Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

public.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

361–370 of 792 posts

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

#361

Post by mharig »

hwillis wrote: post #159
quad_eye_oh wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't looked at where Ben Hu's lab is, but epidemiological distance in urban areas doesn't necessarily follow map distance. In particular, proximity to a shared subway or bus line can be more important than physical proximity, since many commuters will put up with longer travel times if they can tune out, and a packed rush hour subway car is a great place for the spread of airborne infectious diseases. (In US cit…

The CDC is smack in the center of the city (on the other side of the river). The WIV is way outside the urban area, past a very large industrial park. The distribution of cases also strongly contradicts you: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9348750/figure/... Cases were roundly distributed, not along any particular artery. Note that the WIV is not even close to being in frame there- that's how much farthe…

AFAIK, there is a Biolab of a Wuhan University rather near the market. BSL3. Choose your odds.

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

#362

Post by givemeethekeys »

NotYourLawyer wrote: post #328
givemeethekeys wrote: post #292

I keep asking myself, "who gives a shit?". When the virus was first discovered, it was important to pin down who and where Patient zero was. Now? Pure politicking. It isn't even a slow news day!

Politicking was spending 2 years calling anyone racist who talked about the lab leak theory. This is just a reaction.

Absolutely. That was politicking too. Almost every PR response from both parties was terribly executed for the entire period.

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

#363

Post by wk_end »

unyttigfjelltol wrote: post #279
n4r9 wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does the virus have a "true nature", and why would it revert to it? My understanding is that that viruses are well known to become more infectious and less symptomatic as they mutate over time. The reason for this is that causing the host to quickly hole up reduces the chance of replication.

Unfortunately Luc's hypothesis was not explored because, as you will see from googling his name, he became the topic of debunking and adhomenim. And maybe some of his views on other topics were wrong, but his comments on this subject have aged well. After an hour of googling I finally found a reference to his original hypothesis. "According to him, the altered elements of this virus are eliminated as it spreads: “Nat…

But this is just magical thinking, some variation of the naturalistic fallacy. Nature absolutely will accept molecular tinkering if it provides an evolutionary advantage.

Another commenter pointed out that, for a while, the virus became more dangerous over time, not less. And the extent to which COVID has become less dangerous over time (which probably has as much to do with widespread immunity either via vaccination or prior infection, along with the fact that most people particularly vulnerable to COVID have already died), there's no indication that it had anything to do with undo'ing any kind of "unnatural change" - in particular, the furin cleavage site that's one of the more likely candidates for being "unnatural" is still there.

So no, I wouldn't say his comments on the subject have aged particularly well.

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

#364

Post by hobobaggins »

GolfPopper wrote: post #331
kornhole wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or it could do the opposite. Both Taibbi and Shellenberger are independent investigative journalists with no party loyalties. Their funding comes directly from readers rather than corporations or billionaire owned outlets. They can make a few mistakes from time to time but own up to them. Their opinions are their own, but they rarely report anything not factual.

Um, among the "mistakes" Taibbi recently "owned up to" is falsifying information in his Twtter Files reporting. Among other things, he deliberately misrepresented mentions of the non-profit Center for Internet Security (CIS) as the federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). It's clear that was not a mistake, but a choice he made in order to further a specific narrative - one that he only admitte…

> "It's clear that was not a mistake"

In what way? He asserts it was a mistake and even your (obviously non-objective) citation doesn't assert that it was anything other than a mistake.

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

#365

Post by rnk »

MarkMarine wrote: post #178
mindslight wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> considering the vilification of anyone (including the president at the time) for saying things that were in this vein It's very weird that you frame this as if the vilification including the President was an indicator of it being unreasonable, when the actual situation was that the President himself was one of the main drivers of why this topic couldn't be discussed rationally. Once the conversation is hijacked by…

Before I get painted as a Trump supporter and therefore blind to my team, I’m not. Don’t support him, and when listening to him yell about China virus and then listening to people calmly say that was racism, I went with the calm people. But the man did get the PDB every day. Maybe he heard some of this intelligence and made some leaps to suit his purpose. But if we were all lied to about the origin, our family and fr…

If there was reliable evidence that China had created a coronavirus, it would have been widely disseminated because it's the fantasy of the Republicans in the US to put it on China, and if not China then put it on Dr. Fauci. But it doesn't seem like it would have changed anything about treatment of the horrible coronavirus.

