[HN Gopher] The media's lab leak fiasco
___________________________________________________________________
The media's lab leak fiasco
Author : ksec
Score : 161 points
Date : 2021-05-27 19:34 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.slowboring.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.slowboring.com)
| hjek wrote:
| Didn't recognize the author until near the end:
|
| > My position on China is we need "One Billion Americans" in
| order to stay number one forever, and I'm not going to change
| that view.
|
| Current Affairs has an interesting article on the author's
| peculiar form of liberal nationalism[0].
|
| [0]: https://www.currentaffairs.org/2020/11/why-nationalism-
| is-a-...
| Empact wrote:
| As for policy consequences, how about this one:
|
| The United States directly and indirectly funded the Wuhan
| laboratory, and so bears some responsibility for the virus. It
| also appears Fauci and others were aware of the deficiencies of
| the institution. The US should end its support for dangerous
| research in institutions outside of its purview.
| speeder wrote:
| I am not from US.
|
| Back during early pandemy when not only some US politicians
| blamed China, Chinese politicians blamed US, when people asked
| me in person about it, I would explain that both are saying the
| truth.
|
| Obama banned gain of function research in 2015, right after
| some papers about Coronavirus specifically attracted attention.
|
| The fact that US government continued not just gain of function
| research, but research into Coronavirus exactly, that was what
| caused the ban in first place, is something I think the US
| citizens really need to figure out what to do about it.
| louloulou wrote:
| It continued because the ban on GOF research was lifted in
| 2017 (https://www.nih.gov/about-nih/who-we-are/nih-
| director/statem...)
| unyttigfjelltol wrote:
| Fauci would have been pushed aside, along with EcoHealth
| Alliance.
|
| The biggest policy consequence is in the headline-- our leaders
| in health and media would have possessed a lot more credibility
| than they do now. The consequences of 'polarization' of _facts_
| can 't be overstated.
| generalizations wrote:
| And of course it got flagged. What guidelines did it break?
| Didn't seem like the conversation was getting out of hand.
| fitzie wrote:
| The media really aren't the story here. their credibility
| couldn't be any lower. what is interesting is how the scientists
| stayed quiet, how big tech continues to use fact checkers to
| censor, and how the Chinese communist party and their allies were
| able to call discussion of lab leak theory causing hate but the
| notion of Chinese eating bat soup would not.
| aazaa wrote:
| > ... Evidence in favor of leak theory lowers the status of the
| media and raises the status of Tom Cotton but doesn't drastically
| alter the policy landscape.
|
| That's a very peculiar statement coming from someone who just
| admitted to missing the 21st century's biggest story to date. And
| I suspect he's now being too quick to discount the effect on not
| only the political landscape, but the journalistic landscape as
| well.
| nyczomg wrote:
| It's incredible. If the lab leak theory is true, then a virus
| escaped from a lab in China and caused the deaths of millions
| of people. And at the time this happened, the Chinese
| government did everything it could to hide that from the world.
| And for some reason, a large part of the US media and tech
| establishments went along with the ruse and were nice enough to
| censor or attempt to discredit/destroy anyone who suggested
| that the virus didn't come from a wet market, but instead
| possibly came from the Institute of Virology down the street.
|
| And if we somehow find that all of the above is true, there are
| people who say that this isn't really a big deal from a policy
| perspective? What in the actual fuck??
| twoodfin wrote:
| If it had been a lab in Colorado, under the nominal
| supervision of some Trump crony, I think it indeed would have
| been something of "a big deal from a policy perspective"!
|
| I like Yglesias, but it's pretty blinkered to limit "policy
| impact" to "what to do about biological threat research".
| Maybe this means having unanswerable autocracies around is
| bad and we should try (however ineffectually) to change that
| state of affairs?
| fsckboy wrote:
| Not just the media, folks, also the rest of our "sense making
| apparatus".
|
| Wikipedia has been suppressing lab leak discussion, and still to
| this moment will not allow the old Lab Leak Hypothesis page back.
| It still redirects to a declared "Misinformation!" page
| https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=COVID-19_lab_leak...
|
| And guess where else lab leak was suppressed? Here on HN. Yes,
| dang, you suppressed discussion of a perfectly reasonable
| hypothesis many times.
|
| So, while I have your attention, the real problem vis a vis
| Covid19 is not the lab leak. The real problem is "gain of
| function" research, using gene splicing to make more virulent-to-
| humans pathogens. And don't read into anything I'm saying, please
| pay attention to literally what I say here; if you have to reword
| what I say to cast doubt, you're not playing fair.
|
| This virus was likely man-made because gain of function man made
| viruses are quite common in research; and this is not a coverup
| conspiracy caused by the Chinese tendency for face-saving, swept
| under the carpet, "truths", though there is plenty of that. This
| scandal was caused by western experts: our best virologists are
| themselves engaging in gain of function research right here in
| our very own cities. If you ask them, as the media did, "what
| likely happened here", their answer is not going to point the
| finger at themselves, too much funding is at stake.
|
| Good background and in-depth research on the gain of function and
| lab leak hypotheses was carried out and published on the web over
| a year ago by Yuri Deigin https://yurideigin.medium.com/lab-made-
| cov2-genealogy-throug... and it was covered on Bret Weinstein's
| Dark Horse podcast https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5SRrsr-Iug
|
| And surprisingly, it is easy for lay people to read/listen and
| follow because Yuri Deigan is not a virologist, just a really
| smart educated guy.
|
| and it wasn't just the mainstream media and HN and wikipedia who
| suppressed the information from you all; sadly it was also
| because of the politicization, your politicization, of this
| crisis. If Trump said something, to most of you it just had to be
| wrong, and for some reason, opening our economy to the Chinese
| and disliking Russia were sacred cows to the Democrats, and
| anything Trump did that went the other way just had to be undone.
|
| That is what covered up this most obvious and likely HYPOTHESIS
| from being discussed: that of a man made, gain of function virus
| escaping from a lab in Wuhan where the virus broke out.
|
| Was there any Chinese military goal here, as a true conspiracy
| theory would allege? Sadly, frankly, there doesn't need to be.
| That's because advanced virology research is of deep interest to
| every military around the world. See the history of anthrax
| research. It is publicly acknowledged that it's part and parcel
| of germ warfare research both for defensive and offensive
| purposes.
| ximeng wrote:
| "This virus was likely man-made because gain of function man
| made viruses are quite common in research" - this doesn't seem
| a convincing argument on its own (ignoring the comments on
| conspiracy / sense-making / politicisation).
|
| Gain of function research seems valuable precisely in the sense
| it is identifying the mechanisms that govern infectivity. We
| wouldn't have this discussion on furin cleavage sites without
| it.
|
| The most likely case if we accept the lab leak hypothesis is
| that there was a base virus that was modified, with a similar
| virus that had a slightly different spike protein. This then
| infected staff and from there entered society.
|
| This gains plausibility from the fact that it wouldn't be
| readily distinguishable from a natural virus, as it would just
| be a combination of the two genomes.
|
| However this is exactly why we can't say for certain either way
| whether the source is natural or not - they'd be
| indistinguishable genetically.
|
| It is more likely on the face of it that evolutionary pressure
| on the virus to spread and the natural process of mutation and
| selection caused the mutations in question, simply because of
| the volume of natural mutations versus artificial mutations.
| byset wrote:
| "And guess where else lab leak was suppressed? Here on HN."
|
| And maybe is still getting suppressed? This post was #1 on HN
| one minute, and then, less than an hour later, it's down on
| page 3, ranked #88. Does the HN ranking algorithm really bury
| stuff that quickly?
| ximeng wrote:
| Yes it does bury stuff very quickly if it is flagged by
| sufficient numbers of users. I'm not sure it's a good thing
| but it is a thing.
| FillardMillmore wrote:
| Well it looks like this one got flagged. But why?
| ximeng wrote:
| It's a black box from an outside perspective, but
| generally I imagine it's factors such as appearing
| political or the sort of thing that would be reported in
| mainstream media (both of which are somewhat discouraged
| by site guidelines), or being repetitive (there have been
| a number of articles discussed recently on this topic).
|
| This is not a new issue. Here's a discussion on the
| subject:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13857086
| dang wrote:
| It set off the flamewar detector as well as getting a lot of
| user flags. I've turned that off now.
|
| As for 'suppressed' please see
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27309238.
| byset wrote:
| Ok thx for the reply
|
| I was just dismayed to see the story sink so fast (but I
| get it now) -- the article involves an interesting
| discussion of how scientific consensus is represented in
| the media and how it relates to social media, which seem
| like very HN-friendly topics... shame that so many are
| eager to flag something like this based on (as seems
| likely) some sort of forbidden-topic litmus test
| npilk wrote:
| I thought this was a fascinating read. I'd love to see more
| analysis like this of what exactly people said, and how it was
| quoted and characterized in the media.
