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> But the thing is you don't need these conspiracies to hate China. You're projecting, and it's not a good look

• AnotherGoodName 5y ago
  • darkerside 5y ago
    This is buried, but I do think people would care if they could see it because it delegitimizes the very valid reasons to investigate the lab leak hypothesis. Nobody cares if you have a personal vendetta against a country, and it will end up distracting from the fact that, whether this came from a lab or a marketplace, the fact that we can't answer which was the source means the rational response is to take the precautions that would be warranted as if it came from BOTH.
    • jacquesm 5y ago
      Only if they are both equally likely, which they really aren't. It's more like 99.5% natural, 0.5% lab leak. Or even less. The lab leak is mostly a very popular hypothesis in circles that don't really do science. You can spend all the effort to write a book about it but in reality the biology of zooonosis is well understood and has been established many times in very recent history, including for coronaviruses very much like this one. To hypothesize a lab leak would require some evidence other than the circumstantial, and this book presents none. Scott is primarily interested because it allows him to crow 'I told you so', but in fact the substance that he sees simply isn't there. The superlatives with which he describes the book do not come across as unbiased reviewing but as searching for confirmation.
  • dang 5y ago
    Not so. We don't want people hating entire countries here. It's deeply against the intended spirit of this site, which is curiosity. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html