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The media's lab leak fiasco

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Re: The media's lab leak fiasco

#251

Post by defaultname »

Moodles wrote: post #102
defaultname wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of the articles you cite demonstrate what you seem to think they do. When the number of cases was minuscule, the threat to Americans was low and those articles were spot on: Keep vigilant, get your flu shot, but don't stress too much yet. Citing Pelosi visiting San Francisco (at a time when there were zero cases in the region, but a growing number of anti-Asian hate crimes) again doesn't make a point to any reas…

> More critically, you have a higher standard of every random article in every newspaper than you do of agencies actually responsible. Which is truly dystopian. > But you find issue with the media. > Incredible. The HN topic is about the media, so I'm talking about the media. > Speaking of which, Trump's "travel ban" (that wasn't a travel ban) was the single action taken after the virus was already spreading uncontro…

There is zero disguising the intent of your comment. The bit about Pelosi "dancing" was particularly telling. There are a number of other replies that come straight from MAGA-verse, full of outrageous lies but that is where US politics are right now.

The US had a catastrophically poor response under the prior administration. That wasn't because of the media. It wasn't because of Nancy Pelosi. It wasn't because people dismissed theories by racists and imbeciles (the "lab leak" theory was overwhelmingly put forward by the absolute slugs of humanity, so there isn't a lot of surprise that it got smeared along with it, however unfortunate).

This whole "see, we wuz right!" thing is a bit bizarre given that no, people didn't ignore evidence early on. They ignored a theory based upon literally nothing, generally put forward by people arguing that it was somehow weaponized and intentional. If there is evidence it should be pursued, but that doesn't give credence to hysterical conspiracies.

Again, it is remarkable reading your comment and then understanding that you're decrying "partisan" positions. It goes beyond irony.

Re: The media's lab leak fiasco

#252

Post by nfoz »

asciimov wrote: post #193
yawaworht1978 wrote: post #37

Call me cynical...but... What would any government do about it if it was proven to be a lab leak? They could declare it an accident (probably this would be true) and that would be the end of the story. No country would dare to impose sanctions or engage beyond diplomacy. I do not think that the Chinese governments reaction or handling of the case is suspect, they likely want to shut down potential fake news. To label…

The far right will use this as a reason to curtail research. Maybe just curtail "dangerous" research at first. Then whatever other research they can convince their followers is also dangerous.

Why would you think that's just a "far right" thing?

Actually I don't get what you're insinuating at all. Is anyone opposed to safety protocols?

Re: The media's lab leak fiasco

#253

Post by throw0101a »

BurningFrog wrote: post #247
scottrogowski wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> or links to debunkings of fringe theories

Sadly won't be helpful, and may actually make things worse:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belief_perseverance

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backfire_effect

* https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/02/27/why-facts-dont...

Re: The media's lab leak fiasco

#254

Post by roca »

svara wrote: post #209

This story is a real clusterfuck and really hammers home the point that humans are bad at dealing with probabilities and uncertainty. You mix some nationalism in and it becomes completely impossible to have a reasonable discussion. This article already starts with a false dichotomy: "I missed the furious initial skirmish in what’s become the Long Discourse Wars over the idea that the SARS-CoV-2 virus came from the Wu…

We haven't found an animal host for SARS-CoV-2 yet, after more than 12 months. It took six months to find an animal host for SARS and less than a year for MERS. The incentive for the Chinese government to find a SARS-CoV-2 animal host is much much higher than for either of those viruses. Failure to find the host is not proof of lab origin, but the longer the search goes on unsuccessfully, the more the probabilities shift.

> it was and will always have been the correct call to ignore the speculation about how the virus might have come from the Wuhan virology institute.

No, it was not the correct call, because it means that possibility was not investigated when it should have been.

Re: The media's lab leak fiasco

#255

Post by fsckboy »

ximeng wrote: post #160
fsckboy wrote: post #83

Not just the media, folks, also the rest of our "sense making apparatus". Wikipedia has been suppressing lab leak discussion, and still to this moment will not allow the old Lab Leak Hypothesis page back. It still redirects to a declared "Misinformation!" page https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=COVID-19_lab_leak... And guess where else lab leak was suppressed? Here on HN. Yes, dang, you suppressed discussion…

“This virus was likely man-made because gain of function man made viruses are quite common in research” - this doesn’t seem a convincing argument on its own (ignoring the comments on conspiracy / sense-making / politicisation). Gain of function research seems valuable precisely in the sense it is identifying the mechanisms that govern infectivity. We wouldn’t have this discussion on furin cleavage sites without it. T…

"this doesn’t seem a convincing argument on its own"...

you're right, I should have said that "man made gain of function viruses-that-infect-humans are quite common in research and many times moreso than random mutation zoonotic species-jumping viruses are in nature"

"Gain of function research seems valuable"...

and then I will note that I must have scored a point in that sentence even as I wrote it, because the next thing you do is hurry to defend gain-of-function research. I wasn't attacking it, I was simply pointing out that the public is not aware how prevalent it is in urban virology centers in their own cities. I'm a sciency type, I like research, but I'm sure the average Joe would take a much dimmer view.

