8 ms·

Where Did the Coronavirus Come From? What We Already Know Is Troubling

42 points by jbegley 5y ago

zahrc 5y ago
Archived version to bypass paywall https://web.archive.org/web/20210625124427/https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/25/opinion/coronavirus-lab.html https://web.archive.org/web/20210625124427/https://www.nytim...
Grakel 5y ago
This is less a news article than a careful management of emotions as they slowly let the truth trickle out.
- raphlinus 5y ago
  In fairness, it is an opinion piece. I strongly suspect that - on this topic more than most others - "truth" is a Rorschach test, and different people will come away with different conclusions. That said, Zeynep Tufecki has an excellent track record of being right (she was way ahead of the curve on airborne), and if you're going to read one thing on Covid origins, this is probably the one. Another really fascinating piece of background, Jon Cohen's 2000 piece on the origins of AIDS: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2000/10/the-hunt-for-the-origin-of-aids/306490/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2000/10/the-hun... The tl;dr is that there was a popular book (The River) that pushed contaminated oral polio vaccine as an origin story, a lot of people believed it at the time, but that story pretty much fell apart as more detail (slowly) came in on transmission from primates.
  - Grakel 5y ago
    Thank you for this information, great comment. Edit: Not sarcasm.
aliasEli 5y ago
One of the new items was that there was a report there was a bat colony at the institute[0]. (Although, if Sky News Australia is similar to its UK counterpart, it is not a highly reputable news source). Still it wouldn't surprise me. To culture viruses in the lab you need the right cell culture. If you don't have a suitable one, you can always use the host. [0] https://www.skynews.com.au/details/_6258639874001 https://www.skynews.com.au/details/_6258639874001
jaz2130 5y ago
But I thought le evil orange man said it came from a lab, and therefore it must be false and debunked? That’s what The Washington Post told me to think last year.
- bogota 5y ago
  Please don’t do this here. I see you are new but its not a comment that adds anything to the discussion and is not discourse that is welcome on HN.
  - jaz2130 5y ago
    What about my comment doesn’t add to the discussion? I find it pretty thought provoking that mainstream news said the Wuhan Lab Theory was conclusively debunked as false, and now there has been a complete narrative shift. Some, like the Washington Post, have actually gone back and retroactively edited their articles from that time period to hide this fact. It’s very telling that my earlier comment was flagged.
    - snet0 5y ago
      You should probably phrase your comment in that tone, instead of being needlessly antagonistic.
  - slowhand09 5y ago
    It does add to the discussion. The Orange Man raised many good points which people gaslighted the public about. Hydrocloriquine for one. Drs determined when used correctly it is one of the more effective agents.
    - nate_meurer 5y ago
      It's hydroxychloroquine, and it only looked good in poorly controlled studies, like the Henry Ford study where the hydroxychloroquine arm was also given steroids. And answer me this: if hydroxychloroquine was so effective, why didn't Trump's tremendous doctors give it to him when he got covid?
haunter 5y ago
What a difference a year makes >“The Discussion Is Basically Over”: Why Scientists Believe the Wuhan-Lab Coronavirus Origin Theory Is Highly Unlikely >Trump and Mike Pompeo’s favorite blame-China theory makes great propaganda—but dubious science. 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...
- Flatcircle 5y ago
  This insane gaffe should be taught in schools, and the driver of these articles and organizer of these facts should be found and studied.
  - mrkstu 5y ago
    I think everyone is quite aware of the driving force behind these ‘gaffes.’
    - airhead969 5y ago
      I remember I heard about something called Russiagate, but history never-ever repeats itself. EVER.
- seanicus 5y ago
  A broken, racist, nationalist clock is right twice a day. And as for the "new info" that has come to light, I find it amazing that Americans will continue to believe every 'smoking gun' offered to them by their intelligence agencies, as long as it's laundered through the right news outlets.
  - randyrand 5y ago
    Same for the anti-clock. It seems NYT and others just said whatever the opposite of trump was saying. Hardly good journalism.
Flatcircle 5y ago
For me, the most startling line in the article is, "Nearly every SARS case since the original epidemic has been due to lab leaks." I wasn't aware that so many cases have been due to lab leak. This would have been valuable information at the start of the pandemic.
- unanswered 5y ago
  You weren't allowed to have that information at the start of the pandemic because, without the guiding hand of the media, you might have misinterpreted it and come to a then-racist conclusion.
  - bbitmaster 5y ago
    I had all of this information, most of it from a little known "quarantined" subreddit. Luckily reddit didn't outright ban it for so many users proposing the "misinformed" lab leak theory. There was a lot of random/fake info but there was also very accurate information which was outright banned everywhere. and meanwhile I was watching the circus in the media, and wasn't allowed to even spread this "misinformation" Seriously, if the tech companies are going to censor, they should at least get the facts right, over something serious enough to cost lives.
    - snet0 5y ago
      The problem is that you simply cannot "get the facts right" when the facts do not exist. We did not, and still do not, know where the virus came from. It's very easy to look back and say "yes well of course this thing was just fake news, but they also censored this other thing that we now know was true!". Either platforms shouldn't censor anything in these situations, or we have to accept the realities of censorship under uncertainty.
airhead969 5y ago
On the next installment of speculative FUD, mainstream media, agenda-driven reporting: Do the Chinese subsidize supervillains' labs to manufacture pandemics to kill themselves and the world? Do the Chinese drink the blood of young children? If so, what does it taste like and what food pairings work best?Does the dog Fluffy get to have a taste? What should we do to thwart the ascending Red Menace while America crumbles from within like Rome 2.0? This isn't about news, it's about yellow (no pun intended) journalism to serve Western corporate interests.

