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

761–770 of 792 posts

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

#761

Post by kcplate »

iudqnolq wrote: post #758
kcplate wrote: post #753

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bizarre. Both were very vocal supporters of Bernie Sanders in 2016/2020 DNC primaries and have multiple occasions pushed democratic socialism as their ideal political paths for America, but because they are also occasionally critical of leftist authoritarianism tactics or ineptitude of democratic politicians they get lumped to be conservative? I guess if your bubble is pulling it’s identity from the leftist dogma du…

It's quite well known that many prominent Bernie supporters turned into right wing or right wing adjacent.

Did they shift their opinions…or did the left simply shift leftward so that democratic socialism proponents now seem conservative? I’d argue that most probably did not shift their politics and opinion, but the definition of who is left and who is right changed—at least from the “orthodox” left’s perspective.

Amazing that in 2023, Bernie Sanders and his supporters are now considered conservative.

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

#762

Post by iudqnolq »

kcplate wrote: post #761
iudqnolq wrote: post #758

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's quite well known that many prominent Bernie supporters turned into right wing or right wing adjacent.

Did they shift their opinions…or did the left simply shift leftward so that democratic socialism proponents now seem conservative? I’d argue that most probably did not shift their politics and opinion, but the definition of who is left and who is right changed—at least from the “orthodox” left’s perspective. Amazing that in 2023, Bernie Sanders and his supporters are now considered conservative.

Democratic socialism is not conservative. There's this specific weird case that a number of Sanders' prominent supporters turned out to be really weird people. A number of them, including Brienna Joy Gray, are supporting RFK Jr in the upcoming election. This is an example of how politics doesn't map perfectly onto a left-right line.

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

#763

Post by MrOwnPut »

jacquesm wrote: post #732
MrOwnPut wrote: post #726

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zoonotic would mean it was a natural occurrence. The GoF program of adding the spike protein to attach to the ACE2 receptor and putting it in a mouse would NOT be zoonotic, but lab made. It's a lab mouse. Not a jump, but a deliberate placement in a lab. Obviously the implications matter whether it occurred in nature or deliberately by man. If it was the latter, then the program that was supposed to prepare against th…

Zoonotic jumps can still happen in a lab. They are simply jumps from one species to another.

Sure, but in this case if it were a zoonotic jump in the lab it would be really really easy for them to have found the animal now wouldn't it?

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

#764

Post by kcplate »

iudqnolq wrote: post #762
kcplate wrote: post #761

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did they shift their opinions…or did the left simply shift leftward so that democratic socialism proponents now seem conservative? I’d argue that most probably did not shift their politics and opinion, but the definition of who is left and who is right changed—at least from the “orthodox” left’s perspective. Amazing that in 2023, Bernie Sanders and his supporters are now considered conservative.

Democratic socialism is not conservative. There's this specific weird case that a number of Sanders' prominent supporters turned out to be really weird people. A number of them, including Brienna Joy Gray, are supporting RFK Jr in the upcoming election. This is an example of how politics doesn't map perfectly onto a left-right line.

> This is an example of how politics doesn't map perfectly onto a left-right line

That really is my point, the center political position is always arbitrary…in general and on any given single political opinion. So most normal people don’t break exactly along the dogmatic lines set by whatever is the governing authority of right and left.

My political opinion is driven above all else by pragmatism that does not break cleanly in right or left or by party. As such where i sit on the political spectrum is always relative to the person evaluating my opinion.

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

#765

Post by cscurmudgeon »

willcipriano wrote: post #291
cscurmudgeon wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Can you imagine how many scarce resources would have been mispent if SARS-CoV-2 had begun with worldwide knowledge that China was responsible? OTOH if we knew that China was responsible, won't the future be better served by putting safeguards to prevent a worse thing happening again?

China wouldn't be solely responsible, this was a US project.

No, US funded part of it, but China ran the lab 100%.

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

#766

Post by cscurmudgeon »

kornhole wrote: post #294
cscurmudgeon wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Can you imagine how many scarce resources would have been mispent if SARS-CoV-2 had begun with worldwide knowledge that China was responsible? OTOH if we knew that China was responsible, won't the future be better served by putting safeguards to prevent a worse thing happening again?

The Ecohealth Alliance received funding from NIH for the gain of function research which means it would not be just China to blame. https://www.science.org/content/article/nih-says-grantee-fai...

Who ran the lab?

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

#767

Post by mistermann »

lizardking wrote: post #701
mistermann wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even better: one can now know not to trust mainstream authorities, but ithat does not require one to trust conspiracy theorists.

One can, but in practice it seems like more people just won't believe the "official story" anymore. That's the behavior that I've seen manifesting lately.

