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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

#351

Post by spacemadness »

mock-possum wrote: post #287
wsatb wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All you need to do is take a quick look at one of the author's other stories[1] and your skepticism will grow further. [1] https://substack.com/@shellenberger

> Why Politicians Are Trying To Take Your Children > California legislation would punish parents who don't affirm gender dysphoria wow yeah that's a take

This list of articles is right out of a conspiracy theorists fever dream. Great intellectual content here HN, thanks for sharing. Now go outside and take a walk before you go off the deep end.

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

#352

Post by mharig »

brvsft wrote: post #334
basisword wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m sure the millions that died are also frustrated our rights were infringed temporarily due to…fear.

You'd have a point if these actions saved lives, but they didn't. And it turns out in some cases, the actions probably led to more deaths, e.g. NY quarantining patients in nursing homes.

Do not forget the deaths of malnutrition due to interrupted logistics. The Unicef estimated those to >9 million in 2019 and >31 million in 2020.

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

#353

Post by nevi-me »

geuis wrote: post #263
letmevoteplease wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You won't have to wait long for confirmation. The Director of National Intelligence will be required by law to declassify information about the infected researchers on June 18th, including their names, symptoms, date of onset and role at WIV.[1] [1] https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/senate-bill/619...

Hey that's a cool link. I'm kinda embarrassed to say I didn't know you could track bills like this going through Congress. Thanks for the lead.

I discounted the article, especially the below part because anyone can say they're "100%" certain about something while they're not.

> When a source was asked how certain they were that these were the identities of the three WIV scientists who developed symptoms consistent with COVID-19 in the fall of 2019, we were told, “100%”

...

That's until I saw that Act on Congress' website. It'll be interesting to see what information is declassified. If there's proof that the mentioned scientists were first to fall ill, I wonder what the consequences are.

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

#354

Post by dotnet00 »

HWR_14 wrote: post #321

Can someone please explain to me what difference it makes. AFAIK, no one is claiming this was a bioweapon or intentional assault. So what difference could it possibly make where COVID originated from. I think the lab leak theory is wrong, but even if it was true I no idea how that should change anything.

Well, there's the reinforcement of the decreasing trust in media for framing anyone talking about the lab leak as an anti-science bigot.

Then, more practically, if it was an accidental leak, it would mean that a much more detailed assessment needs to be performed of if what they were doing should be allowed elsewhere, if handling and disinfection methods need updating etc.

Might also lead to legislation regarding the responsibilities of people hiring these sorts of labs (eg even if China refuses to take responsibility and update its own laws on the matter, other countries could ban their own researchers from contracting work out to labs which don't meet certain standards).

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

#355

Post by rnk »

rustymonday wrote: post #204
inetknght wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

I just want to add to this that when I first heard about this virus I searched the WIV on Google Maps. I believe that was 14 January 2020. When I searched it again a few weeks later, the location on Google Maps had changed. I have no screenshots of this, but I did find it quite odd at the time.

Addresses of things change on Google maps. They fix problems and find issues and it's entirely possible that an address changing means something was updated. Or there's an international address conspiracy that Google is part of, you'll have to decide for yourself!

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

#356

Post by Reason077 »

freeopinion wrote: post #335
Reason077 wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given the location, the timing, the symptoms, the severity of the illness (it's unusual for 'flu to put healthy young adults in hospital) I think we can be pretty confident in our guess.

Except, of course, we don't know who they were, let alone whether they were otherwise healthy or whether they were young adults. Whether somebody is confident in your guesses is up to them I guess.

According to US government sources, they were Ben Hu, Yu Ping, and Yan Zhu. Ben Hu was the researcher who lead “gain-of-function” research on SARS-like coronaviruses at WIV.

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

#357

Post by [deleted] »

scoofy wrote: post #18
indigodaddy wrote: post #7

‘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 fu…

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…

[deleted]

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

#358

Post by Izkata »

baja_blast wrote: post #8
jleyank wrote: post #2

There seems to have been covid cases in Europe in last-quarter 2019, which suggests it was there or brought there before the outbreak that made the news in 2020. Doesn’t rule out leaks and crossovers, just moves them elsewhere or else when. Viral pneumonia was occurring, symptoms turned out to match covid and nobody was saving or testing blood samples. Outside of a few places in Dec. But people had aggressive, surpri…

I heard from a friend from Taiwan that there were rumors of some kinda of virus spreading around by mid 2019 in China. The thing is if there were blood samples showing a much earlier date of covid spreading in China there is zero chance we would ever hear about it. It is also worth noting that the region hit hardest in Italy early on just so happens to be a huge textile manufacturing center with a huge Chinese popula…

> It is also worth noting that the region hit hardest in Italy early on

There was a paper released early/mid 2020 that was attempting to group the virus into various strains (this was before the "variant" terminology emerged), that attempted to identify changes in the virus's behavior and classified different mutations with things like L, LL, and M. For the most part it was either ignored or ridiculed as being too early, that there hasn't been enough time for mutations that change its behavior to have accumulated.

Thing is, I distinctly remember it identified one mutation that seemed to originate in Italy, was trackable as it reached the US East coast, and every place it spread to had a spike in deaths that coincided with when it overtook the previous variants in prevalence for that location.

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

#359

Post by parineum »

object-a wrote: post #345
NotYourLawyer wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m a lot more interested in how we weren’t allowed to talk about it for a couple years than whether or not it’s ultimately true.

The President of the United States was claiming that COVID was engineered in China as early as May 2020. I don't know how someone can claim they weren't allowed to talk about it.

Did he claim that or did he just call it the "China Virus"? Honest question.

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

#360

Post by rnk »

kneebonian wrote: post #296
aredox wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is peculiar that not many of these conspiracy theories eventually turn out to be true. See Twitter's own lawyers: https://edition.cnn.com/2023/06/06/tech/twitter-files-lawyer...

[flagged]

There was no conspiracy about the sacklers and the opioid epidemic. It was obviously true the first article that was written about it.

On Hunter Biden's laptop, somehow there's terrible evidence but the Republicans in the house are supposed to have the laptop and somehow there's no evidence to share? Why is it the Republicans keep having all this great evidence that they can never share with us? Also see the MyPillow guy and his election stealing evidence. Most recently the Republicans said we've lost the guy that was going to give us all the great evidence. Somehow. We won't share his name with you but we can't find him.

Another example is Hillary Clinton and Benghazi. That was a horrible tragedy, but they've had 10 investigations of it and spent millions and millions of dollars and they never came up with anything more than we hate Hillary Clinton and she's terrible. Sometimes these conspiracy theories have real information behind them, but much more commonly they're just created to demonize someone. I'm certainly willing to consider that Biden or his son could have done something bad, but where's the evidence?

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