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The media's lab leak fiasco

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Re: The media's lab leak fiasco

#241

Post by caddemon »

knz_ wrote: post #224
caddemon wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What incentive would the US government have to lie about this though? They were funding research at that lab, I don't understand why they would want people to think lab leak is correct all of a sudden - if that's what you're claiming?

> What incentive would the US government have to lie about this though? The US government hasn't even made any statement. > They were funding research at that lab, I don't understand why they would want people to think lab leak is correct all of a sudden - if that's what you're claiming? No they weren't? You need to either get off the internet until you turn 18 or learn some serious critical thinking skills. The fact…

Yes they were, NIH grants went to WIV. Here is a government science website saying as much: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/search/research-news/9563/

It went through a non-profit, but trust me there is careful accounting of where money goes with NIH grants, there is no way the government was not aware that some of it's money was funding research at WIV. Especially because they suspended the funding once COVID blew up, per that article.

The commenter was implying the info didn't come from real intelligence but is actually a fabricated leak. I saw the other reply about Iraq and thought the implication was the US wanted to mislead about this, but it indeed could be another country.

Re: The media's lab leak fiasco

#242

Post by crystalmeph »

shkkmo wrote: post #157
cheeseomlit wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I think this will result in a rethink of how we tag unresolved topics as "False Information" or before enough facts are gathered. Wishful thinking perhaps, somehow I doubt most of the media/gov't figures who dismissed these claims did so in good faith to begin with.

Please be explicite iF you are going to make such accusations. What "bad faith" reason do you postulate motivated these actions?

I mean, the OP article is literally about the "mainstream media" dismissing a valid hypothesis because they don't like Tom Cotton.

Re: The media's lab leak fiasco

#243

Post by RV86 »

philjohn wrote: post #221
RV86 wrote: post #107

IMO, determining the origin of the virus is of much more consequence than who was right and who was wrong back in 2020. If the virus crossed over naturally, it's reasonable to conjecture that this sort of thing is going to happen more and more often in the future. If it was human error in a lab, I would actually be relieved -- this seems like something that's much easier to correct. FWIW, I do think available evidenc…

I read spillover a few years ago, which is all about zoonotic crossover events, would recommend it, even if it is a bit dry in parts. The problem is, as an expansionist species we're naturally going to encroach on natural reservoirs for pathogens. The smoking gun of people working at the virology institute may yet turn out to be nothing more than a red herring, if they live and work in the epicentre of where the outb…

I wanted to add -- the two most compelling pieces of information I've seen that make the lab accident theory more plausible to me are: 1) The verified existence of the bat-originating corona virus that killed 3 miners with Pneumonia some years ago being housed/researched in the WIV 2) David Baltimore of Cal Tech's remark ""When I first saw the furin cleavage site in the viral sequence, with its arginine codons, I said to my wife it was the smoking gun for the origin of the virus. These features make a powerful challenge to the idea of a natural origin for SARS2"

Re: The media's lab leak fiasco

#244

Post by awb »

tomjakubowski wrote: post #173
deadalus wrote: post #5

Reminder that Facebook and Twitter banned users for talking about the lab-leak theory. Youtube accounts also got demontized/banned.

Facebook's policy page only mentions censoring content suggesting that the virus was "man-made". Did Twitter actually ban users who suggested _only_ that the virus leaked from a lab? I'd be surprised because I follow some fairly big accounts there which have posted about the lab leak theory. https://about.fb.com/news/2020/04/covid-19-misinfo-update/

There’s only a spec of difference. I don’t know anyone suggesting that the lab leak was of a natural origin. The theory is that the lab created the virus and it leaked.

Re: The media's lab leak fiasco

#245

Post by swader999 »

partiallypro wrote: post #4

To me what gives me credence to the "lab leak theory" more than anything, was China's behavior during and initially after the outbreak. Where they thwarted any investigations from WHO or anyone else and arrested journalists even attempting to cover it. Now we have additional information of lab workers being sick back in November...I genuinely wonder why people immediately jumped in to defend China's actions through t…

CCP's complete lock down of internal flights while leaving international outgoing flights wide open right at the start out this is more damming than the lab leak hypothesis.

