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This story continues to evolve and it's exciting to watch the new reporting come to light and slowly flesh out the details. The "lab escape hypothesis" was disr

This story continues to evolve and it's exciting to watch the new reporting come to light and slowly flesh out the details. The "lab escape hypothesis" was disregarded by many (if not most) media outlets as a conspiracy theory early on. This feels so much like the Iraq "weapons of mass destruction" fiasco. Any time news outlets are credulously repeating the words of "government officials," you need to seriously devalue the reporting. Reporting isn't just being a mouthpiece for the state, and these outlets fail us when they express such a high degree of certainty before there's any independent verification of the facts. Of course, everything you describe is still "circumstantial," and it's wise to remain skeptical. However, even if we somehow eventually confirm this was not a lab escape, there's absolutely no excuse for the certainty expressed by the NYT et al in their early reporting (which is true for so much of the other COVID-19 media coverage - the media did a terrible job of expressing uncertainty with very incomplete information throughout the entire affair).

jasonlaramburu 5y ago
>The "lab escape hypothesis" was disregarded by many (if not most) media outlets as a conspiracy theory early on. I have seen this claim made recently, but as I remember the 'disregarded' conspiracy theory was actually that the virus was genetically engineered (ie codon sequence edited) in a lab. The virus' genetic code seems to discount engineering, but not serial passaging/hybridization.
- zpeti 5y ago
  No, this was the sleight of hand by the media. Almost all people dismissed as conspiracy theorists said most likely lab escape doesn’t mean genetically engineered. But straight away that’s how it was reported in the media. Basically twisting words and lying. Shameful.
  - throwaway894345 5y ago
    Tangentially related, I have another comment from a separate post observing some additional media (NYT specifically) sleight of hand WRT the Damore "memo": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27254877 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27254877 >> [Damore] argued that biological differences and not a lack of opportunity explained the shortage of women in upper-tier positions. > This is an unfortunate way of characterizing Damore’s argument. It’s technically true in that Damore IIRC was arguing that there was more variation among men than women (more men at the top and at the bottom but fewer in the middle, but Google hires from the top hence more men). So yeah, technically biological differences, but when the average person hears that they’re going to assume he was arguing that women in general are dumber than men in general or some such. That said, this also represents much more earnest coverage of Damore considering the initial coverage overtly lied on many accounts (calling it an anti diversity screed, claiming he sent it as a memo to the company, etc).
  - stjohnswarts 5y ago
    I doubt if there's little doubt if you go with the lab theory that this virus wasn't genetically modified to be more virulent to humans (or possibly some species similar to humans). I think the big one is whether it was a lab accident, which seems like the most likely scenario barring jumping species naturally which still seems to be the most likely scenario.
- monoideism 5y ago
  No, that's just not true. The media repeatedly mocked even a lab escape scenario and boosted a handful of experts were favored a wild reservoir for the disease. Our "intellectual elites" have a bad problem now with moral/intellectual fashions, which are constantly changing. Social media has considerably exacerbated this problem.
  - jasonlaramburu 5y ago
    >The media repeatedly mocked even a lab escape scenario Do you have any links?
    - monoideism 5y ago
      How many do you want? If I post one link, you'll likely say it's not enough. Same with two links, etc. I'm hesitant to engage with this kind of request, but I did. In any case, I can tell you that there was a definite narrative in the media that the lab escape scenario was not only very unlikely, but "xenophobic" and "conspiratorial". Perhaps the most telling example of all my links below is this one, which is very open to the possibility of a lab escape. The latter half of the article is full of example of the efforts of the media and scientific establishment (for whatever reason, mostly political) to quash the lab escape hypothesis. One key quote: "Antonio Regalado, biomedicine editor of MIT Technology Review, put it more bluntly. If it turned out COVID-19 came from a lab, he tweeted, 'it would shatter the scientific edifice top to bottom.'" Article: https://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/2020/09/09/alina-chan-broad-institute-coronavirus/ https://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/2020/09/09/alina-chan-br... And here is a handful of links, of many: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/01/could-covid-19-be-manmade-what-we-know-about-origins-trump-chinese-lab-coronavirus