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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

#881

Post by unmole »

realjhol wrote: post #497
willyt wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Times is not a great source. It’s just tabloid style journalism targeted at a higher ‘reading age’. Can’t remember the exact figures but something like 16 compared to ‘The Sun’ which targets 10. A better source would be The Telegraph, if you like your opinion pieces right leaning. The Economist, The Financial Time and The Guardian are also good sources if we’re talking about British newspapers here.

The Guardian - are you serious?

The Guardian's opinion pieces can be downright unhinged and their headlines can have a partisan spin. But the actual reporting is usually solid.

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#882

Post by shwaj »

Arkhaine_kupo wrote: post #725
HardlyCurious wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, the closest natural viruses to covid were sent to Wuhan for study. I mean, that is what the Wuhan institute of coronaviruses was built to do right? The indirect evidence of a lab leak theory is overwhelming frankly. And it doesn't require any malice. No one credible is saying china intentionally released the virus or built it with the intention of building a weapon. Gain of function research is real, scient…

> No one credible is saying china intentionally released the virus Half this very thread. "you couldn't mention the lab without being called a racist" and then they proceed to talk about china bioengineering weapons instead of an accidental lab leak. The constant "the news suppresed this because of trump" is also a pretty loud dogwhistle. The idea that a lab could have a leak was studied, there were multiple papers o…

Half of this very thread is saying that China intentionally released this virus? Let’s grant you that half of this thread is saying that China likely engineered Covid as a weapon (very arguable). Are you unable to distinguish that assertion from the assertion that the engineered weapon was intentionally deployed? I don’t understand why you’re conflating the two.

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#883

Post by Manuel_D »

taaabi8313 wrote: post #880
Manuel_D wrote: post #867

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Cub…

The point of using the term “sinophobia” rather than simply “prejudice” is that no, it does seem that some subset of people are uniquely unable to “criticize” PRC policy without injecting some trope about mainland Chinese people and culture. In fact, the point is to repeat the stereotype as if it were fact. The policy (whether it exists or not) is just an excuse. For that matter, sincere requests for clarification ar…

If the criticism of the PRC were mixed in with Sinophobia, then doom2 should have expanded on that. As written, there's nothing to suggest that doom2 witnessed anything other than criticisms of the PRC. The idea that it's mixed in with stereotypes about mainland China would be a good example, but it's entirely your injection, not something stated in doom2's comment.

Remember, allegations of "dog-whistles" are really just saying "I'm assuming other people are implying XYZ." My conservative relatives think words like "diversity" or "inclusion" are dog-whistles for anti-white discrimination. They're earnest when they say the feel attacked, but that's entirely on account of their own assumptions and does not indicate any actual racism. If doom2 wants to make point, they should actually explain what they witnessed that was bigoted or hateful - don't just allege "dog-whistling" and do nothing to substantiate that claim.

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#884

Post by oilchange »

godelski wrote: post #879
oilchange wrote: post #876

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Very clearly false dilemma. No. It's game theory. It's geopolitics. It's why russia, britain, france and china developed nukes. It's why india and pakistan developed it. > That's a strong word for what you wrote. Not strong or weak. Just reality. > I'd link it to you, but you said you don't want to read "silly blogs". No. What I actually wrote: "The ability to think is a far greater tool than reading silly blogs. T…

> You aren't going to link to anything I don't already know. >> no amount of reason will convince someone with an agenda. You're exactly right. You already know.

> You're exactly right. You already know.

So do you. But you've got an agenda and a worldview that prevents you from accepting it. Imagine being naive enough to believe that there isn't chemical nor biological weapons in this world. Believe what you want. This discussion is getting pointless and I'll end it here.

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#885

Post by randomperson01 »

wizofaus wrote: post #829
wizofaus wrote: post #825

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did GP imply if a virus was leaked it must be man-made? Obviously the fact that the exact virus hadn't been seen before is suggestive of that but it's not inconceivable the lab happened to have samples of a never-before-seen naturally occurring virus that they were planning to do research on. That wasn't the same lab that released the first genome sequencing of the virus though (I gather it was in Shanghai). Not sure…

Btw this seems to be a pretty thorough and technical overview of the various hypotheses: https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/mbio.00583-23 It concludes zoonotic origin to be the most likely, though certainly doesn't rule out other alternatives.

Imperiale, the last author is a known gain of function proponent with a history of downplaying the possibility of a lab leak

https://twitter.com/emilyakopp/status/1620884457032155136?t=...

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#886

Post by randomperson01 »

Eisenstein wrote: post #807
stormfather wrote: post #766

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

from the WHO in 2006, page 236 on SARS: "the risk of a laboratory source is potentially greater"

  https://apps.who.int/iris/handle/10665/207501

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#887

Post by tptacek »

th0ma5 wrote: post #871
dang wrote: post #830

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You posted 68 (!) comments in this thread, most of which were either unsubstantive (like this one), or flamebait, or both. That's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. We have to ban accounts that post like this, so please don't do it again. The idea here is: if you have a substantive point, make it thoughtfully; if not, please don't comment until you do. And please review https://news.ycombinator.c…

I just don't like it when conspiracy theories are featured for days on the front page to be perfectly honest. That's not news for nerds, and it feel likes the community wants that flamebait if they keep promoting and engaging things that are simply not based in fact. > Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. That tramples curiosity. This is every single post in this thread in my opinion, so…

It is specifically OK to downvote to disagree on Hacker News, and the reason for that is exactly because the alternative, of writing lots of repetitive rebuttals, is so much worse for the threads.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16131314

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#888

Post by randomperson01 »

misja111 wrote: post #485
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…

The problem was that the epidemic started in the middle of the US election campaign. At some point the Trump team started to support the lab leak theory. And then it became political; Biden supporters started framing them as conspiracy theorists, anybody who dared to support the leak theory was labeled as a Trump supporter etc. In China some people must have been amazed how the US was arranging such a thorough cover-…

Good timeline here

https://archive.is/zaBp6

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#889

Post by randomperson01 »

usrme wrote: post #443
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…

The best book I've read on the topic of the lab leak theory is "Viral" by Alina Chan & Matt Ridley. It goes into the nitty-gritty scientific detail as well, but also covers some of the things you mentioned too.

Another good book is Dark Winter by epidemiologist Raina MacIntyre. Touches on COVID origin and similarity of the inital market excuse to the Sverdlovsk lab leak coverup by Soviets

https://unsw.press/books/dark-winter/

Looking forward to reading Pandoras Gamble by Alison Young next

https://www.amazon.com.au/Pandoras-Gamble-Leaks-Pandemics-Wo...

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#890

Post by startupsfail »

sh34r wrote: post #411
startupsfail wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can the lab be sued out of existence for damages? It is quite clear that they did amplification research as they’ve planned. And had inserted the furin site into the coronavirus . And they’ve mismanaged the research and they’ve let the virus to spread. This had caused a lot of damage, in particular the deaths, economical damage, long-covid damages, mental illnesses and diminished IQ (covid brain fog). There’ve been s…

> Can the lab be sued out of existence for damages? It's in China, not America. Come on now. The CCP might remove the lab from existence, but they're not gonna do it with a lawsuit.

There is certain amount of justice present in China. They can do it internally. It’s not like they haven’t suffered internally from it.
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