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The lab-leak theory: inside the fight to uncover Covid-19’s origins

• rvba 5y ago
  I posted this article some time ago: https://science.thewire.in/the-sciences/origins-of-covid-19-who-opened-pandoras-box-at-wuhan-people-or-nature/ https://science.thewire.in/the-sciences/origins-of-covid-19-... But it was flagged nearly immeditally. I wonder why and by whom. Do moderators here check for state sponsored bots that try to hide such stuff?
• bartart 5y ago
  This is the most shocking article I have ever read in my life. I'd ask everyone to please read it because it is incredible. One thing I did not realize is that US researchers who conducted gain of function research tried to downplay and discredit the possibility of the virus originating from the wuhan lab. There was an anti-lab theory Lancet statement signed by scientists, and "Daszak had not only signed but organized the influential Lancet statement, with the intention of concealing his role and creating the impression of scientific unanimity." Plus there's all the stuff about the miners shoveling bat poop for weeks and then dying of coronaviruses, and the Wuhan institute collecting and doing gain of function research on these similar-to-SARS samples. And then several of the lab's gain of function researchers became ill in late 2019. And there's the weird renaming of samples to hide the unmatched closeness of the mine samples and covid. This is just the absolute surface of the article. There's too much to list here Edit: here's another amazement for the list: "Shi Zhengli herself had publicly acknowledged that, until the pandemic, all of her team’s coronavirus research — some involving live SARS-like viruses — had been conducted in less secure BSL-3 and even BSL-2 laboratories." And the article says "BSL-2 [is] roughly as secure as an American dentist’s office."
  • RachelF 5y ago
    Take a look here for another shocking article: https://thebulletin.org/2021/05/the-origin-of-covid-did-people-or-nature-open-pandoras-box-at-wuhan/ https://thebulletin.org/2021/05/the-origin-of-covid-did-peop...
    • dataflow 5y ago
      Btw, for anyone who read that, here's a follow-up: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27388943 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27388943
  • harryf 5y ago
    It gets worse - gain of function research was banned under Obama until the ban was lifted in 2017 under Trump - https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(18)30006-9/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3... I can’t find sources for this right now but apparently Dr Anthony Fauci played a key role in getting the ban lifted. He’s also the head of the NIAID ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Fauci https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Fauci ) which (apparently) is the ultimate source for all funding on gain of function research. So the lead guy we’ve been listening to (and still are) for scientific advice on this pandemic is entangled in a massive conflict of interest. Edit: I assume this is getting down-voted either because is sounds like conspiracy theory or just everyone has already heard it and it's not news. Fauci has already admitted having been involved in funding Wuhan - https://nypost.com/2021/05/25/fauci-admits-nih-funding-of-wuhan-lab-denies-gain-of-function/ https://nypost.com/2021/05/25/fauci-admits-nih-funding-of-wu... - that on it's own should not have been something he first admitted to in May 2021, while holding such a responsible position. Looking for more sources right now... Edit 2: In this article from December 2011 - https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/a-flu-virus-risk-worth-taking/2011/12/30/gIQAM9sNRP_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/a-flu-virus-risk-wor... - you have Fauci making the case for creating viruses in a lab; > "Given these uncertainties, important information and insights can come from generating a potentially dangerous virus in the laboratory." It doesn't explicitly mention gain of function but - while raising the concerns, it's arguing for research which would include gain of function. Meanwhile listening to this panel discussion which included Fauci from Nov 2017 - https://www.c-span.org/video/?437187-1/johns-hopkins-forum-explores-pandemic-preparedness-response https://www.c-span.org/video/?437187-1/johns-hopkins-forum-e... ... again he's arguing for more aggressive types of research
    • epitactic 5y ago
      > It gets worse - gain of function research was banned under Obama until the ban was lifted in 2017 under Trump - https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(18)30006-9/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3... The ban was actually lifted by the Obama administration, _11 days prior_ to Trump taking office. Source: https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/blog/2017/01/09/recommended-policy-guidance-potential-pandemic-pathogen-care-and-oversight https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/blog/2017/01/09/recomme... JANUARY 9, 2017 AT 9:06 Recommended Policy Guidance for Potential Pandemic Pathogen Care and Oversight "Adoption of these recommendations will satisfy the requirements for lifting the current moratorium on certain life sciences research that could enhance a pathogen’s virulence and/or transmissibility to produce a potential pandemic pathogen (an enhanced PPP)."
  • jMyles 5y ago
    > "Daszak had not only signed but organized the influential Lancet statement, with the intention of concealing his role and creating the impression of scientific unanimity." The interesting part of this - and I'm curious about the personal experience of others here - is that the scientists I know have been the strongest questioners of the wet market theory from the get-go. I don't think anything resembling scientific unanimity ever emerged, or even appeared to emerge. Heck, here on HN we've been talking about this consistently at least since the PNAS letter, and probably since the beginning of the pandemic.
    • jkhdigital 5y ago
      And, for this thoughtful observation, you get... DOWNVOTES. These Covid origins comment threads are so brutal! But yeah, I agree. I’m just a lowly PhD student (an older one, though) but it’s pretty clear from my limited experience that “scientific consensus” is a PR term that bears little relationship to how scientists perform their work and engage with their colleagues.
    • tacitusarc 5y ago
      There was an episode of TWIV last year where they mocked anyone taking the lab leak hypothesis seriously
      • gataca 5y ago
        There was a pretty recent one that continues to dismiss the idea this came from a lab completely.
        • aorth 5y ago
          To be fair they (on This Week in Virology) said they think it's unlikely that it leaked, but urge anyone with actual evidence to come forward. Their guest on that episode also said that, while RaTG13 is indeed a SARS-like coronavirus, the nucleotide sequence of the genome is only 96% similar to SARS-CoV-2. The guest said it's not similar enough to do gain of function research with. Bats with other similar SARS-like coronaviruses appear in (at least) Japan, Thailand, and Cambodia, and migratory bats have a range of several thousand kilometers. https://www.microbe.tv/twiv/twiv-762/ https://www.microbe.tv/twiv/twiv-762/
  • tpfour 5y ago
    The calculation is simple and could have been made in early 2020. What's the joint probability of occurrence given everything you know about the origins of SARS-CoV-2? There is _very_ high probability that this is just a human error.
    • peter422 5y ago
      Was every other emerging virus also created in a lab? SARS? MERS? Influenza? Polio? The highest probability is this virus originated like every other virus in history.
      • yumraj 5y ago
        Did any of them originate a few miles from a pathogen research lab that handled such pathogen that caused those outbreaks?
        • flukus 5y ago
          These labs are in major cities. Epidemics are likely to be detected in Major cities. The chance of an outbreak being near a research lab aren't as long as you seem to think. If an outbreak were to happen in the United states just about everywhere would be near a CDC location: https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-e&tbs=lf:1,lf_ui:4&tbm=lcl&q=cdc+USA+locations&rflfq=1&num=10&ved=2ahUKEwj96PD03vzwAhWyyzgGHQhdBncQtgN6BAgKEAQ#rlfi=hd:;si:;mv:[[60.57887875049525,-50.50786451874999],[7.520438055110938,-132.68559889374998],null,[38.74123953804018,-91.59673170625],4 https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-e&tbs=lf:1,lf...]
          • kaesar14 5y ago
            As pointed out in the article, there were exactly 3 cities in the world working on gain-of-function research related to bat-originated coronaviruses. Galveston, Texas, Chapel Hill N.C, and Wuhan. It’s way more narrow than just being near a biological laboratory.
            • 5y ago
  • peter422 5y ago
    I’ve never heard of 2-3 people getting sick before in a large organization. That sounds like a smoking gun.
    • JPKab 5y ago
      Several were HOSPITALIZED with a respiratory illness, in a lab studying bat viruses on humanized mice. The cognitive dissonance you are suffering is painful, I'm sure, but it's obviously clouding your judgment.
      • peter422 5y ago
        Those same people were tested for antibodies and they were negative. Or I guess that is also part of the cover up.
        • jkhdigital 5y ago
          ...yes? Listen, if you are prepared to seriously consider a lab leak, then you have to assume that any public statements from Chinese authorities are dubious. I’m pretty sure my own government makes dubious statements all the time so it’s not hard to imagine.
          • peter422 5y ago
            I’m seriously considering it and put it higher than 0%. But if you think your hypothesis is the most likely outcome (>50%), and your defense at any evidence that discounts your view is that it is a giant and incredible cover up by the Chinese government then I guess we have very different priors about how easy it is to pull off massive conspiracies. And also remember the people that leaked that 2-3 employees were hospitalized without any additional details or evidence also had an agenda.
            • chrisco255 5y ago
              > I guess we have very different priors about how easy it is to pull off massive conspiracies. Is it that difficult when you manipulate the media and control the narrative? This is why the principles of free speech are as important as the law itself.
  • JPKab 5y ago
    Prepare to have your head explode further. https://thebulletin.org/2021/05/the-origin-of-covid-did-people-or-nature-open-pandoras-box-at-wuhan/ https://thebulletin.org/2021/05/the-origin-of-covid-did-peop... https://reporter.nih.gov/search/xQW6UJmWfUuOV01ntGvLwQ/project-details/9491676 https://reporter.nih.gov/search/xQW6UJmWfUuOV01ntGvLwQ/proje...
  • mc32 5y ago
    The other astonishing things is the sudden about face by the media. I'm glad they allowed themselves the liberty of looking at alternative origins. But... they were SO adamant and complicit in any discussion about alternative theories being shut down under the guise of conspiracy, Trumpism, anti-China, etc. (These are the same people who have no qualms about attributing anything to Russia even if evidence is thin, so it's clear there is hypocrisy involved). Edit: It looks like Twitter is suspending the account of the Fauci email leaker(s). So the MoT is still on it.
    • corpMaverick 5y ago
      IMHO, we were in the middle of the problem. The important part to was to figure out how to get out of it. The investigation at that point would not be helpful as it may make cooperation more difficult. Even if the result is that is natural origin and it escaped from a Wet Market. It was China's responsibility and the whole world must make sure to force China to ban wet markets. But as I said before, it will come a time for that.
      • ed25519FUUU 5y ago
        Suppressing the truth because you want to game the outcome is an extremely dangerous position to take. It never ends well for the little guy, who ends up getting neither truth nor the best outcome.
      • SV_BubbleTime 5y ago
        > It was China's responsibility and the whole world must make sure to force China to ban wet markets. lol, have you ever been to a wet market? Are you sure you even know what they are? It’s a typical Asian stall market that they hose off every night. I’ve been to “dry” markets that they’re still cutting the faces off hogs and slaughtering chickens next to fruit vendors. That’s not particularly better. I’m not sure if you think “banning wet markets” is a thing, but it’s definitely not.
        • AstralStorm 5y ago
          Essentially banning all slaughtering on place and relegating it to specialty businesses which would be no better regulated than any slaughterhouse anywhere. Meaning, you'd change nothing besides forcing Chinese to use more transport and freezer cars.
  • lawnchair_larry 5y ago
    The sad part is this is all very old news, but the left leaning media wouldn’t report it. Worse, they equated it with conspiracy theorists and Q anon. If this isn’t your media red pill, I don’t know what is.
  • tootie 5y ago
    I don't think lab workers getting sick is really a useful data point. People get sick all the time. Could have very easily been seasonal flu or whatever. It also seems The Lancet letter doesn't actual address the question of lab leak. Only that it wasn't engineered. That was a pretty hot conspiracy theory at the time and one that remains far fetched. They didn't positively say it couldn't be a naturally occurring virus that leaked. I don't know enough to comment on gain of function leaves any hallmarks but I'm guessing it doesn't since it tries to replicate evolution.
    • lamontcg 5y ago
      The lab workers didn't even get sick, it was samples the lab worked on.
    • calsy 5y ago
      It's so far fetched to think a lab with known safety issues could be responsible for leaking a virus. We all know that humans are infallible and never make mistakes and accidents rarely occur in place with poor safety standards. Its just so crazy....
      • tootie 5y ago
        I'm not saying it's far-fetched. It's definitely possible. I'm debating whether or not this is any kind of smoking gun. It's circumstantial evidence.
    • corty 5y ago
      Lab workers getting sick should be a starting point to begin analyzing archived blood samples for instance. Also, you don't usually visit a hospital for seasonal flu. And three people from the same lab at the same time suggests a wider outbreak in the lab. Even if it were the seasonal flu, it would have warranted a wider investigation, given what that lab was working on.
      • GavinMcG 5y ago
        Plenty of people visit hospitals for seasonal flu, fyi. They shouldn't, but they do.
  • deeviant 5y ago
    If this is the most shocking article you have ever read in your life, I feel you haven't read many articles in your life. There is absolutely no evidence in it. Just a pile of conjecture. It is absolutely the stuff of conspiracy theories. The truly shocking thing is that world does not hold China liable for this disaster. It really doesn't matter if it started in a lab or in one of their wet markets; it was incompetence and negligence on China's part in either case. China should pay reparations to the world for turning it off for what looks to be like multiple years, and killing millions of people.
    • jacquesm 5y ago
      China could - rightfully - point out that they in fact did get the situation more or less under control and that in spite of being fully aware of the seriousness of the situation the bulk of the governments in the West (those who presumably would be first in line to demand reparation) messed it up all by themselves.
    • wombatpm 5y ago
      When China started welding doors on high rises to keep people in, that was the signal to take it seriously-despite what the WHO was saying
      • swader999 5y ago
        They never welded people in, it was to funnel them through common exits where they could be disinfected.
        • themacguffinman 5y ago
          It was reported that some residential unit were literally blocked from entry/exit: https://www.lbc.co.uk/news/coronavirus-residents-welded-inside-their-own-home/ https://www.lbc.co.uk/news/coronavirus-residents-welded-insi...