Re: The media's lab leak fiasco

#246

Post by crystalmeph »

generalizations wrote: post #18
danboarder wrote: post #12

One problem with politically charged issues is that one's bias can significantly color unresolved factual issues. In the article the early 'red flags' pointed out in the January 2020 study by The Lancet left clear open questions regarding the Seafood Market hypothesis, but many in the media glossed over these red flags. Now that additional facts are coming to light including the fact that multiple scientists at the l…

> I think this will result in a rethink of how we tag unresolved topics as "False Information" or before enough facts are gathered. Perhaps a "Controversial" tag would be preferred. If anything, it will taint the credibilty of people who claim they have the insight to tag the information's credibility in the first place.

That would actually be a silver lining in my opinion.

Re: The media's lab leak fiasco

#247

Post by BurningFrog »

scottrogowski wrote: post #72
deadalus wrote: post #5

Reminder that Facebook and Twitter banned users for talking about the lab-leak theory. Youtube accounts also got demontized/banned.

This should be the top comment. Social media companies can either be monopolies or they can put limits on the speech of their platform... but they can't do both. While not against the law of freedom of speech, political moderation processes are certainly against the intent. Every once in a while we get a case like this where an unpopular fringe opinion becomes mainstream and underlines the point. But this isn't just…

What I would do, if elected Emperor over this, is to add warnings or links to debunkings of fringe theories, but never delete them.

The power to silence will always be abused.

Re: The media's lab leak fiasco

#248

Post by shkkmo »

caddemon wrote: post #178
shkkmo wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please be explicite iF you are going to make such accusations. What "bad faith" reason do you postulate motivated these actions?

I wouldn't use the word bad faith, but I think for a lot of people it was very likely motivated by political/social pressure more than by trying to find the truth. In a positive light one could interpret some of the dismissal as an effort to combat anti-Asian racism occuring here. In a somewhat more negative light one might think it was simply the move to make to avoid even remotely aligning with conservatives. There…

I see a very different dynamic reading the article. Remember, at the time this all happened Trump was still very publicly backing the Chinese government's response. Tom Cotton was very much bucking the party line in calling the CCP liars.

What I see over and over throughout all of this is repeated conflation of "lab-leaked" and "man-made".

Tom Cotton absolutely never even insinuated that the virus was man-made, only that a china was lying about the market and that a lab leak was a possible origin

This distinction was quickly lost, but it is not clear that was due to malice or even partisanship. In this very article, with the benedit of hind site, the author repeatedly conflates the two an switches which concept is being discussed.

At the time there was no basis to reject the lab-leak theory. There was at the time some preliminary basis to reject the man-made hypothesis. As far as I cam tell, we are just really bad at protraying any nuance when all the incentives reward sensationalizing everything.

Re: The media's lab leak fiasco

#249

Post by TechBro8615 »

awb wrote: post #244
tomjakubowski wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook's policy page only mentions censoring content suggesting that the virus was "man-made". Did Twitter actually ban users who suggested _only_ that the virus leaked from a lab? I'd be surprised because I follow some fairly big accounts there which have posted about the lab leak theory. https://about.fb.com/news/2020/04/covid-19-misinfo-update/

There’s only a spec of difference. I don’t know anyone suggesting that the lab leak was of a natural origin. The theory is that the lab created the virus and it leaked.

Well, I report the opposite. I guess the data is useless.

Re: The media's lab leak fiasco

#250

Post by [deleted] »

temp8964 wrote: post #205
wpietri wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure whether it's plausible to non-experts like you or me is a valuable way to categorize it. But the reason to be cautious about it is the potential for violence. Both at an individual level against people perceived as Asian and at a global level of a hot war. A good example here is after 9/11. The US had a rash of violence against people who people thought looked Muslim, like the Sikh gas station owner Balb…

You are making very very wrong suggestion now. Because some people can link Chinese government to all Asians, so we can't criticize the Chinese government? Because Chinese government = Chinese people = Chinese Americans = Asian Americans? I think this kind of automatic linking Chinese government to Chinese / Asian Americans is itself racist. What you are suggesting is implicitly accepting this racist idea. To stand a…

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