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

telegraph.co.uk

551–560 of 833 posts

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

#551
post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

> 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, There's nothing ill-founded, it was then and is now the most reasonable and plausible explanation for the outbreak. You can do the same back of the envelope calculation today that I did 2 years ago, and nothing has made it less valid: 1. There's 100 cit…

That's one aspect to consider, sure. But with all due respect - people have publically tried to analyze this question from all kinds of angles, and there are lots and lots of equally valid extremely indirect bits of evidence, and people that have looked at this with a lot more time than me and (I'm guessing here) you to invest in the question, and they haven't been able to really conclude on this matter either way.

But when you take specific bits of evidence out of the great soup surrounding this and highlight them, it's really easy to draw the wrong conclusions, or to get the feeling that this bit of evidence simply due to familiarity is more trustworthy than some other evidence. And we also have biases towards evidence we understand, which kind of makes sense, but is also a problem, as non-experts...

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

#552

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At least Fauci, WHO, and Finnish health authorities HAVE come out afterwards and admitted that they lied about masks This is not true. I think Fauci etc. admitted that a reason masks weren't recommended early on was partly to conserve masks. That's quite different from the claim that they actively lied about them.

Perhaps. But we had a pandemic during the Obama/Biden admin, but no stockpile of appropriate PPE, masks, etc. This was, we were told, the pro-science administration. Pandemics are such a common trope that Hollywood has made multiple (bad) movies revolving around them. Yet it appears we were unprepared for the basics. What Fauci said or why isn't important. The question we should be asking is: Why were in that positio…

> We were warned - time and again - and each time that warning was ignored.

And at least in the US, their are 1000s of people receiving good money to take that warning seriously. And they still failed.

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

#553
post #459

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I know, the advice that wearing a mask doesn't protect you very well from getting Covid has held up pretty good; they're a lot better at protecting everyone else from the mask wearer. The logical flaw then was that telling people to just wear masks if they're infected doesn't work very well if highly contagious people don't know they're infected, which turned out to be the case. I can see where it might hav…

"the advice that wearing a mask doesn't protect you very well from getting Covid has held up pretty good; they're a lot better at protecting everyone else from the mask wearer." They're actually no good at anything. You can compare places that were right next to each other and which differed only in mask mandates, or look at the times mask mandates were introduced and removed. Cases don't shift. See the graphs here,…

This is nonsense. You can't do comparisons like that.

For example, mask mandates tend to get imposed when cases are rising, and removed when they fall. To say they have no effect on cases is to confuse cause and effect.

The conspiracy site you link to has no interest in looking at the data dispassionately. There's a reason why we have data science and peer review to investigate these things.

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

#555
post #531

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So if a stranger comes up to you on the street to ask you the time, do you immediately insult them for being an inferior human not deserving of your respect? In my opinion, not giving respect to fellow humans by default is the terrible choice.

No, I am neutral to them. Respect is earned. But it is a spectrum, not a binary choice. >In my opinion, not giving respect to fellow humans by default is the terrible choice. Not every walking person deserves to be called a "fellow human".

[deleted]

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

#556

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not all mice, some mice, somewhere. This virus in the form we encountered, spreads among humans best, but it also can spread between a ton of other animals. Most probable explanation is that it originated from civets (second best) and infected a single person with immunity sufficient to suppress it but insufficient to eradicate it. In this person it multiplied and mutated learning how to infect human cells best and f…

It stayed in single person for months, and somehow it got more infectious in this person, without infecting anyone. It is perfectly adapted to stain airborne and pass lungs, but it gained that inside person! And it only gained mutations related to higher infection rate and severity, nothing else, no other random changes. Omicron DNA was "forked" in July 2020. It was not detected until now, when it spread like wild fi…

As for omicron I can share conspiracy theory I invented for fun.

Here it goes.

Omicron is the result of effort of biohackers group. When pandemics happened they set a goal of evolving milder version of sars-cov-2 to serve as a natural, self-administering covid vaccine. They experimented using mice and human tissue to periodically check for infectiousness. When they noticed they got a version that has trouble infecting human lung tissue and Delta started to threaten the world they decided to relese their version covertly.

They'll never admit they did it because Omicron will kill some people too, they are just hoping it will be less. At that scale they know they are saving millions regardless.

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

#557
post #241

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'm very surprised to find someone on HN who lists the Daily Telegraph as their favourite news source.

This remoinds me of Climegate where cherry-picked phrases taken out of context were used to try and smear scientists. I'll wait to see the words in context.

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

#559
post #505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 an…

First of, using "they" and "simplistic view" in one sentence doesn't work, because it makes a generalized simplistic argument while using itself.

"disprove for yourself if you weren't just looking for a convenient narrative given"

How does "Millions of white Trumps voters are racist" contradict "that Trump had significant minority vote (30-38% of Hispanics [...]"? First it assumes Hispanics can't be racists - everyone can be a racist, racism isn't a "white" thing. Second those Hispanics also want a 50s America with wealth, a good job, traditional values and a future. That was the reason many of them or their parents came to the US (if they haven't been conquered during the expansion of the US to the west, e.g. in the Mexican-American war of conquest). And the most ardent fighters against immigration are those who immigrated last. Trump is a sexists but more women voted for Trump.

Of course things are not mono causal, but than what is? There is not one reason the Earth goes around the sun exactly in the way it does, nevertheless we talk about gravity as a thing. Or the apple falls down the way it does, nevertheless we talk about gravity.

The US enjoyed a boom for various reasons in the 50s and on average people in the US became (or perceived themselves) poorer since then - also for various reasons. People want the 50s back with neat houses, nice cars and a life time job from General Motors. Todays world is complicated and the reasons for why the US and other countries are in the state they are is complicated. And the 50s in the mind of many people was nice and simple.

But for Trump voters it boils down to the rise of black people and hispanics(as can be seen in spike of growth in resentment after Obama became president and millions felt they are ruled by a black person now, e.g. see spike in militia groups). Instead of understanding the reasons for the downfall in (perceived) wealth it boils down to a zero sum game where "what other people get, I don't have".

The fall of the American empire since 1990 has accelerated this believe and has lead to Trumps "make America great again".

I'm with Forrest Gump, “Stupid is as stupid does". Not about what people think or how they see themselves. Were 1933 Germans racist? Götz Aly has shown ("Der Volksstaat") that Germans profited a lot from Hitler materially, so were they racists or just opportunists?

Racists explain the world in races and declare themselves victims of another race (Jews, Blacks, Tutsi, ...). Racist people very seldom see themselves as racist. People become racists when they think they are unfairly treated compared to others and when they get into dire economic circumstances.

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

#560

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> At least Fauci, WHO, and Finnish health authorities HAVE come out afterwards and admitted that they lied about masks This is not true. I think Fauci etc. admitted that a reason masks weren't recommended early on was partly to conserve masks. That's quite different from the claim that they actively lied about them.

"Seriously people- STOP BUYING MASKS! They are NOT effective in preventing general public from catching #Coronavirus"

- Surgeon General, Feb 29, 2020

Please stop spreading misinformation.

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