331–340 of 833 posts
So, did it leak from a Chinese lab? If so, why isn't China being held economically and ethically liable? Why do they continue stonewalling any investigation and suffer zero consequences?
Because mistakes happen. The correct course of action would be to help them ensure it doesn't heppen again, with procedures, audits, etc.
You know this effect, when you've been reading the news for years, and finally your favorite source has a story about something you studied or worked on, and you realize how low quality or outright wrong it is? The spell is broken and you realize how little they know about anything they write. Once government officials and scientists gaslight us about what they think they should, how does one know they wouldn't for a…
I think this view is overly negative. First of all, consider the timing of this all; this was super early days. People, including many experts, had much less facts then, and the topic was sensitive. I think it's perfectly reasonable and even necessary that ill-founded but hard-to-disprove theories such as the lab leak theory at the time are examined critically, but to do so requires a healthy debate - in particular,…
The mistakes that were made need correction. Don't advertise diversity, live up to it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you really trusted science, you would trust that information and knowledge is dynamic and they don’t always have the right answer at the beginning, just an answer that gets changed over time as more knowledge pours in. I’m guessing you prefer your scientists to be absolutely right at the beginning right?
Anthony Fauci has explicitly admitted on camera that the reason "masks don't work" was promoted to the public initially was to conserve PPE for the highest-risk health workers [0]. It was NOT a case of the science changing: > So, why weren't we told to wear masks in the beginning? > "Well, the reason for that is that we were concerned the public health community, and many people were saying this, were concerned that…
I have mixed feelings about this, and I certainly think it’s not as clear cut as HN is converging on, although I share the same instincts. On the one hand, yes, science should be completely open and unhindered by geopolitics. But recall that Trump was in the White House at the time. We are a community of generally highly educated nerds with a strong understanding of science and engineering. We understand that all lab…
And so? Does the name of the current US president alter unrelated facts and findings?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is being used as proof that they leaked it from a lab, when it is just how societies built like China behave. You can't infer anything from normal behavior. It is similar to the way that Hussein's actions in blocking access to presidential palaces was considered to be highly suspicious and therefore proof that he was hiding his weapons program. Turns out he was just trying to save face domestically by standing up…
Didn’t work out well for him.
I feel like it was impossible to really deal with this debate responsibly, what with the current state of society and social media where everyone has figured out how to weaponize false information, before we as a society have figured out how to really deal with it. Even now it seems like everyone wants to elide the massive differences between "accidental lab leak" and "deliberate lab leak". Even now the common phrase…
> Even now it seems like everyone wants to elide the massive differences between "accidental lab leak" and "deliberate lab leak".
Mostly people who wanted to vilify the lab leak theory did that.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you are inclined to think the CCP knows / is covering up a lab leak; you are also inclined to think that they'd release fake disclosure data to cover it up.
Faking data is much harder: it’s easy to forget to remove something, change numbers so they don’t match other numbers, or make up numbers which have the statistical signal of manufactured data. Even being a great power does not prevent these kind of mistakes, because of the skill level censors would need in multiple scientific fields to make a good forgery. People get away with it in minor papers in the social scienc…
Time tables, budgets, staffing docs, those are readily forgeable. Any leftover discrepancies can be chocked up to clerical error. This is doubly so if the problematic research was classified or compartmentalized - files pertaining to those programs are often designed to be easily expunged.
Ultimately, China could release as many files as people ask, and never be able to settle the debate. You can't prove/disprove the existence of files they claim do not exist.
Our best bet would be whistleblowers - ideally multiple trusted and independent ones - who can testify to a hidden program. However, we can't use the lack of whistleblowers to prove the lack of a program, which is where we're stuck today.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Anthony Fauci has explicitly admitted on camera that the reason "masks don't work" was promoted to the public initially was to conserve PPE for the highest-risk health workers [0]. It was NOT a case of the science changing: > So, why weren't we told to wear masks in the beginning? > "Well, the reason for that is that we were concerned the public health community, and many people were saying this, were concerned that…
But they explicitly told us that at the time: “don’t rush out and buy masks, we don’t have enough for healthcare workers as it is, you don’t need them more than they do.” The right just took some sound bites and excerpted the rest of the discussion to “prove” that Fauci was lying, while everyone else was rolling their eyes, and still are. People hear the things that support the story they want to believe, and then ig…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
On one hand, China hasn’t faced ethical or economic consequences for literal concentration camps so why would this be different? On the other hand - would you really seek to punish an entire nation for the (supposed) actions of a few careless scientists?
> literal concentration camps I've seen this repeated hundreds of times, approximately 0 times with proof. Can I find these camps somewhere? Are there photos? As it stands, a casual reader must conclude this is part of a propaganda campaign vilifying China.
The general lack of action by governments and corporations means a casual reader must conclude nobody with any power cares, since they’re all getting rich off china.