5 ms·

Wuhan Lab Staff Sought Hospital Care Before Covid-19 Outbreak Disclosed

70 points by koolba 5y ago

100011_100001 5y ago
Ironically the people that will be the most upset about this, are also the same people that believe that COVID is no big deal and the deaths are faked because "hospitals get paid for reporting deaths as COVID deaths". Prove me wrong.
- mrkramer 5y ago
  Yea it is a big deal because if it was a lab leak it shows you how powerful potential bio weaponry really is. COVID has 0.1% death rate imagine if it was 10% death rate or even more how devastating it would be for global human society.
  - Tarq0n 5y ago
    Diseases with higher death rates spread less fast. You can't just imagine a disease with one characteristic changed, because that would completely alter it's epidemiological characteristics.
    - jfengel 5y ago
      It's true that you can't really run with the counterfactuals very easily, but it is entirely possible to have a high death rate and fast spread. HIV is basically 100% deadly. It's not exactly easy to spread, since it requires super-close contact, but that kind of super-close contact is very common. What is slow is its rate of killing you, so that you can be infectious for a long time while not having obvious symptoms. As you say, changes to any of those comes with a complete change in the epidemiology. It's hard to extrapolate.
  - ModernMech 5y ago
    If COVID had a 10% death rate we wouldn’t have a whole group of people insisting it’s no worse than the flu while spreading it around. I think we have to change our ideas along what the real danger of a bio weapon is — it’s not casualties, but the ability to cripple an economy through taking down important infrastructure (hospitals, manufacturing, etc). If your super bio weapon kills 500k people in one month, everyone stays inside and it dies out. If it kills 500k people over a year, people refuse to stay inside and spread it around.
- FriendlyNormie 5y ago
  You’d look good with a machete buried halfway into your neck, faggot.
- tomp 5y ago
  What is the point of this comment? Are you surprised that some people are upset on principle, whenever truth is suppressed and fake data & lies is promoted instead?
  - 100011_100001 5y ago
    I am upset by the selective bias of people. Go by data, not every time it's suitable.
- listless 5y ago
  I understand the frustration, but the comment is very “us vs them”. I also feel like you do, but we can’t operate on that because it’s pure bias. That kind of thinking has gotten us in to a proper mess as a culture.
tiimbz 5y ago
Previous thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27259953 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27259953
bko 5y ago
I can't find it now, but I saw someone on Twitter point out the slight corrections Fact Check sites have made in response to the lab leak hypothesis. They added a few words to hedge their bets (e.g. "appears to have come from" as opposed to "came from"). Pentagon Papers were released in 1971 and discussed events from 1945-1967. But now everything seems to move so much faster. I remember specifically reading about how practically all scientists were certain that this was not a lab leak, even before they knew anything about the virus. It was the one thing we did know. It's fine that journalists and scientists get things wrong or change their minds. I object to the faux certainty and politicization, on both sides. I'm sure there will be no apologies or consequences from those that have actively suppressed any discussion on this topic. It says something that even with a horrific virus that has killed millions, we can't collectively get together and agree that we should probably find out where this thing came from.
- mytailorisrich 5y ago
  It took 15 years to find the origin of SARS-Cov-1 and it turned out it came from a colony of bats a thousand km away from the first detected outbreak, which also occurred at the end of the year (My guess is that the massive number of people travelling around China in October every year is to 'blame'). If that happened for SARS-Cov-1, why not for SARS-Cov-2? It's much more difficult to have a quiet analysis this time, though, because the China-US relations and the scale of the pandemic are such that this topic has been geopolitically weaponised on all sides.
  - 0-_-0 5y ago
    SARS-Cov-1 leaked from the lab 4 (yes, four) times [0]. If that happened for SARS-Cov-1, why not for SARS-Cov-2? [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Severe_acute_respiratory_syndrome#Laboratory_accidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Severe_acute_respiratory_syndr...
  - justinlink 5y ago
    I'm no expert at all, but I think one of the major differences between SARS-Cov-1 and SARS-Cov-2 origin was within months animals were identified as the carrier of SARS-Cov-1, specifically in May 2003 bats and masked palm civets. To date, I'm not sure we've found bats with SARS-Cov-2, or even know what secondary host animal made the jump to humans. Obviously China (and the whole world) would be highly motivated to find these sources, and it's been over 15 months.
legitster 5y ago
It certainly will be interesting to see if it turns out Covid is a lab leak. What specifically changes if we determine it came from a research lab? Obviously more embarrassment for a government that hates to be embarrassed. But it sounds like these research practices are in more places then just Wuhan. Are there other time bombs around the world ready to go off?
- drran 5y ago
  It will be much more interesting to see which lab leaked the virus. The earliest samples of SARS-CoV-2 are from France (16 Nov 2019) and China (17 Nov 2019).
- dvfjsdhgfv 5y ago
  > What specifically changes if we determine it came from a research lab? The understanding of its origin may help us to learn more about it and the analysis of the case may help us to protect against similar leaks in the future.
  - lumost 5y ago
    There are a few follow-on questions that would have significant impact to future developments. 1) Did China know that it was a lab-leak? and when did they know? 2) What were the objectives of the gain of function research? If China had a large coverup and did not provide significant aid to erstwhile allies then they may find these alliances to be much colder in the future. The Chinese population may take extreme issue with their governments choices in handling the pandemic. If there were connections between the Chinese military and the gain of function research, then countries may demand reparations/financial penalties at later treaty negotiations. China may find that the perception of the world population to the potential of being the victim of a weapons program to be significant. Both scenarios could yield a situation similar to an extreme version of the Chernobyl disaster and the Soviet Union.
prof-dr-ir 5y ago
The opinion of the WHO on the lab hypothesis is on the final pages of its report: https://www.who.int/health-topics/coronavirus/origins-of-the-virus https://www.who.int/health-topics/coronavirus/origins-of-the... Since I heard little to the contrary, I am thinking that a substantial majority of virologists agrees with the 'extremely unlikely' assessment of the WHO. Maybe somebody knows if there has been a poll?
ffffauci 5y ago
Execute Fauci!
ffffauci 5y ago
Liberals who side with China are enemies of the state and should be arrested.

