symptoms or no symptoms at all. It's even more likely since the virus was probably not adapted to human hosts initially. 2) is also likely, for some viruses it took years and years, sometimes even more than a decade to find the actual intermediate an…

It's not "quite unlikely" for a virus to adapt to humans when you are digging through a lab archive of wild coronaviruses and injecting mice that express human proteins with them to see how sick they get. For example the president of EcoHealth, which sponsored bat coronavirus research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, raved in November 2019 about all the exciting work they were doing filtering bat coronaviruses and…

They put 8 natural spike proteins on a well-known backbone, WIV-1. SARS-CoV-2 is not made up of any known viral backbone. It's an entirely novel virus, which differs from all previously known viruses throughout its entire genome. This is very much not what you would get from these sorts of infectivity studies.

Re: The WHO-China search for the origins of the coronavirus

#203

Post by woutr_be » Mon, Mar 29, 2021, 11:01 AM UTC

13415 wrote: post #104

dimgl wrote: post #79

I was called a conspiracy theorist on Reddit last year for saying that this likely came from the lab in Wuhan. Now it's a possibility? It's getting incredibly frustrating to go online and be constantly attacked for having common sense views.

"possible" does not imply "likely". It was always a possibility, the only thing we know with relative certainty is that it originated from near Wuhan and that the virus is not engineered. But it could have been lab grown. The problem is the lack of concrete evidence for this thesis. I'd say that it's very likely that you did not present any concrete evidence for the lab theory last year, neither do you have any now.…

If this person really said "it likely came from a lab", then i would agree with him being labeled as a conspiracy theorist. Because stating it like this also implies that you dismiss any other possible theory. There's quite a few possibilities, so saying it coming from a lab is a "common sense view" just comes across as dismissive. Especially since there's no real evidence yet.

Re: The WHO-China search for the origins of the coronavirus

#204

Post by ngcc_hk » Mon, Mar 29, 2021, 11:18 AM UTC

towergratis wrote: post #81

jkingsbery wrote: post #75

So, to summarize-the-summary: there are four possible theories: 1. Direct-jump from bat population 2. Started in bats, came to humans through intermediate animal 3. Came from frozen food outside of China 4. Lab accident. I used to think the lab accident theory was crazy, because it sounds like a science fiction movie. Not an impossible theory, just a crazy one. But according to this article, despite a year of investi…

> I used to think the lab accident theory was crazy Accidents happen. Even if it was a lab accident, it's not a reason to be outraged with the Chinese government. I think in parallel to searching for the origin, they should also look into the reports that Chinese government tried to hid it under the carpet and only admitting that it couldn't control it after it was already spread all over the world. That's the real c…

Totally agreed. But also after 1 year china gov won by not able to check on it. What worry is when the next come not alone we cannot say wuhan virus vs we can say Uk variant etc (which is not racist but easier to remember), we can never track. And given the index cases from Wu han we can never stop.

Wait and be killed.

Re: The WHO-China search for the origins of the coronavirus

#205

Post by Cyberthal » Mon, Mar 29, 2021, 11:43 AM UTC

I didn't see the Gnews / Dr Yan theory mentioned:

COVID19 is part of a long-running CCP bioweapon unrestricted warfare program with benefits such as damaging open Western societies and providing pretexts for anti-dissident crackdown and social control. Other viruses originating in China have likely also been this kind of bioweapon.

COVID19 was a deliberate release intended to infect the US competitors in the Wuhan military games to frame the USA for a biowarfare attack on China. The US contestants were infected in China and then the infection was suppressed via HCQ as part of a "malaria treatment". The intent being they would return to the USA and then spread the virus.

However, execution was poor, and as a result Wuhan was hit first, and the CCP was unable to credibly blame the USA.

The timing was intended to collaborate with Democrats to prevent the reelection of Trump, to crack down on the HK dissident movement, to deal with economic pressure from Trump's negotiations, etc.

Ideally, China would have been seen as an international savior, with a ready vaccine and a model response. CCP leadership were protected via HCQ and suffered minimal casualties.

Re: The WHO-China search for the origins of the coronavirus

#206

Post by slightwinder » Mon, Mar 29, 2021, 11:55 AM UTC

twobitshifter wrote: post #178

neuronic wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The lab accident isn't crazy. Happens in the West too, it's just something that will be politically weaponized against China if it were to admit it, although we just got lucky in the US and Europe before. Typical Western hypocrisy would be at play and China has no motivation whatsoever to subject itself to that. Also, SARS-1 escaped twice, in Singapore and Beijing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_accidents_and_…

If China did allow this virus to escape, and covered it up shouldn’t they be held liable for trillions in economic damage, as well as compensation for victims around the world?