I don't really understand why people are so hot to talk about gain of function research, that just seems like a distracting point from the fact that we don't have very good public health and now politically, the US has been convinced to be against public health officials, so when the next terrible virus or disease sweeps the world, again, the US will have a failure to deal with it because of all the paranoids.

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

#366

Post by Izkata »

zmgsabst wrote: post #12
hammock wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Wuhan Games, at which 10,000 athletes from the worlds' armies participated, wrapped October 27, 2019, after which people left Wuhan to return to their homes all over the world, including to Italy where many of the first cases outside of Wuhan occured https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Military_World_Games

WIV took down their database and upgraded their ventilation circa September 2019. [0] Event 201 wargame about just such a disease was held in October 2019 — where people “role played” many of the policies we saw enacted. [1] Trump signed for flu vaccine research in September 2019, developing new technologies and an influenza task force. [2] I’m sure that’s all just coincidence. [0] - https://news.yahoo.com/wuhan-lab-…

> Event 201 wargame about just such a disease was held in October 2019 — where people “role played” many of the policies we saw enacted.

On that one, remember how monkeypox seemed to come out of nowhere in early 2022? In early 2021 there was a similar pandemic scenario for monkeypox, and the scenario's in-game start date was only about a week off of when it started in the real world.

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

#367

Post by claytongulick »

rnk wrote: post #349
epicureanideal wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've lived in many US states, including in the south, and I have not met very many of these ignorant, xenophopic, scapegoat-seeking people that everyone claims to be worried about. Seems like those people, if they exist in any significant numbers, are just an excuse to lie to the public "for their own good".

If you didn't meet those people, then either you're ignorant yourself -(with all due respect), or you are not looking closely. I'm from the south. I went to high school there, I got my college degree from there. I live there from the time I was born until my mid-20s. The south is full of racist, horrible people, it was common in my youth to hear people talk badly about Jewish people, people dropped the n word. I hear…

"The south".

Like it's all one thing.

You know, that big geographic area that's much larger than most countries in the world, with a population at least as diverse.

The most racist place I ever lived was about 30 mins from Philadelphia.

Grew up there, and there were literally burning crosses in people's yards and race riots in my high school.

I've lived in "the south" now for almost 20 years and never encountered even a fraction of the racism I saw growing up.

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

#368

Post by beernutz »

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]

hmmm. maybe?

What specifically is the actual conspiracy around "Hunter Bidens laptop"? I am not trying to be dense. I just don't understand I think where the conspiracy is.

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

#369

Post by jasonfarnon »

GolfPopper wrote: post #331
kornhole wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or it could do the opposite. Both Taibbi and Shellenberger are independent investigative journalists with no party loyalties. Their funding comes directly from readers rather than corporations or billionaire owned outlets. They can make a few mistakes from time to time but own up to them. Their opinions are their own, but they rarely report anything not factual.

Um, among the "mistakes" Taibbi recently "owned up to" is falsifying information in his Twtter Files reporting. Among other things, he deliberately misrepresented mentions of the non-profit Center for Internet Security (CIS) as the federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). It's clear that was not a mistake, but a choice he made in order to further a specific narrative - one that he only admitte…

among the "mistakes" Taibbi recently "owned up to"

when you say "among" do you have other examples? or if this is your only example can you explain why "It's clear that was not a mistake"

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

#370

Post by splendor_spoon »

TacticalCoder wrote: post #49
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 mean, unless I've created a false memory I'm pretty sure your memory is very faulty. Of all those saying it could be a lab leak, very few were talking it being a bio-weapon. > Those prattling on about how "people called us crazy" that it was a WIV lab leak seem to completely misremember what was actually being discussed in April-May of 2020 Not at all. You are trying to rewrite history. Here's the bill from Congr…

Isn’t it equally truthful to say there is reason to believe the COVID-19 pandemic may have originated elsewhere? Josh Hawley writing this into the bill does not make it anymore valid than the counter point to that statement.
Post reply on HN