| [deleted]
| newaccount2021 wrote:
| Its very simple - Trump promoted the lab hypothesis, so
| mainstream media immediately seized on the notion that it was a
| crank conspiracy
| cratermoon wrote:
| "If the question is "are both hypotheses possible?" the answer is
| yes. Both are possible. If the question is "are they equally
| likely?" the answer is absolutely not. One hypothesis requires a
| colossal cover-up and the silent, unswerving, leak-proof
| compliance of a vast network of scientists, civilians, and
| government officials for over a year. The other requires only for
| biology to behave as it always has, for a family of viruses that
| have done this before to do it again. The zoonotic spillover
| hypothesis is simple and explains everything. It's scientific
| malpractice to pretend that one idea is equally as meritorious as
| the other. The lab-leak hypothesis is a scientific deus ex
| machina, a narrative shortcut that points a finger at a specific
| set of bad actors. I would be embarrassed to stand up in front of
| a room of scientists, lay out both hypotheses, and then pretend
| that one isn't clearly, obviously better than the other"
|
| https://massivesci.com/articles/sars-cov-coronavirus-covid19...
| ximeng wrote:
| Both this and the originally linked article are long on
| politics and conspiracies and short on science, which is why
| the responses end up being political. The interesting questions
| here are not about CCP secrecy but about mutation rates in
| different environments and how effectively scientists can
| engineer mutations versus evolving them. It would be much more
| convincing evidence of lab leaks if examples of effective gain
| of function mutations being injected by scientists (or some
| kind of accelerated evolution by manipulating lab conditions)
| could be discussed and explained.
|
| There won't be a scientific conclusion based on an analysis of
| what media leaked what when.
| throwaway69123 wrote:
| The reality of this quote doesn't justify censorship
| johncena33 wrote:
| The author is making the "vast network of scientists, govt.
| officials, and civillians" argument, which doesn't even pass
| the BS test. Few dozens researchers in Wuhan lab and CCP
| officials are more than enough to accomplish the cover up.
| zdragnar wrote:
| The cover up didn't need to be colossal, just for everyone to
| point to occams razor and call anyone with a hint of curiosity
| a racist.
|
| The fact that the origin of the outbreak appears to be in the
| same vicinity as a lab that experiments on similar viruses
| alone is sufficient reason to want a thorough investigation.
|
| Otherwise, the odds that nature produced such a virus, in such
| a location, make for a crazy coincidence, given that we havent
| been facing this problem every year for decades.
| cratermoon wrote:
| Have you considered the possibility that it first appeared in
| the vicinity of a lab that experiments on similar viruses is
| because if it had appeared elsewhere, there would have been
| no sufficiently-equipped lab to isolate it? This is the
| streetlight effect: you find things where you (are able to)
| look for them.
|
| In other words, it couldn't have appeared somewhere far from
| a properly-equipped lab, because there would be no properly-
| equipped lab to detect it.
| zdragnar wrote:
| Plenty of virii have their origins traced to initial
| outbreaks where there are not labs.
|
| Using this as a justification to not investigate the
| possibility of a lab leak is wishful thinking at best.
| johncena33 wrote:
| > Have you considered the possibility that it first
| appeared in the vicinity of a lab that experiments on
| similar viruses is because if it had appeared elsewhere,
| there would have been no sufficiently-equipped lab to
| isolate it?
|
| You are essentially arguing for lab leak theory. Initially
| there was only one cluster of COVID and that was at Wuhan.
| That's why lab leak hypothesis is more plausible.
|
| It was not the case that there were dozens of clusters all
| over the world and Wuhan lab was first able to identify the
| virus. Your argument would have _some_ validity if there
| are lot of clusters of outbreaks at the same time. But that
| was not the case. The initial cluster was only at Wuhan.
| cratermoon wrote:
| The initial cluster was _found_ at Wuhan, because there
| 's a lab there. We have no idea how many sub-pandemic
| clusters arose and fell before this particular mutation
| got into a population sufficiently dense and mobile to
| spread it.
|
| Did you know that 1918 flu arose in Haskell County,
| Kansas, killed many, and then just .. died out?
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC340389/
| johncena33 wrote:
| > The initial cluster was found at Wuhan, because there's
| a lab there
|
| Citation needed. This seems hand-wavy at best. As a
| matter of fact, people were uncertain about disease
| itself [1]. I havent seen any article yet that asserts
| the fact that Wuhan cluster was detected because of the
| lab. Furthermore, Wuhan lab is a research lab. It's not
| some diagnostic lab that people go there to get tested
| for new variant of SARS viruses.
|
| [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-50984025
| lamontcg wrote:
| We had SARS-1 crop up in Guangdong in 2003 when the nearest
| known related virus has been found in Yunnan some ~700 miles
| away.
|
| There just wasn't a lab there to leak from.
|
| This time it popped up about ~700 miles away again, but where
| there was a lab.
|
| The actual chances of that happening are probably about
| 1-in-10 / 1-in-20 if we understood the movement of people and
| animals within China that produced both outbreaks. That isn't
| actually that crazy of a coincidence.
| beaner wrote:
| Why does it require a cover-up so vast? All you need to keep
| the secret is blocking access from international investigators
| and the silence of the very few people originally involved.
| There's tons of precedent of harsh and inhumane penalties for
| saying things the government doesn't want you to from within
| China. And international investigation is quite simple to
| decline, you just say no. I don't think it's as complicated as
| you're trying to make it sound.
| cratermoon wrote:
| You vastly underestimate the number of people who would have
| to be silent or silenced. People are terrible at keeping
| secrets.
| johncena33 wrote:
| > People are terrible at keeping secrets.
|
| Not unless their lives are at risk. You do understand that
| we are talking about CCP?
| tomp wrote:
| Maybe people are terrible at keeping secrets, but also
| everyone who spills the secret is immediately branded a
| conspiracy theorist and deplatformed, the end result is the
| same...
| beaner wrote:
| I mean, citations please. If it really was a lab leak, who
| is to say it wasn't from a small specialized research team,
| maybe some academics who were aware of the science but not
| the implementation, and a couple people in management? The
| project does not need to have been a huge, nefarious,
| x-files program. That sounds like the conspiracy theory to
| me.
|
| I think you might be vastly overestimating how many people
| would even have been knowledgeable about it in the first
| place.
| etcet wrote:
| Rootclaim has some fairly compelling analysis which suggests
| the lab leak scenario is more likely:
| https://www.rootclaim.com/analysis/What-is-the-source-of-COV...
| lamontcg wrote:
| Yeah except that is a really bad analysis:
|
| - There's still no evidence that WIV was doing GOF research
| there. The SARS-1 GOF research was done in the USA.
|
| - There are horseshoe bats with sarbecoviruses in Hubei
| province, their range is large.
|
| - Similar to this virus, for SARS-1 there closest known virus
| in bats is in Yunnan, but SARS-1 emerged in Guangdong, about
| the same distance away from Yunnan as Wuhan is.
|
| - Calling it a "Chimera" is not accurate and is a loaded
| term. It is not a Chimera of RaTG13. You can't get from
| RaTG13 to SARS-2 by splicing some other backbone and then
| shipping it through a couple dozen generations of mice.
| RatG13 is also a few decades of evolution away from SARS-2.
|
| - A furin cleavage site has emerged spontaneously in
| coronaviruses at least 6 times now (not including SARS-2) in
| both circulating human coronaviruses and in MERS. It has also
| now been found in sarbecoviruses in Thailand, so we know that
| nature produces furin cleavage sites in this kind of virus.
|
| - Efforts by China to suppress information sound like an
| authoritarian government acting like an authoritarian
| government. This is completely unsurprising.
|
| - Efforts by WIV to do political damage control after the
| pandemic broke also sound like a lab under an authoritarian
| government reacting to protect itself and by its people
| reacting to protect themselves (there may have been
| relatively banal stuff like financial embezzlement going on
| in the lab which is being suppressed). This is also
| completely unsurprising.
| johncena33 wrote:
| > vast network of scientists, civilians, and government
| officials
|
| Few corrections:
|
| * CCP government officials, who have every single incentive to
| participate in cover-up
|
| * I am not sure how much cover-ups needed by any civillian, let
| alone vast network of civillians. An average civillian is
| probably not aware of lab leak to begin with, unless they were
| informed by media.
|
| * again, not vast network of scientists is needed for cover-up.
| Mostly researchers and officials in Wuhan Lab. Like CCP
| officials, who have every single incentive to participate in
| cover-up
| adolph wrote:
| The zoonotic spillover doesn't seem to address geography. Why
| would the virus first appear in a city near a virology
| institute instead of out in the country near bat habitats? The
| speculation from scientists like Dr. Daszak is that someone ate
| an infected live bat from "southern China."
|
| I've seen the studies about air flows in restaurants and
| buffets and none seem to indicate that Covid is food borne. So
| we have someone in the wet market about to bite into some
| delicious live bat and they give it a big sniff right as the
| bat expels some of its last little virus contaminated breaths.
