Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

vanityfair.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

361–370 of 1001 posts

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

#361

Post by chitowneats »

knowaveragejoe wrote: post #315
lawnchair_larry wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haha. No. It’s because of politics and TDS. People were taught that this was a Trump theory. That’s all the media needs to say to ensure that nobody will take it seriously and nobody will tolerate anyone else who takes it seriously.

This is a totally fair reaction to all "trump theories".

It's so bizarre to me to view him in this way. "Trump thinks something; therefore I must be against it".

I understand not taking his word for anything. But it's such an important issue. To just dismiss it and not try to investigate it, even at the highest levels of our government and public health bureaucracies, strikes me as negligent at best.

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

#362

Post by deugo »

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…

Put me in the screenshot when you report your progress.

lamontcg has definitely convinced me, and did a great job disrupting the conversation re-using a playbook template. We all gave him upvotes to increase the visibility of his well-crafted post. Soon, most Americans went home to have beer and watch Superbowl. Job well done.

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

#363

Post by ramraj07 »

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…

Holding people from China accountable might be a tree we can’t bark at, but we can sure as hell hold everyone even marginally accountable in the US side if it’s clear they covered up their involvement in the unleashing of this plague.

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

#364

Post by Izkata »

ctoth wrote: post #7

Another pretty good article, certainly higher quality than you'd consider given the source[0]. What switch flipped to make all these come out right now? [0]: https://www.newsweek.com/exclusive-how-amateur-sleuths-broke...

There were a bunch of things in the past month or so that flipped the pandemic narratives in general, I'm thinking that made people start to question the rest. Here's some others:

* A Wired article detailed how the whole basis for social distancing and masking was wrong, based on two unrelated facts that got mixed together 60 years ago: https://www.wired.com/story/the-teeny-tiny-scientific-screwu...

* Texas and Florida eliminated not just lockdowns but also all mask usage and the predicted spike in cases didn't happen.

* Fauci was caught lying to Congress about funding gain-of-function research.

* And probably the most direct trigger for this topic, Buzzfeed got and released Fauci's emails through a FoIA request just a couple days ago, which among other things revealed that he was warned about it possibly being a lab leak right at the beginning of the pandemic.

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

#365

Post by SV_BubbleTime »

frickenhamster wrote: post #306
mc32 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other astonishing things is the sudden about face by the media. I'm glad they allowed themselves the liberty of looking at alternative origins. But... they were SO adamant and complicit in any discussion about alternative theories being shut down under the guise of conspiracy, Trumpism, anti-China, etc. (These are the same people who have no qualms about attributing anything to Russia even if evidence is thin, so…

China supported this in a psyop. Remember when they tried repeatedly to push the origin of the virus to Italy? I'm ethnically Chinese, so I'm in contact with a lot of mainlanders. The brainwashing is very effective. Even if most mainlanders know that their state media is bogus, and that Xi is a dictator, they'll take it deeply personally when you say anything that threatens the whole China # 1 narrative. All they had…

Does no one else remember the videos out of China with people laying dead in the streets, falling over as they walked, convulsing behind the steering wheels of cars? Who paid for all that acting, scenes, and filming and then have it presented as “news”?

CCP owns Hong Kong, that was over in 1997, the only surprising thing about HK is that China waited this long to make it better known. Now... The country of Taiwan on the other hand, it’s going to be a bit more tense there for some time.

EDIT: Added links from Jan, most videos have been removed but the articles and screenshots are there. The one I specifically wanted was removed from YouTube and I can’t find it, showed a guy being checked by a PPE marshmallow then nearly immediately going into spasms in his car.

EDIT2: To whoever might have been upset at my thoughts on Taiwan; I updated it with some italics for you.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7923981/Coronavirus...

https://www.ibtimes.sg/china-virusnew-videos-wuhan-show-coro...

Here is snopes with an eye roll worthy fact check https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/people-collapsing-coronavi... “Unproven” ok, thanks for that guys.

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

#366

Post by _-david-_ »

Leary wrote: post #72

Wall Street Journal's article on US Intelligence having information on the three potential sick WIV researchers was written by a reporter named Michael R. Gordon[1]. [1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/intelligence-on-sick-staff-at-w... This is the same Michael R. Gordon who in 2002 wrote the famous NYTimes article saying US Intelligence had credible information that Iraq had Weapons of Mass Destruction (Thousands of al…

I mean to be fair there were actually WMD in Iraq

https://www.wired.com/2010/10/wikileaks-show-wmd-hunt-contin...

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

#367

Post by knowaveragejoe »

fragileone wrote: post #53

Strange that this article tries to paint anyone right-wing who postulated this theory way before the mainstream finally accepted it as being racist or crazy, as if nobody had talked about this evidence back then. The journal articles published by the lab were public information, as was their prior lab leaks in 2019, poor safety practice anecdotes, etc. Thousands of social media accounts got banned on all the major pl…

[flagged]

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

#368

Post by jtbayly »

jcrawfordor wrote: post #205
harryf wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not saying it's shady to provide that funding. What I'm saying is it demonstrates conflict of interest. Last year in May 5 2020 Fauci dismissed the idea that the virus came from a lab that his own organisation was providing funds to - https://www.cbsnews.com/news/anthony-fauci-wuhan-lab-coronav... Whether or not anything shady was happening, the conflict of interest is clear.

Would Fauci have even known? Budget numbers say NIAID clears around $5 billion in grant funding per year and this grant was more at the $100k per year level. Another source shows that NIAID receives around 3,000 grant applications per year and that's just in two of their multiple grant types. It seems most likely to me that the grant was approved and funded by a subject-area committee without Fauci being involved at…

Would Fauci have known that gain of function research was now legal again?! Of course he would. Whether or not to fund that sort of risky research that has gone back and forth in legality is precisely the kind of thing that his job required him to know, isn't it?

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

#369

Post by SV_BubbleTime »

corpMaverick wrote: post #139
mc32 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other astonishing things is the sudden about face by the media. I'm glad they allowed themselves the liberty of looking at alternative origins. But... they were SO adamant and complicit in any discussion about alternative theories being shut down under the guise of conspiracy, Trumpism, anti-China, etc. (These are the same people who have no qualms about attributing anything to Russia even if evidence is thin, so…

IMHO, we were in the middle of the problem. The important part to was to figure out how to get out of it. The investigation at that point would not be helpful as it may make cooperation more difficult. Even if the result is that is natural origin and it escaped from a Wet Market. It was China's responsibility and the whole world must make sure to force China to ban wet markets. But as I said before, it will come a ti…

> It was China's responsibility and the whole world must make sure to force China to ban wet markets.

lol, have you ever been to a wet market? Are you sure you even know what they are? It’s a typical Asian stall market that they hose off every night.

I’ve been to “dry” markets that they’re still cutting the faces off hogs and slaughtering chickens next to fruit vendors. That’s not particularly better.

I’m not sure if you think “banning wet markets” is a thing, but it’s definitely not.

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

#370

Post by colechristensen »

chmod600 wrote: post #352
colechristensen wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't "trust" often or very much. You look for a society where conflicting ideas are encouraged and are based in reason not whacky extremist ideology. You trust good disagreements and debates, you look for argument and parties which try to convince with facts and solid arguments. We can't just live in a world where my side is right and your side is evil. The strength of the US system of government and any democra…

What does that say about social media censors and "fact checkers"?

Social media is in a very confuzed middle ground between publisher and public square. I don't want them to be the arbiters of truth nor do I want them to be megaphones for misinformation nor powerful tools for easy population manipulation... but here we are. The solutions aren't just in content moderation, but whatever it is, it is difficult.
Post reply on HN