Covid: Summary of lab-origin hypothesis • Hacker News Board

Re: Covid: Summary of lab-origin hypothesis

#271

Post by pvaldes » Tue, Sep 06, 2022, 2:49 PM UTC

JaceLightning wrote: post #238

seydor wrote: post #6

Well I hope that at least the next lab-made pandemic will insert some beneficial mutations to humanity. In a way, the lab-leak hypothesis is comforting, because it means that nature with its own means did not manage to manufacture such a highly-transmissive disease, despite the facts of modern life, record human population and rates of travel. If it is not lab-made, then nature may do this again soon with another vir…

or... if it's a lab-leak then evil governments know they can create world-wide devastating pandemics.

They were most probably aware of that yet

Re: Covid: Summary of lab-origin hypothesis

#272

Post by barnacled » Tue, Sep 06, 2022, 2:50 PM UTC

arisAlexis wrote: post #167

barnacled wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'Claims are facts until proven otherwise' is quite the take, I think Karl Popper would take issue with that. I linked a thorough thread from a domain expert explaining in detail why the claims are false. These things have been addressed/debunked many, many times but still get repeated because the untruths get amplified and the rebuttals not.

This is sophistry. The OP is stating facts. You are being "vague" by saying that these have been "debunked" relying on the long term "no conspiracy" theory which does really not apply in this case. This is a very clear Bayesian probability problem.

No, you literally said 'all his claims are facts until proven otherwise'.

I am not being vague, I literally posted a link to a rebuttal thread.

This is why I don't post on hacker news any more.

Re: Covid: Summary of lab-origin hypothesis

#273

Post by Izkata » Tue, Sep 06, 2022, 2:50 PM UTC

sjsdaiuasgdia wrote: post #223

PathOfEclipse wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To my knowledge, to this day, there are still exactly zero RCTs showing that masks were ever effective against COVID, and at least two major RCTs whose results indicate they are not very effective (there was no statistically significant benefit to masking). If, after two years of a world-wide pandemic, the best evidence we can put forth are low-quality observational studies which explicitly state they cannot show cau…

You do you, but I've enjoyed not even getting the slightest cold for the last couple years that I might just keep masking in a lot of public spaces for the foreseeable future. It's anecdata for sure, but my experience seems to suggest that masks can help protect against airborne transmissible viral infections. For more anecdata, pretty much everyone in my extended contacts that has chosen to relax their masking postu…

> I haven't heard about any surgeons giving up wearing masks in the operating room. Wonder why...

Those masks are as much about blocking blood spurts from the patient as they are about blocking spit from the doctor. They're not meant for blocking airborne viruses either way.

Re: Covid: Summary of lab-origin hypothesis

#274

Post by sinecure » Tue, Sep 06, 2022, 2:51 PM UTC

I think covid's lasting impact will be one of vastly growing mistrust in the political and scientific organizations that society looks to for guidance.

From the CDC's ever changing guidelines, the liability-free, fast tracked vaccine that doesn't actually mitigate transmission, the labeling of media pushed medical hypothesis as "science" and any debate as heresy, the effortless militarization of common citizens to socially pressure and attack their neighbors into compliance, and the coordinated "fact checking" campaigns of powerful organizations that have turned out to be complete lies. It's all done lasting damage to societal trust... from our own families and neighbors, to the heights of academic and governmental leadership.

People are rightfully asking many questions. Are the FDA, CDC, and the WHO corrupted by big Pharma companies and political groups that care more about saving face and profit than the truth? Is academia similarly corrupted to create research that supports the chosen narrative? Is "trusting the experts" really the embodiment of science... or one of religious zealotry?

Re: Covid: Summary of lab-origin hypothesis

#275

Post by ubertaco » Tue, Sep 06, 2022, 2:52 PM UTC

arisAlexis wrote: post #53

barnacled wrote: post #30

The problem with this is it is full of utterly debunked nonsense that Ebright knows full well has been addressed. It's Brandolini's law [0] in action, and no matter how many times virologists rebut these positions the same old tripe gets wheeled out again, and again, and again. If you ignore rebuttals and just repeat yourself + get 20k likes on twitter how many people are going to see a rebuttal like the excellent on…

Actually all of his claims are facts unless proven otherwise. Do you have proof that these facts (Wuhan playing with these viruses, funding etc) are not true or you would like them to not be true?

I wonder if you take an "all claims are facts until proven otherwise" approach to religion as well, and if so, how do you reconcile the mutually-exclusive (but non-falsifiable) claims that various religions make counter to one another?