        • premium-komodo 5y ago
          That's not true. It's easy to find videos of men sealing doors shut in stairwells. That door they're sealing is the single door of the apartment.
  • 1vuio0pswjnm7 5y ago
    "This is the most shocking article I have ever read in my life." Dare we inquire how long you have lived. :) But seriously, I am not sure that the scientific community, nor all national governments, have reached a clear consensus on gain of function research. It is still a developing issue. Welcome to be corrected on that. Such research could potentially help to prevent pandemics as well as accidentally start them. The idea that scientists in the US might have been working with scientists in other countries, including China, on GoF research is not shocking to me. Here is a paper from 2016 on the ethics of GoF research: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4996883/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4996883/ Perhaps the old saying about mistakingly attributing malice to incompetence applies here. As for the cover-up, it is difficult to imagine that David Baltimore is wrong. I used a textbook he co-authored when I was in school; he is one of the pioneers of the biotech industry. It seems unlikely this was not created in a lab. Then again, it is probably easier to prove someone in a lab made a mistake than to prove soemthing exists in nature.
    • AbrahamParangi 5y ago
      Gain of function research outside of hyper-secure settings is, frankly, idiotic. It’s massively more dangerous than criticality experiments because of the potential for exponential spread.
      • Throwawayaerlei 5y ago
        From the beginning gain of function research has been done at levels as low as BSL-2, and this article claims the Bat Lady said that all their coronavirus research prior to the pandemic was done at BSL-2 or -3 levels. The Wuhan Institute of Virology's BSL-4 lab would likely be booked up for research known to be very dangerous, and as you go up in levels it's more and more inconvenient to get anything done from the physical protections (there are also supposed to be biological ones).
        • bartart 5y ago
          Plus it appears that the lab was poorly run: She noted that a September 2019 paper in an academic journal by the director of the WIV’s BSL-4 laboratory, Yuan Zhiming, had outlined safety deficiencies in China’s labs. “Maintenance cost is generally neglected,” he had written. “Some BSL-3 laboratories run on extremely minimal operational costs or in some cases none at all.”
  • flatline 5y ago
    The WaPo article where I first read about the theory said most of this stuff. I didn’t understand then why people were so quick to dismiss it - it is eerily plausible, and we just don’t have much other data to go on. But it’s like having an opinion one way or the other is a political dog whistle that puts you into one of two bins, neither of which I fit into comfortably. This article makes a decent point of that: now that Trump’s racism is out of the way, maybe we can more critically examine the facts. I still think the lab leak theory is less likely than evolution, but it’s at least a bit compelling.
    • incrudible 5y ago
      > This article makes a decent point of that: now that Trump’s racism is out of the way, maybe we can more critically examine the facts. I highly doubt it, in most cases "Reductio ad Trumperum" will remain a useful sleight of hand. This is a different matter, being "tough on China" is a bipartisan issue, it's just about showing how the other side was "doing it wrong". For instance, you could say that Trump had "no evidence" supporting his lab leak theory.
  • rayiner 5y ago
    We shouldn’t be surprised by any of this. Scientists are human and have human motivations and flaws. They are political, they cover their ass, they suffer from results oriented thinking. “Science” should be trusted within its domain, but it’s not a replacement for all of the processes western society has developed to address the reality that nobody can be trusted with power. Everyone needs to perform their roles. Reporters still need to be skeptical and question scientists’ motivations and investigate the story. And politicians still need to be in charge of translating scientists’ judgments as to various scenarios and probabilities into the political decisions of figuring out what to do accounting for the entire universe of economic and social considerations that are within their ambit.
    • rhacker 5y ago
      I've been hearing more and more that science is moving from the model "theory holds" to a set of arrogant people backing them.
  • version_five 5y ago
    To me, the only really horrible thing is the way that anything other than the mainstream version of events was treated. I think there are different plausible theories, and I'm not surprised they have different adherents that are mostly all motivated by something other than a pure quest for the truth. That's life. If this was e.g. a civil or criminal trial, you'd see the same thing. The only difference is, in a trial, nobody would try and brand the other side as a conspiracy theorist, racist, denier, anti-xer, whatever the most popular inflammatory term is. Nobody would try and block dissent from all mainstream communication forums. To me, that's the only thing that's new, is the institutional suppression of any suggestions outside of an orthodox version. And it's honestly way scarier than the idea that government labs are doing biological research, or that diseases can jump from animals to people.
    • aahortwwy 5y ago
      > To me, that's the only thing that's new, is the institutional suppression of any suggestions outside of an orthodox version. This isn't new at all. It's been a staple of many human cultures throughout history, including US culture for much of the 20th century (and, I would say, all of the 21st century). I think what's probably a new experience for most of us is just how all-encompassing the pandemic has been as an issue of discussion.
    • rayiner 5y ago
      That’s another symptom of the same disease. People have an idea that “trust the experts” can replace all the messy, gross, and often wrong processes we have developed to deal with the fact nobody can be trusted. Trusting scientists involved in gain of function research will neutrally investigate the origins of the pandemic is one manifestation of that conceit. So is trusting fact checkers and review panels to decide what’s “misinformation” and what’s factual. The marketplace of ideas is better than trusting gatekeepers of knowledge. That’s one of the huge lessons of the enlightenment that we have somehow forgot. We think “it’s different this time.”
      • starfallg 5y ago
        >The marketplace of ideas is better than trusting gatekeepers of knowledge. That's such a simplification of the real situation that it's harmful to apply as an axiom. There are many levels of the marketplace of ideas. Ideally, the gatekeepers of knowledge also create a marketplace of ideas so that expert opinion is varied and shifts as new information come in. This is in inline with what we're seeing here. The marketplace of ideas with no experts to guide discussion often results in crank ideas that seem plausible but heavily influenced by our biases bubbling to the top. That's how things like the Anti-vax movement gained a foothold.
  • FriendlyNormie 5y ago
    All of this information has been available for over a year. All of it. ALL OF IT. You helped bury it by labeling anyone sharing it as crazy or a Trump supporter. Kill yourself you fucking retarded nigger. Kill yourself RIGHT NOW.
  • ramraj07 5y ago
    This New York mag article [1] published eons ago already made it clear to any sane biologist that all you mentioned are important things to consider. However the issue is sane biologists or scientists in general are actually in extreme short supply, the vast majority are often under the delusion that they “understand the system” better than they actually do. They also are often knowingly and unknowingly more interested in persevering their personal agenda (for eg. Gain of function research in the general sense in this case) than the overall good of humanity or scientific rigor. Take Fauci for example, is he a good scientist? Yes. But it’s also clear that he too subconsciously has pushed for the method of approaching pandemics that coincidentally he was good at, and now we are left with this mess. I doubt him or anyone in between is going to acknowledge it even if they realize it. I was downvoted here to oblivion for pointing this out weeks back but doesn’t matter. I threw away a decade of my life’s experience because I didn’t believe in this cult of an academic system, downvotes don’t hurt nearly as much. 1. https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/coronavirus-lab-escape-theory.html https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/coronavirus-lab-esca...
    • GavinMcG 5y ago
      Trump didn't exactly follow Fauci's advice, so it's odd that you'd blame Fauci's "method of approaching pandemics" for "this mess." Was there some other, better, established method?
      • ramraj07 5y ago
        I meant Fauci at al.’s approach of proactively looking for the next pandemic via sample collection and lab engineering of new variants which predates the trump administration. By all appearances Faucis performance during the pandemic is nothing to be questioned. These are different topics.
        • GavinMcG 5y ago
          Thanks for clarifying
        • mrguyorama 5y ago
  • matzab 5y ago
    Honestly, reading comments like these and articles like the OP has convinced me that we, as humans, will not at all be prepared for the next pandemic. And the one after that. These viruses and their potential recombinations are out there, we don't need some virologist to go out and maybe catch it. People will catch them, we'll just know even less about them when the next pandemic starts.
  • jb775 5y ago
    Also interesting to note that (per the leaked emails) Fauci was in regular correspondence with the guy who thinks everyone should die by age 75 or else they're a waste of space[1]....Discussing strategy on the pandemic that primarily kills people over 75. [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/10/why-i-hope-to-die-at-75/379329/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/10/why-i-h...
    • hahaxdxd123 5y ago
      The guy has a personal preference for not wanting to live a reduced quality of life, and you're using that to insinuate he wants to genocide old people?
    • toomanybeersies 5y ago
      > per the leaked emails They were released under the FOIA, not leaked. > the guy who thinks everyone should die by age 75 or else they're a waste of space You linked to an article where he expresses the opinion that he personally doesn't want to live past the age of 75. That's a far cry from advocating mass murder of the elderly. > Fauci was in regular correspondence... Discussing strategy on the pandemic Emanuel is the head of the University of Pennsylvania's Department of Medical Ethics & Health Policy. It would be unusual if he wasn't in regular correspondence.
      • jb775 5y ago
        > That's a far cry from advocating mass murder of the elderly. Not what I said. But you obviously didn't read between the lines of why he feels that way, or his statements on the second order effects of a small % of people causing a large drain on the overall healthcare system. I still consider this "Interesting to note". > is the head of the University of Pennsylvania's Department of Medical Ethics & Health Policy Why would an employee at a random private university be expected to have correspondence with a public official?
  • member492 5y ago
    What is even more shocking is that the mass media and big tech have done everything to keep this covered. Most of the revelations are nothing new if you read alternative news sources where true journalism still exists. Big tech and mass media are now more like China state television, they decide what and how to tell you something based on what they want you to believe. The greatest threat of our times is not the Corona pandemic or lies about it's origins. It is the loss of true journalism from mass media and free speech on social media. Mass media journalism and big tech are so terribly corrupted that due to that billions of people around the world are being fooled all the time. They are lying to you "for the greater good". When you start reading alternative news sources you'll find out soon enough something is very wrong. From all over the world renowned scientists, doctors, politicians, lawyers, noble price winners, and many more, are being totally silenced and criminalized. It's truly horrifying.
    • concordDance 5y ago
      The reason that big tech is corrupted is mass media and activists (here I mean anyone who pushes for their company to do good things rather than just neutral thinhs) within the big tech organization. The (non-rightwing) news orgs had constantly been going on about the evils of Trump and racism and fake news and virus misinformation how very bad it all was, the activists were convinced (because most people don't know how the "news" sausage is made and how it misleads) and pushed to stamp out what they saw as dangerous behaviour. The solution is probably to stop trusting the news media and bring back freedom of communication.
      • shlant 5y ago
        question: who constitutes the "mass media"?
        • concordDance 5y ago
          In the sense I meant? The vast majority of professional news outlets.
  • DoreenMichele 5y ago
    This is the most shocking article I have ever read in my life. From what I gather, Vanity Fair generally seeks to be as shocking as possible. It's part of their marketing strategy.
  • durovo 5y ago
    "One obvious demand would have been access to the WIV’s database of some 22,000 virus samples and sequences, which had been taken offline. At an event convened by a London organization on March 10, Daszak was asked whether the group had made such a request. He said there was no need: Shi Zhengli had stated that the WIV took down the database due to hacking attempts during the pandemic. “Absolutely reasonable,” Daszak said. “And we did not ask to see the data…. As you know, a lot of this work has been conducted with EcoHealth Alliance…. We do basically know what’s in those databases. There is no evidence of viruses closer to SARS-CoV-2 than RaTG13 in those databases, simple as that.”" What did she mean when she said that the database is offline? It's not like the data would be gone if the service is not running?
    • xyzzy123 5y ago
      According to DRASTIC it's a 61.5 MB mysql database. Oddly, it went offline 12 September 2019 shortly _before_ the pandemic was announced in December 2019. Ref: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Gilles-Demaneuf/publication/349073738_An_investigation_into_the_WIV_databases_that_were_taken_offline/links/60552846299bf17367551a5f/An-investigation-into-the-WIV-databases-that-were-taken-offline.pdf?origin=publication_detail https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Gilles-Demaneuf/publica... Not really clear why it hasn't been released, it would be technically trivial and save a lot of speculation. There is a bit of a pattern of DRASTIC researchers finding interesting tidbits in various science portals, followed by those portals going offline or being restricted.
      • Red_Leaves_Flyy 5y ago
        The lesson to take from this is to always dump the database and put it on scihub/torrent before going public.
      • tim333 5y ago
        Throughout the whole thing the Chinese have been like no data for you which makes you wonder if they have something to hide.
  • gadders 5y ago
    What amazes me is the BBC are still going to Daszak as an authority on whether it was a lab leak or not.
  • Fomite 5y ago
    Meanwhile, elsewhere, people are arguing that COVID-19 can be studied in BSL-2 facilities: https://www.statnews.com/2020/04/14/allow-bsl-2-labs-handle-novel-coronavirus/ https://www.statnews.com/2020/04/14/allow-bsl-2-labs-handle-... There's a lot of post-hoc engineering arguing for BSL-4 research into coronavirus when even if the lab leak theory proves true wasn't in evidence at the time.
  • avereveard 5y ago
    good time as any to highlight how "fact checking" suppressed the "lab leak" talk for over a year [1] and how "fact checking" is just groupthink by another name and people promoting "fact checking" driven censorship are the 2020 version of the useful idiots of the olds. [1] https://www.aarp.org/health/conditions-treatments/info-2021/facebook-blocks-coronavirus-misinformation.html https://www.aarp.org/health/conditions-treatments/info-2021/... (point 7)
  • unionpivo 5y ago
    Not really sure what is so shocking about it. This is just about what I would expect from governments to behave (both US and China). This kind of bullshit where people are more concerned about their departments future funding and prospects, and try to bury "unfortunate" incidents is happening in all the governments(and even inside larger companies) I am familiar with. It's a lot easier to bury if you can prevent investigation, than bury results of such investigation. As shocking as might sound this is pretty much businesses as usual in bureaucracy . For me that doesn't even comes close to Snowden revelations (even though, again we suspected some of it).
