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

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

#341

Post by IgorPartola » Fri, Jun 04, 2021, 3:40 AM UTC

fragileone wrote: post #140

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that it was a Trump theory. That doesn't mean it cannot be true. It does mean that after 3 years and several thousand fully documented outright lies, the presumption of truth was no longer being granted.

Except he was proven right yet again that social media and old media orgs will censor others and lie to the public when it fits their political agenda.

I keep seeing this and it just doesn’t make sense. What is more likely, a global conspiracy theory amongst all the tech giants who normally try to outcompete each other into the ground as quickly and with as much humiliation as possible and the Federal government, which they try to evade and subvert at every opportunity?

Or the idea that when COVID first hit it was the conspiracy theorists screaming the loudest about the lab leak origin and given the sudden interest of the US in xenophobia and specifically the anti-Chinese sentiment(hint: it’s not that sudden), it would have potentially resulted in violence against Asian people. And at the same time the crossover theory was pretty much as likely if not more based on what we knew then. Now that more info has been gathered everyone is doing an about-face on covering this issue since it’s become a serious conversation and not a crackpot fringe theory shared with the intent to spread hate.

Maybe what had happened was that initially we knew little and everyone was a bit panicked. Then the crackpots started spreading FUD via the most convenient COVID origin theory to their message. The old media mostly ignored this, dismissing it swiftly without giving it more airtime. Social media was too busy with conspiracy theorist and right wing activists spreading the lab leak theory so they viewed it as false (if 99% of the time what a person says is a lie, why would this particular thing be true?). Then articles like these revived that theory with new information. Most people took in the information as just “hey new data” and left it at that. A few people who were spreading the conspiracy theory version of this story felt vindicated while simultaneously upset because their low quality memes were not really allowed while new the WSJ, the NYT, and Vanity Faire is getting front page treatment because of course excellent writing is more compelling than some guy on YouTube angrily vaping in his mother’s basement.

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

#342

Post by jeswin » Fri, Jun 04, 2021, 3:40 AM UTC

Gatsky wrote: post #164

Assuming the chance of a lab leak is non-zero, it is worth considering how this will ever end. - If there was any hard evidence actually proving they had SARS-CoV-2 in the lab before the pandemic, it will be long gone. Only an independent full access forensic level investigation would ever find any sign that evidence was destroyed, and that is never going to happen. - It seems extremely unlikely to me that anyone fro…

Evidence could come from communications. Such a large scale coverup would have required quite a lot of exchanges. Even with China being somewhat opaque and inaccessible to foreign intelligence, there could be digital trails.

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

#343

Post by deugo » Fri, Jun 04, 2021, 3:41 AM UTC

knowaveragejoe wrote: post #338

deugo wrote: post #133

https://drasticresearch.org/ to see some real hackers at work. Media, governments, and scientists should take a stronger stand now, or they will not protect amateurs against the full wrath of more unsavory elements of hostile state actors.

This site smacks of people starting from a conclusion and working backwards.

Working backwards from February 2020. About 3 weeks after Peter Daszak started his wild PR campaign. Pretty impressive for a group of amateurs to still beat the pros to the finish line. Because here we are. Finally discussing it. This site can be linked, and exposed to ridicule and critique. And it keeps standing (Peter Daszak can not use his Facebook admin powers to block it!). Lovely!

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

#344

Post by knowaveragejoe » Fri, Jun 04, 2021, 3:42 AM UTC

MilnerRoute wrote: post #301

I'd like to point out that the lab-leak theory is still being dismissed by portions of the mainstream media. (I'm not taking a side here -- just pointing out that this hasn't been settled yet.) Today the Los Angeles Times published an article headlined "The lab-leak origin claim for COVID-19 is in the news, but it's still fact-free." What's missing from all this reexamination and soul-searching is a fundamental fact:…

What if that's because there's less to the theory than you think? Your own quotations, not to mention other comments in this very thread, show that there is still a non-trivial amount of doubt on this one. I seriously think a lot of people leaving comments along these lines WANT this hypothesis to be true because they think it proves they were "always right".

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

#345

Post by lmm » Fri, Jun 04, 2021, 3:43 AM UTC

triceratops wrote: post #320

lmm wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The more important takeaway is don't shout down those who are skeptical if you haven't actually investigated the authorities' credibility yourself. Get comfortable with not knowing, with being agnostic on a lot of issues, because it's often the only reasonable position. (The most important takeaway is to ignore Twitter - not "social media", but specifically Twitter).

All fair points. But again I question the part where you said "if you haven't actually investigated the authorities' credibility yourself". How would I, a person with no training in virology, do that? At some point, you have to trust someone or some institution or organization or system.

> But again I question the part where you said "if you haven't actually investigated the authorities' credibility yourself". How would I, a person with no training in virology, do that?

