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'…
Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid
911–920 of 1001 posts
Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid
#912I’m just annoyed I was given -3 downvotes here on HN for saying there was research indicating artificial/lab gene markers were discovered indicating it probably had a lab origin. I didn’t say anything else just mentioned a research paper and I got downvoted here on HN. :(
Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid
#913Earlier quoted context omitted.
yes it was taboo in the media and even on hacker news. if you mentioned it then you were literally laura ingraham
The fun thing about claims about Hacker News opinion is that you can actually fact check it on Algolia. [0] Most of it is either people saying that we can't know whether the lab leak is true or not and people who are claiming persecution on "Reddit/the Media/etc" because "they" are keeping the lab leak theory from being discussed. [0]: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=33&prefix=true&qu...
Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid
#914Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is tentative evidence that COVID vaccines may rarely trigger onset of ALS in susceptible individuals - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10035647/ It is possible you are right and it was just a coincidence - but it is also possible that the vaccine was the trigger for ALS to develop. We don’t have enough evidence yet to confidently say
Based on all available evidence, it is probable I am right. We have no evidence of increased rate of incidence of ALS, which you would expect to see given how many people were vaccinated. You linked to a single case report. It does not establish any type of causal link at all. That single person was most likely going to develop ALS at the time whether he had been vaccinated or not.
What data do we have on the incidence of ALS between 2019 and now?
Even pre-2019, there appears to be a slight increase in incidence of ALS over time, although not statistically significant [0] – which could mean the increase isn't real, but could also mean it is real but studies thus far have lacked the statistical power to confirm it.
So, if it is true that ALS incidence is increasing anyway, the question then must be–has the rate of increase accelerated since 2019? I'm not aware of any published data on that topic. Furthermore, there is also some evidence that COVID-19 infection can be a trigger for onset of ALS in susceptible individuals, [1] so even if there is some pandemic-associated acceleration in incidence increase, it may be difficult to disentangle to what extent it is due to infection versus vaccination.
> You linked to a single case report. It does not establish any type of causal link at all.
A case report – even a single one – is evidence. Only weak evidence, but even weak evidence is evidence. Certainly not strong enough to establish anything - but a single case report is enough to increase the epistemic probability, even if only by a little bit. Establish is more systematic review of multiple high quality studies territory, which is at the opposite end of the strength of evidence spectrum from case reports.
I think we are likely talking about something with a rather small effect size. With a sufficiently small effect size, something can be entirely real but also impossible in practice to statistically demonstrate.
Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid
#915Earlier quoted context omitted.
So you are really a proponent of the post-truth society? It is better to believe a lie than to believe the same truth as right-wing people?
It's not about what you believe, it's WHY do you believe it. It's better to start with logic, reason, and scientific evidence - not with guesses, fear, or conspiracy theories. Sometimes the conspiracy theories are true!! The US government DID test mind control and psychadelic drugs on people. They DID forcibly sterilize thousands of african americans. But was 9/11 an inside job? Doesn't seem like it. Don't forget, mo…
So what? You just said we should only look at "logic, reason, and scientific evidence". What some of the same people are screaming shouldn't be a factor at all, by your own reasoning.
Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid
#916Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is maybe more interesting. Anti-Asian 2019: 0.2% Anti-Asian 2020: 10% Anti-Asian 2021: 25% EDIT: Regarding an uptick in anti-jewish etc. Anti-Jewish 2019: 57% Anti-Jewish 2020: 43% Anti-Jewish 2021: 37%
I take it these are percentages of all complaints? Because the number of complaints for anti-Jewish hate crimes was 116 in 2020, but 198 in 2021, so a definite increase, but hate crime overall basically doubled as well, so the relative amount to the total is lower.
Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid
#917Earlier 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…
There is a huge difference though between “lab leak” meaning “a wild virus collected and stored at the Wuhan lab escaped”, vs. “biomedical engineers manufactured a super weapon which escaped.” I think the evidence, or at least the plausibility, of the former is excellent. For the latter, it’s poor.
Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid
#918Remember when someone would acuse you of being paranoid when you said that was the most problable couse of covid pandemic? Yeah...
When there were zero evidences? Yeah, go figure.
Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid
#919I'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…
Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid
#920Earlier 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'…
Being a Russian post-invasion, I feel this is awfully familiar.
Add to that that there are many Russians publicly supporting the war and/or their government. The same goes for the Chinese and for corona specifically you had a lot of them travelling the world while the virus spread was heating up.
Ultimately, humans are pattern seeking animals and if you fit into a pattern of shitty people you better make sure that you make it clear you are not one of them. It would be better if people could be more discerning but I'd rather take this than not having any pushback for countries and other groups of people misbehaving.