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

Scientists believed Covid leaked from Wuhan lab, but feared debate could hurt

telegraph.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

501–510 of 833 posts

Re: Scientists believed Covid leaked from Wuhan lab, but feared debate could hurt

#501

Post by sumedh »

jacquesm wrote: post #341

If this comment thread is the way the self proclaimed smartest forum on the web deals with articles like this then we're doomed. This article contributes zero actual evidence, is littered with out of context quotes (including of all places the title), doesn't appear to understand the science or the probabilities involved and finally is clearly written with an agenda. It shouldn't have been posted to HN in the first p…

> This article contributes zero actual evidence

What evidence has China given to show that the virus jumped from animals?

Re: Scientists believed Covid leaked from Wuhan lab, but feared debate could hurt

#502

Post by headsoup »

roenxi wrote: post #446
cortic wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Happened in the UK as well, Boris (and to be fair the WHO) told us masks were counter productive. That they might get you to stand closer to people and touch your face more, increasing your chances of getting Covid.. All presumably to save a mask shortage; But we know, and they should have known, that the public doesn't buy the same kind of masks that our NHS buys and there never was going to be any shortage. This en…

> It lead to some number of deaths, probably 10s of thousands in the UK Is there solid evidence anywhere that masks are important one way or the other? While it is plausible that a mask could prevent an infection in an encounter, I've not yet seen anyone waving something conclusive around that masks prevent infections over the course of a pandemic. I've managed to avoid the coronavirus for 2 years now and as far as I…

No there isn't. The studies touted have serious issues, but because they align to 'consensus' nobody checks, not daring be called some misinformation agent or 'anti-vaxxer.'

They knew this after sars. It's not hard to find the evidence from after then.

It's just a nice visual way to make people feel safer against the thing they're told to fear.

Re: Scientists believed Covid leaked from Wuhan lab, but feared debate could hurt

#503

Post by throwaway4good »

Jimmc414 wrote: post #3

[But a leading scientist told Sir Jeremy that “further debate would do unnecessary harm to science in general and science in China in particular”. Dr Collins, the former director of the US National Institutes of Health, warned it could damage “international harmony”.] The entire foundation of science is based upon empirical observation and asking hypothetical questions. It is discouraging that scientists can make sta…

Check out Peter Daszak twitter profile for an example for the abuse you will get if you speak out against the lab leak hypothesis:

https://twitter.com/PeterDaszak

Quite understandable if you would not want to participate in that.

Re: Scientists believed Covid leaked from Wuhan lab, but feared debate could hurt

#504

Post by sumedh »

randomsearch wrote: post #313

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…

> At a time when a global pandemic requires international cooperation and focus

Someone should tell that to China.

Re: Scientists believed Covid leaked from Wuhan lab, but feared debate could hurt

#505

Post by Tenoke »

KingOfCoders wrote: post #487
raxxorrax wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trump is irrelevant here, in fact I believe a lot of people voting for him out of spite because they felt they had been lied to by the other party. You will not improve the situation with more paternalism. That is has degraded to "owning the libs" is a predictable result. Yes, people jump to conclusion, but if you want to build a society of trust, you let some people jump. Others will hit the breaks if no conclusive…

Quoted post unavailable.

This is the kind of extremely simplistic view one holds if they only get their news via The Daily Show or are in a massive echo chamber that tells them their opponents are cartoon villains.

Such events are rarely so conveniently mono-causal and it should be easy to disprove for yourself if you weren't just looking for a convenient narrative given that Trump had significant minority vote (30-38% of Hispanics, Asian and other ethnicities).

Re: Scientists believed Covid leaked from Wuhan lab, but feared debate could hurt

#506

Post by michaelt »

Fiahil wrote: post #389
enriquto wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Once government officials and scientists gaslight us about what they think they should, how does one know they wouldn't for anything at all they decide to? For me it was the masks. The masks were my tipping point. At some point at the beginning of the pandemic they said that the disease was totally not airborne and that masks were useless. I remember vividly president Macron (a person that I respected before that)…

> I remember vividly president Macron (a person that I respected before that) very serious in TV explaining to all the citizens of the republic that we should not buy nor wear masks. Ah! This one is actually a story of "the lesser of two evils". You can't really tell people to buy masks where there is none available, and you can't really tell there is nothing to do unless you want to put every one in panic mode. You…

> Ah! This one is actually a story of "the lesser of two evils".

