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

741–750 of 1001 posts

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

#741

Post by hotpotamus »

bradleyjg wrote: post #736
hotpotamus wrote: post #723

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There were and are problematic elements of the lab leak people as well - I still see people (on this site) who claim that some or all aspects of the virus were synthetically created at the behest of Anthony Fauci. You may say I'm nutpicking, but I truly have a hard time determining what the lab leak theory is sometimes. But my sense was that the agenda behind the lab leak family of theories was to lay blame at some h…

It’s one thing for nutjobs to push a bad theory for some whacky reason and another thing entirely for establishment figures to shade the truth in order to push a (positive!) agenda. We have so many nutjobs, in part, because of generations of establishment figures being dishonest for the greater good. Lab leak was always a better theory. There were what hundreds? thousands? of wet markets across China and two bsl-4 la…

Do you think all these establishment figures all had perfect knowledge of the origin of this novel virus and all chose a coordinated lie, or does it seem possible that this was all the process (which I'll note is ongoing and may never be complete) of figuring it out, which is indeed messy and happens over time and in public?

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

#742

Post by jandrese »

midoridensha wrote: post #730
jandrese wrote: post #662

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also to give people time to develop the vaccine for the virus. Lockdown until the vaccine is administered to the community is a sound policy.

It took over a year to deploy the Covid vaccines. You want people to lockdown for 1-2 years when a new outbreak happens?

Depends on your goal. If you want to minimize deaths then you don't have a lot of options. If you want to maximize profit then letting people just die is cheaper, assuming you aren't counting medical expenses.

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

#743

Post by chasd00 »

bmikaili wrote: post #331
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…

AND america? nah man China should pay reparations or face heavy sanctions and geopolitical isolation.

It would be very fortunate if American scientists and people in power are involved. At least then there is some hope of actually finding out what happened and seeking justice.

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

#744

Post by kcplate »

SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #594
mwbajor wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So if a tech from the Wuhan lab on one of these expeditions, does that count as a leak?

It absolutely would. I think the people so eager to say it wasn’t a leak are often strawmaning that the argument is intentional leak. I don’t care if it was a 1 in a billion accident. If it happened, it did so at a lab doing gain of function research on coronaviruses, and that was being funded by money originating in the USA. So… I think I know how to prevent the next global event that someone is surely working on.

> I think the people so eager to say it wasn’t a leak are often strawmaning that the argument is intentional leak.

Exactly. But even an unintentional leak or accident carries with it a HUGE global political problem for the country where the pandemic appeared to originate. It could also carry with it problems for countries that may have funded such research too. Hence, denials and cover up activities start happening.

Frankly, this theory has staying power because countries and agencies have acted exactly like they are covering something up.

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

#745

Post by iaseiadit »

This is what happens when an incident is intertwined with politics, and people have made political allegiance a core part of their personality: all sorts of mental gymnastics to split hairs, discredit scientists, and backpedal so they can cling to their beliefs. It seems liberals will do the exact same things they criticize conservatives of, and without any sense of the irony.

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

#746

Post by lgvln »

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…

What’s even more difficult to wrap your head around should be the poor response to the pandemic; the lack of regard for the vulnerable (citizens) and the poor (nations).

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

#747

Post by iaseiadit »

lucideer wrote: post #589
pessimizer wrote: post #511

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sta…

The headline is absolutely, literally true.

The story is that the DOE determined a lab leak is the most likely origin. And that’s exactly what the headline says.

Did they decide it’s only marginally more likely than other theories? Perhaps, but the headline remains true.

This is not complicated.

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

#748

Post by [deleted] »

plutonorm wrote: post #669
mliker wrote: post #639

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but the point is the headline is clickbaity, and for the uninformed masses, it sounds like it's highly likely it's from the lab, when that judgment was made with "low confidence"

That you think it's a coincidence that a novel coronavirus pops up in the only place in china working on coronaviruses blows my mind. Any sane, rational human thought it likely a lab leak from the moment this thing started.

[deleted]

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

#749

Post by [deleted] »

ss108 wrote: post #667
walkhour wrote: post #626

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Naming something by its origin it's not racist. The tone you're talking about is a completely subjective statement, and it has no place in a serious discussion. Using that name should've never been controversial and making it controversial was creating drama where there was none. The fact that people are still hurt about Trump saying that years ago shows how unprepared we are to have a discussion about anything.

This just willfully tone deaf as to what was going on and being implied then. The other component of it was this kind of "blame China" attitude he was trying to engender to deflect blame, and that's another reason why the theory never caught on. (Also to be clear, it's not even that the China stuff made him racist; he clearly established himself as a racist, and then he said that stuff, which I agree wasn't necessari…

[deleted]

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

#750

Post by iaseiadit »

tootie wrote: post #735
pessimizer wrote: post #511

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'm not entirely clear on why the Energy Department would even be investigating this let alone issuing a controversial finding with low confidence at all. They mention specific intelligence that flipped their conclusion but didn't even characterize what the nature of that intelligence is.

“The DOE oversees several U.S. national labs, some of which conduct advanced biological research”
Post reply on HN