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

521–530 of 792 posts

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

#521

Post by tripletao »

dekhn wrote: post #425
Sunhold wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The geoscientist in question is actually arguing that some of the flaws in the paper are due to the authors' lack of expertise in geospatial analysis.[1] [1] https://twitter.com/search?q=(from%3Adanwalker9999)%20expert...

that may be- I am not qualified to say after reading the twitter thread, but my money is still on the peer reviewed paper written by the virologist, based on a large collection of priors. Note taht the "geoscientist" is really a hydrologist who works on oil and gas, so their ability to comment on the centering model is still suspect. From what I can tell, "dawalker" is just a retired hydrologist with no special skill…

The peer-reviewed literature on COVID origins has been unusually bad. I assume you don't think SARS-CoV-2 came from pangolins; but Nature published "Isolation of SARS-CoV-2-related coronavirus from Malayan pangolins", and took more than a year to correct it. (They said the virus was widespread among pangolins, based on multiple positive samples; but in fact multiple papers had been written about one batch of smuggled pangolins.)

Map-based arguments for the exact site of introduction seem generally like noise to me. Worobey has made aggressive claims in preprints and media interviews, but even his Science paper falls back to just "epicenter", a weaker term without standard epidemiological meaning. SARS-CoV-2 must have been introduced into the Americas at air and seaports; but even with the advance warning to public health officials, that's not where the first clusters were found.

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

#522

Post by mindslight »

mandmandam wrote: post #466
mindslight wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way humans convince each other of the merits of our ideas is by describing our thought processes. The problem isn't actually something being said by someone who "is" a blowhard, but rather that the thing is being said in a blowhard manner - aggressively asserted, with poor supporting reasoning. If there were concrete supporting evidence for the assertion of "China Virus", it would have been mentioned. There wasn'…

> memetic fog Yeah, that's the perfect phrase for it. SCP fan; or did you make that up?

It seemed like a fitting description.

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

#523

Post by harry8 »

richbell wrote: post #512
harry8 wrote: post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> How many former spooks signed a letter claiming it had all the hallmarks of a russian information operation to influence an election? 50? This was then promoted to "russian disinformation" and treated as fact far and wide across the media. The Hunter Biden laptop did reek of a Russian operation. It was clearly an attempt to hurt Biden in the 11th hour. Even if the content is genuine, which everything I've seen appe…

[flagged]

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

#524

Post by object-a »

mensetmanusman wrote: post #303
ZoomerCretin wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You won't have to wait long for confirmation. Confirmation that they were sick. Not confirmation of what they were sick with.

Roll an N-sided die representing all possible locations for possible human/bat human/animal interactions. What percentage of those facets are city centers near level 4 bio labs that research these types of viruses?

COVID is only BSL-3. China has over 100 of those, so the odds of a city center being near a lab is much higher.

If COVID had an incubation period of a 1-2 weeks, it's also possible for the outbreak to occur in a city center that is not a likely location for human/bat/animal interactions, so the percentage will increase further.

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

#525

Post by boomboomsubban »

kneel wrote: post #185
boomboomsubban wrote: post #86

Why name the researchers that got sick? Even if one of them is the source for COVID, which really isn't clear from this, I don't think they deserve the harassment articles like this are bound to cause.

You don't think causing a global pandemic and millions of death from dangerously careless research deserves criticism?

Criticism? Maybe. Harassment from billions? No.

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

#526

Post by harry8 »

undersuit wrote: post #510
harry8 wrote: post #500

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mainstream media has "owners" who "fire" editors when they don't like the stories being written. Journalist pitch stories at those editors. See Rupert Murdoch and the Times of London, The News of the World, The Sun, The New York Post, The Wall Street Journal and Fox News. For example, note how many times Tony Blair and separately Gordon Brown sought audiences with Rupert Murdoch. You subscribe to the NYT or WSJ you u…

https://mashable.com/article/substack-writers-leaving-misinf... Just admit it's not a perfect thing, just another flawed alternative.

I'm not "admitting" anything nobody claimed.

>The claim that the funding doesn't come from a "billionaire owned outlet" doesn't really track if you look at the investors[0] in Substack.

That's your claim to which I objected. It is nonsense. Your linked article above is ridiculous and has /nothing/ whatever to do with that claim. Don't admit it, just acknowledge you got it totally wrong. Easy.

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

#527

Post by hedora »

letmevoteplease wrote: post #258
geuis wrote: post #225

I don't trust this article at all . > 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. All were members of the Wuhan lab suspected to have leaked the pandemic virus. > It is unclear who in the U.S. government had access to the intelligence about the sick WIV workers, how long they had it, and why it was not shared with the pub…

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...

Regardless of that, we already know they were doing related biological weapons research, as part of a cooperative program with the US.

Funny how congress isn’t focusing on the stuff they have direct jurisdiction over, like refusing to fund similar programs in the future unless there is additional oversight.

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

#528

Post by jrochkind1 »

So here's the thing, whether covid came from an accident in gain of function research in Wuhan, or whether it's just totally plausible that it did, the correct response is basically the same:

Banning gain of function research everywhere. Yeah, including here. It's too dangerous, whatever scientific benefits to any positive thing that improves lives is not worth it, just stop doing it and demand that everyone else stop doing it.

So we pretty much already know enough to know that's what we should do, I wish more people could get interested in demanding it instead of talking about whether or not there's what kind of proof that it did come from that, and trying to sift through the multi-source competing disinformation. Plausible is enough, let's try to keep it from happening in the future whether it's for the first or second time who cares?

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

#530

Post by zoklet-enjoyer »

baja_blast wrote: post #431
wk_end wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW my understanding is that the labs were only BSL-2.

The WIV has BSL-4, BSL-3 and BSL-2 labs. But the research involving insertion of human specific furin cleavage sites into coronaviruses sampled in the wild was done in BSL2 which just means a thin medical mask and gloves. https://theintercept.com/2021/09/23/coronavirus-research-gra...

Wow. The past 3 years I thought they had a lot more PPE than that. Not sure why anyone would be surprised about a leak when that's all they wore.
Post reply on HN