Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid • Hacker News Board

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#311

Post by Natsu » Sun, Jun 11, 2023, 9:26 PM UTC

plagiarist wrote: post #272

kcplate wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, so the original motivations for some making that claim were suspect. Should that automatically excuse or prevent discussion that better safety protocols should be used or a better “ways of doing things” should be undertaken when handling viruses and pathogens that are capable of killing 7M people? I think it’s a valid topic and important one that should be verboten lest the next time we accidentally kill 14M with…

If the people making that claim had been sane, instead of pushing it in the middle of; "it's not deadly, just a flu," "masks do nothing," "maybe a bit of bleach is fine in the lungs," "hydroxychloroquine cures everything," "no, wait, it is horse paste that cures everything," "the vaccine will kill you in X months, guaranteed," and "GREAT RESET," it'd be easier to transition into a serious discussion about studying de…

The middle ground always gets pushed to the extremes when there's a strong push to alienate some views.

Covid was worse than the flu, but the flu is also deadly and we should be paying more attention to vaccinating it. The deaths aren't evenly distributed, either, young healthy people have less to worry about, but "less" isn't "nothing." For masks, you really wanted N95 masks, not cloth, and you still have to avoid large indoor gatherings.

Nobody said that bleach in the lungs was good. Trump mentioned disinfectant presumably butchering a description of the HealLight which would use UV to destroy the virus, effectively "disinfecting" the lungs. There are always idiots poisoning themselves with bleach, though, but nobody pays much attention to the poison control stats most of the time. HCQ and Ivermectin had some promising studies but no real effectiveness for the things people wanted them for. There probably is some rise in myocarditis due to vaccines... but they're still a lot safer if you look at mortality rates. "Great Reset" was from an actual policy proposal someone put out, but doesn't really stand for the things the conspiracies say it does.

All of these things got pushed into extreme caricatures depending on what side you trust.

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#312

Post by fzeroracer » Sun, Jun 11, 2023, 9:32 PM UTC

jakear wrote: post #223

andsoitis wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The point is the young and healthy don’t get very sick. You get it, have the sniffles for a day or two, and move on with your life. Same for covid. We could have just embraced that blessing and let children continue to go to school and not experience massive declines in intelligence. But here we are. “Think of the really old people” was truly hilarious. Indeed, all we could do was “think” when my grandpa died alone…

What really happened, as stated in the very source you gave, was that if you had a heart attack at home an ambulance would come to “deal with you” (because of course they would), but if they attempted to resuscitate you for 20 minutes and you still didn’t recover they wouldn’t then take you to the hospital. You should know the survival rate of a heart attack is far far lower than most expect, especially after 20 minu…

There are many [1] many [2] many [3] many [4] many [5] many [6] many [7] examples of people who died as a result of our hospital systems being overloaded and being forced to ration care. This is what was meant by the geometric growth of hospital patients and how many hospital systems were close to outright breaking. You are ultimately factually wrong and extremely unaware of how much stress this put on our hospital systems and how many people died because of what you were suggesting. Now imagine how much worse it would've been if we did nothing.

[1] https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2021/0...

[2] https://www.politico.com/news/agenda/2021/10/26/lack-hospita...

[3] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/covid-us-hospital-icu-bed-short...

[4] https://www.whsv.com/2021/08/27/man-dies-waiting-icu-bed-fam...

[5] https://www.businessinsider.com/man-covid-dead-doctors-icu-b...

[6] https://www.ketv.com/article/auburn-man-dies-in-des-moines-h...

[7] https://www.newsweek.com/kansas-man-dies-after-waiting-icu-b...

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#313

Post by kcplate » Sun, Jun 11, 2023, 9:40 PM UTC

plagiarist wrote: post #282

kcplate wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I honestly don’t see much difference in the level of extremism between everything you listed vs people deciding a specific topic is off limits just because the theory may not be politically correct, or because the alt opinion may have some factual basis.

