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> It is immensely unfortunate this issue became politicized. This comment is over a year too late. Almost immediately after COVID became the topic du jour the

> It is immensely unfortunate this issue became politicized. This comment is over a year too late. Almost immediately after COVID became the topic du jour the technocrats and media were aggressively shutting down anyone who noticed the circumstantial evidence that the coronavirus emerged in close proximity to a lab conducting sloppy coronavirus research. That, coupled with China's refusal to allow anyone outside the CCP apparatus to investigate should have, at least, given thinking people pause. But clearly, "thinking people" doesn't characterize the media or the technocrats and their speech police. And we shouldn't forget the astonishingly sudden about-face by the media (almost all of whom work for companies who also sell their entertainment properties in China) who routinely called COVID the "China virus" or "Wuhan virus" one day and the next day castigated anyone who dared to do so as an irredeemable racist. It was political from the beginning.

TazeTSchnitzel 5y ago
A lot of this “circumstantial evidence” was and is game-of-telephone nonsense. Many mix together two completely different institutions (the Wuhan Center for Disease Control and the Wuhan Institute of Virology) which are several kilometres apart, for example. (Edit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ab-r0capbzk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ab-r0capbzk is a great look at said game of telephone.)
- dimgl 5y ago
  I’m not sure this is a valid counterargument. The intent is clear when someone says “it likely leaked from the lab in Wuhan”… I’m surprised how pedantic everything has gotten.
- btmorex 5y ago
  It's actually this exact attitude that kept it out of the media. I'm curious: what is your goal? Everyone can see the glaringly obvious circumstantial evidence that it was a lab leak. At this point, comments like your's just look ridiculous.
  - LudwigNagasena 5y ago
    Oh, so vulnerable and fragile media decided to spin a ridiculous narrative because of stupid comments on the internet? Maybe the media should grow up and stop acting like a stereotypical 13 year old girl.
    - btmorex 5y ago
      No, it's an attitude of haughty dismissal, which the media has a real problem with too.
      - LudwigNagasena 5y ago
        Yeah, it seems like a real problem when the media can’t even clear the bar for internet comments.
- jonathanstrange 5y ago
  To be honest, the "evidence" I've seen so far boils down to stating that a virology lab was nearby the first outbreak so sure it must have come from that lab and couldn't have come from a wet market or elsewhere. In other words, evidence is confused with plausible storytelling, in incredibly common mistake nowadays. What's mildly infuriating me about this is that the people who push the lab escape hypothesis seem to have political motivations, but the wet market origin hypothesis is much worse for China. Although they have officially prohibited many of the practices and animal abuse that make it easier for viruses to jump to humans from other hosts, these practices remain widespread. It's much easier to secure virology labs than tens of thousands of semi-legal and illegal wet markets.
  - btmorex 5y ago
    If that's the only evidence you've seen so far, you're not looking very hard.
  - TazeTSchnitzel 5y ago
    There's certainly an argument that it's all the fault of the Great Leap Forward.
- refenestrator 5y ago
  The fascinating part is everyone did an about face on it overnight after the WSJ article. We went from Facebook banning mention of the theory to everyone being certain it's right on the basis of "national security flack says someone who works at the lab was sick, during flu season".
  - btmorex 5y ago
    It's almost like the media is taking cues from the Biden administration.
    - refenestrator 5y ago
      Yes, but this is more the trans-administration national security blob than Biden people in particular. The WSJ author had brought us other CIA-approved gems about WMDs in Iraq once upon a time. You might be onto something with garden-variety liberals feeling 'free' to try and blame China now that Trump's out of sight, though.
      - jpeloquin 5y ago
        > The WSJ author had brought us other CIA-approved gems about WMDs in Iraq once upon a time. In case other people besides myself were confused, we're apparently talking about Michael Gordon, and this WSJ article [0], not this one [1]. Michael Gordon also wrote [2], which reported on the Bush administration's claims that Iraq was developing nuclear weapons. [0] 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... [1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/wuhan-lab-leak-question-chinese-mine-covid-pandemic-11621871125 https://www.wsj.com/articles/wuhan-lab-leak-question-chinese... [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...
hn_throwaway_99 5y ago
I downvoted you, and I'll explain why. In my recollection, the very first "politicization" I heard of Covid's origins were politicians insisting that the virus was man-made. Politicians, mind you, who had been repeatedly clear that they were not particularly interested in figuring out the truth in what happened, but assigning blame. So then I saw the unfortunate (and this is where I agree with part of your sentiment) response from media and the scientific establishment insisting that this wasn't possible, instead of stating the truth, that is "we just don't know". Note these are similar falsehoods that the scientific establishment took early on in the pandemic, saying "masks don't work for the public", instead of saying that "we're scared there won't be enough masks for hospitals, and we don't know how effective masks are by the general public." Finally, this statement by you is downright laughable: > And we shouldn't forget the astonishingly sudden about-face by the media (almost all of whom work for companies who also sell their entertainment properties in China) who routinely called COVID the "China virus" or "Wuhan virus" I recall quite clearly one particular American president calling it "the China virus" and virtually every mainstream US media outlet calling him out for racism. I don't remember any member of the media establishment calling it the China virus.
- throwkeep 5y ago
  The corporate media is good at memory holing things, but here's a compilation of them calling it the "Wuhan Coronavirus", "Chinese Coronavirus" and "China's Coronavirus": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eZtCq1aj2g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eZtCq1aj2g Bonus complication of when "the flu is worse" was the narrative: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVDPVBZF2Xg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVDPVBZF2Xg
  - refulgentis 5y ago
    - Link A: The clips are a compilation of COVID19 being referred to as the "Wuhan Coronavirus" and "China Coronavirus" in Q1 2020. I'm not sure what I was supposed to take away from it, is the implication that The US Media was hypercritical because people criticized the US president for repeatedly saying it xenophobically, months later? - Link B: The clips are a compilation of health experts on MSNBC/CNN in January 2020, when the outbreak was confined to China, telling people they didn't need to worry yet. I thought we'd emerge from this with an understanding of how quickly things move and operating under uncertainty a la Taleb, but in the current American context, it appears it turned into another reason to triple down on They'ing.
throw_away 5y ago
It was also political because of the punitive measures sought by those pointing fingers to China— ranging from 10 trillion in reparations to war. Rather than saying hey, maybe this gain of function business was a mistake & we should just do it in the supercomputers like with nukes or something. Personally, I don't really understand the focus on pinning down the exact reason this happened. Stop GoF research and shut down wet markets. Stop encroaching on wilderness as best we can while we're at it. Do all the things.
- Lazare 5y ago
  Many reforms will be aggressively resisted. Wet markets are unlikely to be shut down unless they can be plausibly fingered as the source of COVID-19 (and maybe not even then). GoF research has been heavily criticized for years, but it is still funded because there's a lobby in favour of it. People saying "hey, this could cause a pandemic" wasn't enough. There's another in favour of encroaching on wilderness. > Do all the things. We're more likely going to do none of the things. Again, unless one of them can be shown to be directly related to COVID, and even then, it's questionable.
  - throw_away 5y ago
    Maybe after 2020, the other side of those arguments have a bit more weight for everybody. Were we to focus more on those things rather than war and reparation, maybe we can survive as a species. But yeah, probably not.
- newrotik 5y ago
  Is it realistic to expect them to comply with demands that they should stop GOF research / shut down wet markets without a credible threat of (at least) an economic retribution?
  - throw_away 5y ago
    The US does this kind of research, too. And, it seems like it even funded the Wuhan research at least to some extent. Would the US need a threat of economic retribution to reconsider this research? Or to change a practice of their food supply suspected of causing significant harm? Writing that out, I guess maybe it would.
phlakaton 5y ago
Not to mention that the author rails against it being "politicized," only to propose a deeply political reason why it happened. Like, seriously, dude?
smoldesu 5y ago
> who routinely called COVID the "China virus" or "Wuhan virus" one day and the next day castigated anyone who dared to do so as an irredeemable racist. Probably because Patient Zero was located in Wuhan? What sort of cognitive dissonance am I missing here?