https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/01/could-covid-19... https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/31/health/lab-leak-coronavirus-theory-comic-book-scn/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/31/health/lab-leak-coronavirus-t... https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/04/politics/coronavirus-intelligence/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/04/politics/coronavirus-intellig... https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/17/politics/mike-pompeo-coronavirus-wuhan-lab/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/17/politics/mike-pompeo-coronavi... https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/its-much-more-likely-the-coronavirus-came-from-wildlife-not-a-lab1/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/its-much-more-lik...
- deleted 5y ago
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- mensetmanusman 5y ago
  I know this is confusing, but gain of function genome alterations is one class of genetic engineering. Other approaches involve literally trying to change the codon sequence in a supercomputer to see what happens in the folding and conformation changes, but it is very esoteric since bio is so complicated.
  - jasonlaramburu 5y ago
    So my understanding is that GoF can involve genetic engineering (editing the codon sequence/geneotype) OR serial passaging (growing successive generations of microorganisms under various conditions to influence phenotype). The disregarded conspiracy theory, as I understood it, was that Chinese researchers were doing the former, NOT the latter. It is also my understanding that the virus' genetic code does not show any evidence of the former (editing codon sequence).
- bart_spoon 5y ago
  > I have seen this claim made recently, but as I remember the 'disregarded' conspiracy theory was actually that the virus was genetically engineered (ie codon sequence edited) in a lab. For the better part of a year now, the lab leak theory and the genetic engineering theory have been lumped in together by those trying to discredit them as conspiracies. The issue is that every time someone would point at circumstantial evidence of a potential lab leak, people would point at the scientists saying there was loads of evidence it wasn't genetically engineered, when those two things aren't remotely the same thing.
zpeti 5y ago
> This feels so much like the Iraq "weapons of mass destruction" fiasco. Any time news outlets are credulously repeating the words of "government officials," you need to seriously devalue the reporting. Depends what you mean by government officials. Trump was in power and his statements on this were called conspiracy theories. So the media wasn’t exactly taking the government side on this, they were dismissing statements by the government as conspiracy. Whether right or wrong, it’s extremely embarrassing for the media. They are slowly politicizing themselves into untrustable entities.
- gentleman11 5y ago
  Or, they were skeptics of the words of a compulsive serial liar and manipulator. It’s not partisan to stop trusting somebody like that. Edit: it is factually true to say Trump lied in manipulative ways constantly, and easy to confirm. This is not a partisan statement, it’s a fact that can be checked. Here are 5276 examples: https://projects.thestar.com/donald-trump-fact-check/ https://projects.thestar.com/donald-trump-fact-check/
  - bart_spoon 5y ago
    > Or, they were skeptics of the words of a compulsive serial liar and manipulator. It’s not partisan to stop trusting somebody like that. The issue here is that, as journalists, their job is to look at facts and weight evidence independently, rather than simply base judgements on the person making the statements. There has been ample evidence to at least consider a lab-leak theory very plausible, or even likely, but those were largely ignored. Instead, the media seemed content to report that Trump is claiming this thing, and Trump sucks, so this thing must also suck. Not exactly inspiring behavior from the "fourth estate".
    - gentleman11 5y ago
      That’s fair, but this isn’t an ordinary liar. If a known con artist is raving about his new youth serum, after being caught lying thousands and thousands of times in the last 4 years, it’s not inappropriate for the press to respond with “this known con artist has no evidence to support his claims” after a short glance - they are so busy dealing with the other 1000 recent lies that they don’t have time to investigate everything this person says in depth. The magnitude of the lies and manipulation was unheard of. The fact is, you need to hear the story from somebody credible before it becomes worth investigating, otherwise we would still have journalists trying to uncover the alleged thousands of murders by immigrants kept secret by bizarre conspiracies (which, again, lacks evidence) - the claims have to come from somebody capable of basic truth telling.
Izkata 5y ago
> This story continues to evolve Everything listed by GP was known a year ago, which is why it was so frustrating to get dismissed as conspiracy theory.
- epicureanideal 5y ago