My point is that maybe you shouldn't stick your oar in in that case. The polarisation was exacerbated by a lot of non-experts who not just trusted the WHO (reasonable in itself) but felt the need to pile on anyone who was questioning them.

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

#346

Post by dukeofdoom » Fri, Jun 04, 2021, 3:45 AM UTC

Account of the Informed Consent Action Network @ICANdecide reportedly locked out by Twitter after they announced to publish more emails from Dr. Fauci obtained via FOIA request, citing #COVID19 misinformation policy.

https://twitter.com/disclosetv/status/1400571828230369282

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

#347

Post by Throwawayaerlei » Fri, Jun 04, 2021, 3:46 AM UTC

Jarwain wrote: post #312

lamontcg wrote: post #185

> Wade devoted a full section to the “furin cleavage site,” a distinctive segment of SARS-CoV-2’s genetic code that makes the virus more infectious by allowing it to efficiently enter human cells. > Within the scientific community, one thing leapt off the page. Wade quoted one of the world’s most famous microbiologists, Dr. David Baltimore, saying that he believed the furin cleavage site “was the smoking gun for the…

There are so many "shocking" articles, but here's something I don't get: The closest genetic match is only 3.8% similar. When it only has 29,903 base pairs, that's 1,136 mutations. I'm no bioscientist but my friends who are tell me that's a lot of changes, and that experiments might change a few base pairs or proteins at a time. A lab leak theory doesn't explain how gain of function study resulted in so many mutation…

but my friends who are tell me that's a lot of changes, and that experiments might change a few base pairs or proteins at a time. A lab leak theory doesn't explain how gain of function study resulted in so many mutations, unless they were blasting these viruses with radiation

Or explicitly creating chimeric coronaviruses, which has been the state of the are for some time. Here's https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26552008/ one of the sources of smoke on this, a 2015 paper co-authored by the Bat Woman (2nd to last author), the key sentence from the abstract:

Using the SARS-CoV reverse genetics system, we generated and characterized a chimeric virus expressing the spike of bat coronavirus SHC014 in a mouse-adapted SARS-CoV backbone.

Have you read the fine article? It cites more than a few papers.

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

#348

Post by Izkata » Fri, Jun 04, 2021, 3:46 AM UTC

lifeformed wrote: post #317

kaesar14 wrote: post #54

It’s crazy to me how many people on even this forum, a place purportedly of science, continue to dismiss a lab leak origin out of hand citing it as some sort of crackpot theory. The serious questions raised in this article have been around since last April but it’s only now it’s even allowed to talk about them on digital forums. Excellent write up by Vanity Fair.

The way I remember it was that people conflated the lab leak theory with it being engineered in a lab. Those are very different things but easy to mix up in a headline. It being engineered as a bioweapon is in the realm of a crackpot theory, but it being just a poorly contained natural research project was fairly reasonable. Some prominent people mixed the two up on purpose and eventually the whole thing - both ideas…

Half true, they did get conflated - but it wasn't just the titles, the articles themselves were using one to debunk the other.

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

#349

Post by onetimeusename » Fri, Jun 04, 2021, 3:47 AM UTC

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #83

kaesar14 wrote: post #54

It’s crazy to me how many people on even this forum, a place purportedly of science, continue to dismiss a lab leak origin out of hand citing it as some sort of crackpot theory. The serious questions raised in this article have been around since last April but it’s only now it’s even allowed to talk about them on digital forums. Excellent write up by Vanity Fair.

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…

I think the release that three scientists fell ill in November 2019, who were working on gain of function research at the Wuhan lab with Covid-like symptoms, may have made the lab leak theory more probable, at least in my opinion, since a year ago. Note that doesn't say they definitely had Covid or that anything conclusive about the theory was settled.

Did Kevin Drum say otherwise?

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

#350

Post by PaulDavisThe1st » Fri, Jun 04, 2021, 3:47 AM UTC

remarkEon wrote: post #324

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shutting them up doesn't appear to have been particularly successful. The lab leak theory has continued to be discussed in all kinds of media and many parts of the culture over the last year.

>Shutting them up doesn't appear to have been particularly successful. The goal posts will move on this, I guarantee it. Suddenly institutional media will claim they've been working on this story the entire time, and all of their pronouncements cajoling people into not thinking about this explanation will be completely memory-holed. I'm not being hostile to you, I'm expressing frustration here because this really doe…

Go back and look at the reporting on every American war of the last 70 years. You will see the same pattern, and yet Trump had nothing do with any of them.

Go back and look at the reporting on every major environmental disaster of the last 70 years, from DDT to oil tanker spills to lead in gasoline to anthropogenic climate change: same pattern. Trump had nothing do with any of them either.

Hint: the media is pro-status quo. On every story, there are a few outliers who provide contrarian accounts, while the majority take a don't rock the boat (much) approach. Eventually, evidence accumulates, the culture shifts, the media changes direction.

It's not, for once, about Trump.