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The media's lab leak fiasco

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Re: The media's lab leak fiasco

#281

Post by Lazare »

barrkel wrote: post #256
awb wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s only a spec of difference. I don’t know anyone suggesting that the lab leak was of a natural origin. The theory is that the lab created the virus and it leaked.

I think there's a genuine spectrum between man-made bio-weapon (not very believable IMO), through gain of function research (I've read enough that - if true - the RNA evidence suggests that it probably wasn't this), through to leak from animal studies. Gain of function, if it isn't ruled out by RNA or other approaches, isn't quite man-made and is at least somewhat plausible. Gain of function research on the flu is (a…

Some techniques of manipulating the virus would leave "fingerprints". Others would not. My understanding is that the sweeping assertions that COVID-19 would show clear signs of being manipulated have been largely debunked. Many ultimately traced back to a letter written by a group of virologists led by Kristian Andersen and published in Nature, but all that letter did was assert that some techniques (not all!) were unlikely (but even then, not impossible).

I'm unaware of any reputable experts who are willing to assert that manipulation via, eg, serial passaging, can be ruled out. The closest you'll get is assertions that a natural zoonotic origin is, in their estimation, more likely.

See, eg, https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/coronavirus-lab-esca... and https://nicholaswade.medium.com/origin-of-covid-following-th....

Re: The media's lab leak fiasco

#282

Post by wearywanderer »

Lazare wrote: post #257
tomjakubowski wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook's policy page only mentions censoring content suggesting that the virus was "man-made". Did Twitter actually ban users who suggested _only_ that the virus leaked from a lab? I'd be surprised because I follow some fairly big accounts there which have posted about the lab leak theory. https://about.fb.com/news/2020/04/covid-19-misinfo-update/

There's a bit of a fuzzy overlap between "man made" and "lab leak". Specifically, the lab leak theory more or less assumes that the virus was collected from the mine, taken to Wuhan, and some research and experiments were done on it, resulting it some changes. Certainly the lab was doing research; there's an ongoing debate over what they did, who funded it, whether what they did technically qualifies as "gain of func…

> Specifically, the lab leak theory more or less assumes that the virus was collected from the mine, taken to Wuhan, and some research and experiments were done on it, resulting it some changes.

I disagree, the lab leak hypothesis is independent from the lab [inadvertently or deliberately] mutating the virus. The lab may have merely possessed the virus, having made only the mistake of transporting the virus from a remote region into the middle of a city and then subsequently losing control of it.

Re: The media's lab leak fiasco

#283

Post by makomk »

defaultname wrote: post #265
makomk wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 placin…

I love that my other comment is at -4 already. The "MAGA" side of HN is flooding in, desperately thinking this is their moment of redemption. "but it had to be a ban on all travellers who'd been in China within 14 days and not just direct travel" Weird to call that "Trump-style" given that Trump's travel "ban" excluded Americans and their family members which already comprised the bulk of people traveling to and from…

The "all" part is, from what I can tell, considerably less important than the "not just banning direct travel" part... the model assumed that only most of the travel from China was stopped, and that was still enough to cause a huge delay in the outbreak. It is far better to have 30 aircraft from China landing in San Francisco than to have 30 aircrafts' worth of travellers originally China spread out across hundreds of aircraft from other destinations, such that you have no idea who the travellers are, where they are, they could be spreading it to completely unrelated travellers from different destinations - which is what Italy effectively did.

"This is either ignorance or an intentional lie. Which is it?"

Joe Biden literally got up on stage and claimed that the travel bans made the US outbreak worse - and was quoted in the mainstream media as doing so.

"They opposed that it was the singular action taken during a very dangerous period. That quarantines or even tracing weren't put in effect. Etc."

Errrm... that's not actually true though. There was definitely plenty of contact tracing in the US, it just didn't get a huge amount of media coverage. Also, I can't imagine locking up US citizens of Chinese origin en masse going down well at the time when it would actually have to have been done... especially since it ultimately wouldn't have helped all that much. The contact tracing and other indications, like genetic analysis of the Covid strains which spread in the US, suggest that the measures the US took were effective enough that spread from China isn't what ultimately ended up causing their big outbreaks. Not taking measures against spread from Italy when that country was reporting zero cases is probably what did it, and realistically that wasn't going to happen.

