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China clamping down on coronavirus research, deleted pages suggest

theguardian.com

181–190 of 385 posts

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

#181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is China reopening the wet markets if they know the virus came from there? I will let you ponder on that.

Because people have to eat, and wild animals are only a tiny fraction of what's traded in wet markets. US supermarkets sold lettuce that killed people. Should those supermarkets be shut for good?

If the lettuce killed people and then everyone who interacted with the people who at the lettuce also got sick and the economy had to be shut down the United States would strictly ban selling lettuce immediately.

If China can enforce the largest lockdown ever and enforce a one-child policy for decades, they can easily ban live animals at markets.

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

#182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

Presumption of innocence is a legal matter and this is not a court of law. It might be hard for you to understand but freedom of speech doesn't protect you from getting called out. Nay, it is the affirmative right to do so.

It would also do you well to keep in mind that if we're using the criminal justice system as some standard obstruction of justice itself is a crime, as is destruction/tampering of evidence as well as witness tampering. Physical evidence is not required to convict; strong circumstantial evidence is often sufficent.

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

#183

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.

I don't know your intention but it's unwise to spread disinformation on HN, "taiwanboy".

武汉天河国际机场于23日13时关闭离港。航空公司方面,国泰港龙航空、春秋航空、吉祥航空、中国南方航空、中国东方航空、全日空等航司取消或调整多班来往武汉的班机[29]。1月24日天河机场本场仅允许国际航班进港并当日空返,另有两架运送救灾物资的顺丰航空货机抵港[30]

Note that the international airline is allowed in but leave empty.

天河机场自4月8日起恢复运营,暂不恢复国际航班和北京往返航班[58]

Until April 8, international airlines are still not restored, i.e. all airlines are stopped during lockdown.

Source: Wikipedia https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019%E5%86%A0%E7%8B%80%E7%97%8...

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

#184

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…

Now this is an interesting abuse of Bayes' theorem, because there's an extremely similar conspiracy theory going around in China of this form: it's known that CIA agents specifically visited Wuhan before the virus broke out, and the CIA claims to have known about this disease before anybody in China did. So...

    P(virus from CIA) = 0.01
    P(outbreak in 14km radius | virus from CIA) = 1
    P(outbreak in 14km radius | virus not from CIA) = 1/3,000
Then Bayes' rule gives P(virus from CIA | outbreak in 14km radius) ~= 97%.

But wait a second! How can there both be a 97% chance that the CIA did it, and a 97% chance that WIV made it? The reason is that both of these calculations are total bullshit.

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

#185
post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the murder scenario, we would have something like P(individual is guilty) = 1 / 7 billion P(individual's car on same block | individual is guilty) = 1 P(individual's car on same block | individual is innocent) = 50 / 7 billion P(individual is guilty | individual's car on same block) = 1 / 50 (from Bayes' rule) You might disagree with the priors, but I'm pretty sure the argument is sound.

The soundness of the argument isn't the issue. The problem is the world model where P(Virus starts in Wuhan) = 1. That probability is only 1 in hindsight, where the probability of everything is 1 because it has already happened. In foresight the probability was not 1. And whatever city the virus started in was going to have a BSL-2+ facility studying infectious diseases. I'm probably sitting within 2-4km of a BSL-3 f…

I don't quite follow your point. My model assumed implicit knowledge that the virus originated somewhere in China, but not in Wuhan. Maybe I should have made that more explicit.

We could change the model to not have any implicit assumption about location. Then instead of dividing by the population of China, we'd divide by the world population. The result should be the same, assuming we appropriately adjust our prior probability P(virus from WIV) to account for the fact that there are more BSL-4 facilities worldwide than in China.

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

#186
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bat coronaviruses caused SARS 1 and have been a well-known vector for decades. How is this researcher specifically related to the current situation?

She was researching bat Corona viruses? The outbreak started at a market on the doorstep of her lab? Her name is on several papers on bat Corona virus. Just pointing out that Wuhan was studying viruses exactly like the one tearing through the world right now, lol.

>Just pointing out that Wuhan was studying viruses exactly like the one tearing through the world right now, lol.

Yes, and this is important, but this is also already publicly known. It's not providing any new or interesting information. There're still a lot of other variables and factors to take into account here. Statistics aren't so simple.

For example, Wuhan is a huge city, larger than NYC, and an important economic hub. The area has a very high number of people and is population-dense. Tons of scientific institutions are there, as one would generally expect of such a city. So by that alone, the prior for the lab being there could be pretty high.

Also, maybe the lab was created there and bats were studied there in the first place because the general area was known to already have virus-carrying animals like bats? Perhaps even created there because they considered it very likely the particular bats in that particular area could potentially carry human-transferable viruses? And perhaps also because they knew lots of animals in the area, including bats, were regularly hunted and sold for food, further increasing the likelihood that human-infecting viruses may be found in that area?

If that's true, one would expect outbreaks to be more likely to occur in that area whether or not the lab was involved. It'd be reversing cause and effect - maybe a lab is there because the area is a virus hotzone, rather than the area being a virus hotzone because a lab is there. I saw some other evidence saying coronavirus-carrying bats studied at the lab were taken from elsewhere in China, which could alter this assessment, so one would need to look at all of that more thoroughly, but the point is this isn't such a simple association to make.

A lab escape is totally plausible and wouldn't be shocking, but it needs strong arguments, analysis, and evidence.

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

#187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see any evidence to suggest the virus was engineered or released deliberately. why would you deliberately release a bioweapon in a densely populated part of your own country? doesn't make sense. the lab in wuhan is not just any virology lab though; it's one of only two biosafety level 4 labs in all of china and samples of similar coronaviruses are held and studied there. it may very well be a coincidence; imp…

> why would you deliberately release a bioweapon in a densely populated part of your own country? doesn't make sense. Historically, China has not been above harming their own citizens. There is probably still a substantial "Greater Good" philosophy there. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Tiananmen_Square_protests

I can understand the logic to shutting down pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen if you're a party member and your political system is at stake. This type of thing (sadly) happens all around the world.

But I don't see what was to be gained. Take in mind there are a not insignificant number of people who believe that the US planned 9/11 and Pearl Harbor as well. It just seems like in all these cases (9/11, Pearl Harbor, Coronavirus) to not be in the country's interests at all.

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

#188

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?

It's real, and they're present - even here I would say.

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

#189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

They're always spewing propaganda about everything, though. How does that eliminate the need to provide evidence about a claim? Or are you just saying the best geopolitical response to unsubstantiated propaganda is more unsubstantiated propaganda volleyed right back at them? This is similar to people who accuse the CIA of orchestrating every big event or crime. They say they don't need to provide evidence, because th…

> But this is a completely bullshit argument.

Is it though? I think that it makes a lot of sense.

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

#190
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?

if they have confidence it will damage their opponents more than theirs?
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