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

651–660 of 1001 posts

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

#651

Post by ravel-bar-foo »

DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #589
sbagel wrote: post #587

The amount of wildly delusional oppression complex in this thread is staggering, HN has really gone downhill. On the media 'not taking it seriously' - because there was no evidence whatsoever outside of conjecture and it was being pushed heavily by misinfo merchants. No grand conspiracy. Skepticism is a good default approach to take for info heavily pushed by such sources with no solid evidence. There were tons of ar…

> As more info comes to light it's being given more credence, simple as that. The thing is, no new info supporting the lab-leak theory has come to light. It remains pure speculation, just as it always has been. All the evidence still points to the Wuhan Institute of Virology not having had SARS-CoV-2 before the pandemic, and all the new evidence is consistent with the default prior - that SARS-CoV-2 spilled over from…

No new evidence for natural origin has come to light. It remains pure speculation, just as it always has been, and you are making an isolated demand for rigor.

If you read the Nicholas Wade article, the PLOS blog, or even this article, you will know the evidence is not pointing in any one direction at the moment, but there is solid evidence of a cover-up and blame shifting by the Chinese government and the virology / national defense establishment.

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

#652

Post by calpaterson »

sbagel wrote: post #587

The amount of wildly delusional oppression complex in this thread is staggering, HN has really gone downhill. On the media 'not taking it seriously' - because there was no evidence whatsoever outside of conjecture and it was being pushed heavily by misinfo merchants. No grand conspiracy. Skepticism is a good default approach to take for info heavily pushed by such sources with no solid evidence. There were tons of ar…

> There were tons of articles and threads on [the lab leak theory] everywhere including HN

Until relatively recently lab leak discussion was censored from Twitter and Facebook. I didn't see much of it in the period Feb 2020 - May 2021.

> On the media 'not taking it seriously' - because there was no evidence whatsoever outside of conjecture

There was no brilliant evidence for any source of the coronavirus. Regardless of that, the idea of a lab leak was quickly ruled out and that was unjustified.

I think the problem for the media was that a controversial American president publicly endorsed the lab leak theory, as it supported his broader agenda, and that made people in the media prefer to disbelieve it, even to wrongly suggest that it was not credible. In short: bias.

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

#653

Post by cm2187 »

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…

I agree with you. I am not sure what driving around the WHO delegation in wuhan 1 year after the facts was ever going to achieve.

At the end of the day the only people who most likely know whether it was a lab leak or not are the chinese authorities. So we will likely know in 50 or 60 years if those archives are made public (like for the Katyn massacre). The CIA/NSA can possibly get its hand on incriminating communications, but who is going to trust those guys?

Also I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that the chinese authorities got all covid lab samples destroyed without being analysed. The best way to not leak that you may be responsible is to ensure no one, even yourself, can ever know whether you were responsible.

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

#654

Post by greenwich26 »

sbagel wrote: post #587

The amount of wildly delusional oppression complex in this thread is staggering, HN has really gone downhill. On the media 'not taking it seriously' - because there was no evidence whatsoever outside of conjecture and it was being pushed heavily by misinfo merchants. No grand conspiracy. Skepticism is a good default approach to take for info heavily pushed by such sources with no solid evidence. There were tons of ar…

Don't be absurd. Every single major social media platform banned even the most gentle suggestion that the lab was involved. And everyone who mentioned it was called "racist".

Now that the scientific consensus is settling and lab leak does indeed seem to be true, they are all in major damage control. And you are trying to change the narrative by introducing some silly victim-blaming charade about "oppression complex", which is dubious and off topic.

It will be less embarrassing for you if you get used to saying "I was wrong" instead of continuing your smug "b.b..but...ACTUALLY, oppression complexes! Therefore, my side is still right." Everyone can see straight through it.

> It just had no credibility due to lack of evidence.

Nonsense. It had an enormous amount of evidence. This paper was publicly available in March 2020: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S15671...

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

#656

Post by DiogenesKynikos »

yarcob wrote: post #613
DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #576

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because the theory is being pushed for political reasons, and most virologists think it's nonsense. The evidence for a lab leak is the same as it's ever been: nothing. There's no evidence the lab even had SARS-CoV-2 on hand before the pandemic, which is an absolute prerequisite for the lab leak theory to be possible, and all the evidence points to the lab not having had the virus. They regularly publish the ge…

> most virologists think it's nonsense That's exactly the kind of unsubstantiated statements I see all the time (both from proponents of the lab leak theory and from opponents). I'd love to read the actual reasoning why virologists think that it's nonsense. I'm a bit sad that hacker is so full of political and over-simplified arguments for this topic, and the actual science is missing.