  I agree. This seemed obvious even a year ago, and it seemed like the media and certain public officials were doing everything they could to avoid acknowledging it. And yet now they are starting to acknowledge it. What changed? Mostly the party in power. At the time it was politically expedient to say that Trump was being racist or xenophobic against China, so it was deemed necessary to paint comments by him or his supporters as xenophobic conspiracy theories. Then when he states something reasonable like the lab leak hypothesis they can portray him and his supporters as conspiracy nuts. And if it could influence the election even 0.1%, that would be bonus points for some people, although I would call that a dishonest influence. Now that he isn’t in power, they’ve decided it’s no longer necessary to avoid telling the truth.
  - zpeti 5y ago
    It was extremely worrying to me that the same happened with Hydroxychloroquine. Now I know that the scientific community proved that it doesn’t work. Fine, good. But the media dismissed it before that was proved. Because trump said it. Now imagine a hypothetical scenario where it actually worked. Just because trump was using it, the media would have potentially killed people just because they can’t agree with a single thing trump says. This is not journalism. It’s not objective reporting in the slightest. And it was by media outlets who claim to be doing real journalism and claim they are objective. At least fox doesn’t claim to be objective. It’s shameful propaganda.
    - firmnoodle 5y ago
      The same thing happened with Ivermectin as a prophylaxis. All of a sudden anything that was years old with a history of safe use in humans was off the table. They all also happen to be old enough that patent protection is gone. It's almost like people wanted this to be more dangerous and less treatable for some reason.
throwaway894345 5y ago
> Of course, everything you describe is still "circumstantial," and it's wise to remain skeptical. However, even if we somehow eventually confirm this was not a lab escape, there's absolutely no excuse for the certainty expressed by the NYT et al in their early reporting (which is true for so much of the other COVID-19 media coverage - the media did a terrible job of expressing uncertainty with very incomplete information throughout the entire affair). In general, my trust for the media has fallen through the floor in the last decade. I used to think that the media was mostly trustworthy, but that they would cater to the establishment on certain issues (e.g., WMDs and the general Iraq/Afghanistan war effort) but apart from those obvious high-profile issues they were mostly trustworthy. Now I can't tell if I was wrong the whole time and I've just wisened up recently or if the quality of the media has plummeted (especially with respect to ideological issues) or both. I strongly suspect that the media has become considerably more ideological (abandoning aspirations for neutrality and objectivity in favor of activism and proselytizing, at least to a degree), but I've probably (and hopefully) wisened up a bit as well.
- h2odragon 5y ago
  "Nuclear Winter" is a good example of a past consensual media gang bang; the notion was obvious horse shit but no one was allowed to say so. Mid 80s. That wasn't the first instance of mass media holding a remarkably consistent propaganda line, but I think it might have been one of the first where it escaped from state control.
  - wing-_-nuts 5y ago
    Do you have a citation on nuclear winter not being a thing? The last thing I read on the subject was that even a full blown exchange between india and pakistan would be enough to wreak havoc on agriculture in large swaths of the world for a year or two
    - h2odragon 5y ago
      https://www.quora.com/Is-the-nuclear-winter-a-hoax?share=1 https://www.quora.com/Is-the-nuclear-winter-a-hoax?share=1 and https://skeptoid.com/episodes/4244 https://skeptoid.com/episodes/4244 both discuss more detail; but (especially in the 80s) there wasn't "detail", there was just the same "trust us or else!".
refurb 5y ago
According to the chatter among the talking heads earlier this year, the theory of a lab escape was “misinformation” that was “dangerous” and “fomenting discord” among the population. Many people, including in the media, would have preferred that theory was actively censored.
- manuelabeledo 5y ago
  The conspiracy theory arguably sparked a new tide of anti Asian hate attacks. So, yes, it was and is dangerous and it fomented discord among population. There was zero evidence, at the time, that the virus escaped from a Chinese lab. There is still zero evidence that the virus was created in a lab, or that its purpose is to be a biological weapon.
manuelabeledo 5y ago
> The "lab escape hypothesis" was disregarded by many (if not most) media outlets as a conspiracy theory early on. Because it was a conspiracy theory. Newly surfaced evidence may point in the direction of the conspiracy hypothesis, but that would be just a coincidence.
- zpeti 5y ago
  The issue most people rightly have here, is almost all mainstream news outlets said with certainty that it wasn’t a lab leak. That certainty also needs evidence. Or should. Coming to conclusions either way without evidence, when it suits certain anti government narratives, is partisanship.