Why should china be held liable when it was the labs fails? Or even more specific someone in the lab? Would the USA be held liable when some lab fails? Is USA or even the company itself held liable for tech-companies fails on security or protecting privacy?

I doubt there is some legal paragraph which would work here, even in International Law.

Re: The WHO-China search for the origins of the coronavirus

#207

Post by slightwinder » Mon, Mar 29, 2021, 12:05 PM UTC

jkingsbery wrote: post #75

So, to summarize-the-summary: there are four possible theories: 1. Direct-jump from bat population 2. Started in bats, came to humans through intermediate animal 3. Came from frozen food outside of China 4. Lab accident. I used to think the lab accident theory was crazy, because it sounds like a science fiction movie. Not an impossible theory, just a crazy one. But according to this article, despite a year of investi…

How likely is a combination of them all? Like something harmless which escaped from the lab, and then mutated another harmless variation out there?

> But according to this article, despite a year of investigation

One year of investigation is not long, especially if you have a party who has a significant interesst to hinder your investigation into certain directions.

Re: The WHO-China search for the origins of the coronavirus

#208

Post by loceng » Mon, Mar 29, 2021, 12:20 PM UTC

jkingsbery wrote: post #75

So, to summarize-the-summary: there are four possible theories: 1. Direct-jump from bat population 2. Started in bats, came to humans through intermediate animal 3. Came from frozen food outside of China 4. Lab accident. I used to think the lab accident theory was crazy, because it sounds like a science fiction movie. Not an impossible theory, just a crazy one. But according to this article, despite a year of investi…

There's tons of propaganda trying to diminish the likelihood of a lab leak (purposeful or a mistake). Watch this though - https://youtu.be/q5SRrsr-Iug - and it's very clear that it likely originated from the Wuhan lab (they were studying those bats originating from 200 miles away + multiple markers in the genes showing human intervention/editing) - and that what's being promoted by these orgs into mainstream is gaslighting.

Re: The WHO-China search for the origins of the coronavirus

#209

Post by flavius29663 » Mon, Mar 29, 2021, 3:09 PM UTC

mkolodny wrote: post #136

flavius29663 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

most modern governments did similar stuff in the past few decades. I 'm having trouble thinking of one that didn't. You can call them all authoritarian, but then the word loses all meaning, you would just say "any strong modern government is authoritarian"

Switzerland's government isn't authoritarian. The Swiss government is the whole adult population. Every Swiss citizen over 18 can propose and vote on laws. No subset of Swiss people can force other Swiss people to do anything without approval from Swiss voters.

The Swiss government is pretty democratic as far as governments go, I didn't think of it. But now that you mentioned it I can tell a couple of things that are pretty reprehensible, without even searching on Google:

- taking away kids from "bad" families and sending them in foster care just to be used as slaves by the foster homes. Apparently the slavery part was pretty widespread in the 70s. Granted, this is not happening anymore

- a colleague of mine did prison time because he refused to enroll in the army based on personal beliefs. Now you can do community service instead, but that prison time was not that long ago.

Just because you have approval from the majority of Swiss, it doesn't make it right to do either of those 2 things. It's the kind of stuff authoritarians do. I am pretty sure I can find much more dirt if I use Google, I just used what I know first or second hand.

Re: The WHO-China search for the origins of the coronavirus

#210

Post by jkingsbery » Mon, Mar 29, 2021, 4:54 PM UTC

towergratis wrote: post #81

jkingsbery wrote: post #75

So, to summarize-the-summary: there are four possible theories: 1. Direct-jump from bat population 2. Started in bats, came to humans through intermediate animal 3. Came from frozen food outside of China 4. Lab accident. I used to think the lab accident theory was crazy, because it sounds like a science fiction movie. Not an impossible theory, just a crazy one. But according to this article, despite a year of investi…

> I used to think the lab accident theory was crazy Accidents happen. Even if it was a lab accident, it's not a reason to be outraged with the Chinese government. I think in parallel to searching for the origin, they should also look into the reports that Chinese government tried to hid it under the carpet and only admitting that it couldn't control it after it was already spread all over the world. That's the real c…

> Accidents happen. Even if it was a lab accident, it's not a reason to be outraged with the Chinese government.

Agreed! Whatever did cause COVID-19, the outbreak was made worse by a lack of transparency by the CCP. It seems like no matter what, the WHO report is unlikely to discuss that much. Which is a shame, because with more transparency into what happened we would be better able to stop the next COVID-19 from happening.