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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

#711

Post by whimsicalism »

sharperguy wrote: post #522
BurningPenguin wrote: post #520

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not from the US, but i don't see how it was ever a "taboo". The general gist was "we don't know" or "unlikely". However, what i did see on Social Media, was a bunch of nutjobs pushing their nonsense about "deep state", "population control" and so on.

I believe that these 'nutjobs' were promoted to the forefront of popular discussion for purposes of sensationalism and to discredit more careful dissenting voices by association. In many ways, it makes sense to try to get the entire population on board with a single narrative, in order to have a coherent response to an emerging situation. On the other hand, it opens the doors to corruption by leaving those in charge…

> I believe that these 'nutjobs' were promoted to the forefront of popular discussion for purposes of sensationalism and to discredit more careful dissenting voices by association.

It's interesting that this social media promoting action was so coordinated that it is happening on this very thread in Hacker News.

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#712

Post by ricksunny »

gregwebs wrote: post #642
jeswin wrote: 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…

>Dazik

Daszak.

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#713

Post by l5870uoo9y »

pimpampum wrote: post #673
l5870uoo9y wrote: post #664

The central issue is that the extremely dangerous gain-of-function experiments were being undertaking and potentially still are. I would advocate for a worldwide ban of gain-of-function research and strict regulation of potential dangerous medical research in a similar manner as the Nuclear Non-Proliferation agreement. Even as imperfect as it would be. Issues regarding funding, laboratory security, military involveme…

I agree, but without a way to detect it or control it, it would be hard to enforce.

It would be imperfect but better than nothing.

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#714

Post by Jochim »

yarg wrote: post #555
px43 wrote: 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 never believed it was a bioweapon. Why? Because China was behind on vaccine development, and when they finally produced on it was not only late, but barely functional. Late is one thing - if you release a bioweapon, it's far too suspicious to release a co-developed vaccine simultaneously. But ineffective? When it got out the WHO was parroting China's talking points from day one - it's not airborne, that's just a ra…

> Then China shutdown domestic travel from Wuhan, while still allowing it internationally.

Lie[0]:

> On April 21, Ferguson provided an “update” to his April 5 column in which he acknowledged, “Data from sensors tracking actual flight paths would seem to indicate that no flights left from Wuhan itself to other countries in the world after January 23.”

[0] https://www.factcheck.org/2020/05/trumps-flawed-china-travel...

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#715

Post by ryanbrunner »

nwienert wrote: post #483
dontupvoteme wrote: post #475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

He's never run for political office or anything like that so most of what we can glean is from his shows, which for sure attack the right more than the left but don't advance their own policy proposals.

The most overt stuff he has done politically is the late 2000s rally with Colbert which was very middle-of-the-road decorum-focused Democrat in tone, I don't think there's a lot of evidence for him being "hard left". If I had to guess, I think he'd be more in line with the Obama / Biden type camp than Sanders.

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#716

Post by whimsicalism »

Nemrod67 wrote: post #527
realjhol wrote: post #517

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…

looking at the majority of comments here, I'd say it'll take more than a decade... People just seem to blank out anything really bad done by "their team" (be it either orange man bad or clinton is a traitor). I fear for the future of Human civilization

It might also just be because most of those claims are wrong. Unless you use 'prevent' to mean 'fully eliminate', every single one of those claims is wrong except for potentially the last one, which I am not sure of because I haven't researched.

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#717

Post by joshstrange »

gregwebs wrote: post #642
jeswin wrote: 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…

I think Chris Martenson/Peak Prosperity goes too far on certain things (a little too-prepper/gold+silver) but I did find his videos for the first few months of COVID to be informative and well done especially when it came to the lab leak theory. His coverage of Hydroxychloroquine was well measured for the time it came out and I felt like he did an appropriate about-face once it was clear it didn't help.

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#718

Post by kneel »

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…

>the closest relative to SARSCov2 that has been identified (RaTG13) was found in a cave in Mojiang county in Yunnan, over 1,000 km away, with no evidence that it was ever studied in the Wuhan lab.

This is false

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#719

Post by mft_ »

realjhol wrote: post #517

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…

Wow, there're a lot to parse here, and it looks like you're coming at this from an "I've already decided" and "axe to grind" angle.

> - Lockdowns did little to prevent the spread of COVID...

> - Cloth masks were pointless security theatre

- and most rational people (and countries) immediately switched to N95 masks as soon as supply chains could support the demand. That said, I'd bet that even less-proven masks would have some lesser but still positive impact.

> - The vast majority of people except the very elderly and obese were in very little danger

...except there are plenty of examples of fit, young people having life-altering acute and/or longer-term symptoms. On a population-level, you're right that the numbers are small(er), but I'd argue that each individual case to the contrary is a disaster for the indiviudal involved.

As Stalin said: “The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of a million is a statistic.”

You appear to be looking at the statistics; I was happy to accept changes to my lifestyle to diminish risk of harm to individuals.

> - The vaccines never prevented transmission

That's a straw-man argument - that's not the primary purpose of a vaccine.

> - The vaccines only offered very limited protection for a brief period

Nah. Vaccines offered significant protection against severe disease for a period of months (which itself is a factor of how the human body function). With widespread vaccination, the world was able to 'get on top of' the pandemic, and its effects of healthcare over-utilisation.

> - The rate of side effects (including serious side effects up to and including death) is a lot higher than anyone wants to admit.

> - To most segments of the population, the danger of death by vaccine side effects is greater than the danger of death by COVID-19

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