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The lab-leak theory: inside the fight to uncover Covid-19’s origins

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Re: The lab-leak theory: inside the fight to uncover Covid-19’s origins

#121

Post by fullshark »

generalizations wrote: post #69
anon325235 wrote: post #35

4chan figured this out as early as March 2020: google "site:4plebs.org shi zhengli"

Nearly made the same comment myself. It feels vindicating to watch all this unfold. How many times now has 4chan been right about the virus, and the media wrong? - 4chan saw the pandemic coming in January 2020, and predicted it would be big - 4chan knew it wasn't 'just another flu' in March 2020, when the media was downplaying it - 4chan figured out the virus is transmitted via areosol, not just particulate - 4chan w…

Isn't this partially backwards looking at 10000+ shitposts and marveling at the X number that were right?

Re: The lab-leak theory: inside the fight to uncover Covid-19’s origins

#122

Post by chrisco255 »

peter422 wrote: post #90
jkhdigital wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...yes? Listen, if you are prepared to seriously consider a lab leak, then you have to assume that any public statements from Chinese authorities are dubious. I’m pretty sure my own government makes dubious statements all the time so it’s not hard to imagine.

I’m seriously considering it and put it higher than 0%. But if you think your hypothesis is the most likely outcome (>50%), and your defense at any evidence that discounts your view is that it is a giant and incredible cover up by the Chinese government then I guess we have very different priors about how easy it is to pull off massive conspiracies. And also remember the people that leaked that 2-3 employees were hos…

> I guess we have very different priors about how easy it is to pull off massive conspiracies.

Is it that difficult when you manipulate the media and control the narrative? This is why the principles of free speech are as important as the law itself.

Re: The lab-leak theory: inside the fight to uncover Covid-19’s origins

#124

Post by vharuck »

anon325235 wrote: post #35

4chan figured this out as early as March 2020: google "site:4plebs.org shi zhengli"

4chan flocks to doom and gloom predictions, because that's the most "fun." When they always predict a global disaster, we shouldn't be surprised when they predicted something that actually was a global disaster. Broken clocks are right twice a day.

Re: The lab-leak theory: inside the fight to uncover Covid-19’s origins

#125

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

generalizations wrote: post #115
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The media showed enormous deference to the Trump administration that insisted it was not going to be big, that is was just another flu, that it wasn't transmitted via aerosol, and that it would be gone soon. 4chan isn't know for enormous deference to anyone, so the fact that "they" (collectivizing 4chan always irriates me, but whatever) got things right given the head-in-sand public attitude (*) of the administration…

Showed deference? The standard practice was to go against what he said. https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/01/31/8016865... Months after this came out, the media was proclaiming that the virus was no worse than the flu.

That report is completely deferential to the administration. It reports on their decision, cites administration officials exclusively, contains no counterpoints whatsoever.

Retrospectively, most analyses that I've read have said that travel bans had essentially no effect, something most epidemiologists at the time were saying too. Was that covered? No. The administration said that a ban on travel from China was a good idea (it likely wasn't a bad one), and that was the end of the story, more or less.

Months after that announcement, Trump was proclaiming that the virus was no worse than the flu.

March 24th, 2020:

"We lose thousands and thousands of people a year to the flu. We don't turn the country off," Trump said from the Rose Garden. "And actually, this year we're having a bad flu season. But we lose thousands of people a year to the flu. We never turn the country off. We lose much more than that to automobile accidents… I would love to have the country opened up and just raring to go by Easter."

Re: The lab-leak theory: inside the fight to uncover Covid-19’s origins

#126

Post by kaesar14 »

542458 wrote: post #110
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kevin Drum had a good summary of this a couple of weeks ago, much shorter. His take? There's no more evidence for the lab leak theory now than there was a year ago, BUT what has changed is that the cross-over theory implied that we would find certain evidence for the vectors, and that evidence has not shown up. KD's take was that it's not so much that the lab leak theory has become more likely, it's the that biologic…

We’ve been trying to find the zoonotic origin of Ebola for decades without any success. We don’t have anywhere near a complete catalog of animal diseases, and of those only a fraction have been sequenced.

We didn’t have the same confluence of other circumstantial evidence we do in this case. There’s no good reason to think Ebola came from a lab.

Re: The lab-leak theory: inside the fight to uncover Covid-19’s origins

#127

Post by jkhdigital »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #86
nostromo wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason it's coming out now is because Trump is gone. During the election, most of the media decided to ignore anything they were afraid would help Trump or hurt Biden. Whether an activist media is good or bad is left as an exercise for the reader.

We have an actively status-quo favoring media, not an activist one. The former president was a pathological liar (thousands of documented clear lies during his office), and there were (and are) extremely good reasons to ignore more or less anything he said.

To paraphrase one of my favorite comedies, Super Troopers:

“But Trump’s lies are cheeky and fun!

Yeah, and the establishment’s lies are cruel and tragic.”

Of course this is an overstatement; Trump’s lies were not pretty but the point is that obvious lies are significantly less damaging than well-hidden lies. It’s the skillful liars that one needs to be wary of.

Re: The lab-leak theory: inside the fight to uncover Covid-19’s origins

#128

Post by tpfour »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #78
tpfour wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're taking this the wrong way. You have to update your priors and calculate a joint probability knowing everything we know about the origins of this particular virus.

Except that we still don't actually know very much about the origins of this virus.

We know enough to calculate a joint probability. Just update your estimate with new information. This should be pretty non-controversial. Everybody does this every day especially in the face of uncertainty.

Re: The lab-leak theory: inside the fight to uncover Covid-19’s origins

#129

Post by generalizations »

fullshark wrote: post #121
generalizations wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nearly made the same comment myself. It feels vindicating to watch all this unfold. How many times now has 4chan been right about the virus, and the media wrong? - 4chan saw the pandemic coming in January 2020, and predicted it would be big - 4chan knew it wasn't 'just another flu' in March 2020, when the media was downplaying it - 4chan figured out the virus is transmitted via areosol, not just particulate - 4chan w…

Isn't this partially backwards looking at 10000+ shitposts and marveling at the X number that were right?

> Sure, 4chan got a lot wrong: but better to get all the (possible) facts, and sift through them.

Re: The lab-leak theory: inside the fight to uncover Covid-19’s origins

#130

Post by raphlinus »

This is a good article. There's been so much junk over the past couple of weeks or so that it's been very frustrating. I've mostly been watching the debate unfold on Twitter, and it's confirmed for me that Twitter is a terrible place for real intellectually-curious discussion (probably social media in general).

I've been wondering certain things, especially why Marc Lipsitch (one of the most consistently trustworthy voices throughout the pandemic) signed that Science letter, knowing that it would add weight to the "it's a lab leak" propaganda, and stood by the assertion that lab leak is plausible[1].

I hope we do get the true answers to these questions, though think it's not especially likely.

I'll say a couple other things. For an audience of honestly intellectually curious people, the Trumpian right-wingers did enormous damage to their theory, even if it was correct, by being racist and scientifically willfully stupid. Similarly, the Chinese authorities, even if they were correct did enormous damage to their theory by being authoritarian and stifling real communication. But it is very easy to see why both sides acted as they did: these mythical honest intellectually curious people are a tiny fraction of the entire audience, and have relatively little power, so they were quite incentivized to act as they did. And, maybe a little too early to say for sure, but it probably worked.

[1]: https://twitter.com/mlipsitch/status/1398455815959367683

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