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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

#861

Post by brewdad »

jibe wrote: post #684
speff wrote: 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.

Worth noting the west coast states with larger Asian populations were largely "locked down" in 2020. Schools didn't reopen until 2021. 2020 didn't have as many opportunities for individual interactions that could lead to such crimes.

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#862

Post by lobocinza »

px43 wrote: post #448
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…

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…

Combating marginal conspiracy theories with a real mainstream media/government conspiracy. Surely that did way more harm than good.

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#863

Post by taaabi8313 »

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'…

I hope other readers will note that, in response to the above user’s account of sinophobia in the US, the comments here on HN have overwhelmingly attempted to invalidate those experiences. Responses have ranged from outright hostility to gaslighting behavior, even an attempt to deflect the discussion onto Black Americans despite the original comment mentioning no race other than Asian or Chinese.

The above commenter’s experiences will ring true for many Chinese living in the US, because we are the ones who experience and are impacted by sinophobia (this can also extend to other E/SEA diaspora to an extent). Whereas the commenters claiming that we’re biased or influenced by propaganda, as if they are uniquely exempt from such things, are not.

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#864

Post by lobocinza »

speff wrote: post #648
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...

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

How come those numbers could be used to support anti-ethical policies, to not say outright conspiracy, that prevented the elucidation of a pandemic that decimated millions?

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#865

Post by sampo »

gmarx wrote: post #845
cygx wrote: post #803

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

Perhaps your April 2020 number is correct but I think it's irrelevant because it is too time-boxed. I did an analysis (matching those by others) using the OECD excess deaths data and if you extend the time period through last fall, Sweden did either best (according to other's analysis) or second best (according to mine). Excess deaths actually continued after the pandemic has subsided in many countries (US and UK at…

Due to large numbers of immigration, Sweden has younger population than comparable nearby countries. Too many excess death analyses just take the average of 5 previous years (2015-2019) as the baseline, to compare yearly or weekly deaths to. But in countries with ageing population, number of yearly deaths have been on a slowly increasing linear trend already for a long time. If you ignore the trend, and only compare to the 2015-2019 average, all countries with ageing population would show continuously increasing excess deaths.

Also, Sweden has a peculiar bookkeeping system, and a surprisingly large number of deaths are recorded without precisely known date. If you only look at weekly death statistics, you will miss the "week 99" deaths from the yearly total.

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#866

Post by baja_blast »

cygx wrote: post #851
baja_blast wrote: post #842

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference between previous spillovers like SARS1 and MERS was these viruses rapidly mutated as they adapted towards humans allowing for the identification of the intermediate species within months. SARS2 on the other hand was already pre-adapted towards humans, had almost no adaptive mutations and no intermediate host has been found. And guess what when a virus crosses into humans the virus does not suddenly go…

As far as I'm aware, we still do not know the first intermediate species of SARS-1 (cf Wikipedia: "Infected palm civets at the market were traced to farms where no infected animals were found. It is unknown whether the virus was originally introduced to the market by civets, humans, or another animal." and "Phylogenetic analysis of these viruses indicated a high probability that SARS coronavirus originated in bats an…

The palm civet found infected in the market was infected with a virus 99.9% similar but unique to palm civets. The issue here is they have found animals infected with an ancestral strain at a market that's a 29-nucleotide difference. SARS2 none of this has been found, which stands in stark contrast to all previous coronavirus spillovers.

And the fact the virus not only was extremely well adapted towards humans, but also is more adapted towards human's than other species. Nothing about SARS-2 is typical.

I mean I get it, lots of people's careers/reputations are on the line so it's hard to accept, but it is vital we do.

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#867

Post by Manuel_D »

taaabi8313 wrote: post #863
doom2 wrote: post #677

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'…

I hope other readers will note that, in response to the above user’s account of sinophobia in the US, the comments here on HN have overwhelmingly attempted to invalidate those experiences. Responses have ranged from outright hostility to gaslighting behavior, even an attempt to deflect the discussion onto Black Americans despite the original comment mentioning no race other than Asian or Chinese. The above commenter’…

The comments rightly ask for clarification: did the user witness or experience discrimination or bias, or is the user equating criticisms of China with criticisms of individuals of Chinese descent. If the above user doesn't make that distinction, then it does invalidate the user's observations.

Criticisms of the Cuban government are absolutely independent of criticisms of individual Cubans like myself. If another Cuban person felt that they were being individually criticized when other people criticize Cuba, I'd tell them they need to learn to distinguish between the two - it's not the responsibility of the public to avoid any criticism of the Cuban government. This isn't an attempt to "deflect the discussion", it's using another country as an example to make it clear that this is a distinction we're perfectly capable of making for other ethnic group.

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#868

Post by latency-guy2 »

dekhn wrote: post #349
latency-guy2 wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We also did not know that Cuba housed missles from Russia during the crisis. We also did not know to the extent that Cuba's leadership explicitly did have plans to strike the US alongside their Soviet allies. It took until 1992 for what appears to be the truth to be discovered, 3 decades with far more people involved in the process, and a much darker outcome than a man being assassinated.

The us had credible satellite evidence of soviets building housings for nuclear warheads in Cuba during and before the crisis. https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/nsa/cuba_mis_cri/photos.htm (perhaps I misunderstand your argument; 1992 was when our knowledge was formally confirmed, IIUC)

We did not know the missles were already physically on Cuba. We thought we had successfully blocked transport.

See McNamara's recollection of that meeting in 1992.

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#869

Post by [deleted] »

George83728 wrote: post #808
doom2 wrote: post #677

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

[deleted]

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#870

Post by Izkata »

DocSavage wrote: post #843
Izkata wrote: post #760

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And here's some links from a few months earlier showing we knew it was never tested for preventing infection/transmission: https://www.washington.edu/news/2020/12/02/covid-19-vaccines... https://www.businessinsider.com/who-says-no-evidence-coronav... https://www.fredhutch.org/en/news/center-news/2020/12/covid-... Here's Pfizer's press release: https://www.pfizer.com/news/press-release/press-release-deta... Notice how…

Of course it was tested for preventing infection. It was tested for that as well as efficacy against severe disease: "Efficacy against laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 (with an onset of >= 7 days after receipt of the second dose) and against severe COVID-19.. was assessed among the participants 12 years of age or older." https://www.nejm.org/doi/10.1056/NEJMoa2110345 You seem to be conflating the vaccine having efficacy…

Do you know why it's "laboratory-confirmed"? Because they didn't test anyone until after symptoms showed.

Your confusion here is exactly what I'm talking about. The press release didn't conflate SARS-CoV-2 (the virus) with COVID-19 (the disease, as defined by a combination of symptoms and the virus). The line you quoted is measuring people who got sick, filtering out those who got sick due to a different virus, it's not measuring people who were infected. They didn't test all participants, so they couldn't make any claims against infection.

Edit:

> and whether a vaccinated individual who still catches COVID-19 (since protection against infection is obviously not 100%) can transmit it.

Getting infected does not mean you caught COVID-19, it means you were infected with SARS-CoV-2. You didn't get COVID-19 if you didn't get sick. Treating the two terms as the same thing is a media conflation people have just accepted, and an annoyance I have to explain every time this comes up because Pfizer was using the correct definitions in that press release.

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