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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

#161

Post by dlubarov »

meowface wrote: post #119
dlubarov wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 ex…

> Your prior is also exactly what you're trying to calculate, though.

Maybe I should have been more explicit, but they're not the same. The prior here is the probability that the virus originated from WIV, knowing only that the virus originated in China, and not accounting for the location of the outbreak. I'm trying to calculate an adjusted probability given the outbreak location.

> I don't think you can just try different numbers picked from a hat for that value.

My goal was not to convince anyone that a prior of 1% or 0.1% is appropriate, but rather to suggest a framework in which people can insert their own priors.

And sure, it's a simplified analysis, but it's better than just asserting whatever our intuitions say about coincidences.

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

#162

Post by [deleted] »

Causality1 wrote: post #158
knzhou wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow. It's incredible that it doesn't even take supporting the outgroup to be accused of shilling -- these days even failing to laser focus on condemning the outgroup is enough. Reddit is having a lot more posts about America just because there's a lot going on in the country right now. In late February there were tons of posts about Italy. In early February there were tons of posts about China. The posts about China…

My man this stuff has already been published. It's a deliberate PR campaign. No better or worse than any other country does in similar circumstances. https://i.imgur.com/dwEpRnb.png

[deleted]

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

#163

Post by taiwanboy »

knzhou wrote: post #143
taiwanboy wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Those international flights were allowed to let countries evacuate their own citizens out. If they were banned, you would be making the exact same complaint but reversed: "China held other countries' citizens hostage in Wuhan." Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

China didn’t let taiwanese citizens leave Wuhan then. What’s the excuse there?

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

#164

Post by knzhou »

Causality1 wrote: post #158
knzhou wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow. It's incredible that it doesn't even take supporting the outgroup to be accused of shilling -- these days even failing to laser focus on condemning the outgroup is enough. Reddit is having a lot more posts about America just because there's a lot going on in the country right now. In late February there were tons of posts about Italy. In early February there were tons of posts about China. The posts about China…

My man this stuff has already been published. It's a deliberate PR campaign. No better or worse than any other country does in similar circumstances. https://i.imgur.com/dwEpRnb.png

Care to explain what this screenshot actually means?

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

#165

Post by yutyut »

nikofeyn wrote: post #151
yutyut wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To play devil's advocate here: something doesn't need to kill to be an effective Bioweapon. "The line between disorder and order lies in logistics." -Sun Tzu COVID has been a logistical nightmare. For everyone. For the record, no--I don't believe anybody 'engineered' it [or has used it]* as a bioweapon. *Edit for clarity

why in the world would someone release a bioweapon that would have major and potentially permanent repercussions for their own people and economy?

Agreed, that wouldn't be a very smart thing to do at all.

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

#166

Post by meowface »

DoofusOfDeath wrote: post #125
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.

I'm not sure the concept of "onus" is meaningful in this kind of public debate. It's not like everyone has agreed to only believe conclusions reached by particular forms of argument.

This isn't some kind of weird, esoteric form of argument. It's an underlying principle of empiricism that you should try to provide evidence for claims you make rather than making the accused prove something is false.

Someone accuses you of murder and says "prove you didn't do it". You didn't do it, but can't satisfactorily prove such a negative. Maybe you were outside taking a walk and no one can provide an alibi. Does that mean you should be assumed guilty?

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

#167

Post by chillacy »

abc-xyz wrote: post #150
paulcole wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

There’s a lot of value in paying/blackmailing the moderators. You can clearly certain subreddits, such as r/worldnews, becoming increasingly pro-China. The mod team played a huge role in this, as they have been perma banning people who post a lot of anti-China comments. I’ve for instance had several accounts banned (one simply for sarcastically saying “Thanks China”) - there were also a thread on r/China where plenty…

r/China is very much an echo chamber of its own though. These days the line between criticizing the Chinese government and full blown sinophobia is getting rather thin.

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

#168

Post by cm2187 »

roenxi wrote: post #133
cm2187 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bill Maher has an amusing monologue on that topic [1]. I don't think it is wrong to call it the Wuhan virus, and if the Chinese don't want the bad publicity associated with the virus, they should do something about these wet markets. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEfDwc2G2_8

This and similar monologues do get one important things wrong. The big one on the list - Spanish Flu - likely didn't come from Spain [0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1918_flu_pandemic#Hypotheses_a...

I think this is completely missing the point. I believe it was named the Spanish flu as this is where it was first reported. That we learned later on that it originated from somewhere else is completely irrelevant. The point is that it was named after where it was believed to be first observed.

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

#169

Post by JackFr »

markdown wrote: post #131
riyadparvez wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If animals to human transmission can happen in a wildlife market, then it can also happen unintentionally in a virology lab researching very same family of virus. In the absence of substantial evidence, both theories are equally plausible to me.

And you think your opinion on this should be regarded as equal to that of a study published in Nature?

You miss the point entirely. Nothing in the Nature piece is in conflict with the theory that it accidentally escaped a lab were Coronaviruses are studied.

Not that it was a weapon. Not that it was man made. Simply someone working at a research lab, screwed up and released a dangerous virus.

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

#170

Post by ngcc_hk »

They have been very successfully control who. With the same technique controlling access, we might never know and any whistleblower ... china not open up and free, we are playing Russian or shall we say china lottery. With humanity fate.

No freedom of press and academic research and human rights, china pose a danger to humanity. And regards to they might kill themselves, noticed that they have kill 30m+ in Great Leap Forward. Not even one Memorial Or Day is in. How many 30m we have outside china.

Wuhan virus is the 2nd wake up call. Hard to wake up people who pretend to sleep. I would try again WakeUp.

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