25 ms·

An appeal for an objective, open, transparent debate re: the origin of Covid-19

234 points by alwillis 5y ago

roenxi 5y ago
In the absence of anything else, the existence of RaTG13 seems like pretty reasonable circumstantial evidence of it being a lab leak. The lab had RaTG13 samples - so either the disease travelled a rather long way from Yunnan to Wuhan or someone in the lab was experimenting with the virus doing something interesting and novel.
- prox 5y ago
  My take is that there is sufficient motive for China not wanting it to be a lab leak. It opens up the door for blame and scrutiny, something the Chinese Government hates beyond all other things if we look at their profile of operation. That alone, and doors that got closed when it came to researching the lab is suspicious. Whatever it may be, the original sars had a solid origin within 6 months of research.
  - op00to 5y ago
    > the original SARS had a solid origin within 6 months of research … citation required and also an explanation of what “within 6 month of research”. Exactly when did this 6 month period start and finish?
    - prox 5y ago
      See Wikipedia on SARS section “origin and animal vectors”
peakaboo 5y ago
We live in interesting times, where "conspiracy theories" become true after about 6 months. The reality of the situation is that people who actually pay attention, not the ones who constantly watch the TV news narrative, have been able to not only understand the true origin of covid, but also predict the entire chain of events that has occurred as a consequence. When will the general public stop seeing conspiracy theories as imaginary tales? They have been 100% accurate so far with covid. People who follow conspiracy theories are not stupid - that's why they are looking for what actually happened.
- playcache 5y ago
  > When will the general public stop seeing conspiracy theories as imaginary tales? Covid leaked from a lab is viable. Bill Gates injecting microchips into everyone in order to invoke a new global cabal I would argue is firmly in the imaginary tale bracket.
  - peakaboo 5y ago
    So far, I agree. Nothing has been able to show microchips in the vaccines. If its there, it's using technology that is so far ahead of what's in the general domain that it's undetectable. It doesn't seem plausible at all.
    - asxd 5y ago
      Also, why? What gain would come from putting little computers into people's blood? If it's for some sort of behavioral tracking, it seems like a lot of effort considering everyone is already carrying a computer in their pocket. I guess I also would like to know why Bill Gates has become such a target for conspiracy theorists lately? My impression has been that he's pretty sincerely involved in improving conditions in the underdeveloped world. I'm wondering if I missed something that caused people to believe he has some horrible intention? I hope this is taken as an honest question. I know it's easy to bash on folks who buy into conspiracy theories, but I also happen to know (and am fond of) quite a few of them. Bringing up these topics is always delicate, and I'd be interested in getting to know what's going through their minds.
      - bronzeage 5y ago
        The biggest reason for Bill Gates conspiracy theories is event 201: https://centerforhealthsecurity.org/event201/ https://centerforhealthsecurity.org/event201/ Bill Gates's foundation initiated that. It's a pandemic wargame which happened suspiciously close to the actual pandemic, and it's also the only pandemic wargame they ever did.
      - asxd 5y ago
peakaboo 5y ago
It's so interesting to me that people can't even imagine that covid could be intentionally created and let out. Not a leak, not an accident. Is it because people don't understand that actual evil exists outside of movies? That there are extreamly powerful people in the world that will throw babies into fires because they believe in occult entities? This is not imaginary. We live in a world where very evil people exist in high places, but also a world where many more good people exist, but usually not in as powerful positions.
- roenxi 5y ago
  If it were evil, they'd have tried harder. Which is also the argument against it being a bioweapon - most pathetic bioweapon ever if it was.
  - fit2rule 5y ago
    It has certainly taken the attention off the Wests' incredibly heinous war crimes and crimes against humanity. See for example, the genocide of Yemen.
  - tgv 5y ago
    If we’re going evil conspiracy: it could have been an attempt at bringing down the status quo. China very much wants to be top dog, and Mao once replied to the question what he would do if he lost his 100 million soldiers: I’ve got 900 million more.
    - Maursault 5y ago
      > if he lost his 100 million soldiers While today China has the largest military with 2.8M soldiers, sailors and airmen, Mao had, at best, 50K soldiers in his Red Army.
- inglor_cz 5y ago
  Both bioweapons and chemical weapons suffer from a deployability problem. Sure, you will cause some harm; perhaps even great harm; but there is no guarantee you will emerge out of the chaos better off than your adversaries. What did China win so far? Paranoia of the rest of the world and an acute realization of most Western nations that they need to rethink their alliances (see the recent AUKUS story) and their supply chains. The only active malice scenario I could find plausible would be "a single person or a small cult such as Aum Shinrikyo decided to unleash horror on the world". But in the real world, accidents outnumber crimes by orders of magnitude.
wilsonfiifi 5y ago
Does it even matter any more? From where I stand Covid-19 might have been much less devastating globally if it had been treated seriously in the early days. In fact, based on the initial footage from Wuhan, countries should have adopted more stringent protocols when they repatriated their nationals, i.e. quarantine on arrival etc... If in doubt throw everything including the kitchen sink at just to be sure. But it is what it is. I just hope we've learnt from this and are prepared for the next one.
- sharken 5y ago
  I guess we have to accept the fact that when Russia or China is involved, then we cannot find the truth. The same can even be said of the US. The 1977 H1N1 spread was never truly explained, here a possible lab incident in Russia was one of the possibilities: https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/mbio.01013-15?permanently=true& https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/mbio.01013-15?permanent... The Coronavirus from Wuhan, China has a similar story, only this time it is in China. https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/chinas-mojiang-mine-its-role-origins-covid-19-2021-06-09/ https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/... To me a solid scientific explanation is still useful, e.g. the intimate study of the Wuhan lab into Coronavirus seems risky at best.
- chrisco255 5y ago
  It's clearly too virulent to contain as is evident nearly 2 years later. Yes it matters. If China (and other orgs) are responsible they should be held criminally and civilly liable. Millions have died on account of what appears to have been reckless and dangerous gain of function research. If there's no accountability, it will happen again.
  - mnd999 5y ago
    How are you going to do that then? Without a painful rethinking of the world economy, China does what it pleases. That’s the realpolitik.
    - logicchains 5y ago
okay475008 5y ago
ycombinator is now being used as the cia's psyop grounds for disinformation programs. We're really running out of sincere internet discussion boards, now.
- sharken 5y ago
  I think you seriously underestimating this site.
- bigbluedots 5y ago
  Do you really believe that junk?
dreen 5y ago
