Scientists believed Covid leaked from Wuhan lab, but feared debate could hurt • Hacker News Board

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

#511

Post by itronitron » Wed, Jan 12, 2022, 11:35 AM UTC

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…

you might be interested in this ... https://wallstreetonparade.com/2022/01/mainstream-media-has-...

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

#512

Post by nicoburns » Wed, Jan 12, 2022, 11:35 AM UTC

elihu wrote: post #459

chimprich wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All presumably to save a mask shortage I don't think so. There seemed to be genuine uncertainty early on in the pandemic about whether masks would be helpful. We didn't know if the virus was airborne and there was a question about whether the masks would actually be helpful. For example, the masks could have had very low benefit but encouraged people to touch their face more. Whitty in March 2020: "In terms of wear…

As far as I know, the advice that wearing a mask doesn't protect you very well from getting Covid has held up pretty good; they're a lot better at protecting everyone else from the mask wearer. The logical flaw then was that telling people to just wear masks if they're infected doesn't work very well if highly contagious people don't know they're infected, which turned out to be the case. I can see where it might hav…

I think that's largely true of cloth masks, but well fitted N95 (or similar) masks also protect the wearer.

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

#513

Post by native_samples » Wed, Jan 12, 2022, 11:35 AM UTC

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #345

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…

Climate change is mostly that barometer for me. So when I see this article cites Viscount Ridley, the climate change denier, I pretty much put it in the same category of bullshit as all of that stuff This is assuming I've not spotted its in the Telegraph first, which is enough to know its almost certainly lies and misrepresention.

And what makes you so sure that climatologists have way higher standards than virologists? Clearly, the institutions themselves are not enforcing even the most basic standards of integrity on scientists because they've been fighting the release of these emails for two years.

The fact that you dislike the Telegraph because it's conservative is irrelevant. The evidence here is absolute proof that scientists, as a group, systematically lied to and manipulated both the public and governments for two years. Their goal was simply to ensure people didn't stop blindly trusting them, which might cause them to lose funding and power. There was no higher purpose yet nobody in the field of virology stepped up and pointed this out publicly. Many of them knew and were saying so in private emails, but - and this is critical - none of them spoke out. Not one.

Climatology is in reality not better. The ClimateGate emails have largely been forgotten now but it was also very clear in those that they were manipulating the peer review process, manipulating the temperature records and more in order to get the outcomes they wanted. They admitted it quite openly, at the time even Guardian writers like Monbiot were shocked by it.

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

#514

Post by aaron42net » Wed, Jan 12, 2022, 11:35 AM UTC

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…

Over the years, I've had direct knowledge of or involvement with maybe a dozen or so events that have ended up in the mainstream news. And in almost every case it has been inaccurate in some way, sometimes getting basic facts wrong and others having significant bias or spin that was misleading.

This hasn't given me great confidence in the accuracy of the reporting for things that I don't have direct knowledge of.

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

#515

Post by blitzar » Wed, Jan 12, 2022, 11:36 AM UTC

jokethrowaway wrote: post #425

reallyagain wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... and if Italy learned the lessons from Asian countries, the initial spike in Italy would not have been so devastating. I think a more fair take would be that most countries did not take COVID19(in particular, the early variants which were much more dangerous) seriously enough until there was a major source of infections in their country, at which point it was obviously too late. There are some exceptions(in partic…

That's not it, the problem with Italy was in the way they were treating them and the fact that Italy is mostly old people (after government policies drove out young peoples for decades). Several Italian doctors criticised the Italian guidelines (in particular about giving corticosteroids) but they were silenced. We also don't know the real numbers of Asian countries, do you trust the numbers given by the CCP?

> do you trust the numbers given by the CCP?

No less, or more than for the USA.

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

#516

Post by kdbg » Wed, Jan 12, 2022, 11:36 AM UTC

roenxi wrote: post #446

cortic wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Happened in the UK as well, Boris (and to be fair the WHO) told us masks were counter productive. That they might get you to stand closer to people and touch your face more, increasing your chances of getting Covid.. All presumably to save a mask shortage; But we know, and they should have known, that the public doesn't buy the same kind of masks that our NHS buys and there never was going to be any shortage. This en…

> It lead to some number of deaths, probably 10s of thousands in the UK Is there solid evidence anywhere that masks are important one way or the other? While it is plausible that a mask could prevent an infection in an encounter, I've not yet seen anyone waving something conclusive around that masks prevent infections over the course of a pandemic. I've managed to avoid the coronavirus for 2 years now and as far as I…

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abi9069

Unfortunately many parts of this paper are beyond me, but this study does appear to find that community level masking has an impact, but it is a study that used actual communities and tracked compliance (and impact of different interventions on encouraging making)

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

#517

Post by nicoburns » Wed, Jan 12, 2022, 11:37 AM UTC

roenxi wrote: post #446

cortic wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Happened in the UK as well, Boris (and to be fair the WHO) told us masks were counter productive. That they might get you to stand closer to people and touch your face more, increasing your chances of getting Covid.. All presumably to save a mask shortage; But we know, and they should have known, that the public doesn't buy the same kind of masks that our NHS buys and there never was going to be any shortage. This en…

> It lead to some number of deaths, probably 10s of thousands in the UK Is there solid evidence anywhere that masks are important one way or the other? While it is plausible that a mask could prevent an infection in an encounter, I've not yet seen anyone waving something conclusive around that masks prevent infections over the course of a pandemic. I've managed to avoid the coronavirus for 2 years now and as far as I…

> I've managed to avoid the coronavirus for 2 years now and as far as I can tell the future still has me getting COVID in it. I'm still not clear what role the mask is meant to play in that forecast.

I think a key target was spreading out the infections so that hospitals weren't overwhelmed. And delaying infections until vaccines were available. Imagine if everyone in the country had gotten covid over the first half of 2020.

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

#518

Post by javiercr » Wed, Jan 12, 2022, 11:38 AM UTC

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)…

Exactly the same thing happened in Spain. +1 to everything you said.

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

#519

Post by blitzar » Wed, Jan 12, 2022, 11:38 AM UTC

jokethrowaway wrote: post #427

toyg wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm Italian and the events in February and March 2020 made it very clear to me how the anglo press largely just ignores foreign sources. The "debate" about lockdown in the UK mirrored the Italian one almost day by day, with a delay of 3 weeks between here and Italy. Italian sources and discoveries were either ignored or discounted. It was like watching a child "discover" on their own how to start a fire. If they do t…

The UK has been one of the freest countries in terms of restrictions. I wasn't happy with the restrictions but they never went as crazy as the rest of Europe. Overall I'm glad we had Boris and not someone from the other side who would have been even more draconian - even if having a real conservative would have been better.

Interesting conclusion given by almost every measure the UK restrictions have been more draconian than the rest of europe.

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

#520

Post by native_samples » Wed, Jan 12, 2022, 11:38 AM UTC

underdeserver wrote: post #270

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…

Government officials are not one homogenous group, and neither are scientists. Please remember that most people who belong to one of those groups truly want to get to truth and improve our knowledge and lives.

In this case they unfortunately did act as a completely homogenous group.

Epidemiology at least had the Great Barrington Declaration, it had Anders Tegnell. There were a tiny minority who spoke up. Where was the equivalent group for virology? The fact that these guys were lying and lying as a group had to be figured out by deep investigation and lawsuits by outsiders.

> Please remember that most people who belong to one of those groups truly want to get to truth and improve our knowledge and lives.

I no longer believe this.