The media's lab leak fiasco • Hacker News Board

Re: The media's lab leak fiasco

#471

Post by beaner » Fri, May 28, 2021, 2:39 AM UTC

jjoonathan wrote: post #341

beaner wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the contrary, actors who are bad at judging what qualifies as a "good" idea should be removed from the filtering process.

How is that contrary? MSM got one wrong in the same time that alternative media has gotten hundreds wrong. MSM isn't just better at rejecting misinformation, it's a lot better.

Wrong. The things it does get wrong have more impact. Russiagate is just one prior example. It was patently false from the outset, but led to mass delusions, promotions of fake news propagandists to the point that they are now embedded within and celebrated by the MSM, the discrediting of the media and the intelligence community, breakdown of trust of those institutions by those who had been clear-headed, and fever-dream level hysteria by those who were misled, greatly fracturing Americans who were already divided.

It may be true that they get fewer specific points wrong, but if the ones they do get wrong count for a lot more, that's not better. That's worse.

Re: The media's lab leak fiasco

#472

Post by Moodles » Fri, May 28, 2021, 2:40 AM UTC

XorNot wrote: post #433

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…

> Pelosi was dancing in the streets of Chinatown San Francisco to prove how safe and not racist she is. Why does this keep coming up? This was literally a problem at the time: a pandemic in China was resulting in a huge amount of local racism and ostracism of American Chinese descendants and expats, people who, by you know, being in a completely different country , weren't somehow magically more dangerous then anyone…

You know what else was a bigger problem at the time? The coronavirus.

Re: The media's lab leak fiasco

#473

Post by ravel-bar-foo » Fri, May 28, 2021, 2:40 AM UTC

hintymad wrote: post #317

defaultname wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> It did nothing to restrict US citizens traveling to and from the affected areas unrestrained, which thousands continued to do I thought the federal government does not even have the legal power to do so. Personally, though, I think giving local government more power is a genius design by the founding fathers. > was the single action taken after the virus was already spreading uncontrolled in NY, Washington State, a…

The federal laws on trade and immigration actually have a lot of carve outs for infection control. The executive can quarantine any vessel, demand health documentation on passengers, and turn noncompliant vessels away.

Re: The media's lab leak fiasco

#474

Post by swader999 » Fri, May 28, 2021, 2:43 AM UTC

seattle_spring wrote: post #329

swader999 wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Recognized as a legitimate source of information" So default censor all non legitimate sources? Who gets to decide what is legitimate? I don't care for the comments on that site but many times they've had scoops and been proven correct after time has passed.

> So default censor all non legitimate sources No? Censor sources that have proven time and time again to provide verifiably false information. Zerohedge and Infowars specifically fit into that bucket and it's completely reasonable to shine a light on their lack of trustworthiness. A lot of folks are saying, "let the people decide what is false!" Well, here's the thing: People are really mind-numbingly stupid. Spend…

To quote Tolstoy: "The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of doubt, what is laid before him."

Re: The media's lab leak fiasco

#475

Post by lawnchair_larry » Fri, May 28, 2021, 2:46 AM UTC

tootie wrote: post #467

neither_color wrote: post #34

There’s a question as to why that fake consensus emerged. But I think the more troubling question is: How did people let the original story of what Tom Cotton even said go so badly awry? Essentially Cotton said something that was then transformed into a fake claim of a Chinese bio-attack, then the fake claim was debunked, and then the debunking was applied to the real claim with little attention paid to ongoing disag…

As far as I can tell this is a false premise. The scientific consensus on zoonotic origin was never really considered conclusive by anyone and was never really sold as being conclusive. There was a very strong backlash against the ridiculous theories spread by people like Tom Cotton that virus was engineered that absolutely soured the debate. And people like Trump and his sycophants who didn't just suggest lab leak b…

You’re incorrect on nearly all of this and haven’t “broken out” of the forced narrative. All I can suggest is you go back to the primary sources yourself. Don’t take my word for it, don’t take your preferred media outlet’s word for it. Dig it up and decide.

The lab leak is overwhelmingly likely. It’s the Occam’s Razor without question. It’s still a hypothesis to be clear. It’s not proven. It could be wrong. But if we are assigning probabilities, it’s extremely one sided. It should have been the leading hypothesis from the beginning.

But Trump said it, so it must be wrong. We must find reasons for it to be not only wrong, but worthy of ridicule. And when those narratives fall, we must keep shifting the goal posts. And when that doesn’t work anymore, we must blame our failure on republicans in some roundabout way.

Sorry, that’s not how we science. We have to put the damn political tribal warfare away for a minute.

Re: The media's lab leak fiasco

#476

Post by admax88q » Fri, May 28, 2021, 2:47 AM UTC

lawnchair_larry wrote: post #465

CiceroCiceronis wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A recently released meta—analysis from the British Medical Journal suggests that the evidence base for ivermectin’s efficacy in treating COVID-19 is low. https://ebm.bmj.com/content/early/2021/05/26/bmjebm-2021-111...

