Live data from Hacker News

First people sickened by Covid-19 were scientists at WIV: US government sources

public.substack.com

81–90 of 792 posts

Re: First people sickened by Covid-19 were scientists at WIV: US government sources

#81
post #16

Note that this is NOT the Wuhan CDC, which is the building across the river from the wet market. They did not do any research there. This building is ~10 miles south, well outside the main city. https://geohack.toolforge.org/geohack.php?pagename=Wuhan_Ins... The fact that researchers were sick with flu-like symptoms has been openly stated by the US for a long time. This was put out in the state department Jan 2021, 2…

Which still doesn’t really draw the line of how an outbreak occurred at the wet market. Also common seasonal illness isn’t exactly a smoking gun

not really typical for healthy researchers in their 30s to end up in the hospital with seasonal illness symptoms though.

Re: First people sickened by Covid-19 were scientists at WIV: US government sources

#83
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very. This was put out in the state department Jan 2021, 2.5 years ago: https://2017-2021.state.gov/fact-sheet-activity-at-the-wuhan... > The U.S. government has reason to believe that several researchers inside the WIV became sick in autumn 2019, before the first identified case of the outbreak, with symptoms consistent with both COVID-19 and common seasonal illnesses.

You’re very giddy to try to brush this under the rug. The truth is that big tech and Fauci colluded to suppress the lab leak theory, there are leaked emails that prove it. YouTube and Twitter were censoring and demonetizing channels that would talk about the lab leak theory. What do you have to say about that?

Wasn’t the comment just a validation that this story has been out there previously? (not to this extent with the names and a lot more info/context, but thats indeed what I was trying to get clarification on). How does clarifying a news item lead to some bias or stance on the matter, or trying to “brush under the rug?” I think you have read into that comment way too much..

Re: First people sickened by Covid-19 were scientists at WIV: US government sources

#84
post #16

Note that this is NOT the Wuhan CDC, which is the building across the river from the wet market. They did not do any research there. This building is ~10 miles south, well outside the main city. https://geohack.toolforge.org/geohack.php?pagename=Wuhan_Ins... The fact that researchers were sick with flu-like symptoms has been openly stated by the US for a long time. This was put out in the state department Jan 2021, 2…

Slightly off topic, but thanks to your first link I was just doing some satellite image sightseeing of Wuhan and noticed that on Google maps the streets are offset about 3 blocks east of where they should be.

It's fairly obvious here [1] where the curved road extends out into a lake.

Not saying this means anything, just found it amusing.

1. https://maps.app.goo.gl/reVDkMAhfMRbv1uJ8

Re: First people sickened by Covid-19 were scientists at WIV: US government sources

#85
post #66

There's a problem, covid was in Italy as early as September 2019. (see Dr John Campbell's video on this) Cases in November 2019 aren't early, it started probably six months earlier.

"John Lorimer Campbell is an English YouTuber and retired nurse educator known for his videos about the COVID-19 pandemic. Initially, the videos received praise, but they later veered into misinformation. He has been criticised for suggesting COVID-19 deaths have been over-counted, repeating false claims about the use of ivermectin as a COVID-19 treatment, and providing misleading commentary about the safety of COVID…

agreed that that is absolutely not a legit source. I was curious so I googled, and found something more legit-sounding:

https://www.reuters.com/article/health-coronavirus-italy-tim...

> ROME (Reuters) - The new coronavirus was circulating in Italy in September 2019, a study by the National Cancer Institute (INT) of the Italian city of Milan shows, signaling that it might have spread beyond China earlier than thought.

Re: First people sickened by Covid-19 were scientists at WIV: US government sources

#87
post #30

> "If you knew that this was likely a lab-enhanced pathogen, there are so many things you could have done differently" I'm curious - if we knew in March 2020 that covid came from a lab, what _would_ we have done differently?

Not censored millions upon millions of posts discussing the idea, for one thing. The conversation and narrative was warped, and a lot of people are now rather extremely divorced from the reality around this issue. Gain of function research would have been examined much more closely, and with the origins known we may have had much less fumbling around protocols for containment, such as knowing much sooner that it was…

You are correct. I guess people can't handle that. This is from the article, it tracks with your sentiment:

Said Metzl, “Had US government officials including Dr. Fauci stated from day one that a COVID-19 research-related origin was a very real possibility, and made clear that we had little idea what viruses were being held at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, what work was being done there, and who was doing that work, our national and global conversations would have been dramatically different. The time has come for a full accounting.”

Re: First people sickened by Covid-19 were scientists at WIV: US government sources

#88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first thing we would have done would have been to put an immediate halt to all "gain of function" research - including all of the "gain of function" research that is currently ongoing (that Fauci and his ilk insist isn't really "gain of function" research). This would include severe penalties for those who funneled money to third party researchers. Instead, the global health authorities peddled the absurd "wet ma…

[flagged]

I'm referring to the gain of function research currently being funded by the US government. We funded the gain of function research in Wuhan through the Eco Health Alliance. I don't mean to suggest we have any power to stop other countries from engaging in this dangerous research, but certainly we can stop being a party to it (and likely would have stopped if people knew there was a strong possibility that Covid resulted from a lab leak instead of a "wet market").

Re: First people sickened by Covid-19 were scientists at WIV: US government sources

#89
It is hard to tell from the writing - are the sources claiming that they know the researchers were sick with Covid-19 specifically, or are they saying they know the researchers with sick with something, and that they had symptoms consistent with covid-19?

We go from:

>Sources within the US government say that three of the earliest people to become infected with SARS-CoV-2 were Ben Hu, Yu Ping, and Yan Zhu.

To:

>not only do we know there were WIV scientists who had developed COVID-19-like illnesses in November 2019,

Is it Covid, or Covid-like?

Re: First people sickened by Covid-19 were scientists at WIV: US government sources

#90
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. I have a few family members very deep in the weeds (QAnon, Cabal, One World Order type of crap) and they love to play this narrative. In reality it seemed like it was rather obvious to anybody who looked at the facts that this pandemic had dubious origins. Just a few of these were the close proximity, same family of viruses being researched, mysterious personnel changes around the time of the initial spread, et…

I can never understand if someone actually believes this or is just actively gaslighting. Anyone trying to discuss even the possibility of a lab leak was called xenophobic, a conspiracy theorist, banned from socials… Funny thing when the “conspiracy theorists” keep turning out to be right.

Except they haven't at all, lol

By "the “conspiracy theorists” keep turning out to be right" do you mean like how Trump won the election in 2020, Biden is an actor, Obama has been hung for treason, people around the globe are dropping dead from the vaccine, etc.? These are the people I'm talking about when I speak about conspiracy theorists, people reasonably sitting on the fence when there is conflicting information are not. You speak in absolutes about how _everybody_ who presented the possibility of a lab leak was banned and labeled a xenophobe, and while I cannot speak onto your anecdotal experiences, I never saw this in any platform I participated on at the time, in fact (as I shared in another comment on this thread), I leaned towards the likelihood of a lab leak after getting recommended a very popular youtube video on the topic from a very popular channel. As far as I know, that video is still available, although it has obviously been a long time since I last watched it.

Part of how cults are started is creation of a us versus them mentality, often where it doesn't exist. I believe this is why so many conspiracy theorists with more extreme beliefs might misconstrue their experiences in discussion around the topic, when in reality those discussing the very legitimate possibility of a lab leak never got much flak (anecdotally, as I said).

Post reply on HN