I don't deny any of this hypothetical lab interference but this new thread hit the top 5 of HN in under 30 minutes with no comments. I don't like that.
It's the thing that once was a conspiracy theory that was getting right wing YouTube channels in trouble, now it's an article from a legitimate news source. To me that makes it very interesting.
The more “free thinking” non-right wing people were talking about it too. And being cast out by the NPC left as believing right wing conspiracies.
Most of us who paid any attention knew this a year ago. We just weren’t allowed to talk about it in polite company. Just like several other narratives as of late. Some of which have yet to break through.
Just wait until the mainstream picks up on the massive ivermectin scandal. That’s going to be a way bigger deal than this “revelation”.
Slowly, more and more people are starting to realize how garbage the media has become and how the vast majority of what’s reported is really just activism pushing a narrative, and often not even true. It’s been reduced to ideology and clickbait.
I’m glad we can finally say it. Of course it came from the fucking lab. Anyone who believed otherwise should be ashamed of their gullibility and take steps to avoid buying obvious political propaganda in the future. It started right beside the world’s leading facility for bat coronaviruses where they do gain of function research. Where they have live bats. The species of bat it comes from lives like 1000 miles away. They go there and bring them back to the wuhan lab. The bats do not exist there otherwise. And this lab has a history of accidents. And there were no infected animals in the wet market.
Yes it’s possible it could be a massive cascade of remarkable coincidences that would and have caused this, and it was a mysterious zoonotic origin that we still can’t explain (after changing explanations twice), but…come on. We ate up this obvious coverup story for over a year just because we hated Trump so much we allowed it to drop our IQ by like 30 points.
At this point, it’s conspiracy theorist to claim that it didn’t come from the lab.
What else did we get wrong during this hyper partisan blindness?
I posted stuff on the lab leak way back at the beginning (feb 20 or so) but I still think it's unproven. Even so I think people should have been able to discuss it in mainstream forums from the start. Also I think the Chinese owe it to the world to have some openness on the thing.
It’s definitely unproven, yeah, but so obviously the most likely explanation and should have been explored seriously from the beginning. China’s denials should have never been taken seriously.
It’s not “right wing” or pro-Trump at all, but this NYT explanation is hilarious. It’s just a joke reference to the simulation theory, and refers to someone who has their opinions “assigned” to them, left or right, and doesn’t imply disagreement.
NPC is a meme. Your link to urbandictionary is particularly interesting if you look at the contributors history...
NPC left is a term specifically to fuzz anti-progressive animus through 'memeing' language. This type of coded language is a common tactic of white supremacists [0-4]. You may have done it intentionally or not, but it is what it is [0,1,3]. If this is unintentional, you should be aware that that language is created specifically to play with this irony and ambiguity and draw people in while taking a stance that enables everyone involved to claim [4].
None of these links are authoritative, they’re just NPC left activism.
I used “NPC left” to differentiate from the “reasonable left”. The people who follow folks like AOC and Ilhan Omar, as opposed to the more mainstream moderate left. Nothing to do with right wing or alt-right anything. And I am not even going to entertain this stupid white supremacist lie that folks of a certain activist persuasion love to fling at everyone and everything with no basis whatsoever. That’s not a thing, and you need to join the rest in coming to terms with the fact that narrative is completely manufactured nonsense. Hopefully you weren’t one of the many who fell for the CNN hoax about the white supremacist catholic kids supposedly antagonizing the indigenous man, but after that happening repeatedly, it should give you pause before believing claims like this.
Nevermind that “NPC” doesn’t even appear in your links, so this is some massive goalpost shifting.
One of them even says “snowflake” is an alt-right white supremacist word. Is anybody still supposed to take this shit seriously?
Because we need accountability. This whole disaster of denying a problem, till it was a catastrophe, talking it small, until it was a pandemic, failing institutions and failing systems (face before scientific truth) is a liability that needs to be dismantled.
The idea of accountability is the thing that is holding back the investigation. Because if China were found "culpable", there is no way they could pay compensation for the trillions of economic damage and all the lifes lost. Not even the geopolitical oppenents of China are willing to go there.