This is kind of doing the same thing that the “fact checkers” are doing. There is indeed a lack of proper studies to validate it. That’s the problem. There are mountains of evidence that show it as very promising and worthy of a proper study. That’s what people are asking for. The FDA keeps saying not to use it, because we don’t know for certain that it works, because we haven’t had any rigorous RCTs to validate it,…

The FDA doesn't tell people what to research, it tells the public what existing research confirms is safe to use.

If a bunch of scientists think iverwhatever is viable they can do a proper study on it and get it published and peer reviewed.

To "drop everything" would be criminally negligent, there's lots of things that can and should be researched in parallel.

Re: The media's lab leak fiasco

#477

Post by tshaddox » Fri, May 28, 2021, 2:48 AM UTC

SilverRed wrote: post #293

wpietri wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good thing they aren't monopolies, then. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Twitch, TikTok, and Reddit are are all very popular places for people to post their views. And that's not counting the myriad lesser places like the one we're using now. And of course anybody can drop a few bucks on a blog of their own. I also disagree that sites moderating is against the intent. Freedom of speech is one right, but so is freedom of…

>And of course anybody can drop a few bucks on a blog of their own. And no one will read it unless you can post links on facebook, twitter and reddit. In the end, almost all communication online runs through a limited set of american megacorps who all act in the same ways, have the same rules and align to the same culture. It's no surprise China and Russia ban American sites because those sites control the debate and…

> And no one will read it unless you can post links on facebook, twitter and reddit.

I suppose the question is how long that list of websites really is, and how long it needs to be before people stop calling all those websites "monopolies." Obviously it would be fairly absurd to say "no one will read your website unless you can post links on site 1, site 2, site 3, ... site 3,109,550, and therefore those 3.1 million websites are monopolies."

Re: The media's lab leak fiasco

#478

Post by brippalcharrid » Fri, May 28, 2021, 2:52 AM UTC

ndiddy wrote: post #415

briefcomment wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Insane How can you be so gung-ho with relatively new vaccines, but bury relatively benign and longer standing interventions?

One of the criteria for FDA Emergency Use Authorization is that there's no adequate, approved, and available alternatives ( https://www.fda.gov/emergency-preparedness-and-response/mcm-... ) so if they started looking into alternative treatments it could have jeopardized approval of the vaccines.

You'd hope that if there had been promising candidates for prophylactic/therapeutic treatment involving off-patent/generic drugs that the regulator and the medical establishment would have considered them on their merits, and not systematically squashed them with bad studies and half-truths in favor of top-shelf Big Pharma products. It would be unconscionable for people in these positions of authority to have shown partiality towards the pharmaceutical industry in a matter like this which would have delayed access to treatment and which gives rise to serious concerns about patient safety, especially considering the difference in the amount of medium and long-term safety data that is available about them (months compared to decades).

Re: The media's lab leak fiasco

#479

Post by tshaddox » Fri, May 28, 2021, 2:53 AM UTC

monoideism wrote: post #358

XorNot wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except there's no barrier of entry to Twitter's marketplace. Twitter doesn't somehow prevent users installing other apps. They aren't a natural monopoly, seeing as how Facebook has been taking shots at that space for years. This bizarre HN notion that every big company is a "monopoly" needs to die. Being popular doesn't make you a monopoly.

I'm not really arguing from an antitrust perspective. My argument is more focused on the central role that Twitter plays in our political process. If you have a better word to use for that concept than "monopoly", I'll edit my post. But I'm sure you disagree with my thesis either way. That said, from an antitrust perspective, there are strong arguments against some social media companies, particularly Facebook. Furth…

> My argument is more focused on the central role that Twitter plays in our political process. If you have a better word to use for that concept than "monopoly"

What's the concept then, other than that Twitter is doing things that you don't like? That's obviously not a sufficient argument, and if antitrust law isn't the reason for legal action to be taken against them, what's the reason? The only other legal course I could imagine is significant changes to media laws (which I'm certainly not opposed to, but those seem more difficult to argue for than antitrust action), or perhaps going at it from the other side and changing the laws around how public figures must communicate with the public.

Re: The media's lab leak fiasco

#480

Post by onionisafruit » Fri, May 28, 2021, 2:54 AM UTC

tootie wrote: post #467

neither_color wrote: post #34

There’s a question as to why that fake consensus emerged. But I think the more troubling question is: How did people let the original story of what Tom Cotton even said go so badly awry? Essentially Cotton said something that was then transformed into a fake claim of a Chinese bio-attack, then the fake claim was debunked, and then the debunking was applied to the real claim with little attention paid to ongoing disag…

As far as I can tell this is a false premise. The scientific consensus on zoonotic origin was never really considered conclusive by anyone and was never really sold as being conclusive. There was a very strong backlash against the ridiculous theories spread by people like Tom Cotton that virus was engineered that absolutely soured the debate. And people like Trump and his sycophants who didn't just suggest lab leak b…

How can you read this then casually say Tom Cotton was spreading ridiculous theories that covid was engineered? One of the main points in the article is he never said that and what he did say was pretty reasonable. It’s ok if you think the article is wrong about that, but you should at least give a source for your claim at this point.