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Can someone explain in non charged terms why its 'bad' to investigate and or ask the right questions regarding whether or not the virus was leaked from the Wuha

by S_A_P 5y ago

Can someone explain in non charged terms why its 'bad' to investigate and or ask the right questions regarding whether or not the virus was leaked from the Wuhan lab? Im genuinely curious here. Thinking hypothetically here, if it were leaked wouldnt we all want to do a post mortem and figure out how to prevent it from happening again?

AdamN 5y ago
Some/many people can't separate the accusation from it being shown to be true. During that period of time (years??), it's a distraction for those people from the other problems like handling vaccine distribution, relations with China independent of COVID19, etc... Yes, if this were a narrow academic research project looking into the origin that was left de-politicized until there was an outcome that would be great. Unfortunately this whole thing was born political and China hasn't done itself any favors by always being so hush hush.
soperj 5y ago
It's not bad, it's just the reason people are doing it have nothing to do with preventing it form happening again.
FriendlyNormie 5y ago
The fucking fact that you felt the need to even ask this. Jesus christ.
legostormtroopr 5y ago
There are only 2 reasons I can think of: 1. Because Trump called for an investigation into the Lab Leak Theory. Since Trump is bad, everything he says and does is always bad. This meant that everyone who was anti-Trump said that the lab leak theory was 100% false, definitely a consipracy theory and hence.... bad. 2. Because the Chinese government have used the modern political environment to deflect all critism as racism. Because people often shorten "Chinese Government" to "China" in news (much like the US), they take it that attacks against "China" aren't really attacks against the country but instead racist attacks against the people. Since racism is bad, criticism of China is racism, and investigating the Lab Leak leak is criticism of China - it stans to reason that the Lab Leak theory is racism, and hence.... bad.
- fairpoints777 5y ago
  Well reasoned points, not sure why you are getting downvoted, probably the left/liberal censorship crew (my way of thinking or the highway, insert random accusations of racism/sexism)
- api 5y ago
  (1) is a big reason why hyper-polarizing cult of personality figures in positions of political power are categorically bad. Anything they say is mindlessly believed by their cult, and mindlessly disbelieved by their anti-cult. Government, politics, and politicians are among those things that should be very boring. The mark of a good political leader is that you don't have to think about politics very much during their tenure. Interesting government was a major cause of death in the early 20th century.
- smolder 5y ago
  This sort of non-reasoning is all too common now in partisan news sources. They project opinions out to their viewers without any reasoning or supporting evidence. You've spotted a good example on the left. The right does it too with all sorts of racism and antifa nonsense. Oh and apparently the election was stolen. All around our political climate over the last 20 years has gotten progressively more insane and tribalistic. Another poster in another thread once said that during the Bush and Obama years, safeguards against misleading the US public with counterintelligence ops were removed. I feel like that must have something to do with the explosive growth of the partisan-bullshit-drama-news business. The obvious factors in changing news media are the internet and social media, but I don't think that fully explains the widening divide and eager abandonment of objective reality.
  - mattgreenrocks 5y ago
    Objective reality is sometimes painful, nuanced, and rarely has tidy solutions. It is a poor vehicle for a narrative. Thus, it is weaponized by contorting it into half-truths that serve the important purpose of affirming pre-existing values. The past year has made it extraordinarily clear that the epistemology of science is far too demanding for most people. And that’s okay; it just usually isn’t so starkly obvious.
McTossOut 5y ago
No, investigation or questions are probably merited given the scale of this thing. Random fragments of what sounds like an investigation getting immediately published is the problem.
Splendor 5y ago
This is a charged topic, but I'll try to answer objectively without trying to argue whether the reasons are good or bad. I can think of two reasonable reasons why someone wouldn't want to investigate the matter: 1. It would be embarrassing for China. 2. It may be hard to properly communicate or convince people of the difference between an accidental lab leak vs. an intentional lab leak which could add fuel to a fire of jingoism/nationalism in other countries. Again, I'm trying hard not to make a judgement here. Hopefully I did a decent job.
- fairpoints777 5y ago
  It's not your problem if people take it the wrong way, points are valid, you don't need to dedicate half your message to disclaimers to appease the hyperoffended crowd - what should I get upset about today people
- 542458 5y ago
