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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

#901
post #899
post #896

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I do apologize and I do also appreciate your time. If something isn't even wrong, what neutral information can even be posted in response?

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#902
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...

They didn’t say white supremacist attacks

You’re conflating hate crime with white on everyone else hate crime and the law (and stats) don't reflect that

You went as far as to add those words, which is fascinating to say the least

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#903

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're too far removed from the time and place to accurately determine what happened. Even if we had first-hand witnesses or documentation, the disinformation 'aura' around the whole thing makes it impossible to get the honest truth out. There's no chain of custody for evidence that you, yourself would trust. That's what I mean that at this point it doesn't matter what the reality was, the damage is still compounding…

You might want to look into what disinformation you were personally subjected to that brought you to your own perspective. People who aired their own personal vaccine adverse event experiences were maligned, shamed and cancelled. What makes you think you have the correct information on vaccine adverse events? I personally know 3 people who have had life altering negative effects due to the vaccine, including myself.…

What I'm saying is no one has the truth here.

Also, the team lead I worked with for 3 months was 1 of the 100,000 or so that saw adverse effects. Last day of our deployment in LA county, he received the vaccine in preparation to go home. He was in the hospital for 2 weeks because fluid started to pool in the sac that contains your heart. He nearly died before they could get that under control. He went home for a month and then went back out again on another deployment.

I think this goes to the "is 1 life more important than 100,000" argument. The vaccine saved millions and we are barely celebrating that fact. Even if you say "well there are long-COVID effects" -> the alternative is death. The alternative is nothing happens to you and you become a vehicle for someone else's death. Unless you were planing to isolate for the rest of your life, you became an inherent risk to others for a virus that was spreading too fast.

My great uncle was put into an old folks home to sequester with the others in that risk category, and 1 of the nurses spread it among the staff. 13 people died. Disinformation convinced reckless people that there's reasons to not get the vaccine, and then they went out and did reckless things because they doubted the legitimacy of the danger. People who walked into hospitals without masks, who spit at others taking their own precautions, people who violently attacked service staff in supermarkets because they felt the whole thing was an attack on their livelihood and freedom.

I remember being in Marana, AZ the week that Pfizer was cleared for kids 12 and up. We were stationed outside a school, and for the last 2 days we had watched teachers going in and out of the facility back and forth to their cars to get random things. Every time 1 walked past we asked if they had questions for us, if they wanted to know about the vaccine, and that they could talk to us without committing to anything. Surely these educators were interested in protecting their students? AZ was a strange place. They were more concerned with recounting the election for the 2nd time. The state gov was actively hostile and tried to keep us out so the county we were working within took them to court citing a clause in their constitution that they could request assistance if it was a health concern. We moved from that site a day later, we had vaccinated just 27 people.

To put things in perspective, in LA we did nearly a million vaccinations. In AZ we reached just under 13,000 over 3 months.

I am acknowledging that we were both surrounded by propaganda/disinformation, and both affected by it. You will not find the objective truth to any of this 3 years later, so far from Wuhan, and with this much political influence behind investigating it.

The deaths were right in front of them, but the party told them to reject the evidence of their eyes and ears. The org I work for was actually responsible for vaccinating my own grandparents. My grandpa still caught covid and seemed like he was coming out of it. Then he got pneumonia as a complication from it and died that July 4th weekend I got home.

I'm glad I have a monopoly on truth as a self-righteous, do-gooder it really helped me preserve my family tree . I hope in posterity people understand how amazing it was to see the world support this humanitarian mission, for all its faults. May you live a long life.

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#904
post #706

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is significant delay between lab leak in mid-September-mid-October 2019 and start of epidemic in December in Wuhan. Can such contagious virus as SARS-CoV-2 cross the distance between lab in Wuhan and wet market in Wuhan in few days? Of course. In few months? No way.

fwiw... there were posts floating around at the beginning of 2020 claiming that the epidemic was well established in Wuhan by December, and that cases were seen back to September, October. It's unfortunate in so many way - admit a mistake was made, acknowledge the problem, and clean it up is so much more respectful of everybody's time and resources. Between Asian traditions of saving face, and US traditions of lawyer…

Yes, there is correlation between World Military Games in Wuhan in October 2019 and Covid[0].

Also, Russian media informed about spike of pneumonia cases in November 2019[1].

[0]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7813667/

Note: This page below crashes my browser (Firefox at Fedora Linux) even when requested from Wayback archive. Beware!

[1]: http://web.archive.org/web/20191119113457/https://www.1tv.ru...

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#905

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is significant delay between lab leak in mid-September-mid-October 2019 and start of epidemic in December in Wuhan. Can such contagious virus as SARS-CoV-2 cross the distance between lab in Wuhan and wet market in Wuhan in few days? Of course. In few months? No way.

Yes, covid was in the US months before we bothered to check and count cases. There were rumors of a virus spreading months before it was officially acknowledged

Most likely, Covid19 was introduced into USA from World Military Games[0], or from Russia in October-November 2019.

If someone went to Novosibirsk to check situation after blast at BSL4 lab "Vector", then (IMHO!) he may contracted the virus and spreaded it in USA after return, which (IMHO!) explains why USA three letter agency covers that blast.

[0]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7813667/

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#906
post #898

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.02.24.20026682v...

I would share family chats if they hadn’t been deleted. But we heard about it a few days before Xmas.

