Lab Leak 2.0? • Hacker News Board

Re: Lab Leak 2.0?

#71

Post by xt00 » Tue, Jan 04, 2022, 1:41 AM UTC

beardedwizard wrote: post #11

So how are they keeping all the scientists involved in such a leak quiet? How many of these scientists are there?

I wonder if we need a better way to address safety related to research around potentially airborne diseases -- like maybe in the past things that could result in death are considered bad, but something that presently is not deadly, but being airborne and super contagious could mean it could mutate like crazy while in a large majority of the human population. Another not totally as crazy as it sounds now that we have things like long covid, what if we have something that basically has a minor, but real impact on people long term, but now apply that complication across a huge number of people and comparing the cumulative impact to say 1000 people dying of ebola is hard to compare.

So maybe respiratory diseases, no matter how dangerous they currently are should be heavily restricted to labs that can handle them, and then have international monitors at each of them with strict reporting rules not tied to any organization like WHO or UN or whatever, they are just there to report lab leaks no matter how small.

Re: Lab Leak 2.0?

#72

Post by PennRobotics » Tue, Jan 04, 2022, 1:41 AM UTC

hermitdev wrote: post #49

PennRobotics wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This post had 40 points within 20 minutes, which is the reading time of the article at 200 WPM plus a minute or two for figures. How many of those upvotes were from people who didn't read or who skimmed the article?

I read the article, then up voted. On refresh it was buried. I had to find it via my upvoted submissions. In my opinion, the immediate flagging is a symptom of the hostility of even discussing the origins, lab leak or not.

I agree on the hostility, and I also hadn't flagged.

I wanted to see how the post evolved as I read the article and looked into each linked source's motivations, so I made a note of the points (14 after 10 minutes) specifically because I felt there would be a lot of biased discussion.

The instant popularity of the post could have three factors: multiple votes from one source, individuals already well-versed in disease propagation and clandestine government action who support more visibility in the post, and people who believe the post could have merit without actually putting a great deal of their own research into the sources.

I'm in the fourth camp: agnostics. That's why I haven't contributed to the popularity of the post. However, two years of hearing about this disease does a lot to build resent for armchair epidemiologists.

Re: Lab Leak 2.0?

#73

Post by dls2016 » Tue, Jan 04, 2022, 1:42 AM UTC

beardedwizard wrote: post #11

So how are they keeping all the scientists involved in such a leak quiet? How many of these scientists are there?

Why is a cover up necessary? SARS has leaked from the lab many times before, yet this fact is almost never mentioned in these discussions. The media does plenty of self-censorship.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC416634/

I’m genuinely surprised this (and similar articles) don’t have greater citation counts.

Re: Lab Leak 2.0?

#74

Post by dls2016 » Tue, Jan 04, 2022, 1:46 AM UTC

daxuak wrote: post #25

I don't like certain aspects of publishing with peer review, but if one is so confident with their lab leak theory, try go publish in journals or put it up in one of the preprint servers instead of substack. The key is to demonstrate not that your claims are based, but that you have tried various ways to invalid the conclusions but could not success.

Not regarding omicron, but SARS viruses have escaped the lab numerous times in the past… even killing people. It’s not like the lab-leak hypothesis is the whackiest idea, some might even say it has a “strong prior”.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC416634/

https://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/82/6/news.pdf?ua=1

Re: Lab Leak 2.0?

#75

Post by KarlKemp » Tue, Jan 04, 2022, 1:53 AM UTC

ekianjo wrote: post #50

daxuak wrote: post #25

I don't like certain aspects of publishing with peer review, but if one is so confident with their lab leak theory, try go publish in journals or put it up in one of the preprint servers instead of substack. The key is to demonstrate not that your claims are based, but that you have tried various ways to invalid the conclusions but could not success.

Journals are very unlikely to publish this kind of things, because of massive conflicts of interests. Look at the Lancet.

What conflicts of interest? Big companies? The nations they are based in? None of that stopped, for example, the story about Volkswagen's Diesel fraud, or Boeing's troubles with the 757-MAX from finding a lot reputable publishers willing to print the story.

Re: Lab Leak 2.0?

#76

Post by dls2016 » Tue, Jan 04, 2022, 1:53 AM UTC

stonogo wrote: post #2

None of these Substack-based lab-leak hysteria pieces ever address "so what?" I see nothing here to convince me that Omicron is a lab leak as opposed to an animal reservoir, where the author includes "seems to have come from mice" as evidence for the former and not the latter, which is confused. Regardless, there is nothing actionable about any origin theory aside from "be mad at some unnamed scientist" or, as some o…

How many SARS lab leaks should we tolerate? It has happened before and killed people and with this attitude will continue to happen.

https://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/82/6/news.pdf?ua=1

Re: Lab Leak 2.0?

#77

Post by formerly_proven » Tue, Jan 04, 2022, 1:55 AM UTC

ibejoeb wrote: post #35

There is no legitimate reason for this to be flagged. What happened to the vouch option?

Vouch goes away if you keep vouching for things that get flagged again (or something like that).

Re: Lab Leak 2.0?

#78

Post by sydthrowaway » Tue, Jan 04, 2022, 1:57 AM UTC

What if it was engineered in the lab to be LESS lethal and severe, so it could finally end COVID 19?

Re: Lab Leak 2.0?

#79

Post by d23 » Tue, Jan 04, 2022, 2:02 AM UTC

I'm open minded, but my bullshit detectors started going off around the point where it was casually implied that we all know and it is widely accepted that delta was leaked from a lab. I tried googling it but could find nothing. Then I looked at the two sources the author links:

> https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/4371212

> https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/4382708

Neither of these have nearly enough evidence or support for such a massive claim (the second doesn't even mention delta), as far as I can tell, and I can find no other reputable sources that make a similar claim. Heck, I can't even find un-reputable ones that mention this.

Am I missing something? I'm not going to continue with the article if this is how flimsy the sourcing is.

Re: Lab Leak 2.0?

#80

Post by BbzzbB » Tue, Jan 04, 2022, 2:03 AM UTC

PennRobotics wrote: post #72

hermitdev wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read the article, then up voted. On refresh it was buried. I had to find it via my upvoted submissions. In my opinion, the immediate flagging is a symptom of the hostility of even discussing the origins, lab leak or not.

I agree on the hostility, and I also hadn't flagged. I wanted to see how the post evolved as I read the article and looked into each linked source's motivations, so I made a note of the points (14 after 10 minutes) specifically because I felt there would be a lot of biased discussion. The instant popularity of the post could have three factors: multiple votes from one source, individuals already well-versed in diseas…

Here's a fourth factor: people upvoting before reading it (but possibly after skimming it or being aware of it's context) in order to keep it highly ranked (which is score + time sensitive) in order to trigger HN discussing the subject. I was in that camp before it got flagged.