| "Squee, squee" says the bat. "Hmm-mm finger licking good" says
| the world's unluckiest connoisseur of things that flutter in
| the night.
|
| Alternatively, someone was careless in a lab studying the same
| family of bats and viruses. In the sense that one need not
| attribute to malice that which is explained by incompetence,
| the leaked virus need not have been some "biowarfare" effort,
| maybe just something a bit entrepreneurial or a side experiment
| to see if something could work.
|
| https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/who-report-says-covid-orig...
| cratermoon wrote:
| > Why would the virus first appear in a city near a virology
| institute instead of out in the country near bat habitats?
|
| Have you considered the possibility that it first appeared in
| the vicinity of a lab that experiments on similar viruses is
| because if it had appeared elsewhere, there would have been
| no sufficiently-equipped lab to isolate it? This is the
| streetlight effect: you find things where you (are able to)
| look for them. In other words, it couldn't have appeared
| somewhere far from a properly-equipped lab, because there
| would be no properly-equipped lab to detect it.
| makomk wrote:
| Pretty sure this doesn't make sense at all. If I remember
| rightly, the way Covid-19 was originally identified was
| that two or three different private sector labs which don't
| normally work with this kind of virus at all managed to
| sequence it well enough to identify what it was - it had
| nothing to do with the virology institute. Not only that,
| the fact that they weren't officially meant to be handling
| this kind of virus was used to shut them up and get them to
| destroy the virus sequences they'd found.
| sauwan wrote:
| If the CCP didn't have such a startling surveillance system and
| tight grip over any international narrative, I'd be inclined to
| agree with you.
|
| But they have done themselves no favors in their handling of
| the situation.
|
| I'm not sure the coverup would require a vast network of
| people. Maybe 1-2 dozen in a lab, max, (depending on who knew
| which experiments were being done) and a bunch of CCP members
| who I would not be surprised are tight lipped.
|
| The counter questions are equally as troubling.
|
| - Why haven't we found the host species? Typically it takes a
| few months, but we're going on 1.5 years. You'd think the CCP
| would have it very high on their priority list to find.
|
| - How did this virus mutate a series of genetic sequences, none
| of which are found in other corona viruses? The series of
| mutations in SARS-COV2 seems very unlikely to have been a
| natural fluke.
|
| There's a lot of questions here on both sides.
|
| For me, I'd still put it at 50-50. I will not be surprised if a
| smoking gun is found one way or the other.
| cratermoon wrote:
| > If the CCP didn't have such a startling surveillance system
| and tight grip over any international narrative
|
| and yet not so startling and tight that we don't have leaks
| and we don't know they have a surveillance system and don't
| like leaks.
| generalizations wrote:
| > silent, unswerving, leak-proof compliance of a vast network
| of scientists, civilians, and government officials for over a
| year
|
| I was watching translated videos early last year made by
| chinese scientists trying to get the word out, at the risk of
| their lives. Compliance is simple: you talk, you "disappear".
|
| The Great Firewall blocks in both directions, and is very good.
| Additionally, the West had already decided that it was
| politically expedient to ignore lab leak possibility. That
| meant the primary avenue for such leaks were more underground
| sources, like 4chan.
| cratermoon wrote:
| > I was watching translated videos early last year made by
| chinese scientists trying to get the word out
|
| So you're saying the Great Firewall is porous and leak
| happen, but also saying that in _this_ case, the information
| containment is 100% successful.
| codeulike wrote:
| People keep conflating 'lab leak' with 'made in a lab'.
|
| Think about this: If it was a natural virus that escaped from a
| lab, China wouldn't necessarily even know about the escape for
| sure. We could imagine a scenario where maybe China started to
| suspect that might be what happened around Jan/Feb 2020. So
| then you don't need a collosal cover up, because hardly anyone
| knows for sure anyway - you just need to obstruct anyone asking
| questions that lead in that direction, and obfuscate any clues
| (publications from the lab saying what they were working on,
| reports of staff illness etc)
| partiallypro wrote:
| To me what gives me credence to the "lab leak theory" more than
| anything, was China's behavior during and initially after the
| outbreak. Where they thwarted any investigations from WHO or
| anyone else and arrested journalists even attempting to cover it.
| Now we have additional information of lab workers being sick back
| in November...I genuinely wonder why people immediately jumped in
| to defend China's actions through the entire thing. I feel like
| it was in part because of money interests and also because it was
| something Trump touted as true.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| > I feel like it was in part because of money interests and
| also because it was something Trump touted as true.
|
| I agree on both counts. With respect to the latter, I yearn for
| a time when we can dissect the media's coverage of Trump
| somewhat dispassionately without being branded a Trump
| Supporter (as though there is some kind of firm dichotomy in
| which we must be one of Team Trump or Team Media).
| hogFeast wrote:
| It is generally very hard to read too much into what the
| Chinese govt does because govt behaviour is typically a
| function of domestic situation, and their domestic situation is
| very different to ours. The Chinese govt tends to over-react,
| there is a weird tug of war between local and national
| politicians, authority in Chinese politics (to me) seems very
| situational and freewheeling in a way that US politics isn't
| (an odd point given Chinese criticism of democracy)...it is
| tricky to read anything into their behaviour.
|
| As an example, it is possible that this was a lab leak but that
| this fact was suppressed by the local govt, and no-one in the
| central govt is any the wiser.
|
| Defending China was because Trump was anti-China. I don't think
| money was anything to do with it, there is always going to be a
| section of the media (on both sides) that defines their view as
| the opposite of what "the other side" believes. There is
| nothing complicated about this, it is just a terrible idea to
| think this way and it will almost always backfire. Trump, in
| particular, brought out this characteristic to an unprecedented
| level...if Trump had said that grass was green, some sections
| of the media would have had pundits on an hour later expressing
| how dangerous that sentiment was and that, whilst grass appears
| green to the laymen, it is actually a very, very, very subtle
| shade of brown (even Obama didn't trigger this kind of
| neuralgia on the right).
| HappySweeney wrote:
| I think, like me, many dismissed the lab-leak theory because it
| sounded like yet-another attempt to push the blame for all the
| unnecessary death from Trump to China, as well as the cavalcade
| of doctors stating that the DNA of the virus was clearly not
| artificially constructed.
| imwillofficial wrote:
| So you're saying you formed an important opinion on a
| impactful topic without reviewing the evidence?
|
| Maybe you should change that
| jjk166 wrote:
| There was no evidence to review. Even now the whole reason
| we are having this discussion is because over a year later
| there has still not been an adequate investigation and lots
| of statements made early on have since been shown to be
| false.
|
| And frankly, in the absence of evidence, some guy getting
| sick from bad meat at a market is a much simpler
| explanation than an artificially created virus escaped from
| an institution with good safety standards. Only after an
| extensive search for the host has come back empty and the
| institution's actions have been found to be questionable
| does occam's razor meaningfully shift, and even then it's
| still hardly certain that this alternative theory is
| actually correct.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| GP was adding to the discussion by stating his/her thought
| process at the time. Not advocating that approach for the
| future.
| HappySweeney wrote:
| The only conclusion I came to was that the virus was not
| artificial in origin. I did suspect it was not a lab-leak,
| though, due to the purported difficulty of a virus escaping
| a level 4 facility.
| lamontcg wrote:
| > To me what gives me credence to the "lab leak theory" more
| than anything, was China's behavior during and initially after
| the outbreak [...]
|
| That all sounds to me just like a massive authoritarian
| government bureaucracy dealing with a quick moving disaster on
| their soil where the beaurocrats didn't know what was
| happening, because the scientists couldn't tell them, so they
| leaned in on trying to control everyone.
|
| The argument rephrased reads to me like "The reason why I
| believe in the lab leak theory is that an authoritarian country
| behaved like an authoritarian country, when I would have
| expected them to behave like my western democracy".
| ganzuul wrote:
| I think they defend China because it makes them feel as if
| China needs their defense, even though it is far more powerful
| than they are prepared to admit.
| 99_00 wrote:
| China forbade sharing covid-19's genome. When a Chinese
| scientist published it his lab was shut down the next day.
|
| >The Chinese government had prohibited labs from publishing
| information about the new coronavirus, though Zhang later said
| he did not know about the prohibition. The next day, the
| Shanghai Health Commission ordered Zhang's laboratory to close
| temporarily for "rectification". While some media reports
| argued that the closure was retaliation for Zhang's decision to
| publish the genome, Zhang disputed this, saying that officials
| were right to have the lab improve its biosafety protocols.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhang_Yongzhen
| whydoineedthis wrote:
| I'm just going to say it - no one in their right mind would
| want Donald Trump leading a military war against our strongest
| frenemy in the world.
|
| You don't have to hate Trump to admit that he lacks complex
| strategy and communication skills, as well as a very week, if
| not incompetent, cabinet.
|
| Politically speaking, being in a "justified war" would have
| done nothing but hurt the democrats chances. It's hard to
| unseat a president at 4 years already, but with an ongoing war
| it's even harder.
| kQq9oHeAz6wLLS wrote:
| Genuinely curious, are you indicating that the current POTUS
| is better qualified to be leading potentially that same
| military action?