  #2 is very real. I have friends who have been harassed in public because of their perceived race, which makes me very sick of the whole conversation. This idea got politically weaponized early in the pandemic, which also makes me suspicious of the benevolence of some of the people “just looking into it”. There’s also a #3, that is that I’m irritated that people are becoming experts on virology after reading a Wikipedia article (or worse) and deciding to “look into” this, then declaring things to be damning evidence based on an extremely limited understanding of the subject matter.
- pseudo0 5y ago
  I'd add: 3. Experts who conduct or fund virology research don't want it to be true, because it would inevitably cause a massive clampdown on what research is allowed and how it is conducted. It would also cause lasting damage to the field's reputation and prestige. Eg. imagine being a nuclear researcher in the aftermath of Chernobyl. 4. People who have significant personal or business ties with China are concerned that a finding of culpability will result in escalating tariffs and other sanctions, damaging China's economy and potentially causing collateral damage for those who do business with Chinese firms.
Leary 5y ago
Strawman. Nobody, even China, argues it's bad to investigate. Everyone just wants the investigation to be free from political interference.
justinpombrio 5y ago
If it leaked from the lab, preventing that is very easy. We just need to stop doing gain of function research. Whether or not Covid came from a lab, it's at least plausible that it did, and a virus just as bad could get accidentally released in the future. So our options are: - Continue gain of function research, and risk killing literally millions of people - Stop gain of function research, and lose any knowledge we would gain from it. Honestly, I don't know the first thing about gain of function research, but that's one hell of a risk we're taking with it. Can we maybe not try to make the viruses deadlier?
- notJim 5y ago
  Is it a certainty that the lab was doing gain of function research? Haven't followed this closely.
  - lamontcg 5y ago
    There's no indication WIV was doing any gain of function research. WIV did collaborate with UNC Chapel Hill to do GOF research in America, in mice using a SARS-CoV-1 backbone. The US government send funds to WIV to study SADS-CoV in pigs. Circular logic is invoked to "prove" that those funds led to secret GoF research which has never been published or talked about on the basis that the pandemic arising in Wuhan is too much of a coincidence (and coincidences logically can never happen).
    - busymom0 5y ago
      Dr Shi admitted they were studying to make viruses jump from one species to humans. That's "gain of function".
      - lamontcg 5y ago
        She states specifically that she was not doing GOF research into how to make viruses more virulent or jump species. You can study how viruses jump species without making them jump species. And if you disagree with that, do you have details of the experiments and how they were seeking to enhance existing viruses which goes beyond just speculation and circular logic?
protontorpedo 5y ago
It's not bad, tracing the cause is a fundamentally good thing. In fact, afaik, it's just procedure. But many reasonable people nowadays are reluctant to publicly entertain any ideas that can be politically weaponized, in this case to increase the anti-china sentiment.
Spellman 5y ago
In isolation, there's nothing "bad" about it. And we don't have enough proof to say for sure it was nor that is was not a lab leak. That being said, there are a lot of confounding issues. Mostly political in nature. First, the vast majority of people who insisted on the lab leak theory did it to deflect blame and target China as a scapegoat. And many trotted out terrible and conspiratorial reasonings for why the accidental lab leak theory was the "truth," many going to the point of it being an intentional leak and that it was designed in the lab by humans. Not to mention using these claims to suck up attention away from other things like actually handling the pandemic. And to pile on politically a China=bad narrative. So by association there's been a severe reluctance to add more ammo to this group's claims. Secondly, history and the nature of the spread put the chances more on the side of a zoological vector given the information we have now. Obviously this isn't 100% proven yet, but so far most are hedging on historical priors. Especially considering the conditions of farming and the fur industry that exists in China. So the majority of the community side against the lab leak as the most likely option. Of course, many scientists still leave open the option that it was a lab leak. We don't have enough information to completely be sure. And there's some odd circumstantial evidence that may point to a lab leak somehow. Including that China hasn't been the most forthcoming. Still, it's very much a minority opinion in the field at this time and many people insisting it "must be investigated" seem to be doing it for political reasons as cover for other purposes. Here's from Forbes an opinion piece about the current evidence we have so far about the origins and possible explanations. https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2021/06/11/ask-ethan-how-can-you-be-so-sure-that-covid-19-didnt-happen-from-a-lab-leak/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2021/06/11/ask-...