  - manuelabeledo 5y ago
    You are right. Coming to a conclusion without evidence, is partisanship. That is why scientists spoke of "no evidence" back then: https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2020/05/scientists-exactly-zero-evidence-covid-19-came-lab https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2020/05/scientis... It was a conspiracy theory, and it may still be, because the WSJ only mentions that lab workers were "ill" and presented symptoms similar to those caused by COVID-19, which could be... really anything. The main strain of the flu in 2019 was H1N1. It could have been that. It may not have been. We don't know yet. I don't think there is anything wrong about "mocking" people for peddling conspiracy theories with zero evidence. Let's be honest, even if some of their ideas end up being true, it would have been just a coincidence. It's like arriving to the correct solution to a math problem, but through a completely wrong process.
    - zpeti 5y ago
      Well, luckily for you most big discoveries for humanity were made by people who were mocked, so it didn’t work. Still doesn’t seem like the right thing to do though, especially if we consider ourselves an advanced scientific civilization.
      - 5y ago
cletus 5y ago
> This feels so much like the Iraq "weapons of mass destruction" fiasco. So I have to pipe in here as I recall this vividly. What crystalized this for me was of all things an op-ed piece by a conservative (not neocon) writer that essentially came down to this (paraphrased): > There are essentially two possibilities here: > 1. Iraq has no WMD. In this case the invasion is unjustified; or > 2. Iraq has WMD. In which case, why wouldn't they give them up to avoid a US invasion? This was such a simple and undeniable logical fallacy in the Iraq WMD invasion narrative it blew my mind. I've been skeptical about the lab leak theory. But you can be skeptical about the theory and still recognize that the WHO just hasn't pursued enough leads to debunk the theory to a sufficient degree. Examples include: 1. China had an online database of coronaviruses. This was taken offline in late 2019 and hasn't been online since. The WHO investigation team has not examined it nor sought to do so. While the timing is certainly curious, it's not necessarily damning. But it warrants investigation (IMHO); and 2. Chinese labs have been less than forthcoming about what coronaviruses they have. Chinese authorities have been less than fully cooperative here. Again, that's not damning. I consider it much more likely that Chinese authorities simply don't know if Covid leaked from a Wuhan lab but there's literally zero upside in finding out if that's the case. Would you want to be a member of the CCP that released information that allowed the WHO to establish that Covid-19 came from a Wuhan lab allowing critics of China to "blame" China for this? Nope, I wouldn't either. So why cooperate?
adamrezich 5y ago
the interesting part, in my opinion, is how many people have been saying this for months, but the mainstream media narrative labeled these ideas as those of "conspiracy theorists." it is only now that the mainstream media is starting to shift the narrative, that people are starting to be willing to see this whole debacle being a kind of "Iraq Has WMDs 2.0." thus, the mainstream media, however mistrusted, is still the arbiter of widespread "truth." they still control the Overton Window. if they say a thought is unacceptable, most people won't accept it, until they say it's acceptable once again. absolutely fascinating to watch
- mensetmanusman 5y ago
  It further adds to the studies showing that the more one listens to the media the less one knows.
bart_spoon 5y ago
> This feels so much like the Iraq "weapons of mass destruction" fiasco. Any time news outlets are credulously repeating the words of "government officials," you need to seriously devalue the reporting. Reporting isn't just being a mouthpiece for the state, and these outlets fail us when they express such a high degree of certainty before there's any independent verification of the facts. Interestingly, the inverse happened here. Most of the initial claims of a lab-origin for Covid were being disputed by mainstream media in no small part because the Trump administration was echoing them. A lot of them pointed to scientists claiming that there was no evidence of lab manipulation or gene editing as proof that it was conspiratorial thinking, despite the fact that that was not the same thing as a lab-leak. Very little of the evidence we have to support a lab-leak hypothesis wasn't available and known a year ago. But literally within a couple weeks of the Biden administration taking office, mainstream outlets like the Washington Post started publishing pieces supporting the credibility of lab-origins of the virus. I am no Trump-fan by any means, but I've found this whole saga, and much of the last 4 years, to be a very mask-off period for the media, to the point where its hard to take much of anything being said too seriously.

