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

telegraph.co.uk

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

#371

Post by finite_jest »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #308
simiones wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ig…

I think you are being a tad too generous here. That wasn't the explicit messaging. Public health officials and experts did in fact lie and palter in that case. Part of the messaging was explicitly "masks are not effective in preventing general public from catching COIVD" [1] You could reasonably see it as a "noble lie", however.

The whole thing is also complicated by the fact that science on surgical masks etc. wasn't (and isn't) that clear. During the 2009 H1N1 flu, CDC also recommended against face masks for ordinary people. See this SSC article for more on that. [2]

[1] e.g. https://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-cdc-says-americans-don...

[2]: https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/03/23/face-masks-much-more-t... (Scott, like you, is also sometimes a bit too generous :-))

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

#372

Post by mandmandam »

prof-dr-ir wrote: post #355
larryflint wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

But you're incorrect? The lab leak theory is still widely considered to be an unlikely possibility.

No post body was provided.

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

#373

Post by mandmandam »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #308
simiones wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ig…

No post body was provided.

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

#374

Post by phh »

cm2187 wrote: post #346
enriquto wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Once government officials and scientists gaslight us about what they think they should, how does one know they wouldn't for anything at all they decide to? For me it was the masks. The masks were my tipping point. At some point at the beginning of the pandemic they said that the disease was totally not airborne and that masks were useless. I remember vividly president Macron (a person that I respected before that)…

Even before the masks, they were presenting "case fatility rates" as "infection fatility rates" (by just calling them "death rate", which everyone understands as risk of death when infected), when there was hardly any test. Of course if you only test people who show up at the ICU, you will get a very high death rate. That was obvious from the outset and I think deliberate disinformation as a scare tactic. It is not b…

Well yes the information was there, I remember clearly that back then, we had the "perfect" measurement (for such an early study that is): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_on_Diamond_P...

14 people out of 2666 died, hence 0.5% death rate (because I don't agree with the estimate that only 700 individuals got it, I saw no good reason not to consider everyone got it, but even without that, it'd give low 2%)

A retrospective on who said what on the matter of death rates would be extremely interesting to pick the ""good"" medias and the ""bad"" ones

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

#375

Post by scratcheee »

enriquto wrote: post #324
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…

> Once government officials and scientists gaslight us about what they think they should, how does one know they wouldn't for anything at all they decide to? For me it was the masks. The masks were my tipping point. At some point at the beginning of the pandemic they said that the disease was totally not airborne and that masks were useless. I remember vividly president Macron (a person that I respected before that)…

This may be unpopular, but I'm actually fine with polititians manipulating the truth in that scenario (_if_ we accept as a starting point that the shortage of masks was already unavoidable, and the best option for public health was to convince the public to minimise purchases). Part of the job of politicians is to act as a rudder for the general public, and if tragedy of the commons applies to a scenario, a politician doing what they can to counteract that effect, even by deceipt, isn't fundamentally wrong (if it's for a genuinely good cause and the situation didn't have a less distasteful solution). If polititians need to tell us that there is no fuel shortage to avoid a rush that worsens the fuel shortage, so be it. It is (and _should_ be) assumed that polititians are manipulating the truth, the only question is whether they're doing it at a level and for a cause that are acceptable.

I am _much_ less comfortable by similar behaviour in scientists. Science is built on trust and a pursuit of truth, lying is anathema. This is true both within scientific debate, and from the outside, when scientists share their perspective it should be a counter balance to the more flexible interpretation of truth provided elsewhere.

Tldr: Polititians can and should play politics (politics _is_ mostly white lies, or just lies, depending on your cynicism level). Scientists should not, it hurts the reputation of science as a whole.

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

#376

Post by dgb23 »

secondcoming wrote: post #329
randomsearch wrote: post #313

I have mixed feelings about this, and I certainly think it’s not as clear cut as HN is converging on, although I share the same instincts. On the one hand, yes, science should be completely open and unhindered by geopolitics. But recall that Trump was in the White House at the time. We are a community of generally highly educated nerds with a strong understanding of science and engineering. We understand that all lab…

I don’t understand your point. Trump is the only leader who gave people the truth and was lambasted for it.

Both the US and the Chinese governments downplayed and lied about the severity of the virus. For months.

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

#377

Post by CreepGin »

enriquto wrote: post #324
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…

> Once government officials and scientists gaslight us about what they think they should, how does one know they wouldn't for anything at all they decide to? For me it was the masks. The masks were my tipping point. At some point at the beginning of the pandemic they said that the disease was totally not airborne and that masks were useless. I remember vividly president Macron (a person that I respected before that)…

As an Asian American, this baffles me a little bit. We knew the virus was airborne since January 2020. It was all over Chinese/Taiwanese/SEA news outlets. I live in New England, Asians here started wearing masks months before others. I remember purposely choosing to go to Asian Supermarkets instead of Stop & Shop for safety back then.

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

#378

Post by coupdejarnac »

rixed wrote: post #284
suifbwish wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facts are facts. The fact is in 2019 there were 39,397 wet markets in China. How many virology labs were there in China handling Corona-viruses? TWO. One of which was TWO BLOCKS from where the wet market from where the original Covid-19 virus which started the pandemic has been traced to. One might be forgiven for being curious as to the likelihood of the virus emerging from this particular wet market as opposed to a…

This line of reasoning forget a very important information: research labs are not built at random. This lab studying coronavirusses was built there precisely because this is a place where new coronavirusses have appeared in the past. Will add a source later when not on mobile.

Not because Wuhan is a large, central city?

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

#379

Post by dijit »

secondcoming wrote: post #329
randomsearch wrote: post #313

I have mixed feelings about this, and I certainly think it’s not as clear cut as HN is converging on, although I share the same instincts. On the one hand, yes, science should be completely open and unhindered by geopolitics. But recall that Trump was in the White House at the time. We are a community of generally highly educated nerds with a strong understanding of science and engineering. We understand that all lab…

I don’t understand your point. Trump is the only leader who gave people the truth and was lambasted for it.

I don’t think you can seriously argue in good faith that Trump ‘gave people the truth’, he said whatever came to his mind. Sometimes it was pure fantasy, mostly it was deflection.

Perhaps sometimes it was truth, but only in the same way a broken clock is correct twice a day.

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

#380

Post by dTal »

secondcoming wrote: post #329
randomsearch wrote: post #313

I have mixed feelings about this, and I certainly think it’s not as clear cut as HN is converging on, although I share the same instincts. On the one hand, yes, science should be completely open and unhindered by geopolitics. But recall that Trump was in the White House at the time. We are a community of generally highly educated nerds with a strong understanding of science and engineering. We understand that all lab…

I don’t understand your point. Trump is the only leader who gave people the truth and was lambasted for it.

That's a laughably generous take.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veracity_of_statements_by_Dona...

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