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| Interesting how media coverage completely changed. Under the
| previous administration it was considered racist to even
| mention the theory and it's proponents were considered racists
| or conspiracy theorists.
|
| Why such a sudden change? China certainly didn't change its
| position on the issue...
| colechristensen wrote:
| Because it's no longer a talking point for the "other side"
| that everyone has to disagree with automatically.
|
| A fool insisting it's a sunny day does not make it rain.
| [deleted]
| enraged_camel wrote:
| People ask this as some sort of weird gotcha, but it's
| actually not that interesting, nor should it be surprising.
| After all, the previous administration was filled with
| habitual liars at every level who kept pushing "alternative
| facts" over observable reality and shat on the media at every
| opportunity. As such, everything they claimed was viewed as a
| likely lie, and rightly so.
|
| New developments have happened as well, though. I believe we
| recently started hearing about Wuhan lab employees starting
| to get sick around late 2019 and early 2020. I don't think we
| had known that before.
| kQq9oHeAz6wLLS wrote:
| > the previous administration was filled with habitual
| liars at every level who kept pushing "alternative facts"
| over observable reality
|
| As opposed to now? <cough>US/Mexico boarder</cough>
| enraged_camel wrote:
| And this type of whataboutism about irrelevant topics was
| one of their favorite tactics.
| calvano915 wrote:
| Because there's not a daily sh*tshow occurring in the White
| House any more so the media need something that bleeds to
| lead. There's no losing in covering the issue regardless of
| outcome/findings, and in the mean time ratings will benefit
| from the eyeballs.
| 99_00 wrote:
| Mainstream media no longer sees CCP as an ally against their
| domestic political opponents.
| greedo wrote:
| There's a world of difference in considering this theory, and
| with calling it the "Asian Flu" or "Kung Flu" etc. One act
| addressed what happened, the other tars entire
| nations/cultures/regions with a wide brush.
| [deleted]
| tomjen3 wrote:
| Current the major concern is the Indian mutation.
|
| But we are not allowed to call it the Chinese or Wuhan
| virus.
| greedo wrote:
| Pretty simple to refer to it as COVID, no? West Nile
| Virus was named in 1937, so hard to really say it's
| equivalent. Ebola is named after a river, I doubt it gets
| offended by the association. MERS is widely acknowledged
| as a mistake in naming by the WHO.
| tristanj wrote:
| The biggest sign for me is how the Chinese government
| threatened to charge medical workers with _espionage_ if they
| speak about what happened during the early stages of the
| outbreak.
| https://english.kyodonews.net/news/2020/11/9833532bb925-chin...
|
| Consider the following: How can a medical worker speaking about
| their own experience working at a hospital in any way
| constitute espionage?
|
| If found guilty of espionage, by law they can be _executed_.
| Anyone who speaks up can be _killed_.
| whydoibother wrote:
| Do you have any other source on this? Searching around showed
| nothing.
| bsder wrote:
| The problem is that this is Standard Operating Procedure(tm)
| for China for _anything_ which might upset the hoi-polloi.
|
| Trying to predict what China will execute people for is like
| reading entrails.
| wombatmobile wrote:
| > The problem is that this is Standard Operating
| Procedure(tm) for China
|
| When you say "China", do you mean the Department of Health,
| or the Department of Defense, or the Department of Trade,
| or the Chinese government, or the Chinese people, or some
| Chinese guy?
|
| It makes as much sense to attribute a Standard Operating
| Procedure to "China" as it does to attribute something like
| that to "America", or to say "Americans think...", which is
| not very much at all, because America, like all societies
| of more than one person, is a pluralist society.
|
| China is 1.3 billion people. If you treat it as a
| collection of different interests and points of view, your
| analyses and predictions will have more cogency.
| bsder wrote:
| > When you say "China", do you mean the Department of
| Health, or the Department of Defense, or the Department
| of Trade, or the Chinese government, or the Chinese
| people, or some Chinese guy?
|
| We call this deflecting. And it's a rhetorical device
| used when you are on the wrong side of the argument.
|
| And the answer is "All Of The Above". All parts of the
| Chinese government leaders see very little problem with
| executing those who might upset their status quo.
| temp8964 wrote:
| What you said does not make sense at all. All Chinese
| government branches are directly under the command of the
| CCP. Even China's top court rejects the idea of juridical
| independence [1]. To say China is equivalent to U.S is
| totally ignorant.
|
| 1 . https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-policy-
| law/chinas-t...
| e40 wrote:
| I think it was because the Trump admin had a history of China
| bashing and many of us just thought this was more of the same.
| hpcjoe wrote:
| From my perspective, this is sadly, the likely explanation.
| The media and opposition party was so worked up, that
| anything at all that came from Trump or his admin, was simply
| wrong, a lie, etc.
|
| That, in part, was why no one took this thing seriously at
| the beginning in the US.
|
| In retrospect, the constant hounding and attacks on Trump
| damaged all US citizens, simply by blunting messages, by
| causing unnecessary conflict. While Trump is out of office,
| the leaders who caused this confusion are still in office.
| And that is wrong. They need to be fired.
|
| Indeed, a reasonably large contingent of those hesitant to
| get a vaccine, are parroting the (then) opposition
| politicians, who cast doubt on the processes. How much
| damage, how many lives have been lost, because these fools
| wanted to win a political contest, and score political
| points?
|
| The media bear significant responsibility in this as well.
| Their consistent efforts at painting the former
| administration as "full of crap" all the time, as lying all
| the time, blunted and confused many messages, and forced
| secretaries of departments to have to try to handle/answer
| often idiotic questions.
|
| So here we are today. Lab leak, far from being a paranoid
| fantasy, is a real possibility. And yet, the media is still
| playing these games.
|
| We in the US, need, need ... to fire all the pols responsible
| for this. To no longer consume the media products of the
| organizations that encouraged this. And to stop believing
| that just because someone on one side says something that the
| other side has free rights to attack that without regards for
| facts.
|
| I'm quite disgusted with the interplay between politics,
| media, and the pandemic.
| vmception wrote:
| My experience was people using the authorities as assuming
| credentialed people actually looked into it and subsequently
| ruled it out
|
| Thats been a recurring assumption on this virus that I find
| frustrating
| throw_nbvc1234 wrote:
| I'm surprised nobody paid trump a ton of money to bash a
| crypto currency so that all the trump "haters" would buy it
| up and increase the price. Or why trump didn't just do that
| himself. Then maybe he wouldn't be as scared to show his tax
| returns in 2024 lol.
|
| The whole politicization of America is such a problem right
| now.
| imwillofficial wrote:
| Then I think your critical thinking filter needs adjusting.
| dbt00 wrote:
| The problem with this thinking is assuming the government of
| China actually knows the truth and is acting to protect itself
| from a dangerous reveal. They might not have known then (or
| now!) and are simply acting based on some probability it could
| be true, default secrecy, and organizational fear.
| fastball wrote:
| This seems less plausible. Presumably the PRC knows _exactly_
| what kind of research was happening in Wuhan. It should be
| fairly clear to anyone who worked in that lab if COVID-19
| came from there.
| dbt00 wrote:
| The PRC is made up of people, some of whom may or may not
| tell each other the truth, or may or may not know the truth
| of what they say. Just like any other organization made up
| of people.
|
| I don't know if COVID leaked from a lab or not. I think
| it's possible and very much worth investigating. What I'm
| against is these kind of "social proof" arguments which can
| seem convincing but are are often vacuous.
|
| Investigate the evidence. Pressure the PRC to show their
| records and allow external investigations. Publicly bluster
| that refusal to open up in the face of legitimate questions
| should be considered evidence of culpability if they refuse
| to open up! But don't actually consider a repressive
| government being repressive by default as actual proof of
| anything.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| (Real)communist countries are _notorious_ for local party
| representatives falsifying or mis-representing data to
| their superiors.
|
| Incentives gone wrong - when you risk getting gulag'd for
| missing your quarterly numbers, you _will_ fudge your
| numbers.
| jjk166 wrote:
| It's also possible that there is something unrelated to the
| coronavirus outbreak that a thorough investigation might
| stumble upon which they are trying to keep secret. The WIV
| was china's first biosafety level-4 lab and has close ties to
| China's military.
|
| from [0]:
|
| > Despite the WIV presenting itself as a civilian
| institution, the United States has determined that the WIV
| has collaborated on publications and secret projects with
| China's military. The WIV has engaged in classified research,
| including laboratory animal experiments, on behalf of the
| Chinese military since at least 2017.