What we need is to prevent further such incidents in the future. So if the question of accountability is off the table, lets just think about what the consequence would be if the virus was an accidential lab escape (from any country). We should immediately take measures such that that never happens again. That means increasing the safety measures and transparency, and possibly banning gain-of-function research.
Unfortunately, the undercurrent of the whole discussion is "who is to blame", not "how to prevent this again". (Also, I think this is one of the reasons they tried to downplay the outbreak in the beginning.)
>Because if China were found "culpable", there is no way they could pay compensation for the trillions of economic damage and all the lifes lost. Not even the geopolitical oppenents of China are willing to go there.
I mean we could just take it out of the debt we owe to China. China owns over $1 trillion in US debt. It wouldn't cover all the expenses the US had due to this pandemic but it would help. I would agree that almost nobody on the US would actually advocate for it.
> Unfortunately, the undercurrent of the whole discussion is "who is to blame", not "how to prevent this again".
You have to know how it started and who is to blame in order to put in safe guard against it in the future.
Accountability does not necessary mean monetary damages and compensation. It would be good enough, if there was a government internal reform, that actually resulted in reliable, "in-control" government, instead of the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potemkin_village "strong government" facade that is obviously in effect right now.
Nobody would have trouble entrusting bio-research to Taiwan or South Korea.
It's being pushed hard because the push back against it was so weird. Random "experts" with no evidence writing all sorts of absolutes statements that a lab leak was impossible. Then for a while the media was calling people crazy or racist for believing a very reasonable theory that China has done everything in its' power to make un-confirmable.
What happened was that a conspiracy theory was generally dismissed because it was being pushed in the right wing media, with literally zero evidence to support it.
There weren’t “experts with no evidence” of the non existence of a lab leak. There were experts claiming that there is no evidence of a lab leak.
The "random expects", as you describe them, were saying exactly that: that there is no evidence, so stop the conspiracy theorizing until some evidence is produced.
a report that is highly circumstantial but implies a certain inference
from a foreign intelligence agency that says it 'needs further investigation'
provided to a historically right wing publication
when in contrast the people who do this for a living have consistently had exactly the same line: we need to investigate the cause, the evidence we have suggests one thing, and this theory that keeps getting pushed is scientifically without evidence
Because during the pandemic, the major media outlets dismissed it as a conspiracy theory and completely shut down conversation on the topic. The New York Times claimed this theory was "debunked". Fact checkers claimed this was "pants on fire" lying. For months, Twitter suspended accounts sharing the lab-leak theory, because they were "spreading misinformation".
The past few weeks, all the above parties did a complete about-face, with no apology. Vox silently edited one of its March 2020 articles "debunking" claims that Covid-19 originated in a lab leak https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1396769717805780994 . The fact that the mainstream media can so effectively censor a theory against the prescribed narrative is extremely harmful to our democracy.
It makes you question what other narratives being pushed today are similarly misguided.
It's not being "pushed" except in the sense that any sensational topic gets pushed: by the pressure of people's excitement and sensations. This is the cycle of life on the internet.
While you probably have a higher level view of what "pushing" is on HN, I'm not seeing this topic being posted and quickly upvoted with minimal interaction on just HN... but I'm also just a normal user of other sites like Reddit too.
It's just a sensational topic - maybe the most sensational MOT (major ongoing topic) of the moment, no? The same psychology must apply to that everywhere.
This story has other advantages (from the point of view of the story). It is intriguing in a way that's perfect for internet detectives, sort of like a board game with a low barrier to entry: you can get up and running with a few links in a few minutes, jump in and play. It's personally relevant to everyone who was affected by the pandemic, i.e. literally everyone. And the stakes are high geopolitically, so it's got all the energy of that drama as well (not great for discussion quality, but fabulous if you're the story and want to spread).
I'm just describing the psychology of a story like this. I'm not putting down anyone who's interested in it or who's not interested in it, and I'm certainly not commenting on the story itself—only why it's easy to understand why people would be posting it, upvoting it, and flagging it. Different people, of course.
