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

Scientists believed Covid leaked from Wuhan lab, but feared debate could hurt

telegraph.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

301–310 of 833 posts

Re: Scientists believed Covid leaked from Wuhan lab, but feared debate could hurt

#301

Post by seanmcdirmid »

partiallypro wrote: post #157

What really raises the most suspicion of the lab leak theory in my mind was how the Chinese government acted towards the rest of the scientific community...well before it was a theory at all. Not allowing foreign scientists in, destroying evidence, arresting journalists, etc. That just screams cover-up, even if there was none (in terms of a lab leak.) Then Western scientists that rely on grants with Chinese ties, etc…

> What really raises the most suspicion of the lab leak theory in my mind was how the Chinese government acted towards the rest of the scientific community.

That is nothing special for the Chinese government, they would have acted that way regardless. They are extremely adept at creating Streisand effects.

Re: Scientists believed Covid leaked from Wuhan lab, but feared debate could hurt

#302

Post by fileeditview »

tunesmith wrote: post #276

I feel like it was impossible to really deal with this debate responsibly, what with the current state of society and social media where everyone has figured out how to weaponize false information, before we as a society have figured out how to really deal with it. Even now it seems like everyone wants to elide the massive differences between "accidental lab leak" and "deliberate lab leak". Even now the common phrase…

Concealing all kinds of information to "protect" the sheep-like citizens is counterproductive and dishonest. An honest discussion is the best way to avoid spreading of false information which will always exist to some degree.

However politicians more and more try to avoid all discussion with the voters and just convince them of the rightfulness of their doing. If you don't accept their way you must be wrong, maybe even protected from false information, shielded for your own good..

Re: Scientists believed Covid leaked from Wuhan lab, but feared debate could hurt

#303

Post by synquid »

chx wrote: post #223

I think the clearest article on topic is from Zeynep Tufekci https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/25/opinion/coronavirus-lab.h... who says , repeatedly what we do not know and what is disturbing.

Zeynep has been wrong so many times during the pandemic that it hurts. She will not admit to it, though. She claimed that the Delta variant would end the pandemic, in the same way it is claimed for Omicron now. She's very naive about how the immune system works. Her writing is generally more propaganda than science.

Re: Scientists believed Covid leaked from Wuhan lab, but feared debate could hurt

#304

Post by simiones »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #288
zx85wes wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean the people who told us not to wear masks? I trust science, but that doesn't mean I trust every scientist.

If you really trusted science, you would trust that information and knowledge is dynamic and they don’t always have the right answer at the beginning, just an answer that gets changed over time as more knowledge pours in. I’m guessing you prefer your scientists to be absolutely right at the beginning right?

Anthony Fauci has explicitly admitted on camera that the reason "masks don't work" was promoted to the public initially was to conserve PPE for the highest-risk health workers [0]. It was NOT a case of the science changing:

> So, why weren't we told to wear masks in the beginning?

> "Well, the reason for that is that we were concerned the public health community, and many people were saying this, were concerned that it was at a time when personal protective equipment, including the N95 masks and the surgical masks, were in very short supply. And we wanted to make sure that the people namely, the health care workers, who were brave enough to put themselves in a harm way, to take care of people who you know were infected with the coronavirus and the danger of them getting infected."

[0] https://www.thestreet.com/video/dr-fauci-masks-changing-dire...

Re: Scientists believed Covid leaked from Wuhan lab, but feared debate could hurt

#305

Post by seanmcdirmid »

bellyfullofbac wrote: post #299
lamontcg wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is being used as proof that they leaked it from a lab, when it is just how societies built like China behave. You can't infer anything from normal behavior. It is similar to the way that Hussein's actions in blocking access to presidential palaces was considered to be highly suspicious and therefore proof that he was hiding his weapons program. Turns out he was just trying to save face domestically by standing up…

Yeah, holding strong to the logic that's like a mom concluding of her kindergartner "You're being evasive, this means definitely that you're hiding something" is ridiculous. If the outbreak started in Colorado, and Russia wanted access to the CDC lab there, Americans (officials and public) would also be crying and screaming...

If Russia wanted access to a CDC lab, the Americans would be crying and screaming regardless of whether something happened there or not.

Re: Scientists believed Covid leaked from Wuhan lab, but feared debate could hurt

#306

Post by krageon »

kennywinker wrote: post #282
beebmam wrote: post #266

So, did it leak from a Chinese lab? If so, why isn't China being held economically and ethically liable? Why do they continue stonewalling any investigation and suffer zero consequences?

On one hand, China hasn’t faced ethical or economic consequences for literal concentration camps so why would this be different? On the other hand - would you really seek to punish an entire nation for the (supposed) actions of a few careless scientists?

