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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

#771

Post by [deleted] »

ryanbrunner wrote: post #715
nwienert wrote: post #483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".…

[deleted]

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#772

Post by XorNot »

shri_krishna wrote: post #634
XorNot wrote: post #614

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You introduced Russia not me, and my point is that your example isn't even slightly equivalent.

It is 100% equivalent. You are saying we will censor A topic because it will hurt X race. In the same breath, you will not censor B topic even if it hurts Y race. That is hypocrisy. Everyone sees through it. Some may choose to be blind to this hypocrisy. And that is not my problem.

Again, I'm not saying anything about that. I am saying that public opposition to some Russian persons is not because they're Russian it's because of their direct public actions and statements - as cited in my original post.

Claims of an anti-Russian bias or set of hate crimes is literal Kremlin propaganda which amongst other things was used to justify the Ukraine invasion, the South Ossetia invasion in Georgia, and has been a general talking point as to why Russia should consider invading many other of its neighbours.

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#773

Post by th0ma5 »

epups wrote: post #278
th0ma5 wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Ok but in that scenario, a natural emergence would have come from a strain from Wuhan, while the lab leak theory explains why a virus from relatively far away had an outbreak in Wuhan.

Not really! Why do you need that to be true?

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#774

Post by th0ma5 »

cubefox wrote: post #273
th0ma5 wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure but what if it just isn't knowable?

Historians are still finding out things that happened hundreds of years ago. Do you really think the origins of Covid are lost in the mists of time?

Yes, why do you not? Or why do you need it so bad? You can do whatever you were going to do anyway.

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#776

Post by cubefox »

Manjuuu wrote: post #754
cubefox wrote: post #657

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

Plenty? Which kind of arguments? The ones you can hear only in podcasts for crazy people with unknown sources? We can be better than this... cmon.

The same kind of arguments as for the bat cave theory.

Anyway, your argument here seems circular: Academics must not take the lab leak theory seriously, because only non-academics discuss it, because academics don't take the lab leak theory seriously.

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#777

Post by boston_clone »

anthonypasq wrote: post #759
Mechanical9 wrote: post #689

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pushing cases into the future was always the stated goal of lockdowns. That was what "flatten the curve" meant. The idea was to accept some temporary consequences in order to prevent deaths until vaccines could be made. I also don't think it was any stroke of luck that resulted in vaccines being made quickly. Our scientific establishments correctly devoted their resources to developing vaccines. A lot of us were clos…

When "flatten the curve" came out as a slogan they told us 2 weeks. Absolutely no one in public health believed that would be true. It doesnt make sense on any level whatsoever. i mean it just beggars belief that they told the public that with a straight face. the only person i recall in early days of 2020 saying this was going to be many months if not years was Mike Osterholm which i respect for not gaslighting the…

About a year after vaccines became available, only 60% or so of folks had received two doses [0]. Public messaging from the initial administration is an obvious contributor to the remaining 40%.

County / MSA hospital capacities, percent available ICU beds, ventilator use, admission increase rates, deaths, and various other stats were factored into restrictive policy decisions. However, this varies city by city and state by state (I suppose as an effect of federalism).

0. https://usafacts.org/visualizations/covid-vaccine-tracker-st...

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#778

Post by status200 »

peppermint_gum wrote: post #605
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…

> 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...

Which data points are you referencing from your source? There is a spike YOY between 2019 to 2020.

Annual for 2019: 1 out of 420

Annual for 2020: 27 out of 265

Is that not enough of a percentage increase for you? Edit: Apologies for not seeing the other users' replies who have already made this point.

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#779

Post by boston_clone »

naasking wrote: post #727
boston_clone wrote: post #611

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't try and have other people do your research for easily answered questions. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3559034/

Quarantining people who may have been exposed is a whole universe away from the lockdowns being discussed here, where whole cities, states and countries proactively prevented the free movement of their people who they had no reason to suspect had been exposed. Don't conflate these two.

It seems you may be looking to only discredit an argument instead of arguing the merits.

FTA:

> However, the use of quarantine and other measures for controlling epidemic diseases has always been controversial because such strategies raise political, ethical, and socioeconomic issues and require a careful balance between public interest and individual rights.

Here’s a list of about 30 examples since the 15th century where various governments have prevented the free movement of their people (because even then, they recognized that public health is more important than individual travel).

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/short-history-of-quara...

In the face of a never-before-seen rapidly spreading and mutating virus, what the hell do you think medical professionals and governments ought to do? Stand by idly and let people die?

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#780

Post by realjhol »

Manjuuu wrote: post #763
realjhol wrote: post #756

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So did you watch the montage? If so, please admit that you were wrong when you made this comment: > 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. My montage showed you (if you had watched it), many talking heads and officials at the time accusin…

Nope, I don't plan to watch anything, feel free to indulge in your beliefs.

Yes - this is my point.

So many of you people have become so emotionally invested in the false narratives that you have believed, that you can't cope with any evidence that threatens your narrative even slightly.

At least we can talk about the "lab leak theory" now. This was the original point I made: it will take years for people to climb down these positions they have taken, but at least we are making small steps in the right direction.

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