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Lab leak most likely origin of Covid-19 pandemic, U.S. agency now says

wsj.com

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Re: Lab leak most likely origin of Covid-19 pandemic, U.S. agency now says

#391

Post by che_shirecat »

cld8483 wrote: post #115
credit_guy wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only reason to not say it was a lab leak is to avoid embarrassing those responsible, China first and America second. But little by little people will start accepting that. What should the consequences be? At the very least a tightening of the controls around labs doing bio research. Of course, this amounts to nothing if someone is allowed to outsource research to labs in countries that don't follow the stringent…

> What should the consequences be? The abolition of modern virology, roll the clock back on them a hundred years. Allow the development of vaccines for extant viruses, but completely ban all Dr Frankenstein activities with viruses. No more "invent a virus in a lab to beat nature to the punch" horse shit, with is flagrant weapons development under the cover of civilian research. As soon as the virus started circulatin…

Hackernews now advocating for burning books, wow. This is the end result in allowing political ragebait threads instead of focusing on tech and startups.

Re: Lab leak most likely origin of Covid-19 pandemic, U.S. agency now says

#392

Post by fswd »

dang wrote: post #317
fswd wrote: post #289

[flagged]

Not sure what you mean but it seems par for the course to me.

I should clarify, I'm not suggesting you are censoring, or "site sponsored censorship", rather censorship from users via downvotes. They both accomplish the same thing I could understand why somebody might misunderstand me that you are censoring.

The Nordstream 2 thread was also interesting, with tons of users trying to appeal to you specifically to do site censor the story, or tone policing. I remember you stuck to your guns.

Re: Lab leak most likely origin of Covid-19 pandemic, U.S. agency now says

#394

Post by tzs »

credit_guy wrote: post #41
boeingUH60 wrote: post #6

Nothing seems certain at this point, but, let’s say the pandemic was actually caused by a lab leak. That’ll mean the world was brought to an economic standstill and millions of people died because of the errors and carelessness of some people…will there be consequences? What will be the assurance that such deadly mistake won’t occur again? If it was actually a lab leak, then it’ll definitely rank as the most costly a…

The only reason to not say it was a lab leak is to avoid embarrassing those responsible, China first and America second. But little by little people will start accepting that. What should the consequences be? At the very least a tightening of the controls around labs doing bio research. Of course, this amounts to nothing if someone is allowed to outsource research to labs in countries that don't follow the stringent…

No one is going to pay any significant reparations for a couple.

1. Too many first world countries do not want to open up that can of worms because it might come back to bite them in the ass over the various things they have inflicted environmentally on the rest of the world.

The US and Europe for example are responsible for the overwhelming majority of greenhouse gases currently in the atmosphere--yes some other countries are now emitting comparable amounts to current US/EU emissions, but because CO2 stays in the atmosphere for hundreds of years the US/EU emissions from the past 200 years still massively dominate and will for a long time.

2. Calculating the reparations amount due to a given country would require an analysis of how much of their losses were due to their poor handling of COVID. There's too much risk that such analysis could conclude for many countries that their net losses were way higher than they would have been had the country handled it better.

If you suffer $X loss but then only get say 1/10 $X in reparations because that analysis concluded that 90% of your loss could have been avoided if you'd handled it better, your citizens aren't going to be happy their government got the 1/10 $X in reparations. No, your citizens are going to be annoyed their government botched things making COVID 10 times worse than it had to be.

Re: Lab leak most likely origin of Covid-19 pandemic, U.S. agency now says

#395

Post by mherdeg »

cookiengineer wrote: post #231

No idea if it's possible to still find the source, but the doctor of patient zero also got infected (and died/"disappeared" afterwards like her boss at the wuhan hospital). Patient zero was a virologist that seems to have been censored off the Chinese internet afterwards, and I can't find the links anymore :-/ In the beginning of sars-cov-2 breakout there was an article shared on wechat that later got censored in var…

Hmmm -- do you mean Li Wenliang?

Re: Lab leak most likely origin of Covid-19 pandemic, U.S. agency now says

#396

Post by smsm42 »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #269
aaronbrethorst wrote: post #151

There's a lot of bad headline-writing on this subject today. Here's the NYT's headline: Lab Leak Most Likely Caused Pandemic, Energy Dept. Says And then the sub-head (or dek, if you want to sound like you're in the know): The conclusion, which was made with “low confidence,” came as America’s intelligence agencies remained divided over the origins of the coronavirus. So we have a conclusion: 'lab leak most likely cau…

Good luck getting 95% of the American populace to understand any of that nuance. After seeing lots of Twitter threads about Nate Silver, condemning his lack of "certainty" in his predictions ("It's such a cop out! Since he never says yes or no one way or the other he always has an out when he's wrong!"), I'm even more convinced not just that people don't understand statistics, but they willfully don't want to.

It's not like any other options have high confidence. All theories are low confidence right now because there is no conclusive proof for either. But if you support some, you are the defender of science, and if you support another, you are a filthy conspirologist and get banned from social media. Try explaining that to 95% of the American populace.

Re: Lab leak most likely origin of Covid-19 pandemic, U.S. agency now says

#397

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

smsm42 wrote: post #382
SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perfect, then it's unfalsifiable.

Unfortunately, unless whoever destroyed evidence screwed up (happens all the time, security services have enough idiots and slackers), or somebody kept some evidence and then will defect, yes, it is likely we'll never have the proof. That's why they do it.

[flagged]

Re: Lab leak most likely origin of Covid-19 pandemic, U.S. agency now says

#399

Post by jcranmer »

nradov wrote: post #342
orlp wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think if anything COVID has shown us that biological warfare makes as much sense as nuclear: none. In our globally connected world it's mutually assured destruction, and that's without even the need for your enemy to maintain stockpiles of weapons. The virus will find itself within your own borders soon enough.

Terrorists motivated by religion or ideology sometimes use tactics and weapons that make no sense to rational people. The Aum Shinrikyo cult was developing biological weapons.

> The Aum Shinrikyo cult was developing biological weapons.

Sarin would be classed as chemical, not biological.

It's also worth illustrating that their primary terrorist act killed 15 people, after releasing sarin on 5 different trains during Tokyo's busy rush hour. You would have been more effective just lobbing a single grenade.

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