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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

#901

Post by kenmacd »

anon291 wrote: post #722
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"

A distinction without a difference. I've said it was a lab leak from about month two of the pandemic. Any sane person hearing me say this should assume I have low confidence as the sort of evidence necessary to prove this beyond a reasonable doubt is information a random hn commentor could not possibly have. Unfortunately, even expressing that you thought it likely it was a lab leak was enough to get my accounts bann…

If I ask you what time it is and you're not really sure, do you say "It's 1:04:35.023"?

So if you 'said it was a lab leak', but expected people to know you really mean "based on the extremely limited information I have on the situation, it don't feel the possibly of it being a lab leak can not be entirely discounted", then you've communicated poorly.

You've said in this comment that "you thought it likely it was a lab leak". Again, that's not the words of someone with low confidence in their theory.

Then we have to come to your motives in espousing such a theory. What was your point in saying that then and now? Is it that you think the world in general should work towards better lab practices? If so why not say that instead. Why do you want people to know you think it was from a particular lab?

Just saying what you're saying sounds a lot like an anti-China dog-whistle, especially in the environment in which you're saying it.

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

#902

Post by zamadatix »

yakubin wrote: post #578
zamadatix wrote: post #527

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can "low confidence" and "higher confidence than all other theories combined" jive? Does it require "all other theories" to not include "we don't have a clue" which is the most likely of all or am I missing something else?

"we don't have a clue" is not a theory about the origin. It's a theory about your knowledge of the origin. It's not in the pool of competing theories you're considering in this context.

True, in this case “nature” is basically the catch all “not lab” theory already including the probabilities the source is "not lab but we haven't named the source".

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

#903

Post by jandrese »

midoridensha wrote: post #842
jandrese wrote: post #742

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Locking people up for a year is probably going to cause many other problems that will lead to early deaths, so I don't see that as necessarily a good way of minimizing deaths. We're already seeing that Covid has disrupted many aspects of peoples' social lives, probably leading to a decrease in the birth rate, for instance, plus causing other health issues like depression. Just letting the disease run rampant doesn't…

You would be hard pressed to find more than a handful of deaths attributed to "being in lockdown", especially when compared against the 6.5 million extra deaths from COVID.

Economists tend to see workers as replaceable cogs, so deaths aren't a major factor until it starts affecting the labor supply. To maximize income in cases like this the best strategy is to get your entire workforce sick at once, take the two weeks off, then hire enough people to replace the 5% that died so you can get back to work as fast as possible. Also, make sure to suspend all health benefits for the two weeks to make sure nobody tries to use expensive hospital stays. You probably think this sounds extreme, but it's a real strategy (apart from suspending health insurance) that some powerful people were very angry about not being able to implement due to government interference.

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

#904

Post by chiefalchemist »

unsupp0rted wrote: post #889
chiefalchemist wrote: post #711

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps. But you buried the lede. It wasn't that long ago that just asking the question - or questioning the then narrative - was positioned as a threat to the democracy, racist (i.e., anti China), conspiracy theory, etc. Low confidence based on available data is 100x better than high confidence based on nothing but some backroom creative thinking, and a mindless media entourage willing to parrot anything tossed in f…

I got banned from a major Coronavirus subreddit for saying in 2021 "we don't know yet how many boosters will be needed or on what schedule". This was seen as a claim that the vaccines don't work, which was patently false (at the time). Questioning whether the virus emerged organically or came from a lab leak? That was equivalent to claiming the government is run by lizard people and the earth is flat. That's a public…

What concerns me is now that the facts are dripping out, the tools (i.e., public shaming) that enabled a false narrative and marginalized traditional common (i.e., asking painfully obvious questions) are still normalized.

We can't just flip a button and undo the "programming" and glorification of group think. The step in the wrong direction can't be reversed.

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

#905

Post by mullingitover »

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.

Isn’t that lab in Wuhan because it’s a region with a lot of endemic coronaviruses?

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

#907

Post by VerminOctopus1 »

ecf wrote: post #438
mwbajor wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand the mental gymnastics to discredit the lab leak hypothesis. The fact that the lab and epicenter of the virus are in the same geographic area make it the likely scenario and warrants the most investigation. The efforts to look past this seem artificial.

[flagged]

Your claims: - The true origin of COVID-19 is known and being kept a secret [citation needed] - It’s unreasonable to assume a pandemic can be caused by a natural occurring genetic mutation [citation needed] - Global knowledge that the virus came from a Chinese lab (accidentally? intentionally?) would cause a world war [citation needed]

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

#908

Post by plutonorm »

mullingitover wrote: post #905
plutonorm wrote: post #669

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Isn’t that lab in Wuhan because it’s a region with a lot of endemic coronaviruses?

It's a large region. Also the virus didn't come from anywhere near there. Also, the bats they supposedly came from weren't sold at the wet market. Start with the suspicion and work your way through the facts from there.

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

#909

Post by plutonorm »

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…

How on earth did you manage to bridge the gap from 'there was some evidence for it' to 'BS conspiracy theory'. If it has some evidence for it, it is not, by definition a BS conspiracy theory. You allowed others to do your thinking for you. You allowed your emotions to cloud your judgement, all while under the banner of the holy rationalists. Own it and do better next time. The media is used to manipulate opinion especially in times of national crisis, dont fall for it.

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

#910

Post by plutonorm »

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…

This is a prelude to war with China. We want people to hate them now that geopolitics are pitting us against them. Oh shit, we are heading to war.
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