70 points by koolba 5y ago

Ironically the people that will be the most upset about this, are also the same people that believe that COVID is no big deal and the deaths are faked because "hospitals get paid for reporting deaths as COVID deaths". Prove me wrong.

mrkramer 5y ago
Yea it is a big deal because if it was a lab leak it shows you how powerful potential bio weaponry really is. COVID has 0.1% death rate imagine if it was 10% death rate or even more how devastating it would be for global human society.
- Tarq0n 5y ago
  Diseases with higher death rates spread less fast. You can't just imagine a disease with one characteristic changed, because that would completely alter it's epidemiological characteristics.
  - jfengel 5y ago
    It's true that you can't really run with the counterfactuals very easily, but it is entirely possible to have a high death rate and fast spread. HIV is basically 100% deadly. It's not exactly easy to spread, since it requires super-close contact, but that kind of super-close contact is very common. What is slow is its rate of killing you, so that you can be infectious for a long time while not having obvious symptoms. As you say, changes to any of those comes with a complete change in the epidemiology. It's hard to extrapolate.
- ModernMech 5y ago
  If COVID had a 10% death rate we wouldn’t have a whole group of people insisting it’s no worse than the flu while spreading it around. I think we have to change our ideas along what the real danger of a bio weapon is — it’s not casualties, but the ability to cripple an economy through taking down important infrastructure (hospitals, manufacturing, etc). If your super bio weapon kills 500k people in one month, everyone stays inside and it dies out. If it kills 500k people over a year, people refuse to stay inside and spread it around.
FriendlyNormie 5y ago
You’d look good with a machete buried halfway into your neck, faggot.
tomp 5y ago
What is the point of this comment? Are you surprised that some people are upset on principle, whenever truth is suppressed and fake data & lies is promoted instead?
- 100011_100001 5y ago
  I am upset by the selective bias of people. Go by data, not every time it's suitable.
listless 5y ago
I understand the frustration, but the comment is very “us vs them”. I also feel like you do, but we can’t operate on that because it’s pure bias. That kind of thinking has gotten us in to a proper mess as a culture.

