[HN Gopher] WHO inquiry chief 'had concerns' about lab close to ...
___________________________________________________________________
WHO inquiry chief 'had concerns' about lab close to first Covid
cases
Author : belter
Score : 187 points
Date : 2021-08-13 16:55 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (apnews.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (apnews.com)
| mullingitover wrote:
| Edit: link has changed to ap news (didn't know that was even a
| thing you could do after posting to HN?)
|
| This story seems like more idle speculation with the backing of a
| semi-official source (but not in his official capacity).
|
| Absolutely no new evidence is presented in the story, it's just
| one person's opinion. Also, this source is a right-wing media
| org, and in comments to the Washington Post later he walked the
| story back[1]:
|
| > Asked for comment, Ben Embarek initially said the interview had
| been mistranslated in English-language media coverage. "It is a
| wrong translation from a Danish article," he wrote, declining to
| comment further and referring The Washington Post to the WHO. He
| did not immediately respond to follow-up questions.
|
| [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/08/12/who-
| origins-...
| dang wrote:
| Moderators change URLs all the time on HN: https://hn.algolia.c
| om/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que.... Usually we explain
| why. Generally the goal is to have the best URL for supporting
| a substantive HN discussion. In this case the originally
| submitted URL was obviously not doing that.
|
| More here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28172310
| mullingitover wrote:
| Moderator change makes sense, I thought OP had changed it.
| Thanks for the explanation.
| dang wrote:
| We've changed the URL from https://summit.news/2021/08/12/danish-
| who-chief-says-covid-p... as flaggers and commenters seemed to be
| reacting particularly strongly to that site.
|
| The story itself is arguably significant new information (https:/
| /hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...), so
| I've turned off the flags after changing the URL.
|
| Generally on HN we go by article quality rather than site quality
| (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...)
| but in this case I think it is less distracting simply to change
| the URL. Actually the original domain is banned on HN, the same
| way most highly politicized sites are (regardless of which
| politics they practice) but users vouched for this submission, no
| doubt because they felt the story to be significant.
|
| If anyone comes up with a better URL, we can change it again.
|
| Edit: users in the thread have pointed out these other links
| (thanks!):
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/08/12/who-origins-...
|
| https://www.wsj.com/articles/head-of-who-team-investigating-...
|
| Every one of these articles is presenting a somewhat different
| story and I'm not sure what a good title would be. According to
| the WaPo and WSJ articles, Ben Embarek wasn't just _a_ WHO
| official but the leader of the investigation ( "Ben Embarek led a
| team of international scientists on a mission to China") - that
| seems particularly significant so I've added it to the title
| above. If anyone comes up with a better (i.e. more accurate and
| neutral) title, we can change it again.
| sascha_sl wrote:
| summit.news is a low quality source because it adds a cynical
| far right conspiracy spin to everything. Here, it immediately
| jumps back to gain of function research , while the primary
| source talks about something entirely different.
| [deleted]
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| Remember when the previous administration suggested looking into
| the Lab Leak theory and was laughed at?
|
| Remember how you would get banned from Facebook for suggesting
| that the lab leak theory was a possibility?
|
| Then major social networks and the medias reversed their
| positions. What changed in the meantime, other than the
| president?
| tlowrimore wrote:
| It is important to consider the context within which these
| suggestions were initially put forth. We had a president that
| claimed to have Coronavirus under control, that it was no worse
| than the flu and who openly and frequently cast doubt upon the
| only expert in the room. Perhaps had his behavior been a bit
| more tempered, he would have been taken more seriously.
| handmodel wrote:
| I posted an article on HN at the time from a Chinese-born
| Harvard Public Health PHd who was writing in winter of 2020
| he thought it could have come from the lab.
|
| It actually wasn't downvoted too much - plenty of people here
| found it plausible - but the amount of people saying I was
| stupid and gullible has really stuck with me.
|
| I was told I had no idea how viruses work (this is true
| enough - I don't have a degree in biology) but still felt
| extremely gaslit.
| philliphaydon wrote:
| I first heard about the lab leak theory late jan 2020, but
| I also was considered stupid and gullible too for believing
| it. Also mocked for wearing a mask from singapore to london
| in Feb 2020. :/
| TMWNN wrote:
| >I was told I had no idea how viruses work (this is true
| enough - I don't have a degree in biology) but still felt
| extremely gaslit.
|
| Similarly, on New Year's Eve 2015 I saw mention of the
| Cologne mass attacks on women by refugees _as they were
| occurring_ on, yes, 4chan /pol/, and checked /r/worldnews
| and /r/europe to find out more. I didn't see anything, and
| assumed that it was another /pol/ "it's _happening_ " dank
| maymayism. I only later realized that German media and
| those subreddits' mods had all worked to suppress news of
| the attacks until they could no longer be ignored.
|
| (Cue "/pol/ was right" couplet)
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > by refugees
|
| Was it confirmed these men were legitimate refugees?
|
| > I only later realized that German media and those
| subreddits' mods had all worked to suppress news of the
| attacks until they could no longer be ignored.
|
| Why would they do that?
| vimy wrote:
| Yes, it was confirmed. It's to protect the narrative that
| immigration is good for Europe.
|
| Just like every time there is a religious terror knife
| attack they claim it's someone with mental problems.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| I meant economic migrants and not true refugees, as
| defined by international laws. Like this
|
| https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/09/africa/fake-refugees-
| kenya-in...
|
| https://abcnews.go.com/International/fake-syrian-
| passports-w...
|
| https://news.yahoo.com/migrants-using-fake-syrian-
| passports-...
| s5300 wrote:
| >but the amount of people saying I was stupid and gullible
| has really stuck with me.
|
| The amount of people saying something about you on a mostly
| anonymous internet message board has really stuck with you?
|
| This is, probably for your own good, a decent indicator
| that you should stop visiting said website.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > I was told I had no idea how viruses work (this is true
| enough - I don't have a degree in biology) but still felt
| extremely gaslit.
|
| You don't need a degree to understand how a virus works.
| philliphaydon wrote:
| It doesn't really matter who was president. The whole western
| world has handled Covid poorly. Including the current
| administration. The issue is no one has learned to not trust
| ccp. They lied about sars and tried to cover it up, and they
| lied about Covid from day 1 trying to cover it up.
| ghostwriter wrote:
| > We had a president that claimed to have Coronavirus under
| control, that it was no worse than the flu
|
| Could you remind us who was that person who went to SF's
| Chinatown to hug random people and was urging others to "come
| and visit and enjoy Chinatown" during the first critical
| months of unknown risk?
| tlowrimore wrote:
| It was Nancy Pelosi.
| refenestrator wrote:
| That makes the media look worse, not better. Their true
| inclination is to think one thing but they self censored so
| they wouldn't be seen as agreeing with the bad orange man?
| tlowrimore wrote:
| Perhaps. That does not change the fact that when you
| bloviate, demean and deflect, as did Trump, you will be
| disliked and distrusted. Reputation matters when making a
| claim that--in that moment--could not be supported with
| real evidence. Was it a plausible theory for the origin of
| the virus? Sure. But, when that message becomes entangled
| with a larger xenophobic rhetoric, then it just seems like,
| well, xenophobia. Again, the context matters.
| refenestrator wrote:
| I'm talking about the media's credibility. I'll give them
| "more credible than Trump" as a freebie but after that
| they have to earn it.
| blacktriangle wrote:
| Come on man, Antifa's just an idea - some senile old idiot
| wadeparzival wrote:
| I remember when the previous President said he had evidence of
| a lab leak, but did not share it or have any corroboration from
| anyone else in the administration. It was obvious at the time
| that it was a political tool to drive a nationalist sentiment.
|
| The issue is not that people wanted to investigate a lab leak,
| the issue was that people presented their lab leak theory as a
| fact. Believing in a theory without any evidence to support it
| falls pretty squarely in the conspiracy theory bucket.
|
| Honestly, I haven't seen anything change in substance in the
| meantime. It still is a suspicious coincidence, but we don't
| have any clear indication of what actually happened. What has
| changed in the reporting is that people are expressing concerns
| about the lab (clearly theories, not fact), which is completely
| natural. We should investigate it so we can better prevent,
| detect, and respond to future outbreaks. But let's not make
| premature judgements from a coincidence.
| iammisc wrote:
| We have hospitalization records of lab staff, which Trump kne
| about and was later declassified.
|
| We have e-mail evidence of lab employees explicitly asking
| reporters not to report on the potential.
|
| And we have a novel virus that appeared centered around a
| biomedical research lab doing gain of function research on
| closely related viruses.