- api 5y ago
  > did it to deflect blame and target China as a scapegoat. I don't see how that works. The US funded some of the research in Wuhan and it was done in collaboration with US scientists. If the lab leak hypothesis is true both the USA and China could share the blame.
  - Spellman 5y ago
    That's more of a recent development in my reckoning. The original form was almost purely China=bad. Then it has morphed to include some of the US scientists as more information came out. But specifically most (in the conspiracy group) are trying to tie it specifically to Dr Fauci who became a lightning rod for controversy and political attacks during the pandemic as he became the face of the government's response. Thus it's not all US scientists. Just the ones some don't like politically and who are "in bed with China." And furthermore, sure the US may have funded some of it, but at the end of the day China is the one who goofed. Of course, I'm speculating a lot and there are a lot of variations that I've seen for support for the lab leak theory. Just trying to summarize some of the hotter takes I've seen.
hraedon 5y ago
It isn't bad to investigate or ask questions; the problem is that many of the people who are vocal proponents of the lab-leak theory are making a motte and bailey argument that takes the form of "the virus escaped from a lab in China" as the motte and "China deliberately released the virus to hurt its enemies/Trump/etc" as the bailey. I don't have a strong opinion on the origin of the virus, but the idea that China released it deliberately is very stupid and where most of the lab-leak conversations I've followed end up. It also doesn't help that China's current leadership is extremely allergic to anything that implicates China at all, so their actions are largely compatible with what you'd see in a coverup.
- germinalphrase 5y ago
  Motte and Bailey Definition: “ Motte and bailey (MAB) is a combination of bait-and-switch and equivocation in which someone switches between a "motte" (an easy-to-defend and often common-sense statement, such as "culture shapes our experiences") and a "bailey" (a hard-to-defend and more controversial statement, such as "cultural knowledge is just as valid as scientific knowledge") in order to defend a viewpoint. Someone will argue the easy-to-defend position (motte) temporarily, to ward off critics, while the less-defensible position (bailey) remains the desired belief, yet is never actually defended.” https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Motte_and_bailey https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Motte_and_bailey
m3kw9 5y ago
If found to be or not to be, it can be used for political ammo
andyxor 5y ago
Fauci’s NIAID institution directly sponsored coronavirus research in Wuhan lab suspected in the leak (via more than $800k in grants in 2015-2019). They are probably as interested as Chinese government in downplaying the role of this lab in the Covid outbreak.
winrid 5y ago
Why don't you ask if it came from one of the two US labs that do the same kind of research? Especially since we know the virus was present, globally, months before the outbreak in Wuhan....
- tomjakubowski 5y ago
  We do?
  - winrid 5y ago
    It did not sound like "we" included the person I was replying to. :)
- xdennis 5y ago
  Pretty much every source agrees that Covid was first detected in Wuhan in December 2019. Do you have any proof that it was detected earlier?
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
jollybean 5y ago
There's nothing bad about it rhetorically, academically. But from a populist perspective, it's really scary. Crime is up across the board 33% in the US due to various factors, populist anger is real and that's just 'regular covid stuff'. On the margins of the bell curve, people do really crazy things. Anti-Asian acts, ranging from a few simple harmful words on the street, to full on assault, have measurably increased this year. So you can see some of the impact of populism right in the numbers. With 600 000 dead Americans and 240 Million guns ... it's pretty scary to think of what might happen. Geopolitically, it's a 'monster' thing, on the order of 9/11, invasion of a country etc.. Accident or not, if China 'caused' a massive worldwide decline and millions of deaths ... it's hard to imagine what the fallout would be. If there were inexorable, clean, hard evidence ... then I can see 25% of the population demanding blood, i.e. 'war' as within the scope of retribution. So the 'truth', the 'nuances', 'public communications' and 'goestrategic implictions' all form different aspects to thi answer.
jb775 5y ago
