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

telegraph.co.uk

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

#691

Post by q1w2 »

dash2 wrote: post #300

It’s hard to believe how bad this is. Not the lab leak theory itself, but the fact that scientists found it plausible that a scientific mistake released an epidemic which killed 20m people – and decided they should cover this up because “talking about it might harm science“. This is truly scandalous, and I don’t see how those people can remain in their post.

...but who is to blame here? Are the scientists who were in fear of harassment, intimidation, and career destruction to blame? ...or is it the institutions that facilitate that sort of punishment.

I would think twice about punishing victims.

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

#692

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

undecisive wrote: post #684
YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #654

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jesus Christ, son of Mary, please don't bring Occam's razor in yet another internet discussion that tramples all over it. There is no reason to assume a lab leak when every disease we know that affects humans is _not_ the result of a lab leak. A natural origin is the most likely explanation and we don't need any other explanation unless there is strong evidence that something different happened, which we absolutely d…

"People whose whole job it is to study bat-based coronaviruses managed to cause a variant which escaped." "A virus whose whole job it is to mutate and infect mutated and infected people." I think most reasonably sensible people would consider these to be fairly equal in terms of unlikeliness or simplicity. So yes, Occam's razor does not apply, but not because of your particular bias against one of the options. > that…

>> I have absolutely no preference for one theory over the other. Or neither. I have no special evidence, and speculation at this point seems pretty pointless.

That's a false objectivity. We have very strong prior knowledge that diseases arise naturally, without the need for human intervention. To assume there was human intervention requires accordingly strong evidence, at least as strong as the stength of the prior knowledge.

This is where Occam's razor comes in. We do not need to imagine lab leaks, when a natural origin suffices to explain the pandemic.

Also, the "3 observations" you list are observations used to justify the hypothesis that a lab like happened, not observations that caused the hypothesis to be proposed in the first place. First people assumed there was a lab leak, then they went out to find reasons to support a lab leak. That's putting the cart before the horses. Solid reasoning needs observations to precede a hypothesis, not the other way around.

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

#693

Post by tim333 »

baq wrote: post #247
eloisius wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's probably true, but constant suspicious behavior shouldn't normalize behaving suspiciously.

If you're approaching this with a western democratic frame of mind, yes. This is not suspicious behavior in China, as the GP said - it is standard operating procedure.

Some of the details are unusual though especially the Wuhan Institute of Virology taking down it's previously public pathogen sequence database before the thing kicked off.

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

#694

Post by s5300 »

chiefalchemist wrote: post #688
s5300 wrote: post #679

Earlier quoted context omitted.

…sigh Feel free to use the search engine of your choice to search “US PPE Stockpile” & read any of the multiple credible articles that come up as the first results of the search. As it was known nearly immediately after COVID started, the stockpiles were mostly depleted - and what wasn’t depleted was mostly expired. This is why you saw pictures and videos of nurses demonstrating their supplied smocks disintegrating i…

So we had a stockpile that wasn't a stockpile, that wasn't effective? That ran out in no time at all? That's some great spin. Thanks.

I’ll leave anybody who comes across this discourse a simple

Google “Trump administration stockpile budget cuts”

and stop attempting to discuss in good faith with you, who apparently really wants to be right on the internet when they’re completely wrong.

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

#695

Post by afpx »

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #665
afpx wrote: post #657

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Scientists must do a better job of explaining how natural origin is the likely explanation, then. Otherwise, a lot of smart and educated people are going to put the wrong dots together.

The natural origin is the default explanation and nobody needs to have an IQ of 130 and a degree in biology to figure that out. It suffices to know that diseases are a natural thing. Most people who have gone to school will know that already. It really hurts me that you believe "smart and educated people" believe that nonsense. Everytime anyone with any relevant education has commented on HN it's to say that "lab lea…

Do you really think that most people will buy that given that we haven't had a similar pandemic in 100 years?

Also, if you're going to appeal to authority, please link to the HN comments that explain how "lab leak" explanations are rubbish. I'm more than happy to read them. In my opinion, we don't have nearly enough information to make such a decision, one way or the other.