|
| Simply due to the level of accusation and its implications,
| the claim deserved investigation from day one not out of hand
| dismissal.
|
| Imagine if someone is found with a gun right next to a
| shooting scene, and everyone around you insisted that he
| certainly could not be the one who did any wrong because...
| racism or something. And then later on, you find that that
| guys friends spoke privately with the police and asked them
| not to conduct an investigation. Shouldn't that arouse
| suspicion in normal people?
| TooKool4This wrote:
| > Remember when the previous administration suggested looking
| into the Lab Leak theory and was laughed at?
|
| Remember when the head of the previous administration thought
| injecting disinfectants or UV light was a possible solution to
| Covid?
|
| The problem with trust and credibility is that once it's lost,
| it's very hard to gain back. Even if the broken clock is right
| twice a day, it's still broken.
| 99_00 wrote:
| You can't blame corporate media and the scientific
| establishment, and big tech's active suppression of this
| topic on Trump. That's on them.
|
| Do you think corporate media is giving the recent information
| the weight it deserves, given the fact that 4.3 million
| people died so far, and untold damage was done to the global
| economy and mental health?
| 99_00 wrote:
| There was public information about the UVA catheter at the
| time Trump made his comments.
|
| >The findings, published in the peer-reviewed journal
| Advances in Therapy, were based on five days of 20-minute
| treatments with ultraviolet A (UVA) light using a catheter
| inserted into the patients' tracheas. Patients were followed
| for 30 days. The findings were based on four patients; the
| fifth patient had no detectable levels of SARS-CoV-2 at the
| study outset.
|
| https://www.cedars-sinai.org/newsroom/reduced-viral-loads-
| se...
|
| >The problem with trust and credibility is that once it's
| lost, it's very hard to gain back.
|
| Are you talking about corporate media? They seem to break
| trust constantly, and a large % of the population continues
| to trust them.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| Wait... that can't be true. Because the media immediately
| published this https://youtu.be/fr5OopWwp98 and they
| laughed the idea away.
|
| So far I've seen no retractions.
| alimw wrote:
| Did you post the wrong link? The doctors in that clip
| don't actually mention the UV light thing, although they
| are clear in their opposition to injecting disinfectant.
| iammisc wrote:
| > The problem with trust and credibility is that once it's
| lost, it's very hard to gain back. Even if the broken clock
| is right twice a day, it's still broken.
|
| If that's the case, then the previous administration's
| opponents ought to look in the mirror, because they were the
| first anti-vaxxers, the first covid deniers (pelosi's
| statements that people should not be afraid of covid in late
| jan/early feb in chinatown, despite having access to the same
| intelligence as trump), and Dr Fauci lying to the US congress
| about gain of function research.
|
| Honestly, given what's happened in the last two years on both
| sides, it should come as no surprise that no one trusts the
| federal government.
| SnowProblem wrote:
| Aytu BioPharma is a small company bringing UV light into the
| body, and the early trials on COVID last year showed it
| worked. The same was true for Hydroxychloroquine too. You
| fell for propaganda.
|
| https://aytubio.com/pipeline/healight-technology-platform/
| phatfish wrote:
| Hydroxychloroquine has a mountain of side effects worse
| than COVID for most people, and very little (if any)
| positive effect.
|
| Maybe UV could help in some way, but was this ever going to
| be a real solution? I highly doubt Aytu BioPharma was in a
| position to deliver anything meaningful at the volume and
| time-scale required.
|
| Trump simply had no clue what a workable solution looked
| like. He broadcast to the world as the American President
| the ideas of the most recent crazy to have his ear (or one
| that he read on Twitter), and then got a bruised ego and
| doubled down when shown his ideas were worthless.
|
| No propaganda there.
| SnowProblem wrote:
| The side effects of HCQ were very overstated. The first
| study [1] that was pushed by the media to discredit Trump
| saying HCQ might be dangerous to the heart was later
| retracted [2] because the authors refused to share its
| data. The best metaanalysis today shows HCQ works to
| treat COVID if used early and is safe at the right doses
| [3].
|
| [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/22/health/malaria-
| drug-trump...
|
| [2] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PII
| S0140-6...
|
| [3] https://hcqmeta.com/
| camhart wrote:
| He said they were going to look into it. He didn't break
| trust with your example because he didn't make a statement of
| fact that it was a cure. He said they'd look into it.
|
| Now if all you do is read the title of articles or videos
| from left leaning news site, you may walk away with the
| belief that he's telling people to inject it. But he's not.
| He says they're going to look into it. Watch the video for
| yourself (and take note at the video title):
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zicGxU5MfwE.
|
| I want to add--I'm in no way indicating the right leaning
| news sites don't do the same. They've both screwed the
| country up by failing to report news without some bias
| slapped all over everything.
| TMWNN wrote:
| >Then major social networks and the medias reversed their
| positions. What changed in the meantime, other than the
| president?
|
| Further, the above (reasonably) implies that, had the president
| not changed, the reversing of positions would not have
| occurred.
| [deleted]
| uses wrote:
| > Remember when the previous administration suggested looking
| into the Lab Leak theory and was laughed at?
|
| The previous administration was completely nuts and would do
| and say all kinds of random things. The problems with
| communication and trust were too many to know where to start.
| Besides that, the context was totally different. A president
| trying to "wage a trade war" on China, stir up nationalist
| sentiment, distract from his responsibility to respond to the
| pandemic, constantly regurgitating conspiracy theories and
| other misinformation, constantly trying to distract from
| scandals, etc.
|
| > Remember how you would get banned from Facebook for
| suggesting that the lab leak theory was a possibility?
|
| The amount of misinformation about COVID was and is extreme.
| Yeah, they moderated their platform, which is under intense
| congressional scrutiny, in the middle of a once-in-a-century
| pandemic. Even so, I think you're conflating the bio-weapon
| theory with the lab-leak theory.
|
| > Then major social networks and the medias reversed their
| positions. What changed in the meantime, other than the
| president?
|
| Major social networks and medias didn't "reverse their
| positions"...we learned more, we're still learning more. What
| changed in the meantime is so, so many things lmao.
| iammisc wrote:
| The previous administration was broadly right on many
| important topics regarding the pandemic, that the media was
| wrong on.
|
| 1. Vaccines would be available by the election (they were off
| by two days, likely because of optics of releasing a vaccine
| right before). 2. The lab leak theory being worthy of
| investigation 3. School lockdowns are damaging (now broad
| agreement) 4. New York did not need 40k ventilators and
| Andrew Cuomo covered up nursing home deaths (later an aide
| admitted to it) 5. Shutting down travel was wrong before it
| was right. If you recall, after trump's state of the union,
| in which he mentioned covid, Nancy Pelosi went into the
| streets of china town and insisted people ignore his fear
| mongering.
|
| Shall I go on?
|
| > A president trying to "wage a trade war" on China
|
| A trade war which he campaigned on, was voted into office
| for, and for which he has the legal authority. You are
| complaining that trump doesn't agree with you, not that he
| did something legally wrong.
|
| > we learned more, we're still learning more
|
| Yes, they learned that they were wrong on many things and
| trump was right.
| gjs278 wrote:
| you're a piece of shit. fuck you and fuck your censorship.
| mc32 wrote:
| Tangentially related: there are no antifa burnings or endless
| videos of cops acting badly either. It's not as though
| criminals stopped being criminals and cops stopped policing...
| fxbe12 wrote:
| I remember, and I am sure that many others do if they are
| honest with themselves. America needs to stand united. We have
| let politics drive a deep wedge between neighbors and families.
|
| We live at the peak of the information age but our natures have
| not changed. Both left and right need to focus on being
| unified, not strong-arming the other side.
| SamPatt wrote:
| And people on "the left and right" need to remember that
| plenty of people don't believe in "sides" and just want to
| live their lives without being bullied around by whoever
| happens be in power or whatever ideas are popular at the
| moment.
|
| I don't want unity. People obsessed with politics think they
| just need consensus to solve any problem, despite the
| atrocious track record of political solutions. Just leave the
| rest of us alone.
| iammisc wrote:
| > I don't want unity
|
| And this sentiment is problematic, because other countries
| have unity and are not afraid to use it.
| sg47 wrote:
| The previous administration had zero credibility on anything
| and were rightly laughed out of the room.
| Phil_Latio wrote:
| Everyone with common sense must assume that a lab which does
| experiments on Corona viruses is the most likely source and not
| the food market nearby.
|
| It's really that simple...