Population control. There's around 8 billion people on Earth. Most of the wealth on Earth is controlled by a small number of those people. What stops the other people from taking it from them? Answer: The illusion of power and control, via use of that wealth. Historically, the best way to control people is to divide them...over and over. That's what we're seeing nowadays: via use of the mass media. You'll rarely see a major news story nowadays that doesn't pit large groups of humans against one another. Currently, the best "division" strategy is for them to use the media to promote left-wing thought. Since a lab-leak doesn't align with the political aspect of Covid, they're doing everything they can to squash any discussion of it. Admitting they were wrong, or having discussion around the possibility of them being wrong, would bring the possibility of people waking the fuck up to the level of bullshit they're being fed.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- verall 5y ago
  Thanks, "Covid was NWO population control" is my new favorite crazy-person Covid theory. It now beats the #2, "Covid isn't real but it was created by the Chinese government". Wake up, Sheeple!
  - jb775 5y ago
    I didn't say covid is population control, I said the media is. And if you lived in the 15th century you'd probably be the guy ridiculing anyone who said the Earth might not be flat. How dare those crazy people!
    - verall 5y ago
      I'm sure in the 15th century, I'd be a lowly peasant, barely able to read and blissfully unaware of Earth's shape. I'm not royalty or something in this life.
booleandilemma 5y ago
Because then it could truly be called “The China Virus”, and there are a lot of people that don’t want that to happen.
- 8note 5y ago
  A lab leak theory doesn't necessitate that it's a chinese lab
cyanydeez 5y ago
it matters how a line of questioning starts. same way it matters if police coerce a suspect to "confess". tainting an inquisition that started with no factual observations is what has happened.
an_opabinia 5y ago
By the time Russia disclosed the Sverdlovsk incident, the Soviet Union didn’t exist. It’s only bad from the perspective of a specific government elite in China, and no one else.
topspin 5y ago
> Can someone explain Were one to entertain the possibility that a lab facility in China was the source of infection leading to a global pandemic then isolationists and nationalists and other persona non grata might imagine they've received some validation of their policies. Naturally this is intolerable. So intolerable, in fact, that you are obligated to employ however much cognitive dissonance you find necessary such that any suggestion of a lab leak becomes unthinkable. Obviously anyone that fails to do so is exhibiting faulty and dangerous thinking.
- etangent 5y ago
  This is an extraordinary comment. To follow up, however, wouldn't suppressing talking about this stuff provide even more validation?
  - topspin 5y ago
    Of course. But we're dealing with ideology here, and ideologues rarely perform the sort of calculations you have in mind.
- ramoz 5y ago
  This, itself, is dangerous thinking.
  - ajsnigrutin 5y ago
    Yes, this is literally the "ministry of truth" and thought policing in action.
- ajsnigrutin 5y ago
  So, because of a few people, who already believe this has happened, you decide not to investigate (which reaffirms their beliefs), and possibly lie to all of your citizens, because a country might have accidentaly or intentionally killed many many people, and won't get sanctioned in any way because of that?
  - 5y ago
brighton36 5y ago
Cultural degeneration? The messenger is usually shot, because people believe that what they don't know can't hurt them. Here, I think people valued 'clarity' in risky times. (even if that clarity was baseless)
theknocker 5y ago
A bunch of liberal pundits snarked out about it which caused me to behave like an arrogant jerk, so now instead of admitting that I should do better at thinking for myself, I pretend like I don't understand why someone thinks an apple might have fallen from a nearby apple tree, like the rest of my hipster friends who refuse to admit the media prescribes their entire worldview wholesale.
passwordreset 5y ago
When I first heard the lab leak hypothesis around Feb or March 2020, it was entirely non-partisan and was being investigated by people who had no skin in the political game. At the same time, some other politically-motivated people were claiming that the virus was both a "democratic hoax", and a "bioweapon" made by China and deliberately released on their own people so that it could be blamed on the US and embarrass the US President. Now, those same politically motivated people are tying themselves to the lab leak theory, because none of their other nonsense panned out. I'm surprised that people had forgotten this already. You don't hear much about a "democratic hoax" or a "bioweapon" nowadays, but those words were a part of the conversation a year ago. Note that the phrase "politically motivated people" was substituted for the original term "whack jobs", which I think is more appropriate; however, your asked me to use "non charged terms", so I did my best.
Gatsky 5y ago
I think virologists may have some incentive to discount the possibility of a lab leak. They seem to be the first to deny it is a possibility. This could be because they know what they are talking about. But at the same time, if a lab leak was proven, there would be repurcussions for all virology research. It would at the very least become much more heavily regulated. BSL4 research and facilities may get canned altogether. At worse... virology would receive an indelible stain of epochal vitriol.