jasonlaramburu 5y ago

>The "lab escape hypothesis" was disregarded by many (if not most) media outlets as a conspiracy theory early on. I have seen this claim made recently, but as I remember the 'disregarded' conspiracy theory was actually that the virus was genetically engineered (ie codon sequence edited) in a lab. The virus' genetic code seems to discount engineering, but not serial passaging/hybridization.

zpeti 5y ago
No, this was the sleight of hand by the media. Almost all people dismissed as conspiracy theorists said most likely lab escape doesn’t mean genetically engineered. But straight away that’s how it was reported in the media. Basically twisting words and lying. Shameful.
- throwaway894345 5y ago
  Tangentially related, I have another comment from a separate post observing some additional media (NYT specifically) sleight of hand WRT the Damore "memo": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27254877 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27254877 >> [Damore] argued that biological differences and not a lack of opportunity explained the shortage of women in upper-tier positions. > This is an unfortunate way of characterizing Damore’s argument. It’s technically true in that Damore IIRC was arguing that there was more variation among men than women (more men at the top and at the bottom but fewer in the middle, but Google hires from the top hence more men). So yeah, technically biological differences, but when the average person hears that they’re going to assume he was arguing that women in general are dumber than men in general or some such. That said, this also represents much more earnest coverage of Damore considering the initial coverage overtly lied on many accounts (calling it an anti diversity screed, claiming he sent it as a memo to the company, etc).
- stjohnswarts 5y ago
  I doubt if there's little doubt if you go with the lab theory that this virus wasn't genetically modified to be more virulent to humans (or possibly some species similar to humans). I think the big one is whether it was a lab accident, which seems like the most likely scenario barring jumping species naturally which still seems to be the most likely scenario.
monoideism 5y ago
No, that's just not true. The media repeatedly mocked even a lab escape scenario and boosted a handful of experts were favored a wild reservoir for the disease. Our "intellectual elites" have a bad problem now with moral/intellectual fashions, which are constantly changing. Social media has considerably exacerbated this problem.
- jasonlaramburu 5y ago
  >The media repeatedly mocked even a lab escape scenario Do you have any links?
  - monoideism 5y ago
    How many do you want? If I post one link, you'll likely say it's not enough. Same with two links, etc. I'm hesitant to engage with this kind of request, but I did. In any case, I can tell you that there was a definite narrative in the media that the lab escape scenario was not only very unlikely, but "xenophobic" and "conspiratorial". Perhaps the most telling example of all my links below is this one, which is very open to the possibility of a lab escape. The latter half of the article is full of example of the efforts of the media and scientific establishment (for whatever reason, mostly political) to quash the lab escape hypothesis. One key quote: "Antonio Regalado, biomedicine editor of MIT Technology Review, put it more bluntly. If it turned out COVID-19 came from a lab, he tweeted, 'it would shatter the scientific edifice top to bottom.'" Article: https://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/2020/09/09/alina-chan-broad-institute-coronavirus/ https://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/2020/09/09/alina-chan-br... And here is a handful of links, of many: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/01/could-covid-19-be-manmade-what-we-know-about-origins-trump-chinese-lab-coronavirus https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/01/could-covid-19... https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/31/health/lab-leak-coronavirus-theory-comic-book-scn/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/31/health/lab-leak-coronavirus-t... https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/04/politics/coronavirus-intelligence/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/04/politics/coronavirus-intellig... https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/17/politics/mike-pompeo-coronavirus-wuhan-lab/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/17/politics/mike-pompeo-coronavi... https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/its-much-more-likely-the-coronavirus-came-from-wildlife-not-a-lab1/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/its-much-more-lik...
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
mensetmanusman 5y ago
I know this is confusing, but gain of function genome alterations is one class of genetic engineering. Other approaches involve literally trying to change the codon sequence in a supercomputer to see what happens in the folding and conformation changes, but it is very esoteric since bio is so complicated.
- jasonlaramburu 5y ago
  So my understanding is that GoF can involve genetic engineering (editing the codon sequence/geneotype) OR serial passaging (growing successive generations of microorganisms under various conditions to influence phenotype). The disregarded conspiracy theory, as I understood it, was that Chinese researchers were doing the former, NOT the latter. It is also my understanding that the virus' genetic code does not show any evidence of the former (editing codon sequence).
bart_spoon 5y ago
> I have seen this claim made recently, but as I remember the 'disregarded' conspiracy theory was actually that the virus was genetically engineered (ie codon sequence edited) in a lab. For the better part of a year now, the lab leak theory and the genetic engineering theory have been lumped in together by those trying to discredit them as conspiracies. The issue is that every time someone would point at circumstantial evidence of a potential lab leak, people would point at the scientists saying there was loads of evidence it wasn't genetically engineered, when those two things aren't remotely the same thing.