| reilly3000 wrote:
| The lab was located there because the wet markets and local bat
| population have been a historical epicenter of respiratory
| diseases.
| iammisc wrote:
| Love or hate china, you gotta appreciate their brilliance in
| choice of location for a bioweapons lab.
| launchaway wrote:
| "I had never expected this kind of thing to happen in Wuhan,
| in central China." Her studies had shown that the southern,
| subtropical provinces of Guangdong, Guangxi and Yunnan have
| the greatest risk of coronaviruses jumping to humans from
| animals--particularly bats, a known reservoir. If
| coronaviruses were the culprit, she remembers thinking,
| "Could they have come from our lab?"
|
| - Shi Zhengli
| stvswn wrote:
| there is no local bat population near Wuhan, China -- nor is
| Wuhan known to be some sort of wet market epicenter. It _has_
| wet markets like any Chinese city would.
|
| The reason the wet market theory came to prominence was
| because commerce seemed like a reasonable explanation for how
| a novel coronavirus showed up so far away from its known
| animal reservoir (bats).
|
| The reason the WIV is in Wuhan is the same as the reason why
| the CDC is in Atlanta or whatever -- Wuhan is a major city
| and it has things in it.
| timy2shoes wrote:
| Yes, the jumping of viruses from animals to humans due to
| keeping them in close proximity is so unlikely that it's
| happened hundreds of times before (e.g. SARS, MERS, Spanish
| flu, bubonic plague).
| ChemSpider wrote:
| The bat lady herself says that these type of bats are not in
| or near Wuhan:
|
| "I wondered if [the municipal health authority] got it
| wrong," she says. "I had never expected this kind of thing to
| happen in Wuhan, in central China." Her studies had shown
| that the southern, subtropical provinces of Guangdong,
| Guangxi and Yunnan have the greatest risk of coronaviruses
| jumping to humans from animals--particularly bats, a known
| reservoir. If coronaviruses were the culprit, she remembers
| thinking, "Could they have come from our lab?"
|
| https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-chinas-bat-
| wo...
| Mizza wrote:
| If you're going down that route, you might also want to
| consider that there have been two other incidents of SARS
| escaping from labs in China:
|
| https://genomebiology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/gb-.
| ..
| timy2shoes wrote:
| I'm not excluding the lab hypothesis, I'm just pointing our
| that the natural hypothesis is also valid. Honestly, I
| don't think we're ever gonna figure out definitively which
| one it was (I don't think there's a 3rd competing theory).
| Even if it was a lab leak, I suspect that the evidence for
| that is gone.
| m0llusk wrote:
| That is really far off from the reality of determining viral
| origins.
|
| Both SARS and MERS were recent coronavirus outbreaks that have
| had their origins rigorously pinpointed. Did this happen
| because governments cooperated and journalists provided
| important information? Not even close. Governments interfered
| with research into SARS and MERS origins for political reasons
| and journalists never really contributed anything of
| significance. The hard work was done by scientists doing
| sampling and sequencing of viruses and their results are
| extremely robust.
|
| The next most recent pandemic is HIV/AIDS. When AIDS first hit
| everyone absolutely knew for certain that it was caused and
| spread by rampant gay sex in coastal cities. Then when research
| pointed to the Caribbean everyone knew that decadent travelers
| were to blame. It was only after a great deal of scientific
| work, again focused on sampling and sequencing, that we came to
| know HIV came from interactions with wild animals in Africa and
| didn't explode until much, much later. The one thing that can
| be said for certain about all of the early popular hypotheses
| is that they were all both completely wrong and thoroughly
| unhelpful.
|
| The biggest problem with the lab leak theory is that it ignores
| all of the important information we have learned from past
| outbreaks and origins investigations and instead asserts that
| things are different this time and everything is about making
| narratives that have a coherent feel like a novel or dramatic
| film. An alternative conclusion that is far more simple is that
| finding the origins of SARS-CoV2 is going to be similar to the
| experiences we had with HIV and SARS and MERS. The rest is
| politics and click bait journalism.
| calibas wrote:
| So the best guess is that it came from wild bats, and there was a
| lab right next to the initial outbreak site that was studying
| wild bats. That could just be a coincidence, but it's a pretty
| remarkable coincidence and at the very least deserves further
| investigation.
|
| It could have been just an innocent mistake. A researcher got the
| disease while collecting bats out in the wild, but the lab never
| got a sample of the disease. The researcher was asymptomatic and
| unknowingly spread it to another person while stopping by the
| local market on their way home. So as far as anybody can tell, it
| came from the marketplace.
|
| I don't know what really happened, but I think I'm being more
| reasonable that most people about this. There's three other major
| lines of thinking, all politically motivated and all wrong in my
| opinion.
|
| #1: Many of the Western "liberals", especially the media,
| dismissed any kind of "lab-leak theory" as right wing
| conspiracies for most of 2020. I honestly think just because
| Trump and the right were promoting it, the "liberals" were
| against it.
|
| #2: The Western conservatives and Trump filled in all the blanks
| in the "lab-leak theories" with their own personal agendas. This
| turned sane and objective lab-leak theories into conspiracy
| theories. What the other lab in Wuhan was doing is interesting,
| but not necessarily connected.
|
| #3: The Chinese government considers any lab-leak theories as
| anti-Chinese propaganda, and aggressively launches it's own
| counter-propaganda. In my opinion, the Chinese government doesn't
| want to know the truth, and the biggest and most racist anti-
| Chinese organization of them all is the Chinese government
| itself, based upon what's currently happening in HK and to the
| Uighurs, among other human rights issues.
|
| I'm by no means against China, their government is just as
| hypocritical as the US, and both get in the way of any kind of
| truly objective and scientific approach to these issues. Seems
| like there's so much "noise", so much cognitive dissonance and
| emotional charge, that we're incapable of discussing these things
| sanely.
| j_walter wrote:
| I think the fact that there are only two labs in China that
| study Coronaviruses...and the outbreak location is a few
| hundred yards from where one of the labs is...is enough of a
| coincidence that it should be THE theory that it somehow (leak
| of some sort) until proven otherwise.
| bmn__ wrote:
| I think you are confusing WIV and WCDC. Check whether in that
| light the theory still makes sense.
| slownews45 wrote:
| If this really did jump from bats, they should be able to find
| this IN bats.
|
| Instead we can't seem to find that side of things. Instead the
| virus seems better fit to the mouse / ACE2 receptor stuff going
| on in the lab (with a big jump in infection rate) vs a gradual
| build from something evolving to work in humans.
| nradov wrote:
| The Wall Street Journal published a similar article yesterday.
|
| https://www.wsj.com/articles/head-of-who-team-investigating-...
| neonate wrote:
| https://archive.is/RXu6y
| xmasjones wrote:
| Some interesting information about this from that news show
| Breaking Points: https://youtu.be/fgAl0uSB9cA
| thick wrote:
| We should do a little experiment, since HN is so good at
| gathering and keeping data on us.
|
| Gather the last year's worth of commentary around this subject
| and get all the people who kneejerked "lab hypothesis is a
| conspiratorial/xenophobic/racist theory," and ask them what do
| they think about the situation now and what has changed in their
| minds.
|
| I'd love to know.
| raphlinus wrote:
| Some more background on this. First, an interview in Science from
| a few months back[1]. I very much trust the reporting in that
| interview (Kai Kakape is an award-winning science journalist),
| but it also has the air of words being chosen _very_ carefully.
|
| Second, this thread[2] is very interesting. The Chinese
| government is freaking out pretty hard against the idea of doing
| more of a real investigation. I'm not sure how all the pieces fit
| together, but I find it curious for sure.
|
| [1]: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021/02/politics-was-
| always-...
|
| [2]: https://twitter.com/natashaloder/status/1425915665752461316
| 99_00 wrote:
| >Dr Peter Embarek, the epidemiologist who led the WHO's four-week
| fact-finding mission in China earlier this year, said it was "one
| of the likely hypotheses" that the first person to be infected
| with coronavirus was a lab employee.
|
| https://news.yahoo.com/who-wuhan-lab-worker-covid-patient-ze...
|
| China forbade publishing the virus's genome. It was published by
| a Chinese scientist contrary to the rules and his lab was
| shutdown the next day for 'rectification'.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhang_Yongzhen
| underseacables wrote:
| If I post this to Facebook, or Twitter, what are the chances it
| will get taken down, or moderated?
| temp8964 wrote:
| Or shadowbanned so that you wouldn't even notice.
| MMS21 wrote:
| If this is a jab at how other sites are ran you should look
| into HN and hellbanning.
