Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The media's lab leak fiasco

slowboring.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

501–510 of 736 posts

Re: The media's lab leak fiasco

#501

Post by iammisc »

onionisafruit wrote: post #480
tootie wrote: post #467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I can tell this is a false premise. The scientific consensus on zoonotic origin was never really considered conclusive by anyone and was never really sold as being conclusive. There was a very strong backlash against the ridiculous theories spread by people like Tom Cotton that virus was engineered that absolutely soured the debate. And people like Trump and his sycophants who didn't just suggest lab leak b…

How can you read this then casually say Tom Cotton was spreading ridiculous theories that covid was engineered? One of the main points in the article is he never said that and what he did say was pretty reasonable. It’s ok if you think the article is wrong about that, but you should at least give a source for your claim at this point.

There is no source for these claims. Just like with Trump, people get angry and upset with what they think he said based on the impression from the media, not what was actually said. Just look at the 'fine people on both sides' comment that was taken ridiculously out of context.

This same thing happened to Sarah Palin with the 'I can see Russia from my house' phrase, which she never said. It was part of a comedy sketch, yet it was used to attack her. It is absolutely ridiculous. No one is interested anymore in what is said, just what they think someone 'like that' would say.

Re: The media's lab leak fiasco

#502

Post by iammisc »

tootie wrote: post #497
lawnchair_larry wrote: post #475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re incorrect on nearly all of this and haven’t “broken out” of the forced narrative. All I can suggest is you go back to the primary sources yourself. Don’t take my word for it, don’t take your preferred media outlet’s word for it. Dig it up and decide. The lab leak is overwhelmingly likely. It’s the Occam’s Razor without question. It’s still a hypothesis to be clear. It’s not proven. It could be wrong. But if we…

The lab leak theory is not Occam's razor. We've had many, many pandemics and epidemics and none have been associated with research labs. We've had SARS outbreaks in China that are not associated with a lab. There is also no proof beyond circumstance to associate it with the lab. And it's not wrong because Trump said it. He may end up being partly correct. The fact remains he had no reason to be as confident in his pr…

> And it's not wrong because Trump said it. He may end up being partly correct. The fact remains he had no reason to be as confident in his pronouncement as he was aside from political expediency.

except his CDC head claimed after the new administration took over that Trump's administration did have additional classified evidence that made it more likely. It is extremely likely that the intelligence community knew of the chinese researchers who had gone to the hospital (and maybe more) way before it was released to the public. By the time these facts are made public, they have been researched and assigned a high level of confidence.

Re: The media's lab leak fiasco

#503

Post by iammisc »

CiceroCiceronis wrote: post #436
shaicoleman wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's also systematic censorship and disinformation against prophylaxis and early treatment information, which could prevent millions of hospitalisations and deaths. [1] e.g. YouTube recently censored the Ivermectin Global Summit, in which doctors and scientists showed the overwhelming scientific evidence for Ivermectin from around the world. [2] 1. https://covid19criticalcare.com/videos-and-press/flccc-relea... 2.…

A recently released meta—analysis from the British Medical Journal suggests that the evidence base for ivermectin’s efficacy in treating COVID-19 is low. https://ebm.bmj.com/content/early/2021/05/26/bmjebm-2021-111...

You have to be careful though because we've seen medical journals engage in deceptive practices recently around drugs that could potentially treat COVID. For example, the data showing hydroxychloroquine to be harmful to COVID patients was completely made up or non-existent. Unfortunately, medical academia, in some failed attempt to 'stick to the facts', have led themselves to have a lower a priori assumption of correctness.

Re: The media's lab leak fiasco

#504

Post by iammisc »

Godel_unicode wrote: post #389
jacob2484 wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remember - people were called fascists + racists for mentioning or discussing the lab leak theory.

Remember, the discussion of the lab leak theory is strongly correlated with a rise in hate crimes against Asian-Americans. There were also lots of links made between the lab leak theory and needing to tighten immigration policies to keep out "undesirables".

> Remember, the discussion of the lab leak theory is strongly correlated with a rise in hate crimes against Asian-Americans

By black people, the group least likely to be part of the party whose leader's immigration policy you decry, and who have always had anti-asian sentiment after the LA riots.

Re: The media's lab leak fiasco

#505

Post by Drunk_Engineer »

nraynaud wrote: post #500

What all those Wuhan lab story miss is a good explanation as to why the oldest cases are outside Wuhan.

Thank you. Had to scroll to the next page to find this comment. The lab leak theory never made any sense, because it does not fit the timeline of the viral spread. Nor does it explain why some countries already had T-cell immunity to the virus.

