Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

CIA now favors lab leak theory to explain Covid's origins

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

791–800 of 868 posts

Re: CIA now favors lab leak theory to explain Covid's origins

#791

Post by drewbug01 »

rob_c wrote: post #788
drewbug01 wrote: post #767

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yes I am sorry for your loss. Now let's get to the point I hope that people do not treat you with the callousness with which you treat others. > Because I understand statistics and am making sweeping statements I can and will make them from an objective viewpoint. Please do NOT sensor proven facts. I don't care for bible thumping tora humping nonsense that does not match reality. I'll take 2k years of religion and…

> be kinder to others. You effectively told me to shut up because of the way you feel when talking about facts. This is the ultimate in anti-intellectual, dishonest and selfish statements. Check yourself before engaging in conversations about FACTS.

> You effectively told me to shut up because of the way you feel when talking about facts.

You waltzed into a thread about the CIA suddenly changing their tune about where COVID came from; and started making assertions that it wasn’t that bad.

I shared a deeply personal story about exactly how bad it was, from my vantage point. I expressed outrage at your dismissal of the suffering and many deaths that occurred. “How dare you” isn’t the same as “shut up.” But it is a strong suggestion that you’re being uncharitable.

> Check yourself before engaging in conversations about FACTS.

I scrolled through your comment history and based on some recent arguments with the mods, it sounds like you’ve have a bone to pick with people on this site.

Log off and touch grass, man.

Re: CIA now favors lab leak theory to explain Covid's origins

#792

Post by zmgsabst »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #453
zmgsabst wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They attacked the White House and forced the president to flee to a bunker on 5/29 — as referenced in my original comment. Note how that’s called a “protest” and not “insurrection”. (I’d say riot, but protest is closer to the truth than insurrection.) https://edition.cnn.com/2020/05/31/politics/trump-undergroun... They interrupted a proceeding two weeks ago. https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/5087021-protesters-trum…

I know it’s weird, but when you just protest outside of the white house and don’t actually do anything illegal, they can’t really arrest you and throw the book at you. Also, disrupting a public hearing open to the public, definitely rude but not actually illegal. The Gaza protesters were arrested for refusing to leave the capitol, but didn’t force their way into congressional offices nor did they threaten any congres…

> I don’t think they were any position to overthrow the government though.

One group used weapons to seize an area for multiple days, including acts of murder to defend their ill-gotten territory; one didn’t.

Neither made an attempt to “overthrow the government”.

> when you just protest outside of the white house and don’t actually do anything illegal

They rioted and attacked the gate imposing enough threat the president had to flee to a bunker. They also assaulted the security there.

From the article you clearly didn’t read:

> The decision to physically move the President came as protesters confronted Secret Service officers outside the White House for hours on Friday – shouting, throwing water bottles and other objects at the line of officers, and attempting to break through the metal barriers.

I find it interesting that you minimize when people aligned with your policies attempt the same crimes — assaulting police, attempting to break into a secured government building, and forcing politicians to flee.

Re: CIA now favors lab leak theory to explain Covid's origins

#793

Post by pathikrit »

My favorite conspiracy theory:

After Tiananmen, the CCP planned many contingents next time something similar happened.

Cue, the [2019 Hong Kong Democracy Protests][1]. The MSS releases Covid19 at the peak of the protests (actually they do pick Wuhan so they can use lab leak as a plausibility if needed) in Sep 2019 and later they use the lockdown laws to completely clamp down the protests.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019%E2%80%932020_Hong_Kong_pr...

Re: CIA now favors lab leak theory to explain Covid's origins

#794

Post by latentcall »

rob_c wrote: post #721
drewbug01 wrote: post #707

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have some interesting thoughts. But: > 0. COVID-19 was mostly harmless. Even more so than Douglas Adam's books. At the beginning of the pandemic, I found out that my father and his partner had COVID. He lived, at the time, about 12 hours drive from me. Where he lived, his support network was thin (to say the least) - the little family he had nearby needed to keep away because they were responsible for caring for…

> How dare you paint it as “mostly harmless.” Yes I am sorry for your loss. Now let's get to the point. Because I understand statistics and am making sweeping statements I can and will make them from an objective viewpoint. Please do NOT sensor proven facts. I don't care for bible thumping tora humping nonsense that does not match reality. I'll take 2k years of religion and raise you 50 years of tech, oled TVs and mi…

Ah the “COVID wasn’t that bad” denial psychosis. Haven’t seen it in a while.

Re: CIA now favors lab leak theory to explain Covid's origins

#795

Post by blcknight »

chimprich wrote: post #33

The CIA is not a neutral party in this. Discrediting China may well be their goal here. A lab leak is not impossible, but there are good reasons to suspect a natural spillover event. There have been a number of studies that point in that direction; e.g. recent genetic analysis that suggests that the Wuhan wet market was the origin. https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(24)00901-2

Eh, sure, the CIA isn't behind honest. China isn't being honest. There's too many parties with ulterior motives to trust anything being said. China has done a great job of looking like they're covering something up.