It's well known that local Chinese authorities silenced a doctor (Li Wenliang) who was giving early warnings about the virus. That to me is a more grave mistake than an accidental lab leak, because they lost a chance to nip it in the bud. Accidents happen and quick response is essential. An intentional lab leak makes no sense to me at all. Its like starting a fire in your house to spite your neighbour.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- dkersten 5y ago
  > An intentional lab leak makes no sense to me at all. Very few people are arguing that it was intentional. I agree that an intentional lab leak is highly, highly unlikely, but I think an accidental lab leak is at least just as likely as the wet market hypothesis and CCP certainly acted extremely suspicious.
  - sneak 5y ago
    Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. All major world governments do illegal and shady acts when faced with situations that may result in the need for extreme ass-covering. (cf. "righteous strike") If it were an accidental lab leak: so what? How does that change things? If anything, it would accelerate a {trade,cold,cyber,shooting} war with China, which is universally a bad thing, even in pursuit of justice for something that was likely accidental (if indeed it came from a lab, which is presently undefined/unknown to the public).
    - fighterpilot 5y ago
      > If it were an accidental lab leak: so what? > pursuit of justice It has nothing to do with a pursuit of justice, at least not for me. It's about understanding where the disease came from and how it jumped to humans, so that we have a better shot at stopping something like this happening again.
      - 5y ago
dogsboywonder 5y ago
The amount of censorship, especially among the qualified scientific community in just about every facet of this disease is alarming. Even if the origins were accidental or lab-born or whatnot, the response has been so politicized worldwide that pure science has been largely thrown out the window. Every possibility should be analyzed & tested, even if it goes against the interests of a ruling party and all parties are guilty of exploiting this.
- indy 5y ago
  As someone mentioned on Twitter: "When you mix Science with Politics you end up with Politics"
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - simonh 5y ago
    Anything + Politics = Politics
    - Torwald 5y ago
      religion + politics = religion (?) eg. Aztec empire edit: the Aztec empire is an example for this. The religion was politically enforced and thus the political system became part of the religion. So the question is, isn't religion a case that refutes the parent's hypothessis.
      - clairity 5y ago
        religion is a way to coalesce and exert power on large groups of people. religion is politics.
        arcbyte 5y ago
        For very narrow definitions of religion, sure.
PicassoCTs 5y ago
Liaison for the Wuhan Virology Institute and later WHO Investigator into his own lab, in his own words, 1 year pre Covid outbreak : https://youtu.be/IdYDL_RK--w?t=1773 https://youtu.be/IdYDL_RK--w?t=1773 But honestly, it does not matter. What matters is that there is a whole culture who allows shutting down narratives, as it pleases for whatever failed reflexes control it. That culture has to go. Right, Left and center.
- noptd 5y ago
  >But honestly, it does not matter. What matters is that there is a whole culture who allows shutting down narratives, as it pleases for whatever failed reflexes control it. I disagree - they both matter.
hamburgerwah 5y ago
From the lancet of all places. They completely destroyed centuries of reputation for cheap political points in all this. Too little too late.
- raverbashing 5y ago
  The Lancet's reputation is in a downturn since the Wakefield case
  - mctt 5y ago
    Thanks. Interesting read, https://www.theguardian.com/society/2010/feb/02/lancet-retracts-mmr-paper https://www.theguardian.com/society/2010/feb/02/lancet-retra...
phodge 5y ago
I've never worked in virus research, but my understanding is that any researcher would be keeping meticulous records of every virus they're studying, as well as detailed information about genetic differences with any variants they have produced. So if the Chinese govt simply seized access to all research projects at the lab at Wuhan they would have been able to compare all viruses within the lab with SARS-Cov-2 within a matter of weeks and have an extremely confident Yes or No as to whether it came from their lab. I'd love to be refuted on the above by someone with actual viral research experience because the alternative conclusion is that the Chinese govt has known the true origin of SARS-Cov-2 since early 2020 and simply won't tell anyone.
- sneak 5y ago
  Now how would anyone else ever get access to that evidence, if the people who physically control it don't want it to be widely known? If indeed it ever existed, such would almost certainly have been destroyed by now. Ultimately the source/origin story only matters to narrative or those who would push political narratives of good/evil guilty/innocent. We have to live in the world that exists today regardless of whether it was chance or carelessness that caused it.
- jml7c5 5y ago
  The lab did do that (...or just claimed they did, if you're inclined to believe there's been a cover-up): >Shi instructed her group to repeat the tests and, at the same time, sent the samples to another facility to sequence the full viral genomes. Meanwhile she frantically went through her own lab’s records from the past few years to check for any mishandling of experimental materials, especially during disposal. Shi breathed a sigh of relief when the results came back: none of the sequences matched those of the viruses her team had sampled from bat caves. “That really took a load off my mind,” she says. “I had not slept a wink for days.” https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-chinas-bat-woman-hunted-down-viruses-from-sars-to-the-new-coronavirus1/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-chinas-bat-wo...
  - ctchocula 5y ago
    If she really did do this, why didn't she publish all the records for public perusal? Even if the records can't be proven to not have been altered, it seems this would be a show of good faith.
bigbluedots 5y ago
An objective, open, transparent debate seems to be no longer possible these days. Maybe it never has been.
yomly 5y ago
I was thinking about this the other day. Suppose it is true and there was a leak, given the current balance of the world it would probably lead to WW3. I am happy not knowing the truth if my hunch proves right.
sinyug 5y ago
I have no love lost for China[1], or Russia, or the US, all of whom have been duping successive Indian governments for the last 75 years for their own gains.[2] However, if we were to assume that the origins are neither natural (wet markets) nor accidental (lab leaks), but deliberate action on the part of some state that is not China, I have to wonder about the likelihood of this being a botched attempt at triggering regime change in China by parts of the US government. It was executed perfectly in Egypt and Ukraine over the last decade. The extreme measures taken by the CCP that rapidly ended transmission within the country perhaps caused the project to fail. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020%E2%80%932021_China%E2%80%93India_skirmishes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020%E2%80%932021_China%E2%80%... [2] Tawang would have gone to China if Nehru had been left to deal with it : Sardar Patel (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ydguwz8lV7k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ydguwz8lV7k)
- int_19h 5y ago
  If you really want to delve into this kind of conspirology, why not point at North Korea, who benefits significantly from having neighboring China that is hostile to US (and will thus prop DPRK as a counter?)