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

#696

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

varjag wrote: post #677
YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #676

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no "when". A natural origin is the default explanation. To look for a different explanation you need to have a reason to look for a different explanation. The existence of a virology lab in the state where the pandemic began is no such reason. Rather, it is a post-facto attempt at making observations supporting an a-priori hypothesis.

Not just "in the state" but in minutes distance from first cases. Plenty of reason to look into, it's not like every urban centre has virology labs studying the titular disease.

The first cases were found in a wet market. The lab is miles away from it:

The first known human infections from SARS‑CoV‑2 were discovered in Wuhan, China.[37] Because many of the early infectees were workers at the Huanan Seafood Market,[50][51] it was originally suggested that the virus might have originated from bats or pangolins sold at the market.[30][33] It was later determined that no bats or pangolins were sold at the market.[52] Bats are not commonly eaten in Central China.[53] The Wuhan Institute of Virology and the Wuhan Center for Disease Control are located within miles of the original focal point of the pandemic, Wuhan's Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, and this has been used to argue in support of the lab leak theory. However, another explanation for this is a tendency to build virology labs in proximity to outbreak areas.[54]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_lab_leak_theory#Wuhan...

What's more, the proximity of the first detected cases to anything is a red herring. We don't know where the first transmission happened. We only know where the first cases were detected. For all we know the virus started in Alaska.

Finally the location of the lab was only noticed after people started talking of a lab leak. Some people said "lab leak", some other people said "OMG there's a lab close by!".

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

#697

Post by tim333 »

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…

I think you are missing the context. It's not that it proves or disproves the lab leak hypothesis. It's that it shows the scientific authorities were deliberately misleading the public by saying it's a crazy conspiracy theory while in private believing it quite likely.

And as to why that matters rather than "It shouldn't have been posted to HN" type suppression - we have millions dead in this outbreak and "At least 59 maximum biosafety level 4 labs (BSL-4) are planned, under construction or in operation across the world" https://www.ft.com/content/a0badd5d-4d88-4a3b-b019-61c6d8275... If labs are the cause we should take steps to try to avoid the next pandemic.

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

#698

Post by ceejayoz »

Jimmc414 wrote: post #13
ceejayoz wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Scientists do not have the luxury of pretending politics and bad actors don’t exist.

Politics and bad actors have always existed. Scientists should counter them with facts and honesty not censorship.

> Scientists should counter them with facts and honesty not censorship.

Scientists must be careful in how they communicate, and organizations like the CDC and FDA need to staff expert scientific communicators who can explain complicated things to lay people. Bill Nye types.

"Vaccines contain dihydrogen monoxide, a chemical that killed over 200,000 people within hours in 2004" is a scientifically factual statement, but not a well communicated one.

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

#699

Post by varjag »

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #696
varjag wrote: post #677

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not just "in the state" but in minutes distance from first cases. Plenty of reason to look into, it's not like every urban centre has virology labs studying the titular disease.

The first cases were found in a wet market. The lab is miles away from it: The first known human infections from SARS‑CoV‑2 were discovered in Wuhan, China.[37] Because many of the early infectees were workers at the Huanan Seafood Market,[50][51] it was originally suggested that the virus might have originated from bats or pangolins sold at the market.[30][33] It was later determined that no bats or pangolins were s…

Yes, "miles away" is within minutes drive: many lab workers quite likely have a commute longer than that.

> For all we know the virus started in Alaska.

I think we know where the virus have started at this point with reasonable confidence, and it wasn't Alaska. Can't help but notice tho that U.S. origin of virus was a popular CCP media propaganda point last year.

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

#700

Post by raxxorrax »

partiallypro wrote: post #157

What really raises the most suspicion of the lab leak theory in my mind was how the Chinese government acted towards the rest of the scientific community...well before it was a theory at all. Not allowing foreign scientists in, destroying evidence, arresting journalists, etc. That just screams cover-up, even if there was none (in terms of a lab leak.) Then Western scientists that rely on grants with Chinese ties, etc…

I think the Chinese government would have reacted like this even if it didn't know what they were dealing with, which still is the most likely explanation.

I think the general information control we saw around Covid far more concerning.

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