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The world needs a proper investigation into how Covid-19 started

economist.com

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Re: The world needs a proper investigation into how Covid-19 started

#121

Post by notacoward »

aww_dang wrote: post #85
dTal wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you've made a category error. We're not talking about the lost schmucks who've bought into this claptrap - we're talking about whose bright idea it was in the first place, and who's making an effort to spread it. Someone is providing those "alternative theories". You dig around a little and you find dubiously funded websites and media outlets pushing this stuff, as well as the more unsavory elements of media…

>So, who benefits when Americans lose faith in their government? The public at large if it results in more critical thinking, greater liberty or accountability.

Expecting such an outcome is starkly irrational. Its exact opposite is far more likely, as evidenced by the fact that we're already well down exactly that road to exactly that destination.

Re: The world needs a proper investigation into how Covid-19 started

#122

Post by bertil »

AbortedLaunch wrote: post #101
bertil wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not a biologist but as I understand, viruses very rarely go from being common in one species to another. It has to do with mutation and how you want many hosts with high viral load to stumble on an effective change. There are cases where someone close to animals might get it, a farmer typically, but it rarely becomes transmissible between humans — not unless it mutated first and for that it would need to be endem…

But cross species transmission is known for quite a lot of pathogens. Ebola is a recent example. Asserting it is so unlikely as to be dismissed out of hand doesn’t match knowledge in the field.

It happens, especially between closely related species, in both genetic and physical proximity, like monkeys and humans, but it’s rarer between further apart groups. More importantly, it follows patterns (first a few opportunistic infections, then more common ones, then transmission between new hosts) that were not observed with Sars-Cov-2. Hemorrhagic fevers were occasionally described among bushmeat hunters before Ebola became endemic. There were effort to discourage the practice precisely because of a fear of future contamination beyond that small group.

I’m not dismissing that it happen —I can’t imagine you’ve read anything like that in my comment— but the natural origin theory changes our understanding of how fast it can happen.

Re: The world needs a proper investigation into how Covid-19 started

#123

Post by helloworld11 »

ryandrake wrote: post #114
ramblerman wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not both? Two things can matter at the same time. If covid did leak from a lab, accidentally, but there was a cover up, that's also worth exploring no? It feels like you are choosing because of political motivations.

Why does the origin story matter, outside of political motivations? If we knew 100% how it came into being, what specific information does that give us that helps the world eradicate it, or deal with future pandemics? The whole "lab leak investigation" is a political side show attempt to distract people away from the real question, which is how did almost every country on earth utterly fail to control the spread and…

Are you kidding? Of course the origin story of COVID matters, enormously. Knowing where a virus originated and whether it leaked from a lab accident or came to us through a natural cross-over is enormously important for clinical reasons and in the case of this vast global pandemic, for simple historical reasons of firmly establishing what happened and how right down to the first sequence of events. In no way is wanting to find that out a political sideshow if you have any notion of careful research and establishment of facts. People will be writing about the COVID pandemic for decades to come. It's absurd that you or anyone would dismiss something so basic as wanting to concretely know its origin. That sort of reasoning is a much more obvious example of politically motivated sideshow drama.

Re: The world needs a proper investigation into how Covid-19 started

#124

Post by guilhas »

cblconfederate wrote: post #13

Why? What would that change, apart from distracting everyone into another giant anti-china campaign? Would we solve covid if we knew how it came to be synthesized?

China or USA? Clearly the Wuhan lab received USA grants to work on coronavirus

Re: The world needs a proper investigation into how Covid-19 started

#125

Post by dTal »

aww_dang wrote: post #85
dTal wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you've made a category error. We're not talking about the lost schmucks who've bought into this claptrap - we're talking about whose bright idea it was in the first place, and who's making an effort to spread it. Someone is providing those "alternative theories". You dig around a little and you find dubiously funded websites and media outlets pushing this stuff, as well as the more unsavory elements of media…

>So, who benefits when Americans lose faith in their government? The public at large if it results in more critical thinking, greater liberty or accountability.

Why on earth would it? The government is the engine of social cooperation. Losing faith in it puts you on the road away from civilization, not towards.

Re: The world needs a proper investigation into how Covid-19 started

#127

Post by quetzlbazaar »

ghyiihdruh wrote: post #58

No, it doesn't. It will only fuel anti-science sentiment all over the world and put scientists under scrutiny and attacks. We need more science, not more science attacks. It will also vindicate Trump like anti-scientists just when we need more science to tackle climate change, inequality, gender gap, and yes, search for viruses with pandemic risk due to human encroachment on wild life so we can be ready for them. Any…

What probability do you give to the virus having escaped from a lab? If you were confident that this was not the case and that a proper investigation would show this, would you feel differently about whether there should be a proper investigation or not?

Re: The world needs a proper investigation into how Covid-19 started

#128

Post by tubs »

beloch wrote: post #61
zpeti wrote: post #2

Things like this usually come down to incentives. And right now I don’t see how almost any major power’s leaders have any incentive to push an investigation forwards. We are too dependent on China to piss them off, and so far experience shows we are much more likely to follow their demands than follow our own (Hollywood, NBA, Hong Kong, blizzard, albeit only one of those is geopolitical).

It's important to realize that the world's dependence on China is actually interdependence . People fear what might happen if China suddenly blocked all exports to their country, and rightly so. China is a country where the government wields that kind of totalitarian power. However, this hasn't happened even once yet. The Chinese government knows that, once they play that particular card on one nation, every other na…

The US went a step further and not only blocked exports from their own country but pressured other entities to do the same.

Re: The world needs a proper investigation into how Covid-19 started

#129

Post by xupybd »

underwater wrote: post #30

If you want to chase a conspiracy that actually matters, go find out who is pushing the narrative that COVID is fake and vaccines are dangerous. That conspiracy is literally killing thousands of people.

So the a conspiracy that causes people to respond poorly to the threat is worse than the conspiracy that released the threat into the world in the first place?

Re: The world needs a proper investigation into how Covid-19 started

#130

Post by xupybd »

blitzar wrote: post #75
chucke wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, covering up science fuck ups is legimitate because it protects science, and we need science to promote other agendas to promote other dodgy agendas which are scientifically still unproven or unprovable (I don't know how science can even explain gender gap...)?

Possibly the scariest thing I see at the moment; 'we can't say/do that as it will give fuel to the anti-vaxers '. Antivaxers will just make shit up - properly exploring the science is not strengthening their argument, refusing to do so is strengthening their argument.

I'm pro vax. I think this vaccine is worth the risk but this is the highest risk vaccine we've had in a long time and that part of the equation is getting swept under the rug.
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