Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

wsj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

581–590 of 1001 posts

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

#581

Post by mrexroad »

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.

My teenager brings up the A&W 1/3lb burger failure when I rant how people are choosing “math ignorance.” Kid’s point being that “fast food lovers[] would never let math intentionally get between them and greater amounts of fast food by choice, and that people simply that dumb.” I’ve dubbed it Hanlon’s Burger.

[] rephrased as their wording was a bit unfair to those that consume large amounts of fast food.

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

#582

Post by dangwhy »

autoexec wrote: post #569
dangwhy wrote: post #555

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how were the people pushing wet market theory not "crazies" also then.

> how were the people pushing wet market theory not "crazies" also then. Because they had evidence that made the wet market theory the one most likely to be true, and a lack of stronger evidence for the lab leak theory. Investigating and supporting the theory that is best supported by the evidence you have isn't crazy, it's science. When you look at all the facts you have, and then ignore that because it doesn't supp…

> Because they had evidence that made the wet market theory the one most likely to be true

sorry but what was evidence supporting wet market theory when this article was published

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/19/health/coronavirus-animal...

> The new virus seems to have leapt from wildlife to humans in a seafood and meat market in Wuhan, China, where live animals were slaughtered and sold as food.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/10/science/pangolin-coronavi...

None of these qualify as evidence that you say the claim was based on.

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

#583

Post by philippejara »

selcuka wrote: post #566
dangwhy wrote: post #544

Earlier quoted context omitted.

then why even propose any theory ? why not let it remain a mystery.

> then why even propose any theory ? why not let it remain a mystery. Reductio ad absurdum won't work here. There are ways to test a "low confidence" theory, and re-evaluate its confidence level. This is called science.

You aren't going to get any confirmation or material evidence until the chinese government allows it to happen, and with their initial reaction to the situation before the rest of the world kenw what was happening and their reaction to the WHO inquiries, odds are we'll never get anything aside from "low confidence".

Science isn't a magic wand, its a process, and honestly assuming we do get access an investigation like this most likely wouldn't even involve the scientific method at all. If science was enough to determine the origin given current available knowledge it probably would've been solved already.

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

#584

Post by brippalcharrid »

autoexec wrote: post #557
frank_nitti wrote: post #500

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly - and how many were mocked, ridiculed, cancelled for even floating the idea of the lab leak; it was labeled as a BS conspiracy theory. Many, even some in this thread, are eager to minimize this story if they participated in ridiculing the fringe voices who kept questioning the official narrative. Better to have this quickly fade into oblivion lest they be outed as having placed their blind faith in false prop…

> it was labeled as a BS conspiracy theory. At the time it was a BS conspiracy theory. There was some evidence for it, and some evidence against it and it happened that the evidence we had at the time was stronger for the non-lab leak theories. That's what changed right now. We have new evidence that puts the lab leak theory above the others. Back when Trump was demanding that "China pay" and people were beating up r…

> Trump was demanding that "China pay" and people were beating up random Asians who were just walking down the street

Unfortunately, random Asian people getting brutalized when they're going about their daily business has been a long-standing problem in a number of cities. Is there any evidence to suggest that the people perpetrating these crimes were even aware of Trump's words, let alone motivated by them, rather than this just fitting the usual pattern of criminality combined with a generalized ethnic resentment?

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

#585

Post by earlyam »

autoexec wrote: post #557
frank_nitti wrote: post #500

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly - and how many were mocked, ridiculed, cancelled for even floating the idea of the lab leak; it was labeled as a BS conspiracy theory. Many, even some in this thread, are eager to minimize this story if they participated in ridiculing the fringe voices who kept questioning the official narrative. Better to have this quickly fade into oblivion lest they be outed as having placed their blind faith in false prop…

> it was labeled as a BS conspiracy theory. At the time it was a BS conspiracy theory. There was some evidence for it, and some evidence against it and it happened that the evidence we had at the time was stronger for the non-lab leak theories. That's what changed right now. We have new evidence that puts the lab leak theory above the others. Back when Trump was demanding that "China pay" and people were beating up r…

Problem was you weren't even allowed to speculate about this and consider that the possibility warranted more investigation without being written off as a "Trumper."

I've seen huge family fights over this very issue and not one person involved was a Trump supporter or a conspiracy theorist but then the names get thrown around because somebody didn't toe somebody else's ideological line.

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

#586

Post by autoexec »

actually_a_dog wrote: post #481
ffssffss wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the WSJ piece says the CIA is undecided! I wonder what explains the different assessments.

This is exactly why I can't give this article, or any of those multiple intelligence agency assessments any real credence. I don't have access to any of the data that went into those assessments. What I do have access to doesn't point very strongly at a lab leak origin, despite its plausibility.

It's perfectly reasonable for the government to support one theory based on non-conclusive evidence that they have and reasonable for the public to support another based on the non-conclusive evidence available to them.

It makes it a lot more likely that public support for the non-lab leak theories will change once we get the chance to see the government's new evidence though.

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

#587

Post by SV_BubbleTime »

tim333 wrote: post #538
goolulusaurs wrote: post #192

IMO, it seems obvious from the behavior of China's government that they know it is a lab leak. If it wasn't a lab leak, then presumably there is an animal reservoir of the virus somewhere in China, but as far as I know they haven't claimed to have found it. But if there is an animal reservoir of the virus in China, then how could the Chinese government ever expect a lockdown to work? A lockdown on travel would only r…

There are other Chinese government behaviours also. If it wasn't a lab leak why not publish the Wuhan labs database which was public until the outbreak? I know they say hacking but they could just make a copy and upload it somewhere. Also after Xi's first speech on covid his civil servants put out instructions to improve biosecurity at the virus labs. And lots of little things that seem a bit odd.

Does no one else on earth remember the initial videos out of China of people laying dead on the streets? Does no one else remeber the WHO refusing to acknowledge Taiwan is its own state?

I really struggle that anyone is seriously buying a single “truth” that is coming out of China.

I don’t know it was a lab leak, but I agree, if you are at all reasonable you can just see that China thinks it was.

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

#588

Post by AnimalMuppet »

jimbob45 wrote: post #449
barbazoo wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It didn't seem to be based on evidence at the time rather than a simple minded and racist bit to cover up that he had no idea what he was doing.

As a thought experiment, who would have access to the most information in the world outside of the sitting POTUS? The richest man in the world? Surely Trump of all people would be the most qualified to make such a claim.

Trump was... not an ordinary president. In particular, he didn't pay very much attention to his briefings. He may have had access to the information, but there's less indication that he used that access, and plenty of indication that he frequently shot his mouth of contrary to the facts. Whether he did so in this case is not proven, but the parent's argument doesn't work for the particular president in question.

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

#589

Post by lucideer »

pessimizer wrote: post #511
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…

The headline is absolutely, literally true. I also don't understand the nuance that anyone could miss here. The astounding thing is that the Energy Dept. can say that a lab leak is the most likely cause of the pandemic, and people jump out in front of them to say that what they somehow still mean is that a lab leak wasn't the cause of the pandemic. They have "low confidence" that it was a lab leak ( there might not e…

> The headline is absolutely, literally true

It absolutely, literally isn't.

The headline says the lab leak is the most likely origin. The lab theory being the least shitty theory absolutely doesn't make it a likely origin: it is purely a statement about the information we have (rather lack thereof) on origins, not on the likelihood of any of those. Likelihood of origin doesn't even come into it given the current state of theories.

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

#590

Post by FollowingTheDao »

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…

They went from "undecided" to "Low Confidence". That is a shift in a particular direction.

I would go on to talk about how the US invaded countries with zero confidence but...

Post reply on HN