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>I'm generally in favour of the actions taken against misinformation... Who would be the one to determine what is misinformation and what is not?
The evidence?
'Evidence' is tangential to the decision making behind misinformation tags.
"If the question is “are both hypotheses possible?” the answer is yes. Both are possible. If the question is “are they equally likely?” the answer is absolutely not. One hypothesis requires a colossal cover-up and the silent, unswerving, leak-proof compliance of a vast network of scientists, civilians, and government officials for over a year. The other requires only for biology to behave as it always has, for a fami…
Rootclaim has some fairly compelling analysis which suggests the lab leak scenario is more likely: https://www.rootclaim.com/analysis/What-is-the-source-of-COV...
- There's still no evidence that WIV was doing GOF research there. The SARS-1 GOF research was done in the USA.
- There are horseshoe bats with sarbecoviruses in Hubei province, their range is large.
- Similar to this virus, for SARS-1 there closest known virus in bats is in Yunnan, but SARS-1 emerged in Guangdong, about the same distance away from Yunnan as Wuhan is.
- Calling it a "Chimera" is not accurate and is a loaded term. It is not a Chimera of RaTG13. You can't get from RaTG13 to SARS-2 by splicing some other backbone and then shipping it through a couple dozen generations of mice. RatG13 is also a few decades of evolution away from SARS-2.
- A furin cleavage site has emerged spontaneously in coronaviruses at least 6 times now (not including SARS-2) in both circulating human coronaviruses and in MERS. It has also now been found in sarbecoviruses in Thailand, so we know that nature produces furin cleavage sites in this kind of virus.
- Efforts by China to suppress information sound like an authoritarian government acting like an authoritarian government. This is completely unsurprising.
- Efforts by WIV to do political damage control after the pandemic broke also sound like a lab under an authoritarian government reacting to protect itself and by its people reacting to protect themselves (there may have been relatively banal stuff like financial embezzlement going on in the lab which is being suppressed). This is also completely unsurprising.
Reminder that Facebook and Twitter banned users for talking about the lab-leak theory. Youtube accounts also got demontized/banned.
The reputations of media outlets, social or otherwise, are to be protected at all costs.
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Yes it does bury stuff very quickly if it is flagged by sufficient numbers of users. I’m not sure it’s a good thing but it is a thing.
Well it looks like this one got flagged. But why?
This is not a new issue. Here's a discussion on the subject:
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I'm generally in favour of the actions taken against misinformation but this situation surprises me. Lab leak always seemed plausible and non-crazy even if you think the odds are against it. I don't envy the task of making a call on any of this stuff.
If we accept that taking action against misinformation is good, then this sort of mistake will inevitably happen. If you're in favor of taking action against misinformation, then you should be willing to accept this situation as an acceptable failure. I'm not willing to accept that.
When Jack banned zerohedge for their article, there were other reasons than "misinformation". Only he and his masters know those reasons.
Whenever I talk to people about recent news stories in real life it feels like everyone is just repeating talking points they read online.
Its like we've been absorbed into the internet consciousness and talking to a person is like talking to "the internet brain".
"If the question is “are both hypotheses possible?” the answer is yes. Both are possible. If the question is “are they equally likely?” the answer is absolutely not. One hypothesis requires a colossal cover-up and the silent, unswerving, leak-proof compliance of a vast network of scientists, civilians, and government officials for over a year. The other requires only for biology to behave as it always has, for a fami…
> silent, unswerving, leak-proof compliance of a vast network of scientists, civilians, and government officials for over a year I was watching translated videos early last year made by chinese scientists trying to get the word out, at the risk of their lives. Compliance is simple: you talk, you "disappear". The Great Firewall blocks in both directions, and is very good. Additionally, the West had already decided tha…
So you're saying the Great Firewall is porous and leak happen, but also saying that in this case, the information containment is 100% successful.
"If the question is “are both hypotheses possible?” the answer is yes. Both are possible. If the question is “are they equally likely?” the answer is absolutely not. One hypothesis requires a colossal cover-up and the silent, unswerving, leak-proof compliance of a vast network of scientists, civilians, and government officials for over a year. The other requires only for biology to behave as it always has, for a fami…
The zoonotic spillover doesn't seem to address geography. Why would the virus first appear in a city near a virology institute instead of out in the country near bat habitats? The speculation from scientists like Dr. Daszak is that someone ate an infected live bat from "southern China." I've seen the studies about air flows in restaurants and buffets and none seem to indicate that Covid is food borne. So we have some…
Have you considered the possibility that it first appeared in the vicinity of a lab that experiments on similar viruses is because if it had appeared elsewhere, there would have been no sufficiently-equipped lab to isolate it? This is the streetlight effect: you find things where you (are able to) look for them. In other words, it couldn't have appeared somewhere far from a properly-equipped lab, because there would be no properly-equipped lab to detect it.