  • toshk 5y ago
    The strong sentiment that it couldn't have come from the lab was suspicious from day one. It was not even allowed to be a consideration. Also, here on this forum, I was downvoted for saying it shouldn't be ruled out that the lab might be the source.
    • texasbigdata 5y ago
      Maybe this is naive, but what the issue here? These people are alive, the documents exist, the physical locations are accessible. This isn’t archeology. Couldn’t we ... just... check? Like maybe the UN or the group of 7 or something similar? You shut down the globe for a year, seems like it’d be worth running down all the Rabit holes.
      • tremon 5y ago
        the physical locations are accessible China has blocked any and all independent access to the site, the only group allowed access was the WHO research group that somehow happened to include the most rabid opponents of the lab leak theory (Peter Daszak, mentioned in the article).
        • bitexploder 5y ago
          It’s all been thoroughly scrubbed physically and digitally anyway at this point.
      • toshk 5y ago
        You don't seem to understand China. Hollywood actor Cena just begged in Mandarin for forgiveness after mentioning Taiwan is a country (which it is). Local Amsterdam politicians are not allowed to go on the photo with Taiwanese politicians etc. The Communist Party is overly controlling and will not allow anything that will challenge their vision. While Europe and the US were busy with their internal quarrels the last decades, China has been making moves.
        • Workaccount2 5y ago
  • mynameishere 5y ago
    Shocking? This is all very humdrum to anyone who has been paying attention. Maybe you should pay attention.
  • DebtDeflation 5y ago
    >"Shi Zhengli herself had publicly acknowledged that, until the pandemic, all of her team’s coronavirus research — some involving live SARS-like viruses — had been conducted in less secure BSL-3 and even BSL-2 laboratories." This is important for another reason that may not be immediately obvious. The WIV (BSL-4) is ~8 miles from the Wuhan Market. There's a BSL-2 lab (the CCDC) that's literally just a few hundred yards from the market. If the lab leak theory is correct, it may have escaped from the latter rather than the former. Or a visiting worker may have inadvertently transmitted it from the former to the latter before it escaped from the latter.
    • nraynaud 5y ago
      do you have a map? I tried to look for things, but it's really hard with the Chinese datum obfuscation. the best I could do was 3km, but I don't recognize anything from google pictures https://imgur.com/KxOT84W https://imgur.com/KxOT84W
      • DebtDeflation 5y ago
        277.73 meters exactly. https://img-prod.tgcom24.mediaset.it/images/2020/02/16/114720192-5eb8307f-017c-4075-a697-348628da0204.pdf https://img-prod.tgcom24.mediaset.it/images/2020/02/16/11472... And yes, I checked Google Maps and they are very much obscuring this now (they weren't several months ago when I last checked).
      • tim333 5y ago
        there this https://s.rfi.fr/media/display/2f7b52c0-87b0-11ea-b8a0-005056bff430/Xiao%20Botao%20-%20The%20possible%20origins%20of%20the%202019-nCoV%20virus.pdf https://s.rfi.fr/media/display/2f7b52c0-87b0-11ea-b8a0-00505... the Botao Xiao paper
  • jonplackett 5y ago
    I read Biohazard by Ken Alibek years ago and the current situation reminds me of one of the anecdotes in it. He was a Soviet scientist in charge of creating bio-weapons- the book starts with him planning world war 3. In one of the anecdotes talks about a lab leak they had, caused by someone not replacing a filter and the the lab accidentally pumping out anthrax all day and killing a lot of people. The government blamed it on local meat sellers at the market and executed them all. Blaming the local market seems to be part of the bio-weapon-denial playbook. It's a great (but terrifying) book - https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0031RS5DI/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1 https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0031RS5DI/ref=dp-kindle-redirec...
    • tim333 5y ago
      There's a bit on the leak in wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sverdlovsk_anthrax_leak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sverdlovsk_anthrax_leak
  • swiley 5y ago
    There are a handful of us who are completely unsurprising that both the US and CCP worked hard to cover up certain facts about the virus.
  • bumbada 5y ago
    There is a very important thing to mention: Both the US and Europe depended on China's supplies in order to fight the virus in the first place. Guess what Chinese officials did? They called each individual country prime minister and said: Your news reporters are criticizing China, it seems like you don't want supplies. So politicians will talk with the boss of the news Media and explain the situation, the journalist will shut up. This happened in two big European countries I personally know of. I suspect the same happened in the rest. This is a beautiful reminder that you should never outsource your strategic resources like essential food, energy or medical supplies and if you do, you better don't do that from totalitarian regimes.
    • rorykoehler 5y ago
      The world will reorganise after this for sure.
  • jackfoxy 5y ago
    I am not at all shocked. All this was known and reported over a year ago. Social media companies and the MSM actively censored this information then in the name of squashing fake news. It was called conspiracy theory. What is different now? The only new and shocking revelations are the release of Fauci's emails.
  • Tarragon 5y ago
    The state department memo disclosing the sick researchers story isn't anywhere near as strong as the article implies. It's not US original reporting and there is disagreement about how strong the unnamed sources really are. I'm also going to attack the sources... This was strongly pushed by the Trump administration which was looking for this result. And originally reported by in the WSJ by Michael R. Gordon who is also one of the original reporters about the Iraq Aluminum tubes/centrifuge story that turned out to be wildly false. It took about 15 years to trace the origins of SARS [1] to a specific bat cave. We cannot be this confident this early on SARS-CoV-2. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Severe_acute_respiratory_syndrome#cite_note-:1-3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Severe_acute_respiratory_syndr...
    • _notreallyme_ 5y ago
      After reviewing most of the arguments in favor of a lab leak origin, I eventually concluded that when confronted to their counter arguments, the Occam's razor would be in favor of a natural origin for the sars-cov2. Indeed, when I heard of the report about WIV workers being sick with covid-like symptom I immediately checked who reported that, and ended up with the same conclusion as you. While a lab leak origin cannot be entirely dismissed, one should keep in mind that all this fuss is politicaly motivated.
  • gentleman11 5y ago
    I’m not sure the writing style promotes objectivity. It doesn’t explore certain threads enough to feel like you are reading a trustworthy and complete briefing on the story
  • fiftyfifty 5y ago
    I found this News Week article also very interesting and it goes into more detail about the DRASTIC internet group and how they made some of their discoveries: https://www.newsweek.com/exclusive-how-amateur-sleuths-broke-wuhan-lab-story-embarrassed-media-1596958 https://www.newsweek.com/exclusive-how-amateur-sleuths-broke... IMO the most upsetting part about this is people like Shi Zhengli and Peter Daszak being repeatedly caught in outright lies and coverup behavior. These people seemed to have the best of intentions at some point in their career but they are doing irreparable damage to their field and science in general with the public lies and coverups. One example is Shi Zhengli publicly stating the the 6 miners that died after shoveling bat guano in a mine in Mojiang died from a fungal infection while the DRASTIC group was able to dig up two papers that specifically stated the miners died from a SARS-like virus. They also dug up evidence that Zhengli's lab visited the mine multiple times since 2012 to take samples after the miners died and retrieved as many as 9 unique Coronaviruses similar to SARS-Cov-2 from the mine.
    • Throwawayaerlei 5y ago
      It's a tremendously good bit of reporting, especially for a generalist outfit like Newsweek. I didn't notice anything wrong in it or the science of the Vanity Fair article this topic is based on, or contradictions between the two articles. The DRASTIC team's story is an amazing example of "open source intelligence," for that primarily focused on an anonymous Indian who goes by the handle The Seeker who dug up a bunch of papers and theses for the data scientists and others on the team to assemble into a picture that is more and more convincing about the lab leak hypothesis, although having wet lab experience I'm predisposed to suspect this over the zoonotic transfer hypothesis. But speaking of predispositions, it's exactly the sort of thing the US intelligence community could have done if most of the government and world scientific establishment hadn't already decided on the zoonotic transfer narrative, which is detailed in the Vanity Fair article. Also an example of how Silicon Valley censorship can backfire, his first posting on this to Reddit got his account permanently banned, which suggested to him he was on to something. On the other hand Twitter didn't have any problems mentioned in either of these articles hosting the discussions of the DRASTIC team.
  • weaksauce 5y ago
    > Edit: here's another amazement for the list: "Shi Zhengli herself had publicly acknowledged that, until the pandemic, all of her team’s coronavirus research — some involving live SARS-like viruses — had been conducted in less secure BSL-3 and even BSL-2 laboratories." And the article says "BSL-2 [is] roughly as secure as an American dentist’s office." "SARS-like" could mean quite a few things and without defining what they mean by that it strikes me as fear baiting or being intentionally misleading to further their thesis.
  • divbzero 5y ago
    Potential mistakes across different countries should put to rest the idea that investigating COVID origins is a nationalistic endeavor. The motivation should be as straightforward and objective as investigating airplane crashes.
  • amatecha 5y ago
    Check this one out as well, from last month. Excellent post on the subject: https://thebulletin.org/2021/05/the-origin-of-covid-did-people-or-nature-open-pandoras-box-at-wuhan/ https://thebulletin.org/2021/05/the-origin-of-covid-did-peop...
• dazsnow 5y ago
  Critical China Scholars' statement on the lab leak investigation: https://criticalchinascholars.org/interventions/ https://criticalchinascholars.org/interventions/
• mmcgaha 5y ago
  If anything good can come of this, I hope some of the folks who trusted the science begins to realize that people are behind science and people often act in their own best interest. Not that it will change much but we can at least stop yelling down and shaming skeptics.
  • xwolfi 5y ago
    "the science" we need to trust is to say "I don't know but am investigating". What people want to trust in science is just this behaviour, not that "scientists can be evil and conspire together with China to hide that they make mistakes sometimes". The "skeptics" you refer to, sometimes are not so interested in investigating but more in pushing anti-science agenda, for instance religious, or nationalist. But if people who wanted to know got shamed by religious who told them that it cannot be the Wuhan lab, then that's wrong :D
  • seaman1921 5y ago
    this is terrifying.. who can we even trust then :\ Such exposed dishonesty leads to more and more people completely losing faith in everything that the scientists say and turning into anti-vaccers etc.
    • roamerz 5y ago
      Who can you trust? Go back a year and read some news articles. It’s pretty clear who was on the right track and ‘WHO’ wasn’t.
    • clairity 5y ago
      it's the reality of living in large, complex societies, where our intuitive trust-building relational proclivities get short-circuited by power structures. that doesn't mean we never trust organizations, but trust should be commensurate with our relational distance. that's actually the foundational principle of the federalist separation of powers (in the US). also, terms like "anti-vaccers" don't help. just stop trying to bucket others as being stupid or outrageous. there are small but real, legitimate risks to every vaccine. that some folks can be overly self-assured and blow out those dangers for their own self-importance has no bearing on that fact. employ your rational brain to keep your emotional brain in check so you can see risks as they are, not as others want to use against you.
• ctoth 5y ago
  Another pretty good article, certainly higher quality than you'd consider given the source[0]. What switch flipped to make all these come out right now? [0]: https://www.newsweek.com/exclusive-how-amateur-sleuths-broke-wuhan-lab-story-embarrassed-media-1596958 https://www.newsweek.com/exclusive-how-amateur-sleuths-broke...
  • eyeball 5y ago
    Who benefits?
    • disgrunt 5y ago
      Big Pharma? Authoritarians? The 0.1%? All the above.
  • DenisM 5y ago
    > What switch flipped to make all these come out right now? Vaccination rates are nearing immunity across the major US population centers. I can imagine "they" wanted to ensure orderly vaccinations and return to the normal economic activity before any possible disruption of the political order. Far-fetched, I know. But if you had to have a theory, here is one.
  • nostromo 5y ago
    The reason it's coming out now is because Trump is gone. During the election, most of the media decided to ignore anything they were afraid would help Trump or hurt Biden. Whether an activist media is good or bad is left as an exercise for the reader.
    • PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
      We have an actively status-quo favoring media, not an activist one. The former president was a pathological liar (thousands of documented clear lies during his office), and there were (and are) extremely good reasons to ignore more or less anything he said.
• m0llusk 5y ago
  This is silly. The lab leak hypothesis was never off limits, it was ridiculed because it had little evidence and was based on political things are different this time thinking. Finding viral origins is never a fight, it is hard work requiring detailed research. Both SARS and MERS are good comparisons and took around three years to fully understand. The lab leak theory is popular because of politics and ignoring the down sides of potential error. The lab leak theory posits that natural disasters such as have happened throughout history no longer happen because all events are shaped by the hands of man. The lab leak theory is based on the idea that establishing guilt brings justice. The lab leak theory is based on a generalized loathing of China. The lab leak theory ignores the history of ongoing transfers of animal viruses to man in favor of the view that it is different this time. Garbage in results in garbage out and the lab leak theory assumes that an incorrect idea will result in correct political action. Perhaps the greatest tragedy here is that people are appealing to ideas about justice by saying this was a forbidden struggle that is a big fight, yet ignoring the most important realities of justice. If you really want justice then you need a coherent statement of the offense, there should be a fair hearing with representatives of all sides, there should be impartial review whether that be trained judges or a selected jury of peers or whatever else, and so on. We know what justice looks like and any serious introspection will show that this shrill advocacy of the lab leak theory is just more social media garbage like q anon and the rest. If you want justice then you will have to submit to the kind of impartiality that brings justice, but that isn't what we are talking about here.