| jaywalk wrote:
| I believe they've had to lighten up the moderation on this one,
| specific subject.
| sascha_sl wrote:
| It's a well known unreliable source, so pretty high?
|
| Edit: when this comment was written, the thread was pointing at
| summit.news, not AP.
| [deleted]
| lamp987 wrote:
| AP News or WHO?
| [deleted]
| delecti wrote:
| The link has been changed. Check dang's comment. I assume
| they were referring to the original with "well known
| unreliable source".
| kristjansson wrote:
| One gets the sense that the ... intense ... interest in the
| origin of this virus, and whether it has any association this lab
| is not really driven by overwhelming scientific curiosity.
|
| Is it worth knowing? Sure. Would a convincing answer to the
| question at any point between March 2020 and now changed the
| course of the pandemic in any way? No.
| [deleted]
| causi wrote:
| I'm not skilled enough in the biomedical background to evaluate
| the various genetics-based articles written for or against
| natural-origin and lab-origin hypotheses. As a layman, however, I
| find the degree to which the Chinese government has stomped all
| over foreign-led investigations into the origin of SARS-Cov-2 to
| be highly, highly suspicious.
| newacct583 wrote:
| I guess, but that imparts a level of uniform direction that
| isn't really known. It could very well be that the PRC
| government _does not know themselves_ whether or not covid was
| a lab leak, because who the fuck knows what those beaker heads
| were doing. They just want to be sure that if it was a lab
| leak, that no one ever knows.
|
| Basically: totalitarian governments suppress everything. It's
| what they do. It's not like the west had clear access inside
| facilities like WIV _before_ the pandemic, so why do we expect
| different behavior now?
|
| I remain really dubious, personally. Imagine it was a leak.
| Dozens or hundreds of people -- researchers with PhDs and
| international cred and travel ability -- would have had to be
| knowledgeable about the research and in on the coverup.
| _Someone_ would have swung themselves an appointment at UCSF or
| Johns Hopkins or wherever in exchange for blabbing.
|
| It's an attractive conspiracy, but really that's all there is.
| The existing circumstantial evidence is a big nothingburger
| (Chinese Institute of Virology studies known Chinese Viruses;
| News at 11!).
|
| The _ONLY_ significant evidence, itself still just a single
| source, is that the Journal reported that it was known to
| western intelligence agencies at the time that there was an
| outbreak of something flu-like among WIV employees in October
| 2020. That 's I guess a little suspicious, but still
| unconfirmed and... really not enough to move the needle.
|
| Add to that the fact that covid is a close cousin of already-
| known endemic viruses and that _nothing_ about it looks
| engineered at all, and... this is still just a natural virus,
| sorry.
| z3ncyberpunk wrote:
| Yeah, that's a lot of mental gymnastics to avoid the obvious
| reality.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| >Imagine it was a leak. Dozens or hundreds of people --
| researchers with PhDs and international cred and travel
| ability -- would have had to be knowledgeable about the
| research and in on the coverup.
|
| I don't see why this would be the case. It could be a lab
| leak with nobody at the being aware or having evidence. Why
| must people be in on a _secret_ coverup?
|
| Many activities that make evaluating the lab leak hypothesis
| difficult were done in the open: Destruction of early virus
| samples and deletion of Gene sequencing from public
| databases.
|
| >Add to that the fact that covid is a close cousin of
| already-known endemic viruses and that nothing about it looks
| engineered at all, and... this is still just a natural virus,
| sorry.
|
| The virus does not need to have been engineered to have
| leaked from a lab. Natural viruses can and do leak from labs
| as well.
| newacct583 wrote:
| You're doing the conspiracist thing where you respond to my
| examples of plausible explanations with more hypotheses
| that could alternately explain my guesses. But who cares?
| That's not how proof works.
|
| This is just a gish gallop. I told you why I find existing
| evidence unconvincing. You need to convince me with
| evidence, not hypotheses.
| nickff wrote:
| > _" Why must people be in on a secret coverup?"_
|
| I hadn't considered this before, but you're right that most
| of the people dismissing the 'lab leak' theory seem to
| believe that their intellectual opponents are proposing
| that a 'premeditated conspiracy' took place.
|
| In any case, if I were a PRoC official, I would try to
| reduce the chance of any (direct or circumstantial)
| evidence of a lab leak came to light. That said, even
| suppression of circumstantial evidence is not necessarily
| evidence of either a lab leak or pre-meditated conspiracy.
| echelon wrote:
| "research accident" is a better term than "lab leak".
| newacct583 wrote:
| To be fair, a lot of you nuts are absolutely alleging
| "premeditated conspiracy", or even loopier notions like
| bioweapon engineering. It's extremely hard to figure out
| who we're talking to.
|
| If you want to argue for some weak form of the
| conspiracy, then maybe give it another name or something.
| But note that the weak form you seem to be thinking about
| (that it was benign research on natural viruses and just
| a routine mistake that caused the leak) seems to be _even
| more_ susceptible to my suspicion. If you 're a
| researcher who was doing this benign work, why keep
| silent? You could literally write a book fingering all
| your superiors as the villains and sell it for tens of
| millions of dollars and retire in Taipei or San
| Francisco.
| nickff wrote:
| > _" To be fair, a lot of you nuts are absolutely
| alleging "premeditated conspiracy", or even loopier
| notions like bioweapon engineering. "_
|
| Why are you insulting me? I honestly don't know where
| this virus came from, and am more interested in what the
| polarized discourse says about our current state of
| affairs.
| fouric wrote:
| > To be fair, a lot of you nuts
|
| Please don't resort to personal insults on HN. It's a
| violation of the guidelines[1] and makes for poor and
| uninteresting discussion.
|
| Instead...
|
| > It's extremely hard to figure out who we're talking to.
|
| ...don't resort to personal attacks, and assess the
| argument that the individual is making, without setting
| up a straw-man argument. If you're unclear what their
| assumptions are, then ask.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| hammock wrote:
| >Imagine it was a leak. Dozens or hundreds of people --
| researchers with PhDs and international cred and travel
| ability -- would have had to be knowledgeable about the
| research and in on the coverup
|
| Maybe. And? Dozens or hundreds of internationally-relevant
| people would have been knowledgeable about the Kingdom of
| Saudi Arabia's specific involvement in 9/11, but that didn't
| stop it from being covered up for almost a decade.
| SantalBlush wrote:
| The Saudi Government's involvement in 9/11 was public
| knowledge shortly after it happened. I read about it around
| 2002. It just didn't get media coverage.
| tehjoker wrote:
| Not really, the Chinese government knows the western powers
| want to use this to create an anti-China hysteria and so want
| to deny them the ability to do so. The NATO alliance is trying
| to create a confrontation over Taiwan and a lab leak hysteria
| is a great way to get the population onboard with a war.
| [deleted]
| barnesto wrote:
| Xi thanks you
| ransom1538 wrote:
| I wish we could get the country of origin for comments like
| these.
| trynumber9 wrote:
| of course, NATO is the one threatening to invade Taiwan if
| they legally change their name... such absurdity
| dkersten wrote:
| My problem with the non-lab-leak story is that CCP went to
| great lengths to cover up and downplay the virus in the early
| months, largely contributing to its global spread and a bunch
| of coincidences would have had to line up just right for the
| wet market hypothesis to be true (just happened to be in the
| same city as the lab where they just happened to be studying
| the exact same thing, where the CCP just happened to threaten
| and arrest any doctors or scientists talking about it?). CCP
| has also in recent months tried to shift the blame to other
| countries and they wouldn't let the WHO investigate for over a
| year, plenty of time to dispose of any evidence if it was a lab
| leak.
|
| While non of that proves anything, it certainly makes CCP look
| incredibly suspicious. Of course, if it was a lab leak, its
| pretty unlikely we will ever know. All I know is that the CCP
| acted extremely shady and that alone makes me doubt their
| official story. Again, this doesn't mean it wasn't the wet
| market hypothesis, but its clear that the CCP's word cannot be
| trusted.
|
| We also know that viruses have leaked form high security labs
| in the past (including smallpox!) so its not exactly unheard
| of.
|
| Some footnotes: Its important to separate China/Chinese people
| from the CCP. Its also important to separate "bioengineered"
| from "lab accident", I think the former is extremely unlikely
| and the latter is very possible.
| shapefrog wrote:
| My problem with the non-lab-leak story is that USA went to
| great lengths to cover up and downplay the virus in the early
| months, largely contributing to its global spread
| dkersten wrote:
| I'm unsure what your point is. Care to explain?
