Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid • Hacker News Board

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#801

Post by ajross » Mon, Jun 12, 2023, 6:25 PM UTC

ergodic1 wrote: post #433

ajross wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no certainty, that's the point! The evidence for natural evolution is pretty reasonable (it matches every other pandemic ever -- these are hardly unknown!), the evidence for lab genesis is at best circumstantial and frankly pretty heavily spun by everyone dealing in it. You want the fact that I can't prove you wrong to be evidence that you're right, and that's not how logic works.

I think you misunderstood. Your claim is: "The overwhelming majority of conspiracies likes this, especially ones in fundamentally civilian organizations like science labs, don't survive a year if that." How do you know that the overwhelming majority of conspiracies don't survive a year if that? It's like sampling sick people and concluding that all people are sick. Without an estimate of the number of conspiracies th…

It's an intuition based on a lifetime of watching dumb bureaucrats try to hide stuff and failing. But your logic is symmetric: where are all the successfully hidden conspiracies then? Obviously your response will be "we don't know by definition because they're hidden", which sorta makes your point non-falsifiable, doesn't it?

I'll put my money on bureaucrats being dumb over globalist nation state super autocracy every day.

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#802

Post by Manjuuu » Mon, Jun 12, 2023, 6:32 PM UTC

cubefox wrote: post #776

Manjuuu wrote: post #754

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I didn't say non-academic, I explicitly said "crazy people".

The lab theory will be taken seriously when there will be serious evidences. If they exist they will come out. Believing in conspiracies because enough people believe in them without any actual, tangible, verifiable evidence is worrying.

The option "intensive farming+poverty+open market full of crap+random bats, all in extremely unsanitary conditions" seems a way better theory, needing way less evidence (also hard to acquire in this case), if you compare it to the random lab doing experiments full of incompetent researchers.

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#803

Post by cygx » Mon, Jun 12, 2023, 6:37 PM UTC

revelio wrote: post #762

sampo wrote: post #742

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> all the other so-called experts were loudly and vocally demanding lockdowns as a strategy This is not true. Denmark, Finland, Netherlands and UK [1] had their own versions of "Tegnell". That is, epidemiologists who recommended the let-it-rip, "herd immunity" strategy. In these countries, politicians finally decided to follow the majority consensus among countries, and ignore those epidemiologists who were among the…

Vallance is in no way comparable to Tegnell. Valance and the other UK/SAGE "experts" were quite happy to invert their advice overnight on the basis of nothing. Like all the others they were making decisions based on politics and ideology, not a mature of understanding of science. Tegnell picked one position and stuck with it because there was no reason to change it, in that he was virtually alone. > Maybe because it…

It's amazing how many people still never got the memo that lockdowns and masks had no effect whatsoever.

Do you have a source for that? It's been a while since I've looked at Covid numbers, so the only research I know off the top of my head that claims there was no effect is a meta-analysis by some economists, which originally claimed lockdowns only prevented 0.2% of deaths. After criticism, they had to re-evaluate their approach and arrived at 3.2%. However, not all objections were addressed, so who knows if there isn't another order of magnitude hiding somewhere.

Personally, I've been leaning towards lockdowns having the potential to be effective based on excess mortality in the nordics: Sweden was the only nordic country that did not lock down in March 2020, and it's also the only one of these countries that saw significant excess mortality in April 2020. There could of course be another reason for that, but until someone offers such, the lockdowns seem to be the obvious factor...

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#804

Post by spookthesunset » Mon, Jun 12, 2023, 6:50 PM UTC

boston_clone wrote: post #799

spookthesunset wrote: post #788

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Unsurprisingly, the people attempting to debate this typically had no medical background whatsoever. You don't need to have a "medical background" to debate lockdowns or masks. The decision to use those should never have been made exclusively by people with "medical backgrounds". It isn't their job. Just because the "medical people" say it's gonna work, doesn't mean it is worth the cost to society. And it isn't at…

> A good decision-maker should take input from everybody who will be impacted. You’re right; I’m really glad I polled thousands of fellow employees before forcing multifactor auth, or that time I chatted with a sysadmin to make sure they really did mean to open RDP on a public server before taking it offline. Sarcasm aside, in a time of a medical emergency, it is the job of medical professionals to make decisions, be…

> Sarcasm aside, in a time of a medical emergency, it is the job of medical professionals to make decisions, because public safety supersedes individual freedoms.

This might be true for like the first week or two of march but after that... the response should absolutely not be solely in the hands of nothing but "medical experts". Those people were never elected, are not accountable at all for their actions, and were granted virtually unlimited control. That is what we call a dictatorship.

I would much, much rather have a diverse party of people calling the shots and not just one very specific niche class of "expert". Without a diverse set of people involved you'll wind up where we got... an extremely myopic fixation on exactly one single respiratory virus for two+ years to the complete disregard for the damage it caused to our children and communities.

I used to think technocracy would be awesome. What better than to have a bunch of experts doing things "the right way". But covid opened my eyes to how incredibly bad of an idea that is. Experts are only expert on one specific thing. All their advice and mandates are made through that narrow lens.

> You’re right; I’m really glad I polled thousands of fellow employees before forcing multifactor auth, or that time I chatted with a sysadmin to make sure they really did mean to open RDP on a public server before taking it offline.

But you also chatted with business people to get insight into the costs of forcing multifactor auth on people would be worth the security gains? Right? Because forcing 2FA is absolutely not something a security expert gets to decide. A good security expert would realize they are an advisor and not the person calling the shots. They know their role is to outline "what would happen if we did blah blah" and then let the business people know the pros and cons so said business people can make a decision. The business people, if they are any good, realize that there are multiple often conflicting requirements and have the hard work of deciding what the right tradeoffs to make are. Experts don't get to decide those tradeoffs at all...

