Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The origin of Covid: Did people or nature open Pandora’s box?

thebulletin.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 578 posts

Re: The origin of Covid: Did people or nature open Pandora’s box?

#21

Post by FindMySocks »

nnash wrote: post #6
Mountain_Skies wrote: post #3

We don't want to know. That may sound a bit glib but I think it's true. What would be the reaction if we could determine the outbreak was due to an unintentional leak? China cannot reimburse the world for the economic damage covid has caused. It cannot be held accountable for all the lives that have been lost. It cannot compensate the world for the diminished quality of life we've all suffered. But there will be plen…

It's absolutely pathetic how no matter what China does they just get a limp handed pass from people like you.

Punishment should be due only when actual proveable facts can be shown. Otherwise it's just rampant speculation which just feeds into sometimes political power moves. We already have enough of that going on.

Re: The origin of Covid: Did people or nature open Pandora’s box?

#22

Post by wbsun »

Mountain_Skies wrote: post #11
Judgmentality wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And let's not even begin to think what will happen if there were to be evidence that this was an intentional release. But don't you think it's important to know this?

It's important to know and it's important not to know. Both paths have mostly negative outcomes. The best path is for it to have been natural, second best is accidental. Intentional is unfathomable and has unlimited downside. We should all hope that's not the case here.

+1, the truth is not important at all.

The most scary path would be intentional. I can't think of any other aftermath except for WWIII.

Re: The origin of Covid: Did people or nature open Pandora’s box?

#23

Post by dang »

luxuryballs wrote: post #18

> By this criterion, the signatories of the Lancet letter were behaving as poor scientists: They were assuring the public of facts they could not know for sure were true. Not to get all political but this totally reminds me of Mitt Romney on Jan 6th evening when he said something to the tune of: “an (election) audit won’t satisfy, them only telling them the truth will”… how he or anyone at a news studio knew the trut…

"Eschew flamebait. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: The origin of Covid: Did people or nature open Pandora’s box?

#24

Post by thepasswordis »

Something which hasn't been able to be answered for me on this yet:

Where are all the bats infected with this virus? It it came from a bat, it would have had to be circulating in the bat population a LOT to mutate enough to jump to humans, right?

So...why not go find a bad, identify the parent virus, and close this whole thing out?

Re: The origin of Covid: Did people or nature open Pandora’s box?

#25

Post by NeutronStar »

[deleted] wrote: post #20
VectorLock wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thankfully there are alternative ways to sanction a country short of nuclear war.

[deleted]

So America won't be able to use cheap labor for cheap price decimating the USA fracturing in the process?

Re: The origin of Covid: Did people or nature open Pandora’s box?

#26

Post by FpUser »

wbsun wrote: post #22
Mountain_Skies wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's important to know and it's important not to know. Both paths have mostly negative outcomes. The best path is for it to have been natural, second best is accidental. Intentional is unfathomable and has unlimited downside. We should all hope that's not the case here.

+1, the truth is not important at all. The most scary path would be intentional. I can't think of any other aftermath except for WWIII.

>"I can't think of any other aftermath except for WWIII."

Yeah sure. We've just lost 3 million lives, let's kill the rest of the planet as consolation. As fucked up as our politicians are I hope they are not ready to die.

Re: The origin of Covid: Did people or nature open Pandora’s box?

#27

Post by rramadass »

PSA: As user "mromanuk" points out below (and links to relevant articles), the author of this article "Nicholas Wade" is a racist. So exercise caution while reading this article. Don't accept his narrative but do your own research from any "actual scientific data" leads in the article.

Re: The origin of Covid: Did people or nature open Pandora’s box?

#28

Post by Judgmentality »

wbsun wrote: post #22
Mountain_Skies wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's important to know and it's important not to know. Both paths have mostly negative outcomes. The best path is for it to have been natural, second best is accidental. Intentional is unfathomable and has unlimited downside. We should all hope that's not the case here.

+1, the truth is not important at all. The most scary path would be intentional. I can't think of any other aftermath except for WWIII.

I'm not saying it wouldn't be scary, but I don't think we should be willfully ignorant. I want to know what happened. Sunshine is the best disinfectant.

Re: The origin of Covid: Did people or nature open Pandora’s box?

#29

Post by rramadass »

guesst wrote: post #15
Mountain_Skies wrote: post #3

We don't want to know. That may sound a bit glib but I think it's true. What would be the reaction if we could determine the outbreak was due to an unintentional leak? China cannot reimburse the world for the economic damage covid has caused. It cannot be held accountable for all the lives that have been lost. It cannot compensate the world for the diminished quality of life we've all suffered. But there will be plen…

The China aspect is probably a red herring. Gain-of-function research was internationally funded, including by the US. The perils had been pointed out for years by virologists [1], some of whom managed to get an editorial in the New York Times against it [2]. If Covid turns out to be a lab escape (which is a big if ), the nation or lab it happened in is just the proximate cause. Deeper responsibility would lie with t…

You make a very good point (and thanks for the links).

However i would not let China off the hook until we have figured out exactly what happened. If nobody is held "accountable" (for a certain definition of this word) it is bound to happen again and the next time it most certainly will be "biological warfare".

This needs to be treated as seriously and as comprehensively the way we treat Nuclear Weapons.

Re: The origin of Covid: Did people or nature open Pandora’s box?

#30

Post by FpUser »

mromanuk wrote: post #4
dataflow wrote: post #2

Please consider spending the ~hour or so it takes to read this. Yes, this is a repost, but I'm posting it because it hardly grabbed any attention the first couple of times people posted it. [1] [2] Yes, it's long, but it's very much worth the read. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27056327 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27062021

Sorry, I don’t read articles written by racists. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2834627 https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/primate-diaries/on-the-...

And if the article tells the truth? Why would author's racial preferences matter? You might be surprised how much of modern tech was developed by racists and other bad apples. If you are from the US try reading how your rocket / space industry had been developed for example.
Post reply on HN