by S_A_P 5y ago

AdamN 5y ago

Some/many people can't separate the accusation from it being shown to be true. During that period of time (years??), it's a distraction for those people from the other problems like handling vaccine distribution, relations with China independent of COVID19, etc... Yes, if this were a narrow academic research project looking into the origin that was left de-politicized until there was an outcome that would be great. Unfortunately this whole thing was born political and China hasn't done itself any favors by always being so hush hush.

soperj 5y ago

It's not bad, it's just the reason people are doing it have nothing to do with preventing it form happening again.

FriendlyNormie 5y ago

The fucking fact that you felt the need to even ask this. Jesus christ.

legostormtroopr 5y ago

There are only 2 reasons I can think of: 1. Because Trump called for an investigation into the Lab Leak Theory. Since Trump is bad, everything he says and does is always bad. This meant that everyone who was anti-Trump said that the lab leak theory was 100% false, definitely a consipracy theory and hence.... bad. 2. Because the Chinese government have used the modern political environment to deflect all critism as racism. Because people often shorten "Chinese Government" to "China" in news (much like the US), they take it that attacks against "China" aren't really attacks against the country but instead racist attacks against the people. Since racism is bad, criticism of China is racism, and investigating the Lab Leak leak is criticism of China - it stans to reason that the Lab Leak theory is racism, and hence.... bad.

fairpoints777 5y ago
Well reasoned points, not sure why you are getting downvoted, probably the left/liberal censorship crew (my way of thinking or the highway, insert random accusations of racism/sexism)
api 5y ago
(1) is a big reason why hyper-polarizing cult of personality figures in positions of political power are categorically bad. Anything they say is mindlessly believed by their cult, and mindlessly disbelieved by their anti-cult. Government, politics, and politicians are among those things that should be very boring. The mark of a good political leader is that you don't have to think about politics very much during their tenure. Interesting government was a major cause of death in the early 20th century.
smolder 5y ago
This sort of non-reasoning is all too common now in partisan news sources. They project opinions out to their viewers without any reasoning or supporting evidence. You've spotted a good example on the left. The right does it too with all sorts of racism and antifa nonsense. Oh and apparently the election was stolen. All around our political climate over the last 20 years has gotten progressively more insane and tribalistic. Another poster in another thread once said that during the Bush and Obama years, safeguards against misleading the US public with counterintelligence ops were removed. I feel like that must have something to do with the explosive growth of the partisan-bullshit-drama-news business. The obvious factors in changing news media are the internet and social media, but I don't think that fully explains the widening divide and eager abandonment of objective reality.
- mattgreenrocks 5y ago
  Objective reality is sometimes painful, nuanced, and rarely has tidy solutions. It is a poor vehicle for a narrative. Thus, it is weaponized by contorting it into half-truths that serve the important purpose of affirming pre-existing values. The past year has made it extraordinarily clear that the epistemology of science is far too demanding for most people. And that’s okay; it just usually isn’t so starkly obvious.

McTossOut 5y ago

No, investigation or questions are probably merited given the scale of this thing. Random fragments of what sounds like an investigation getting immediately published is the problem.

Splendor 5y ago

This is a charged topic, but I'll try to answer objectively without trying to argue whether the reasons are good or bad. I can think of two reasonable reasons why someone wouldn't want to investigate the matter: 1. It would be embarrassing for China. 2. It may be hard to properly communicate or convince people of the difference between an accidental lab leak vs. an intentional lab leak which could add fuel to a fire of jingoism/nationalism in other countries. Again, I'm trying hard not to make a judgement here. Hopefully I did a decent job.

