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The media's lab leak fiasco

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Re: The media's lab leak fiasco

#201

Post by makomk »

defaultname wrote: post #77
Moodles wrote: post #16

The media is so disappointing these days. A lot of people don't remember this, but the mainstream media outlets were actually playing down the coronavirus pandemic at the start. Then they attacked the travel ban to China. Then did a complete U-turn. Pelosi was dancing in the streets of Chinatown San Francisco to prove how safe and not racist she is. It seemed like they hated Trump and would fight anything he did. htt…

None of the articles you cite demonstrate what you seem to think they do. When the number of cases was minuscule, the threat to Americans was low and those articles were spot on: Keep vigilant, get your flu shot, but don't stress too much yet. Citing Pelosi visiting San Francisco (at a time when there were zero cases in the region, but a growing number of anti-Asian hate crimes) again doesn't make a point to any reas…

No, every bit of cynicism about the media coverage of travel bans seems 100% justified. For context, I'm from the UK where we have a right-wing Brexit-supporting government that's perceived very much as a Trump analogue - except they didn't impose travel bans on places like China early in the pandemic. Which means that over here, people blame our pandemic deaths on the supposed fact that our Government avoided placing restrictions on travel because they're evil right-wingers who were too worried about the damage to the economy that would cause. There was literally a talking point where the Guardian dug up an estimate that imposing travel restrictions on China would've delayed the outbreak here by something like a month, but it had to be a ban on all travellers who'd been in China within 14 days and not just direct travel - that is, it specifically had to be a Trump-style travel ban, an Italy-style one would not have worked. Meanwhile, their US coverage was attacking Trump for his travel ban.

Also, remember that the current US president literally went from using the idea that travel bans were dangerous, counterproductive and made things worse in his electoral campaign to reinstating them with the exact same rules as Trump used as his first act in office, and the mainstream media cheered him on every step of the way...

Re: The media's lab leak fiasco

#202

Post by seattle_spring »

narrator wrote: post #58
thundergolfer wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you got a link to examples? I’m wondering if they weren’t also saying that China deliberately leaked the virus. Saying “it is possible but very unlikely that the virus leaked from a Wuhan lab” is talking about the lab-leak theory. Saying “the virus was cooked up and leaked from a Wuhan lab to hurt Trump’s re-election chances” is also talking about the lab-leak theory.

Zerohedge getting banned from Twitter for publishing an expose of the Wuhan Lab which is pretty close to what is acknowledged as a probable story these days is the most high profile example. https://www.zdnet.com/article/zerohedge-banned-from-twitter-...

Is the majority of HN really fighting for Zerohedge to be recognized as a legitimate source of information?

Re: The media's lab leak fiasco

#203

Post by wombatmobile »

temp8964 wrote: post #177
wombatmobile wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The problem is that this is Standard Operating Procedure(tm) for China When you say "China", do you mean the Department of Health, or the Department of Defense, or the Department of Trade, or the Chinese government, or the Chinese people, or some Chinese guy? It makes as much sense to attribute a Standard Operating Procedure to "China" as it does to attribute something like that to "America", or to say "Americans t…

What you said does not make sense at all. All Chinese government branches are directly under the command of the CCP. Even China's top court rejects the idea of juridical independence [1]. To say China is equivalent to U.S is totally ignorant. 1 . https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-policy-law/chinas-t...

I haven't said China is the same as USA. I’ve said China is a huge set of different interests.

Can you see the difference between those two propositions?

Apparently not, if you’re quoting one western account of one Chinese guys statement, and imaging that represents all of China monolithically.

Re: The media's lab leak fiasco

#204

Post by speeder »

undersuit wrote: post #198
speeder wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A Infamous case was Twitter baning Zerohedge because of it. And all that Zerohedge did was point out a lot of public documents, nothing private, and no bioweapon theory. (Twitter claimed Zerohedge had doxxed the scientist, but Zerohedge only had shown the official lab website and documents from it). https://www.cbsnews.com/news/twitter-bans-zero-hedge-coronav...

Good revisionism there. The very first sentence they push the bioweapon theory. https://www.zerohedge.com/health/man-behind-global-coronavir...

Indeed, he mentioned "weaponized virus" on the article, I had forgotten that particular bit.