You're not the only person who is reacting to the reposts. Based on past experience, we should all brace ourselves for throngs more of them. Maybe this would be a good place to repeat the principles of MOTs and SNI:
I didn't really think that the current story was SNI, given that we've had several other major threads recently, but it's a borderline case and the community seems to have voted otherwise.
'Because justice, moral high ground and emotions are important to people, and people elect governments'
From a meta "gain of function" POV, China has gained from the pandemic. It has kick started its economy with months of head start, while all of the BRIC and western competition have suffered through the pandemic.
China hasn't lost a single opportunity to let it be known that the superiority of their governance methods and ideology has a hand in how well they've handled the pandemic. Their main competition: US (in front) and India (much behind) have particularly suffered and been the subject of ridicule among the Chinese.
The winds of change are heralded in by emotion and perception. Being able to associate the grief of millions to a single regime is the kind of weapon that itching to be wielded. (to a lesser degree the democrats already wielded it in ousting Trump)
It can permanently damage the credibility of mainstream media organizations and social media giants. It can breed nationalism and anti-PRC sentiment. It can legitimize scepticism towards empirical science and make heterodox/conspiratorial ideas harder to dismiss. It can be used to break the break the stranglehold of elite media/universities as unquestionable source of truth.
Whether the outcomes are to our liking is secondary. The answer to the question if the issue is worth pursuing is a resounding YES !
I'll re-iterate how important this comment is, sorry dang, when I see the responses to this comment, some comments of mine, and other 'this is a suspicious pattern' comments.
There is nothing insulating HN from being a home for some particular conspiracy theory anymore than other sites. The willingness of some comments in this thread to just absolutely push the 'lab' narrative despite admitting the lack of evidence is deeply troubling.
Maybe. But this is according to a paraphrase of unverified (possibly not even American) intelligence. Both the document's authority and origin are disputed, and the WSJ can't even say which department or agency wrote this. This does not seem like any sort of official US intelligence report.
Couldn’t all these same points from that Twitter thread be leveled against the New York Times when they wrote about Trump’s tax returns and financials? It seems to be like an inconsistent bar is being used in terms of transparency and access to the primary source. I’m not saying it’s wrong to be skeptical - in fact I think it’s appropriate - it’s just an interesting observation on how ready we are (or aren’t) to accept allegations based on the story. Ultimately what the lab leak hypothesis deserves is a trustworthy transparent and independent investigation into WIV, but we may be too late in demanding that now, 1.5 years later.
One thing is fantastically hard to ignore. The SARS2 phylogeny is rooted by a most recent common ancestor in October or November. This is as clear as day and no evidence has ever surfaced to nudge the estimate nor to indicate the virus was present previous to those dates, nor that there were existing proto-SARS2 strains. These would continue to circulate and something would have been found had they existed. (n.b. There _has_ been some now discredited science arguing it was in Europe before those dates.) The correspondence between the virus phylogeny, this report, as well as previous indications of a shutdown in the WIV in early to mid October 2019, is just an awful lot to say maybe to. So, what's the explanation on the other side of your "maybe"?
You're asking me to comment on the entire theory, I think. I'm only commenting on the value of an unseen intelligence report of unknown source. None of what you've said increases the validity of this report.
Everyone commenting on this post is acting immediately as if this report is 100% true, but the reality is that we know very little about the report.
> CDC estimates that influenza has resulted in between 9 million – 45 million illnesses, between 140,000 – 810,000 hospitalizations and between 12,000 – 61,000 deaths annually since 2010.
Normally you have to be really young, really old or really sick to die from the flu. Not everyone but most. I hope the Wuhan lab didn't have multiple employees in any of those categories.
Edit: parent comment has changed so much my comment is no longer in context :(
If their average age was around 50 to 64, then we'd expect around 155.1/1e5*266 ~= 0.4 hospitalizations within the entire flu season, not just within one month.
yeah not necessarily related to any particular theory around lab leak, one could simply take this for what it is: further evidence of underreporting by china to WHO which seems to be fairly uncontroversial
But we're talking "sought hospital care". In the west, when I hear "hospitalized", I translate that as admitted to hospital from the emergency department because your problems won't be solved in 12 hours.
