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WHO inquiry chief 'had concerns' about lab close to first Covid cases

apnews.com

51–60 of 220 posts

Re: WHO inquiry chief 'had concerns' about lab close to first Covid cases

#51
post #28

Remember 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?

I remember, and I am sure that many others do if they are honest with themselves. America needs to stand united. We have let politics drive a deep wedge between neighbors and families. We live at the peak of the information age but our natures have not changed. Both left and right need to focus on being unified, not strong-arming the other side.

And people on "the left and right" need to remember that plenty of people don't believe in "sides" and just want to live their lives without being bullied around by whoever happens be in power or whatever ideas are popular at the moment.

I don't want unity. People obsessed with politics think they just need consensus to solve any problem, despite the atrocious track record of political solutions. Just leave the rest of us alone.

Re: WHO inquiry chief 'had concerns' about lab close to first Covid cases

#52
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apparently it has merit, as the link has now been changed to AP. We shouldn't be so hasty in making (or believing) ad hominiem attacks.

So we should take everything at face value and only investigate later, if at all?

I think skepticism should vary, and we should be quicker to verify than dismiss. This post made a specific, verifiable claim; I find that most misleading articles are vague and impossible to verify, or omit any context.

Re: WHO inquiry chief 'had concerns' about lab close to first Covid cases

#53
post #26

I'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.

[deleted]

Re: WHO inquiry chief 'had concerns' about lab close to first Covid cases

#55
post #26

I'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.

Xi thanks you

Re: WHO inquiry chief 'had concerns' about lab close to first Covid cases

#56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 di…

You're doing the conspiracist thing where you respond to my examples of plausible explanations with more hypotheses that could alternately explain my guesses. But who cares? That's not how proof works.

This is just a gish gallop. I told you why I find existing evidence unconvincing. You need to convince me with evidence, not hypotheses.

Re: WHO inquiry chief 'had concerns' about lab close to first Covid cases

#57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 di…

>"Why must people be in on a secret coverup?"

I hadn't considered this before, but you're right that most of the people dismissing the 'lab leak' theory seem to believe that their intellectual opponents are proposing that a 'premeditated conspiracy' took place.

In any case, if I were a PRoC official, I would try to reduce the chance of any (direct or circumstantial) evidence of a lab leak came to light. That said, even suppression of circumstantial evidence is not necessarily evidence of either a lab leak or pre-meditated conspiracy.

Re: WHO inquiry chief 'had concerns' about lab close to first Covid cases

#58
post #19

We'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.

[deleted]

Re: WHO inquiry chief 'had concerns' about lab close to first Covid cases

#59

Everyone 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...

Yes, the jumping of viruses from animals to humans due to keeping them in close proximity is so unlikely that it's happened hundreds of times before (e.g. SARS, MERS, Spanish flu, bubonic plague).

Re: WHO inquiry chief 'had concerns' about lab close to first Covid cases

#60
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 di…

> "Why must people be in on a secret coverup?" I hadn't considered this before, but you're right that most of the people dismissing the 'lab leak' theory seem to believe that their intellectual opponents are proposing that a 'premeditated conspiracy' took place. In any case, if I were a PRoC official, I would try to reduce the chance of any (direct or circumstantial) evidence of a lab leak came to light. That said, e…

To be fair, a lot of you nuts are absolutely alleging "premeditated conspiracy", or even loopier notions like bioweapon engineering. It's extremely hard to figure out who we're talking to.

If you want to argue for some weak form of the conspiracy, then maybe give it another name or something. But note that the weak form you seem to be thinking about (that it was benign research on natural viruses and just a routine mistake that caused the leak) seems to be even more susceptible to my suspicion. If you're a researcher who was doing this benign work, why keep silent? You could literally write a book fingering all your superiors as the villains and sell it for tens of millions of dollars and retire in Taipei or San Francisco.

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