Re: The media's lab leak fiasco

#205

Post by temp8964 »

wpietri wrote: post #182
andybak wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm not sure whether it's plausible to non-experts like you or me is a valuable way to categorize it. But the reason to be cautious about it is the potential for violence. Both at an individual level against people perceived as Asian and at a global level of a hot war. A good example here is after 9/11. The US had a rash of violence against people who people thought looked Muslim, like the Sikh gas station owner Balb…

You are making very very wrong suggestion now. Because some people can link Chinese government to all Asians, so we can't criticize the Chinese government? Because Chinese government = Chinese people = Chinese Americans = Asian Americans?

I think this kind of automatic linking Chinese government to Chinese / Asian Americans is itself racist.

What you are suggesting is implicitly accepting this racist idea.

To stand against this kind of racist idea, what we should do is to explicitly separate the Chinese government from Chinese people, from Chinese Americans. We should directly call out Xi Jingping the dictator and CCP the dictatorial regime, instead of implying Xi Jingping and CCP own Chinese people and somehow also own Chinese / Asian Americans.

Re: The media's lab leak fiasco

#206

Post by seattle_spring »

arduinomancer wrote: post #137

I hate how it feels like there's such a "collective narrative" for everything now days with the internet. 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".

> Whenever I talk to people about recent news stories in real life it feels like everyone is just repeating talking points they read online.

Would you mind sharing some examples, as well as the counterpoint arguments you add to the real life conversation?

I've seen claims like this before, and it almost always comes from people who get their news from places like Zerohedge or Infowars.

Re: The media's lab leak fiasco

#207

Post by Spooky23 »

galangalalgol wrote: post #175
Spooky23 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think given the demagogue POTUS and the mob of crazy followers, it was in the public interest to avoid agitating the mob. Even Facebook had the sense to realize that. As it stands, asian people are getting targeted for attacks in the street by deranged individuals.

That is called guilding the lilly. Long term the erosion of trust causes more damage than the white lies avoid. And it shouldn't be Facebook's call.

Long term it’s good to erode trust in Facebook as it’s a malevolent force in society.

Re: The media's lab leak fiasco

#208

Post by seattle_spring »

SCUSKU wrote: post #174
arduinomancer wrote: post #137

I hate how it feels like there's such a "collective narrative" for everything now days with the internet. 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".

Absolutely. Discussion with friends about the goings ons of the world frequently just turns into taking turns regurgitating what we can recall from NPR and NYT's The Daily.

What sources would you recommend instead?

Re: The media's lab leak fiasco

#209

Post by svara »

This story is a real clusterfuck and really hammers home the point that humans are bad at dealing with probabilities and uncertainty. You mix some nationalism in and it becomes completely impossible to have a reasonable discussion.

This article already starts with a false dichotomy: "I missed the furious initial skirmish in what’s become the Long Discourse Wars over the idea that the SARS-CoV-2 virus came from the Wuhan Institute of Virology rather than originating naturally in bats."

Those aren't conflicting hypotheses. If you're having a "war" over that question you need a cold shower and to go offline for a bit. If the institute was somehow involved in spreading the virus, the simplest story is still that they got it from bats. No matter what anyone tells you, there is zero evidence that any part of the virus is engineered (and it isn't even entirely clear what such evidence would look like, in general!).

Either way, no new hard information has become available. The only thing that has changed is we've gone from pure, wild speculation based on the mere existence of the Wuhan virology institute, to wild speculation paired with some suggestive, anecdotal reports that need to be investigated further.

I would agree that this has somewhat changed the probabilities that we should assign to different hypotheses about the origins of the virus, but it's way too early to have strong convictions.

In the absence of any evidence, and in the heated climate of early 2020, it was and will always have been the correct call to ignore the speculation about how the virus might have come from the Wuhan virology institute.

At the present time, there's nothing you can do except hope that more facts will come to light at some point in the future, even if that's somewhat disappointing. Jumping on the story because it's so juicy and fits so great with "China bad" preconceptions is totally unnecessary.

Re: The media's lab leak fiasco

#210

Post by temp8964 »

wombatmobile wrote: post #203
temp8964 wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you said does not make sense at all. All Chinese government branches are directly under the command of the CCP. Even China's top court rejects the idea of juridical independence [1]. To say China is equivalent to U.S is totally ignorant. 1 . https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-policy-law/chinas-t...

I haven't said China is the same as USA. I’ve said China is a huge set of different interests. Can you see the difference between those two propositions? Apparently not, if you’re quoting one western account of one Chinese guys statement, and imaging that represents all of China monolithically.

Lol. You can imagine whatever you want, at the end of the day, CCP makes the final call.
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