Live data from Hacker News

China clamping down on coronavirus research, deleted pages suggest

theguardian.com

351–360 of 385 posts

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

#351
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same thing happening now with Hydroxychloroquine. Lots of interesting articles on how it might help. Media decides it’s a political football. No more articles

Your “lots of interesting articles” were what made it a political football. Before it was picked up by the right-wing propaganda network there was one obviously flawed study and some fringe non-experts promoting it to people anxious for a cure, followed by a bunch of actual experts urging caution.

For the people who might not have followed this closely, here’s a history of the spread:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/04/13/how-false...

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

#352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only reason I can possibly fathom as to why it would be nefarious would be trade. And that’s a stretch.

I'm totally willing to entertain that argument, but their exports have suffered tremendously and any forecasters could have predicted that a global slowdown would hurt such an interconnected country like China the most. So I am just unable to connect the dots here as to what the conspiracy theorists think the motive is. Conspiracy theories that end up actually being true generally have one thing in common: they have…

I agree with you, just pointing out the only thing I could come up with. Great comment.

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

#353
post #301
post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A) COVID-19 doesn't kill everyone it comes in contact with. Depending on where you live, more people in the last 3 months may have become seriously ill from a food-borne illness than from COVID-19. B)Food-borne illness actually does kill around 150,000 per year worldwide. It is a serious concern, and difficult to track/contain. There are also concerns around regulations being too lax, not enough inspectors, and livin…

A) Saying the "last three months" is intellectually disingenuous because the virus hadn't even been introduced to most states three months ago. I'm sure in some areas more people have died in the last three months from ski accidents but that is irrelevant. Name one state where you honestly believe the next three months will have comparable cases of food-borne deaths to Covid-19 deaths. B) I'm not disagreeing with you…

> intellectually disingenuous...

Given poor testing/tracking, it probably was floating around in the USA 3 months ago. I am not saying that COVID-19 is not deadlier, but that food-borne illnesses are serious and rife in the food supply, and can lead to death for compromised individuals, yet we have not shutdown our markets or meat processing facilities despite outbreaks of food-borne illnesses being somewhat common. Those illnesses can indeed lead to death for thousands of people each year, especially those with pre-existing health conditions.

Also the cruise industry is notorious for food-borne outbreaks of Norovirus. These cruises typically have multiple incidents every year, and are great vectors for spreading viral infections, yet the cruise industry has never been shutdown.

You think eating bats and going to church are not comparable, because that's your opinion on what's culturally normal. Others might say eating a bat is delicious and going to church is dumb. Both have risks and I am not a fan either. No one should be eating bats or going to church right now, but that's going to offend people on both sides.

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

#354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's little evidence to support the cover-up charge https://old.reddit.com/r/geopolitics/comments/fnvvh8/some_th...

Since that post was made, there has been widespread reporting that US intelligence agencies are quite sure that China's numbers regarding the infection have been fabricated and underreported by quite a large amount. [0] Keep in mind that the Chinese government doesn't have to be pursuing a centralized disinformation campaign for it to occur. It would appear that at least a decent amount of the misinformation is occur…

1. I'm well aware of that. Is that the only new evidence that's come to light since the piece I linked to though? Would have expected something more solid than unnamed sources from inside national security (see: big hack)

2. I'll grant that that's possibility in the exact same sense in which I grant the centralized cover-up theory to be a possibility, and in which I grant both the lab creation and the lab accident origin theories to be possibilities. But I'm not interested in possibilities. What I'm interested in is positive evidence supportive of this or that theory.

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

#355
post #322
post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one is being persecuted. It is correct to suspect. In a murder investigation the police start with those closest related to the victim. If money is missing from a bank vault you start your investigation looking at all those who had access. When a pandemic starts outside of a lab studying the same kind of virus tearing through the world you start with the lab. We will likely never know for sure, but it is absolutel…

You're accusing a specific person of involvement in a major pandemic with evidence you admit is flimsy at best, with little to no hope of ever confirming.

No I’m not accusing a specific person, I was pointing out that the US actually funded this research here domestically and the doctor went to Wuhan to continue her research when we closed the program as proof bat Corona virus was being studied there.

We will never be allowed by totalitarian China to collect evidence, so all we have is suspicion. Very justified suspicion.

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

#356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a shame that China's covering something up, which will only fuel the most outlandish theories.