tiimbz 5y ago

Previous thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27259953 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27259953

bko 5y ago

I can't find it now, but I saw someone on Twitter point out the slight corrections Fact Check sites have made in response to the lab leak hypothesis. They added a few words to hedge their bets (e.g. "appears to have come from" as opposed to "came from"). Pentagon Papers were released in 1971 and discussed events from 1945-1967. But now everything seems to move so much faster. I remember specifically reading about how practically all scientists were certain that this was not a lab leak, even before they knew anything about the virus. It was the one thing we did know. It's fine that journalists and scientists get things wrong or change their minds. I object to the faux certainty and politicization, on both sides. I'm sure there will be no apologies or consequences from those that have actively suppressed any discussion on this topic. It says something that even with a horrific virus that has killed millions, we can't collectively get together and agree that we should probably find out where this thing came from.

mytailorisrich 5y ago
It took 15 years to find the origin of SARS-Cov-1 and it turned out it came from a colony of bats a thousand km away from the first detected outbreak, which also occurred at the end of the year (My guess is that the massive number of people travelling around China in October every year is to 'blame'). If that happened for SARS-Cov-1, why not for SARS-Cov-2? It's much more difficult to have a quiet analysis this time, though, because the China-US relations and the scale of the pandemic are such that this topic has been geopolitically weaponised on all sides.
- 0-_-0 5y ago
  SARS-Cov-1 leaked from the lab 4 (yes, four) times [0]. If that happened for SARS-Cov-1, why not for SARS-Cov-2? [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Severe_acute_respiratory_syndrome#Laboratory_accidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Severe_acute_respiratory_syndr...
- justinlink 5y ago
  I'm no expert at all, but I think one of the major differences between SARS-Cov-1 and SARS-Cov-2 origin was within months animals were identified as the carrier of SARS-Cov-1, specifically in May 2003 bats and masked palm civets. To date, I'm not sure we've found bats with SARS-Cov-2, or even know what secondary host animal made the jump to humans. Obviously China (and the whole world) would be highly motivated to find these sources, and it's been over 15 months.

legitster 5y ago

It certainly will be interesting to see if it turns out Covid is a lab leak. What specifically changes if we determine it came from a research lab? Obviously more embarrassment for a government that hates to be embarrassed. But it sounds like these research practices are in more places then just Wuhan. Are there other time bombs around the world ready to go off?

drran 5y ago
It will be much more interesting to see which lab leaked the virus. The earliest samples of SARS-CoV-2 are from France (16 Nov 2019) and China (17 Nov 2019).
dvfjsdhgfv 5y ago
> What specifically changes if we determine it came from a research lab? The understanding of its origin may help us to learn more about it and the analysis of the case may help us to protect against similar leaks in the future.
- lumost 5y ago
  There are a few follow-on questions that would have significant impact to future developments. 1) Did China know that it was a lab-leak? and when did they know? 2) What were the objectives of the gain of function research? If China had a large coverup and did not provide significant aid to erstwhile allies then they may find these alliances to be much colder in the future. The Chinese population may take extreme issue with their governments choices in handling the pandemic. If there were connections between the Chinese military and the gain of function research, then countries may demand reparations/financial penalties at later treaty negotiations. China may find that the perception of the world population to the potential of being the victim of a weapons program to be significant. Both scenarios could yield a situation similar to an extreme version of the Chernobyl disaster and the Soviet Union.

prof-dr-ir 5y ago

The opinion of the WHO on the lab hypothesis is on the final pages of its report: https://www.who.int/health-topics/coronavirus/origins-of-the-virus https://www.who.int/health-topics/coronavirus/origins-of-the... Since I heard little to the contrary, I am thinking that a substantial majority of virologists agrees with the 'extremely unlikely' assessment of the WHO. Maybe somebody knows if there has been a poll?

ffffauci 5y ago

Execute Fauci!

ffffauci 5y ago

Liberals who side with China are enemies of the state and should be arrested.