fairpoints777 5y ago
It's not your problem if people take it the wrong way, points are valid, you don't need to dedicate half your message to disclaimers to appease the hyperoffended crowd - what should I get upset about today people
542458 5y ago
#2 is very real. I have friends who have been harassed in public because of their perceived race, which makes me very sick of the whole conversation. This idea got politically weaponized early in the pandemic, which also makes me suspicious of the benevolence of some of the people “just looking into it”. There’s also a #3, that is that I’m irritated that people are becoming experts on virology after reading a Wikipedia article (or worse) and deciding to “look into” this, then declaring things to be damning evidence based on an extremely limited understanding of the subject matter.
pseudo0 5y ago
I'd add: 3. Experts who conduct or fund virology research don't want it to be true, because it would inevitably cause a massive clampdown on what research is allowed and how it is conducted. It would also cause lasting damage to the field's reputation and prestige. Eg. imagine being a nuclear researcher in the aftermath of Chernobyl. 4. People who have significant personal or business ties with China are concerned that a finding of culpability will result in escalating tariffs and other sanctions, damaging China's economy and potentially causing collateral damage for those who do business with Chinese firms.

Leary 5y ago

Strawman. Nobody, even China, argues it's bad to investigate. Everyone just wants the investigation to be free from political interference.

justinpombrio 5y ago

If it leaked from the lab, preventing that is very easy. We just need to stop doing gain of function research. Whether or not Covid came from a lab, it's at least plausible that it did, and a virus just as bad could get accidentally released in the future. So our options are: - Continue gain of function research, and risk killing literally millions of people - Stop gain of function research, and lose any knowledge we would gain from it. Honestly, I don't know the first thing about gain of function research, but that's one hell of a risk we're taking with it. Can we maybe not try to make the viruses deadlier?

notJim 5y ago
Is it a certainty that the lab was doing gain of function research? Haven't followed this closely.
- lamontcg 5y ago
  There's no indication WIV was doing any gain of function research. WIV did collaborate with UNC Chapel Hill to do GOF research in America, in mice using a SARS-CoV-1 backbone. The US government send funds to WIV to study SADS-CoV in pigs. Circular logic is invoked to "prove" that those funds led to secret GoF research which has never been published or talked about on the basis that the pandemic arising in Wuhan is too much of a coincidence (and coincidences logically can never happen).
  - busymom0 5y ago
    Dr Shi admitted they were studying to make viruses jump from one species to humans. That's "gain of function".
    - lamontcg 5y ago
      She states specifically that she was not doing GOF research into how to make viruses more virulent or jump species. You can study how viruses jump species without making them jump species. And if you disagree with that, do you have details of the experiments and how they were seeking to enhance existing viruses which goes beyond just speculation and circular logic?

protontorpedo 5y ago

It's not bad, tracing the cause is a fundamentally good thing. In fact, afaik, it's just procedure. But many reasonable people nowadays are reluctant to publicly entertain any ideas that can be politically weaponized, in this case to increase the anti-china sentiment.

Spellman 5y ago

In isolation, there's nothing "bad" about it. And we don't have enough proof to say for sure it was nor that is was not a lab leak. That being said, there are a lot of confounding issues. Mostly political in nature. First, the vast majority of people who insisted on the lab leak theory did it to deflect blame and target China as a scapegoat. And many trotted out terrible and conspiratorial reasonings for why the accidental lab leak theory was the "truth," many going to the point of it being an intentional leak and that it was designed in the lab by humans. Not to mention using these claims to suck up attention away from other things like actually handling the pandemic. And to pile on politically a China=bad narrative. So by association there's been a severe reluctance to add more ammo to this group's claims. Secondly, history and the nature of the spread put the chances more on the side of a zoological vector given the information we have now. Obviously this isn't 100% proven yet, but so far most are hedging on historical priors. Especially considering the conditions of farming and the fur industry that exists in China. So the majority of the community side against the lab leak as the most likely option. Of course, many scientists still leave open the option that it was a lab leak. We don't have enough information to completely be sure. And there's some odd circumstantial evidence that may point to a lab leak somehow. Including that China hasn't been the most forthcoming. Still, it's very much a minority opinion in the field at this time and many people insisting it "must be investigated" seem to be doing it for political reasons as cover for other purposes. Here's from Forbes an opinion piece about the current evidence we have so far about the origins and possible explanations. https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2021/06/11/ask-ethan-how-can-you-be-so-sure-that-covid-19-didnt-happen-from-a-lab-leak/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2021/06/11/ask-...

