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How I learned to stop worrying and love the lab-leak theory

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Re: How I learned to stop worrying and love the lab-leak theory

#91

Post by encryptluks2 »

aabhay wrote: post #52
slg wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That might be great from a public health standpoint, but I'm not so sure from an overall global perspective. Proof of a lab leak and subsequent coverup would be a hugely destabilizing political event that could have severe consequences as there would be people pushing for some type of retribution for the millions of deaths. At the very least that would lead to further political division and racial animosity in places…

Unfortunately that outcome is happening already, from just the hearsay

Well the heresay comes from people like Donald Trump and the longer the Democrats ignore the theory the more credibility they lose and give to him, even if the way he said it was inflammatory. Seems like it would be far less destructive to bring it out into the open now than to just let people think that someone calling it the Kung Flu was more transparent than the political party that pretended like the lab leak is just a racist conspiracy theory.

Re: How I learned to stop worrying and love the lab-leak theory

#92

Post by swader999 »

katbyte wrote: post #67
Godel_unicode wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a false equivalency though; whether or not this was a lab accident, there will be future pandemics which aren't (like every single previous one in history).

There hadn’t been one at this scale for 100 years, who’s to say how long it would have been till the next natural one, I for one would rather not have experienced a global pandemic even if a natural one was due in 50 years

The 68 flu killed between 1-4 million, so the high end in that one would be comparable to what we see with covid.

Re: How I learned to stop worrying and love the lab-leak theory

#93

Post by kstenerud »

edit Changed "character" to "structure" because my intent is being misunderstood. This is ultimately about human psychology (as in homo sapiens), not particular nations or peoples. Each of us could very well have but for chance been placed in any of these boats, and our behavior would change to match because we're not morally special.

There are a number of things at play here that stoke up distrust, mainly due to China's current national structure. The world won't get China's cooperation on this, and there will be no smoking gun evidence one way or the other. But we can stop and think about it rationally.

In fact, someone already has, and I recommend reading it if you haven't already, putting the lab leak theory to rest: https://old.reddit.com/r/science/comments/gk6y95/covid19_did...

So what's going on with China then? Well first off, they're an autocratic nation, which makes them EXTREMELY sensitive to criticism and dissent. An autocratic nation deals with criticism by dismissing it, dodging it, blocking it, and crushing it. You're not going to get cooperation on something negative like a pandemic outbreak because they don't know where it came from either, and it's better for them to just block everyone than to allow any potential negativity to stick to them. Again, this behavior is nothing new for autocratic nations.

Secondly, they're an up-and-comer nation. They've finally reached the big leagues (again), and that means that they expect big league treatment. It means that they can push back against anyone they choose and punish those who step on their toes. They've been doing this for years now, buying or bullying compliance like their more established brethren from smaller nations and organizations, even to the point of cowing the WHO (who, for the record, have always deferred somewhat to the powerful because they have no actual teeth and would lose access to that nation otherwise).

Third, they have a legacy to uphold as the Kingdom of Heaven. Xi's mission for the nation is a moral one to once again become the shining beacon of civilization, the center of the Earth. For a nation on such a mission, minor things like a pandemic are merely a distraction that could potentially be used by the other nations to disrupt their sacred task of purifying their people and seating themselves at their rightful place as THE representatives of humanity's best.

So no, the lab leak theory holds no water. And no, there will be no investigation. And unless you want to invade China or something equally drastic, that's how things will stand.

Re: How I learned to stop worrying and love the lab-leak theory

#94

Post by dang »

tolbish wrote: post #36
lukeholder wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can do both. If a plane crashes, you find out the cause. During that evaluation, if you also find that the pilots response to the engine failure was also wrong, you fix that too.

There is a noticeable trend here of gatekeepers crying foul when others decide to talk about this. They try to shame you into silence, claiming that you are caring about the wrong thing , as if you cannot pay attention to more than one issue simultaneously. Whenever there is a trend of similar talking points on a hot topic it makes me wonder how much of that is influence from outside groups.