> literal concentration camps

I've seen this repeated hundreds of times, approximately 0 times with proof. Can I find these camps somewhere? Are there photos? As it stands, a casual reader must conclude this is part of a propaganda campaign vilifying China.

Re: Scientists believed Covid leaked from Wuhan lab, but feared debate could hurt

#307

Post by DrBazza »

ayngg wrote: post #256
vasco wrote: post #241

You know this effect, when you've been reading the news for years, and finally your favorite source has a story about something you studied or worked on, and you realize how low quality or outright wrong it is? The spell is broken and you realize how little they know about anything they write. Once government officials and scientists gaslight us about what they think they should, how does one know they wouldn't for a…

"Trust the science" hasn't made people more rational, it has made "science" more dogmatic. I wonder what governments and the media will latch onto once they have eroded the trust in science, because there aren't many other trustworthy institutions left.

Don't trust the people that report the science though.

The gutter press has to sensationalise stories to sell the newspapers and get viewers. It's a race to the bottom. A quarter not vaccinated!!! vs 75% vaccinated so far. Guess which one they run with? Let's not forget cherry-picking the science too, and that the media is a massive echo chamber.

There's no problem with science, but like any other industry, it has its own language, which isn't accessible to the average person, so someone has to simplify it. Journalists should not be that 'someone'.

Re: Scientists believed Covid leaked from Wuhan lab, but feared debate could hurt

#308

Post by seanmcdirmid »

simiones wrote: post #304
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you really trusted science, you would trust that information and knowledge is dynamic and they don’t always have the right answer at the beginning, just an answer that gets changed over time as more knowledge pours in. I’m guessing you prefer your scientists to be absolutely right at the beginning right?

Anthony Fauci has explicitly admitted on camera that the reason "masks don't work" was promoted to the public initially was to conserve PPE for the highest-risk health workers [0]. It was NOT a case of the science changing: > So, why weren't we told to wear masks in the beginning? > "Well, the reason for that is that we were concerned the public health community, and many people were saying this, were concerned that…

But they explicitly told us that at the time: “don’t rush out and buy masks, we don’t have enough for healthcare workers as it is, you don’t need them more than they do.”

The right just took some sound bites and excerpted the rest of the discussion to “prove” that Fauci was lying, while everyone else was rolling their eyes, and still are.

People hear the things that support the story they want to believe, and then ignore everything else that doesn’t support their preferred narrative. You don’t need a PhD in psych to realize that.

Re: Scientists believed Covid leaked from Wuhan lab, but feared debate could hurt

#309

Post by lamontcg »

DarknessFalls wrote: post #33

Can someone explain why the furin cleavage site is unusual from a natural evolutionary view?

It isn't unusual at all.

Many coronaviruses including MERS have a furin cleavage site and they're common and likely evolved independently multiple times, showing that this acquisition of an FCS is common:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S187350612...

The FCS in SARS-CoV-2 is NSPRRAR, we now know of sarbecoviruses like like the BANAL viruses in Laos which have NSPAAR, some other viruses like RmYN02 have NSPAAR or NSPVAR. If you insert an R into the BANAL spike protein you get the SARS-CoV-2 FCS.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02596-2

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.01.26.428212v1

Finding bat sarbecoviruses which are one insertion away from having the original FCS really blows a gaping hole in this whole idea that the FCS is some kind of smoking gun.

Delta has P681R and Omicron has P681H mutations in the FCS region which may be behind why they're more infectious/transmissible. So the FCS is also still evolving and adapting to humans.

Re: Scientists believed Covid leaked from Wuhan lab, but feared debate could hurt

#310

Post by MarkMarine »

larryflint wrote: post #254
vasco wrote: post #241

You know this effect, when you've been reading the news for years, and finally your favorite source has a story about something you studied or worked on, and you realize how low quality or outright wrong it is? The spell is broken and you realize how little they know about anything they write. Once government officials and scientists gaslight us about what they think they should, how does one know they wouldn't for a…

Yep. I'm a case in point. At the beginning of this thing i went along with the mainstream narrative like a good sheeple. Now that i've watched how a narrative can go from 'your a crazy person to believe there COULD have been a lab leak' to 'yahhh it was probably a lab leak the whole time'...my faith has probably been permenantly destroyed in main-stream sources of information. Which sucks because idealy i just want t…

Honestly, good. I’m glad you (and others) realized this. With an open mind read about the history of the US during the age of 3 letter agencies (https://www.npr.org/2019/09/09/758989641/the-cias-secret-que...) (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jakarta_Method) I could go on and on with historical accounting books that are just accepted as fact… and try to square the circle that those kinds of things have stopped and the people in charge have your best interest at heart, and act in good faith.
Post reply on HN