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

101–110 of 792 posts

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

#101

Post by indigodaddy »

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…

Good comment

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

#103

Post by wouldbecouldbe »

Sakos wrote: post #93
wouldbecouldbe wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It was wild.

The most obvious theory was ridiculed.

Some groups are very good at creating narritives in western media.

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

#105

Post by Natsu »

D13Fd wrote: post #67
ChemSpider wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the lab leak story is correct, the WIV people knew somewhere inbetween September...November 2019 that the virus leaked.

Why is that true? I would think you could have an undetected leak.

The article claims multiple researchers got sick. I mean, we can posit that this wouldn't ring any alarm bells... but if they have any competence at all, it should've rung some alarm bells and resulted in more testing. And if we'd developed tests for this in November, it wouldn't have been spreading undetected for months.

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

#106

Post by mlyle »

onethought wrote: post #70
mlyle wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. We don't have swabs that we can perform PCR on. On the other hand, this report, if true: - Sickened about a month before COVID-19 was formally detected - In close proximity to where COVID-19 was formally detected - While doing research on gain of function in coronaviruses. This is strongly suggestive circumstantial evidence.

Close proximity is a bit of a stretch. This shows people catching colds in winter. The rest is speculation

> This shows people catching colds in winter.

And hospitalized? That's a bit more uncommon than catching a cold.

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

#107

Post by ozr »

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?

If it was developed in lab, presumably there would be a substantial amount of information available on it. Lab notes, testing results, transmission rates, all sorts of things we had to discover in the wild.

We could have used that data to make progress on a vaccine (and adjust our overall response) much, much faster.

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

#109

Post by Natsu »

onethought wrote: post #65
ChemSpider wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the lab leak story is correct, the WIV people knew somewhere inbetween September...November 2019 that the virus leaked.

That’s not true, a leak could occur without them realising. Getting cold and flu symptoms in winter wouldn’t raise too many suspicions. Given they didn’t start any containment procedures either they didn’t know or that’s not how it happened

The article doesn't just say "people got sick" it says that researchers were hospitalized. That doesn't sound like "normal seasonal illness" to me.

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

#110

Post by unyttigfjelltol »

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?

In 2020 Luc Montagnier identified Covid-19 as a lab creation and predicted that, because the original strain was unnatural, later strains would be less problematic as the virus reverted to its true (less problematic) nature. In contrast, the public health conversation was about a permanent threat and how much worse can it get and generally government running around hair-on-fire.

Maybe the initial quarantine recommendation would have been the same--or even stronger-- but the pandemic impacted all aspects of life everywhere, and elements of that would have been different. EcoHealth would be a bad dream, no one would be running interference for Fauci. Vaccinations would have been a different conversation, because this would have been recognized as a temporary threat.

Post reply on HN