Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's a well known unreliable source, so pretty high? Edit: when this comment was written, the thread was pointing at summit.news, not AP.
AP News or WHO?
[deleted]
WHO inquiry chief 'had concerns' about lab close to first Covid cases
41–50 of 220 posts
Re: WHO inquiry chief 'had concerns' about lab close to first Covid cases
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
I found it sad to see how a very plausible theory (other countries have had leaks in the past) was silenced and censored. As a starter, we need a deep and careful investigation to make sure this doesn't happen ever again either in China or elsewhere.
It got tied to another theory, that the virus was engineered.
It is possible lab modified or directed the evolution of the virus.
Re: WHO inquiry chief 'had concerns' about lab close to first Covid cases
#43Some more background on this. First, an interview in Science from a few months back[1]. I very much trust the reporting in that interview (Kai Kakape is an award-winning science journalist), but it also has the air of words being chosen very carefully.
Second, this thread[2] is very interesting. The Chinese government is freaking out pretty hard against the idea of doing more of a real investigation. I'm not sure how all the pieces fit together, but I find it curious for sure.
[1]: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021/02/politics-was-always-...
[2]: https://twitter.com/natashaloder/status/1425915665752461316
Re: WHO inquiry chief 'had concerns' about lab close to first Covid cases
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's a well known unreliable source, so pretty high? Edit: when this comment was written, the thread was pointing at summit.news, not AP.
AP News or WHO?
The link has been changed. Check dang's comment. I assume they were referring to the original with "well known unreliable source".
Re: WHO inquiry chief 'had concerns' about lab close to first Covid cases
#45Remember when the previous administration suggested looking into the Lab Leak theory and was laughed at? Remember how you would get banned from Facebook for suggesting that the lab leak theory was a possibility? Then major social networks and the medias reversed their positions. What changed in the meantime, other than the president?
It is important to consider the context within which these suggestions were initially put forth. We had a president that claimed to have Coronavirus under control, that it was no worse than the flu and who openly and frequently cast doubt upon the only expert in the room. Perhaps had his behavior been a bit more tempered, he would have been taken more seriously.
> We had a president that claimed to have Coronavirus under control, that it was no worse than the flu
Could you remind us who was that person who went to SF’s Chinatown to hug random people and was urging others to “come and visit and enjoy Chinatown” during the first critical months of unknown risk?
Re: WHO inquiry chief 'had concerns' about lab close to first Covid cases
#46Re: WHO inquiry chief 'had concerns' about lab close to first Covid cases
#47We've changed the URL from https://summit.news/2021/08/12/danish-who-chief-says-covid-p... as flaggers and commenters seemed to be reacting particularly strongly to that site. The story itself is arguably significant new information ( https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so... ), so I've turned off the flags after changing the URL. Generally on HN we go by article quality rather than site quality…
summit.news is a low quality source because it adds a cynical far right conspiracy spin to everything. Here, it immediately jumps back to gain of function research , while the primary source talks about something entirely different.
Re: WHO inquiry chief 'had concerns' about lab close to first Covid cases
#48I'm not skilled enough in the biomedical background to evaluate the various genetics-based articles written for or against natural-origin and lab-origin hypotheses. As a layman, however, I find the degree to which the Chinese government has stomped all over foreign-led investigations into the origin of SARS-Cov-2 to be highly, highly suspicious.
Not really, the Chinese government knows the western powers want to use this to create an anti-China hysteria and so want to deny them the ability to do so. The NATO alliance is trying to create a confrontation over Taiwan and a lab leak hysteria is a great way to get the population onboard with a war.
of course, NATO is the one threatening to invade Taiwan if they legally change their name...
such absurdity
Re: WHO inquiry chief 'had concerns' about lab close to first Covid cases
#49I'm not skilled enough in the biomedical background to evaluate the various genetics-based articles written for or against natural-origin and lab-origin hypotheses. As a layman, however, I find the degree to which the Chinese government has stomped all over foreign-led investigations into the origin of SARS-Cov-2 to be highly, highly suspicious.
I guess, but that imparts a level of uniform direction that isn't really known. It could very well be that the PRC government does not know themselves whether or not covid was a lab leak, because who the fuck knows what those beaker heads were doing. They just want to be sure that if it was a lab leak, that no one ever knows. Basically: totalitarian governments suppress everything. It's what they do. It's not like th…
>Imagine it was a leak. Dozens or hundreds of people -- researchers with PhDs and international cred and travel ability -- would have had to be knowledgeable about the research and in on the coverup.
I don't see why this would be the case. It could be a lab leak with nobody at the being aware or having evidence. Why must people be in on a secret coverup?
Many activities that make evaluating the lab leak hypothesis difficult were done in the open: Destruction of early virus samples and deletion of Gene sequencing from public databases.
>Add to that the fact that covid is a close cousin of already-known endemic viruses and that nothing about it looks engineered at all, and... this is still just a natural virus, sorry.
The virus does not need to have been engineered to have leaked from a lab. Natural viruses can and do leak from labs as well.
Re: WHO inquiry chief 'had concerns' about lab close to first Covid cases
#50Everyone with common sense must assume that a lab which does experiments on Corona viruses is the most likely source and not the food market nearby.
It's really that simple...