|
| If I had done some work in the past on biological weapons
| that I didn't want the world to know about, I'd be very
| concerned about letting a bunch of international
| investigators examine labs that might be literally right down
| the hall. Alternatively if I were a government hostile to
| china who knew damn well what china was doing down the hall
| but can't find a good way to call them out on it, the
| opportunity to send investigators in for an unrelated reason
| would be a godsend.
|
| [0] https://2017-2021.state.gov/fact-sheet-activity-at-the-
| wuhan...
| dylan604 wrote:
| Isn't this basically the default behavior of China and/or
| other communist/dictator countries? I just rewatched HBO's
| Chernobyl, and that was the underlying premise about how
| badly the gov't wanted the thing to be played down until it
| was just too much to hide. The superiority of those in charge
| cannot be brought into disrepute in any way. Same thing with
| COVID-19. I just think that Bejing has a tighter grip on
| things than Moscow did at the time. Not that I'm equating
| global nuclear disaster and a viral pandemic on the same
| level.
| roveo wrote:
| Well. The upper estimates for Chernobyl-related deaths is
| 6000. Legasov's projections in the 80s cited 40000. That's
| nothing compared to COVID, and COVID is more global for
| sure (meaning that most people in most coutries experienced
| the effects of the pandemic on themselves).
|
| Nuclear disaster sound scary, but COVID is actually
| objectively scarier.
|
| (Not sure which way you meant the comparison goes)
| dylan604 wrote:
| I meant if Moscow kept a lid on the Chernobyl situation
| and did not allow them to "fix" it as that would have
| admitted that Soviet engineering was falible. Had the
| various nightmare scenarios been allowed to happen
| (meltdown reaching the water table, etc) due to pride,
| then Chernobyl could have been so much worse. Could COVID
| had been mitigated from becoming a global pandemic if
| "pride" had not affected Bejing?
| renewiltord wrote:
| Yeah, I'm not throwing out the lab leak hypothesis, but the
| "China is being secret" thing doesn't hold water. They've got
| some degree of decentralization mixed with always-be-secret
| where each gov piece doesn't want to accidentally release
| something from a different gov piece.
|
| The notorious case of the Chinese spy needing spy auth docs
| to prove that she's a bona fide spy to the Chinese consulate
| in the US is an example. Surely they could have authed her
| using her passport, but no, she needed the auth docs and she
| got caught for having them.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| I think given the demagogue POTUS and the mob of crazy
| followers, it was in the public interest to avoid agitating the
| mob. Even Facebook had the sense to realize that.
|
| As it stands, asian people are getting targeted for attacks in
| the street by deranged individuals.
| narrator wrote:
| That's why I'm always careful to say CCP instead of China or
| Chinese when referring to who the bad guy is in all of this.
| People should take care never to confuse the Chinese
| ethnicity with the corrupt CCP government.
| imwillofficial wrote:
| Yes yes, the ole "We lie to you about important aspects of a
| global pandemic for your own good"
|
| Nice
| galangalalgol wrote:
| That is called guilding the lilly. Long term the erosion of
| trust causes more damage than the white lies avoid. And it
| shouldn't be Facebook's call.
| throwkeep wrote:
| Something to ponder:
|
| "It's amazing how antisemitism is allegedly _totally_
| unrelated from Israel criticism but anti-Asian violence is
| completely (and obviously!) related to criticism of China. "
|
| https://twitter.com/karol/status/1397949659667181574
| arduinomancer wrote:
| I hate how it feels like there's such a "collective narrative"
| for everything now days with the internet.
|
| Whenever I talk to people about recent news stories in real life
| it feels like everyone is just repeating talking points they read
| online.
|
| Its like we've been absorbed into the internet consciousness and
| talking to a person is like talking to "the internet brain".
| dougmwne wrote:
| Thanks for speaking this out loud. I've been feeling the same
| thing. What's weird is I've been having identical conversations
| with people from multiple US states and several European
| countries. There used to be an enormous gap between people from
| different areas and countries, each existing in their own
| cultural bubble. Now that's changed, and I'm not talking about
| "closer" I'm talking "the exact same."
|
| Our opinions have always been easily shaped by the media, mass
| entertainment and political campaigning. But lately it seems
| like there's less an ocean of information and more like a small
| puddle we're all trying to drink from at once. At the same
| time, the Overton Window seems to be slamming shut.
|
| I have been suspecting this has all been a dress rehearsal for
| the societal changes that are coming soon to address climate
| change, a sort of "powering up" of the collective
| consciousness.
| SCUSKU wrote:
| Absolutely. Discussion with friends about the goings ons of the
| world frequently just turns into taking turns regurgitating
| what we can recall from NPR and NYT's The Daily.
| [deleted]
| asdff wrote:
| It's ironic to even call those experiences discussions when
| no new ideas are exchanged. It's just people of the same
| worldview taking turns chanting verses of their creed.
| Nothing learned nor imparted.
| asdff wrote:
| People stopped reading the source material, and started just
| parroting the talking points. It's even gotten to the point
| where people are even convinced the talking points are the
| source material.
| deadalus wrote:
| Reminder that Facebook and Twitter banned users for talking about
| the lab-leak theory. Youtube accounts also got demontized/banned.
| throwkeep wrote:
| Exactly what many were warning about with big tech censorship
| and getting vilified for it. But it's good if it fails quickly
| and conclusively, instead of taking years to get to that point.
| bosswipe wrote:
| I thought they banned man-made claims, not lab-leak claims.
| [deleted]
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| Facebook, Twitter, and much of the news media have been in the
| service of CCP as part of an influence operation and
| suppression of dissent.
|
| There needs to be an investigation. The people involved in
| these decisions need to be put under oath and testify how they
| came to the decision to ban users. Emails and messages should
| be subpoenaed to see if there was illegal coordination across
| services. There needs to be an complete investigation if any of
| the people involved were being influenced by or were agents of
| the CCP.
| scottrogowski wrote:
| This should be the top comment. Social media companies can
| either be monopolies or they can put limits on the speech of
| their platform... but they can't do both.
|
| While not against the law of freedom of speech, political
| moderation processes are certainly against the intent. Every
| once in a while we get a case like this where an unpopular
| fringe opinion becomes mainstream and underlines the point. But
| this isn't just a matter of Facebook / Twitter / YouTube
| needing a better moderation process - this is more fundamental.
| No person or organization - no matter how benevolent or wise -
| should have the power to declare truth in a society.
|
| Fringe opinions need constitutional protection - regardless of
| the era or the technology.
| tonystubblebine wrote:
| Not all opinions deserve equal airtime. Fringe opinions
| should have to work harder to get to the mainstream. Isn't
| that exactly what happened here? This is the fringe opinion
| that had the most inherent value and it's proved that by
| breaking through. IMO I wish the platforms had censored more
| bad info than this. It's crazy to me that there isn't more
| friction for bad ideas.
| beaner wrote:
| On the contrary, actors who are bad at judging what
| qualifies as a "good" idea should be removed from the
| filtering process.
| wpietri wrote:
| Good thing they aren't monopolies, then. Facebook, Twitter,
| YouTube, Twitch, TikTok, and Reddit are are all very popular
| places for people to post their views. And that's not
| counting the myriad lesser places like the one we're using
| now. And of course anybody can drop a few bucks on a blog of
| their own.
|
| I also disagree that sites moderating is against the intent.
| Freedom of speech is one right, but so is freedom of
| association. Should HN be required by law to platform anybody
| with an "unpopular fringe opinion"? I'd say no. Using
| government power to force participation in speech someone
| finds odious is just as bad as using government power to shut
| down speech.
| caeril wrote:
| If it makes you feel better, it's now flagged here, too.
|
| The reputations of media outlets, social or otherwise, are to
| be protected at all costs.
| eddyg wrote:
| And today Facebook lifted that ban:
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/may/27/facebook-...
| tomjakubowski wrote:
| The theory that "SARS-CoV-2 leaked from the Wuhan lab"
| overlaps some with the theory that "SARS-CoV-2 was man-made",
| but they're not the same thing. According to the article
| Facebook's policy change is towards posts saying "SARS-CoV-2
| was man-made". Did Facebook's policy ban posts which
| supported the "lab leak" theory but didn't claim the virus
| was "man-made"?
|
| Facebook's April 2020 covid-19 policy notice only mentions
| "man-made".
| https://about.fb.com/news/2020/04/covid-19-misinfo-update/
| zed88 wrote:
| Apparently they did so in consultation with the WHO :)
| thundergolfer wrote:
| Have you got a link to examples? I'm wondering if they weren't
| also saying that China deliberately leaked the virus.
|
| Saying "it is possible but very unlikely that the virus leaked
| from a Wuhan lab" is talking about the lab-leak theory. Saying
| "the virus was cooked up and leaked from a Wuhan lab to hurt
| Trump's re-election chances" is also talking about the lab-leak
| theory.
