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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

#561

Post by chrisco255 »

bArray wrote: post #348

> But a leading scientist told Sir Jeremy that “further debate would do unnecessary harm to science in general and science in China in particular”. Dr Collins, the former director of the US National Institutes of Health, warned it could damage “international harmony”. COVID-19: the time where Scientists pretended to be politicians and politicians pretended to be Scientists. Also if their intention was to not hurt Chi…

> COVID-19: the time where Scientists pretended to be politicians and politicians pretended to be Scientists.

It's naive to think this is not systemic to academia. Science was corrupted by politics a long time ago on more than one level.

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

#562

Post by throwaway6734 »

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)…

The alternative is that governing massive democratic countries is incredibly difficult and it requires lies/facades/manipulation to ensure stability. Imagine the largest project you've ever worked on and then imagine scaling it up by many orders of magnitude.

Conspiracy theorists almost always operate in negative space and are unable to stand on their own.

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

#563

Post by JudasGoat »

throwaway4good wrote: post #503
Jimmc414 wrote: post #3

[But a leading scientist told Sir Jeremy that “further debate would do unnecessary harm to science in general and science in China in particular”. Dr Collins, the former director of the US National Institutes of Health, warned it could damage “international harmony”.] The entire foundation of science is based upon empirical observation and asking hypothetical questions. It is discouraging that scientists can make sta…

Check out Peter Daszak twitter profile for an example for the abuse you will get if you speak out against the lab leak hypothesis: https://twitter.com/PeterDaszak Quite understandable if you would not want to participate in that.

Somewhat telling that you need a "throwaway" to point that out...

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

#564

Post by spaniard89277 »

toyg wrote: post #384
CreepGin wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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…

In Spain, up until the 8th of march the government was inviting people to go to women's marchs and saying everything was under control.

A guy in charge of the job safety for national police was demoted because he decided to buy and give masks to policeman.

Media affiliated with the government was actively trying to ridicule everyone, calling people alarmists, fascists or whatever insult they came up with. That includes science divulgators, medical personnel, etc. Pretty ugly.

Then, suddenly, the 9th of March we had a very worrysome situation and yadda yadda.

Not to mention the mask thing.

I mean, how in the hell are you going to trust any of this any more? I know I don't. Now if something else happens you have to be very careful, they may be lying to you, or having a combination of lies and stupidity.

I guess this is what happens when the selection of elites is optimized for marketing purposes.

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

#565

Post by jtc331 »

chimprich wrote: post #474
baobabKoodaa wrote: post #462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There seemed to be genuine uncertainty early on in the pandemic Among the civilian population, perhaps. Not among politicians and health officials. At least Fauci, WHO, and Finnish health authorities HAVE come out afterwards and admitted that they lied about masks to conserve them for health personnel.

> At least Fauci, WHO, and Finnish health authorities HAVE come out afterwards and admitted that they lied about masks This is not true. I think Fauci etc. admitted that a reason masks weren't recommended early on was partly to conserve masks. That's quite different from the claim that they actively lied about them.

Alternatively admitting that makes one look better than admitting “I didn’t know” or even “I was wrong”.

The inability of public health officials to simply say “we got X wrong” when they pivot massively erodes trust; ironically admitting “we were wrong; we know better now” would have done the opposite: it would have increased trust.

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

#566

Post by chrisjc »

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…

Totally agree with what you've said, but let's face it... the hate was always there. This whole situation has just emboldened the hateful to become violent both verbally and physically.

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

#567

Post by IgorPartola »

chiefalchemist wrote: post #521
chimprich wrote: post #474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At least Fauci, WHO, and Finnish health authorities HAVE come out afterwards and admitted that they lied about masks This is not true. I think Fauci etc. admitted that a reason masks weren't recommended early on was partly to conserve masks. That's quite different from the claim that they actively lied about them.

Perhaps. But we had a pandemic during the Obama/Biden admin, but no stockpile of appropriate PPE, masks, etc. This was, we were told, the pro-science administration. Pandemics are such a common trope that Hollywood has made multiple (bad) movies revolving around them. Yet it appears we were unprepared for the basics. What Fauci said or why isn't important. The question we should be asking is: Why were in that positio…

This is wrong. The Obama administration did quite a bit to prevent future pandemics and the Trump administration dismantled it all pretty much immediately. Three things come to mind: the pandemic playbook, the pandemic response office, and the public health observers in China that were all recalled under Trump.

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

#568

Post by Retric »

bluediscussy22 wrote: post #538
nicoburns wrote: post #507

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, that's not an unreasonable concern for them to have. Masks running out for healthcare professionals would have been an absolute disaster.

This is exactly the problem. No matter what it is not ok for someone to lie for what they perceive is the greater good, but scientists who we thought we could trust show that's exactly what they do and keep doing. Trust is what our entire society is built upon and the foundation of science.

These people aren’t scientists their doctors acting as public health officials it’s a very different group. These people don’t have much hard data at the start and simply get a lot of things wrong such as the need to keep disinfecting everything.

They also have the dual jobs of keep people alive and keeping society functioning.

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

#570

Post by chrishynes »

denton-scratch wrote: post #436
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…

> your a crazy person to believe there COULD have been a lab leak I'm not really bothered about the true origin of the virus, except inasmuchas scientists lying about their true beliefs is incredibly damaging to public confidence, and energises conspiranoids. Lying about the benefits of mask-wearing was bloody stupid. I no longer pay attention to statistics about infection rates and fatality rates. They are presented…

All of the lying and "nudging" and viewpoint policing is what made the "conspiraloons" so big (great word BTW). It was quite clear by March or April 2020 that a lot of lying was going on (wether "for the greater good" or some more nefarious reason) and also clear that everyone in media, politics, and science that should have been asking questions was instead giving a doe eyed acquiesce that the emperor was in fact wearing beautiful clothes.
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