TazeTSchnitzel 5y ago

A lot of this “circumstantial evidence” was and is game-of-telephone nonsense. Many mix together two completely different institutions (the Wuhan Center for Disease Control and the Wuhan Institute of Virology) which are several kilometres apart, for example. (Edit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ab-r0capbzk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ab-r0capbzk is a great look at said game of telephone.)

dimgl 5y ago
I’m not sure this is a valid counterargument. The intent is clear when someone says “it likely leaked from the lab in Wuhan”… I’m surprised how pedantic everything has gotten.
btmorex 5y ago
It's actually this exact attitude that kept it out of the media. I'm curious: what is your goal? Everyone can see the glaringly obvious circumstantial evidence that it was a lab leak. At this point, comments like your's just look ridiculous.
- LudwigNagasena 5y ago
  Oh, so vulnerable and fragile media decided to spin a ridiculous narrative because of stupid comments on the internet? Maybe the media should grow up and stop acting like a stereotypical 13 year old girl.
  - btmorex 5y ago
    No, it's an attitude of haughty dismissal, which the media has a real problem with too.
    - LudwigNagasena 5y ago
      Yeah, it seems like a real problem when the media can’t even clear the bar for internet comments.
jonathanstrange 5y ago
To be honest, the "evidence" I've seen so far boils down to stating that a virology lab was nearby the first outbreak so sure it must have come from that lab and couldn't have come from a wet market or elsewhere. In other words, evidence is confused with plausible storytelling, in incredibly common mistake nowadays. What's mildly infuriating me about this is that the people who push the lab escape hypothesis seem to have political motivations, but the wet market origin hypothesis is much worse for China. Although they have officially prohibited many of the practices and animal abuse that make it easier for viruses to jump to humans from other hosts, these practices remain widespread. It's much easier to secure virology labs than tens of thousands of semi-legal and illegal wet markets.
- btmorex 5y ago
  If that's the only evidence you've seen so far, you're not looking very hard.
- TazeTSchnitzel 5y ago
  There's certainly an argument that it's all the fault of the Great Leap Forward.
refenestrator 5y ago
The fascinating part is everyone did an about face on it overnight after the WSJ article. We went from Facebook banning mention of the theory to everyone being certain it's right on the basis of "national security flack says someone who works at the lab was sick, during flu season".
- btmorex 5y ago
  It's almost like the media is taking cues from the Biden administration.
  - refenestrator 5y ago
    Yes, but this is more the trans-administration national security blob than Biden people in particular. The WSJ author had brought us other CIA-approved gems about WMDs in Iraq once upon a time. You might be onto something with garden-variety liberals feeling 'free' to try and blame China now that Trump's out of sight, though.
    - jpeloquin 5y ago
      > The WSJ author had brought us other CIA-approved gems about WMDs in Iraq once upon a time. In case other people besides myself were confused, we're apparently talking about Michael Gordon, and this WSJ article [0], not this one [1]. Michael Gordon also wrote [2], which reported on the Bush administration's claims that Iraq was developing nuclear weapons. [0] 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... [1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/wuhan-lab-leak-question-chinese-mine-covid-pandemic-11621871125 https://www.wsj.com/articles/wuhan-lab-leak-question-chinese... [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...