|
| Is that meant to be a counterargument? (just because the
| USA downplayed it doesn't make CCP's doing so better,
| especially since they had advance knowledge and could have
| potentially completely prevented the global pandemic, while
| when it was in the USA, it was already global, even if
| lesser) Are you agreeing with me but adding that the USA
| isn't faultless? (Its true, but I don't know how its
| relevant to what I said) I really have no idea what you're
| trying to say.
| tootie wrote:
| The best writeup I've seen is actually this twitter thread from
| the WNYC science reporter, Nsikan Akpan (himself a phd in
| biology). The gist being that while lab leak is still possible,
| it's very unlikely and it's also likely we'll never find a
| smoking gun for any hypothesis.
|
| https://twitter.com/MoNscience/status/1396240581651742724
| stvswn wrote:
| The thread's entire premise is that lab leakers are only
| speculating while there is in fact direct evidence of natural
| origins.
|
| What direct evidence of natural origins is he referring to?
| Kristian Andersen's argument in his oft-cited paper seems to
| be that the spike proteins are effective at infecting humans
| in a novel way, and that if he were engineering an infections
| coronavirus he would have designed it differently, therefore
| it's unlikely that it was bioengineered. Beyond that, they
| tend to point out that "there is no evidence" of a lab leak
| -- ignoring many pieces of evidence along the way, even if
| they are circumstantial, including the workers at the WIV
| contracting a dangerous disease w/ COVID-like symptoms in
| Fall 2019, the sudden disappearance of the WIV genome
| sequence database before the first publicly known cases, and
| the suspicious renaming of the RaTG13 virus sample (the
| closest known to COVID-19 genetically) in WIV literature. I
| feel perpetually gaslit but some of these scientists. The
| argument seems to go as follows: it is most reasonable to
| suspect a zoonotic transfer, even without direct evidence,
| because a community of scientists with clear conflicts of
| interest tell us so -- but we are supposed to dismiss the
| circumstantial evidence of a lab leak because the only
| satisfactory evidence would be if a smoking gun were found in
| the WIV records (and everyone knows that they won't be). The
| idea that it has natural origins stems from recent experience
| with SARS and MERS, but of course that doesn't mean much of
| anything at all -- those experience inform both theories. One
| should also consider the 1977 flu pandemic which was
| confirmed to have been related to a live vaccine trial done
| by the Chinese military -- information which was suppressed
| at the time by the WHO for fear of losing cooperation with
| China and Russia.
|
| Origins aside, it is not disupted that the NIH through the
| NIAID and EcoHealth alliance were funding research into
| coronaviruses that was being done at the WIV, and that the
| data related to that research used to be readily available
| but now is suppressed by the Chinese government, exactly at
| the same time that we are experiencing a pandemic that the
| research was hoping to forestall. Isn't that alone troubling?
| Are the scientists in this community expressing any trouble
| with that fact, or are we meant to believe that we are
| conspiratorial nuts if we bring up China's behavior in any
| context?
| nosianu wrote:
| > _The thread 's entire premise is that lab leakers are
| only speculating while there is in fact direct evidence of
| natural origins._
|
| This is not either/or at all!
|
| It can be both completely natural AND also have escaped
| from a lab. Pretending that lab == bio-engineered is a
| disingenuous distraction. For the given purpose of that lab
| them having a lot of naturally occurring viruses is to be
| expected, since that is the basis of what they are supposed
| to research.
|
| A lot of people have pointed that out, why do you keep
| touting that distraction that paints anyone serious about
| the lab leak question as a conspiracy nut unwilling to look
| at the evidence? Natural origin is accepted and does not
| contradict the lab escape hypothesis at all.
| siva7 wrote:
| Again, this writeup is more about the bioengineering
| hypothesis while embarak states another theory. in it's
| current state the term lab leak has almost become meaningless
| mike00632 wrote:
| That's the problem with these conspiracy theories, though,
| right? They are unfalsifiable by design. A scientific
| hypothesis would be testable. For example, "Did the
| COVID-19 virus come from a lab?" would be falsifiable if
| the COVID-19 virus didn't share the base genetic sequence
| of typical viruses tested in a lab. Lo and behold, the
| COVID-19 virus doesn't have the genetic signature of
| viruses in labs. Therefore the conspiracy theory is more
| convoluted to include vastly more participants in a complex
| web of motives resulting in a theory that is less
| falsifiable and plays into every possible prejudice a
| laymen could have about geopolitics, money, race and
| national governments.
|
| We've seen lab leaks and this is supposedly different
| because it's not disclosed and numerous other reasons
| making it hard to prove. We know about lab made viruses
| which this is supposedly different because it somehow looks
| like a virus of zoonotic origin. We've seen the Chinese
| government cover up embarrassing situations but this is
| different because there was heavy involvement from American
| researchers and American public educational institutions
| and they are in on the cover up too for some reason. We've
| seen the US government dislose previously classified
| information but this is different because all of the
| government officials who say they saw classified
| information about a lab leak (and were in a position to
| declassify said information) did not accompany their
| accusations with gathered intelligence. At some point we
| should recognize that these necessary mental gymnastics put
| the theory well into crank territory.
| JPKab wrote:
| There is currently zero evidence to support a zoonotic
| origin.
|
| It took 9 months to find the source of MERS (camels). It
| took 14 months to find the origin of SARS1 (bats).
|
| What evidence do you have that this was transmitted from
| an animal carrier? What mammal in China (it's not like
| there are that many mammal species living in the Wuhan
| metropolitan area) has been identified that easily
| catches COVID? The answer is zero.
|
| The most likely explanation for this, which fits with all
| the other circumstantial data, is that the zoonotic
| origin was a genetically engineered mouse with human ACE2
| receptors lining it's lungs. Note that I'm saying the
| mouse was genetically engineered, not the virus itself.
| The virus could easily evolve to infect humans by
| repeatedly exposing the humanized mice to the original,
| completely natural origin bat viruses.
|
| Calling out "mental gymnastics" when you are acting as if
| it's a pure coincidence that a bat virus pandemic
| originated in a city containing the world's leading bat-
| borne virus research facility is the height of hypocrisy
| and cognitive dissonance. And before you say that the lab
| is in Wuhan because that's where the viruses are, no,
| it's not. The viruses historically have emerged in Yunnan
| province, in remote caves 1000 KM away from Wuhan.
| scheme271 wrote:
| OTOH, no one has found the zoonotic origin for ebola
| people looking for literally decades. That's also the
| case for a few other diseases as well. Just because the
| origin for MERS and SARS was found quickly, it doesn't
| follow that covid investigations will be as quick
| danenania wrote:
| If ebola had emerged right next to a lab doing high-risk
| research on ebola-like viruses, people would have
| (justifiably) been highly suspicious.
| derbOac wrote:
| I think equating the lab leak hypothesis with climate
| change denial also caused me to tune out. It's just not
| acting in good faith.
|
| I also feel like if he's serious about it, he would produce
| something other than a tweet thread, at least a real blog
| post with links to papers he refers to. Otherwise it's hard
| for me to take them any more seriously than anyone else who
| handwaves about papers.
|
| It _would_ be nice to see something like that with good
| faith opportunities for people to respond and
| counterrespond but I 'm skeptical about it happening.
|
| There's also a sense that I have from reading stuff like
| that and others that we should treat the peer-reviewed
| academic paper trail as somehow the state of things, rather
| than looking at the evidence on its own terms. I don't mean
| anything conspiratorial about that, just that it's almost
| like they expect there to be some peer-reviewed paper out
| there from China that shows how they would have engineered
| it if they had, as if that's realistic at all.
|
| That's not even getting into what you mention, which is the
| possibility nothing was engineered and there was a leak.
| refenestrator wrote:
| You're asking people to prove a negative and then you're
| upset when they can't?
|
| It's impossible to disprove but both SARS and Bird Flu
| crossed over from animals in Southern China so there's no
| reason it must have come from the lab, either. Right now
| we have zero evidence either way, just people speculating
| mostly based on their pre-existing opinions of the
| Chinese state.
| tootie wrote:
| No it covers the entire spectrum of theories. You have to
| follow the thread it's like 50 tweets long. He talks about
| bioengineering, gain of function, serial passage and direct
| animal to lab to public.
| jcranberry wrote:
| The New Yorker had an article in the discussion and
| interviewed two scientists, Stanford microbiologist David
| Relman and UNC virologist Ralph Baric, who signed the letter
| to WHO which was published in Science magazine.