I mean, could you imagine if the only input you got for a product, say a car seat, was just from a bunch of lawyers? The product would be absolutely lawsuit proof but I bet it would suck as a car seat.

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#805

Post by bart_spoon » Mon, Jun 12, 2023, 6:51 PM UTC

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…

There seems to be a tendency for many to believe that academics, researchers, and physicians are above personal and political bias, particularly when it comes to their fields. But as far as I can tell, it largely stemmed from the fact that some of the earliest insinuations around the origins came from fringe right-wing talking heads, and particularly people surrounding Donald Trump, immediately caused many in positions of power, either in academic or media circles, to shut down such notions as racism, xenophobic, anti-intellectual conspiracy theories not based on facts. This despite those same people were largely coming to that conclusion in an anti-intellectual manner also not based on facts.

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#806

Post by bart_spoon » Mon, Jun 12, 2023, 6:54 PM UTC

doom2 wrote: post #677

peppermint_gum wrote: post #605

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...

As a personal anecdote, living as an Asian in a US city with a population over 1M people, I definitely saw a change in peoples' stance towards Asians in general and Chinese in particular, and not in a good way. There was a lot more suspicion about Asians, their businesses, etc. It wasn't the same level of suspicion as during post-9/11 America but it had a similar vibe. A lot of dog whistling with sentiments like, "I'…

In what way did they claim to be criticizing the Chinese government but actually criticized Chinese culture? Because it is possible and valid to criticize the Chinese government and not the people. And it is also a possibility that your own personal biases could make it difficult to differentiate between the two. We have a surplus of Americans who take any criticism of America, the nation-state, as a personal insult, so I'm sure the same thing happens elsewhere.

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#807

Post by Eisenstein » Mon, Jun 12, 2023, 6:58 PM UTC

stormfather wrote: post #766

shlant wrote: post #659

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For me it's just common sense > Duh This is the kind of argument one makes when they don't have an argument

It's so obvious that an appeal to common sense is all that's necessary. How many markets do you think are in China? 100,000? 1,000,000? And how many of those are within driving distance of the one lab where: - They study novel coronaviruses - They sampled the same regions where the closest relatives to the virus were found - They applied to put a furin cleavage site in a coronavirus before the pandemic - They were ci…

'Common sense' says that the thing which has occurred periodically throughout human history (plagues and epidemics) completely naturally and is occurring around the same period after the last one ('Spanish' flu of 1918-20) would have the same causes as those before it, but with accelerated time frames due to ease of travel and population density.

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#808

Post by George83728 » Mon, Jun 12, 2023, 7:06 PM UTC

doom2 wrote: post #677

peppermint_gum wrote: post #605

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...

As a personal anecdote, living as an Asian in a US city with a population over 1M people, I definitely saw a change in peoples' stance towards Asians in general and Chinese in particular, and not in a good way. There was a lot more suspicion about Asians, their businesses, etc. It wasn't the same level of suspicion as during post-9/11 America but it had a similar vibe. A lot of dog whistling with sentiments like, "I'…

> A lot of dog whistling with sentiments like "I'm criticizing the Chinese government, not the Chinese people." (spoiler alert: it was both)

'Dog-whistling', meaning they don't overtly say it and you infer that they mean it. If they make it overt such that it doesn't need to be inferred, they're not longer dog whistling.

How do you know your inference is correct and that is their intent? How can you be sure that wasn't just an impression given to you by [social] media? The CCP has a vested interest in conflating any criticism of itself or the PRC generally with racist criticism of all Asians. They also say that criticism of their Uyghur genocide is dog whistling anti-Asian racism. The CCP say this of anything that criticizes them, and their narratives do not stop dead at their borders. I've heard it echoed by some of my coworkers, PRC nationals working in America, and even western media that might not endorse such narratives will still give voice to consideration of those narratives.

Now allow me to be frank; during the supposed surge of anti-Asian hatred ostensibly motivated by Trump and perpetrated by white nationalists, much of anti-Asian crimes that were being reported had been perpetrated by African Americans. It was probably crime motivated by class/social/economic inequality, and insofar as it disproportionately targeted Asian Americans at all (rather than selective reporting merely creating that appearance) it probably had nothing to do with any politician's covid rhetoric and was instead was an artifact of geographic proximity and inequality in policing (Asian American neighborhoods receive less protection from the police, making Asian Americans an easier target for crime.) In this last regard, you can easily show that racism against Asian Americans played a role, but such inequalities in policing are problems that go back many generations and have little if anything to do with covid.

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#809

Post by Eisenstein » Mon, Jun 12, 2023, 7:10 PM UTC

hospitalJail wrote: post #616

Zetobal wrote: post #604

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Go ahead.

EDIT: Disclaimer, this was for one of the most principled politicians I've ever met. To this day, he will say he is an anarchist in public. (Although, he would say it in a pleasurable way) Sure, so to change 0.5% of the vote, we would find people with demographics that people vote for. For instance, if there is a women on the ballot, run another women because at least 0.5% of people vote for a women, so this splits t…

Those sound like basic things that politicians or even salespeople do. You sound like you went in naive, got your mind blown, and now believe anything is possible. I hate to break it to you but you haven't uncovered any shocking secrets and your 'destroy the economy so we can beat Trump even though he is defeating himself with his handling of the epidemic' theory doesn't water.

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#810

Post by ra1231963 » Mon, Jun 12, 2023, 7:18 PM UTC

whimsicalism wrote: post #693

ra1231963 wrote: post #441

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…

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 qu…

It is exactly the attitude you are still exhibiting that was the problem. “We’re in a crisis, no time to ask questions. Fall in line or you’re a far right conspiracy theorist/idiot.”