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Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

thetimes.co.uk

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Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#591

Post by gordian-mind »

toofy wrote: post #567
the8472 wrote: post #541

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Last time I checked our democracies are still running on the premise of informed voters. If discussion of hypothesis needs to be suppressed during a 3-year-long "emergency" then we have an issue.

i think you’d find that in just about every significant crisis of any significant timeframe plenty of examples of clamping down on witch-hunts in these very democracies. am i advocating for this? of course not, however, we have countless examples where conspiracies and just plain paranoid thinking spun out and resulted in very very real atrocities. significant atrocities that were much more real and much more severe…

Could you please elaborate on what atrocities were caused by conspiracy theories?

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#592

Post by emptysongglass »

mjburgess wrote: post #496
Ancapistani wrote: post #482

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There was a very well coordinated and intentional conflation of the term "lab leak" with the conspiracy theories around China and the WHO intentionally developing and deploying bio-weapons as a means of global population control. I don’t recall a single instance of this. A year ago, people were saying on this site and elsewhere was that the issue was conflating “lab leak” with “intentionally engineered”. A year bef…

[flagged]

Hi me! And a veritable ton of Hacker News folks back then. I have plenty of misgivings about China but I am also a reasonable person. Turning this into an everybody weaponized it against Asians argument is handing a lot of us a weapon we never picked up.

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#593

Post by kweinber »

shri_krishna wrote: post #577
kweinber wrote: post #572

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the time the US had a president that routinely used race-baiting as a divisive political technique. He admired Vladimir Putin and defended Russian actions, so the Russian people weren’t a subject of his attacks.

That's a weird way to defend censorship of lab leak theory. Whatever floats your boat I guess. > At the time the US had a president that routinely used race-baiting as a divisive political technique What exactly did the US President, at that time, say specifically that exacerbated attacks on Asians, after breakout of COVID, and more importantly could be used as a justification for Worldwide censorship of lab leak the…

I’m not defending anything about a lab leak. I’m addressing the previous poster’s question about why there were attacks on Asian Americans and not Russian ones.

The lab leak theory and weaponization theories were never squelched. The right wing in this country fantasizes that their viewpoints are marginalized while having their most extreme viewpoints broadcast on the top watched news programs in history. The idea that the lab theories were squelched was floated by those very same programs as part of their promotional formula.

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#594

Post by masswerk »

tim333 wrote: post #523
masswerk wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a smoking gun, I'd expect evidence. This is just reporting on a diffuse claim of hearsay, allegedly by what might be labeled a party with geopolitical interest in the public narrative. It may be disinformation just as well. (Especially, as similar claims were already repeatedly made based on what turned out to be false links, like the Wuhan Institute being just around the wet market.)

Well yes, is the claim true or not? The article has: >The investigators spoke to two researchers working at a US laboratory who were collaborating with the Wuhan institute at the time of the outbreak. They said the Wuhan scientists... So presumably The Times has the names of the researchers and someone like the FBI could investigate and see what correspondence if any they have with Wuhan about it.

This was not in the version I was seeing. (This was only the first 4 paragraphs.)

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#596

Post by stormfather »

pfisherman wrote: post #589
015UUZn8aEvW wrote: post #546

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you overstate how much the lab leak and the bioweapon stories were being conflated. I recall that most people were able to distinguish between them, and that the most prominent figures raising red flags about a potential leak weren't talking about bioweapons. In any case, the most alarming aspect of the lab leak hypothesis is that gain-of-function research is STILL being done, and that the same thing could ha…

> the most alarming aspect of the lab leak hypothesis is that gain-of-function research is STILL being done, and that the same thing could happen AGAIN. This right here is an example of why we can’t have reasoned discussion around the topic. You can explain one of the many reasons why gain of function research is necessary: anticipating next year’s version of the flu, designing drugs and vaccines such that resistance…

> the “lab leak” theory tends to be people pushing an unsubstantiated theory to either

For me it's just common sense. It probably came from the coronavirus lab with a bad safety record it popped up next to. Duh. And I "push" it because I value the truth and want to live in a rational society where the truth isn't gamed for emotional or political reasons. And that's probably the same for most of us.

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#597

Post by bitemaja »

pfisherman wrote: post #589
015UUZn8aEvW wrote: post #546

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you overstate how much the lab leak and the bioweapon stories were being conflated. I recall that most people were able to distinguish between them, and that the most prominent figures raising red flags about a potential leak weren't talking about bioweapons. In any case, the most alarming aspect of the lab leak hypothesis is that gain-of-function research is STILL being done, and that the same thing could ha…

> the most alarming aspect of the lab leak hypothesis is that gain-of-function research is STILL being done, and that the same thing could happen AGAIN. This right here is an example of why we can’t have reasoned discussion around the topic. You can explain one of the many reasons why gain of function research is necessary: anticipating next year’s version of the flu, designing drugs and vaccines such that resistance…

I think real risk is testing these chimera viruses on mice with humanized cells.

Letting viruses evolve in-vivo is the problem especially when they are so viral.

There needs to be limitations on what R is allowed to be produced in-vivo, even more so because calculating the risk of virality of the outbreak is trivial if in-vitro studies are done.

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#598

Post by dahfizz »

mjburgess wrote: post #496
Ancapistani wrote: post #482

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There was a very well coordinated and intentional conflation of the term "lab leak" with the conspiracy theories around China and the WHO intentionally developing and deploying bio-weapons as a means of global population control. I don’t recall a single instance of this. A year ago, people were saying on this site and elsewhere was that the issue was conflating “lab leak” with “intentionally engineered”. A year bef…

[flagged]

I think this says more about you than others. "every single instance" is a gross exaggeration. This is your personal bias at play so that when you read "lab leak", you perceive "racist conspiracy theory"

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#599

Post by elmolino89 »

HardlyCurious wrote: post #537
russdill wrote: post #516

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't appear that there is a clear zoonotic origin for SARS-CoV-1 and MERS either. The case is circumstantial in a similar way to SARS-CoV-2. Yes there are several animal reservoirs that carry similar viruses, but there wasn't a specific one found from which any of the 3 strains came.

Covid has a novel mutation never seen in any natural coronavirus. Further there was a grant proposal from 2018 to insert the identical mutation as found in covid. There was a plan to engineer covid 2ish years before covid existed. But I'm sure nature evolving this exact mutation coincidentally in a relatively short period after scientist documented their plans to engineer it is an equally likely outcome.

Which mutation are you talking about?

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#600

Post by nonethewiser »

kweinber wrote: post #572
shri_krishna wrote: post #484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is funny how you say it so nonchalantly that the reason for not discussing lab leak theory is it lead to "marked rise in violent attacks on anyone of Asian descent". However none of this applies to rhetoric against Russia, Middle East or any such country where US is at War with right now. How come no US citizen is attacking Russians, or Middle Easterners (Libyans, Syrians, Iraqis, Afghans etc) in US soil when the…

At the time the US had a president that routinely used race-baiting as a divisive political technique. He admired Vladimir Putin and defended Russian actions, so the Russian people weren’t a subject of his attacks.

> At the time the US had a president that routinely used race-baiting as a divisive political technique.

This is at least as true now and in 2015

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