Live data from Hacker News

Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

thetimes.co.uk

691–700 of 1001 posts

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#691
post #116

I personally believe in Rootlclaim's Bayesian analysis ( https://www.rootclaim.com/analysis/What-is-the-source-of-COV... ) which states that "the virus was developed during gain-of-function research and was released by accident (89% probability)" This is consistent with David Martin's speech in Europe: https://twitter.com/KimDotcom/status/1661698114917646336 I haven't checked the "publicly available references" but m…

This David Martin?

https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-covid-vaccine/f...

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#692
post #684
post #648

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From your own link "hate-crime-complaints-by-motivation-annual" 2020 vs 2021: +Anti-Asian 2019: 1 Anti-Asian 2020: 27 Anti-Asian 2021: 131 *+ Edit: Added 2019 as suggested below

You should be comparing 2019 to 2020. 2019 is the pre-covid default state. 2020 is when covid rhetoric was hot. 2021 is Vaccines and Biden is president 2019 stats are in the archive at the bottom of the page. I’d pull them but on a phone.

Good call. I was going to, but for some reason I didn't see the report in 2019 when checking. Edited into the original comment

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#693

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was it really taboo? I didn’t get this feeling where I live (admittedly not the USA). It’s just that it became clear pretty quickly that the investigation was going nowhere as China wasn’t going to honestly cooperate. That didn’t leave much to discuss. For the official response, it was to be expected. The UN does plenty of compromises with authoritarian countries for the sake of being able to operate. It would have b…

It was absolutely taboo. If you tried to bring it up you were shouted down as a far right conspiracy theorist, or racist. Mashup of clips from the news: https://youtu.be/zl-X-Lgrlf0 Jon Stewart was the first to call this into question publicly, which was brave at the time. Watch Colbert push back on Stewart’s line of reasoning: https://youtu.be/sSfejgwbDQ8 Honestly questioning anything covid-related was taboo at that…

Lots of people thinking you are an idiot does not mean you can't say it. I saw plenty of people saying things about vaccines, masks, ivermectin.

But yes, when hundreds of thousands of people are dying globally, I think patience for those things wears thin in a personal capacity.

But I would seriously question whether something is really 'taboo' if ~half of the country is watching media outlets where they ask these questions regularly, which is the case in the domestic US.

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#694
post #648

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> These conspiracy theories lead to a marked rise in violent attacks on anyone of Asian descent in the US, It should be noted that the statistics don't support the media narrative and there was no wave of white supremacist attacks on Asians. Here are the stats from New York ("Arrest Statistics by Bias Motivation"): https://www.nyc.gov/site/nypd/stats/reports-analysis/hate-cr...

From your own link "hate-crime-complaints-by-motivation-annual" 2020 vs 2021: +Anti-Asian 2019: 1 Anti-Asian 2020: 27 Anti-Asian 2021: 131 *+ Edit: Added 2019 as suggested below

Arrests involving Anti-Asian hate crime incidents in 2020:

BLACK: 11 (55%)

WHITE HISPANIC: 5 (25%)

BLACK HISPANIC: 2 (10%)

WHITE: 2 (10%)

Total: 20

2021:

BLACK: 31 (53%)

HISPANIC: 15 (26%)

WHITE: 7 (12%)

ASIAN / PACIFIC ISLANDER: 5 (8%)

UNKNOWN: 1 (2%)

Total: 59

2022:

BLACK: 39 (49%)

WHITE HISPANIC: 20 (25%)

WHITE: 17 (22%)

ASIAN / PACIFIC ISLANDER: 2 (3%)

BLACK HISPANIC: 1 (1%)

Total: 79

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#695

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was absolutely taboo. If you tried to bring it up you were shouted down as a far right conspiracy theorist, or racist. Mashup of clips from the news: https://youtu.be/zl-X-Lgrlf0 Jon Stewart was the first to call this into question publicly, which was brave at the time. Watch Colbert push back on Stewart’s line of reasoning: https://youtu.be/sSfejgwbDQ8 Honestly questioning anything covid-related was taboo at that…

Wow, I already liked Stewart but really respect him to have the stones to bring that up. He doesn't fall into the left or right dichotomy.