42 points by jbegley 5y ago

Archived version to bypass paywall https://web.archive.org/web/20210625124427/https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/25/opinion/coronavirus-lab.html https://web.archive.org/web/20210625124427/https://www.nytim...

Grakel 5y ago

This is less a news article than a careful management of emotions as they slowly let the truth trickle out.

raphlinus 5y ago
In fairness, it is an opinion piece. I strongly suspect that - on this topic more than most others - "truth" is a Rorschach test, and different people will come away with different conclusions. That said, Zeynep Tufecki has an excellent track record of being right (she was way ahead of the curve on airborne), and if you're going to read one thing on Covid origins, this is probably the one. Another really fascinating piece of background, Jon Cohen's 2000 piece on the origins of AIDS: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2000/10/the-hunt-for-the-origin-of-aids/306490/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2000/10/the-hun... The tl;dr is that there was a popular book (The River) that pushed contaminated oral polio vaccine as an origin story, a lot of people believed it at the time, but that story pretty much fell apart as more detail (slowly) came in on transmission from primates.
- Grakel 5y ago
  Thank you for this information, great comment. Edit: Not sarcasm.

aliasEli 5y ago

One of the new items was that there was a report there was a bat colony at the institute[0]. (Although, if Sky News Australia is similar to its UK counterpart, it is not a highly reputable news source). Still it wouldn't surprise me. To culture viruses in the lab you need the right cell culture. If you don't have a suitable one, you can always use the host. [0] https://www.skynews.com.au/details/_6258639874001 https://www.skynews.com.au/details/_6258639874001

jaz2130 5y ago

But I thought le evil orange man said it came from a lab, and therefore it must be false and debunked? That’s what The Washington Post told me to think last year.

bogota 5y ago
Please don’t do this here. I see you are new but its not a comment that adds anything to the discussion and is not discourse that is welcome on HN.
- jaz2130 5y ago
  What about my comment doesn’t add to the discussion? I find it pretty thought provoking that mainstream news said the Wuhan Lab Theory was conclusively debunked as false, and now there has been a complete narrative shift. Some, like the Washington Post, have actually gone back and retroactively edited their articles from that time period to hide this fact. It’s very telling that my earlier comment was flagged.
  - snet0 5y ago
    You should probably phrase your comment in that tone, instead of being needlessly antagonistic.
- slowhand09 5y ago
  It does add to the discussion. The Orange Man raised many good points which people gaslighted the public about. Hydrocloriquine for one. Drs determined when used correctly it is one of the more effective agents.
  - nate_meurer 5y ago
    It's hydroxychloroquine, and it only looked good in poorly controlled studies, like the Henry Ford study where the hydroxychloroquine arm was also given steroids. And answer me this: if hydroxychloroquine was so effective, why didn't Trump's tremendous doctors give it to him when he got covid?

haunter 5y ago

What a difference a year makes >“The Discussion Is Basically Over”: Why Scientists Believe the Wuhan-Lab Coronavirus Origin Theory Is Highly Unlikely >Trump and Mike Pompeo’s favorite blame-China theory makes great propaganda—but dubious science. 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...

Flatcircle 5y ago
This insane gaffe should be taught in schools, and the driver of these articles and organizer of these facts should be found and studied.
- mrkstu 5y ago
  I think everyone is quite aware of the driving force behind these ‘gaffes.’
  - airhead969 5y ago
    I remember I heard about something called Russiagate, but history never-ever repeats itself. EVER.
seanicus 5y ago
A broken, racist, nationalist clock is right twice a day. And as for the "new info" that has come to light, I find it amazing that Americans will continue to believe every 'smoking gun' offered to them by their intelligence agencies, as long as it's laundered through the right news outlets.
- randyrand 5y ago
  Same for the anti-clock. It seems NYT and others just said whatever the opposite of trump was saying. Hardly good journalism.

Flatcircle 5y ago

For me, the most startling line in the article is, "Nearly every SARS case since the original epidemic has been due to lab leaks." I wasn't aware that so many cases have been due to lab leak. This would have been valuable information at the start of the pandemic.

unanswered 5y ago
You weren't allowed to have that information at the start of the pandemic because, without the guiding hand of the media, you might have misinterpreted it and come to a then-racist conclusion.
- bbitmaster 5y ago
  I had all of this information, most of it from a little known "quarantined" subreddit. Luckily reddit didn't outright ban it for so many users proposing the "misinformed" lab leak theory. There was a lot of random/fake info but there was also very accurate information which was outright banned everywhere. and meanwhile I was watching the circus in the media, and wasn't allowed to even spread this "misinformation" Seriously, if the tech companies are going to censor, they should at least get the facts right, over something serious enough to cost lives.
  - snet0 5y ago
    The problem is that you simply cannot "get the facts right" when the facts do not exist. We did not, and still do not, know where the virus came from. It's very easy to look back and say "yes well of course this thing was just fake news, but they also censored this other thing that we now know was true!". Either platforms shouldn't censor anything in these situations, or we have to accept the realities of censorship under uncertainty.

airhead969 5y ago

On the next installment of speculative FUD, mainstream media, agenda-driven reporting: Do the Chinese subsidize supervillains' labs to manufacture pandemics to kill themselves and the world? Do the Chinese drink the blood of young children? If so, what does it taste like and what food pairings work best?Does the dog Fluffy get to have a taste? What should we do to thwart the ascending Red Menace while America crumbles from within like Rome 2.0? This isn't about news, it's about yellow (no pun intended) journalism to serve Western corporate interests.