  - sinyug 5y ago
    > why not point at North Korea Because the DPRK SoS was not the one openly talking about regime change in China.[1] [1] Mike Pompeo Just Declared America’s New China Policy: Regime Change (https://nationalinterest.org/feature/mike-pompeo-just-declared-america%E2%80%99s-new-china-policy-regime-change-165639 https://nationalinterest.org/feature/mike-pompeo-just-declar...)
3grdlurker 5y ago
.
- lucian1900 5y ago
  They did announce a new virus when it became clear it wasn’t SARS. Then most countries did nothing about it for months.
athrowaway3z 5y ago
It seems to me the consensus has been on "it's plausible" for a while now. However, sometimes i see people paint a picture where experts are categorically denying the possibility, and i don't understand the field well enough to be sure one way or another. What would be the minimum necessary steps to create something like Covid-19? Corollary: If i mix 100 different natural strains together with a couple dozen CRISPR cutters at random, and inject it into a human. What are the chances of a permutation to be infections/dangerous, and transmissible between humans?
devwastaken 5y ago
"In addition, the international research community has no access to the sites, samples, or raw data." The reason lab leak is considered a conspiracy theory, is because it's a literal conspiracy theory. The conspiracy being the CCP and potentially U.S. covering up a virus leak from their lab. Of course all sorts of other politics and disinformation get attached. Nobody has the evidence necessary to make evidence based theories on lab leak. All we have is hand waving and "maybe". Even if it did happen, what do you do? Sanction china? Tell them they were naughty? What this focus on lab leak without evidence does, is riles up the public, gets psuedo intellectual personalities in on the hand waving, and politics turns it into disinformation. The end result being anti-vaccine, anti-pharma, etc. Lab leak hypotheticals have so far done an incredible disservice.
- nradov 5y ago
  The US federal government still officially considers a lab leak as a possibility. If it were ever proven then sanctions against China would be likely. https://www.dni.gov/index.php/newsroom/reports-publications/reports-publications-2021/item/2236-unclassified-summary-of-assessment-on-covid-19-origins https://www.dni.gov/index.php/newsroom/reports-publications/...
- Gibbon1 5y ago
  A hallmark of a conspiracy theory is you always have a cartoon villein behind it. In this case the CCP is Dr Evil. Also will say the approach the conspiracy theorists and foreign policy operatives have taken with this isn't likely to garner any transparency from China going forward. That's bad because fundamentally despite differences the Chinese and the the US have common interests in this.
  - Akronymus 5y ago
    > A hallmark of a conspiracy theory is you always have a cartoon villein behind it. In this case the CCP is Dr Evil. That seems to impliy that everyone who thinks the lab leak is possible also thinks it was intentional. Which I didn't see much of, in real life.
- 5y ago
djkivi 5y ago
I don't understand. Some of our most trusted news sources told us that a lab origin was debunked. https://www.npr.org/2020/04/22/841925672/scientists-debunk-lab-accident-theory-of-pandemic-emergence https://www.npr.org/2020/04/22/841925672/scientists-debunk-l...
djkivi 5y ago
Who controls the past controls the future? https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/02/16/tom-cotton-coronavirus-conspiracy/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/02/16/tom-cotto...
advael 5y ago
It's a mantra at this point that polarization has gotten out of control, but one of the biggest effects it seems to have is this reverse-psychology effect I'm in a big American city, and I remember that until the online kids and snarky liberals started moralizing about mask protocol, there wasn't as much resistance to wearing masks among right-wing crazies. I remember when there was that controversy about 5G networks interfering with bird migration patterns and meteorology, but as the fringe conspiracy crowd started spinning up crazy theories about how 5G was going to brainwash or sterilize or force-feminize people over the airwaves or whatever it was, most people I knew stopped talking about it, seemed to forget that they had ever thought it concerning. It reminded me of the time people were worried about pollutants causing hormonal changes in indicator species, and then Alex Jones started talking about how "they're turning the frogs gay" and the meaningful version of that discourse vanished too. I view the same kind of thing as happening here, as well as a lot of other places. It's made me wary of the sport of finding what crazy things my political enemies believe to make fun of them, because it seems like the net effect of this is creating "opposite" erroneous beliefs with no evidence
- void_mint 5y ago
  > I'm in a big American city, and I remember that until the online kids and snarky liberals started moralizing about mask protocol, there wasn't as much resistance to wearing masks among right-wing crazies. We're living in very different worlds I guess.
  - birken 5y ago
    Yes, don't you remember the early days of the pandemic when Donald Trump was very pro-mask, including regularly wearing a mask himself, and then only when the liberal started moralizing he turned anti-mask?
    - void_mint 5y ago
      Are we talking about political figures or the people that follow them? The poster I'm responding to is talking about the latter. edit Someone already pointed out that this is an obvious biased misinformation post.
motohagiography 5y ago
Working closely to the issue on a couple of fronts, I think debate about the disease origin is a distraction from the real debate everyone has a stake in, which has been the policy response and the legitimacy of lockdowns, vax passports, mandates for health status disclosure, and discrimination based on health information. Who cares if it came from a lab, there are zero consequences to anyone whether it did or not, and it's the least impactful detail of what has happened. "Allowing," debate on the disease origin is a cynical switcheroo.
- ISL 5y ago
  The origin matters for two major reasons: 1) So we can learn and mitigate the risks of something similar happening again. and 2) In the event that the virus was leaked from a laboratory, the world would like to send the lab a small invoice for costs incurred and damages.
  - motohagiography 5y ago
    So literally, nothing different. Labs are all hypersensitive about their processes right now, so they're doing 1) already, and the recipient of that invoice is the US NIH, or the CCP, neither of whom have either the willingness or ability to pay. It's window dressing, and I'm becoming even more suspicious that the disease origin is just another managed narrative, as everybody who believes it came from a lab believed it last year, and nobody who rejected the lab leak view last year is going to have their mind changed to where they accept institutions they believe in are culpable. It's an issue designed to politically neutralize people, so that we will be just like people arguing about jet fuel burning temperatures on the internet instead of confronting our governments about surveillance and state overreach and the patriot act. The whole so-called "debate" is a honeypot tarpit for useful idiots.
    - secondcoming 5y ago
      People outside of America are also interested in whether this virus came from some guy's bat dinner, or a bio-warfare lab.
nradov 5y ago