|
| https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-inquiry/the-
| sudden-...
|
| The two scientists seemed to think that although a lab leak
| origin is possible the natural origin story is more likely.
| JPKab wrote:
| Again, there is no identifiable difference between a virus
| harvested from guano in a cave that later leaks from a lab
| sample and the same virus if transmitted to a human.
|
| Nobody is saying this virus was engineered in this thread.
|
| It appears to me to be a deliberate psychological trick of
| lumping people who claim the virus leaked from a lab (by
| far the most probable cause) with people who say the virus
| was an engineered bioweapon (insane, nonsensical crazy
| talk). The entire virology community is dependent on
| government funding, and they have massive conflicts of
| interest. I work with academics all day every day, and far
| too many gradually turn into mealy-mouthed bureaucrats,
| doing and saying whatever it takes to chase their next
| juicy grant, abusing and exploiting graduate students all
| along the way.
| stvswn wrote:
| Wait, you're still overgeneralizing.
|
| There's the chance that it was a naturally occurring
| virus that wasd being stored in a lab (like RaTG13, it's
| closest known cousin). Then, there's the chance that it
| was manipulated in lab experiments by well-meaning
| scientists hoping to learn more about coronavirus
| transmission to humans (which I think is most likely,
| considering the behavior of the WIV, but far from
| certain). Finally, there's the chance that it was
| deliberately leaked as a bioweapon (doesn't make sense to
| me).
|
| I totally agree that there are massive conflicts of
| interest, including the implication of being blacklisted
| from Chinese data sources for one's career and the chance
| that there simply won't be any funding in the future if
| the public believes that the research field itself is to
| blame.
| stvswn wrote:
| I know it won't be a popular opinion here, but I am not
| sure I trust the judgment of scientists with conflicts of
| interest.
|
| It would be human nature for those who were involved in
| lobbying for gain-of-function research to continue are now
| unwilling to entertain the idea that something as
| devastating as COVID was a result of such research. If that
| is true, it means that they were disasterously wrong in
| their earlier stance and it means that there will be no
| appetite to continue funding their field of expertise.
|
| I'm tired of being told not to believe what's clearly in
| front of me -- a coordinated campaign in China to cover up
| any inquiry in to the origins of the virus accompanied by
| very suspicious behavior in China in the months before they
| were supposed to have been aware of the outbreak.
|
| Whether COVID-19 itself is exactly a product of research at
| the WIV funded by EcoHealth Alliance and the NIAID, I don't
| know, but I can read those grant requests myself and see
| that they clearly refer to manipulating coronaviruses so
| that they better infect humanized mice cells. This is a
| study that Fauci insists is not gain of function research,
| but I'm unclear as to the distinction. I suspect that they
| played with language in these requests so as to be able to
| avoid triggering the legally-required review.
|
| Fauci, and others, are potentially aware that the pandemic
| _could_ have stemmed from research that they themselves
| fast-tracked around the legally mandated review process,
| making them partially culpable in millions of deaths
| worldwide -- it would be incredibly difficult in that
| situation to start looking critically at the possibility
| that it 's true.
|
| We should be very careful about trusting experts with a lot
| at stake in the answer to the question.
| shapefrog wrote:
| I know it won't be a popular opinion here, but I am not
| sure I trust the judgment of mathematicians with
| conflicts of interest.
|
| It would be human nature for those who were involved in
| lobbying for 1+1=2 to continue are now unwilling to
| entertain the idea that something as devastating as 42
| was a result of such a calculation.
| JPKab wrote:
| Lab leak and lab engineered are not the same thing.
|
| The SARS1 virus escaped from a lab many years after the
| original outbreak (via accidentally being put in a fridge
| reserved for inactive virus and being examined under electron
| microscope, infecting employee), and it wasn't engineered at
| all. It was 100% natural origin.
|
| I have ZERO doubt in my mind that natural viruses have leaked
| from US labs in the past, and were covered up. Can't prove it
| of course. Superpowers don't admit to these kinds of things.
|
| Belief that this wasn't leaked from a lab requires a
| dismissal of a huge chain of improbable coincidences, and
| it's much easier to believe when you are part of a community
| of scientists who will undoubtedly have funding up-ended when
| people figure out they were at fault. Not unlike what
| happened to the field of nuclear energy after Three Mile
| Island and Chernobyl. The international virology community
| knows this.
| refenestrator wrote:
| How would the US react to a foreign-led investigation of us?
| athenot wrote:
| Probably very similarly. If the EU Commission tried to lead
| an investigation of some major disaster potentially
| originating in the US, _cooperative_ is not the word I 'd use
| to describe how it would go. Sadly.
| refenestrator wrote:
| And that's an org with like 80% NATO members. Picture one
| being led by a rival power.
| rflrob wrote:
| > I find the degree to which the Chinese government has stomped
| all over foreign-led investigations into the origin of SARS-
| Cov-2 to be highly, highly suspicious.
|
| I don't find it suspicious at all, precisely _because_ I don 't
| trust the Chinese government. In my estimation of the CPC, the
| following probabilities are all roughly equal (and close to 1):
|
| * P(suppress investigation | natural origin)
|
| * P(suppress investigation | lab leak of benign research)
|
| * P(suppress investigation | lab leak of gain of function)
|
| From a Bayesian point of view, then, P(lab leak | suppress
| investigation) is going to be almost equal to P(lab leak).
| shakezula wrote:
| This is exactly what's so frustrating about the media
| treating the gain-of-function research they were doing as the
| "smoking gun" is so disingenuous. We were doing all of the
| same types of research, even cooperating with their
| government on some of it in our own labs IN CHINA, and then
| all of a sudden we turn around and blame them? Come on,
| people, you're playing right into what the propaganda says
| happened. They're not doing anything the U.S. government
| wouldn't do if the likely point of origin had been somewhere
| in Atlanta.
| abakker wrote:
| Right, but the purpose of the narrative is not to compare
| whether we are doing the same thing. It is to blame China
| for the pandemic. TBH, if we did the same thing, I expect
| the rest of the world would blame us.
|
| That said, it seems pretty unproductive at this point to
| blame anyone, but it does seem productive to avoid it
| happening again.
| jerry1979 wrote:
| Do we need to actually blame them, as such? Or is it more
| important to memorialize the mistake so we can learn from
| our history?
| [deleted]
| shakezula wrote:
| That's exactly my point. It doesn't help anyone to blame
| anyone else, and the fact that Americans are so fast to
| blame China is very telling.
|
| Years of propaganda has worked its magic in far more
| sinister ways than any of us want to admit, especially to
| ourselves.
| shapefrog wrote:
| > the fact that Americans are so fast to blame China is
| very telling
|
| * P(agressivley blame china | american lab leak of gain
| of function)
|
| Not a 0 on that one.
| keebzed wrote:
| Not sure that makes sense given your presumed knowledge of
| the Chinese government's reaction to SARS?
|
| Or are you in bad faith giving dubious priors?
|
| "This lack of openness caused delays in efforts to control
| the epidemic, resulting in criticism of the People's Republic
| of China from the international community. China officially
| apologized for early slowness in dealing with the SARS
| epidemic."
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Severe_acute_respiratory_syndr.
| ..
| rflrob wrote:
| I think we agree? The Chinese government wasn't open about
| SARS, and despite their apology in 2003 (by which point
| SARS was on the path to containment), I don't have reason
| to believe they've become more open about such things in
| the last couple decades. I am by no means a China expert,
| so you may disagree with my priors about their behavior.
|
| My experience in biology labs (though not virology labs)
| suggests that a leak of benign research is plausible, and
| that if it did happen odds are good that there wouldn't be
| a ton of documentation to suppress. Mistakes happen all the
| time, and if researchers filled out a report every time a
| tube was dropped or some PPE was ignored in a "pretty safe"
| scenario, there'd be almost no time for research.
|
| I still think the total number of human-animal contacts
| outside the lab are at least an order of magnitude greater
| than inside of it, so I would rank the probabilities as
| (natural > benign research leak >> gain of function leak).
| cm2187 wrote:
| To be honest the only way we will ever know is if the chinese
| would share the genomes of the viruses they stored in their
| lab, but who would trust them to do that? The express drive-by
| the WHO did in china served absolutely no purpose. I am ready
| to bet that all samples have been destroyed and the staff
| briefed (warned). I would even suspect the samples have not
| even been analysed by the Chinese themselves as it is better to
| not know than running the risk of some technician leaking such
| damaging information (and who would trust the Chinese
| authorities whatever they say anyway). So my money is on "we
| will never know".
