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

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

#91

Post by inetknght »

notjulianjaynes wrote: post #84
hwillis wrote: 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

It's fairly well-known [0] that China messes with maps data and forces Google to do so.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restrictions_on_geographic_dat...

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

#92

Post by TechBro8615 »

jb12 wrote: 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?

I had personally decided by April 2020 that there was sufficient information for me to believe that Covid was a lab-enhanced pathogen that was accidentally released by researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. My "source" was mainly common sense (the simplest solution is usually the right one, and guilty people doth protest too much), an understanding of probability (there is a lab studying the pathogen right next to the wet market which an authoritarian regime claims was the source), and an unbiased reading of history (like looking at 2001 articles on CNN about the last time SARS leaked from a lab).

For better or worse, I'm not a policymaker, so my opinion is meaningless and would have had no outcome on what "we" could have done differently (aside: I dislike this kind of rhetoric that shifts the blame to the amorphous "we" rather than the specific policymakers with names and titles who "we" should be blaming and holding responsible for their failures). But I've at least saved some sanity by listening to my gut instincts instead of subjecting myself to the whiplash that would have come with a world view determined by appeals to authority.

It seems this is more and more necessary these days - if you rely on authority as a heuristic for truth, your reality can shift under you at the whims of politicians who manipulate it for their own selfish reasons. It's best to stay above the fray. Sure, gut instinct can be wrong, but when I'm not a policymaker and only need to be concerned with my own health and well-being, the consequences of incorrect critical thinking are usually less bad than the consequences of trusting the wrong authority. I will continue to prioritize my "gut feeling" - informed by critical reading of publicly available data, and careful triangulation of the motives and biases of stakeholders in the current political reality - over any blessed truth that "we" have anointed as "consensus."

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

#93

Post by Sakos »

wouldbecouldbe wrote: post #36
scoofy wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also... I mean, unless I've created a false memory, I specifically remember that the discussion at the time was about a the virus literally being a bio-weapon, and not actually the entirely plausible, accidental escape of a virus. I've always had a completely open mind about it, even if experts have repeatedly suggested that it's plausible, but unlikely. Those prattling on about how "people called us crazy" that it w…

No you misremember. Here I was ridiculed. Specifically remember a columnist at Parool, a Dutch local newspaper, talking about it how he was pressured by colleagues days after just mentioning a column it might be from the Lab. There was a consensus in the West it didn't came from the Lab, and those who suggested otherwise were non-scientific lunatics.

Shit, I remember arguing with people like him back when the whole pandemic started that it was a distinct possibility, one of several, that should be fairly evaluated like every other. And people like him just waved it off as conspiracy theory garbage like we're seeing here. Same shit, different day, except now with the flavour of gaslighting along with it.

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

#94

Post by TacticalCoder »

jchw wrote: post #69
scoofy wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also... I mean, unless I've created a false memory, I specifically remember that the discussion at the time was about a the virus literally being a bio-weapon, and not actually the entirely plausible, accidental escape of a virus. I've always had a completely open mind about it, even if experts have repeatedly suggested that it's plausible, but unlikely. Those prattling on about how "people called us crazy" that it w…

I knew this would happen, so much so I'm pretty sure I even called it ahead of time. This happens so frequently that there ought to be a word for it. Yes, some conservative personalities early on had pushed some dumb conspiracies about COVID-19 being a bioweapon. No, that was not the crux of the argument that the many scientists, journalists and internet commenters had when they argued in favor of the lab leak hypoth…

> Yes, some conservative personalities early on had pushed some dumb conspiracies about COVID-19 being a bioweapon. No, that was not the crux of the argument that the many scientists, journalists and internet commenters had when they argued in favor of the lab leak hypothesis.

It's totally insane. GP is literally rewriting history and getting upvoted for it. I post a link to a Congress bill (linked from TFA), from 2023 under the Biden administration (so not Trump), saying "there's reason to believe COVID may have originated at the Wuhan lab" and I immediately get two downvotes.

It's as if the shills who tried to bury the lab leak posts back then (not the bioweapon ones, just the lab leak ones) were still actively trying to control the narrative. This time by explaining why it was normal to label everyone who talked about lab leak a "conspiracy theory cracknut" because they'd supposedly all be talking about bio-weapon (which they weren't).

> There's always amnesia about things like this, but I'm pretty sure COVID-19 has become a case study on how not to handle a pandemic. A lot of what happened gave people a legitimate reason to distrust authority, and if we pretend that never happened things will simply continue to get worse as it repeats indefinitely.

I totally agree.

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

#95

Post by api »

mc32 wrote: post #68
api wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recall reading credible scientists talking about a lab leak from day one, and I always considered it a possibility. Yet many of the people pushing it on social media were pushing it as a 100% certainty and even that it was some kind of intentional bio-weapon attack. The people getting banned for this were conspiritainment grifters and people pushing fascist politics. The most effective way to cover something up is…

You see... a grain of truth. Yes, in the very beginning is was allowed, but come May and June, it was verboten.

[flagged]

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

#97

Post by janalsncm »

treeman79 wrote: post #28
jmclnx wrote: post #13

[flagged]

Facebook just admitted that the government was asking them to censor information that was, in fact true. https://youtu.be/ixCKd8lUrKw

If that is shocking to you I would suggest reading up on the Pentagon Papers: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentagon_Papers

The Snowden leaks are in the same vein.

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

#98

Post by mort96 »

mandmandam wrote: post #53
jb12 wrote: 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…

Please explain the connection you see to extra deaths. Because as I see it, nothing about how governments responded to this was conditional on COVID having occurred naturally; social distancing and mask use would still have been the correct response even if we knew with certainty that it leaked from a lab, and I see no reason why the early blunders like recommending against masking or over-emphasizing hand sanitizer would've been any different.

Why, for example, would we have known much sooner that it was airborne?

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

#99

Post by CommitSyn »

inetknght wrote: post #91
notjulianjaynes wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It's fairly well-known [0] that China messes with maps data and forces Google to do so. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restrictions_on_geographic_dat...

Is this similar to how the US used to mandate that civilian use of GPS was off by a certain amount?

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

#100

Post by mort96 »

UberFly wrote: post #87
mandmandam wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wor…

That doesn't track with their sentiment at all? "Our national and global conversation would have been dramatically different" is not the same as "many fewer people would have died".
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