Yes, of course, everyone should treat disingenuous propagandists as if they were attempting to have a serious discussion. If anyone objects to that, it is "deciding a topic is off-limits," which is insane. Of course we should let them run their horse paste grift and just patiently repeat over and over, "no, no, studies show it doesn't work. Please wear a mask to reduce spread."

Considering that you are intentionally misconstruing that ivermectin position that folks were discussing at the time using the same tired and dishonest “horse paste” media talking point, I’ll assume that “disingenuous propaganda” runs in many directions.

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#314

Post by Ireallyapart » Sun, Jun 11, 2023, 9:43 PM UTC

denton-scratch wrote: post #192

prepend wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> indication of any ill-intent I don’t think ill-intent is the accusation, I think the argument is that the lab has poor safety protocols and made errors. I haven’t studied the “lab leak theory” extensively, but everything I read seems to be about lab failures resulting in a leak, not anything purposeful or ill-intentioned.

The article claims that Chinese army researchers were at the lab researching viral weapons. That sounds like ill-intent to me. It also states that Covid-19 is the only Coronavirus discovered with a furin cleavage site on the spike, and that the lab had applied for funding to research the insertion of such a site. I don't think anyone is suggesting that the lab deliberately launched a pandemic by deliberately releasin…

> The article claims that Chinese army researchers were at the lab researching viral weapons. That sounds like ill-intent to me.

The US does weapons research it does not mean ill intent. The Chinese does weapons research for the same reason the US does it.

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#315

Post by ajross » Sun, Jun 11, 2023, 9:46 PM UTC

toomim wrote: post #244

ajross wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My position hasn't changed for years: if covid was really a lab creation we'd know, because someone would have told us. An email dump, a memo, a document, an interview. Something would have leaked out. The incentives are just too high and the access is too pervasive[1] to believe otherwise. Is it possible? Sure! Is it likewise possible that some of the circumstantial claims about WIV are true? Sure! But if someone ma…

We still don't know what happened to JFK, 60 years later.

Yikes. I mean, yes, in this sense you're right. We've never found conclusive disproof of the various conspiracy theories around the assassination and have been forced into a consensus that, y'know, Oswald shot him. But you don't believe that. And nothing is going to make you. So from you're perspective "we still don't know". WIV is going to be the same. You'll never get the disproof you demand, so you'll continue to disbelieve the consensus opinion.

Yours is a world where disproof rules, and conspiracies are assumed true until proven false. I'm sure it's entertaining, but it's not "true" any more than mine is.

In my world, Oswald probably shot JFK and covid was probably a natural virus, because those are the hypotheses that demand the least of the existing evidence. I'm willing to change my priors with more evidence, but not because of the lack of disproof of an entertaining counter-hypothesis.

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#316

Post by ergodic1 » Sun, Jun 11, 2023, 9:49 PM UTC

ajross wrote: post #198

Etherlord87 wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the time limit a secret of this magnitude could survive without being revealed by someone? A year, two years? If we look at our history, we will only see secrets that were revealed within that maximum period? Snowden revealed quite shocking information, and I think it is safe to say the secret of mass surveillance was going on for much longer than 4 years.

And if such information pops up, I will (with great surprise) re-evaluate my priors. Nonetheless I think history bears out my intuition here. The overwhelming majority of conspiracies likes this, especially ones in fundamentally civilian organizations like science labs, don't survive a year if that.

Making the claim that you know the proportion of conspiracies that get reported implies you know the number of conspiracies not reported.

Im not aware of any way you could know that or the relative proportion of each.

Where do you get your certainty here?

