Live data from Hacker News

Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

thetimes.co.uk

651–660 of 1001 posts

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#651

It's going to take a long time before the mainstream is ready to think critically about the COVID narratives, but it's good to see first steps toward the recovery of rationality. But there's still a lot to cover: - Lockdowns did little to prevent the spread of COVID and lead to increased deaths by other causes, egregious violation of people's fundamental rights, massively destruction of the economy, and many people's…

I'm hoping that in a decade or so, people will stop using "vaccines never prevented transmission" as an argument since it has been said at least a billion of times since the beginning, VACCINES PREVENTED SERIOUS ILLNESS. Same thing about the imaginary widespread side-effects or the mask being useless. Depressing. Personally I'm more worried about the people that went full retard about covid alternative views and cons…

It’s depressing that public institutions mishandled this so badly that a huge segment of the population has lost trust in them.

I can agree that the messaging I got was that the vaccine was meant to prevent serious illness. Regardless, the absurd policies, suppression of information and discussion on vaccine side effects was unforgivable.

People went full retard because the institutions meant to provide them with good information instead treated them like children and suppressed detailed debate. The only alternative was to go online and risk the lunacy that is internet research, so people did so.

Now more people are anti-vaxers than ever before, and not just for mRNA vaccines but old-school shots like measles.

At a minimum many institutions need change of leadership after this fiasco, and maybe complete reform of others.

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#652
post #431

I'd like for someone to throughly research and write about how it became taboo to discuss the virus leak theory. How researchers who discussed it were shunned, tagged as racists, and in some cases had their posts banned from Social Media. About how almost the entire scientific community discarded the idea as impossible. How during the early pandemic years, no mainstream news media dared talk about the possibility. Te…

Chris Martenson did a lot of this as it was ongoing- of course his YouTube videos got flagged. As another commenter mentioned Dazik had a big role- he lead the delegation that went to China to investigate the origin even though he had an obvious conflict of interest. 60 minutes interviewed him without digging into the conflict of interest. There are now public emails between Fauci and others coordinating the NIH posi…

[flagged]

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#653
post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At a high level, it's pretty simple. 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. These conspiracy theories lead to a marked rise in violent attacks on anyone of Asian descent in the US, and generally fed into the wet dream fantasies o…

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…

You either recall wrongly or are looking at the wrong set of population in the world.

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#654

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strange, I have the exact opposite experience. I have personally have felt ostracized multiple times for suggesting it was likely there was an unintentional lab leak. I often got criticized for suggesting it was a bio-weapon, while I never thought that and never even said those words. Sometime in the past 12 months this disappeared.

> Sometime in the past 12 months this disappeared. We're trying to groom public appetite for war with China. Anything that paints them in the worst possible light is acceptable now. After artificial chip shortages, the weather balloon incident, and TikTok, now it's suggested China was responsible for COVID. Expect more to follow.

In Canada, China "interfering with our democracy" is all the latest rage... At one point about a month ago, 11 out of the top 20 posts on /r/Canada had some negative reference to China (most being related to the democracy interference story, but a few others I can't remember the topic of).

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#655

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because you can't blame dear grandpa's death on Russia maybe however you try ? I am pretty sure 9/11 - War on Terror saw a rise in aggression of muslim looking people even though it concerned less people than covid did. You're pretending there was no such thing as people on TV blaming it on people eating "bat soup" and stuff like that. When lab leak hypotheses were able to rise above the conspiracy theories thanks to…

> Because you can't blame dear grandpa's death on Russia maybe however you try ? I am pretty sure 9/11 - War on Terror saw a rise in aggression of muslim looking people even though it concerned less people than covid did. And yet there was no censorship on conspiracy theories about the CIA being behind 9/11, for instance.

So, the reason we didn't see CIA being behind 9/11 story in the Wall Street Journal because that actually it wasn't censored?

In contrast to the lab leak theory which made the front page more than once, was actually the was much more heavily "censored".

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#657

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and that right there is how you promulgate a social suppression campaign.

No, that right there is how I remind you that if you want your hypothesis to be taken seriously you need proofs or at least a very compelling argument. There was neither.

Nonsense. There were plenty of arguments from the very beginning for the lab leak theory. The alternative "bat cave" hypothesis had plenty of implausiblies (e.g. huge distance) and was far from being "proven".

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#658
post #431

I'd like for someone to throughly research and write about how it became taboo to discuss the virus leak theory. How researchers who discussed it were shunned, tagged as racists, and in some cases had their posts banned from Social Media. About how almost the entire scientific community discarded the idea as impossible. How during the early pandemic years, no mainstream news media dared talk about the possibility. Te…

> I'd like for someone to throughly research and write about how it became taboo to discuss the virus leak theory

It was politicized.

At the same time, it was a "theory" based on little to no evidence early on. Rather than let scientists work through and figure things out, people were shouting it through the roof as if it was confirmed. Basically, it was an answer in search of evidence, rather than using the evidence to direct the answer.

There was a lot of pushback against that sort of talk, especially here.

Couple that with a divisive administration here in the US that caused confusion and chaos, there was little to no hope for it being anything other than taboo.

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#659

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> For me it's just common sense

> Duh

This is the kind of argument one makes when they don't have an argument

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#660
post #587

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a whole lot of Russian expats who have been quite vocal in supporting the war against Ukraine by Russia. When Russians complain they're being victimised, it might behold you to consider that "Russian" is pretty much not an identifiable group amongst the wide range of eastern Europeans who have immigrated - including Ukrainians. So when Russians complain they're being mistreated, is worth asking what they were…

The point I was making is not whether Russians feel mistreated or Asians feel mistreated etc. That is a separate debate. I am only making a limited point on "Lab leak theory was censored because it lead to rise in Asian hate crime". This makes absolutely no sense to me. Investigating possible lab leak theory that lead to one of the worst pandemics in recent times should be done irrespective of whether there is hate c…

Are you sure there was absolutely no attempt at doing a proper investigation? I wasn’t super fixed on the news at the time, but I do remember a number of reports, fact finding trips, etc by international and governmental bodies trying to investigate the origins.
Post reply on HN