Well, there could have been a third route - Buy out the entire supply, then announce that masks help, but they do the most good on the faces of doctors and nurses so the supply of N95 masks has been reserved for them by the government; and those who can sew their own cloth masks are encouraged to do so.

The decisions were made in a hurry, and our politicians aren't doctors or scientists, so some mistakes are to be expected. But there's no denying the early stop-buying-masks announcements were a mistake IMHO.

Re: Scientists believed Covid leaked from Wuhan lab, but feared debate could hurt

#507

Post by nicoburns »

baobabKoodaa wrote: post #462
chimprich wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All presumably to save a mask shortage I don't think so. There seemed to be genuine uncertainty early on in the pandemic about whether masks would be helpful. We didn't know if the virus was airborne and there was a question about whether the masks would actually be helpful. For example, the masks could have had very low benefit but encouraged people to touch their face more. Whitty in March 2020: "In terms of wear…

> There seemed to be genuine uncertainty early on in the pandemic Among the civilian population, perhaps. Not among politicians and health officials. At least Fauci, WHO, and Finnish health authorities HAVE come out afterwards and admitted that they lied about masks to conserve them for health personnel.

To be fair, that's not an unreasonable concern for them to have. Masks running out for healthcare professionals would have been an absolute disaster.

Re: Scientists believed Covid leaked from Wuhan lab, but feared debate could hurt

#508

Post by headsoup »

causi wrote: post #399
enriquto wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Once government officials and scientists gaslight us about what they think they should, how does one know they wouldn't for anything at all they decide to? For me it was the masks. The masks were my tipping point. At some point at the beginning of the pandemic they said that the disease was totally not airborne and that masks were useless. I remember vividly president Macron (a person that I respected before that)…

The CDC and WHO are still spouting off about cleaning surfaces without, to my knowledge, one single well-documented case of surface transmission.

It's not a long stretch to question if anything the CDC recommends actually comes from caring for public health at all rather than private interests.

The US is becoming more and more the outlier in over-hyped fear and infantalism vs a world moving on.

Re: Scientists believed Covid leaked from Wuhan lab, but feared debate could hurt

#509

Post by ratg13 »

cocoggu wrote: post #458
rozab wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Evidence? The hypothesis of the article is that certain scientists did believe a lab leak was likely, but hid their views. The article provides ample evidence for this. If you also want it to conclusively prove the lab leak hypothesis in the same breath then I'd say your expectations are too high. Better publications have tackled the subject anyway: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/06/the-lab-leak-theory-...

Then the title of the article is highly misleading. Using "Scientists" instead of "Some scientists" implies that the great majority of the scientists believed in this hypothesis, and there is no evidence for that.

If an article is headlined "Firefighters rescue cat from tree"

Is your assumption that all firefighters were involved in the rescue?

Re: Scientists believed Covid leaked from Wuhan lab, but feared debate could hurt

#510

Post by raxxorrax »

KingOfCoders wrote: post #487
raxxorrax wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trump is irrelevant here, in fact I believe a lot of people voting for him out of spite because they felt they had been lied to by the other party. You will not improve the situation with more paternalism. That is has degraded to "owning the libs" is a predictable result. Yes, people jump to conclusion, but if you want to build a society of trust, you let some people jump. Others will hit the breaks if no conclusive…

Quoted post unavailable.

Sorry, I don't believe this story at all. I believe this is a story people tell themselves to feel better about "the others".

The whole analytic lens of white people against minorities is purely made up in my opinion and I have seen no evidence to the contrary. On the other side justification was made up for real institutional discrimination against white people with the same lies that spawned accusations like this. But that wasn't to combat racism, it was to satisfy egoistical vanity and weak characters.

I belong to a minority and I feel pressured to state this whenever I engage with people that bring forward such ideas and that is not a mistake.

Back to reality: People never cared much about race. There are some exceptions to this and there is still prejudice against certain minorities. But I firmly believe your characterization doesn't understand the perspective of Trump supporters very well.

Post reply on HN