  • bedobi 5y ago
    > The lab leak theory posits that natural disasters such as have happened throughout history no longer happen because all events are shaped by the hands of man wat
  • gjsman-1000 5y ago
    It was off limits if you dared post it on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, or any other "popular" place for public discourse.
    • m0llusk 5y ago
• inostia 5y ago
  > More recently, Shi and her colleagues at the WIV have performed high-profile experiments that made pathogens more infectious. Such research, known as “gain-of-function,” has generated heated controversy among virologists. Yeah, I don't see this ending well. A lab leak seems... inevitable, no?
• tpfour 5y ago
  Anybody who has ever worked in a wet lab, or a lab of any sort, knows that accidents happen. All the time. Things catch fire, things are dropped, labeling issues happen, anything you can think of. I worked for many years in a lab, the accidental leak hypothesis was and still is what I consider the most probable. Calculate the joint probability of everything we know about the origin of SARS-CoV-2 happening and it should be obvious that the "lab leak" should be _thoroughly_ investigated before dismissing it.
  • 542458 5y ago
    What makes lab leak more probable than cross species transfer, something that happens all the time?
    • bradleyjg 5y ago
      As I understand it we haven’t identified a similar enough animal virus to be the source. China has and continues to have every incentive to find it.
      • 542458 5y ago
        It also differs from every betacoronavirus backbone that had been used for genetic modification (and there’s no clear reason somebody would want to come up with a new one), which is basically the same problem but in reverse. We’ve never, despite years and years of trying, been able to identify an origin for Ebola. The basic reality is we don’t know anywhere near all the diseases that animals have.
        • bradleyjg 5y ago
          I’d guess several small teams have received single digit million dollar grants to look for the origin of Ebola. Maybe one or two got double digit millions. China put sanctions on Australia that will and have cost their economy billions for implying that the lab leak hypothesis is plausible. Reasonable or not the Chinese government believes suppressing this theory to be a major policy goal. So I expect they’ve either spent orders of magnitude more effort than we ever spent on looking for Ebola’s origins, or they have some reason to believe they wouldn’t find anything. This isn’t a smoking gun, but it is a dog that didn’t bark.
• dtx1 5y ago
  So, will china be held accountable if it is found that covid was indeed leaked from the wuhan lab? Propably not. This is Chernobyl 2.0 but this time, the evil empire is getting away scott-free
• TechBro8615 5y ago
  I wonder what other factual reporting might have been suppressed by political orthodoxy dismissing it as a baseless conspiracy theory over the past few years.
• rootsudo 5y ago
  It is, the narrative last year was that if you pointed at Wuhan, or Chinese Lab Leak, you were racist/bigoted.
  • xwolfi 5y ago
    Depends how you point. Look I'm French, we built the lab. In France, all the people involved in the lab construction "quit" any official functions they had before the virus. That's the legend, the doubt is quite strong. People are just now refusing it could NOT be the lab. And are mounting into conspiracy theory etc just because not everyone rolls over the floor with their conviction. No: the lab source is likely (suspicious communist behaviour, french handlers all disappeared, geographical proximity, thematical proximity - as in they studied these kind of virii), but not sure yet. And I'm taking flak in my family for not jumping to the most "obvious" conclusion - probably because they live in France and I live in China hehe. I think the communists are equally able to be stupid enough to refuse any investigation, to have put military command of the lab to actually be ready to study a natural virus under military command, that they were not quite competent enough to raise the virus to that particular gain of function, and that the french handlers left their ministerial position out of precaution.
  • PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
    That's not how I remember the narrative. It was split in two. 1. Calling it "the china virus", as the former president was wont to do, was labelled racist/bigoted/nationalistic by those who did not simply agree with anything he said. 2. The claim that it originated in the Wuhan lab was viewed as unlikely, and there was (is) an alternative biological origin story which at the time seemed credible and more likely.
    • swader999 5y ago
      It's been practice for centuries to initially name it after where it was first originated. Spanish flu ring a bell? But yeah Trump's racist for saying China flu.
      • 5y ago
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• kache_ 5y ago
  It's fake news, twitter said so last year. Right?
• dang 5y ago
  The previous significant threads: Related threads: The media's lab leak fiasco - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27307175 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27307175 - May 2021 (696 comments) Wuhan lab staff sought hospital care before Covid-19 outbreak disclosed - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27259953 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 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 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 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 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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26540458 - March 2021 (985 comments) The Lab Leak Hypothesis - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25640323 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25640323 - Jan 2021 (229 comments) Israeli startup claims Covid-19 likely originated in a lab, willing to bet on it - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25585833 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25585833 - Dec 2020 (351 comments) Wuhan lab did research on bat viruses, but no evidence of accidental release - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23070031 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23070031 - May 2020 (76 comments) Experts disagree on whether Covid-19 could have leaked from a research lab - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22695825 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22695825 - March 2020 (6 comments)
• anon325235 5y ago
  4chan figured this out as early as March 2020: google "site:4plebs.org shi zhengli"
  • generalizations 5y ago
    Nearly made the same comment myself. It feels vindicating to watch all this unfold. How many times now has 4chan been right about the virus, and the media wrong? - 4chan saw the pandemic coming in January 2020, and predicted it would be big - 4chan knew it wasn't 'just another flu' in March 2020, when the media was downplaying it - 4chan figured out the virus is transmitted via areosol, not just particulate - 4chan worked out that Vitamin D can help (even Fauci admitted he takes it) - Wuhan Lab hypothesis That's just off the top of my head. Sure, 4chan got a lot wrong: but better to get all the (possible) facts, and sift through them. That's science. What are you going to do otherwise? Trust Fauci?
    • PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
      The media showed enormous deference to the Trump administration that insisted it was not going to be big, that is was just another flu, that it wasn't transmitted via aerosol, and that it would be gone soon. 4chan isn't know for enormous deference to anyone, so the fact that "they" (collectivizing 4chan always irriates me, but whatever) got things right given the head-in-sand public attitude (*) of the administration isn't really surprising. (*) Trump of course privately told Woodward that it was really bad.
      • generalizations 5y ago
        Showed deference? The standard practice was to go against what he said. https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/01/31/801686524/trump-declares-coronavirus-a-public-health-emergency-and-restricts-travel-from-c https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/01/31/8016865... Months after this came out, the media was proclaiming that the virus was no worse than the flu.
        • 5y ago
• fragileone 5y ago
  Strange that this article tries to paint anyone right-wing who postulated this theory way before the mainstream finally accepted it as being racist or crazy, as if nobody had talked about this evidence back then. The journal articles published by the lab were public information, as was their prior lab leaks in 2019, poor safety practice anecdotes, etc. Thousands of social media accounts got banned on all the major platforms during months of suppression all because this theory didn't fit Big Tech's political agenda. Will they get unbanned? Will anyone of them apologise? No, it's business as usual for our corporate overlords. If you're on the wrong side of their agenda then you'll be cancelled even with paper thin reasoning.
  • jkhdigital 5y ago
    Yeah, it’s a good article except for the gratuitous sprinkling of partisan barbs against any and all not-left-of-center political affiliations.
  • knowaveragejoe 5y ago
    > Strange that this article tries to paint anyone right-wing who postulated this theory way before the mainstream finally accepted it as being racist or crazy That'd be because of the company they keep. If you're aligning yourself with with incompetent nutjobs like the modern GOP and its allies, it's kind of hard to take anything you say seriously even if it is grounded in hard fact or within the realm of possibility. > Thousands of social media accounts got banned on all the major platforms during months of suppression all because this theory didn't fit Big Tech's political agenda. Source for this claim? IIRC people of all stripes have been banned for a variety of things in recent months/years. But it just so happens right-wing pundits with audiences in the millions have been pushing thinly veiled white nativism and wild conspiracy theories that tend to lead to despondent, isolated people taking matters into their own hands in a violent fashion. "Antifa" doesn't have a mouthpiece or a talking head on primetime TV every night, but some of their more popular accounts(followers in the tens of thousands) have been banned along similar lines.
• kaesar14 5y ago
  It’s crazy to me how many people on even this forum, a place purportedly of science, continue to dismiss a lab leak origin out of hand citing it as some sort of crackpot theory. The serious questions raised in this article have been around since last April but it’s only now it’s even allowed to talk about them on digital forums. Excellent write up by Vanity Fair.
  • analog31 5y ago
    Here's what I remember from that time period. My recollection is that the wet market hypothesis fell out of favor rather quickly, but nothing else really emerged in its place. The lab leak theory was circulating, but amongst people such as rank-and-file scientists, the attitude was: We aren't going to get a straight answer about this, but we've got to defeat this virus. I don't remember dismissing the lab leak theory per se, but rather, taking it in as one of a massive spew of crackpot theories all coming from more or less one source. I'm reminded of the children's story, "The boy who cried wolf." Looking back in hindsight, I wonder how we could have picked out the lab leak theory as being worthy of consideration, given the context. And whether a more scientifically minded public and government would have faced that dilemma.
    • jkhdigital 5y ago
      > amongst people such as rank-and-file scientists Do you have a source? Is there some kind of periodic “rank-and-file scientist opinion survey” that provided this insight to you? Or are you just manufacturing (or repeating) a narrative to make sense of a complicated world?
      • analog31 5y ago
        Maybe there's a third option. Thanks.
    • kaesar14 5y ago
      They would’ve had a better chance of being taken seriously if it wasn’t actively a bannable offense to talk about them on major social media websites.
• generalizations 5y ago
  This is why people say "do your own research". Because trusting some other authority will end badly, just like this.
  • triceratops 5y ago
    > "do your own research" How? I barely have enough time to do my day job. You think I have the time or expertise to research the origins of a virus? Where does it end? Do I grow my own food? Make my own clothes? Build my own car after mining ore, smelting it and doing a million other things?
    • generalizations 5y ago
      It's a statement of consequences; just "the way the world works." Trust the experts if you've no time for more, but this is the likely result. Put time into your own research, and maybe you won't be caught off guard.
      • triceratops 5y ago
        > Put time into your own research, and maybe you won't be caught off guard. Why? What guarantees are there that I'll do a better job of research than the experts?
        • generalizations 5y ago
          It's not that you discover the One True Truth; it's that you know all the things that might be true. If you listen to the experts, all you hear is one possibility - hope they got it right.
          • triceratops 5y ago
            > If you listen to the experts The "experts" rarely have a unanimous consensus on anything. If you actually listen to all of the experts, you'll hear all of the possibilities. But that still won't tell you who's right and who isn't. On a question like "lab leak or meat market?" the answer isn't of importance to me, or any other average person. It's important for the experts to know the truth, in order to be able to prevent it next time. But other than that, finding someone (or several someones) to pin it on isn't going to give everyone the past 15 months of their lives back.
• PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
  You know the story of the boy who cried wolf? Trump was the boy. Everybody knows how that story ended, but as a reminder: "This tale concerns a shepherd boy who repeatedly tricks nearby villagers into thinking a wolf is attacking his flock. When a wolf actually does appear, the villagers do not believe the boy's cries for help, and the flock is destroyed. The moral of the story is that liars will not be rewarded; even if they tell the truth, no one believes them. " There's a cost to lying. Sometimes it's your own flock. Sometime's its everybody's flock. Maybe Trump was right, maybe he wasn't. The boy was right about the wolf, eventually, too. The moral remains the same.
  • mc32 5y ago
    Ok, but somehow he turned journalists' brains into mush such that they could no longer do investigative journalism and moreover turned them into bots which flagged Tweets which questioned the received theory and turned the CDC virologist into a Saint?
    • PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
      Investigative journalism? Do you know how long it takes to do that sort of thing under normal conditions? How long was it between the writing of the Pentagon papers and their release? How long did the Catholic sex abuse situation take to be fully reported? It's been a bit more than a year since the virus turned into a global pandemic. I'm willing to grant journalists a bit more leeway in the timeline for serious investigative journalism, particularly when the central locate is a somewhat secretive Chinese lab in an area that was completely locked down for months as the pandemic started.
      • mc32 5y ago
        Fine. The problem is they dismissed alternate theories out of hand and they castigated any dissident. It was more akin to dogma. You gotta remember they had time to "debunk" this theory. So apparently they had time to do something, except critical thinking.
• Leary 5y ago
  Wall Street Journal's article on US Intelligence having information on the three potential sick WIV researchers was written by a reporter named Michael R. Gordon[1]. [1]https://www.wsj.com/articles/intelligence-on-sick-staff-at-wuhan-lab-fuels-debate-on-covid-19-origin-11621796228 https://www.wsj.com/articles/intelligence-on-sick-staff-at-w... This is the same Michael R. Gordon who in 2002 wrote the famous NYTimes article saying US Intelligence had credible information that Iraq had Weapons of Mass Destruction (Thousands of aluminium tubes) [2] and led to the Iraq War. [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/08/world/threats-responses-iraqis-us-says-hussein-intensifies-quest-for-bomb-parts.html https://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/08/world/threats-responses-i...
  • CapmCrackaWaka 5y ago
    To be clear - this guy's article didn't lead to the Iraq war. He was writing about the information that the US intelligence offices were putting out, which at this point we know was dubious. That really has nothing to do with his credibility.
    • thrdbndndn 5y ago
      Saying it "has nothing to do with his credibility" sounds extremely naive. It is totally within possibility that he is "writing about the information that the US intelligence offices were putting out" this time too, to make certain narrative that the US government wants.
  • _-david-_ 5y ago
    I mean to be fair there were actually WMD in Iraq https://www.wired.com/2010/10/wikileaks-show-wmd-hunt-continued-in-iraq-with-surprising-results/ https://www.wired.com/2010/10/wikileaks-show-wmd-hunt-contin...