There's little evidence to support the cover-up charge https://old.reddit.com/r/geopolitics/comments/fnvvh8/some_th...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22849747

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

#357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This entire video is translating open-source conspiracy theories that Chinese netizens conjured up under lockdown. You know what else was conjured up under lock down? US engineered weapon from Fort Detrick disguised as vape pneumonia that later infected Wuhan via international military games. Both theories has exactly the same credibility and validity. It's ridiculous that people think laowhy and serpenza are credibl…

You are saying that both theory have the same credibility. I don't agree, because you can actually go see the sources linked in the video description. So why don't you go see the sources? Is your claim that laowhy86 is divorced, and that his judgement is clouded, substantiated? I didn't think so, so to me it looks like plain old smear. This lab accident, on the contrary, is NOT unsubstantiated claims, and acting as i…

The Wuhan lab leak theory has as much credible endorsement as Fort Detrik - i.e. none. Both are replete with connect the dot sources conjured by Chinese /r/conspiracy equivalents, the latter complete with corresponding proof drawn from US media sources. And if you believe CIA's recent allegations evidence of virus in Wuhan dating back to November... then the timeline actually syncs up with the US military games theory. Both are credible depending on what one choose to belief. It's just that neither is believed by most experts, but they however endorsed through political posturing and perpetuated by "useful idiots".

laowhy86, bitter expats doing China-bad for clicks is well trodden career pivot. You can see clearly in his youtube timeline when he transitioned from prosaic China musings to anti-CPC bashing after he left the country. His authority or lack of absolutely has to do with the fact that he's a youtube travel blogger and not subject matter expert - again of which there are many - who has not endorsed such theories. I'm not appealing to a singular authority, but a community of China watchers where conspiracy theories are dismissed as conspiracy theories. Unless your conspiracy is that they all got bought off - including anti-China institutions - and are collectively incompetent. Or alternatively, a youtuber is endorsing conspiracy for clicks. Which is more likely? Which is the kind of thing a stupid person would entertain?

Re: Taiwan, they released the alleged emails that they had information on H2H on Dec31st. Never mind there's no way they would be able to verify such information since they only had their first imported case on Jan21st. There's Taiwanese interviews in early Jan where their own CDC deputy director stated it was impossible to verify H2H until new cases happen after Jan14th. Their Dec31st email turned out to be the exact correspondence provided by Wuhan medical officials to the WHO and other medical community prior - they are treating novel corona patients in isolation wards which is standard practice. AKA it was nothing. Also elevating Taiwan was part of a coordinated US propaganda push to undermine the WHO including that interview (by HK news no less) that attempts to discredit the WHO via ambush questions that's outside of the organization's let alone a scientist's purview. Identifying propaganda and manufactured consent is media literacy 101. Believing your countries propaganda over a competing narrative is understandable, but believing a youtuber over general consensus of experts is less so. That's Alex Jones territory.

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

#358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

hey sergiotapioca talk is cheap, be the man you're claiming to be please, go out, mingle, get close to lots of your relatives. and remember, the government are telling you to wash your hands, so don't do that. show them how you're not gonna take any crap from the elites.

Ok Chinese Government Stooge #390-AEJ-039/2

Can you please stop breaking the site guidelines? We've asked you many times, and you've been doing it repeatedly again.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

You're a good contributor otherwise, so I don't want to ban you, but at some point it becomes unfair to all the other users we've banned for less.

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

#359
post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i don't know regarding investments. but just to be clear, the trend i have noticed is a clear anti-chinese sentiment on hacker news. it comes up a lot. i think it's simply because a lot of americans are on hacker news, and there is a gross level of anti-chinese sentiment in the united states in general, probably more-so from educated people.

[flagged]

Please don't use HN for nationalistic flamewar. Or ideological flamewar.

Also in the site guidelines (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html): please don't post insinuations about astroturfing to HN. The data is clear that this is almost always in the eye of the beholder, i.e. people imagine it as an explanation for things they dislike, and they're far more likely to notice those than other things. For a great deal of past explanation, see these links:

https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

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

#360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I agree it seems incredibly illogical and unlikely that China would deliberately do something like this. But putting on my devil's advocate hat, the "no political motive" angle isn't as strong a rebuttal as it could be. The Chinese government has a long track record of fearing problems that this sort of virus would solve, problems like: 1. A heavy dependency on economic growth for legitimacy, threatened by an impendi…

I see what you're getting at, but a virus that can infect everyone and easily spread is impossible to use in any sort of directed way. A student could easily catch it from another student at school, then go home and infect their father, who may be an older high-ranking CCP official, for example. It does way more than discourage large gatherings, kills pretty indiscriminately (beyond some factors like age and history of smoking), and of course is a massive hit to the economy and society as a whole. And it'd also be very likely to spread to the rest of the world.

It'd be like trying to deal with overpopulation by setting a computer program to randomly select 20 of your own population centers to nuke, then launching nukes. Then a week later choosing other random cities around the world to nuke. Plus, it'd probably be discovered eventually, and would obviously be the most severe pre-emptive act of war ever known. It would inevitably cause WWIII, leading to much more death and chaos. It's a completely illogical and self-destructive strategy.

Now, if it were a virus that, say, couldn't infect those with a gene found in all Han Chinese people, and which isn't found in any other groups, that would be worthy of some investigation. Or only infected Uyghurs.

I know this is just playing Devil's advocate, but I think the odds are so low as to essentially be zero, unless the CCP has some sort of bizarre motivation that's extremely distant from nearly everyone else's motivation (like trying to end the world and make humans extinct).

Post reply on HN