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Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

thetimes.co.uk

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Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#461

Post by zh3 »

pcrh wrote: post #55

After a quick read of the article, it presents no new data, and is replete with innuendo pointing at the Wuhan lab, rather than any direct evidence. Most importantly, the general reader should know that all labs researching viruses do research on dangerous viruses. After all there is no incentive to research benign viruses. So the fact that the Wuhan lab worked on coronaviruses is not in itself an indication of any i…

Reference the statement that several employees were ill in the months leading up to the outbreak, these were tested and (reportedly) did not have Covid antibodies - this also seems to be missing from the article.

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#462

Post by HlessClaudesman »

jeswin wrote: post #431

I'd like for someone to throughly research and write about how it became taboo to discuss the virus leak theory. How researchers who discussed it were shunned, tagged as racists, and in some cases had their posts banned from Social Media. About how almost the entire scientific community discarded the idea as impossible. How during the early pandemic years, no mainstream news media dared talk about the possibility. Te…

Humans have a bias towards: "That would be terrible if true, therefore it is not true."

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#463

Post by WastingMyTime89 »

HardlyCurious wrote: post #387
Fomite wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've got a PhD in infectious disease epidemiology who got his start in researching respiratory pathogens and whose work on coronaviruses has been cited 387 times. I'd both put my estimate at much lower than 95%, and I'd be substantially less confident in it, since my expertise kicks in about two weeks after an initial spillover event occurs.

It is fact that a group that funds research in Wuhan (Eco health alliance) submitted a grant request to DARPA to fund research to engineer a coronavirus which could infect human lungs by inserted a specific cleavage site. Covid has that mutation exactly where the grant proposal planned to insert it. And no viruses in teh wild have been found to have that feature. This grant proposal was submitted in 2018. For covid t…

> Think about it

Did you consider that maybe the reason this proposal was written was because this mutation was the most likely way this kind of virus could mutate to infect humans?

I don’t understand why people keep throwing around all kind of unsubstantiated facts like if they suddenly made things clearer.

The facts are not that complicated. Could the pandemic be linked to an accidental leak from a gain-of-function study at the Wuhan lab? Most certainly. Do we have evidence that it did? No, we don’t. Could it come from somewhere else? Sure, it can. Was there a properly done inquiry with full collaboration from the lab and the host country? Absolutely not, China was extremely uncooperative and did all it could to control the narrative surrounding the pandemic.

From that, I conclude that it’s highly unlikely we will ever learn anything definitive. Therefor, discussing this is pretty much pointless.

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#464

Post by dang »

stainablesteel wrote: post #204
pcrh wrote: post #55

After a quick read of the article, it presents no new data, and is replete with innuendo pointing at the Wuhan lab, rather than any direct evidence. Most importantly, the general reader should know that all labs researching viruses do research on dangerous viruses. After all there is no incentive to research benign viruses. So the fact that the Wuhan lab worked on coronaviruses is not in itself an indication of any i…

[flagged]

It's against the site rules to accuse other users of being shills in this way. Please see https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and don't do this again. Instead, if someone is wrong or you feel they are, please explain how they are wrong and provide correct information without taking swipes.

For a longer explanation of why we don't allow this, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35932851 and https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme.... The short version is that the vast majority of these perceptions aren't grounded in evidence and we don't want discussions to be poisoned by accusations of bad faith.

p.s. Your comment would have been fine without that first paragraph.

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#465

Post by Atotalnoob »

toast0 wrote: post #234
reuben_scratton wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> Humans brought the virus to the market. It's screamingly obvious and always has been. Well of course, the racoon dogs et al all come in via human transport. Testing infrastructure was poor, and maybe it still is. Chinese government interest was not in finding facts, but in taking action to 'solve the problem'. It's hard to find facts when the people with power just want the problem to go away. IMHO, that doesn't we…

They said not to use them because there was a shortage of PPE.