    • sjfidsfkds 5y ago
      It’s a widely accepted fact that Iraq had a chemical weapons program before the Persian Gulf War. Iraq and the UN cooperated to dismantle that program in the early 90’s. There was disagreement about whether that effort was exhaustive. The Bush administration’s claim to justify invasion was that there was an active ongoing chemical/biological/nuclear weapons program. Some old caches of chemical weapons materials discovered after the invasion doesn’t show that Iraq had an active chemical weapons program circa 2003. You can read more about how the intelligence community failed here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senate_Report_on_Pre-war_Intelligence_on_Iraq https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senate_Report_on_Pre-war_Intel... For example, they thought that Iraq had restarted its nuclear weapons program, and there was nothing like that in the evidence you linked to.
• dukeofdoom 5y ago
  Fauci, the greatest villain in history.
• ALittleLight 5y ago
  One thing I've noticed a lot in articles like this one is how they kind of "both sides" the issue. This article says "With disreputable wing nuts on one side of them and scornful experts on the other" - to make it seem like both the right wing cranks and the experts were wrong here. Right wing cranks way-overstepped by calling it a "bioweapon" without evidence and experts understepped by assuming it was natural without good evidence. I looked up the person (Li-Meng Yan)[1], the paper[2], and the Fox News Interview[3] where Tucker Carlson "gleefully flogged" the bioweapon theory that this article references as being part of Steve Bannon's faction of right wing cranks. In the paper Yan describes "an unrestricted bioweapon" like so - Although it is not easy for the public to accept SARS-CoV-2 as a bioweapon due to its relatively low lethality, this virus indeed meets the criteria of a bioweapon as described by Dr. Ruifu Yang. Aside from his appointment in the AMMS, Dr. Yang is also a key member of China’s National and Military Bioterrorism Response Consultant Group and had participated in the investigation of the Iraqi bioweapon program as a member of the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) in 1998. In 2005, Dr. Yang specified the criteria for a pathogen to qualify as a bioweapon: 1. It is significantly virulent and can cause large scale casualty. 2. It is highly contagious and transmits easily, often through respiratory routesin the form of aerosols. The most dangerous scenario would be that it allows human-to-human transmission. 3. It is relatively resistant to environmental changes, can sustain transportation, and is capable of supporting targeted release. ------- I don't know that's the exact definition I'd give for "bioweapon" but it seems plausible, from a somewhat authoritative source, and fits covid. In other parts of the paper Yan addresses what she calls the "cover-up" of the lab origins of covid-19 and she points to elements of the cover-up that predate the outbreak and concludes "the unleashing of the virus must be a planned execution rather than accident." On the Tucker Carlson interview the host listens to Yan's points and invites an expert on. The expert seems to basically ignore Yan's more exotic claims (i.e. that it was an intentional attack) and summarizes the situation at 3:39 as "We don't know" and gives two possible explanations as "Zoonotic transfer" or "Accidental lab release" and leans towards the latter. That seems exactly right to me. I don't follow the "cover-up" part of Yan's argument (though I will read more about it) so I can't comment on her conclusion that it was an intentional attack. That's certainly not what other people I've read seem to think. The "bioweapon" definition seems a bit like an exaggeration or a technicality, if only because "bioweapon" conjures the idea of much more severe and lethal and viruses. My point is that the right wing cranks actually come out looking pretty good on this topic - as far as I can tell. They immediately questioned the natural origins and advanced credible arguments for lab leak which are gaining support and evidence. I think it's wrong for this article and others to start out, and dedicate space in the opening of their argument, to try and balance things by saying, essentially, "Yes, maybe the experts were wrong here, but so were the crazy right-wing people." The people who are really and clearly wrong here are the mainstream media outlets who blindly trusted the authorities that told them this couldn't be a lab leak. Tucker Carlson talked to Yan, who may not really be a virus-expert (her degree seems to be in Ophthalmology) and may be over-zealous in her anti-China stance (e.g. concluding it was an intentional attack on what might not be very good evidence) but Tucker Carlson and his show explicitly call out the two main theories as what I believe they still are - i.e. zoonotic transfer and lab leak. 1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li-Meng_Yan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li-Meng_Yan 2 - https://zenodo.org/record/4073131#.YLl19JqYVhF https://zenodo.org/record/4073131#.YLl19JqYVhF 3 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUbrE1v4kuQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUbrE1v4kuQ
• alexanderdmitri 5y ago
  Assuming a lab leak, but not judging, it's surreal to think what it would be like to be someone involved with the initial handling of Covid-19. I can't imagine being in those shoes while this unprecedented, global event unfolded with political and economic consequences on such an insane scale ...
• Simulacra 5y ago
  It's refreshing how the news media suddenly notices something everyone has been talking about.
  • speedgoose 5y ago
    This theory has been explained in the French news media for quite some time now.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• raphlinus 5y ago
  This is a good article. There's been so much junk over the past couple of weeks or so that it's been very frustrating. I've mostly been watching the debate unfold on Twitter, and it's confirmed for me that Twitter is a terrible place for real intellectually-curious discussion (probably social media in general). I've been wondering certain things, especially why Marc Lipsitch (one of the most consistently trustworthy voices throughout the pandemic) signed that Science letter, knowing that it would add weight to the "it's a lab leak" propaganda, and stood by the assertion that lab leak is plausible[1]. I hope we do get the true answers to these questions, though think it's not especially likely. I'll say a couple other things. For an audience of honestly intellectually curious people, the Trumpian right-wingers did enormous damage to their theory, even if it was correct, by being racist and scientifically willfully stupid. Similarly, the Chinese authorities, even if they were correct did enormous damage to their theory by being authoritarian and stifling real communication. But it is very easy to see why both sides acted as they did: these mythical honest intellectually curious people are a tiny fraction of the entire audience, and have relatively little power, so they were quite incentivized to act as they did. And, maybe a little too early to say for sure, but it probably worked. [1]: https://twitter.com/mlipsitch/status/1398455815959367683 https://twitter.com/mlipsitch/status/1398455815959367683
  • Cyberthal 5y ago
    By being racist? The CCP is a party, not a race. Taiwan and Chinese dissidents deserve great credit for advancing the lab leak hypothesis, and are conspicuously absent from this article, probably because the CCP is extremely displeased whenever they are acknowledged. Forget race, these Taiwanese and mainlander dissidents are the same ethnicity as the CCP. Saying it's racist to criticize or discriminate against China mainlanders ignores the many people of the same race who hold such prejudices in Hong Kong, for example. Racism would be blaming Japanese or Koreans for COVID19, because they are the same racial group as the Han. Who does that? In theory, Americans could be aware that North America has always been a battleground between introgressions from northeast Asia and northwest Europe, and view the spread of COVID19 as parallel to the spread of smallpox to Indians via plague blankets. But I honestly don't think any meaningful number of "Trumpians" are that smart. Those Indians may have developed some racist conspiracy theories. I bet the Uyghurs have some too!
• deugo 5y ago
  https://drasticresearch.org/ https://drasticresearch.org/ to see some real hackers at work. Media, governments, and scientists should take a stronger stand now, or they will not protect amateurs against the full wrath of more unsavory elements of hostile state actors.
  • knowaveragejoe 5y ago
    This site smacks of people starting from a conclusion and working backwards.
    • deugo 5y ago
      Working backwards from February 2020. About 3 weeks after Peter Daszak started his wild PR campaign. Pretty impressive for a group of amateurs to still beat the pros to the finish line. Because here we are. Finally discussing it. This site can be linked, and exposed to ridicule and critique. And it keeps standing (Peter Daszak can not use his Facebook admin powers to block it!). Lovely!
• Octoth0rpe 5y ago
  Several thoughts: 1) If covid _did_ come out of lab - I'm emphatically not saying that I believe that it did - I have pretty high confidence in the ability of the any government to cover it up. 2) There is some class of people who will accept whatever 'evidence' of a lab leak as completely convincing for a variety of reasons (conspiracy minded thinking, anti-chinese sentiments, etc) 3) It seems impossible to strongly prove that the virus emerged naturally (we can't observe the case zero event again), _especially_ to the crowd mentioned in 2). Given these 3 statements, it's really hard for me to see _any_ value in investigating this any further. It just seems like it'd just feed fuel to group 2), which is not something that I think would be particularly good for anyone in the long run.
  • rhino369 5y ago
    Covering up the deaths of 10+ Million people that potentially occurred due to risky research because it might encourage conspiracy theorists and racists? I’m trying to be civil, but that’s the most conformist thing I’ve ever heard.
  • haram_masala 5y ago
    Not investigating would provide fuel to group 2a, the people who will defend China at any cost and against all evidence, and their Western enablers who engage in performative anti-racism.
• tmp404 5y ago
  While this article is quite illuminating on the political side of the lab leak theory, on the evidence side it's mostly a rehash of some long-standing speculations. The only recent evidence it contains is the fact that 3 researchers from WIV sought hospital care back in autumn of 2019 with symptoms similar to COVID. However, this piece of evidence is hardly consequential without further details: - First, most common symptoms of COVID are indistinguishable from common cold. If the researchers were known to have any "signature" symptoms like loss of smell the article would certainly mention it. - Second and more importantly, China doesn't have a robust GP/family doctor system found in western countries. As a result, many people would go to hospitals directly whenever they're mildly sick. Taking the evidence as we know it now, the straightforward explanation is that 3 researchers caught cold, got mildly sick, so went to the hospital to get prescriptions or doctor's notes for sick leave (in China it's common for employers to require a doctor's note even for a short sick leave). That said, I believe the lab leak theory is still plausible, and shouldn't be ruled out unless a clear transmission path from bat to human has been identified (which was done for the 2002 SARS outbreak). But I also think that we may never know. I trust that some theories put forward were in good faith, but so far they are little more than speculations.
  • graeme 5y ago
    Thanks for that context. I had thought the hospital care was more significant as flu hospitalization is rare in working age people. But medical visits are common so that is quite different.
    • repiret 5y ago
      What’s really missing in the analysis is the base rate of WIV workers visiting the hospital with cold symptoms. I’ve heard plausible explanations for why it might be pedestrian or why it might be exceptional, but it’s all meaningless without the base rate.
  • BrissyCoder 5y ago
    > First, most common symptoms of COVID are indistinguishable from common cold. I was under the impression that the symptoms were quite different to the common cold and more inline with influenza (fever, dry-cough, aches, no mucus production – symptoms that are rarely caused by the cold).
• Gatsky 5y ago
  Assuming the chance of a lab leak is non-zero, it is worth considering how this will ever end. - If there was any hard evidence actually proving they had SARS-CoV-2 in the lab before the pandemic, it will be long gone. Only an independent full access forensic level investigation would ever find any sign that evidence was destroyed, and that is never going to happen. - It seems extremely unlikely to me that anyone from within China will A) blow the whistle or B) that we would hear about it. - If a whistleblower were to escape the country, China would be able to claim they are lying, and it is a plot by the West to oppress the Chinese people etc. The chance that the whistleblower would be carrying irrefutable evidence of a lab leak is again almost zero. We can keep shaking the tree, but I don't think anything truly satisfying is going to fall out. Consider that even if the USA for example had actual evidence of a lab leak, they would be better off using this as leverage over China secretly than releasing it publicly. What actually can and should happen, is that some major change comes to virology research to absolutely minimise the chance of another lab origin pandemic. Wherever SARS-CoV-2 came from, we have had lab leaks before and we will have them again, that much is certain.
  • duxup 5y ago
    >even if the USA for example had actual evidence of a lab leak, they would be better off using this as leverage over China secretly than releasing it publicly. That seems unlikely to work.
  • rhodozelia 5y ago
    They did have samples of a 98% similar virus collected from the miners working in the bat cave who had died years earlier. The virus had a different name like ratg or something.
    • krrrh 5y ago
      It’s covered in the article and it’s called RaTG13 and no one can get a straight answer on where it was acquired or when. However independent researchers found it is identical to a virus previously known as RaBtCoV/4991 that made several miners ill in 2012. It’s 96.2% similar not 98%. The issue is that coronaviruses in nature don’t mutate fast enough for that to be the missing link, and they have tested something like 80,000 animals since the outbreak without finding anything closer. One possibility is that the gap was closed through gain-of-function or serial passage research.
• lamontcg 5y ago
  > Wade devoted a full section to the “furin cleavage site,” a distinctive segment of SARS-CoV-2’s genetic code that makes the virus more infectious by allowing it to efficiently enter human cells. > Within the scientific community, one thing leapt off the page. Wade quoted one of the world’s most famous microbiologists, Dr. David Baltimore, saying that he believed the furin cleavage site “was the smoking gun for the origin of the virus.” Baltimore, a Nobel Laureate and pioneer in molecular biology, was about as far from Steve Bannon and the conspiracy theorists as it was possible to get. His judgment, that the furin cleavage site raised the prospect of gene manipulation, had to be taken seriously. Furin cleavage sites have evolved and are present in multiple coronaviruses: - HCoV-OC43 (infects humans) - HCoV-HKU1 (infects humans) - MHV-A59 - ChRCoV-HKU24 - BtCoV-ENT - BtNeCoV-PML-PHE1 - BtCoV-HKU4 - BtCoV-HKU5 - MERS-CoV - BtHpCoV-Zhejiang2013 - SARS-CoV-2 Phylogenetic analysis suggests that it has evolved independently at least 6 times that we know of. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S187350612 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S187350612... After that article was published a team in Thailand found furin cleavage sites in sarbecoviruses closely related to SARS-CoV-2 called RacCS203 (91.5% similarity to SARS-CoV-2) and RmYN02 (93.3% similarity to SARS-CoV-2) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7873279/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7873279/ Furin cleavage sites are common, nature understands how to utilize that trick very well, and continuously has re-discovered it.
  • Throwawayaerlei 5y ago
    <s>The</s> A gravamen of the SARS-CoV-2 furin cleavage site claim is that it's not aligned like others in the coronaviruses you cite.