hn_throwaway_99 5y ago

I downvoted you, and I'll explain why. In my recollection, the very first "politicization" I heard of Covid's origins were politicians insisting that the virus was man-made. Politicians, mind you, who had been repeatedly clear that they were not particularly interested in figuring out the truth in what happened, but assigning blame. So then I saw the unfortunate (and this is where I agree with part of your sentiment) response from media and the scientific establishment insisting that this wasn't possible, instead of stating the truth, that is "we just don't know". Note these are similar falsehoods that the scientific establishment took early on in the pandemic, saying "masks don't work for the public", instead of saying that "we're scared there won't be enough masks for hospitals, and we don't know how effective masks are by the general public." Finally, this statement by you is downright laughable: > And we shouldn't forget the astonishingly sudden about-face by the media (almost all of whom work for companies who also sell their entertainment properties in China) who routinely called COVID the "China virus" or "Wuhan virus" I recall quite clearly one particular American president calling it "the China virus" and virtually every mainstream US media outlet calling him out for racism. I don't remember any member of the media establishment calling it the China virus.

throwkeep 5y ago
The corporate media is good at memory holing things, but here's a compilation of them calling it the "Wuhan Coronavirus", "Chinese Coronavirus" and "China's Coronavirus": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eZtCq1aj2g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eZtCq1aj2g Bonus complication of when "the flu is worse" was the narrative: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVDPVBZF2Xg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVDPVBZF2Xg
- refulgentis 5y ago
  - Link A: The clips are a compilation of COVID19 being referred to as the "Wuhan Coronavirus" and "China Coronavirus" in Q1 2020. I'm not sure what I was supposed to take away from it, is the implication that The US Media was hypercritical because people criticized the US president for repeatedly saying it xenophobically, months later? - Link B: The clips are a compilation of health experts on MSNBC/CNN in January 2020, when the outbreak was confined to China, telling people they didn't need to worry yet. I thought we'd emerge from this with an understanding of how quickly things move and operating under uncertainty a la Taleb, but in the current American context, it appears it turned into another reason to triple down on They'ing.

throw_away 5y ago

It was also political because of the punitive measures sought by those pointing fingers to China— ranging from 10 trillion in reparations to war. Rather than saying hey, maybe this gain of function business was a mistake & we should just do it in the supercomputers like with nukes or something. Personally, I don't really understand the focus on pinning down the exact reason this happened. Stop GoF research and shut down wet markets. Stop encroaching on wilderness as best we can while we're at it. Do all the things.

Lazare 5y ago
Many reforms will be aggressively resisted. Wet markets are unlikely to be shut down unless they can be plausibly fingered as the source of COVID-19 (and maybe not even then). GoF research has been heavily criticized for years, but it is still funded because there's a lobby in favour of it. People saying "hey, this could cause a pandemic" wasn't enough. There's another in favour of encroaching on wilderness. > Do all the things. We're more likely going to do none of the things. Again, unless one of them can be shown to be directly related to COVID, and even then, it's questionable.
- throw_away 5y ago
  Maybe after 2020, the other side of those arguments have a bit more weight for everybody. Were we to focus more on those things rather than war and reparation, maybe we can survive as a species. But yeah, probably not.
newrotik 5y ago
Is it realistic to expect them to comply with demands that they should stop GOF research / shut down wet markets without a credible threat of (at least) an economic retribution?
- throw_away 5y ago
  The US does this kind of research, too. And, it seems like it even funded the Wuhan research at least to some extent. Would the US need a threat of economic retribution to reconsider this research? Or to change a practice of their food supply suspected of causing significant harm? Writing that out, I guess maybe it would.

phlakaton 5y ago

Not to mention that the author rails against it being "politicized," only to propose a deeply political reason why it happened. Like, seriously, dude?

smoldesu 5y ago

> who routinely called COVID the "China virus" or "Wuhan virus" one day and the next day castigated anyone who dared to do so as an irredeemable racist. Probably because Patient Zero was located in Wuhan? What sort of cognitive dissonance am I missing here?