I would encourage everyone interested in the virus origins to read the US DNI Unclassified Summary of Assessment on COVID-19 Origins. While it's inherently somewhat politicized it contains a good, readable summary of the origin hypotheses and evidence. https://www.dni.gov/index.php/newsroom/reports-publications/reports-publications-2021/item/2236-unclassified-summary-of-assessment-on-covid-19-origins https://www.dni.gov/index.php/newsroom/reports-publications/...
TheCowboy 5y ago
The best piece that one can read on the origin of covid is by Zeynep: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/25/opinion/coronavirus-lab.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/25/opinion/coronavirus-lab.h... I am still confused how people think that it being an accidental "lab leak" is any more damning of the role China played in the initial outbreak. China made a lot of mistakes and also kept other countries in the dark for way too long no matter the origin. It can also serve as a warning against authoritarian models of rule. My criticism doesn't mean I think we shouldn't investigate the origins either. It is in the world's public interest to err on the side of knowing too much so that maybe the chance of this happening again is reduced.
- boulos 5y ago
  > I am still confused how people think that it being an accidental "lab leak" is any more damning of the role China played in the initial outbreak. Huh. I think most people find that if something "happens to you" it's less your fault than if you "made it happen". If your house burns down from a gas line explosion nearby, that's bad luck for you. If it burns down because you had a pile of paper next to your stove while operating it, that's on you. How it was handled after the fact is probably similar (though again, if it was your own source, then it probably meant you had even earlier warning), but I believe it's mostly down to "things that happen to you versus things you cause".
  - parineum 5y ago
    If you had a grease fire in your kitchen but didn't call the fire department because you didn't want your neighbors to know you couldn't cook the situation would be similar. Especially if it burned down the whole neighborhood.
- glitchc 5y ago
  I think what it really brings to light (at least for me) is the incompetence of the CCP in the matter. I have no qualms about China conducting research in this regard, other countries are doing it too and we would be naive to think otherwise. However, if it is proven to be true that gain of function research was being conducted at the Wuhan laboratory, it highlights the sheer stupidity of the government in thinking they could build a military bio-weapons research laboratory in the heart of a major city center. Western nations that do have such facilities place them far away from high-density urban populations, precisely as a last-ditch measure to mitigate the impact of an (eventual) breach. It's worse for the CCP if it boils down to incompetence rather than malice. Becoming a laughingstock of the world and not being taken seriously is perhaps their deepest fear.
tomohawk 5y ago
If you want an objective and open and transparent debate, then a good place to start would be to stop censoring it. Here's but one of many cases. https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2021/sep/12/they-are-controlling-you-they-are-silencing-you/ https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2021/sep/12/they-are-co... You can't arrive at the truth of a matter by only listening to those with enough power to shut down any countervailing opinions.
cwp 5y ago
This is stupid. You can't debate facts. Either SARS-CoV-2 escaped from a lab, or it didn't. Unless somebody comes forward to say, "Yeah, I tore my glove while transporting some test tubes and I got sick two days later," we're never going to know for sure. The only sensible thing to do is assume that it's at least possible that it was a lab leak and reevaluate the risk-benefit tradeoff of this type of research. That is a debate worth having. The rest is just posturing.
- adolph 5y ago
  It is stupid. Previous authors published in the Lancet did call for suppression of debate and facts. From the first sentence of the parent article: On July 5, 2021, a Correspondence was published in The Lancet called “Science, not speculation, is essential to determine how SARS-CoV-2 reached humans”. The letter recapitulates the arguments of an earlier letter (published in February, 2020) by the same authors, which claimed overwhelming support for the hypothesis that the novel coronavirus causing the COVID-19 pandemic originated in wildlife. The authors associated any alternative view with conspiracy theories by stating: “We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin”. The statement has imparted a silencing effect on the wider scientific debate, including among science journalists. The 2/20 letter stated: The rapid, open, and transparent sharing of data on this outbreak is now being threatened by rumours and misinformation around its origins. We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin. These are the scientists who wanted to deny facts: Charles Calisher, Dennis Carroll, Rita Colwell, Ronald B Corley, Peter Daszak, Christian Drosten, Luis Enjuanes, Jeremy Farrar, Hume Field, Josie Golding, Alexander Gorbalenya, Bart Haagmans, James M Hughes, William B Karesh, Gerald T Keusch, Sai Kit Lam, Juan Lubroth, John S Mackenzie, Larry Madoff, Jonna Mazet, Peter Palese, Stanley Perlman, Leo Poon, Bernard Roizman, Linda Saif, Kanta Subbarao, Mike Turner The above statement may sound mild-mannered to a lay person but it had greater import and effect, as outlined by this BMJ article, "The covid-19 lab leak hypothesis: did the media fall victim to a misinformation campaign?" [https://www.bmj.com/content/374/bmj.n1656 https://www.bmj.com/content/374/bmj.n1656] Scientists and reporters contacted by The BMJ say that objective consideration of covid-19’s origins went awry early in the pandemic, as researchers who were funded to study viruses with pandemic potential launched a campaign labelling the lab leak hypothesis as a “conspiracy theory.” A leader in this campaign has been Peter Daszak, president of EcoHealth Alliance, a non-profit organisation given millions of dollars in grants by the US federal government to research viruses for pandemic preparedness.1 Over the years EcoHealth Alliance has subcontracted out its federally supported research to various scientists and groups, including around $600 000 (£434 000; €504 000) to the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Shortly after the pandemic began, Daszak effectively silenced debate over the possibility of a lab leak with a February 2020 statement in the Lancet. “We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that covid-19 does not have a natural origin,” said the letter, which listed Daszak as one of 27 coauthors. Daszak did not respond to repeated requests for comment from The BMJ.
endgame 5y ago
The Lancet? The same Lancet that published the studies that were based on faked data from Surgisphere? https://retractionwatch.com/2020/06/04/lancet-retracts-controversial-hydroxychloroquine-study/ https://retractionwatch.com/2020/06/04/lancet-retracts-contr... https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/03/covid-19-surgisphere-who-world-health-organization-hydroxychloroquine https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/03/covid-19-surgi...
iammisc 5y ago
It's time we admit a lot of 'science' was done with the express purpose of contradicting a republican president, and then admit that this is the reason why many conservatives do not trust science and scientists and experts anymore. Until we do that, this country will not be able to come together.
- Akronymus 5y ago
  The "science" more often than not seems like "scientism" to me.
TheRealNGenius 5y ago
Slightly off topic, but with so many viruses crossing the animal-human barrier from bats, has there ever been consideration of eradication?