    • henearkr 5y ago
      I'd love more information if you have. Because per se it does not prove the claim of bioengineering.
      • Throwawayaerlei 5y ago
        It's not in Nicolas Wade's article, which I now see has been unfairly maligned along with David Baltimore who's been selectively quoted to leave out the technical detail of what made the latter say the SARS-CoV-2 is a smoking gun, see the 4) A Question of Codons: https://nicholaswade.medium.com/origin-of-covid-following-the-clues-6f03564c038 https://nicholaswade.medium.com/origin-of-covid-following-th... If correct, that's getting strongly into bioengineering evidence. You are of course more likely correct about the alignment issue, I can't find my source now, and the above is probably much stronger evidence. For the alignment you'd have to be a virologist, probably one specializing in coronaviruses, to be able to really judge this. Of course a whole bunch of biologists have shifted their focus to coronaviruses in the last year and a half.
• wuwuno 5y ago
  In early December of 2019 with absolutely no indication that a new virus was being spread, the Chinese figured out that they had a) a new virus and b) they were able to identify the virus. In this case the Chinese knew, in early December, they had a problem when they only had a handful of cases. HOW???? COVID presents like the flu, so there isn't a novel symptom to help them identify that something new is in play. There wasn't a significant rise in cases or deaths. There couldn't be a significant rise in deaths because there weren't that many cases. A small cluster of flu cases escalating into pneumonia, and then death won't raise a red flag because it happens all the time. I've had multiple Chief Medial Officers tell me this. With COVID presenting like the flu, and with so few cases the ONLY way they could know that a new virus was spreading was if they had prior knowledge. The only way they could get prior knowledge was because someone working at the lab got sick, and then people they came in contact with got sick. If this really happened organically then it should have been spreading pretty damn fast, and because it presents like the flu it wouldn't have raised any eyebrows until either the case rates spiked or the death rates spiked. In the U.S. flu cases per year range from a low of 9.3M to a high of 45M and deaths of 12,000 up to 61,000. I suspect that China sees the same fluctuations in yearly flu cases so localized spikes wouldn't have raised any eyebrows it wouldn't have gotten anyone's attention until hospitals started to get overwhelmed. But in early December they didn't have that many cases. So how did they know?
  • saalweachter 5y ago
    Ground glass lung X-rays?
• gkfasdfasdf 5y ago
  Does anybody know if the current lab leak theories say if it was a natural virus that was released by accident, or was it something engineered in the course of research that was released by accident?
• dariusj18 5y ago
  It's not that productive to say, but this thread's comments are mostly trash, if you read this comment first, just turn around.
  • deugo 5y ago
    I do think it is. This thread shows clear efforts of an organized group, likely state-sponsored, to disrupt it. It was funny to see this happen on 4chan, because at first they could not get it right, and were stuck in their Wikipedia editor mode. They kept getting called out for it, or ignored. They switched to upvoting and commenting unrelated threads to the front page. When 4chan changed their algorithm to combat this blatant manipulation, they ended with an effective weapon: shitposting. You fill a thread on Covid or GoF research with an incredible amount of shitposts, and other shitposters attacking those shitposts, downvote walls of text to grey. Derail, derail, derail. You end up with a thread that nobody wants to read, and requires sifting through shit to find what you need. Then easier to just listen to the news about what expert Peter Daszak has to say. Beating 4chan at its own game. 50 cent army is extremely good at shitposting. And interesting posts are now hidden behind a "Read More", while posts defending zoonosis (imagine coming into a zoonosis theory thread to shitpost about lab-leak theory, hahaha) are on 2-3-4'th place. It is getting harder and harder to find the facts or reason about what the hell is going on. The brain of society is poisoned to schizophrenia.
  • deugo 5y ago
    Previous post was flagged within seconds? If by Dang, please explain shortly what is wrong. Too meta? Manipulation on HN not to be spoken out loud or speculated about? --- I do think it is productive to say. This thread shows clear efforts of an organized group, likely state-sponsored, to disrupt it. It was funny to see this happen on 4chan, because at first they could not get it right, and were stuck in their Wikipedia editor mode. They kept getting called out for it, or ignored. They switched to upvoting and commenting unrelated threads to the front page. When 4chan changed their algorithm to combat this blatant manipulation, they ended with an effective weapon: shitposting. You fill a thread on Covid or GoF research with an incredible amount of shitposts, and other shitposters attacking those shitposts, downvote walls of text to grey. Derail, derail, derail. You end up with a thread that nobody wants to read, and requires sifting through shit to find what you need. Then easier to just listen to the news about what expert Peter Daszak has to say. Beating 4chan at its own game. 50 cent army is extremely good at shitposting. And interesting posts are now hidden behind a "Read More", while posts defending zoonosis (imagine coming into a zoonosis theory thread to shitpost about lab-leak theory, hahaha) are on 2-3-4'th place. It is getting harder and harder to find the facts or reason about what the hell is going on. The brain of society is poisoned to schizophrenia.
• S_A_P 5y ago
  Why is the lab leak theory so taboo? I dont understand why this would want to be glossed over? If a mistake was made why are we not learning from it? Why would China care? its not like anything would change if they admitted a mea culpa here. I just feel like so many factors point to this not being a 'wild' virus it just didnt make sense to not investigate if this was a lab leak. Lets learn here and do better.
  • S_A_P 5y ago
    really not getting it here- even if my home country had a lab leak I would be interested in learning from a mistake.
• psychlops 5y ago
  This article is painfully political. The author takes far too much time demonizing Trump and anointing Biden to keep me interested in learning what she has to say.
  • badmadrad 5y ago
    Now that media has to tell the truth they have to get the negative Trump spin in to justify the vitriol of the last 5 years otherwise the narrative wouldn't make sense.
• MilnerRoute 5y ago
  I'd like to point out that the lab-leak theory is still being dismissed by portions of the mainstream media. (I'm not taking a side here -- just pointing out that this hasn't been settled yet.) Today the Los Angeles Times published an article headlined "The lab-leak origin claim for COVID-19 is in the news, but it's still fact-free." What's missing from all this reexamination and soul-searching is a fundamental fact: There is no evidence — not a smidgen — for the claim that COVID-19 originated in a laboratory in China or anywhere else, or that the China lab ever had the virus in its inventory... No one disputes that a lab leak is possible. Viruses have escaped from laboratories in the past, on occasion leading to human infection. But "zoonotic" transfers — that is, from animals to humans — are a much more common and well-documented pathway. That's why the virological community believes that it's vastly more likely that COVID-19 spilled over from an animal host to humans... "We cannot prove that SARS-CoV-2 [the COVID-19 virus] has a natural origin and we cannot prove that its emergence was not the result of a lab leak," the lead author of the Nature paper, Kristian Andersen of the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, told me by email. "However, while both scenarios are possible, they are not equally likely," Andersen said. "Precedence, data, and other evidence strongly favor natural emergence as a highly likely scientific theory for the emergence of SARS-CoV-2, while the lab leak remains a speculative incomplete hypothesis with no credible evidence." Co-author Robert F. Garry of Tulane Medical School told several colleagues during a recent webcast: "Our conclusion that it didn't leak from the lab is even stronger today than it was when we wrote the paper." As the veteran pseudoscience debunker David Gorski sums up the contest between the lab-leak and zoonotic theories, "the likelihood of the two hypotheses is nowhere near close to equal." https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/column-the-lab-leak-origin-claim-for-covid-19-is-in-the-news-but-it-s-still-fact-free/ar-AAKGj1e?ocid=BingNewsSearch https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/column-the-lab-lea... And Wired also ran a piece last week with a similar skeptical headline. "The Covid-19 Lab Leak Theory Is a Tale of Weaponized Uncertainty." Its subheading? "Scientists almost never say they’re sure, and it could take years to pin down the pandemic's origins. Until then: People are trying to scare you." https://www.wired.com/story/covid-19-lab-leak-theory-weaponized-uncertainty/ https://www.wired.com/story/covid-19-lab-leak-theory-weaponi...
  • knowaveragejoe 5y ago
    What if that's because there's less to the theory than you think? Your own quotations, not to mention other comments in this very thread, show that there is still a non-trivial amount of doubt on this one. I seriously think a lot of people leaving comments along these lines WANT this hypothesis to be true because they think it proves they were "always right".
• timelincoln 5y ago
  I think the real point that no public figure is willing to say, is that if this virus did leak out of a CCP lab after being modified the entire world will to some degree or another demand consequences for the CCP. While doubtful the consequences would lead to nuclear war that’s not outside the scope of possible outcomes. What’s more likely is the vast consumer public rejecting the relationship with the CCP, leading to a quicker downward spiral of relations leading to risky military situations and a lot of rich people with a stake in China trade becoming slightly less rich.
  • chasd00 5y ago
    I think many people who make important decisions related to things that explode would rather just not know. “To the heart and mind, ignorance is kind There’s no comfort in the truth, pain is all you’ll find” - careless whispers
  • timelincoln 5y ago
    Go ahead and Vote me down , it’s still true https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/lab-leak-china-international-relations/2021/06/04/7e966eaa-c489-11eb-9a8d-f95d7724967c_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/lab-leak-china-intern...
• dukeofdoom 5y ago
  Account of the Informed Consent Action Network @ICANdecide reportedly locked out by Twitter after they announced to publish more emails from Dr. Fauci obtained via FOIA request, citing #COVID19 misinformation policy. https://twitter.com/disclosetv/status/1400571828230369282 https://twitter.com/disclosetv/status/1400571828230369282
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• ycombigator 5y ago
  3 words. Conflict of interest.
• qrybam 5y ago
  For anyone who’s listened to Bret Weinstein’s podcast from early on in the pandemic, “gain of function research” will be a familiar term. Great to see this hypothesis getting traction in mainstream media. What’s still crazy to me is how quickly things were explained away and how strongly the directly related scientific community said the hypothesis was “fringe”. Here’s an episode of Bret’s podcast from June 2020 covering this in depth: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5SRrsr-Iug https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5SRrsr-Iug Edit: a word
  • noetic_techy 5y ago
    Came here to see if anyone mention the fact that Bret had ALREADY identified this exact scenario on his podcast months ago! He even pointed out the Drazak conflict of interest. But no one listened. Its bewildering how blind people can be. I hope they start paying attentions and giving him credit because he is saying things today that no one in the mainstream is paying attention to... but I feel will have the exact same gravity of scandal later on.
• systemvoltage 5y ago
  > Dr. Robert Redfield, former director of the CDC, said he received death threats from fellow scientists after telling CNN he thought the virus likely escaped from a lab. “I expected it from politicians. I didn’t expect it from science,” he said. Holyshit. We have created an atmosphere of censorship and suppression to the point where noble, well meaning people have been turned into monsters.
  • Aachen 5y ago
    Turns out one human isn't necessarily better than another? This emphasis on that scientists are evil in this thread astounds me.
    • systemvoltage 5y ago
      The emphasis is that reasonable, educated and rational, self-introspective and self-critical people like Scientists can issue death threats from their wokeness just shows how bad politics have gotten on both sides.
• djkivi 5y ago
  What a difference a year makes? https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/05/why-scientists-believe-the-wuhan-lab-coronavirus-origin-theory-is-highly-unlikely https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/05/why-scientists-belie...
  • badmadrad 5y ago
    This is an example of "anything Trump says I must believe the opposite" logic that has plagued our country for the last 5 years.
  • capableweb 5y ago
    Your comment makes it seem like they somehow shifted their opinion from one side to the other. That's not what either articles are about. The one you link is about "Wuhan-Lab Coronavirus Origin Theory Is Highly Unlikely", that the science is "dubious" but doesn't seem to make any strong claims either way (but I only skimmed the article). The one in the submission is about how conversations and debates about the "Wuhan-Lab Coronavirus Origin Theory" was silenced because many thought it was so obvious. While the articles are about the same subject, they touch on the subject in two very different ways and are in no way contradictory. What you are doing here is trying to add more gasoline on some fire, but that's not super helpful.
• deugo 5y ago
  This thread shows clear efforts of an organized group, likely state-sponsored, to disrupt it. It was funny to see this happen on 4chan, because at first they could not get it right, and were stuck in their Wikipedia editor mode. They kept getting called out for it, or ignored. They switched to upvoting and commenting unrelated threads to the front page. When 4chan changed their algorithm to combat this blatant manipulation, they ended with an effective weapon: shitposting. You fill a thread on Covid or GoF research with an incredible amount of shitposts, and other shitposters attacking those shitposts, downvote walls of text to grey. Derail, derail, derail. You end up with a thread that nobody wants to read, and requires sifting through shit to find what you need. Then easier to just listen to the news about what expert Peter Daszak has to say. Beating 4chan at its own game. 50 cent army is extremely good at shitposting. And interesting posts are now hidden behind a "Read More", while posts defending zoonosis (imagine coming into a zoonosis theory thread to shitpost about lab-leak theory, hahaha) are on 2-3-4'th place. It is getting harder and harder to find the facts or reason about what the hell is going on. The brain of society is poisoned to schizophrenia.
  • dang 5y ago
    What you did in this thread (posting dozens of copies of the same comment) was vandalism. I've banned the account. You needn't have wondered why your comment was flagged if you had read the site guidelines before posting it. The users who flagged it were obviously correct to do so. What you did after that was beyond the pale. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    • extratinypp 5y ago
      > The users who flagged it were obviously correct CCP master! You are being naive and your site is abused. But I'll stop. Do check how fast the flags were. This was scripted. Also check the IPs for VPN usage and entropy between the downvotes. Taiwan is a country. Dare say it?
      • dang 5y ago
        I already checked. The flaggers were well established, responsible HN users who understood exactly which site guidelines you were violating. This "communist agent" stuff is childish. Please stop now.