In China, "hospital care" might just mean the clinics at the hospital. Even in the west, I know family doctor units that are based at the hospital and that's where you'd go for regular stuff.
Tenth of thousands of people die from flu in the US every year: https://tinyurl.com/tc3c2mz2 . The fact that you have not worked with any of the victims means zilch.
And almost none of them are employed prior, so it makes sense he has not worked with them, and makes it suspicious that 3 working people went to hospital.
It goes without saying a virology lab of this level isn’t the same as most organizations. Given the nature of their activities they have safety systems in place to prevent a virus from spreading at the work place.
> Given the nature of their activities they have safety systems in place to prevent a virus from spreading at the work place.
This is a silly assertion. Precautions are taken against the viruses being studied in the labs themselves - gloves, hoods, special suits if you're working with something like Ebola - but when you go to the cafeteria or visit someone's office, it's unlikely people were masking or distancing etc. pre-COVID.
Colds/flus likely spread like they do at any other workplace.
yes that's the most suspect part of this narrative. that lab workers working in an environment and educated about virus and communicative diseases would get sick and then go to a public emergency room against all common sense.
It is strange to me that there is this much concern over whether COVID came from a lab or not because ultimately it is irrelevant outside of highlighting a need for additional safety protocols if proven true. "Virus from a lab" != engineered bioweapon, and regardless of whether infected animals existed in nature, got placed in a lab, and then an infection occurred or whether humans came in contact with infected animals in nature outside of the lab, we still should have employed much better disease management protocols than we did. We (Americans) aren't suddenly absolved of responsibility for our failures to contain this pandemic if it turns out that this was a lab leak, nor will the Chinese be any more responsible for the pandemic than they already are.
Does nothing for the current situation but helps us to understand future pandemic sources. If the virus escaped or was released from a specific source we can deal with the security of that location and others like it.
If it truly passed from a bat/pangolin/chicken, etc we can begin to deal with the sources of that vector.
This truly is a serious question that must be resolved.
its important to some people because they want to be able to blame China, I guess.
of course it's actually meaningless. the actual crime was the cover up that occurred after the virus was on the loose, delaying preparations and making containment impossible. we already know that happened
Exactly, it's a reason to get clicks and drum up Sinophobia, this theory wouldn't be pushed at all if the suspect origin nation was in North America or Europe.
It is fair to be concerned about the origin of the virus that continues to shake the world. The purpose of this investigation is 2 parts really -
1. to show political dominance/name calling
2. to be cautious in the future
Unfortunately, while (2) is still true, the majority of the news coverage is around (1).
I think if it can be proven that it came from their lab, A LOT of entities (companies, countries, and... individuals?) will be looking for reparations. Considering how many lives have been lost, impaired, companies bankrupt, money lost, etc. it would be highly consequential if the whole world (besides China's allies) agree to formally put the blame on China. Especially considering that they do not have UN veto super powers.
The Chinese government you mean? I'm talking about international court, sanctions.. honestly I don't know what tools are available, but seems to me if most of the world agrees on something, they can make it into reality. Besides the real costs of the virus, you can also consider how this is geopolitically very advantageous for allll the countries who would gain from delaying China's economic rise.
Even the developing countries who benefit from Chinese investment could benefit from this, because if the financial pain is high enough, they may have more leverage to renegotiate the terms of repayment.
> it is irrelevant outside of highlighting a need for additional safety protocols.
It calls into question the entire premise of this sort of research. If the risk of accidental release in the course of this research is greater than the risk of a natural pandemic, then the research should be discontinued. Of course anybody who is involved in this sort of research has a strong personal incentive to discourage such lines of thought, since it could end their careers.
If Chinese state actors are culpable for the pandemic, it seems plausible other nations will seek damages from the Chinese government. If not paid, they may levy fines on commerce from Chinese companies.