| narrator wrote:
| Zerohedge getting banned from Twitter for publishing an
| expose of the Wuhan Lab which is pretty close to what is
| acknowledged as a probable story these days is the most high
| profile example.
|
| https://www.zdnet.com/article/zerohedge-banned-from-
| twitter-...
| speeder wrote:
| A Infamous case was Twitter baning Zerohedge because of it.
|
| And all that Zerohedge did was point out a lot of public
| documents, nothing private, and no bioweapon theory. (Twitter
| claimed Zerohedge had doxxed the scientist, but Zerohedge
| only had shown the official lab website and documents from
| it).
|
| https://www.cbsnews.com/news/twitter-bans-zero-hedge-
| coronav...
| undersuit wrote:
| Good revisionism there. The very first sentence they push
| the bioweapon theory.
|
| https://www.zerohedge.com/health/man-behind-global-
| coronavir...
| neuronexmachina wrote:
| I think it's pretty obvious why they were banned:
|
| > The article, posted under the pseudonym "Tyler Durden"
| (the fictional character played by Brad Pitt in the movie
| "Fight Club"), was titled "Is This Man Behind The Global
| Coronavirus Pandemic?" It included a photograph of a
| scientist at Wuhan's Institute of Virology and suggested
| that anyone curious about the epidemic might want to pay
| him "a visit."
| realce wrote:
| And the amount of evidence in both cases is equal right now -
| slim and circumstantial. Just because one is political
| doesn't make it more worthy of censorship if you're removing
| content based on "misinformation." There's no real evidence
| underlying either statement.
| andybak wrote:
| I'm generally in favour of the actions taken against
| misinformation but this situation surprises me. Lab leak always
| seemed plausible and non-crazy even if you think the odds are
| against it.
|
| I don't envy the task of making a call on any of this stuff.
| asciimov wrote:
| If your pursuing a misinformation campaign it does make since
| to occasionally publish some facts. That way people can wring
| their hands if they should ban you or not, and so your
| supporters have something to say that you were right about.
| betwixthewires wrote:
| This is a good example of why opponents to actions against
| misinformation oppose it. Nobody should make these calls
| because the wrong call _will_ be made eventually, and the
| power to silently mediate and manipulate discourse is very
| tempting.
| ratsmack wrote:
| >I'm generally in favour of the actions taken against
| misinformation...
|
| Who would be the one to determine what is misinformation and
| what is not?
| dylan604 wrote:
| The evidence?
| [deleted]
| wearywanderer wrote:
| "Evidence" is not a person, and can't make decisions.
| Decisions are made by people, who we _hope_ are informed
| by evidence. Who are these people and how are they
| chosen? What mechanisms exist to evaluate their
| effectiveness and recall them when they fail? These
| questions are currently being answered by American
| corporations, which is not confidence inspiring.
| ratsmack wrote:
| Speculation and conjecture is not always evident, but is
| many times useful in determining the evidence. But this
| type of discussion was axed from many forums as
| "misinformation".
| generalizations wrote:
| There were even videos of chinese scientists trying to
| get the word out about the virus and the lab leak
| liklihood. There was plenty of evidence, if you knew
| where to look.
|
| 'Evidence' is tangential to the decision making behind
| misinformation tags.
| kristofferR wrote:
| The problem is that "evidence" is pretty easy to find.
| Even the wildest conspiracy theories has pages and pages
| of links to their evidence.
|
| Who should evaluate the evidence for its credibility?
| generalizations wrote:
| Is that a serious question? Here's a better one:
|
| Who has the right to tell others what they may, and may
| not, decide for themselves?
| xhkkffbf wrote:
| This is a good example of why I don't say things like I'm
| "generally in favour of actions taking against
| misinformation."
|
| We shouldn't take any action, at least at a governmental
| level. And certainly not on the level of a big corporation
| like Facebook.
|
| It's very embarrassing that Facebook and YouTube banned this.
| imwillofficial wrote:
| It's misinformation until we tell you otherwise citizen!
| generalizations wrote:
| If we accept that taking action against misinformation is
| good, then this sort of mistake will inevitably happen.
|
| If you're in favor of taking action against misinformation,
| then you should be willing to accept this situation as an
| acceptable failure. I'm not willing to accept that.
| noofen wrote:
| Who would've thought that letting billionaires with
| international business interests censor scientific inquiry
| would end badly...
| enaaem wrote:
| I believe that censorship is more harmful than
| misinformation.
|
| Censorship is a bottom down initiative. It requires a few
| bad actors or 'mistakes' to completely change the
| information landscape. Misinformation is bottom up. It
| still needs to compete with a whole bunch of other ideas
| and it requires far more effort to spread. You also don't
| create a pretence that all available information is
| correct.
|
| Censorship carries far larger risks, with small short term
| gains. It's like picking pennies in front of steamroller.
| caeril wrote:
| Except it was never misinformation. It's always been not
| only plausible, but the null hypothesis given the location
| of the lab, the nature of research there, and the early
| cases along the train line.
|
| When Jack banned zerohedge for their article, there were
| other reasons than "misinformation". Only he and his
| masters know those reasons.
| chipotle_coyote wrote:
| > _If you 're in favor of taking action against
| misinformation, then you should be willing to accept this
| situation as an acceptable failure._
|
| We can believe taking action against misinformation is a
| generally good principle while still believing that both
| our definition of "misinformation" and the kinds of actions
| we take may need to be improved.
| generalizations wrote:
| You still have to be willing to accept that whatever
| actions you take against misinformation will occasionally
| be taken against things that are actually true.
|
| That also means that over time, the credibility of the
| entities that flag 'misinformation' will inevitably
| erode: as more people are exposed to things they know,
| perhaps first-hand, are true, but are flagged as
| 'misinformation'.
| noofen wrote:
| I disagree. The market and political forces are too
| strong, the "misinformation" umbrella will always expand
| to fit the needs of the wealthy and powerful.
|
| When the stakes are high, exactly the time when you
| _need_ radical honesty, the benefits of censoring
| information are also high.
|
| Some might say, "hasn't this always been the case?" And
| you'd be correct. The difference today is that it is now
| a fashionable political position to cheer for censorship
| of any controversial ideas. This prevailing attitude
| combined with centralization of the public square (social
| media) is a dangerous combination, and we will continue
| to pay the price of this well into the future.
|
| The trust in traditional institutions is plummeting, as
| it should for anyone who has witnessed their actions the
| past year.
|
| I still remember the "hug a Chinese person" campaign in
| Italy.
| andybak wrote:
| The perfect is the enemy of the good?
| tomjen3 wrote:
| That assumes a binary situation, but it can be a sliding
| scale.
|
| A system that prevents only Holocaust denial and flat earth
| theories is unlikely to ban anything that is actually true.
| generalizations wrote:
| The current situation was justified with examples like
| yours.
|
| A year ago, most people in favor of banning
| misinformation would have classed the lab leak hypothesis
| in the same obviously-false bucket with your examples.
| wpietri wrote:
| I'm not sure whether it's plausible to non-experts like you
| or me is a valuable way to categorize it. But the reason to
| be cautious about it is the potential for violence. Both at
| an individual level against people perceived as Asian and at
| a global level of a hot war. A good example here is after
| 9/11. The US had a rash of violence against people who people
| thought looked Muslim, like the Sikh gas station owner Balbir
| Singh Sodhi [1]. We ended up invading not just Afghanistan
| but Iraq and we still haven't brought all the troops home.
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Balbir_Singh_Sodhi
| kobieyc wrote:
| This makes me furious
| RpFLCL wrote:
| It's one more example of how yesterday's "misinformation" can
| become tomorrow's "information", and how dangerous it is for
| sites to censor entire conversations because they (or their so-
| called 'fact checkers') believe in one side of a narrative.
|
| Will there be apologies given to the people banned, isolated
| from participating in socialization during a pandemic where
| online communication was a vital tool for human connection?
| tomjakubowski wrote:
| Facebook's policy page only mentions censoring content
| suggesting that the virus was "man-made". Did Twitter actually
| ban users who suggested _only_ that the virus leaked from a
| lab? I'd be surprised because I follow some fairly big accounts
| there which have posted about the lab leak theory.
|
| https://about.fb.com/news/2020/04/covid-19-misinfo-update/
| alphabet9000 wrote:
| It's interesting looking at the timeline before Western media
| picked it up -- in the very early stages, chatter online
| referencing a leak, (or there was something released
| deliberately) seemed to be fear of it being a SARS 'biological
| weapon'. there was overlap with the newly emerging health crisis
| and the Hong Kong protests, which seems to have fueled that
| speculation. A good analysis of that time period was done by the
| Atlantic Council [0]
|
| I have also been archiving different web findings pertaining to
| all forms of 'leak' speculation in the form of a timeline [1]
|
| [0] https://atlanticcouncil.org/wp-
| content/uploads/2021/02/Weapo...
