Live data from Hacker News

First people sickened by Covid-19 were scientists at WIV: US government sources

public.substack.com

601–610 of 792 posts

Re: First people sickened by Covid-19 were scientists at WIV: US government sources

#601
post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Addresses of things change on Google maps. They fix problems and find issues and it's entirely possible that an address changing means something was updated. Or there's an international address conspiracy that Google is part of, you'll have to decide for yourself!

This change of address is initated by an authority of that region or owner of that business. What exactly is your motivation is spreading FUD on this matter?

You don't have to be a business owner to change the location of a business on Google Maps. They rely on the general public to correct inaccuracies - I've done this a few times for certain locations near me. Presumably they use some kind of scoring system to determine whether the request to make the change is valid.

Re: First people sickened by Covid-19 were scientists at WIV: US government sources

#602
post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just don't buy the international conspiracy to block ivermectin. I've considered it and discussed it with my poor father who became convinced by Fox News and endless Facebook forwarded postings. There are hundreds, perhaps thousands of drugs and substances that have an antiviral effect. Ivermectin was one that was tested and there were some early results that were positive but then later with more thorough testing…

> I just don't buy the international conspiracy to block ivermectin. I agree, there is no conspiracy. It is just that when scientists, journalists and public servants are usually on the same side of the political spectrum, there is no need to central coordination (conspiracy). Society seems more polarized than recent times which leads to greater uniformity of ideas on each side. Regarding Ivermectin, though the evide…

The evidence was flimsy that vaccinations prevented trasmission of the disease, but that didn't stop all the "experts" spreading damaging misinformation about it though. Therefore evidence was not among the criteria that governed their decision making, so their decisions about ivermectin must have been motivated by something else.

Re: First people sickened by Covid-19 were scientists at WIV: US government sources

#603
I'm still a little baffled at what people believe will change if anything is proven about the origin of covid-19.

It's indisputable that many governments went well beyond their legal remit in response to the virus, and yet many have silently or openly accepted it.

Powerful people will do horrible things and we have little to no way to stop them because the majority of us are weak and passive. We do what we're told and applaud that we were told to do it.

Re: First people sickened by Covid-19 were scientists at WIV: US government sources

#604

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having had a number of bad colds before I actually got a bad flu, I always thought my colds were the flu. Not a huge deal. When it was confirmed to be the flu when I talked to her later, the mobile doctor said that many people think the same because they tupically don't go to the doctor for confirmation, if the doctor even chooses to test. A real (non-covid) flu had me feeling like I was on death's door for a week, a…

I got H1N1. The only reason I didn’t end up in a hospital was because I forced myself to stay hydrated and somewhat lucid when I wasn’t able to sleep. It was really bad.

I had H1N1 in 2009, weird thing was it was really mild for me

Haven’t had Covid either, despite being exposed to it (our son had it) and we tested regularly for over a year too

Re: First people sickened by Covid-19 were scientists at WIV: US government sources

#605
post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me it isn't about the effectiveness or the blame it was that we spent 2 years where many fundamental and basic rights were suspended because of fear. For me it is not about blame it is about reminding people how fragile our rights are and that there are people all to willing and eager to take them. Combined with the massive redistribution of wealth that happened as a direct result of government action that furthe…

We had an emergency health situation and the government made emergency rules. Those rules were rescinded later when the emergency was reduced, partly because of widespread vaccination. This is not the first time that during a health emergency the US govt at various levels made temporary stringent rules. It turned out that our political argument against the rules is probably why the u.s had a much higher death rate fr…

Governments love emergencies.

Also Americans have a lot of co-morbidities besides ignoring government orders.

Re: First people sickened by Covid-19 were scientists at WIV: US government sources

#606

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow. The past 3 years I thought they had a lot more PPE than that. Not sure why anyone would be surprised about a leak when that's all they wore.

Realistically, many people's bayesian priors are severely skewed against the lab leak hypothesis because it is associated with Donald Trump, and even intelligent people find it difficult to separate the message from the messenger.

The fact that one of the authors of this is Shellenberger makes me assume the opposite is true. He's clearly a grifter.

Can grifters sometimes be correct? Yes. On a topic that happens to be culture war catnip? The odds reduce greatly.

Re: First people sickened by Covid-19 were scientists at WIV: US government sources

#607
post #597
post #594

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>> You trust a system of checks and balances precisely because of this. >> I think trusting in our system of checks and balances > No. A thousand times no. No damn way. Which one is it? I paraphrased you, and you contradicted your own recommendation. You’re proposing a flawed research methodology which uses an a priori fallacy. If the CIA says A, but an internal memo says B, B is more trustworthy. It’s equally as gu…

>I paraphrased you No. And I hope the clarification is understood. The difference is between trusting that a system of checks and balances is required and trusting some particular implementation of something calling itself a system, without verifying what is actually happening now. Close your eyes, the system is perfect, I trust the system. I highly recommend the formal study of history and the analysis of sources in…

I mean, I didn't originally want to call out the insane claim that everyone should try to personally verify all truth propositions. I guess you truly are the ultimate skeptic, or you have infinite time to throw away. Fortunately, for all productive people, our institutions are reliable, more often than not!

Re: First people sickened by Covid-19 were scientists at WIV: US government sources

#608
post #500

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"FFS", then I'm going to make the argument that mainstream media is funded by subscribers too! Substack isn't much different from a newspaper.

Mainstream media has "owners" who "fire" editors when they don't like the stories being written. Journalist pitch stories at those editors. See Rupert Murdoch and the Times of London, The News of the World, The Sun, The New York Post, The Wall Street Journal and Fox News. For example, note how many times Tony Blair and separately Gordon Brown sought audiences with Rupert Murdoch. You subscribe to the NYT or WSJ you u…

Individual reporters making money with a blog (instead of employment with a news outlet) certainly have worse fact checking. The best news sources in the world have huge fact checking teams that help to verify everything. This small mistakes that Tabbi made would be much less likely to slip if he were part of a major news org.

Re: First people sickened by Covid-19 were scientists at WIV: US government sources

#609

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I discounted the article, especially the below part because anyone can say they're "100%" certain about something while they're not. > When a source was asked how certain they were that these were the identities of the three WIV scientists who developed symptoms consistent with COVID-19 in the fall of 2019, we were told, “100%” ... That's until I saw that Act on Congress' website. It'll be interesting to see what inf…

Maybe it will be used as an excuse to cancel the forth-coming Blinken visit to China: https://edition.cnn.com/2023/06/14/politics/blinken-china-an... Blinken to travel to China this weekend as US looks to reset relations after spy balloon incident

That would look bad diplomatically. It’s one thing to make up an excuse before going. It’s another thing to cancel in the middle and leave. Not sure what would be accomplished by this.

Re: First people sickened by Covid-19 were scientists at WIV: US government sources

#610

I keep asking myself, "who gives a shit?". When the virus was first discovered, it was important to pin down who and where Patient zero was. Now? Pure politicking. It isn't even a slow news day!

What are the odds that exactly three years ago, your response to the same question was "The experts told us that this was definitely, positively not a lab leak, and anyone who says otherwise is a racist"?
Post reply on HN