Re: Covid: Summary of lab-origin hypothesis

#276

Post by barnacled » Tue, Sep 06, 2022, 2:52 PM UTC

null_object wrote: post #99

barnacled wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah I expected to get downvoted into oblivion, I know it's a cliche to say it but HN isn't what it once was. A key point to take away is that the fact there are 2 lineages means that lab leak is super unlikely. It would require somebody from the lab to come to the same relatively small market to give lineage A, then somebody else who got infected through a totally different evolutionary route at the lab to happen to c…

> Of course lab leakers are working hard to try to deny this or claim the data is wrong or yada yada. It's an ongoing battle and they have several highly dedicated 'independent scientists' (lol) working on it seemingly 24/7. I think the downvotes are because of this type of statement, which suggests that people who have read the papers, and thought about the conflicting evidence, and finally come to a conclusion that…

You do realise there are countless people who have 'read the papers and thought about the conflicting evidence' about climate change right?

The reality is unfortunately that these people ARE nutty conspiracy theorists. They are not 'thinking about the papers' and providing a reasonable push back, they're reiterating long debunked points (did you read the thread I posted?).

Ebright already claimed the papers were scientific fraud until he thought better and deleted the tweet. This is the kind of person you're dealing with.

I'm not going to both-sides something which now has very clear evidence in one direction and not a shred of evidence in the other, I'm sorry I'm just not.

Hacker news of old would be more open to that. Again,this is why I no longer post here.

Re: Covid: Summary of lab-origin hypothesis

#277

Post by shmel » Tue, Sep 06, 2022, 2:52 PM UTC

notahacker wrote: post #224

jcims wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They aren't a monolith but there is a pretty large overlap between the set of scientists that would be negatively impacted by major policy changes in virus research and those who's opinion is considered useful in the discussion of possible origins of SARS-CoV-2.

There is also a pretty large overlap between the set of scientists who would be positively impacted by major policy changes in virus research. "We need more money to research coronaviruses because we can't trust our counterparts in China" and "Funding should be restricted to labs in $homecountry with better biosecurity controls" are fairly natural conclusions to draw from discovering it was Chinese error, and "this i…

Yeah, right, but it may also backfire if all gain-of-function research is banned. Imagine if we accidentally invented a rogue AI that caused as much disruption worldwide as covid did? Would you trust the general public and policymakers to come up with conclusions "it is fine, we continue AI research only in big corps based in SF, we can trust those" rather than "AI bad, ban AI research!"?

I remember when this controversy about NIH grants just started, Fauci said: "if you want to ban gain-of-function research, you may just as well ban the virology entirely". And honestly, I am fine with that. I advocate for banning all gain-of-function research. If virologists can't do anything else except engineering deadly viruses on purpose, it is their problem.

Re: Covid: Summary of lab-origin hypothesis

#278

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Sep 06, 2022, 2:53 PM UTC

M0r13n wrote: post #148

I ask myself whether the Chinese government knows more about the risks of a COVID infection and is therefore trying everything it can to stop it from spreading. Maybe the virus actually leaked and the chemists know something about the long term effects that they do not publicly disclose.

[deleted]

Re: Covid: Summary of lab-origin hypothesis

#279

Post by boltzmann-brain » Tue, Sep 06, 2022, 2:54 PM UTC

ploika wrote: post #200

glofish wrote: post #114

The main point that no scientists seems to want to mention is the clear cut and well defined conflict of interest in determining the origins. How would the scientists of the future ask for funding if it turns out they themselves directly caused an epidemic? It is a black eye for science, it provides ammunition to the "anti-science" crowd. In contrast scientists are in the drivers position if the cause was all natural…

Scientists aren't a monolith though. There few better career boosts than proving everyone else wrong, and the satisfaction of poaching work off a competitor who messed up isn't restricted to any one industry. Research into dangerous viruses isn't going to stop, no matter what happened in Wuhan, and it's far from the only risky work going on in labs around the world anyway. Whatever about the strength of the natural o…

> it's far from the only risky work going on in labs around the world

what else could you bring up?

Re: Covid: Summary of lab-origin hypothesis

#280

Post by cjbgkagh » Tue, Sep 06, 2022, 2:55 PM UTC

If a real conflict starts over Taiwan those who oppose the lab-leak theory will become the new ‘deniers’; after all we’ve always been at war with East Asia.

I get whiplash from watching how rapidly the public gets jawboned. I’ve seen many people, even those close to me, completely switch positions on ‘strongly’ held beliefs. Not only do they not acknowledge the inherent contradictions but they seem to have forgotten holding the original positions in the first place. Those without memory are living in an ever changing present, and those of us with memory are stuck with a past that no longer exists.