zpeti 5y ago

> This feels so much like the Iraq "weapons of mass destruction" fiasco. Any time news outlets are credulously repeating the words of "government officials," you need to seriously devalue the reporting. Depends what you mean by government officials. Trump was in power and his statements on this were called conspiracy theories. So the media wasn’t exactly taking the government side on this, they were dismissing statements by the government as conspiracy. Whether right or wrong, it’s extremely embarrassing for the media. They are slowly politicizing themselves into untrustable entities.

gentleman11 5y ago
Or, they were skeptics of the words of a compulsive serial liar and manipulator. It’s not partisan to stop trusting somebody like that. Edit: it is factually true to say Trump lied in manipulative ways constantly, and easy to confirm. This is not a partisan statement, it’s a fact that can be checked. Here are 5276 examples: https://projects.thestar.com/donald-trump-fact-check/ https://projects.thestar.com/donald-trump-fact-check/
- bart_spoon 5y ago
  > Or, they were skeptics of the words of a compulsive serial liar and manipulator. It’s not partisan to stop trusting somebody like that. The issue here is that, as journalists, their job is to look at facts and weight evidence independently, rather than simply base judgements on the person making the statements. There has been ample evidence to at least consider a lab-leak theory very plausible, or even likely, but those were largely ignored. Instead, the media seemed content to report that Trump is claiming this thing, and Trump sucks, so this thing must also suck. Not exactly inspiring behavior from the "fourth estate".
  - gentleman11 5y ago
    That’s fair, but this isn’t an ordinary liar. If a known con artist is raving about his new youth serum, after being caught lying thousands and thousands of times in the last 4 years, it’s not inappropriate for the press to respond with “this known con artist has no evidence to support his claims” after a short glance - they are so busy dealing with the other 1000 recent lies that they don’t have time to investigate everything this person says in depth. The magnitude of the lies and manipulation was unheard of. The fact is, you need to hear the story from somebody credible before it becomes worth investigating, otherwise we would still have journalists trying to uncover the alleged thousands of murders by immigrants kept secret by bizarre conspiracies (which, again, lacks evidence) - the claims have to come from somebody capable of basic truth telling.

Izkata 5y ago

> This story continues to evolve Everything listed by GP was known a year ago, which is why it was so frustrating to get dismissed as conspiracy theory.