• ralph84 5y ago
  We can only hope that someday the "I fucking love science" crowd will realize science is no less political than any other human endeavor.
  • Aachen 5y ago
    More like they weren't actually doing science, not that science was wrong or turns out to be a bad concept. I should most sincerely hope that the love of proper science will not be reduced due to articles and comments like these. What kind of dark ages would that land us in if the general public started doubting that if you do an experiment that shows X, and you can repeat that and it still shows X, that X is likely true?
• extratinypp 5y ago
  This thread shows clear efforts of an organized group, likely state-sponsored, to disrupt it. It was funny to see this happen on 4chan, because at first they could not get it right, and were stuck in their Wikipedia editor mode. They kept getting called out for it, or ignored. They switched to upvoting and commenting unrelated threads to the front page. When 4chan changed their algorithm to combat this blatant manipulation, they ended with an effective weapon: shitposting. You fill a thread on Covid or GoF research with an incredible amount of shitposts, and other shitposters attacking those shitposts, downvote walls of text to grey. Derail, derail, derail. You end up with a thread that nobody wants to read, and requires sifting through shit to find what you need. Then easier to just listen to the news about what expert Peter Daszak has to say. Beating 4chan at its own game. 50 cent army is extremely competent at shitposting. And interesting posts are now hidden behind a "Read More", while posts defending zoonosis (imagine coming into a zoonosis theory thread to shitpost about lab-leak theory, hahaha) are on 2-3-4'th place. It is getting harder and harder to find the facts or reason about what the hell is going on. The brain of society is poisoned to schizophrenia.
• mountainboy 5y ago
  People have been discussing a possible lab leak for well over a year. For the most part commenters here on hackernews have been close-minded, arrogant, dismissive and probably wrong. disgusting. I don't actually care much about the lab leak hypothesis. So I don't have a dog in that particular fight. I think contagion itself is a myth. See the work of Dr. Tom Cowan if you are interested. I just don't like the arrogant attitude I see on display here all the time, on so many topics. People wielding beliefs, opinions, and "scientific consensus" as if they were facts, and there is nothing left to discover about biology or wider sciences. Guess what people, human understanding of the natural world is moved forward by those who DO NOT AGREE with scientific consensus of the day. The heretics are the interesting ones to follow, not the rest of you lot. I'm quite frankly glad to see a bunch of you eating crow right now. You should. Good day.
• ngc248 5y ago
  This goes a bit more into detail - https://nicholaswade.medium.com/origin-of-covid-following-the-clues-6f03564c038 https://nicholaswade.medium.com/origin-of-covid-following-th...
• throwaway210222 5y ago
  The American government might much more cooperation in their lab-link investigation if they can guarantee the Chinese that there will be ZERO consequences (financial, legal, oversight, etc.) for them if its found to be true. If its just about getting to The Truth. But its not.
• tfcata 5y ago
  I'm sorry to see the impotent Biden administration chose to politicize this issue that should've been left to scientists, just maybe to demonstrate he's not weak, or to shift the attention of the Americans who are under such economic stress cause by the shamefully ineffective measure taken by their government.
• speedgoose 5y ago
  USA's medias are a bit late to discuss this theory seriously. I know that they usually don't read newspapers that are not written in English, but they perhaps should do because it's not the first time they arrive months later. For example the theory was discussed a lot in major French medias months ago after the CNRS, a major research institute, published about it : https://lejournal.cnrs.fr/articles/la-question-de-lorigine-du-sars-cov-2-se-pose-serieusement https://lejournal.cnrs.fr/articles/la-question-de-lorigine-d... Since very recently you also have a letter in the Science journal written in English, so it may help USA medias to consider the theory: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/372/6543/694.1 https://science.sciencemag.org/content/372/6543/694.1 Anyway, better late than never and this is a good story from vanity fair.
• yarcob 5y ago
  One thing that's baffling to me is that I've not seen any discussion from scientists who actually know what they are talking about. All we get are articles who talk about the political side, and try to prove things by how certain actors behaved. Most of the actual science that all the articles cite are pop-sci simplifications at best. People talk about how parts from multiple viruses would be joined together etc, how base pairs are 97% identical, etc. These are all very high level summaries that don't really allow for detailed conclusions. Now I'm not a subject matter expert myself, but from what I've learned about evolutionary genetics is that some scenarios would be pretty obvious when looking at the genome. For example, you could look at where in the genome the mutations occur. I'd love to read an article that goes in depth on the actual scientific arguments, rather than just rehashes of rehashes like this.
  • DiogenesKynikos 5y ago
    That's because the theory is being pushed for political reasons, and most virologists think it's nonsense. The evidence for a lab leak is the same as it's ever been: nothing. There's no evidence the lab even had SARS-CoV-2 on hand before the pandemic, which is an absolute prerequisite for the lab leak theory to be possible, and all the evidence points to the lab not having had the virus. They regularly publish the genetic sequences of the viruses they have, and SARS-CoV-2 is not among them. For comparison, the now-famous RaTG13 was published in 2016. But given the way that conspiracy theories work, proponents of the lab-leak theory will just assert that the lab secretly had SARS-CoV-2, but unlike with all their other viruses, they didn't publish it. The theory is unfalsifiable, and it will constantly morph to remain so.
    • m-ee 5y ago
      If the lab even did secretly have SARS-CoV-2, they must have acquired that sample somewhere. Which means it was out in the wild spreading and ready to spillover. Even buying into the conspiracy theory a bit the lab leak still doesn't seem like the most probable outcome. It's strange that everyone pushing the lab leak ignores this.
    • yarcob 5y ago
• mcintyre1994 5y ago
  Obviously this article isn’t making a comprehensive argument for gain-of-function research, but it’s interesting how the arguments made in favour of it seem to have been demonstrated so poorly during this pandemic. The argument that it’d help detect risk doesn’t seem very good, we know these researchers published work on similar viruses and it doesn’t seem to have caused anything to change and increase safety. The argument that it could contribute to vaccine research doesn’t seem to have held up either, AFAIK there’s no link between such research and the Covid-19 vaccines we now have. I’m sure there are other arguments for the research, and I’m sure it won’t stop regardless of what people want given how the article says Obama’s moratorium was treated and the obvious military applications. But it seems that the experience of Covid-19 does drastically alter the risk/benefit calculation of that research given it seems to have had no benefit in practice.
• Teracotage 5y ago
  G Greenwald has an interesting take on it https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-fbis-strange-anthrax-investigation?token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjoyMjE3NTI2MCwicG9zdF9pZCI6MzcxNjQ2NDYsIl8iOiI5aXU4NSIsImlhdCI6MTYyMjc4Mzc3NSwiZXhwIjoxNjIyNzg3Mzc1LCJpc3MiOiJwdWItMTI4NjYyIiwic3ViIjoicG9zdC1yZWFjdGlvbiJ9.6v-lqb9ULX1nsgeBcrbGhTtYOSUSReRvVMnBki40ojo https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-fbis-strange-anthrax-in...
• mountainboy 5y ago
  People have been discussing a possible lab leak for well over a year. For the most part commenters here on hackernews have been close-minded, arrogant, dismissive and probably wrong. disgusting. I don't actually care much about the lab leak hypothesis. So I don't have a dog in that particular fight. I think contagion itself is a myth. See the work of Dr. Tom Cowan if you are interested. I just don't like the arrogant attitude I see on display here all the time, on so many topics. People wielding beliefs, opinions, and "scientific consensus" as if they were facts, and there is nothing left to discover about biology or wider sciences. Guess what people, human understanding of the natural world is moved forward by those who DO NOT AGREE with scientific consensus of the day. The heretics are the interesting ones to follow, not the rest of you lot. I'm quite frankly glad to see a bunch of you eating crow right now. You should. Good day
• rogers18445 5y ago
  What's interesting is that the way the Chinese govt responded and is responding is consistent with the fact that they believe it escaped one of their labs. There is much to be said in not cooperating in an investigation against yourself, but active measures to prevent the investigation is a step further. Ultimately the problem will be cracked, artificial selection and natural selection can be discerned given enough time and effort.
• DevKoala 5y ago
  >> When Trump himself floated the lab-leak hypothesis last April, his divisiveness and lack of credibility made things more, not less, challenging for those seeking the truth. Bullshit. It was the media which rejected this theory. How is this also Trump's fault for suggesting it? Are they also going to rewrite this part of the record?
• abbassi 5y ago
  https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9
• abbassi 5y ago
  The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2 To the Editor — Since the first reports of novel pneumonia (COVID-19) in Wuhan, Hubei province, China, there has been considerable discussion on the origin of the causative virus, SARS-CoV-2 (also referred to as HCoV-19). Infections with SARS-CoV-2 are now widespread, and as of 11 March 2020, 121,564 cases have been confirmed in more than 110 countries, with 4,373 deaths. SARS-CoV-2 is the seventh coronavirus known to infect humans; SARS-CoV, MERS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2 can cause severe disease, whereas HKU1, NL63, OC43 and 229E are associated with mild symptoms. Here we review what can be deduced about the origin of SARS-CoV-2 from comparative analysis of genomic data. We offer a perspective on the notable features of the SARS-CoV-2 genome and discuss scenarios by which they could have arisen. Our analyses clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus.
• sbagel 5y ago
  The amount of wildly delusional oppression complex in this thread is staggering, HN has really gone downhill. On the media 'not taking it seriously' - because there was no evidence whatsoever outside of conjecture and it was being pushed heavily by misinfo merchants. No grand conspiracy. Skepticism is a good default approach to take for info heavily pushed by such sources with no solid evidence. There were tons of articles and threads on it everywhere including HN, no one was being silenced, give me a break. The oppression complex is really out of control, as if people were being visited by the secret police and forced to immediately cease all discussion about the lab leak theory. It just had no credibility due to lack of evidence. As more info comes to light it's being given more credence, simple as that. Really seems many want to feel like they've been oppressed and silenced when that couldn't be further from reality, reaching absurd levels of delusion here.
  • DiogenesKynikos 5y ago
    > As more info comes to light it's being given more credence, simple as that. The thing is, no new info supporting the lab-leak theory has come to light. It remains pure speculation, just as it always has been. All the evidence still points to the Wuhan Institute of Virology not having had SARS-CoV-2 before the pandemic, and all the new evidence is consistent with the default prior - that SARS-CoV-2 spilled over from animals, just like every other novel virus in history.
    • ravel-bar-foo 5y ago
      No new evidence for natural origin has come to light. It remains pure speculation, just as it always has been, and you are making an isolated demand for rigor. If you read the Nicholas Wade article, the PLOS blog, or even this article, you will know the evidence is not pointing in any one direction at the moment, but there is solid evidence of a cover-up and blame shifting by the Chinese government and the virology / national defense establishment.
      • DiogenesKynikos 5y ago
        > No new evidence for natural origin has come to light. It remains pure speculation, just as it always has been, and you are making an isolated demand for rigor. This is an absurd equivalence. Viruses spill over from nature all the time. There are millions of people coming into contact every day with animal populations that harbor myriad SARS-related coronaviruses. Every known novel virus that has entered the human population has done so through spillover. This is the default hypothesis, which must be overwhelmingly favored at the outset of any discussion. Everything we know so far is perfectly consistent with this default assumption, and there is precisely zero evidence of a lab leak. > If you read the Nicholas Wade article I've read it, and it is appalling that an article by someone who does not understand the subject they are writing about is getting so much circulation. > there is solid evidence of a cover-up There is no evidence at all of a cover-up of a lab leak. Everything we know so far points to the lab not even having had SARS-CoV-2 before the pandemic. It appears to be a completely novel virus, not closely related to anything else known before, which is precisely what you'd expect for a novel virus that spilled over from an unknown animal population. If there were a major outbreak of a virus that the Wuhan Institute of Virology had (such as WIV-1), that would be a different matter, but there isn't.
• orolle 5y ago
  This is nothing new. The independent media wrote about this a year ago and mainstream media organized an anti-fake news campaign against it. Now the mainstream presents itself as the saint - BS! 1 year ago mainstream did not check the facts or at least compare natural versus lab origin. No - they steam rolled independent media for publishing "fake" news, got them kicked off of social media and destroyed their income stream. Now it's factual news and they present themselves as saints, without apologizing for their wrong doing. I do not trust these mainstream media outlets anymore. I spend my money on independent news.
• intricatedetail 5y ago
  I don't trust "prestigious" science magazines, since they publish substandard research on cannabis for political purpose. I am an expert in that topic. If they do this with cannabis, what else they publish with an agenda?
• zalo 5y ago
  Can’t we tell whether the 4% difference between SARS-Cov2 and RaTG13 is responsible for the Furin Cleavage site? If so, that would be a huge connection suggesting GoF and the template coronavirus SARS-Cov2 was based on
• Grustaf 5y ago
  Surely you mean "The lab-leak CONSPIRACY theory"?
• TheGigaChad 5y ago
  I wonder when the people that pushed for lockdowns will get what they deserve as well...Fraudci in prison!
• NoblePublius 5y ago
  Ok so…China infected the President of the United States with a bio weapon? And we are going to do what about it?
  • eutropia 5y ago
    TFA doesn’t call Sars-Cov-2 a bioweapon. Sloppy lab practices on virus research is all it takes to have a lab leak.
    • NoblePublius 5y ago
      to suggest that gain of function research is not in service to bio weapon development is tantamount to suggesting the United States went to the moon purely for scientific purposes
• izhak 5y ago
  The very first paragraph starting with a hackneyed image of an "Asperger’s Syndrome" scientist who is good in "finding patterns" is quite a serious signal of bullshit. Let's read further...