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#907

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A scientific consensus is significantly different than media opinion. Second, there is no "debate" regarding efficacy of masks and limiting exposure via quarantining. Masking reduces the likelihood of contracting SARS from others, and staying home reduces the spread to others and strain on hospitals. Unsurprisingly, the people attempting to debate this typically had no medical background whatsoever. Millions died in…

Oppositions to lockdowns were never about whether they would reduce deaths or not in the short term. Anyone with a brain could understand that if people weren't in a position to breath on each other, the virus wouldnt spread as quickly. Oppositions to lockdowns were always about tradeoffs and whether they were worth it. Its just such a boring critique. My main question still remains, what would your plan have been if…

> Anyone with a brain could understand that if people weren't in a position to breath on each other, the virus wouldnt spread as quickly.

This can be rephrased as "it's just obvious/common sense that lockdowns work" and it's a really common argument, but wrong.

Unfortunately there's nothing really obvious or intuitive about viruses. The Diamond Princess cruise ship showed right at the start that lockdowns would be ineffective. They locked down everyone on the cruise ship the moment the first outbreaks were confirmed, confining them to cabins. In the transmission model that lockdowns rely on that would have ended the outbreak immediately. But it didn't, instead people kept coming down with COVID completely at random, scattered all over the ship. From this two things could be concluded:

1. SARS-CoV-2 is airborne, that is, it can move long distances in gaseous clouds, i.e. through air ducts, by hanging in the air for long periods and other ways that lockdowns can't affect.

2. The clouds must have circulated through the ship, yet not everyone was susceptible.

This wasn't a terribly surprising result because investigators had concluded the same things about SARS-1 back in the day. SARS-1 clouds were able to move within apartment buildings even when everyone was locked down in their apartments, apparently via air ducts.

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa032867

Some people pointed out at the time that this would render lockdowns irrelevant right back in March 2020, and were ignored, but time has proven them right. There's no correlation between lockdown severity and results.

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#908
post #882

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> Half of this very thread is saying that China intentionally released this virus?

I was being slightly hyperbolic. A good chhunk outright said it, another good group was using plausible deniability, which means if pressed they might say thats not what they meant. Makes separating them quite hard

> Are you unable to distinguish that assertion from the assertion that the engineered weapon was intentionally deployed?

I am not. The issue is not that either. The issue is "The origin of COVID-19".

When it came out two main theories appeared. Either the wet market where it was first noticed, or a lab leak in a lab over an hour away that was studying coronaviruses.

The two were studied by the scientific community, china put a lot of hurdles and the best availeble evidence pointed towards the wetmarket.

While this was happening, a number of conspiracies started, many of which pointed towards China as a bioweapons manufacturer (something that is very illegal). Those theories included that china was not studying viruses but manufacturing them (that is a very key distinction) and the theoreis then spawn over if China leaked it to test it, or infected its own population etc. Theories adjacent to this were heavily repeated by a number of news outlets, mayorly OAN a far right news station. The great smoke screen was that when pressed they could always fall back on "the lab leak theory" which is way more sensible.

Essentially the problem is the lab leak theory meant two very different things. It should have been called the accident leak and the bio weapon theory, but both were called lab leak and people who mean bioweapon hide behind the larger, more defensible lab leak umbrella.

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#909

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was all dismissed as misinformation and conspiracies. https://edition.cnn.com/2020/04/13/us/coronavirus-made-in-la... The latest poll from the public opinion fact tank shows that misinformation around the virus is still king, even as fact checkers and public health officials work furiously to dispel it and save American lives. A total of 23% of adults polled said they believe the virus was created intentionally. T…

> Now what we read is that the virus was man made and the WIV was doing secret military work for the PLA, with the idea being to create a virus and vaccine simultaneously so the attacker controls who survives i.e. a bioweapon. That's the same as what the BBC called a false claim and conspiracy theory. In a tabloid, recycling claims that have already quite questionable without any additional evidence (ie. the Mojiang…

The Sunday Times isn't a tabloid!

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#910

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As the other commenter said, I'd like to add an example because I think it's worth it adding this to the discussion given that you are angry about a death in your family. Just imagine, there are - to pick an example - new cancer cases (or anything really) every single day. Therefore, the vaccination will coincide with the diagnosis perfectly for a pretty large number of people. But as should be obvious, that is not b…

[flagged]

What are you saying? It has nothing to do with what I wrote. Please remain constructive - and respond to what I actually wrote, not to imagined slights. Thank you. And the "hand wave" is what you are doing - read what I wrote, it is normal to have many such things coincide in timing. Timing alone is not proof of anything, since it is completely normal and expected with a constant stream of new disease. You have to show a (statistically) significant rise in numbers - as a first step, that alone still would not be proof either. Others have pointed that out too.

Given the scale of both normal disease occurrence and of the vaccination campaign, it is expected and normal for a very large number of people to get sick after vaccination - simply due to chance.

If you read into that purely statistical statement a claim of vaccinations not having any side effects than you need to read what I wrote, not what you think I wrote. One has nothing to do with the other, and I'm only addressing the one thing. Of course you can have problems due to vaccination, but you can not "hand-wave" any single random event into that category, especially when it's obvious you fail to even consider the large amount of "normally sick" cases that are bound to happen simply by random chance of them occurring all the time either way.

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