|
| But like others, I have strong suspicions. It starts by an
| improbable coincidence (pandemic starting at the doorstep of a
| lab). The Chinese have acted guilty from the outset, by lying
| about the virus, arresting doctors, not allowing any
| investigation, and pushing crazy alternative theories.
| vanattab wrote:
| >The express drive-by the WHO did in china served absolutely
| no purpose.
|
| I served it's purpose perfectly! It allowed China to pretend
| that an investigation was done.
| timbo1642 wrote:
| We dont need to compare anything. We already know. Even the
| Biden administration who kisses China's ass agrees. Its well
| known and all the virus experts that aren't brainwashed
| leftists agree. Many of them did from day 1. They had other
| leaks and there are news articles about it with the original
| SARS.
|
| Stop trying to play pretend and believe the truth.
| lasc4r wrote:
| From day one it's been silly to assume any outbreak of a
| virus is from a lab leak without evidence.
| z3ncyberpunk wrote:
| There's been plenty, there's been exactly zero evidence
| though that it was from bats and wet markets. And if it
| were from bats or other animals, why did fouchi want to
| collect even more animals that are already being
| experimented on an increase the rate of already dangerous
| research?
| dkersten wrote:
| There's no evidence for the counter argument either, but
| to believe that we have to accept the big coincidence
| that it happened to start in the one city where they were
| studying that exact virus.
|
| I'm not saying that this means it was definitely a lab
| leak. It absolutely doesn't, without further evidence,
| but discounting it completely, especially given how
| suspicious the CCP acted around it (why wait an entire
| year before letting the WHO investigate and then only for
| a few hours? why silence scientists and doctors?), is
| equally silly.
|
| There's no evidence it was a lab leak, there's no
| evidence that it wasn't either. There's some
| circumstantial data to suggest that the CCP isn't a
| trustworthy source. That's all we know.
|
| Yes its silly to assume that it was a lab leak. But its
| also silly to assume that it wasn't. We don't know what
| it was.
| s5300 wrote:
| >that aren't brainwashed leftists agree.
|
| >Stop trying to play pretend and believe the truth.
|
| Just like Bush and his Dubya Em Deez, right? The other side
| is always brainwashed, and your side always "knows the
| truth"
|
| Why don't you go use that power of yours to go do something
| helpful?
| outworlder wrote:
| > brainwashed leftists
|
| My heuristic is, whenever I encounter these labels, it's
| the moment I stop reading. They signal the end of
| productive conversation, anything surrounding them can be
| ignored.
| z3ncyberpunk wrote:
| Cool?
| JPKab wrote:
| To add to your point, it was a chain of improbable
| coincidences:
|
| Pandemic starting at the doorstep of a lab (that is not
| located in remotely close proximity to the Yunnan caves where
| the previous SARS viruses were originating from)
|
| Previous SARS virus outbreaks (SARS1 and MERS) had zoonotic
| reservoirs identified in months with dramatically fewer
| resources, but coincidentally, with vast resources and global
| efforts, no zoonotic reservoir identified for this virus.
|
| Previous SARS virus outbreaks showed a gradual evolution of a
| virus to progressively becoming more infectious to humans,
| and equivalent genetic changes in the virus that can be
| traced. This one started out as highly infectious, and until
| several months in, mutations weren't very significant.
|
| The Chinese Communist Party (not China, not the Chinese
| people, but the CCP) has expended far more energy suppressing
| research and scientific access than any form of investigation
| into the origins of the virus.
|
| The CCP deliberately suppressed and arrested doctors publicly
| talking about the virus early on.
|
| Edit:
|
| Forgot to add that there is a direct paper trail (publicly
| available on data.gov) of grant documents which specify that
| the funding will be used in WIV for research of bat
| coronaviruses with (and I quote from the paper) "humanized
| mice". Humanized mice, in this context, are mice genetically
| engineered to have human ACE2 receptors lining their
| respiratory tissue. In what was the most infuriating moment
| of public testimony I have ever seen, Dr. Fauci argues that
| infecting humanized mice with animal viruses (resulting in
| animal viruses that can more easily infect humans) is NOT
| gain of function research. He was playing an obvious semantic
| game, where his definition of GOF is the far narrower concept
| of making an existing human infecting virus more
| infectious..... Seriously, I was a big fan of the guy until
| that single bit of testimony. Now i know he's a lying
| bureaucrat more than he is a scientist.
|
| https://reporter.nih.gov/search/xQW6UJmWfUuOV01ntGvLwQ/proje.
| ..
| peter422 wrote:
| > Previous SARS virus outbreaks showed a gradual evolution
| of a virus to progressively becoming more infectious to
| humans, and equivalent genetic changes in the virus that
| can be traced. This one started out as highly infectious,
| and until several months in, mutations weren't very
| significant.
|
| Both of these statements are so inaccurate. It took many
| years before scientists were certain what the reservoir was
| for SARS, and there were already different lineages of the
| virus at the Wuhan market!
|
| You are mad at the CCP for putting out misleading
| information. You are guilty of the same thing!
| shakezula wrote:
| The Chinese didn't do anything that we wouldn't have done. In
| fact, they took better steps than we did, as far as the
| pandemic is concerned.
|
| Of course the dude had concerns, anyone with half a brain
| would explore all of the possible origins and theories. But
| the lab leak theory is just that - one theory that could
| explain the situation at hand.
|
| The problem is that too many people have put far too much
| stock in the lab leak theory to the point that it's being
| treated as the most likely source of origin, but that's just
| not what the evidence says.
| cm2187 wrote:
| I'd like to think we don't put doctors in jail when they
| raise the alarm on a new virus.
| trasz wrote:
| You mean Li Wenliang, the doctor who was eventually
| decorated - by Chinese government - for speaking up? He
| was never put to jail. That's another case of anti-
| Chinese propaganda for you.
| aesh2Xa1 wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li_Wenliang
|
| Born 12 October 1985 Beizhen, Jinzhou, Liaoning, China
|
| Died 7 February 2020 (aged 34) Wuhan, Hubei, China
|
| Cause of death COVID-19
|
| Yes, all of that suspicious propaganda about the Chinese
| government's treatment of dissidents. The decoration came
| after his death at 34 years old.
|
| > He died from the disease on 7 February 2020, at age
| 34.[8][9] A subsequent Chinese official inquiry
| exonerated him, and the Communist Party of China formally
| offered a "solemn apology" to his family and revoked the
| admonishment of him.
| rcurry wrote:
| Well, we do block them on Facebook and Twitter.
| aesh2Xa1 wrote:
| What are you talking about (serious)? Dissent is legal
| and will not result in imprisonment in the US.
|
| I don't even subscribe to Facebook or Twitter by choice.
| I definitely wouldn't subscribe to imprisonment by
| choice, haha. If you're concerned about these platforms
| controlling their content privately, don't use them.
| quantum_magpie wrote:
| Well, the US seems hellbent on shipping one journalist
| who broke no law in US to their torture chambers. Until
| that's sorted out you just can't claim moral superiority.
| rcurry wrote:
| Forget it Jake, it's Chinatown.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| shakezula wrote:
| Sure, and I'd like to think we don't run scientific tests
| on black people without their knowledge or consent, but
| that doesn't line up either.
|
| If you think the U.S. is above unlawfully detaining a
| doctor, then I've got sad news for you.
| iammisc wrote:
| Great argument... if the US did this, I'm sure no one
| would demand an investigation... /s
| trasz wrote:
| US did this many times. The investigations ended up like
| they usually do in US, starting from My Lai - in the best
| case they'll find a single scapegoat and that's it.
| iammisc wrote:
| I'm not claiming the us didnt do this. I'm disputing that
| people would stay silent when the us does this.
|
| The us does do this and has large and growing domestic
| opposition movements.
| trasz wrote:
| People don't stay silent, but the way the US works, it
| simply doesn't matter.
| iammisc wrote:
| If we had 100% incontrivertible evidence COVID came from
| a CHinese lab, I can 100% guarantee you nothing would
| happen to china.
| mc32 wrote:
| >"Ben Embarek told the Danish reporters. In the end, Ben
| Embarek's Chinese counterpart eventually agreed to discuss the
| lab-leak theory in the report "on the condition we didn't
| recommend any specific studies to further that hypothesis."
|
| Things would have been so much better, if they had just come
| correct from the beginning.
|
| But now we have all this politicking and censorship and
| accusations of racism, etc., etc. when discussing the possibility
| of it being a lab release.