"This gains plausibility from the fact that it wouldn’t be readily distinguishable from a natural virus, as it would just be a combination of the two genomes. However this is exactly why we can’t say for certain either way whether the source is natural or not - they’d be indistinguishable genetically."

you really need to read the Yuri Deigin page I linked: for exactly the reason you cite, it actually is plausibly readily distinguishable as man-made because the bats and the pangolin viruses that were spliced together don't occur in the same geographic areas and the Wuhan lab published papers about them before their more recent info was wiped from view, and in nature the likelihood of such a clean crisp (CRISPR!) gene splice would be astronomically the worst luck ever as a mutation, but quite likely for exactly the research goals you defend above.

"It is more likely on the face of it that evolutionary pressure on the virus to spread and the natural process of mutation and selection caused the mutations in question, simply because of the volume of natural mutations versus artificial mutations."

again, nope, artificial splicing (not mutation) is quite common and becoming much moreso as the cost of doing it has dropped within reach (something like $100K IIRC) of just about anybody. Natural mutations that follow the path of precisely covid-19's genetics, quite uncommon.

Read the Yuri Deigin piece, listen to the youtube. If you're in too big a hurry, skip the first 25% of each and jump in later, still completely clear to grok.

Re: The media's lab leak fiasco

#256

Post by barrkel »

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.

I think there's a genuine spectrum between man-made bio-weapon (not very believable IMO), through gain of function research (I've read enough that - if true - the RNA evidence suggests that it probably wasn't this), through to leak from animal studies.

Gain of function, if it isn't ruled out by RNA or other approaches, isn't quite man-made and is at least somewhat plausible. Gain of function research on the flu is (as I understand it) how the flu vaccine is created ahead of the season.

https://jme.bmj.com/content/41/11/901

Evans NG, Lipsitch M, Levinson M The ethics of biosafety considerations in gain-of-function research resulting in the creation of potential pandemic pathogens

Journal of Medical Ethics 2015;41:901-908.

This paper proposes an ethical framework for evaluating biosafety risks of gain-of-function (GOF) experiments that create novel strains of influenza expected to be virulent and transmissible in humans, so-called potential pandemic pathogens (PPPs). Such research raises ethical concerns because of the risk that accidental release from a laboratory could lead to extensive or even global spread of a virulent pathogen.

Re: The media's lab leak fiasco

#257

Post by Lazare »

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 a bit of a fuzzy overlap between "man made" and "lab leak".

Specifically, the lab leak theory more or less assumes that the virus was collected from the mine, taken to Wuhan, and some research and experiments were done on it, resulting it some changes. Certainly the lab was doing research; there's an ongoing debate over what they did, who funded it, whether what they did technically qualifies as "gain of function" research, what practical impact the research could reasonably have been predicted to have, etc.

Still, if your theory is that the lab took a bat virus, performed some research on it such as "serial passaging" to determine if it could mutate to become more infectious to humans, the virus does mutate (thus proving the hypothesis), and then a sample of the mutated virus is accidentally leaked...

...that seems like a plausible theory, and it's now showing up in mainstream discussions; eg, https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/coronavirus-lab-esca.... But I could easily imagine that being considered a suggestion the virus was "man-made", and censored.

Re: The media's lab leak fiasco

#258

Post by LargoLasskhyfv »

seattle_spring wrote: post #202
narrator wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zerohedge getting banned from Twitter for publishing an expose of the Wuhan Lab which is pretty close to what is acknowledged as a probable story these days is the most high profile example. https://www.zdnet.com/article/zerohedge-banned-from-twitter-...

Is the majority of HN really fighting for Zerohedge to be recognized as a legitimate source of information?

Is there any 'legitimate' source of information?

Methinks it's all just some form of propaganda, or another, camouflaged as crappy infotainment. So if you are into being brainwashed, you could also don your sunglasses, and have at least some fun, skimming between the lines.

Re: The media's lab leak fiasco

#259

Post by ratsmack »

shkkmo wrote: post #200
ratsmack wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you think it would play out if it is found that our government (e.g. NIH/CDC) supplied funding for research that created this virus? I suspect many countries would take notice.

The US absolutely knew there were risks here. US diplomats knew that the lab had insufficient safety systems for the research that we already know was being done in Wuhan. Those diplomats explicitly warned the US of the dangers several years ago but the US did nothing. [0] If anything, the Wuhan lab needed more US funding that was primarily focused on safety. Edit: If you want to prevent certain types of dangerous re…

Just throwing more money a any particular situation is no guarantee the situation will improve. In this case, the Wuhan lab is controlled by China and will conform to Chinese laws and regulations.

Re: The media's lab leak fiasco

#260

Post by bgentry »

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.

I think there’s some nuance here. The virus could have a perfectly natural origin in bats, but not be able to infect humans in its original form. There are many ways the virus could have come to infect humans, such as by manipulating it directly, via gain of function research, or even just by a random mutation that managed to infect a lab worker (seems unlikely since it’s alleged there may have needed to be an intermediate species). Whether you could consider the virus “lab created” or “man-made” at that point is maybe a matter of debate. Even the Guardian article on Facebook’s policy changes seemed to conflate these scenarios, so I’m not entirely sure what the changes were.

But they’re all a far cry from the more extreme narrative of “this was deliberately engineered to infect humans and/or as a bioweapon”, which is not what is being suggested here (nor, it seems, was that ever what Tom Cotton suggested).

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