Well that's kinda my point: trusting the official story is known to be not rational behavior, where rational ~= "aspiring to have a maximally accurate / minimally inaccurate model of reality.

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

#768

Post by mistermann »

ajross wrote: post #396
mistermann wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is perhaps noteworthy that this is the writing form that a lot of mainstream news articles take (advantage of?). I also am not a fan of it, but I must confess I do enjoy seeing it used in the other direction.

> It is perhaps noteworthy that this is the writing form that a lot of mainstream news articles take (advantage of?). No, no way does a serious paper go to print with a source like that. There's room for argument about the use of anonymous sourcing, but there's a huge difference between "someone involved in the decision process" or "with knowledge of the events" (commonly used descriptions) and what the authors did h…

> No, no way does a serious paper go to print with a source like that. There's room for argument about the use of anonymous sourcing, but there's a huge difference between "someone involved in the decision process" or "with knowledge of the events" (commonly used descriptions) and what the authors did here, which amounts to "someone who works for the US government anywhere, but we won't tell you their expertise".

"Anonymous sources" is a superior attack vector - it is well psychologically established as "normal/righteous", and it allows one complete free reign on weaving a believable tale for the public to update their local simulation with, no risk from your sources being exposed as bogus.

> But yes: a lot of it is about trust. We trust editors at NYT and WaPo to make sure their journalists know who their sources are and not to lie or spin about them.

Some people believe this, but I don't.

In fact, I think it is rather interesting how so many people have been trained to think this way, and no one notices how weird it is.

> And while, sure, sometimes this process breaks, on the whole it's worked very well for a very long time.

"Measured" (but not actually) on a relative scale.

> Throwing it out the window so that someone can get clicks on substack posts, or (worse) because you don't like the political implications of the trusted journalism, is a really bad idea.

You predict that it is a bad idea, you do not actually have any way to know this.

Imagine driving a car that is modified such that the front window is not a window, but rather a screen containing an extremely well known to be inaccurate simulation of the road - would this not make you nervous?

> A world of Fox and Substack, where "sincerely held opinions" take the place of "truth", is sort of a disaster.

The problem isn't just Fox and Substack, the root problem is humans/consciousness/culture.

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

#769

Post by mindslight »

MarkMarine wrote: post #760
mindslight wrote: post #517

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not arguing that "government" will tell population the truth. Rather that if a President is making an extraordinary claim that is actually based on some concrete details in a classified briefing, then we would expect that President to reference those details - especially a President who readily publicized classified information. That he did not points to the claim as being from the same vein of political misinfor…

I understand your reasoning here, I agree without spending an inordinate amount of time doing first person research on every topic we all basically have to fall back to listening to other people's reasoning on a subject and then decide, but I'm curious, has discussing this and reading the article (and probably some of the other information around) caused you to rethink COVID origin possibilities or at least do some m…

You're asking in the context of me personally, rather than in the context of the topic.

That answer is "no". The importance I give to a topic is mostly based on what is actionable, which for this topic would seem to be limited to posting my resulting opinion on social media.

Just like I never bought into the "China virus" narrative, I also never bought into the "no, it's definitely not from a lab" narrative. I am comfortable with leaving a topic undecided in my mind.

Contrast with say masking, where I looked at the details and decided to start wearing a P100 respirator in public in February. That was something I could do, where the downside was really small (oh weird looks in a store, boo hoo), and the possible upside was much larger.

In the context of the topic, I didn't find my skim of this article particularly compelling. No smoking guns stuck out at me, and it would seem that other ways of the main claim happening aren't as uncorrelated as one would think at first brush (eg virus circulating publicly in Wuhan, these researchers get it, which is then noticed and recorded because they care about such things for lab workers). But in line with what I said above, that isn't a rejection of the article and "no that definitely didn't happen!", rather it just didn't move my needle much, and I am comfortable with it remaining ambiguously unknown.

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

#770

Post by gcanyon »

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #627
gcanyon wrote: post #496

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The non-lab-leak coincidence required: 1. They made a mistake in the lab, exposing themselves to a virus (not covid-19) 2. That virus was non-human-transmissible 3. The exposure happened 1-several weeks before the actual start of covid-19 at the market That's not impossible, especially if the lab was sloppy and (1) happened fairly regularly. Given the early concentration of cases around the market, and the detection…

> 2. They nearly-immediately went to the market, and spent significant time there to get the place loaded up with the virus Wouldn't it be enough to just go there, buy some food, caugh on a few of the workers there, and they'd spread the thing around to other shoppers in the next few days?

2 was meant to be in coordination with 3 -- the initial outbreak was at the market, so the researchers need to do two things: go to the market enough to infect people there, and not go other places to infect people elsewhere.
Post reply on HN