> He doesn't fall into the left or right dichotomy.

I am a fan of Jon Stewart, but the fact that I have never heard someone on the right-wing claim that Jon Stewart is non-partisan while I hear it frequently from mainstream democrats should tell you something about the veracity of the claim.

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#696

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There is absolutely not attempt at doing a proper investigation of blast in BSL4 lab "Vector", Novosibirsk, Russia on Sep 16 2019 and following epidemic of unknown origin in Siberia, which caused hospitals overwhelmed

Wuhan was hit by strain B in December. Strain A, original virus, was released about 2 months before that. Where it was for 2 months?

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#697

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He is extremely far left but had a new show coming out and needed to generate a bit of hype

"extremely far left" by US standards, sure .. otherwise pretty moderate middle of the road.

> "extremely far left" by US standards, sure .. otherwise pretty moderate middle of the road.

Globally the world is right of the US on most issues, but you're probably pretending that the rest of the world is just Europe.

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#698
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…

We need the same for the complete 180 on lockdowns. From universally against to forced lockdowns. I think people forget how strong the consensus (including medical) against lockdowns was. I was in China during the outbreak. All western media and healthcare experts had to say about lockdowns was that they were counterproductive and have never been part of the medical playbook. And that it violates civil rights. A mont…

In Canada we wanted lockdowns pretty quickly and our prime minister said no and even refused to close the borders because he considered closing the borders to be racist. They tried to say border closures would have no effect on stopping covid.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/covid-coronavirus-pandemic-...

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#699

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To add to this, most countries have turned away from infectious biological weapons because they are near impossible to control. Most countries ( small to mid-tier ) lack the expertise, will or reason for it. But most major countries are working on biological weapons. If you think the US, Russia, China, UK, France, Germany, Japan, Israel, etc aren't running bio-weapons labs, then you are being too trusting at best o…

> If you think the ... aren't running bio-weapons labs, then you are being too trusting at best or too naive at worst. No, they are. But that's a bit different. Though I understand the confusion. Gain of function research can be classified as weapons. You got to develop weapons to defend against them. And of course, momentum. Especially in politics, where once funding is given it is hard to take it away, though not h…

> No, they are.

Okay good, I'm glad we are agreed.

> Some yes, some no.

If some are, then "everyone" has to, especially major powers. Just think about it.

> This is a lot of what jcranmer is pointing to.

I debunked what he wrote.

> the Russian strategy

What's that?

> Though this is more easily done in an authoritative country.

No. It's done more easily in a democracy. An authoritative country never developed nuked and used it on innocent civilians. It was one of those wonderful democracies. Just like a wonderful democracy and our democratic friends overthrew the ukrainian democracy and now another wonderful democracy is invading ukraine. Most of the horror in this world has been done by democracies. Funny how all parties involved in ukraine are democracies...

> Not quite true

No. Absolutely true.

> I'm not quite sure what you're getting at here.

You wrote "Contagion weapons are the weapons of those with nothing left to lose (which aren't big/rich countries, even in dire circumstances)."

And I was pointing out that all "contagion weapons" were created by big/rich countries. I was simply debunking your claim.

> But there's got to be a logical reason for well over a century of research in the area and not seeing it used in practice.

Has it not been used "in practice". Biological weapons have been used since ancient times. Biological weapons have been used more often than nuclear weapons.

The blind and naive were adamant our agencies don't collect data and spy on us. And were absolutely shocked when it was revealed they do. Of course they do. As I said, people who are too naive or too trusting believe otherwise. I guess the third option are state actors or those who brainwashed by the media. Or maybe I'm just too cynical.

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#700
It honestly terrifies me that people in this very thread are still pushing conspiracy theorys. Not just the technically possible ones ("the CCP did it all on purpose") but the just plain factually wrong ("vaccines are more deadly than covid"). Such comments remain popular.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36276268&p=2#36290411

Post reply on HN