• sam345 5y ago
  Dislike of the messenger and conflicts of interest clouded and intimidated the search for truth. We need an objective press and a de-politicized science free, or fully disclosed of, conflicts of interest. Intimidation by the political wind of the day has substantial consequences.
• myfavoritedog 5y ago
  I know that most people won't; but if this article is some kind of major a revelation to you, I hope that you take some time to re-evaluate your information sources. You really should think more carefully about how you detect bullshit. There were those who were sounding the alarm about this lab leak hypothesis well over a year ago. The overwhelming media narrative to look away from that hypothesis and smear those who talked about it was always artificially manufactured in a way that should have been obvious to most people. But this kind of misinformation is really par for the course with the mainstream media. If you're only paying attention to ABC, NBC, MSNBC, CNN, NYT, WaPo, etc. (and downstream from those sources) for your day-to-day news - you're in the worst manufactured media bubble in existence. Those big media companies are a locus of power that is manipulated to an incredible degree. I'm not telling you to drink the koolaid and only watch Fox News while reading Breitbart. I'm definitely not telling you to waste your time on Alex Jones or someone like that. I'm saying to balance what you look at with other information sources with a variety of political slants. This WIV narrative is just one of many that the MSM has been pushing over the last few years. It scares me how gullible people have been on so many topics.
  • infamouscow 5y ago
    I'm not sure why you are being downvoted for suggesting people should form their own conclusions rather than blindly following team red or blue.
    • myfavoritedog 5y ago
      Yeah, that feeling of belonging to a team is all that matters to a lot of people. I know several people whose happiness is based upon whether or not the Atlanta Falcons or Braves are having a good season. It's bizarre to me, but there it is.
  • altcognito 5y ago
    Im still curious what you think this article really reveals. It makes a lot of unsupported claims. Fox News Is mainstream news. It literally is the most watched network, well beyond all those you listed as being “mainstream news”. Yet they serve the same biased, lack of balanced coverage as the sites you listed. In fact, the article even points out how White House advisors (on Fox, OAN) put out the WIV origin story over and over again using bad research and sources. And again, I still don’t even know why this is more important than the task of dealing with the pandemic first. Pointing fingers directly led to a simpleton policy of blocking flights from China, which was the extent of public health measures for weeks. Cases were pouring in from italy without anyone doing quarantine follow up or contact tracing. It took months to get PPE and adequate testing in place. Even today, as variants occur (hey, but nobody seems to care that those have origins too right?), there are literally Republicans fighting measures against public safety and calling into question the efficacy of vaccination.
• myfavoritedog 5y ago
  When Trump himself floated the lab-leak hypothesis last April, his divisiveness and lack of credibility made things more, not less, challenging for those seeking the truth. Right, it's Trump's fault that the media and political opposition acted like children in opposing every word that came out of his mouth. Apply that logic to your favorite left-leaning politician: "The fact that Obama was always a natural born citizen would have been accepted by some Conservatives who thought he was born in Kenya, but the fact that Obama denied the claims that he was foreign-born made things worse." When you're wrong, you're wrong. Try to own up to it without blaming the people who were actually right.
  • CRConrad 5y ago
    > Right, it's Trump's fault that the media and political opposition acted like children in opposing every word that came out of his mouth. In 2020?!? By then, "acting like children" would have been not to doubt every single word from Über-liar Trump.
  • daughart 5y ago
    And the villagers were the ones to blame in "the boy who cried wolf".
    • myfavoritedog 5y ago
      There was a need to rely on the boy who cried wolf at first, since he was the only one out in the fields. There was never a need to rely on Trump. This was a pandemic. Basic journalistic curiosity and integrity should have meant that our "free" press should have been all over figuring out how COVID-19 came to be. Instead, they played politics with information that they could have easily looked into.
• freeflight 5y ago
  The article claims "the Lancet statement rejected the lab-leak hypothesis", which is a bit misleading considering what the Lancet statement actually did was reject a human origin of the virus, based on genome sampling and other evidence. The two are not equal, the virus could be of natural origin but leaked from a lab, that scenario is still very much possible even in the context of the Lancet statement. Gilles Demaneuf, a data scientist, then is cited as saying there is no evidence in the statement, when actually there are around 12 relevant citations in there. I guess a dozen is just not enough data for a data scientist? The actual context of that statement also gets quite a bit embezzled with an off-hand remark about "xenophobia and climate denialism": Since the first case in the US, there had been a concentrated and very nasty effort to politicize the virus. It was US senators and US new pundits who at first floated the claim of it being a bio weapon [0], that's what triggered said Lancet statement in the very first place. It didn't just come out of nowhere for no reason, as some people like to claim, to imply the statement itself is already evidence for a cover-up. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_misinformation#Wuhan_lab_origin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_misinformation#Wuhan_...
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  • meowface 5y ago
    >the virus could be of natural origin but leaked from a lab, that scenario is still very much possible even in the context of the Lancet statement. That's absolutely true, but one of the main corollary claims is also that SARS-CoV-2 may have resulted in part from gain of function research. People making that claim have said that the virus seems to be particularly effective against humans despite no intermediate forms discovered yet and that a natural virus leaking from a lab would be less likely to spread so widely. They've also cited the fact that the lab does do gain of function research on coronaviruses. If it were true, that definitely wouldn't imply it's a bio-weapon (such research happens everywhere all the time, etc.), but it would be important to know.
    • freeflight 5y ago
      > People making that claim have said that the virus seems to be particularly effective against humans despite no intermediate forms discovered yet But such forms were already discovered back in 2015 as a result of the research that's now labeled as "GoF research", even tho it didn't actually fall under the GoF moratorium back then [0]. Imho the whole thing has a very "shooting the messenger" vibe to it; The evidence we had for this being a very real possibility of happening is now turned into the alleged cause of it actually happening. [0] https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2015.18787 https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2015.18787
• betteryet 5y ago
  Katherine Eban is exactly the right person to be reporting on this. Her work on fraud in the generic drug industry has been eye-opening.
• donewithcoding 5y ago
  I knew something was off from the very beginning once big tech started banning scientists with dissenting voices. The fact that Fauci and Zuckerberg were literally conspiring to induce greater panic in the masses is icing on the cake. Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying's DarkHorse podcast have been very critical of Fauci's involvement but they would have been banned just 6 months ago.
• caseysoftware 5y ago
  FTA: "In one State Department meeting, officials seeking to demand transparency from the Chinese government say they were explicitly told by colleagues not to explore the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s gain-of-function research, because it would bring unwelcome attention to U.S. government funding of it." In an internal memo obtained by Vanity Fair, Thomas DiNanno, former acting assistant secretary of the State Department’s Bureau of Arms Control, Verification, and Compliance, wrote that staff from two bureaus, his own and the Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation, “warned” leaders within his bureau “not to pursue an investigation into the origin of COVID-19” because it would “‘open a can of worms’ if it continued.” Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (or "Who will guard the guards?")
• wycy 5y ago
  I'm normally one to be quick to criticize the media for its many faults, but in this case I blame the scientists--namely those at the Lancet--more than the media. Journalists aren't virologists or biologists, and I have a hard time blaming them for taking the statements of scientists at the most respected medical journal at face value. This is massively discrediting to the Lancet. Similar to the review of Linux patches from U of Minnesota, it would be prudent to review past publications by the scientists who published the Lancet statement.
• FridayoLeary 5y ago
  What i feel is that as much as science has distinguished itself over the pandemic e.g. identifying the virus developing a vaccine etc, it has disgraced itself. First of the criminal and disgraceful actions of the WHO helping China cover up the virus in the initial stages. Then afterwards, despite obviously and understandably being totally ignorant of almost all basic data on how the virus spreads, works etc. (data that the Chinese withheld) they felt confident enough to offer clear guidelines. So much so, that when Trump closed the US to China, he was slammed as xenophobic. The scientific community have a lot to explain, but shockingly they don't seem to be hanging their heads in shame. Rather they are soldiering apparently oblivious to that fact.
• gfodor 5y ago
  Of course, there is still another “conspiracy theory” that was dismissed out of hand without any real investigation due to the immense ideological cost of even acknowledging it could be true. It’s still not even safe to suggest publicly, and, unlike the lab leak theory, it will almost certainly stay in the box given the catastrophic consequences if it were investigated properly and shockingly confirmed.
  • CRConrad 5y ago
    Cute hinting around the bush. You obviously want to spread it, so do.
• macspoofing 5y ago
  We'll see if this lab-leak theory stands the test of time - but if it does, this is another Chernobyl-moment for communist regimes.
• samuelizdat 5y ago
  You guys really think people would do that? Lie about a crisis to consolidate power? Those WMDs were real, they HAVE to be! People with power over me wouldn't lie because that's wrong!
• steve76 5y ago
  For fun, let's pretend covid originated from the police, or the fossil fuel industry, or Israel instead of our leadership's foolish and fake intellectual Marxist friends. What would happen? - Calls for transparency and to gather the evidence - Demands to move on - Or a repeat of the 2020 Reign of Terror, where murders doubled and cities burned until liberals seized power So, what are we moving on to? You turning yourself into a movie star, and getting all the money in DC, NYC, LA, and SF? Everyone will still dislike you. Your endless ambition for power and money won't end. Where you go, the world withers and dies. Where you leave, the world blossoms and thrives. How about we move on to you recogonizing you are restrained by laws and don't get to do whatever you want? Move on to limiting the violence, not adding to it just so you get everything you want? Shields do not defeat blades. Plowshares do. All those resources and skills and demand return horrific martial weapons into civil pursuits, which is the most devastating strategy. Liberals. Marxists. Fascists. Dictators. Autocrats. All the same. All believe they are above the law, and only amount to the dead with their weapons and the dying with their snares and deceit. Pretty soon, they fall right into traps of their own making.
• kodah 5y ago
  Did the zoonotic origin story have a favored political party in the US? Who even introduced it? I wish Trump had never commented on this stuff at all. I feel like what that did is take advantage of people's rage over Trump to sell them facts that they would have never otherwise bought. Not everything is political, contrary to that foolish saying. I think politics ruins everything it touches, like Midas, except it turns everything to trash.
• gadf 5y ago
  De-propagandized title for Western audiences: The lab-leak theory: inside the race to legitimize blaming Chinese for absolutely everything, in order to cover our own failures This new, wholly revamped narrative now comes with an Expanded Feature Set™, containing: - 5 New Ways You Can Blame China without seeming like a Trump-nutbag, or Conspiracy Tin Foilist - Talking points to refute the "racism is racist" balderdash pushed by pro-China sympathizers - Impress your friends with Loads of Data and Legitimate Experts™, they'll never dare question you again - In just 3 Days You'll Breathe a Sigh of Relief as You Discover it wasn't hopeless Western democratic mismanagement and ineptitude that lead to countless unnecessary deaths, but really it was China all along, as you should have suspected, you naughty pseudo-commie
• boringg 5y ago
  The most shocking thing about this is actually the comment thread on Hackernews and the level of conspiracy that exists here under guise of uncovering facts. I've read lots of comments on how major media organizations are hiding information or not covering stories to push a narrative. That the US media landscape is like China State TV. That Fauci must have been involved at a conspiratorial level. It's legit bananas and deeply concerning. I always assume HN commentters broadly havev a scientific mindset (anything is possible - though many are unlikely, fact based, empirical evidence, probabilities) as I equated programming/computer engineering similar to scientific thinking. However I realize through experience that many people here like to think they have a scientific thought process and in fact don't and truly harbor intense conspiracies. There is a chance that the commenters are actually not that representative of the broader population and this story brings out the biases of people who have a conspiratorial Fauci angle.
• jb1991 5y ago
  > the researchers had engineered mice with humanized lungs What in the world does that mean?!
• inancgumus 5y ago
  TLDR: Demaneuf soon discovered that there had been four incidents of SARS-related lab breaches since 2004, two occuring at a top laboratory in Beijing. Due to overcrowding there, a live SARS virus that had been improperly deactivated, had been moved to a refrigerator in a corridor. A graduate student then examined it in the electron microscope room and sparked an outbreak.
• Overdr0ne 5y ago
  Independent of whether the virus was lab-leaked or natural in origin, the conduct of Peter Daszac was completely inappropriate, and he should face consequences. Spearheading and cosigning the statement: "We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin.", when you have specific career and financial interest in that statement being true, is a conflict of interest, is not scientific, and should be addressed publicly. But then privately saying “you, me and him should not sign this statement, so it has some distance from us and therefore doesn’t work in a counterproductive way.” Daszak added, “We’ll then put it out in a way that doesn’t link it back to our collaboration so we maximize an independent voice.” displays clear intent to manipulate public opinion. Unbelievable.
• lazyeye 5y ago
  A good article although it spends too much time blaming Trump for other peoples failures. How hilarious will it be if Trump was more accurate on this issue than Fauci?
• throwaway67435 5y ago
  A sideshow is what’s happening on Wikipedia. There’s a cabal of editors that shut off any mention of a lab leak, using mis-applied content guidelines designed to protect against quack medical advice. Talk pages are constantly purged, which is a sign that someone desperately doesn’t want a consensus to form. Anti-pile-on policies are used as a way to ignore criticism. Are these Chinese government agents? Overzealous students studying in North America? Gain-of-function grad students protecting their turf? There were a smaller number of suspicious accounts that overzealously pushed the lab leak, possibly agents of Taiwan, but these were banned swiftly. With the anti leak thought-policing editors, normal editors are intimidated into silence. Despite all the talk of dealing with organized manipulation around the 2020 election, the foundation hasn’t bothered intervening. Normal amateur editors don’t have the resources to push back against zealous state-actors. This issue could pose a devastating blow to Wikipedia.
• kangaroozach 5y ago
  Lableaktheory.com has aggregated links to various primary and secondary sources on the topic.