api 5y ago
> did it to deflect blame and target China as a scapegoat. I don't see how that works. The US funded some of the research in Wuhan and it was done in collaboration with US scientists. If the lab leak hypothesis is true both the USA and China could share the blame.
- Spellman 5y ago
  That's more of a recent development in my reckoning. The original form was almost purely China=bad. Then it has morphed to include some of the US scientists as more information came out. But specifically most (in the conspiracy group) are trying to tie it specifically to Dr Fauci who became a lightning rod for controversy and political attacks during the pandemic as he became the face of the government's response. Thus it's not all US scientists. Just the ones some don't like politically and who are "in bed with China." And furthermore, sure the US may have funded some of it, but at the end of the day China is the one who goofed. Of course, I'm speculating a lot and there are a lot of variations that I've seen for support for the lab leak theory. Just trying to summarize some of the hotter takes I've seen.

hraedon 5y ago

It isn't bad to investigate or ask questions; the problem is that many of the people who are vocal proponents of the lab-leak theory are making a motte and bailey argument that takes the form of "the virus escaped from a lab in China" as the motte and "China deliberately released the virus to hurt its enemies/Trump/etc" as the bailey. I don't have a strong opinion on the origin of the virus, but the idea that China released it deliberately is very stupid and where most of the lab-leak conversations I've followed end up. It also doesn't help that China's current leadership is extremely allergic to anything that implicates China at all, so their actions are largely compatible with what you'd see in a coverup.

germinalphrase 5y ago
Motte and Bailey Definition: “ Motte and bailey (MAB) is a combination of bait-and-switch and equivocation in which someone switches between a "motte" (an easy-to-defend and often common-sense statement, such as "culture shapes our experiences") and a "bailey" (a hard-to-defend and more controversial statement, such as "cultural knowledge is just as valid as scientific knowledge") in order to defend a viewpoint. Someone will argue the easy-to-defend position (motte) temporarily, to ward off critics, while the less-defensible position (bailey) remains the desired belief, yet is never actually defended.” https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Motte_and_bailey https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Motte_and_bailey

m3kw9 5y ago

If found to be or not to be, it can be used for political ammo

andyxor 5y ago

Fauci’s NIAID institution directly sponsored coronavirus research in Wuhan lab suspected in the leak (via more than $800k in grants in 2015-2019). They are probably as interested as Chinese government in downplaying the role of this lab in the Covid outbreak.

winrid 5y ago

Why don't you ask if it came from one of the two US labs that do the same kind of research? Especially since we know the virus was present, globally, months before the outbreak in Wuhan....

tomjakubowski 5y ago
We do?
- winrid 5y ago
  It did not sound like "we" included the person I was replying to. :)
xdennis 5y ago
Pretty much every source agrees that Covid was first detected in Wuhan in December 2019. Do you have any proof that it was detected earlier?

deleted 5y ago

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jollybean 5y ago

There's nothing bad about it rhetorically, academically. But from a populist perspective, it's really scary. Crime is up across the board 33% in the US due to various factors, populist anger is real and that's just 'regular covid stuff'. On the margins of the bell curve, people do really crazy things. Anti-Asian acts, ranging from a few simple harmful words on the street, to full on assault, have measurably increased this year. So you can see some of the impact of populism right in the numbers. With 600 000 dead Americans and 240 Million guns ... it's pretty scary to think of what might happen. Geopolitically, it's a 'monster' thing, on the order of 9/11, invasion of a country etc.. Accident or not, if China 'caused' a massive worldwide decline and millions of deaths ... it's hard to imagine what the fallout would be. If there were inexorable, clean, hard evidence ... then I can see 25% of the population demanding blood, i.e. 'war' as within the scope of retribution. So the 'truth', the 'nuances', 'public communications' and 'goestrategic implictions' all form different aspects to thi answer.

jb775 5y ago

Population control. There's around 8 billion people on Earth. Most of the wealth on Earth is controlled by a small number of those people. What stops the other people from taking it from them? Answer: The illusion of power and control, via use of that wealth. Historically, the best way to control people is to divide them...over and over. That's what we're seeing nowadays: via use of the mass media. You'll rarely see a major news story nowadays that doesn't pit large groups of humans against one another. Currently, the best "division" strategy is for them to use the media to promote left-wing thought. Since a lab-leak doesn't align with the political aspect of Covid, they're doing everything they can to squash any discussion of it. Admitting they were wrong, or having discussion around the possibility of them being wrong, would bring the possibility of people waking the fuck up to the level of bullshit they're being fed.

