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China clamping down on coronavirus research, deleted pages suggest

theguardian.com

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Re: China clamping down on coronavirus research, deleted pages suggest

#111

Post by taiwanboy »

Razengan wrote: post #90

Tinfoil hat: I'm not keeping active track, but I passively perceived a sheer drop in mentions of the fact that Wuhan has China's first "biosafety level 4" laboratory, coinciding with an increased lambasting of the US's handling of their infections in the general media (" The Wuhan virus is now the American virus "), along with a streak of random US-critical posts (" What is the worst thing the US government has done?…

On 1/22, Xi jinping and CCP blocked internal transportation such as railways, subways, ferries, trains and domestic flights in and out of Wuhan. But still let international flights in and out of Wuhan. If the coronavirus wasn’t weaponized with that intent I don’t know what is.

Re: China clamping down on coronavirus research, deleted pages suggest

#112

Post by YarickR2 »

rumanator wrote: post #96
meowface wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? That's not how evidence works. The onus is on the person making the claim to provide positive evidence. Not actively insisting they have to prove a negative.

> What? That's not how evidence works. The onus is on the person making the claim to provide positive evidence. You might have had a point if the Chinese regime wasn't putting it's propaganda machine into overdrive spewing conspiracy theories on how covid19 was created by the US to attack China.

Right now US propaganda is in overdrive mode trying to lay the blame onto China ; there are no other views in mainstream media , and if anyone tries to doubt that, asking for evidence and reminding the world about presumption of innocence, they are instantly labeled chinese bots. So much for freedom of speech and thought

Re: China clamping down on coronavirus research, deleted pages suggest

#113

Post by nikofeyn »

Flow wrote: post #15
gnusty_gnurc wrote: post #8

In lieu of evidence that the “wet market” story is true, the accidental lab release is pretty compelling. Interesting to see how people react to it though - as though the idea is outlandish that a laboratory working with pathogens from actual bats could mishandle things. Is there even any evidence people ate bats at the wet market?

Lots of bats at some of those markets if this video is true. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0V7fyjaFOwQ

you should place a nsfw or nsfl tag on your link as it shows disturbing images.

Re: China clamping down on coronavirus research, deleted pages suggest

#114

Post by joering2 »

paulcole wrote: post #108
sergiotapia wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Take a look at reddit to see how legions of paid government actors are actively shaping the discussion on mainstream platforms.

I don’t buy this. Why would governments pay people to shitpost on Reddit when so many of us gladly do it for free?

To get specific narrative via majority posting similar “shit”. Aka propaganda.

Re: China clamping down on coronavirus research, deleted pages suggest

#115

Post by andromeduck »

CreRecombinase wrote: post #60
StandardFuture wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think it is overwhelmingly likely Why are you so sure it is overwhelmingly likely? > I think it's probably just a coincidence that there's a virology lab there Only because you believe it to be purely coincidental of a virology lab being next to the outbreak source location? I am entirely up for accepting this viewpoint. But, the lack of evidence to suggest an actual source location coupled with the (CCP sourced…

I don't know about illogical, but I think your intuition that zoonotic transfer is unlikely because it hasn't happened in the recent past is not a good one.

Most bat consumption in China happens in the South, along with the population in general. The odds of a zoonotic event occuring in Wuhan of all places and within a block of one of the few labs known to have been activity hunting for a virus just like this is too much of a coincidence.

Re: China clamping down on coronavirus research, deleted pages suggest

#116

Post by 2019-nCoV »

paulcole wrote: post #108
sergiotapia wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Take a look at reddit to see how legions of paid government actors are actively shaping the discussion on mainstream platforms.

I don’t buy this. Why would governments pay people to shitpost on Reddit when so many of us gladly do it for free?

Many govs use astroturfing, the CCP in particular: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party

Re: China clamping down on coronavirus research, deleted pages suggest

#117

Post by MilnerRoute »

alderz wrote: post #52
JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember a scientific paper on HN a few months ago by Chinese authors saying Covid came from that lab and that it came from bats that had infected workers there, or that was the assumption. That is my memory of the article. I cannot find that paper anymore. Does anyone remember this?

You might be thinking of this one https://img-prod.tgcom24.mediaset.it/images/2020/02/16/11472...

Those are the authors who entirely withdrew this "paper."

https://www.snopes.com/news/2020/04/01/covid-19-bioweapon/

Snopes reports that it contained numerous errors, and the authors themselves have said they had no direct evidence for their claims. (Note that it was never peer-reviewed or even accepted for publication anywhere. They just pasted it up on a social media site.)

Re: China clamping down on coronavirus research, deleted pages suggest

#118

Post by legolas2412 »

PeCaN wrote: post #85
avs733 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So...evidence? Stating it's compelling isn't evidence, just that it is an explanation that appeals to large populations of our species who are hold certain suspicions. There is, however, a long history of animal to human transmission of diseases. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. I have yet to see anyone provide evidence, only twitter rumors, and twitter rumors aren't even regular evidence.

I don't think "coronavirus escapes from a lab, in the exact area where the outbreak started, that was studying coronaviruses" is exactly an 'extraordinary claim'. If anything it's the elephant in the room. Are we just supposed to casually ignore that or what…. I think the problem is that when people think of "lab" they think of some sort of devious genetic engineering bioweapons program, and not something considerabl…

Umm, they were also combining viruses to create "chimeras". Now, this combinational process could be genetic engineering (which has been ruled out I think) or just combining in a petri dish, which I find compelling.

Re: China clamping down on coronavirus research, deleted pages suggest

#119

Post by meowface »

dlubarov wrote: post #65
meowface wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, there's basically no current evidence to suggest it was engineered, and plenty of evidence to suggest it was zoonotic and evolved naturally. One possibility that can't be totally ruled out is that maybe this was one of many viruses collected from local animals which their virology lab had stored for current or future study, and some kind of mistake led to it escaping, perhaps through an employee unknowingly g…

> Wuhan is a massive city and economic hub Let's dig into this a bit more though. The WIV's location on Google Maps apparently changed after the incident [1]. I don't know if it was a legitimate correction or what, but for the sake of argument let's suppose that the old location was correct. Then the lab is 8.6 miles from the wet market, or ~14 km. It looks like the population density in that area is around 10,000 pe…

Your prior is also exactly what you're trying to calculate, though. I don't think you can just try different numbers picked from a hat for that value.

Also, it isn't accounting for lots of other highly relevant, potentially confounding variables.

And those assumptions make no sense to me at all. Can you write them out much more explicitly?

I think it's totally plausible it was a lab escape, but this analysis seems extremely oversimplified and naive, and I'd even say a misuse and abuse of Bayes' theorem. A full Bayesian analysis is a good idea, though. I'd like to see a much more robust and detailed one from someone.

Re: China clamping down on coronavirus research, deleted pages suggest

#120

Post by zozbot234 »

gnusty_gnurc wrote: post #8

In lieu of evidence that the “wet market” story is true, the accidental lab release is pretty compelling. Interesting to see how people react to it though - as though the idea is outlandish that a laboratory working with pathogens from actual bats could mishandle things. Is there even any evidence people ate bats at the wet market?

You don't need to eat bats for them to be a problem. The virus could have jumped via some intermediate host.

Some folks used to be skeptical wrt. the market being a source, because it was officially described as a fish/seafood market and fish are not a very plausible reservoir for this virus. However it's clear by now that all kinds of live animals were sold there, similar to other "wet" markets throughout Mainland China.

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