Re: The media's lab leak fiasco

#284

Post by dundarious »

pedalpete wrote: post #222

Am I the only one who feels like this is mostly a non-issue. I feel like the case of if this came from a lab for from a market is mostly taking a political side against China - if it came from a lab, or for China - if it was naturally developed. If it came from a Chinese lab as part of a conscious effort of weaponizing a virus, sure, that's important, but I don't think anyone is saying that. If it came from a lab acc…

I think further public and political pressure is still needed to ensure a proper investigation occurs (I'm not confident one is ongoing). There is an inflection point at which more pressure becomes actively unhelpful of course.

But I also think the current evidence for a lab leak is far weaker than proponents claim (2 somewhat contradictory unnamed US intel sources saying WIV staff were sick in Nov '19, haven't found the reservoir animal yet, closest match is far away, lab exists in part of Asia where such viruses are known to emerge and also where it would be a good place to put a lab...)

Re: The media's lab leak fiasco

#285

Post by fsckboy »

pedalpete wrote: post #222

Am I the only one who feels like this is mostly a non-issue. I feel like the case of if this came from a lab for from a market is mostly taking a political side against China - if it came from a lab, or for China - if it was naturally developed. If it came from a Chinese lab as part of a conscious effort of weaponizing a virus, sure, that's important, but I don't think anyone is saying that. If it came from a lab acc…

no, the choice is not as you put it, "weaponization vs lab leak of virus that happens to be under study". The likely scenario that's being proposed for the lab-leak is a man-made virus that is quite routine to see in labs like this, in every advanced technology country in the world. The making of dangerous viruses for the purposes of research is quite common, and in order to take steps to improve security, we need openness and transparency about what is going on.

China does, though, very much lack openness and transparency when it comes to owning up to mistakes.

Re: The media's lab leak fiasco

#286

Post by jkhdigital »

caeril wrote: post #136
generalizations wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Except it was never misinformation. It's always been not only plausible, but the null hypothesis given the location of the lab, the nature of research there, and the early cases along the train line. When Jack banned zerohedge for their article, there were other reasons than "misinformation". Only he and his masters know those reasons.

Exactly, the misinformation argument is a red herring. The evidence for the lab leak theory was assembled and publicly available by February of last year. It has not changed in the intervening 15 months. The only explanation I can come up with is TDS—otherwise intelligent people (including some of my close friends) who simply could not consider an idea supported by Trump to be credible. Didn’t matter how clear and convincing the evidence was, they just assumed that it must be faulty and untrustworthy.

Re: The media's lab leak fiasco

#288

Post by hintymad »

deadalus wrote: post #5

Reminder that Facebook and Twitter banned users for talking about the lab-leak theory. Youtube accounts also got demontized/banned.

Also a reminder that "right wing" is such a wonderful term. Mention it, and all the discussion that you don't like can be easily shrugged off, or better, attacked.

Really, why is it so important that we need to pitch left against right? Why can we establish facts, carry out reasoning, and be explicit about interpretation vs conclusion?

How many countries can thrive when all that matters is partisanship or moralizing everything? Maybe Americans should learn a little history about Ming dynasty: The Tung-lin-tang turned everything into evil vs. good, to the point that the government couldn't get anything done and the ruling class couldn't get any fact straight. A dynasty with hundreds of millions of people was conquered by a barbarous tribe, and the entire nation became the laugh stock of the world in merely 150 years (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macartney_Embassy).

By the way, Tung-lin-tang were experts of mind reading. Their most effective method of attacking their political opponent is to attack their motive. To them, narrative was all that matters.

Re: The media's lab leak fiasco

#289

Post by hanselot »

dqv wrote: post #234
seattle_spring wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What sources would you recommend instead?

All of them. Even the ones of your enemies. Sometimes you need to know the other side’s angle to understand if you’re unknowingly biased.

How else do you train your spam filter?

Re: The media's lab leak fiasco

#290

Post by jkhdigital »

wearywanderer wrote: post #239
dylan604 wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Decisions are made by people, who we hope are informed by evidence. That hope is lost. It's really easy to get overwhelmed in how doomed we seemed to be because of it. People are believing things in spite of evidence, and are absolutely rooted in that belief to society's detrement. How much further could be be if beliefs were no longer held onto once evidence were present that shows that belief to just not be correc…

Some people will believe stupid things no matter the evidence until the day they die. I don't consider this such a severe problem as to warrant putting some people in charge of what others should believe. Just the contrary in fact...

Not just some people—everyone.
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