They prioritized healthcare workers to wear masks

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#466

Post by [deleted] »

throwaway485 wrote: post #438
jeswin wrote: post #431

I'd like for someone to throughly research and write about how it became taboo to discuss the virus leak theory. How researchers who discussed it were shunned, tagged as racists, and in some cases had their posts banned from Social Media. About how almost the entire scientific community discarded the idea as impossible. How during the early pandemic years, no mainstream news media dared talk about the possibility. Te…

There was a brief window at the beginning where it would have mattered to know the origin of the virus. Intervention at a wet market or in a wuhan lab could have happened. However, this theory was circulated and promoted to inspire hatred and distrust of many authority figures. Authorities who put significant resources forward to save lives. Even today we're still seeing thousands die from what may very well be a con…

[deleted]

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#467

Post by localplume »

jeswin wrote: post #431

I'd like for someone to throughly research and write about how it became taboo to discuss the virus leak theory. How researchers who discussed it were shunned, tagged as racists, and in some cases had their posts banned from Social Media. About how almost the entire scientific community discarded the idea as impossible. How during the early pandemic years, no mainstream news media dared talk about the possibility. Te…

[dead]

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#468

Post by bruce511 »

inciampati wrote: post #453
bruce511 wrote: post #450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me fair the folk dying today are tangential to the origin story. I'm not sure the origin story mattered a whole lot along the way, other than being a useful political distraction. I don't think it informed personal or medical behaviour. Of course discussions around vaccines, masks, social distancing etc did have a huge impact on personal behaviours, so those are far more impactful both than and in hindsight. The d…

The actual origin is critical to understand, because it will happen again. We should be ready and able to watch out for where it might come from. Can you agree that, if it was generated by human activity that we can control, it'd be critical to know this and spread information about it widely?

Absolutely. Perhaps it was grown in a lab, perhaps it was released, or perhaps it escaped. All happened before, all will happen again.

Given that I don't think we -can- control human behavior, there are good labs, there are bad labs, etc, I think the ability to -respond- I paramount. While the origin is interesting in an historical way, lessons from the response will be more useful going forwards.

We need to respond in a way that is independent of origin. That will ultimately lead to better outcomes, and incidentally reduce the risk of bio-terrorism.

[Aside - if it was lab grown I don't think it was released on purpose (it wouldn't have been released locally). Which means some sort of failure in the safety protocols, which likely means human error. General discussion on that topic I useless except for a tiny sliver of people doing that work. I'm not sure discussing it on social media really achieves anything. ]

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#469

Post by ipaddr »

px43 wrote: post #448
jeswin wrote: post #431

I'd like for someone to throughly research and write about how it became taboo to discuss the virus leak theory. How researchers who discussed it were shunned, tagged as racists, and in some cases had their posts banned from Social Media. About how almost the entire scientific community discarded the idea as impossible. How during the early pandemic years, no mainstream news media dared talk about the possibility. Te…

At a high level, it's pretty simple. There was a very well coordinated and intentional conflation of the term "lab leak" with the conspiracy theories around China and the WHO intentionally developing and deploying bio-weapons as a means of global population control. These conspiracy theories lead to a marked rise in violent attacks on anyone of Asian descent in the US, and generally fed into the wet dream fantasies o…

The news was reporting on anti Asian feelings prior to covid. When covid hit this automatically became racist. Wearing a mask was racist. Bizarre. It caused many to ignore media/leaders because they were so obviously off base and constantly proven wrong and backtracking they lost credibility.

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#470

Post by LargoLasskhyfv »

PierceJoy wrote: post #457
coding123 wrote: post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Very sorry about your Dad, but you have no evidence vaccination was related to his ALS. Hundred of millions of people were vaccinated in short period of time, and there is obviously a group of people who were always going to develop ALS within that time frame. Given the large n of the first group, overlap was inevitable. Temporal proximity doesn't establish causation when there's an overlap.

[flagged]
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