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#317

Post by varelse » Sun, Jun 11, 2023, 9:52 PM UTC

lamontcg wrote: post #267

amoss wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The map showing the clustering around the lab is not labelled in the article. It looks like the map from the senate report which used internet search history. I recall that their point in the original report was that there was a cluster of internet searches for flu-like symptoms clustered around the institute, rather than the market. There is no new direct evidence in the article, simply the weight of existing indire…

> It is not direct evidence, but under a weaker burden of proof (e.g. balance of probabilities) it is fairly convincing. - We have a bunch of evidence of WIV engineering SARS-1-like viruses because they talked about it before the pandemic. - We have zero evidence of them ever doing experiments on live SARS-2-like virus - We have zero evidence of the existence of a SARS-2-like progenitor virus - Before the pandemic th…

[dead]

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#318

Post by latency-guy2 » Sun, Jun 11, 2023, 9:58 PM UTC

toomim wrote: post #244

ajross wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My position hasn't changed for years: if covid was really a lab creation we'd know, because someone would have told us. An email dump, a memo, a document, an interview. Something would have leaked out. The incentives are just too high and the access is too pervasive[1] to believe otherwise. Is it possible? Sure! Is it likewise possible that some of the circumstantial claims about WIV are true? Sure! But if someone ma…

We still don't know what happened to JFK, 60 years later.

We also did not know that Cuba housed missles from Russia during the crisis. We also did not know to the extent that Cuba's leadership explicitly did have plans to strike the US alongside their Soviet allies.

It took until 1992 for what appears to be the truth to be discovered, 3 decades with far more people involved in the process, and a much darker outcome than a man being assassinated.

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#319

Post by ricksunny » Sun, Jun 11, 2023, 10:03 PM UTC

ricksunny wrote: post #166

amoss wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The map showing the clustering around the lab is not labelled in the article. It looks like the map from the senate report which used internet search history. I recall that their point in the original report was that there was a cluster of internet searches for flu-like symptoms clustered around the institute, rather than the market. There is no new direct evidence in the article, simply the weight of existing indire…

Chief among key new assertions the parent article makes, https://twitter.com/BlockedVirology/status/16676623250907463... • WIV added FCS's to coronavirus(es?) exactly as described in DEFUSE, according to a US lab collaborator. • Zhou Yusen "fell" off the roof of the WIV in May 2020 • WIV was working on a 'closer [than published] unpublished variant' • Of all caves/mines, only scholarly attempts to access the Mojiang…

• an item covered that isn't strictly new but is probably unfamiliar to many even so, is: Of the researchers who the Jan 2021 State Dep Fact Sheet described as having fell sick with 'Covid-like symptoms' in Nov 2019 • they were taken to hospital, desoite being in their 30's and 40's (age) • one of their relatives died • they were working on advanced coronavirus research in the laboratory

The WaPo journalist Josh Rogin who is known for maintainibg quality confidential sources in DC, had long ago tweeted the above. While some aspects may have been covered in intervening press, this is the first time to my knowledge all of tbese items are asserted explicitly with a quote attributed to one of the anonymous investigators.

--- my take fwiw: While intriguing, vis-a-vis a seasonal illness null hypothesis, it's never been discussed whether they were unique cases at that time with such symptoms (more likely covid), or if many others both in and out of the WIV had similar symtoms at the time (more likely seasonal illness)

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#320

Post by hackinthebochs » Sun, Jun 11, 2023, 10:04 PM UTC

ajross wrote: post #175

pcrh wrote: post #55

After a quick read of the article, it presents no new data, and is replete with innuendo pointing at the Wuhan lab, rather than any direct evidence. Most importantly, the general reader should know that all labs researching viruses do research on dangerous viruses. After all there is no incentive to research benign viruses. So the fact that the Wuhan lab worked on coronaviruses is not in itself an indication of any i…

My position hasn't changed for years: if covid was really a lab creation we'd know, because someone would have told us. An email dump, a memo, a document, an interview. Something would have leaked out. The incentives are just too high and the access is too pervasive[1] to believe otherwise. Is it possible? Sure! Is it likewise possible that some of the circumstantial claims about WIV are true? Sure! But if someone ma…

It's amazing how easily some people deploy unfalsifiable theories to justify a presupposition.