However, I'm still very skeptical of "lab leak", I think the zoonotic origin is most likely. If the zoonotic origin resulted from poorly regulated wet markets, however, Covid is just as much a result of bad government policy by China as in the lab leak case.
China needs to convince the world that they have taken steps which will prevent Covid from ever happening again. At a minimum, this includes tightly regulating wet markets so that animals will be "socially distanced" with good ventilation, if not banning wet markets altogether. If China is unwilling to do this, they present an ongoing pandemic risk, and it seems reasonable for the rest of the world to restrict travel to China until they comply.
>"If Chinese state actors are culpable for the pandemic, it seems plausible other nations will seek damages from the Chinese government. If not paid, they may levy fines on commerce from Chinese companies."
The US had sponsored virus research in Wuhan's lab possibly including "gain of function". If COVID leaked from that lab it could make the US culpable as well.
If it proved that this was a lab leak and evidence suggests the lab leak was covered up there will be a seismic shift in international relations with China across the globe.
I would not call that irrelevant in the slightest.
> ultimately it is irrelevant outside of highlighting a need for additional safety protocols if proven true
Well yeah, and those safety protocols could've prevented the pandemic. You're arguing this isn't important? This could prevent the next black plague, regardless of whether it was released intentionally or not (I do not believe it was released intentionally, my point is that's irrelevant to this discussion of public safety).
I would agree that, yes, many of the things you raised are things we'd look at regardless, but in any "5 Why's"-type investigation, you have to get to the root cause. Whether this came from a lab will probably have a huge influence on the future of Gain of Function research, both how it is conducted and whether we as a global society think it is a good idea. If on the other hand COVID was a natural occurring disease, but we have been unable to figure out the path from its origin in animals to eventually infecting humans, then we will probably need better techniques for tracking such transmissions. I think everyone knows that bats carry diseases, but most of what I read has indicated that in the natural scenario there was probably an intermediary animal, and knowing what animal that is surely would change how we approach that animal and its habitat in the wild.
Humans don't have to bioengineer a weaponized virus on purpose for a lab to be what created the virus. One common thing that happens in these research labs is that viruses can jump from one lab culture to another and swap genetic material to make hybrids that are more contagious for example. This might explain the furin cleavage site in the spike protein that helps SARS-CoV-2 pry its way into human cells.
As a hypothetical let's assume this disease was created, enhanced, released and let's even say all of this was done deliberately with malice of forethought.
Doesn't alter a thing - our collective response was 'C-'
Pretty obvious this came from a lab. Theres no easy resolution to the problem though. Is the USA going to confront China? Spark a dangerous tension? They are meddling with technology that they dont respect, and we are all suffering the consequences
Is this a story about a lab leak or media incompetence? What evidence has meaningfully changed since a year ago when this was a harmful conspiracy theory?
Next you’re gonna tell me that really was Hunter Biden’s laptop...
FWIW I made this HN account a year ago to post an article about the lab leak theory. I couldn’t use my main account because it was so obviously wrongthink at the time.
Yeah, I gave up caring a long time ago. You can’t fight emotion and attachment theory with logic. Let people feel what they will. For example I feel like a tendency for critical thinking is a curse.
This was the most depressing realization of the past year for me. Otherwise smart people too. Including a large percentage of this site. They got nearly every story wrong, and only some are just starting to realize it.
That’s hilarious. I had to self-sensor a lot for wrongthink as well. I still do on some topics. These people don’t listen, they do a quick pattern match of your keywords and dismiss if it sounds tangentially related to a non-left narrative, or contradicts theirs. Even when you explicitly differentiate from whatever narrative they’re associating it with. It’s maddening.
The vibe seems to have changed with the general public since the WHO investigation happened and looked like a bit of a PR job where they did meet and greets, were not allowed to see raw data, didn't see the lab database, couldn't talk to scientists without political minders present and so on.
I find it unusual that people can think this came from a 'wet market'. Those people will go as far as verbally attacking you if you suggest it originated or leaked from within a lab. Furthermore those people will claim it doesn't matter where it came from. The aggressive response seems agenda driven.
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