epicureanideal 5y ago
I agree. This seemed obvious even a year ago, and it seemed like the media and certain public officials were doing everything they could to avoid acknowledging it. And yet now they are starting to acknowledge it. What changed? Mostly the party in power. At the time it was politically expedient to say that Trump was being racist or xenophobic against China, so it was deemed necessary to paint comments by him or his supporters as xenophobic conspiracy theories. Then when he states something reasonable like the lab leak hypothesis they can portray him and his supporters as conspiracy nuts. And if it could influence the election even 0.1%, that would be bonus points for some people, although I would call that a dishonest influence. Now that he isn’t in power, they’ve decided it’s no longer necessary to avoid telling the truth.
- zpeti 5y ago
  It was extremely worrying to me that the same happened with Hydroxychloroquine. Now I know that the scientific community proved that it doesn’t work. Fine, good. But the media dismissed it before that was proved. Because trump said it. Now imagine a hypothetical scenario where it actually worked. Just because trump was using it, the media would have potentially killed people just because they can’t agree with a single thing trump says. This is not journalism. It’s not objective reporting in the slightest. And it was by media outlets who claim to be doing real journalism and claim they are objective. At least fox doesn’t claim to be objective. It’s shameful propaganda.
  - firmnoodle 5y ago
    The same thing happened with Ivermectin as a prophylaxis. All of a sudden anything that was years old with a history of safe use in humans was off the table. They all also happen to be old enough that patent protection is gone. It's almost like people wanted this to be more dangerous and less treatable for some reason.

throwaway894345 5y ago

> Of course, everything you describe is still "circumstantial," and it's wise to remain skeptical. However, even if we somehow eventually confirm this was not a lab escape, there's absolutely no excuse for the certainty expressed by the NYT et al in their early reporting (which is true for so much of the other COVID-19 media coverage - the media did a terrible job of expressing uncertainty with very incomplete information throughout the entire affair). In general, my trust for the media has fallen through the floor in the last decade. I used to think that the media was mostly trustworthy, but that they would cater to the establishment on certain issues (e.g., WMDs and the general Iraq/Afghanistan war effort) but apart from those obvious high-profile issues they were mostly trustworthy. Now I can't tell if I was wrong the whole time and I've just wisened up recently or if the quality of the media has plummeted (especially with respect to ideological issues) or both. I strongly suspect that the media has become considerably more ideological (abandoning aspirations for neutrality and objectivity in favor of activism and proselytizing, at least to a degree), but I've probably (and hopefully) wisened up a bit as well.

h2odragon 5y ago
"Nuclear Winter" is a good example of a past consensual media gang bang; the notion was obvious horse shit but no one was allowed to say so. Mid 80s. That wasn't the first instance of mass media holding a remarkably consistent propaganda line, but I think it might have been one of the first where it escaped from state control.
- wing-_-nuts 5y ago
  Do you have a citation on nuclear winter not being a thing? The last thing I read on the subject was that even a full blown exchange between india and pakistan would be enough to wreak havoc on agriculture in large swaths of the world for a year or two
  - h2odragon 5y ago
    https://www.quora.com/Is-the-nuclear-winter-a-hoax?share=1 https://www.quora.com/Is-the-nuclear-winter-a-hoax?share=1 and https://skeptoid.com/episodes/4244 https://skeptoid.com/episodes/4244 both discuss more detail; but (especially in the 80s) there wasn't "detail", there was just the same "trust us or else!".

refurb 5y ago

According to the chatter among the talking heads earlier this year, the theory of a lab escape was “misinformation” that was “dangerous” and “fomenting discord” among the population. Many people, including in the media, would have preferred that theory was actively censored.

manuelabeledo 5y ago
The conspiracy theory arguably sparked a new tide of anti Asian hate attacks. So, yes, it was and is dangerous and it fomented discord among population. There was zero evidence, at the time, that the virus escaped from a Chinese lab. There is still zero evidence that the virus was created in a lab, or that its purpose is to be a biological weapon.

manuelabeledo 5y ago

> The "lab escape hypothesis" was disregarded by many (if not most) media outlets as a conspiracy theory early on. Because it was a conspiracy theory. Newly surfaced evidence may point in the direction of the conspiracy hypothesis, but that would be just a coincidence.