Please don't resort to sinister explanations without evidence, when a topic is plainly divisive. It's an extremely tempting but low-quality discussion move that the site guidelines explicitly ask everyone here to refrain from:

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

If there's specific reason to believe that comments here are somehow being manipulated, that's different and you should email hn@ycombinator.com so we can look into it. (That's in the site guidelines as well.) But the overwhelming majority of the time, there's zero suggestion of any such thing, other than people disagreeing, which is evidence of nothing but that the topic is divisive.

I've posted hundreds if not thousands of explanations of this over many years at this point: https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme....

Re: How I learned to stop worrying and love the lab-leak theory

#95

Post by ekianjo »

jMyles wrote: post #49
cletus wrote: post #39

So I generally give like zero weight to conspiracy theories. That being said, I don't believe anyone can reasonably claim with any degree certainty that Covid was a lab-leak BUT the WHO investigation simply hasn't done their due diligence to a sufficient degree to eliminate this theory. Unfortunately the WHO's credibility is trained here. In the early days of the pandemic the WHO bent over backwards not to upset Chin…

> So I generally give like zero weight to conspiracy theories It needn't have been a conspiracy; it's plausible that it was accidental, or even if intentional, the work of a single disgruntled individual.

> It needn't have been a conspiracy

We have so used to calling "conspiracy theories" anything that deviates the official narrative, we don't even notice what it means anymore...

Re: How I learned to stop worrying and love the lab-leak theory

#96

Post by gnopgnip »

baggy_trough wrote: post #63
cletus wrote: post #39

So I generally give like zero weight to conspiracy theories. That being said, I don't believe anyone can reasonably claim with any degree certainty that Covid was a lab-leak BUT the WHO investigation simply hasn't done their due diligence to a sufficient degree to eliminate this theory. Unfortunately the WHO's credibility is trained here. In the early days of the pandemic the WHO bent over backwards not to upset Chin…

Why do you call it a conspiracy theory? There's nothing conspiratorial about it. Any politically sensitive organization will inherently do whatever it can do avoid blame. That's as natural as the force of gravity. I also don't understand why you say so vehemently that you don't believe it was engineered. Gain of function experiments are something they do in these labs!

Because any evidence that disproves the theory only makes it stronger for those that believe it is a conspiracy. Not that everyone that believes in this believes it is a conspiracy.

Re: How I learned to stop worrying and love the lab-leak theory

#97

Post by _y5hn »

socceroos wrote: post #21
Godel_unicode wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that's not what you would start with. If you have an incident and discover that your response plan was hilariously inadequate, you would prioritize making more robust response plans because even if you can prevent that exact incident from happening again, there will be other disasters.

Conversely, if you discover that the cause of the issue was inadequate controls during virus research then you should absolutely start with fixing those. Put it this way, if the cause of the worldwide pandemic was because it leaked from a lab then you should fix the lab.

Saying this as layman that warned for years about virus engineering, this is just a given. The mere potential should be enough. However, speculation without evidence and mitigation is bad.

Re: How I learned to stop worrying and love the lab-leak theory

#98

Post by caspper69 »

ekianjo wrote: post #95
jMyles wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So I generally give like zero weight to conspiracy theories It needn't have been a conspiracy; it's plausible that it was accidental, or even if intentional, the work of a single disgruntled individual.

> It needn't have been a conspiracy We have so used to calling "conspiracy theories" anything that deviates the official narrative, we don't even notice what it means anymore...

I know what it means. I'd assume most people here do too.

Re: How I learned to stop worrying and love the lab-leak theory

#99

Post by cbHXBY1D »

I tend to trust Prof Shi Zhengli on this one. She has been open [1] to investigations into her lab and has the most evidence in her favor. Notably, she's showed that miners who died 8 years ago didn't die of Sars-Cov-2 and that none of her staff had antibodies.

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-55364445

Re: How I learned to stop worrying and love the lab-leak theory

#100

Post by mdoms »

temp8964 wrote: post #90

> It spawned racist rumors like “Chinese labs sell their dead experimental animals in food markets.” First, I don't see how is this racist. Second, this is not rumor, there are Chinese articles about how some lab members were punished. The author lost credibility here.

Suggesting that because it has happened before in China, "Chinese labs" do it, is indeed racist.
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