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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

#891

Post by randomperson01 »

Manjuuu wrote: post #629
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…

[flagged]

No the reason is that there was a concerted campaign by those with research links to the WIV to cast it as a conspiracy theory

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...

https://medium.com/@leftback45/peter-daszak-the-elizabeth-ho...

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#892

Post by Eisenstein »

randomperson01 wrote: post #886
Eisenstein wrote: post #807

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'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

That's great. I am countering the notion that evidence is not required because it is 'common sense'.

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#893

Post by chrisbrandow »

sampo wrote: post #728
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…

> I'd like for someone to throughly research and write about how it became taboo to discuss the virus leak theory. I think the story is pretty much documented in Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EcoHealth_Alliance#COVID-19_pa... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Daszak#COVID-19_pandemic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancet_letter_(COVID-19)#Criti... Unless you mean to ask, why was their PR stunt so very suc…

Because trump said it in the most inflammatory way possible, so folks like me discounted it immediately.

I still don’t know what the truth is but I’m certainly open to a full range of possibilities now.

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#894

Post by chimprich »

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…

>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?

This is why "common sense" is very often wrong and we have to refer to data instead. You're making assumptions that are very wrong.

The wet market was over 50,000 square metres in size and one of the largest in China. The idea that there are hundreds or millions of these things is completely backwards.

The conditions were unsanitary, animals were slaughtered on site, and large numbers of wild animals were sold.

This is exactly the sort of place you'd expect a zoonotic spillover event to occur. It was flagged beforehand as a danger site.

It's not impossible that it could have been a lab leak, but consider that this market had hundreds of thousands of animals being kept, slaughtered and sold, in unsanitary conditions, shitting and pissing on each other, bleeding everywhere and biting humans and each other.

Now compare that to a secure biolab holding a small number of samples whilst following biosecure protocols. Even if they weren't perfect, which environment provides the best chance of a spillover event?

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#895

Post by DocSavage »

Izkata wrote: post #870
DocSavage wrote: post #843

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Yes, you are correct that I should’ve said symptomatic infection (or COVID-19) because they were only trying to power the study for what they needed to clear EUA and not measuring ability to block transmission. The second paper I linked made the same mistake in its table header.

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#896

Post by th0ma5 »

tptacek wrote: post #887
th0ma5 wrote: post #871

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

This is not a good tactic for misinformation and disinformation, and general authoritarian thinking... That the message gets out there let alone isn't challenged on its merits immediately implies that it must be something reasonable to say if HN allows it to be posted.

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#897

Post by shwaj »

upsidesinclude wrote: post #423
sokoloff wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If it was transported to the seafood market by someone who worked at the lab that is highly coincidental that the place they infected first just happened to be the most likely place for zoonotic spillover If we're going with highly coincidental pairings, it seems like we can't ignore "the disease originated in the only city in China to have an institute that specializes in virology, viral pathology and virus techno…

At this point can we not just state plainly, the whole denial argument is predicated on politics?

Which one do you mean by “the denial argument”? (and why do you use that term instead of something unambiguous like “lab leak” or “zoonotic origin” hypotheses?)

As to which of the two hypotheses is more predicated on politics, I think there are more generally left-leaning people who are swayed by the lab leak (circumstantial) evidence, than there are right-leaning people who are swayed by the zoonotic origin (circumstantial) evidence. This perception may be mistaken, but assuming I’m correct, this would suggest that the zoonotic origin hypothesis is more likely to be predicated on politics.

Edit: typo

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#898

Post by shwaj »

throwaway2990 wrote: post #364
lamontcg wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is not direct evidence, but under a weaker burden of proof (e.g. balance of probabilities) it is fairly convincing. - We have a bunch of evidence of WIV engineering SARS-1-like viruses because they talked about it before the pandemic. - We have zero evidence of them ever doing experiments on live SARS-2-like virus - We have zero evidence of the existence of a SARS-2-like progenitor virus - Before the pandemic th…

> The spread of SARS-CoV-2 looks exactly like it originated in the Seafood market. Huh? No it doesn’t. The discussion of a possible SARS outbreak started weeks before the seafood market incident. The lab leak theory started in China BEFORE the seafood market was pinned as the cause.

A source would be helpful, if you can provide one.

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#899

Post by dang »

th0ma5 wrote: post #896
tptacek wrote: post #887

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

This is not a good tactic for misinformation and disinformation, and general authoritarian thinking... That the message gets out there let alone isn't challenged on its merits immediately implies that it must be something reasonable to say if HN allows it to be posted.

If you want to correct false information by providing correct information neutrally, you're welcome to do so. But it's not ok to get triggered into posting a bunch of low-information objections. That kind of thing just contributes to general degeneration, and we're trying to avoid that here.

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#900

Post by shwaj »

lamontcg wrote: post #269
AbrahamParangi wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m sure most of this is true or at least true-ish but to be appropriately skeptical, all evidence which has a Chinese source here should be considered as potentially made up. Regardless of whether or not there was a coverup, the Chinese government has certainly acted like it was covering something up. The circumstantial evidence is sort of ridiculous here though. An institute with weak safety controls experimenting…

> the Chinese government has certainly acted like it was covering something up. Yes, they covered up the existence of racoon dogs and other susceptible animals at the market.

I’m reading this as sarcasm, am I wrong? If so, it is such a bad faith response. It is well reported that China was highly uncooperative in providing records about the research that was occurring at WIV.
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