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verall 5y ago
Thanks, "Covid was NWO population control" is my new favorite crazy-person Covid theory. It now beats the #2, "Covid isn't real but it was created by the Chinese government". Wake up, Sheeple!
- jb775 5y ago
  I didn't say covid is population control, I said the media is. And if you lived in the 15th century you'd probably be the guy ridiculing anyone who said the Earth might not be flat. How dare those crazy people!
  - verall 5y ago
    I'm sure in the 15th century, I'd be a lowly peasant, barely able to read and blissfully unaware of Earth's shape. I'm not royalty or something in this life.

booleandilemma 5y ago

Because then it could truly be called “The China Virus”, and there are a lot of people that don’t want that to happen.

8note 5y ago
A lab leak theory doesn't necessitate that it's a chinese lab

cyanydeez 5y ago

it matters how a line of questioning starts. same way it matters if police coerce a suspect to "confess". tainting an inquisition that started with no factual observations is what has happened.

an_opabinia 5y ago

By the time Russia disclosed the Sverdlovsk incident, the Soviet Union didn’t exist. It’s only bad from the perspective of a specific government elite in China, and no one else.

topspin 5y ago

> Can someone explain Were one to entertain the possibility that a lab facility in China was the source of infection leading to a global pandemic then isolationists and nationalists and other persona non grata might imagine they've received some validation of their policies. Naturally this is intolerable. So intolerable, in fact, that you are obligated to employ however much cognitive dissonance you find necessary such that any suggestion of a lab leak becomes unthinkable. Obviously anyone that fails to do so is exhibiting faulty and dangerous thinking.

etangent 5y ago
This is an extraordinary comment. To follow up, however, wouldn't suppressing talking about this stuff provide even more validation?
- topspin 5y ago
  Of course. But we're dealing with ideology here, and ideologues rarely perform the sort of calculations you have in mind.
ramoz 5y ago
This, itself, is dangerous thinking.
- ajsnigrutin 5y ago
  Yes, this is literally the "ministry of truth" and thought policing in action.
ajsnigrutin 5y ago
So, because of a few people, who already believe this has happened, you decide not to investigate (which reaffirms their beliefs), and possibly lie to all of your citizens, because a country might have accidentaly or intentionally killed many many people, and won't get sanctioned in any way because of that?
- 5y ago

brighton36 5y ago

Cultural degeneration? The messenger is usually shot, because people believe that what they don't know can't hurt them. Here, I think people valued 'clarity' in risky times. (even if that clarity was baseless)

theknocker 5y ago

A bunch of liberal pundits snarked out about it which caused me to behave like an arrogant jerk, so now instead of admitting that I should do better at thinking for myself, I pretend like I don't understand why someone thinks an apple might have fallen from a nearby apple tree, like the rest of my hipster friends who refuse to admit the media prescribes their entire worldview wholesale.

passwordreset 5y ago

When I first heard the lab leak hypothesis around Feb or March 2020, it was entirely non-partisan and was being investigated by people who had no skin in the political game. At the same time, some other politically-motivated people were claiming that the virus was both a "democratic hoax", and a "bioweapon" made by China and deliberately released on their own people so that it could be blamed on the US and embarrass the US President. Now, those same politically motivated people are tying themselves to the lab leak theory, because none of their other nonsense panned out. I'm surprised that people had forgotten this already. You don't hear much about a "democratic hoax" or a "bioweapon" nowadays, but those words were a part of the conversation a year ago. Note that the phrase "politically motivated people" was substituted for the original term "whack jobs", which I think is more appropriate; however, your asked me to use "non charged terms", so I did my best.

Gatsky 5y ago

I think virologists may have some incentive to discount the possibility of a lab leak. They seem to be the first to deny it is a possibility. This could be because they know what they are talking about. But at the same time, if a lab leak was proven, there would be repurcussions for all virology research. It would at the very least become much more heavily regulated. BSL4 research and facilities may get canned altogether. At worse... virology would receive an indelible stain of epochal vitriol.