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[flagged]

himinlomax 5y ago
I'm pretty sure there was a conspiracy. Not a conspiracy to create a pandemic, but a conspiracy to hide an accident due to incompetence. Not all conspiracies are myths, just consider Watergate: there was a conspiracy to hide Nixon's shenanigans. The only difference is that one happened in a dictatorship while the other happened in a democracy with a free press.
- bedhead 5y ago
  Oh I agree, at a bare minimum there's nothing even remotely wacky about the lab leak theory. I'm just explaining why half the country has counterintuitively decided to brand it as lunatic fringe conspiracy rather than it being self-evidently plausible if not likely.
bufferoverflow 5y ago
You pretty much nailed it. The left is so deranged in their hatred, they can't consider that this explanation isn't just plausible, but very likely.
- knownjorbist 5y ago
  The irony in this statement is palpable. You're so obviously ready to confirm your priors that you'll actively go out of your way to avoid other plausible explanations.
  - dekhn 5y ago
    I'm a democrat and I definitely think a lot of left-leaning scientists really made themselves look like idiots by saying that claiming China had a lab leak was "racist". It was always a reasonable (IE, not impossible or even extremely unlikely) hypothesis, and only some of the people who suggested it were doing so out of racial hatred for China.
dekhn 5y ago
it's too bad this was downvoted because it's probably the best explanation. I'm not totally sure about 3, my guess is that we have collected far more useful intelligence that our agencies have released, but nothing sufficient to make a geopolitical claim about China, and the cost of being wrong with such an accusation is huge.
downWidOutaFite 5y ago
Well I'm guessing that because of your political ideals you're committed to the wrong position that masks are ineffective so studies like this won't convince you, https://www.bmj.com/content/375/bmj-2021-068302 https://www.bmj.com/content/375/bmj-2021-068302
- bedhead 5y ago
  No, it's my commitment to objective analysis and not bizarre herd behavior combined with religious/cult undertones that led me to this conclusion. I always love when someone posts like one single "study" that almost always doesn't even qualify as amateur hour (eg data mining) and thinks it's some sort of mic drop, as if there aren't 25 disconfirming studies or data points for every one thing saying masks have even a faint amount of efficacy.
  - downWidOutaFite 5y ago
    The link was to a rigorous meta-analysis in one of the top medical journals of several studies with combined n=389k that concluded that masks showed a 53% reduction in covid-19 incidence.

[flagged]

I'm pretty sure there was a conspiracy. Not a conspiracy to create a pandemic, but a conspiracy to hide an accident due to incompetence. Not all conspiracies are myths, just consider Watergate: there was a conspiracy to hide Nixon's shenanigans. The only difference is that one happened in a dictatorship while the other happened in a democracy with a free press.

bedhead 5y ago
Oh I agree, at a bare minimum there's nothing even remotely wacky about the lab leak theory. I'm just explaining why half the country has counterintuitively decided to brand it as lunatic fringe conspiracy rather than it being self-evidently plausible if not likely.

bufferoverflow 5y ago

You pretty much nailed it. The left is so deranged in their hatred, they can't consider that this explanation isn't just plausible, but very likely.

knownjorbist 5y ago
The irony in this statement is palpable. You're so obviously ready to confirm your priors that you'll actively go out of your way to avoid other plausible explanations.
- dekhn 5y ago
  I'm a democrat and I definitely think a lot of left-leaning scientists really made themselves look like idiots by saying that claiming China had a lab leak was "racist". It was always a reasonable (IE, not impossible or even extremely unlikely) hypothesis, and only some of the people who suggested it were doing so out of racial hatred for China.

dekhn 5y ago

it's too bad this was downvoted because it's probably the best explanation. I'm not totally sure about 3, my guess is that we have collected far more useful intelligence that our agencies have released, but nothing sufficient to make a geopolitical claim about China, and the cost of being wrong with such an accusation is huge.

downWidOutaFite 5y ago

Well I'm guessing that because of your political ideals you're committed to the wrong position that masks are ineffective so studies like this won't convince you, https://www.bmj.com/content/375/bmj-2021-068302 https://www.bmj.com/content/375/bmj-2021-068302

bedhead 5y ago
No, it's my commitment to objective analysis and not bizarre herd behavior combined with religious/cult undertones that led me to this conclusion. I always love when someone posts like one single "study" that almost always doesn't even qualify as amateur hour (eg data mining) and thinks it's some sort of mic drop, as if there aren't 25 disconfirming studies or data points for every one thing saying masks have even a faint amount of efficacy.
- downWidOutaFite 5y ago
  The link was to a rigorous meta-analysis in one of the top medical journals of several studies with combined n=389k that concluded that masks showed a 53% reduction in covid-19 incidence.