234 points by alwillis 5y ago

In the absence of anything else, the existence of RaTG13 seems like pretty reasonable circumstantial evidence of it being a lab leak. The lab had RaTG13 samples - so either the disease travelled a rather long way from Yunnan to Wuhan or someone in the lab was experimenting with the virus doing something interesting and novel.

prox 5y ago
My take is that there is sufficient motive for China not wanting it to be a lab leak. It opens up the door for blame and scrutiny, something the Chinese Government hates beyond all other things if we look at their profile of operation. That alone, and doors that got closed when it came to researching the lab is suspicious. Whatever it may be, the original sars had a solid origin within 6 months of research.
- op00to 5y ago
  > the original SARS had a solid origin within 6 months of research … citation required and also an explanation of what “within 6 month of research”. Exactly when did this 6 month period start and finish?
  - prox 5y ago
    See Wikipedia on SARS section “origin and animal vectors”

peakaboo 5y ago

We live in interesting times, where "conspiracy theories" become true after about 6 months. The reality of the situation is that people who actually pay attention, not the ones who constantly watch the TV news narrative, have been able to not only understand the true origin of covid, but also predict the entire chain of events that has occurred as a consequence. When will the general public stop seeing conspiracy theories as imaginary tales? They have been 100% accurate so far with covid. People who follow conspiracy theories are not stupid - that's why they are looking for what actually happened.

playcache 5y ago
> When will the general public stop seeing conspiracy theories as imaginary tales? Covid leaked from a lab is viable. Bill Gates injecting microchips into everyone in order to invoke a new global cabal I would argue is firmly in the imaginary tale bracket.
- peakaboo 5y ago
  So far, I agree. Nothing has been able to show microchips in the vaccines. If its there, it's using technology that is so far ahead of what's in the general domain that it's undetectable. It doesn't seem plausible at all.
  - asxd 5y ago
    Also, why? What gain would come from putting little computers into people's blood? If it's for some sort of behavioral tracking, it seems like a lot of effort considering everyone is already carrying a computer in their pocket. I guess I also would like to know why Bill Gates has become such a target for conspiracy theorists lately? My impression has been that he's pretty sincerely involved in improving conditions in the underdeveloped world. I'm wondering if I missed something that caused people to believe he has some horrible intention? I hope this is taken as an honest question. I know it's easy to bash on folks who buy into conspiracy theories, but I also happen to know (and am fond of) quite a few of them. Bringing up these topics is always delicate, and I'd be interested in getting to know what's going through their minds.
    - bronzeage 5y ago
      The biggest reason for Bill Gates conspiracy theories is event 201: https://centerforhealthsecurity.org/event201/ https://centerforhealthsecurity.org/event201/ Bill Gates's foundation initiated that. It's a pandemic wargame which happened suspiciously close to the actual pandemic, and it's also the only pandemic wargame they ever did.
    - asxd 5y ago

peakaboo 5y ago

It's so interesting to me that people can't even imagine that covid could be intentionally created and let out. Not a leak, not an accident. Is it because people don't understand that actual evil exists outside of movies? That there are extreamly powerful people in the world that will throw babies into fires because they believe in occult entities? This is not imaginary. We live in a world where very evil people exist in high places, but also a world where many more good people exist, but usually not in as powerful positions.

roenxi 5y ago
If it were evil, they'd have tried harder. Which is also the argument against it being a bioweapon - most pathetic bioweapon ever if it was.
- fit2rule 5y ago
  It has certainly taken the attention off the Wests' incredibly heinous war crimes and crimes against humanity. See for example, the genocide of Yemen.
- tgv 5y ago
  If we’re going evil conspiracy: it could have been an attempt at bringing down the status quo. China very much wants to be top dog, and Mao once replied to the question what he would do if he lost his 100 million soldiers: I’ve got 900 million more.
  - Maursault 5y ago
    > if he lost his 100 million soldiers While today China has the largest military with 2.8M soldiers, sailors and airmen, Mao had, at best, 50K soldiers in his Red Army.
inglor_cz 5y ago
Both bioweapons and chemical weapons suffer from a deployability problem. Sure, you will cause some harm; perhaps even great harm; but there is no guarantee you will emerge out of the chaos better off than your adversaries. What did China win so far? Paranoia of the rest of the world and an acute realization of most Western nations that they need to rethink their alliances (see the recent AUKUS story) and their supply chains. The only active malice scenario I could find plausible would be "a single person or a small cult such as Aum Shinrikyo decided to unleash horror on the world". But in the real world, accidents outnumber crimes by orders of magnitude.

wilsonfiifi 5y ago

Does it even matter any more? From where I stand Covid-19 might have been much less devastating globally if it had been treated seriously in the early days. In fact, based on the initial footage from Wuhan, countries should have adopted more stringent protocols when they repatriated their nationals, i.e. quarantine on arrival etc... If in doubt throw everything including the kitchen sink at just to be sure. But it is what it is. I just hope we've learnt from this and are prepared for the next one.

sharken 5y ago
I guess we have to accept the fact that when Russia or China is involved, then we cannot find the truth. The same can even be said of the US. The 1977 H1N1 spread was never truly explained, here a possible lab incident in Russia was one of the possibilities: https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/mbio.01013-15?permanently=true& https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/mbio.01013-15?permanent... The Coronavirus from Wuhan, China has a similar story, only this time it is in China. https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/chinas-mojiang-mine-its-role-origins-covid-19-2021-06-09/ https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/... To me a solid scientific explanation is still useful, e.g. the intimate study of the Wuhan lab into Coronavirus seems risky at best.
chrisco255 5y ago
It's clearly too virulent to contain as is evident nearly 2 years later. Yes it matters. If China (and other orgs) are responsible they should be held criminally and civilly liable. Millions have died on account of what appears to have been reckless and dangerous gain of function research. If there's no accountability, it will happen again.
- mnd999 5y ago
  How are you going to do that then? Without a painful rethinking of the world economy, China does what it pleases. That’s the realpolitik.
  - logicchains 5y ago

okay475008 5y ago

ycombinator is now being used as the cia's psyop grounds for disinformation programs. We're really running out of sincere internet discussion boards, now.

sharken 5y ago
I think you seriously underestimating this site.
bigbluedots 5y ago
Do you really believe that junk?

