Yes, and? This was obvious to anyone with a brain since early 2020. Are we going to ask China for reparations?
WIV doesn't work on its own, and the GoF research was mostly funded by Fauci & NIH
First people sickened by Covid-19 were scientists at WIV: US government sources
621–630 of 792 posts
Re: First people sickened by Covid-19 were scientists at WIV: US government sources
#622Earlier quoted context omitted.
The article doesn't just say "people got sick" it says that researchers were hospitalized. That doesn't sound like "normal seasonal illness" to me.
Then you haven’t spent time in China and realise they use their hospital system very differently. Often people will go to hospitals for minor fevers.
Yep, can confirm this took me by surprise when working with chinese colleagues in our company. Eg. I would read someone's out-of-message saying "OoO, going to hospital today" and be freaking out. But then they would be just out for couple days sick leave for fever or something. Only after like 3rd time that happening it clicked to me that 'hospital' for them means something completely different than I would have thought.
Whether that is just a misunderstanding of language or actual difference in healthcare system I never thought about.
Re: First people sickened by Covid-19 were scientists at WIV: US government sources
#623Earlier quoted context omitted.
Proof is not objective. There are levels of proof, different ones for civil and criminal in the US. So, maybe this doesn't prove it to you, but it will prove it to others. Argue for what level of proof you think is right here, but there is no absolute in proof for anything like this, ever.
You're not wrong. My take is this: the context of this debate is, for many, "China caused the Covid pandemic intentionally and conspired to hide their culpability." It's a big claim, literally a conspiracy theory, so I'd put it at the standards of a criminal trial. This is circumstantial evidence and, while it's certainly evidence that could be used to prosecute that claim, it isn't a case of China being caught in fl…
If it were a criminal case you could be right. But you cannot sue a nation state, you cannot imprison an institution and culpable people may be hard to come by.
But actually, civil liability is more relevant here, since worldwide damages were extreme and changes in how virus research is handled are obviously necessary. So if one were to sue relevant parties in a civil court for damages or to force their procedures to be changed, the standard of proof is just "more likely than the other explanations". And I think one may get there, at some point.
Also, for a civil case, intent isn't necessary, negligence would also suffice.
Re: First people sickened by Covid-19 were scientists at WIV: US government sources
#624I admit when stuff like this comes up I think of the world analogically, the analogy being a big company with lots of divisions (countries, international orgs) working on a big important project "keeping the world on track"
Sometimes people make mistakes in the company and you realize this big mistake these people made make our "keeping the world on track" project go over budget this year etc. but hey, mistakes happen (sure we've made mistakes too, but really those idiots over on the AI department really screwed up though, huh right guys hah hah) so we're just going to keep going through it, try to iron over the mistakes, write some documents that hide the mistakes from shareholders etc. and keep working on the project "keeping the world on track" because we've got metrics to hit!
In short I think probably people realized early on in various other divisions of the big world organization that this was probably the China divisions fault - that is to say an actual 'fuck-up' and not just an accident of nature - and it was just useful to pretend it wasn't their fault until at such a point that things were reasonably back on track and then some reports can be filed indicating which divisions in the company suck and which are super cool divisions to be working at.
I'm probably a cynical type of guy.
Re: First people sickened by Covid-19 were scientists at WIV: US government sources
#625Earlier quoted context omitted.
>became sick in autumn 2019, before the first identified case of the outbreak, with symptoms consistent with both COVID-19 and common seasonal illnesses I was in Thailand in february 2019 and came down with SARS-like symptoms that were very similar to Covid-19 once that became known. SARS-like viruses have been going around for a while, meaning they affect the respiratory system. Doesn't mean it was covid-19, what ev…
> SARS-like symptoms Aren’t SARS-like symptoms just flu-like? I heard the same exact thing from an European friend and again I think it’s Barnum effect-like. Given the transmissibility of the virus, I doubt that it was in the wild unnoticed for 12+ months before suddenly affecting millions in weeks.
Sort of but what made me think I had SARS specifically was the fact that I had this weird cough that persisted for a month after I recovered from the worst of the flu symptoms. That was very unusual to me.
During the actual week or two I was sick I had all the symptoms of Covid, diarrhea, shortness of breath, and the rest of normal flu symptoms. And when I recovered I remember eating a protein shake just because I couldn't eat anything else and I needed energy, and I remember not tasting it.
