[HN Gopher] The Covid lab-leak theory goes mainstream
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The Covid lab-leak theory goes mainstream
Author : cwwc
Score : 49 points
Date : 2021-05-15 18:29 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.axios.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.axios.com)
| upofadown wrote:
| For this to mean anything then it would have to be specific
| enough that it could lead to policy changes at the institute in
| question (and possibly others). Otherwise it makes no difference.
|
| We know it came from bats. It might of spent time in a building
| somewhere. It may or may not of escaped from that building.
| Either way we still would of ended up with a pandemic. It wasn't
| going to magically stay in bats after it mutated to a form
| transmissible to humans.
|
| They were Chinese bats. So if we want to hate China for this we
| still can. Hatred doesn't have to make logical sense.
| arisAlexis wrote:
| An outbreak occurring next to the the only Bsl4 lab dealing with
| coronavirus research and it took the world 1.5 year and 15mln
| deaths to start seriously thinking about this.
| Jun8 wrote:
| NYT article from less than two months ago still underlining that
| the lab leak hypothesis has been thoroughly dismissed by
| scientists and it was an idea pushed by Pompeo and Trump:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/26/science/redfield-coronavi....
| [deleted]
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| Two things can be true at once--Pompeo and Trump may have
| decided to push a theory they wanted to be true, without
| actually examining the evidence for it. That's obviously not
| productive--but the theory could still be true.
|
| The article does mention that some scientists thought the lab
| leak was a real possibility. They even quote Dr. Fauci saying
| saying as much (although he made it clear that he thought a
| natural cause was more likely).
| dqv wrote:
| Yeah this is what I was talking about elsewhere in this thread.
|
| But what the article really says is the hypothesis "that the
| virus was created or modified intentionally in a lab were
| dismissed by scientists and U.S. intelligence officials."
|
| That does not preclude it from being leaked from a lab. I find
| it uncomfortable that they are using crafty wording to jump
| from "it wasn't created in a lab" to the virus never escaping
| the lab, which are two entirely different claims.
| spinny wrote:
| The theory been around since covid.
|
| People were concerned about lab leaks from that particular lab in
| Wuhan (the one close to the market where it supposedly started)
| before covid. The research on this type of virus was happening at
| this lab, they had posted a job opening for a researcher some
| time before.
|
| All the Trump hate going around (an the willingness to go against
| all-things-Trump) at the time, clouded massively any actions to
| properly identify the origins and even some preventive actions.
|
| Any traces that could only be identify at the time are gone by
| now, and as time passes, we may have more information but
| probably less concrete evidence. Sadly the world may end up with
| only theories
| jimmygrapes wrote:
| I think it's going to be really interesting in the future to
| see if there was anything else that was dismissed or treated
| with disdain simply because of pure contrarianism to anything
| with Trump-adjacency. As if all it should have taken for Trump
| to have won was to have tried baby-tier reverse psychology.
|
| I wonder how many otherwise rational and educated people here
| on HN who hold that hatred still would be willing to analyze
| their intentions deeply enough to figure out why they hate? I
| am not interested in justifications, just suggesting some
| multi-level introspection. Most of the time when I discuss this
| with younger people, asking "why do you feel that way?" at
| least 3 times results in a complete blank (or violent/emotional
| reaction), a blatant cognitive fallacy, or simple trend/peer
| pressure. The ones who can still answer are those with truly
| unique ideas, in my experience at least.
|
| If anybody reads this and is willing, I'd be glad to hear your
| take on this.
| dkdk8283 wrote:
| If it is true China would never admit it. It can't be dismissed
| on their word alone. Glad to see this investigated.
| dqv wrote:
| Good. Of course I'm not expecting anyone to prove a negative, but
| the lab leak theory was dismissed with very little evidence to
| the contrary. We know other viruses have leaked from labs before
| [0].
|
| I think part of the resistance to accepting this possibility was
| that it was strongly associated with Trump supporters. I'm glad
| people won't be able to use the "that's a Trump supporter theory"
| bludgeon and we can start hearing experts talk about this in good
| faith.
|
| [0]: https://youtu.be/HKQDSgBHPfY?t=214 (thanks to whichever HNer
| posted this initially - not even sure if it had to do with a
| covid discussion)
| AzzieElbab wrote:
| Just wait until alternative treatments of COVID go mainstream
| meepmorp wrote:
| An alternative to the standard lab leak theory:
|
| Thee virus escaped a lab, but not wasn't actually genetically
| manipulated - patient zero was exposed to a naturally occurring
| virus during the course of their work and it mutated to become
| more transmissible in vivo.
| dqv wrote:
| ??? I don't remember hearing anything about genetic
| manipulation being a part of the lab leak theory. My
| understanding is that these kinds of viruses are studied all
| the time without being modified.
| cameldrv wrote:
| The WIV is either the #1 or #2 lab worldwide in studying and
| genetically modifying coronaviruses. They had multiple active
| grants and recent published papers on this work.
| Izkata wrote:
| That _is_ the standard lab-leak theory. Intentional
| manipulation of the virus was the strawman used to discredit
| it, by conflating the two.
|
| ...which is especially interesting in that it 's going
| mainstream alongside more serious looks at the gain of function
| research that was funded there. This is actually more
| conspiratorial than what people had been saying for the past 14
| months.
| victor106 wrote:
| Ex cdc director also believes this. https://youtu.be/f0_RhfT21bw
|
| The Chinese government has a lot to answer to the world. Their
| cover up in the initial stages costed thousands of lives and
| unspeakable damage to millions of people. The irony is the world
| still keeps buying billions of dollars of goods from them
| totalZero wrote:
| This theory has been mainstream since before Covid.
|
| At the time of the laboratory's inception as a BSL-4 facility,
| Nature published an article describing worries that China would
| be unable to contain pathogens there. Here's a PDF:
|
| https://www.nature.com/news/polopoly_fs/1.21487!/menu/main/t...
| dqv wrote:
| I guess mainstream is the wrong word for it. During the Trump
| administration, it seemed like there was an effort to suppress
| the theory by associating the lab leak theory with Trump
| supporters. I also recall an Indian virologist trying to
| suggest SARS-CoV-2 had been modified to have parts of HIV in
| its genetic material.
| 07121941 wrote:
| I agree, seems like it got memory-holed, or at least lumped
| as tinfoil-hat bs
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