Re: The media's lab leak fiasco

#506

Post by premium-komodo »

dqpb wrote: post #403
neither_color wrote: post #34

There’s a question as to why that fake consensus emerged. But I think the more troubling question is: How did people let the original story of what Tom Cotton even said go so badly awry? Essentially Cotton said something that was then transformed into a fake claim of a Chinese bio-attack, then the fake claim was debunked, and then the debunking was applied to the real claim with little attention paid to ongoing disag…

Is HN any better? I got censored and ridiculously rate limited today for trying to post a similar article.

Many HN users seem confident they know the truth, and that they know which sources are credible, and are comfortable suppressing anything contrary to what they already think, often without explanation. I don't think HN is quite an echo chamber yet, but it's well on its way.

Re: The media's lab leak fiasco

#507

Post by BobbyJo »

tootie wrote: post #497
lawnchair_larry wrote: post #475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re incorrect on nearly all of this and haven’t “broken out” of the forced narrative. All I can suggest is you go back to the primary sources yourself. Don’t take my word for it, don’t take your preferred media outlet’s word for it. Dig it up and decide. The lab leak is overwhelmingly likely. It’s the Occam’s Razor without question. It’s still a hypothesis to be clear. It’s not proven. It could be wrong. But if we…

The lab leak theory is not Occam's razor. We've had many, many pandemics and epidemics and none have been associated with research labs. We've had SARS outbreaks in China that are not associated with a lab. There is also no proof beyond circumstance to associate it with the lab. And it's not wrong because Trump said it. He may end up being partly correct. The fact remains he had no reason to be as confident in his pr…

You're not actually refuting any argument the parent made.

First, pointing out that other pandemics have happened absent lab accidents doesn't negate all the evidence pointing in that direction this time. As far as evidence and probability goes (with regard to the potential evolutionary paths the virus would have had to have taken in the wild), the lab leak hypothesis is very strong. The simplest answer is that it leaked from the lab a few miles away studying this exact family of viruses.

Second, the parent wasn't saying anything about whether or not Trump was twisting the truth or being dramatic. His whole point is that the discussion was able to be hijacked by the simple act of a divisive figure talking about it. It's fine if people dismiss Trump (the smart thing to do honestly), but allowing that to bias you in the opposite direction without any evidence is making the exact same mistake he did.

Re: The media's lab leak fiasco

#508

Post by argonaut »

Moodles wrote: post #16

The media is so disappointing these days. A lot of people don't remember this, but the mainstream media outlets were actually playing down the coronavirus pandemic at the start. Then they attacked the travel ban to China. Then did a complete U-turn. Pelosi was dancing in the streets of Chinatown San Francisco to prove how safe and not racist she is. It seemed like they hated Trump and would fight anything he did. htt…

I'm not disappointed the media got Covid wrong at various points in time. Most people got Covid wrong at the beginning. And almost everyone, including me, has had a bad Covid take at least once.

I didn't see Covid coming. And if someone really saw it coming, they could have made thousands/millions shorting the stock market (and some people did).

Point is, I don't view this as grounds to attack the media. I do find it disappointing that the media is usually not willing to admit their mistakes, and usually doesn't do a good job at expressing scientific uncertainty.

Re: The media's lab leak fiasco

#509

Post by R0b0t1 »

pavlov wrote: post #462
R0b0t1 wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Real estate is expensive too, but there are "town square" doctrines in some states where presenting yourself as a public space means you must not discriminate on usage. This goes further -- in some states where such doctrine does not exist it was kind of synthesized because some electoral districts have, say, 80% of the electorate in an apartment building which a judge ruled must be accessible to candidates who run.

A comment section on a blog presents itself as a public space. Does this mean nobody can moderate comments anymore? Or if the rule only applies to political expression, can spammers just adopt the formula: “I love candidate $X because he buys viagra at http:yyy” Or, if the rule is that big enough sites suddenly become “town squares”, that seems like a major disincentive to American companies to grow. Others would wal…

A direct analogue is the concept of an easement. If you get large enough and enough people use your site, that is when the public square doctrine would kick in. Similar to how eventually if you let people keep walking through your yard it becomes public use land.

Usually you have multiple chances to fight it. The owner of a square continues to own it because it makes them money.

Re: The media's lab leak fiasco

#510

Post by [deleted] »

lawnchair_larry wrote: post #457
seattle_spring wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally. Here's the thing: 95% of the time I see someone argue what you're arguing online, it's from someone who only believes completely false news sources (rather than biased).

Here’s the thing, no, they don’t. You recently said this to me: ”Part-time Portlander here! You have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. Please stop basing your worldview on Infowars talking points.” I’ve obviously never seen anything produced by infowars and this was a dismissive epithet, doing exactly the problem described here. You’re one of them. And my point you were responding to was objectively true.

[deleted]
Post reply on HN