I'm not saying it went unnoticed for a year, it's just an interesting thing that happened to me that I didn't pay attention to until after covid was detected.
I even know how I got sick, it was on the plane from Copenhagen to Doha. Two thai guys were sitting next to us and one of them was visibly sick. We felt pity on him and offered him a pillow or candy sometimes. Then 1 day after we landed in Udon Thani we both got sick.
Re: First people sickened by Covid-19 were scientists at WIV: US government sources
#626Earlier quoted context omitted.
>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!
You didn't want to because nobody made that claim perhaps?
I do it when i want to. So do Dave and Mary. Abby is a professor who takes a professional interest in it as it pertains to X. And so on. It's open, anyone can. Anytime you have a doubt there it is.
In cryptography we never trust secret algos, that's pretty normal. I haven't verified every open one I've used either.
Re: First people sickened by Covid-19 were scientists at WIV: US government sources
#627Earlier quoted context omitted.
Given the location, the timing, the symptoms, the severity of the illness (it's unusual for 'flu to put healthy young adults in hospital) I think we can be pretty confident in our guess.
The non-lab-leak coincidence required: 1. They made a mistake in the lab, exposing themselves to a virus (not covid-19) 2. That virus was non-human-transmissible 3. The exposure happened 1-several weeks before the actual start of covid-19 at the market That's not impossible, especially if the lab was sloppy and (1) happened fairly regularly. Given the early concentration of cases around the market, and the detection…
> 2. They nearly-immediately went to the market, and spent significant time there to get the place loaded up with the virus
Wouldn't it be enough to just go there, buy some food, caugh on a few of the workers there, and they'd spread the thing around to other shoppers in the next few days?
Re: First people sickened by Covid-19 were scientists at WIV: US government sources
#628Earlier quoted context omitted.
Importantly, Covid very rarely results in severe symptoms for middle aged adults. In the vast majority of adults, the symptoms are mild and nonspecific. So the idea that all of these researchers would have contracted Covid and present with symptoms specific/indicative of Covid is absurd. The chances of that must be infinitesimally small. If they had the typical, flu- and cold-like symptoms that most people experience…
The earliest strains of Covid were by far the most severe ones. It's not that surprising to me that the very first patients contracted a strain more likely to put them in the hospital. The severity also depends a lot on viral load.
> The earliest strains of Covid were by far the most severe ones. It's not that surprising to me that the very first patients contracted a strain more likely to put them in the hospital.
No, the only SARS-Cov-2 strain with (likely) decreased mortality is Omicron, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variants_of_SARS-CoV-2 The fact that Covid (as an illness) has become milder is due to the hosts adapting, not the virus being milder.
> The severity also depends a lot on viral load.
Yes, that is a factor.
Re: First people sickened by Covid-19 were scientists at WIV: US government sources
#629Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is perhaps noteworthy that this is the writing form that a lot of mainstream news articles take (advantage of?). I also am not a fan of it, but I must confess I do enjoy seeing it used in the other direction.
> It is perhaps noteworthy that this is the writing form that a lot of mainstream news articles take (advantage of?). No, no way does a serious paper go to print with a source like that. There's room for argument about the use of anonymous sourcing, but there's a huge difference between "someone involved in the decision process" or "with knowledge of the events" (commonly used descriptions) and what the authors did h…
>No, no way does a serious paper go to print with a source like that.
Many did it with Adrian Zenz ad nauseum and there's a few other outliers i've noticed. It's kinda silly. People claim he's the target of a chinese disinformation campaign but he couldn't be an easier target if he tried. From his far right political views to taking a number from a dubious source to begin with, rounding up a ton and then listing an even higher number or quoting numbers from a more reputable paper and adding some extra zeroes because what's a decimal point even? One would chalk it up to a mistake if he didn't pull constant weird mistakes in his favour.
Re: First people sickened by Covid-19 were scientists at WIV: US government sources
#630Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Why Politicians Are Trying To Take Your Children > California legislation would punish parents who don't affirm gender dysphoria wow yeah that's a take
This list of articles is right out of a conspiracy theorists fever dream. Great intellectual content here HN, thanks for sharing. Now go outside and take a walk before you go off the deep end.
The whole "lab leak" thing was one of those conspiracies that got you censored on facebook, reddit and many other sites.
Three years later, it's becoming a mainstream discussion and it became a realistic possibility.