dreen 5y ago

It's well known that local Chinese authorities silenced a doctor (Li Wenliang) who was giving early warnings about the virus. That to me is a more grave mistake than an accidental lab leak, because they lost a chance to nip it in the bud. Accidents happen and quick response is essential. An intentional lab leak makes no sense to me at all. Its like starting a fire in your house to spite your neighbour.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
dkersten 5y ago
> An intentional lab leak makes no sense to me at all. Very few people are arguing that it was intentional. I agree that an intentional lab leak is highly, highly unlikely, but I think an accidental lab leak is at least just as likely as the wet market hypothesis and CCP certainly acted extremely suspicious.
- sneak 5y ago
  Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. All major world governments do illegal and shady acts when faced with situations that may result in the need for extreme ass-covering. (cf. "righteous strike") If it were an accidental lab leak: so what? How does that change things? If anything, it would accelerate a {trade,cold,cyber,shooting} war with China, which is universally a bad thing, even in pursuit of justice for something that was likely accidental (if indeed it came from a lab, which is presently undefined/unknown to the public).
  - fighterpilot 5y ago
    > If it were an accidental lab leak: so what? > pursuit of justice It has nothing to do with a pursuit of justice, at least not for me. It's about understanding where the disease came from and how it jumped to humans, so that we have a better shot at stopping something like this happening again.
    - 5y ago

dogsboywonder 5y ago

The amount of censorship, especially among the qualified scientific community in just about every facet of this disease is alarming. Even if the origins were accidental or lab-born or whatnot, the response has been so politicized worldwide that pure science has been largely thrown out the window. Every possibility should be analyzed & tested, even if it goes against the interests of a ruling party and all parties are guilty of exploiting this.

indy 5y ago
As someone mentioned on Twitter: "When you mix Science with Politics you end up with Politics"
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- simonh 5y ago
  Anything + Politics = Politics
  - Torwald 5y ago
    religion + politics = religion (?) eg. Aztec empire edit: the Aztec empire is an example for this. The religion was politically enforced and thus the political system became part of the religion. So the question is, isn't religion a case that refutes the parent's hypothessis.
    - clairity 5y ago
      religion is a way to coalesce and exert power on large groups of people. religion is politics.
      - arcbyte 5y ago
        For very narrow definitions of religion, sure.

PicassoCTs 5y ago

Liaison for the Wuhan Virology Institute and later WHO Investigator into his own lab, in his own words, 1 year pre Covid outbreak : https://youtu.be/IdYDL_RK--w?t=1773 https://youtu.be/IdYDL_RK--w?t=1773 But honestly, it does not matter. What matters is that there is a whole culture who allows shutting down narratives, as it pleases for whatever failed reflexes control it. That culture has to go. Right, Left and center.

noptd 5y ago
>But honestly, it does not matter. What matters is that there is a whole culture who allows shutting down narratives, as it pleases for whatever failed reflexes control it. I disagree - they both matter.

hamburgerwah 5y ago

From the lancet of all places. They completely destroyed centuries of reputation for cheap political points in all this. Too little too late.

raverbashing 5y ago
The Lancet's reputation is in a downturn since the Wakefield case
- mctt 5y ago
  Thanks. Interesting read, https://www.theguardian.com/society/2010/feb/02/lancet-retracts-mmr-paper https://www.theguardian.com/society/2010/feb/02/lancet-retra...

phodge 5y ago

I've never worked in virus research, but my understanding is that any researcher would be keeping meticulous records of every virus they're studying, as well as detailed information about genetic differences with any variants they have produced. So if the Chinese govt simply seized access to all research projects at the lab at Wuhan they would have been able to compare all viruses within the lab with SARS-Cov-2 within a matter of weeks and have an extremely confident Yes or No as to whether it came from their lab. I'd love to be refuted on the above by someone with actual viral research experience because the alternative conclusion is that the Chinese govt has known the true origin of SARS-Cov-2 since early 2020 and simply won't tell anyone.

sneak 5y ago
Now how would anyone else ever get access to that evidence, if the people who physically control it don't want it to be widely known? If indeed it ever existed, such would almost certainly have been destroyed by now. Ultimately the source/origin story only matters to narrative or those who would push political narratives of good/evil guilty/innocent. We have to live in the world that exists today regardless of whether it was chance or carelessness that caused it.
jml7c5 5y ago
The lab did do that (...or just claimed they did, if you're inclined to believe there's been a cover-up): >Shi instructed her group to repeat the tests and, at the same time, sent the samples to another facility to sequence the full viral genomes. Meanwhile she frantically went through her own lab’s records from the past few years to check for any mishandling of experimental materials, especially during disposal. Shi breathed a sigh of relief when the results came back: none of the sequences matched those of the viruses her team had sampled from bat caves. “That really took a load off my mind,” she says. “I had not slept a wink for days.” https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-chinas-bat-woman-hunted-down-viruses-from-sars-to-the-new-coronavirus1/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-chinas-bat-wo...
- ctchocula 5y ago
  If she really did do this, why didn't she publish all the records for public perusal? Even if the records can't be proven to not have been altered, it seems this would be a show of good faith.

bigbluedots 5y ago

An objective, open, transparent debate seems to be no longer possible these days. Maybe it never has been.

yomly 5y ago

I was thinking about this the other day. Suppose it is true and there was a leak, given the current balance of the world it would probably lead to WW3. I am happy not knowing the truth if my hunch proves right.

sinyug 5y ago

I have no love lost for China[1], or Russia, or the US, all of whom have been duping successive Indian governments for the last 75 years for their own gains.[2] However, if we were to assume that the origins are neither natural (wet markets) nor accidental (lab leaks), but deliberate action on the part of some state that is not China, I have to wonder about the likelihood of this being a botched attempt at triggering regime change in China by parts of the US government. It was executed perfectly in Egypt and Ukraine over the last decade. The extreme measures taken by the CCP that rapidly ended transmission within the country perhaps caused the project to fail. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020%E2%80%932021_China%E2%80%93India_skirmishes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020%E2%80%932021_China%E2%80%... [2] Tawang would have gone to China if Nehru had been left to deal with it : Sardar Patel (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ydguwz8lV7k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ydguwz8lV7k)

int_19h 5y ago
If you really want to delve into this kind of conspirology, why not point at North Korea, who benefits significantly from having neighboring China that is hostile to US (and will thus prop DPRK as a counter?)
- sinyug 5y ago
  > why not point at North Korea Because the DPRK SoS was not the one openly talking about regime change in China.[1] [1] Mike Pompeo Just Declared America’s New China Policy: Regime Change (https://nationalinterest.org/feature/mike-pompeo-just-declared-america%E2%80%99s-new-china-policy-regime-change-165639 https://nationalinterest.org/feature/mike-pompeo-just-declar...)