|
| [1] https://news.coffee/wuhan_lab_snippets
| neither_color wrote:
| _There's a question as to why that fake consensus emerged. But I
| think the more troubling question is: How did people let the
| original story of what Tom Cotton even said go so badly awry?
| Essentially Cotton said something that was then transformed into
| a fake claim of a Chinese bio-attack, then the fake claim was
| debunked, and then the debunking was applied to the real claim
| with little attention paid to ongoing disagreement among
| researchers._
|
| I think this part of the text really sums up everything I hated
| about reading the news and social media in 2020. Each site seemed
| to be funneling you into a single source of truth and way of not
| only thinking, but FEELING about an event. I don't like being
| reminded of corporate sponsored social movements if I open
| facebook/google/amazon/twitter. I don't want my app reminding me
| to vote/get vaccinated(I did both btw) every time I open it
| without a way to dismiss and select 'I already did, stop
| reminding me.' I don't want reddit creating a central sub-page
| for discussing [Current Event] within the narrow bounds of what
| their moderators think is acceptable. I don't like non-
| dismissable context text on twitter and under youtube videos that
| are often off topic and triggered by bad speech detection that
| simply take you to a link dump of regular news articles. I don't
| like the idea that there's an oligopoly on "truth" and "credible
| sources." No amount of branding will convince me that "fact
| checkers" are any more objective and impartial than regular
| newspaper columnists; fact checkers are what editors are supposed
| to be. There's no academic rigor to fact checking, and the
| reality that so much casual skepticism on a variety of topics was
| suppressed and equivocated with being a flat-earther is
| sickening.
| throwaway69123 wrote:
| Maybe people will start to understand that it's very hard to be a
| unbiased arbitrator of truth and that beyond illegal speech the
| media and social platforms should let people talk. You have to
| wonder if the parties were reversed and it was a democrat
| incumbent president making these claims, would the reaction have
| been the same. I think if we are being honest to ourselves we
| know the truth.
| yawaworht1978 wrote:
| Call me cynical...but... What would any government do about it if
| it was proven to be a lab leak? They could declare it an accident
| (probably this would be true) and that would be the end of the
| story.
|
| No country would dare to impose sanctions or engage beyond
| diplomacy.
|
| I do not think that the Chinese governments reaction or handling
| of the case is suspect, they likely want to shut down potential
| fake news. To label it as potential espionage is an ok measure
| until there was a conclusive investigation. If this happened in
| other nations, they would just declare it as a matter of national
| security and incarcerate whistle blowers too. Look no further
| than Manning and Snowden.
|
| In other words, China will not face any harsh consequences.
| paxys wrote:
| There is no way anything can be "proven" in the first place.
| Does anything think China will will let international
| investigators waltz into the Wuhan lab and collect samples or
| something? There will be a ton of meaningless online
| speculation and people will get bored and move on.
| wearywanderer wrote:
| It may change the cost/benefit analysis of viral research. If
| the risk of a lab escape is presently worse than the risk of a
| natural virus arising, then there are numerous things
| governments could do to remedy this. Even if a total research
| ban isn't warranted, it's probably a good idea to consider
| banning these labs in cities. The labs could be relocated to
| remote areas where workers are kept quarantined-by-default.
| tomjen3 wrote:
| As a minimum we would hopefully agree to a ban on GoF research
| for potentially dangerous pathogens.
|
| Secondly, we could find the scientist involved and charge him
| with 3 million 400 thousand counts of involuntary manslaughter,
| just to put this into perspective.
|
| That is more than some genocides, so it isn't that much of
| stretch for it to constitute crimes against humanity.
|
| Crimes against humanity generally have universal jurisdiction,
| so we could charge the people responsible in the Hague.
|
| I doubt we will ever see anybody defending themselves there,
| but it will cause the next person to think twice about this.
| asciimov wrote:
| The far right will use this as a reason to curtail research.
| Maybe just curtail "dangerous" research at first. Then whatever
| other research they can convince their followers is also
| dangerous.
| estaseuropano wrote:
| You miss that china also has internal politics. Not everything
| is about what the US/western countries think/do/want.
| Lammy wrote:
| Everyone forgot about Hong Kong: https://en.wikipedia.org/wik
| i/2019%E2%80%932020_Hong_Kong_pr...
| ratsmack wrote:
| How do you think it would play out if it is found that our
| government (e.g. NIH/CDC) supplied funding for research that
| created this virus?
|
| I suspect many countries would take notice.
| bradford wrote:
| > funding for research that created this virus?
|
| The very question demonstrates part of the problem here:
| there are ways that it could have been 'released' by the lab
| without being 'created' in the lab (or any lab). It's not
| clear to me that people are aware of this when the lab origin
| theory is discussed. Please don't prematurely make an
| assumption about what was going on in the lab.
|
| It's possible that some researcher went into a cave, took
| some biological samples from bats back to the lab.
| Thereafter, lack of proper protocol led to an infection that
| resulted in the pandemic.
|
| Embarrassing for China? yes, and I'd imagine they'd want to
| cover it up (although such accidents have happened at other
| worldwide facilities).
| hooande wrote:
| This is the smartest comment. Lab leaks happen frequently,
| it's part of medical research. There's no hard evidence
| that this virus was engineered or human modified. China
| didn't create the concept of a virus. Mistakes happen
| joeblow21 wrote:
| Ill bet most of the country still thinks the Hunter Biden laptop
| story is "baseless Russian conspiracy".
| ajcp wrote:
| > "Cotton's views should be associated with conspiracy theories
| and misinformation," even though his core factual claim was not
| particularly different from what anyone was else was saying.
|
| Does the author not know how conspiracy theories and
| misinformation campaigns work?
|
| I'm not sure how useful it is doing a hotwash on how we could
| have been so remiss as to ignore the comments of a public
| official whose views are often associated with conspiracy
| theories and misinformation, even if this one time they were not.
| fasteddie31003 wrote:
| Tom Cotton is an idiot and putting his name behind anything is
| counter productive even if he has a point.
| dang wrote:
| Previous related threads:
|
| _Wuhan lab staff sought hospital care before Covid-19 outbreak
| disclosed_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27259953 - May
| 2021 (343 comments)
|
| _How I learned to stop worrying and love the lab-leak theory_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27184998 - May 2021 (235
| comments)
|
| _More Scientists Urge Broad Inquiry into Coronavirus Origins_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27160898 - May 2021 (341
| comments)
|
| _The origin of Covid: Did people or nature open Pandora's box?_
| - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27071432 - May 2021 (537
| comments)
|
| _Scientists who say the lab-leak hypothesis for SARS-CoV-2
| shouldn 't be ruled out_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26750452 - April 2021 (618
| comments)
|
| _Why the Wuhan lab leak theory shouldn 't be dismissed_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26540458 - March 2021 (985
| comments)
|
| _The Lab Leak Hypothesis_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25640323 - Jan 2021 (229
| comments)
| OldGoodNewBad wrote:
| They are eating crow, Orange Man was right again.
| chowells wrote:
| This article correctly notices at the very start that asking this
| question is of no value in resolving the current situation. Then
| the author seems to think they've uncovered a massive secret
| instead of continuing the thought.
|
| Who wants this question in the public's mind? What are their
| goals in constantly pushing it, even though it does nothing to
| improve people's lives? What are the actual effects of pushing
| this question as if it was important?
|
| https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/04/21/one-third-o...
|
| I think it's better to not contribute to an environment of hatred
| towards large groups of people. Is the question potentially
| interesting? Sure, I suppose. But there's a huge difference
| between idly thinking about something and telling everybody else
| that they should as well. The latter has consequences, and you
| can't just ignore them.
| Vaslo wrote:
| So we should hide information because it might cause people to
| have a negative view towards the country of China? How about
| this - let all information, whether it goes with your far left
| anti-racist view or not, be put freely out to the public and
| let the public decide how they want to react. Of course some
| people will take it to the extreme, but that doesn't mean we
| aren't entitled to this info. Anyone who lost a loved one, had
| their livelihoods reduced, or fell ill absolutely deserve to
| know what was done and what steps we are going to take to never
| allow it to happen again.
|
| I never need censorship of any information by anyone, no matter
| how noble or misguided their deed.
| renewiltord wrote:
| The 'media' has a bias towards team-alignment. This makes sense.
| The Washington Post is more like Arsenal Fan TV than it is like
| The Lancet. You don't go there for truth. You go there to either
| yell at your team or support your team, but ultimately you go
| there to be with your team.
|
| This isn't because they're dumb or anything. It's just a natural
| result of what we, as consumers, want.
|
| It happened with masks, it happened with this nonsense, it will
| happen again.
| medium_burrito wrote:
| "The past never had been altered. Oceania was at war with
| Eastasia. Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia."
| 99_00 wrote:
| If it came from the wet market, and wet markets are still open in
| China, why would any country allow free travel to anyone who has
| been to China?
|
| Or, even free travel to anyone from a country that allows free
| travel with China?