I read "Viral: The Search for the Origin of COVID-19 by Alina Chan and Matt Ridley" and it convinced me the lab leak theory was at least fairly likely. The proximity of the outbreak to WIV -- which was doing gain-of-function research of bat coronaviruses -- is convincing. Occam's razor and all.

Re: CIA now favors lab leak theory to explain Covid's origins

#796

Post by ozmodiar »

Paradigma11 wrote: post #616
Dalewyn wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My priors include all the agencies (the Intelligence Community , arguably the deep state) having ulterior political and personal motives. Does noone remember the Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction hoax that the CIA cooked up for GWB? I would not trust any of these agencies to provide objective findings or conclusions, there is a lot of power on the table that's at stake.

The CIA was very skeptical about the WMD story and there were lots of leaks that made that clear.

Seriously, I remember the Bush admin going after the wife of a CIA operative by leaking her identity after he spoke out about the war intel being bullshit. As someone who was following the Iraq war from the left side and pretty disgusted by it it definitely seemed like it was being pushed hardest by the GOP with anti-war information coming out of the CIA or even military. Granted leakers don't represent the opinions of an agency but this narrative that the CIA was the real villain (not that they aren't) that hoodwinked the poor GOP strikes me revisionist whitewashing.

Re: CIA now favors lab leak theory to explain Covid's origins

#797

Post by juliushuijnk »

Khaine wrote: post #230
juliushuijnk wrote: post #155

Apart from directing anger for political reasons, I don't see the big importance. It's like wondering why a single building caught fire, when the shocking thing was that the whole world caught fire. Surely the lessons to learn are with 'how to deal with a spreading fire', and not with 'how to prevent a fire'.

The NIH under Fauci may have been funding gain of function research in China in violation of an Executive Order (EO), and this research may have caused the pandemic. If so, I think it's pretty important to investigate, how the NIH could violate the EO without appropriate oversight, and to hold those who made those decisions to account. From: https://unherd.com/2025/01/the-criminal-pardoning-of-anthony... "Fauci claim…

Sorry, I don't care about Fauci. From my perspective he stood up agaist trump, the all sorts of attacks appeared. They're always contradictive. He and his people don't care about consistency, because his followers only focus on what resonates with their fears and anger. They'll take that storyline and will find things to make that story work. For example on Biden in Gaza, he was both too pro Israel, and too pro Muslim, depending on the audience.

If you have lots of data, you can find all sorts of patterns. Now your looking at misspellings and inferring things from it..

More importantly, I don't care about 'getting justice' on an indvidual. I want lessons learned on how to deal with a new pandamic.

Re: CIA now favors lab leak theory to explain Covid's origins

#798

Post by juliushuijnk »

cal85 wrote: post #679
juliushuijnk wrote: post #155

Apart from directing anger for political reasons, I don't see the big importance. It's like wondering why a single building caught fire, when the shocking thing was that the whole world caught fire. Surely the lessons to learn are with 'how to deal with a spreading fire', and not with 'how to prevent a fire'.

Both, come on

No. It doesn't matter, because just like with fire, with new virusses it is well known that these will happen regardless of people having bad intent.

You can't prevent someone with mental problems setting a tree on fire to smoke out the deamons in their head. It's a huge distraction and waste of energy that could be spent on the things I wrote about earlier.

Re: CIA now favors lab leak theory to explain Covid's origins

#799

Post by lordloki »

gtgvdfc wrote: post #467

What I never understood about the politicization of the lab leak theory is this: How is it more racist and Sinophobic to support the lab leak theory vs the wet market one? The lab leak theory has single individuals messing up. The wet market theory judges an entire nation's culinary habits. Of course racism has nothing to do with the Truth of COVID's origins. Im was just always perplexed how the lab leak ended up spu…

Accusations of racism were always a lie used simply to silence those who said it was a lab leak. Our governments failed us, lied to us, censured us, and demonized those who didn't bend the knee.

Re: CIA now favors lab leak theory to explain Covid's origins

#800

Post by idlewords »

camgunz wrote: post #781
idlewords wrote: post #761

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't tell someone you respect them in the same paragraph where you're accusing them of bad faith.

Maybe, but I think we're all subject to the temptation to make bad arguments to get one over on people we disagree with. I can respect some things about someone and not respect other things. I guess this comes from being low-key terrified I've been as bamboozled as conservatives have, and I hope if I started parroting various propaganda someone here would have respect enough to tell me respectfully. But, also I get t…

Baldly accusing someone of bad faith is serious business, and I believe against the rules of this forum. It is way worse than calling out what you believe are bad arguments, as it's a slur against someone's integrity and character. Rayiner doesn't deserve that.
Post reply on HN