3grdlurker 5y ago

lucian1900 5y ago
They did announce a new virus when it became clear it wasn’t SARS. Then most countries did nothing about it for months.

athrowaway3z 5y ago

It seems to me the consensus has been on "it's plausible" for a while now. However, sometimes i see people paint a picture where experts are categorically denying the possibility, and i don't understand the field well enough to be sure one way or another. What would be the minimum necessary steps to create something like Covid-19? Corollary: If i mix 100 different natural strains together with a couple dozen CRISPR cutters at random, and inject it into a human. What are the chances of a permutation to be infections/dangerous, and transmissible between humans?

devwastaken 5y ago

"In addition, the international research community has no access to the sites, samples, or raw data." The reason lab leak is considered a conspiracy theory, is because it's a literal conspiracy theory. The conspiracy being the CCP and potentially U.S. covering up a virus leak from their lab. Of course all sorts of other politics and disinformation get attached. Nobody has the evidence necessary to make evidence based theories on lab leak. All we have is hand waving and "maybe". Even if it did happen, what do you do? Sanction china? Tell them they were naughty? What this focus on lab leak without evidence does, is riles up the public, gets psuedo intellectual personalities in on the hand waving, and politics turns it into disinformation. The end result being anti-vaccine, anti-pharma, etc. Lab leak hypotheticals have so far done an incredible disservice.

nradov 5y ago
The US federal government still officially considers a lab leak as a possibility. If it were ever proven then sanctions against China would be likely. https://www.dni.gov/index.php/newsroom/reports-publications/reports-publications-2021/item/2236-unclassified-summary-of-assessment-on-covid-19-origins https://www.dni.gov/index.php/newsroom/reports-publications/...
Gibbon1 5y ago
A hallmark of a conspiracy theory is you always have a cartoon villein behind it. In this case the CCP is Dr Evil. Also will say the approach the conspiracy theorists and foreign policy operatives have taken with this isn't likely to garner any transparency from China going forward. That's bad because fundamentally despite differences the Chinese and the the US have common interests in this.
- Akronymus 5y ago
  > A hallmark of a conspiracy theory is you always have a cartoon villein behind it. In this case the CCP is Dr Evil. That seems to impliy that everyone who thinks the lab leak is possible also thinks it was intentional. Which I didn't see much of, in real life.
5y ago

djkivi 5y ago

I don't understand. Some of our most trusted news sources told us that a lab origin was debunked. https://www.npr.org/2020/04/22/841925672/scientists-debunk-lab-accident-theory-of-pandemic-emergence https://www.npr.org/2020/04/22/841925672/scientists-debunk-l...

djkivi 5y ago

Who controls the past controls the future? https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/02/16/tom-cotton-coronavirus-conspiracy/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/02/16/tom-cotto...

advael 5y ago

It's a mantra at this point that polarization has gotten out of control, but one of the biggest effects it seems to have is this reverse-psychology effect I'm in a big American city, and I remember that until the online kids and snarky liberals started moralizing about mask protocol, there wasn't as much resistance to wearing masks among right-wing crazies. I remember when there was that controversy about 5G networks interfering with bird migration patterns and meteorology, but as the fringe conspiracy crowd started spinning up crazy theories about how 5G was going to brainwash or sterilize or force-feminize people over the airwaves or whatever it was, most people I knew stopped talking about it, seemed to forget that they had ever thought it concerning. It reminded me of the time people were worried about pollutants causing hormonal changes in indicator species, and then Alex Jones started talking about how "they're turning the frogs gay" and the meaningful version of that discourse vanished too. I view the same kind of thing as happening here, as well as a lot of other places. It's made me wary of the sport of finding what crazy things my political enemies believe to make fun of them, because it seems like the net effect of this is creating "opposite" erroneous beliefs with no evidence

void_mint 5y ago
> I'm in a big American city, and I remember that until the online kids and snarky liberals started moralizing about mask protocol, there wasn't as much resistance to wearing masks among right-wing crazies. We're living in very different worlds I guess.
- birken 5y ago
  Yes, don't you remember the early days of the pandemic when Donald Trump was very pro-mask, including regularly wearing a mask himself, and then only when the liberal started moralizing he turned anti-mask?
  - void_mint 5y ago
    Are we talking about political figures or the people that follow them? The poster I'm responding to is talking about the latter. edit Someone already pointed out that this is an obvious biased misinformation post.

motohagiography 5y ago

Working closely to the issue on a couple of fronts, I think debate about the disease origin is a distraction from the real debate everyone has a stake in, which has been the policy response and the legitimacy of lockdowns, vax passports, mandates for health status disclosure, and discrimination based on health information. Who cares if it came from a lab, there are zero consequences to anyone whether it did or not, and it's the least impactful detail of what has happened. "Allowing," debate on the disease origin is a cynical switcheroo.

ISL 5y ago
The origin matters for two major reasons: 1) So we can learn and mitigate the risks of something similar happening again. and 2) In the event that the virus was leaked from a laboratory, the world would like to send the lab a small invoice for costs incurred and damages.
- motohagiography 5y ago
  So literally, nothing different. Labs are all hypersensitive about their processes right now, so they're doing 1) already, and the recipient of that invoice is the US NIH, or the CCP, neither of whom have either the willingness or ability to pay. It's window dressing, and I'm becoming even more suspicious that the disease origin is just another managed narrative, as everybody who believes it came from a lab believed it last year, and nobody who rejected the lab leak view last year is going to have their mind changed to where they accept institutions they believe in are culpable. It's an issue designed to politically neutralize people, so that we will be just like people arguing about jet fuel burning temperatures on the internet instead of confronting our governments about surveillance and state overreach and the patriot act. The whole so-called "debate" is a honeypot tarpit for useful idiots.
  - secondcoming 5y ago
    People outside of America are also interested in whether this virus came from some guy's bat dinner, or a bio-warfare lab.

nradov 5y ago

I would encourage everyone interested in the virus origins to read the US DNI Unclassified Summary of Assessment on COVID-19 Origins. While it's inherently somewhat politicized it contains a good, readable summary of the origin hypotheses and evidence. https://www.dni.gov/index.php/newsroom/reports-publications/reports-publications-2021/item/2236-unclassified-summary-of-assessment-on-covid-19-origins https://www.dni.gov/index.php/newsroom/reports-publications/...