|
| If we are to believe that it crossed species at the wet market is
| it too much to ask that they be shut down before free travel with
| China is allowed?
|
| Belief in the wet market theory doesn't square with the total
| lack of discussion around mitigating the risk.
|
| 3.5M dead and counting.
| danboarder wrote:
| One problem with politically charged issues is that one's bias
| can significantly color unresolved factual issues. In the article
| the early 'red flags' pointed out in the January 2020 study by
| The Lancet left clear open questions regarding the Seafood Market
| hypothesis, but many in the media glossed over these red flags.
| Now that additional facts are coming to light including the fact
| that multiple scientists at the lab were hospitalized with Covid
| like symptoms in late 2019, the facts are starting to pierce
| through the early dismissal of the lab leak theory by many
| journalists. I think this will result in a rethink of how we tag
| unresolved topics as "False Information" or before enough facts
| are gathered. Perhaps a "Controversial" tag would be preferred. I
| really like the site https://www.allsides.com/ that provides
| Left/Center/Right bias indicators for any story so you can read
| all sides and get the gist of how politics is coloring current
| stories in the media.
|
| (1) https://www.allsides.com/tags/wuhan-
| lab?search=wuhan%20lab#g...
| generalizations wrote:
| > I think this will result in a rethink of how we tag
| unresolved topics as "False Information" or before enough facts
| are gathered. Perhaps a "Controversial" tag would be preferred.
|
| If anything, it will taint the credibilty of people who claim
| they have the insight to tag the information's credibility in
| the first place.
| contemporary343 wrote:
| Weren't scientists from the Chinese CDC actually _authors_ of
| the Lancet article that everyone cited? It doesn 't seem like
| they were trying to push any seafood market hypothesis either.
| speeder wrote:
| The author of that article is actually Peter Daszak of
| Ecohealth Alliance, that was funding the Wuhan lab for gain
| of function research, seemly using money from US government
| (NIH and another department I can't recall now).
| cheeseomlit wrote:
| >I think this will result in a rethink of how we tag unresolved
| topics as "False Information" or before enough facts are
| gathered.
|
| Wishful thinking perhaps, somehow I doubt most of the
| media/gov't figures who dismissed these claims did so in good
| faith to begin with.
| shkkmo wrote:
| Please be explicite id youbare going to make such
| accusations. What "bad faith" reason do you postulate
| motivated these actions?
| caddemon wrote:
| I wouldn't use the word bad faith, but I think for a lot of
| people it was very likely motivated by political/social
| pressure more than by trying to find the truth. In a
| positive light one could interpret some of the dismissal as
| an effort to combat anti-Asian racism occuring here. In a
| somewhat more negative light one might think it was simply
| the move to make to avoid even remotely aligning with
| conservatives. There were probably also dynamics going on
| with foreign politics, but even just on US soil there was
| more than enough politicization of the issue.
| RV86 wrote:
| IMO, determining the origin of the virus is of much more
| consequence than who was right and who was wrong back in 2020. If
| the virus crossed over naturally, it's reasonable to conjecture
| that this sort of thing is going to happen more and more often in
| the future. If it was human error in a lab, I would actually be
| relieved -- this seems like something that's much easier to
| correct. FWIW, I do think available evidence supports a lab leak
| more than any other hypothesis.
| dougmwne wrote:
| I agree that it's extremely important. If it was a lab leak,
| there are many safety process and regulation improvements we
| might be highly motivated to make. It's a thing we can actually
| have some control over. If it was a natural virus, there's good
| reason to collect and study more pathogens so we have a head
| start if one of them crosses into humans. Not that both of
| these things aren't good responses to the pandemic, but having
| a specific answer will direct more funding at the problem.
| Leary wrote:
| The US has intelligence that three Wuhan virologists were
| hospitalized.
|
| China says nobody was sick.
|
| It's quite simple, the US should release the names of those who
| were sick.
| tick_tock_tick wrote:
| Those people would be silently disappeared the next day.
| throwaway69123 wrote:
| Seems like a fast way for China to black bag those people if
| they haven't already
| cratermoon wrote:
| They never will, because there is no such intelligence, it was
| reported as a statement from an unnamed intelligence official.
| It's garbage.
| caddemon wrote:
| What incentive would the US government have to lie about this
| though? They were funding research at that lab, I don't
| understand why they would want people to think lab leak is
| correct all of a sudden - if that's what you're claiming?
| whydoibother wrote:
| It is really a shame people fall for this garbage after Iraq.
| cbHXBY1D wrote:
| My favorite over the top intelligence claim from that era
| was that Saddam had a "human shredder" which he used on his
| enemies. Turns out it never existed: https://en.wikipedia.o
| rg/wiki/Saddam_Hussein%27s_alleged_shr...
| cratermoon wrote:
| ah yes, the phantom yellowcake
| cout wrote:
| By March, it didn't matter whether the virus had come from a lab
| or a spillover event, because a bigger, more pressing issue had
| emerged: what to do now that the virus was outside China. Now
| that that threat is starting to abate, it seems discussion has
| picked up where it left off.
| nodesocket wrote:
| Hopefully people will start to realize that questioning norms and
| diversity of thought should be accepted on social media.
| Silencing and suppression of questions and thought by media is
| rampant and occurs here on Hacker News as well.
|
| The population as a whole (especially under the age of 30) feels
| like a bunch of sheep to me these days. They can't think freely,
| question things, or ask hard questions. They all just want to fit
| in. Ideology that doesn't align with bit tech and social media
| agendas is quickly dismissed as right-wing idiocracy.
| Moodles wrote:
| The media is so disappointing these days. A lot of people don't
| remember this, but the mainstream media outlets were actually
| playing down the coronavirus pandemic at the start. Then they
| attacked the travel ban to China. Then did a complete U-turn.
| Pelosi was dancing in the streets of Chinatown San Francisco to
| prove how safe and not racist she is. It seemed like they hated
| Trump and would fight anything he did.
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/time-for-a-reality-che...
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/02/03/why-we-sho...
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/18/world/europe/coronavirus-...
|
| https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/01/29/8008132...
|
| I saw a viral clip of the Kayleigh McEnany pointing out this
| hypocrisy and the immediate response as she dropped the mic and
| walked off was someone in the press shouting "you were prepared
| for that!". No shit she was prepared for that? That's her job?
| How is that a bad thing? Oh, because your gotcha question didn't
| work. Ridiculous.
| newaccount2021 wrote:
| you have to understand, all of the Orange Checkmarks of HN are
| Democrat cultists
| defaultname wrote:
| None of the articles you cite demonstrate what you seem to
| think they do. When the number of cases was minuscule, the
| threat to Americans was low and those articles were spot on:
| Keep vigilant, get your flu shot, but don't stress too much
| yet. Citing Pelosi visiting San Francisco (at a time when there
| were _zero_ cases in the region, but a growing number of anti-
| Asian hate crimes) again doesn 't make a point to any
| reasonable person. These claims speak only to zealots.
|
| More critically, you have a higher standard of every random
| article in every newspaper than you do of agencies actually
| responsible. Which is truly dystopian.
|
| Speaking of which, Trump's "travel ban" (that wasn't a travel
| ban) was the single action taken after the virus was already
| spreading uncontrolled in NY, Washington State, and Europe. It
| did nothing to restrict US citizens traveling to and from the
| affected areas unrestrained, which thousands continued to do,
| even if we believed it would be remotely effective at that
| point. It did nothing for testing or tracing. It was the
| laziest, least-effort action possible. And to be clear, long
| after _all_ of these things, Trump declared that the number of
| cases would soon be 0. He made similar "nothingburger"
| comments for months.
|
| But you find issue with the media.
|
| Incredible.
| Moodles wrote:
| > More critically, you have a higher standard of every random
| article in every newspaper than you do of agencies actually
| responsible. Which is truly dystopian.
|
| > But you find issue with the media.
|
| > Incredible.
|
| The HN topic is about the media, so I'm talking about the
| media.
|
| > Speaking of which, Trump's "travel ban" (that wasn't a
| travel ban) was the single action taken after the virus was
| already spreading uncontrolled in NY, Washington State, and
| Europe. It did nothing to restrict US citizens traveling to
| and from the affected areas unrestrained, which thousands
| continued to do, even if we believed it would be remotely
| effective at that point
|
| I'm not defending Trump. I'm pointing out media hypocrisy.
| What did they do? Call the travel ban racist. Their behaviour
| has been very partisan, often at the expense of the truth.
| Exhibit A: the lab leak theory in the OP.
| MeinBlutIstBlau wrote:
| This last year alone has made me lose more faith in the
| democratic party and the media altogether. Not only did they
| push a radical agenda with retribution, they did it like
| religious people used to do centuries ago. Don't challenge the
| status quo or face reprecussions (fine, demobilization,
| banned). Now egg on their faces.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| The media, the left, and big tech are all clearly working on
| the same agenda.
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