This is a recent discussion on This Week in Virology: https://youtu.be/IxwrDSYrhjU.

The main reasons why virologists think the idea of a lab leak is nonsense:

* Nothing in the genome of SARS-CoV-2 is particularly surprising. All the elements of the virus (including the furin cleavage site) are commonly found in other coronaviruses.

* Every novel virus in history has been the result of spillover from animals. Just in the last 20 years alone, two novel coronaviruses have spilled over into humans: SARS and MERS. SARS-related coronaviruses are circulating in bat and other animal populations throughout China and Southeast Asia, and millions of people come into regular contact with these animal populations. These millions of people are not trained researchers wearing protective gear and undergoing regular testing for infection. Literally millions of people are constantly exposed at much higher levels than researchers.

* There is not a single shred of evidence that the Wuhan Institute of Virology had SARS-CoV-2 before the pandemic. None. On the other hand, there's good evidence that they didn't have it. They publish the genomes of viruses they find (such as the now-famous RaTG13, which they published in 2016), and SARS-CoV-2 is not among them.

* The Wuhan Institute of Virology has only ever isolated three SARS-related coronaviruses, and it has published extensively on them. All three of them are only distantly related to SARS-CoV-2. All the gain-of-function conspiracy theories require SARS-CoV-2 to have been secretly isolated in a lab, which is a very difficult and time-consuming task, without anyone being informed, without anything being published, and without any of the many people who would know about this (very likely including foreign scientists) spilling the beans.

* The Wuhan Institute of Virology, just like all other well-run high-security labs, regularly tests its workers for signs of infection. If lab workers had been infected, they would be seropositive. The lab-leak conspiracy theory requires the lab to be lying about its testing results.

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

#657

Post by Hitton »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #168
briefcomment wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Craziest excuse I've ever heard: "I couldn't be bothered to act rationally and morally because someone else was being too annoying".

What do you think the moral of "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" is? Is it a lesson for the villagers, or a lesson for a (potential) liar?

As I know the story, claims about wolf were made by just the boy, not by scores of people and subsequently dismissed because the boy was also one who claimed it. I'm starting to question if you argue in good faith.

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

#658

Post by garmaine »

Javantea_ wrote: post #559
garmaine wrote: post #521

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it is not. Judge ideas on their own merits please. These same people ridicule the Space Force, for example, despite it being a reorganization of US Space Command that had bipartisan approval years before Trump even ran for office. A broken clock is still right twice a day.

Here I have a little bit of experience. When a person has shown themselves to be a pathological liar, you can't judge their ideas on their own merits because the cost of judging far outweighs the cost of producing garbage ideas. That is why attention is so valuable, there are plenty of people out there who do not make it their trade to espouse nonsense.

As an everyday heuristic, sure. But when it comes to matters of national importance we all deserve better.

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

#659

Post by mynameishere »

bartart wrote: post #2

This is the most shocking article I have ever read in my life. I'd ask everyone to please read it because it is incredible. One thing I did not realize is that US researchers who conducted gain of function research tried to downplay and discredit the possibility of the virus originating from the wuhan lab. There was an anti-lab theory Lancet statement signed by scientists, and "Daszak had not only signed but organize…

Shocking? This is all very humdrum to anyone who has been paying attention. Maybe you should pay attention.

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

#660

Post by mhh__ »

tpfour wrote: post #20
bartart wrote: post #2

This is the most shocking article I have ever read in my life. I'd ask everyone to please read it because it is incredible. One thing I did not realize is that US researchers who conducted gain of function research tried to downplay and discredit the possibility of the virus originating from the wuhan lab. There was an anti-lab theory Lancet statement signed by scientists, and "Daszak had not only signed but organize…

The calculation is simple and could have been made in early 2020. What's the joint probability of occurrence given everything you know about the origins of SARS-CoV-2? There is _very_ high probability that this is just a human error.

Yes, but, I've seen people try to do that both on here and on rootcause, and the probabilities are anything but objective. It's just people math-washing what they already thought
Post reply on HN