zpeti 5y ago
The issue most people rightly have here, is almost all mainstream news outlets said with certainty that it wasn’t a lab leak. That certainty also needs evidence. Or should. Coming to conclusions either way without evidence, when it suits certain anti government narratives, is partisanship.
- manuelabeledo 5y ago
  You are right. Coming to a conclusion without evidence, is partisanship. That is why scientists spoke of "no evidence" back then: https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2020/05/scientists-exactly-zero-evidence-covid-19-came-lab https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2020/05/scientis... It was a conspiracy theory, and it may still be, because the WSJ only mentions that lab workers were "ill" and presented symptoms similar to those caused by COVID-19, which could be... really anything. The main strain of the flu in 2019 was H1N1. It could have been that. It may not have been. We don't know yet. I don't think there is anything wrong about "mocking" people for peddling conspiracy theories with zero evidence. Let's be honest, even if some of their ideas end up being true, it would have been just a coincidence. It's like arriving to the correct solution to a math problem, but through a completely wrong process.
  - zpeti 5y ago
    Well, luckily for you most big discoveries for humanity were made by people who were mocked, so it didn’t work. Still doesn’t seem like the right thing to do though, especially if we consider ourselves an advanced scientific civilization.
    - 5y ago

cletus 5y ago

> This feels so much like the Iraq "weapons of mass destruction" fiasco. So I have to pipe in here as I recall this vividly. What crystalized this for me was of all things an op-ed piece by a conservative (not neocon) writer that essentially came down to this (paraphrased): > There are essentially two possibilities here: > 1. Iraq has no WMD. In this case the invasion is unjustified; or > 2. Iraq has WMD. In which case, why wouldn't they give them up to avoid a US invasion? This was such a simple and undeniable logical fallacy in the Iraq WMD invasion narrative it blew my mind. I've been skeptical about the lab leak theory. But you can be skeptical about the theory and still recognize that the WHO just hasn't pursued enough leads to debunk the theory to a sufficient degree. Examples include: 1. China had an online database of coronaviruses. This was taken offline in late 2019 and hasn't been online since. The WHO investigation team has not examined it nor sought to do so. While the timing is certainly curious, it's not necessarily damning. But it warrants investigation (IMHO); and 2. Chinese labs have been less than forthcoming about what coronaviruses they have. Chinese authorities have been less than fully cooperative here. Again, that's not damning. I consider it much more likely that Chinese authorities simply don't know if Covid leaked from a Wuhan lab but there's literally zero upside in finding out if that's the case. Would you want to be a member of the CCP that released information that allowed the WHO to establish that Covid-19 came from a Wuhan lab allowing critics of China to "blame" China for this? Nope, I wouldn't either. So why cooperate?

adamrezich 5y ago

the interesting part, in my opinion, is how many people have been saying this for months, but the mainstream media narrative labeled these ideas as those of "conspiracy theorists." it is only now that the mainstream media is starting to shift the narrative, that people are starting to be willing to see this whole debacle being a kind of "Iraq Has WMDs 2.0." thus, the mainstream media, however mistrusted, is still the arbiter of widespread "truth." they still control the Overton Window. if they say a thought is unacceptable, most people won't accept it, until they say it's acceptable once again. absolutely fascinating to watch

mensetmanusman 5y ago
It further adds to the studies showing that the more one listens to the media the less one knows.

bart_spoon 5y ago

> This feels so much like the Iraq "weapons of mass destruction" fiasco. Any time news outlets are credulously repeating the words of "government officials," you need to seriously devalue the reporting. Reporting isn't just being a mouthpiece for the state, and these outlets fail us when they express such a high degree of certainty before there's any independent verification of the facts. Interestingly, the inverse happened here. Most of the initial claims of a lab-origin for Covid were being disputed by mainstream media in no small part because the Trump administration was echoing them. A lot of them pointed to scientists claiming that there was no evidence of lab manipulation or gene editing as proof that it was conspiratorial thinking, despite the fact that that was not the same thing as a lab-leak. Very little of the evidence we have to support a lab-leak hypothesis wasn't available and known a year ago. But literally within a couple weeks of the Biden administration taking office, mainstream outlets like the Washington Post started publishing pieces supporting the credibility of lab-origins of the virus. I am no Trump-fan by any means, but I've found this whole saga, and much of the last 4 years, to be a very mask-off period for the media, to the point where its hard to take much of anything being said too seriously.