TheCowboy 5y ago

The best piece that one can read on the origin of covid is by Zeynep: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/25/opinion/coronavirus-lab.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/25/opinion/coronavirus-lab.h... I am still confused how people think that it being an accidental "lab leak" is any more damning of the role China played in the initial outbreak. China made a lot of mistakes and also kept other countries in the dark for way too long no matter the origin. It can also serve as a warning against authoritarian models of rule. My criticism doesn't mean I think we shouldn't investigate the origins either. It is in the world's public interest to err on the side of knowing too much so that maybe the chance of this happening again is reduced.

boulos 5y ago
> I am still confused how people think that it being an accidental "lab leak" is any more damning of the role China played in the initial outbreak. Huh. I think most people find that if something "happens to you" it's less your fault than if you "made it happen". If your house burns down from a gas line explosion nearby, that's bad luck for you. If it burns down because you had a pile of paper next to your stove while operating it, that's on you. How it was handled after the fact is probably similar (though again, if it was your own source, then it probably meant you had even earlier warning), but I believe it's mostly down to "things that happen to you versus things you cause".
- parineum 5y ago
  If you had a grease fire in your kitchen but didn't call the fire department because you didn't want your neighbors to know you couldn't cook the situation would be similar. Especially if it burned down the whole neighborhood.
glitchc 5y ago
I think what it really brings to light (at least for me) is the incompetence of the CCP in the matter. I have no qualms about China conducting research in this regard, other countries are doing it too and we would be naive to think otherwise. However, if it is proven to be true that gain of function research was being conducted at the Wuhan laboratory, it highlights the sheer stupidity of the government in thinking they could build a military bio-weapons research laboratory in the heart of a major city center. Western nations that do have such facilities place them far away from high-density urban populations, precisely as a last-ditch measure to mitigate the impact of an (eventual) breach. It's worse for the CCP if it boils down to incompetence rather than malice. Becoming a laughingstock of the world and not being taken seriously is perhaps their deepest fear.

tomohawk 5y ago

If you want an objective and open and transparent debate, then a good place to start would be to stop censoring it. Here's but one of many cases. https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2021/sep/12/they-are-controlling-you-they-are-silencing-you/ https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2021/sep/12/they-are-co... You can't arrive at the truth of a matter by only listening to those with enough power to shut down any countervailing opinions.

cwp 5y ago

This is stupid. You can't debate facts. Either SARS-CoV-2 escaped from a lab, or it didn't. Unless somebody comes forward to say, "Yeah, I tore my glove while transporting some test tubes and I got sick two days later," we're never going to know for sure. The only sensible thing to do is assume that it's at least possible that it was a lab leak and reevaluate the risk-benefit tradeoff of this type of research. That is a debate worth having. The rest is just posturing.

adolph 5y ago
It is stupid. Previous authors published in the Lancet did call for suppression of debate and facts. From the first sentence of the parent article: On July 5, 2021, a Correspondence was published in The Lancet called “Science, not speculation, is essential to determine how SARS-CoV-2 reached humans”. The letter recapitulates the arguments of an earlier letter (published in February, 2020) by the same authors, which claimed overwhelming support for the hypothesis that the novel coronavirus causing the COVID-19 pandemic originated in wildlife. The authors associated any alternative view with conspiracy theories by stating: “We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin”. The statement has imparted a silencing effect on the wider scientific debate, including among science journalists. The 2/20 letter stated: The rapid, open, and transparent sharing of data on this outbreak is now being threatened by rumours and misinformation around its origins. We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin. These are the scientists who wanted to deny facts: Charles Calisher, Dennis Carroll, Rita Colwell, Ronald B Corley, Peter Daszak, Christian Drosten, Luis Enjuanes, Jeremy Farrar, Hume Field, Josie Golding, Alexander Gorbalenya, Bart Haagmans, James M Hughes, William B Karesh, Gerald T Keusch, Sai Kit Lam, Juan Lubroth, John S Mackenzie, Larry Madoff, Jonna Mazet, Peter Palese, Stanley Perlman, Leo Poon, Bernard Roizman, Linda Saif, Kanta Subbarao, Mike Turner The above statement may sound mild-mannered to a lay person but it had greater import and effect, as outlined by this BMJ article, "The covid-19 lab leak hypothesis: did the media fall victim to a misinformation campaign?" [https://www.bmj.com/content/374/bmj.n1656 https://www.bmj.com/content/374/bmj.n1656] Scientists and reporters contacted by The BMJ say that objective consideration of covid-19’s origins went awry early in the pandemic, as researchers who were funded to study viruses with pandemic potential launched a campaign labelling the lab leak hypothesis as a “conspiracy theory.” A leader in this campaign has been Peter Daszak, president of EcoHealth Alliance, a non-profit organisation given millions of dollars in grants by the US federal government to research viruses for pandemic preparedness.1 Over the years EcoHealth Alliance has subcontracted out its federally supported research to various scientists and groups, including around $600 000 (£434 000; €504 000) to the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Shortly after the pandemic began, Daszak effectively silenced debate over the possibility of a lab leak with a February 2020 statement in the Lancet. “We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that covid-19 does not have a natural origin,” said the letter, which listed Daszak as one of 27 coauthors. Daszak did not respond to repeated requests for comment from The BMJ.

endgame 5y ago

The Lancet? The same Lancet that published the studies that were based on faked data from Surgisphere? https://retractionwatch.com/2020/06/04/lancet-retracts-controversial-hydroxychloroquine-study/ https://retractionwatch.com/2020/06/04/lancet-retracts-contr... https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/03/covid-19-surgisphere-who-world-health-organization-hydroxychloroquine https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/03/covid-19-surgi...

iammisc 5y ago

It's time we admit a lot of 'science' was done with the express purpose of contradicting a republican president, and then admit that this is the reason why many conservatives do not trust science and scientists and experts anymore. Until we do that, this country will not be able to come together.

Akronymus 5y ago
The "science" more often than not seems like "scientism" to me.

TheRealNGenius 5y ago

Slightly off topic, but with so many viruses crossing the animal-human barrier from bats, has there ever been consideration of eradication?