|
| Will Twitter and FB and the WHO issue a mea culpa? I don't expect
| so.
| nextos wrote:
| I found it sad to see how a very plausible theory (other
| countries have had leaks in the past) was silenced and
| censored.
|
| As a starter, we need a deep and careful investigation to make
| sure this doesn't happen ever again either in China or
| elsewhere.
| 8note wrote:
| It got tied to another theory, that the virus was engineered.
| jacobriis wrote:
| It is possible lab modified or directed the evolution of
| the virus.
| mc32 wrote:
| No, the WHO and many others insisted the most plausible
| scenario was it coming from the wet market which sold bats
| that were hunted about 1000 miles away.
|
| That's the theory they wanted people to consume.
|
| [and apparently voters have short memories because they are
| disagreeing]
|
| This is indeed interesting to see.
| iammisc wrote:
| Who claimed that?
|
| Even the most prominent proponent of the lab leak theory,
| Donald Trump, said several times early on that he wasn't
| sure if it was intentional or an accident. In fact, he was
| pretty clear he thought it was accidental, and only
| mentioned it being intentional as a possibility, but that
| was an afterthought.
|
| Source, since everyone likes to put words in his mouth:
|
| https://apnews.com/article/understanding-the-outbreak-
| intell... (dated April 30, 2020).
|
| So who exactly said that it was engineered for certain?
|
| EDIT: the downvotes indicate that the belief that some
| believe the virus to be engineered is dogmatic in nature,
| rather than based on facts. If this were such a common
| belief, surely someone can identify its main proponent.
| s5300 wrote:
| > In fact, he was pretty clear he thought
|
| I suspect you're being downvoted because of your
| insistence on Donald Trump being "pretty clear", among
| other things, when Donald Trump has a decades long
| history of being anything but "very clear"
|
| While this is after when your comment refers to, here is
| an example.
|
| > "And then I see the disinfectant where it knocks it out
| in a minute. One minute. And is there a way we can do
| something like that, by injection inside or almost a
| cleaning?
|
| "So it'd be interesting to check that."
|
| Pointing to his head, Mr Trump went on: "I'm not a
| doctor. But I'm, like, a person that has a good you-know-
| what."
|
| This was stated by a US President to the general public
| of his nation, and the world at large.
|
| The next day, about this quote - he simpled stated that
| he was "being sarcastic"
|
| If you have some notion on how this method of
| communication and reason equates with being "pretty
| clear", please do tell.
|
| However, this reply of yours
|
| >the downvotes indicate
|
| Would seem to "indicate" that you're not exactly the most
| reasonable person to have any discussion in good faith to
| begin with.
| iammisc wrote:
| No one is going to argue that Trump is a great orator or
| that he doesn't gaffe or that every single thing that
| comes out of his mouth ought to be taken at face value
| (Are you kidding me... do you believe this is true of
| _any_ politician? Look at what happened with Cuomo after
| months of media adulation and an emmy....)
|
| In the case of the lab leak theory, Trump was always
| extremely clear that he thought it a possibility and that
| he did not necessarily think it was a bioweapon. I can
| see that you are uninterested in engaging in good faith,
| because instead of keeping the debate to what it was
| about (the lab leak theory) you're changing the goalposts
| (demanding that everything he say be absolutely clear and
| never wrong or stupid, apparently in contrast to every
| other president before him [1]).
|
| Lots of presidents speak poorly on certain issues, make
| stupid statements that they later have to cover up and
| retract, or cause confusion. That doesn't make them wrong
| on the issues they do speak clearly on.
|
| > Would seem to "indicate" that you're not exactly the
| most reasonable person to have any discussion in good
| faith to begin with.
|
| Oh please... downvoting someone who is giving you
| evidence of exactly what was said without a response
| indicates that those downvoting are only interested in
| ignoring reality.
|
| [1] If I recall correctly, one of the most popular
| presidents of all time got up on stage and actually told
| the American public that accusations against him
| literally depend on 'what the meaning of the word is
| is'... come on, this is the most demanding and insane
| standard to expect of any American leader.
| s5300 wrote:
| > I can see that you are uninterested in engaging in good
| faith, because instead of keeping the debate to what it
| was about (the lab leak theory) you're changing the
| goalposts (demanding that everything he say be absolutely
| clear and never wrong or stupid, apparently in contrast
| to every other president before him [1]).
|
| No, a third grader can easily explain to you why when
| somebody has a long and detailed history of being
| completely and utterly full of shit, whatever they say
| going forward will barely be considered to be not full of
| shit, for whatever roundabout reasons and circumstances.
|
| >are only interested in ignoring reality.
|
| You're trolling on HN. _Stop_ trolling on HN.
| iammisc wrote:
| I have no interest in provoking a reaction from you
| (trolling), I'm just pointing out that all
| administrations say stupid things, and that's not a good
| reason to dismiss the correct things they say or to deny
| it without consideration. I honestly don't understand why
| this is controversial. Instead of an explanation as to
| why any administration's claims ought to be dismissed out
| of hand, I am being accused of breaking site rules.
|
| It seems to me, that by downvoting and then accusing me
| of breaking site rules, you're trying to make me react.
| Isn't that also trolling? At no point did I ask for your
| comments or try to 'bait' you into making them. Have a
| great day!
| minikites wrote:
| Summit News is not a reliable source:
| https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/summit-news/
|
| >Launched in March 2019, Summit News is a far-right conspiracy
| website. Like most questionable sources this website does not
| have an about page nor disclosure of ownership. The primary
| writer appears to be Paul Joseph Watson, who is a former editor
| for the conspiracy website Infowars. Although not disclosed, Paul
| Joseph Watson appears to be the owner and editor of this website.
| Croftengea wrote:
| Thanks for the link, very useful site.
| underseacables wrote:
| Don't shoot the messenger. What about the content? Did the
| Danish WHO director make the statement or not?
|
| BuzzFeed was once declared not a reliable news source.
| rndmind wrote:
| Sure, ad hominem attack.. but stereotypes exist for a reason.
| If a story is _only_ in places like National Inquirer, or in
| this case, if the story is _only_ on a place that is rated as
| a poor news site, then I 'm not going to read it.
|
| If it has merit, then it will be republished by more ( non-
| profit, and independent ) reliable news sources.
| nickff wrote:
| Apparently it has merit, as the link has now been changed
| to AP. We shouldn't be so hasty in making (or believing) ad
| hominiem attacks.
| minikites wrote:
| So we should take everything at face value and only
| investigate later, if at all?
| nickff wrote:
| I think skepticism should vary, and we should be quicker
| to verify than dismiss. This post made a specific,
| verifiable claim; I find that most misleading articles
| are vague and impossible to verify, or omit any context.
| minikites wrote:
| I agree, but I think there's another aspect to this. The
| way many news sources with an agenda operate is by mixing
| news and opinion (vague, impossible to verify, sometimes
| omit context, but grounded in reality). Where it starts
| to cross the line into propaganda is when news is mixed
| with misleading falsehoods and an active attempt to
| manipulate context. An individual associated with
| InfoWars should be viewed with a large amount of
| skepticism.
| stonkdonk wrote:
| lol why is this crap on the first page
| oh_sigh wrote:
| Wow, I can't believed trained scientists/lab workers decide to go
| scrounge around wet markets and get infected by wild animals.
| rcurry wrote:
| In local news, officials announced that the accidental nuclear
| detonation a few blocks from the Acme Nuclear Weapons Depot was
| in fact the fault of a nearby farmers market. Back to you Jim for
| the college sports update.
| PicassoCTs wrote:
| How about the western liason to the whole affair have his say in
| his own words - pre-covid out-break?
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IdYDL_RK--w
| rcurry wrote:
| This stuff is always so much easier in the Navy. Just find a gay
| sailor who has a copy of The Anarchist's Cookbook.
|
| Re: USS Iowa Turret Explosion
| shadilay wrote:
| But how can you pick just one gay seaman?
| rcurry wrote:
| I knew a Marine would show up.
| belter wrote:
| Original Danish article. Use your blockers because it has an
| ocean of ads...
|
| https://nyheder.tv2.dk/udland/2021-08-12-ansat-paa-laborator...
| anonAndOn wrote:
| Maybe it's because he's a fan of The Far Side and had seen this
| on his Far Side desktop calendar?[0]
|
| [0]https://i.pinimg.com/736x/6c/1d/61/6c1d61b11496488750658428d..
| .
| rcurry wrote:
| Hahaha, reminds me of the old Simpson's episode:
|
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FwvZql6RToE&feature=share&fbcl...
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