3 ms·

I wish there was no harm. It seems to be a pretty short jump from lab-leak, to engineered virus, to 5G cell towers giving us covid through our dreams. And even

I wish there was no harm. It seems to be a pretty short jump from lab-leak, to engineered virus, to 5G cell towers giving us covid through our dreams. And even that starting step seems to have a lot of people wanting to shut down virology labs.

jtdev 5y ago
howLongHowLong 5y ago
I just want to comment to reject the equivalency of lab-leak hypothesis with absurd conspiracies. Humans make mistakes; it's known that contagions have escaped from labs. How does acknowledging these uncontroversial facts cause one to jump to intentional engineering, or not understanding how 5G works? I suspect that the majority of people who think "lab leak" is among the set of reasonable origin hypotheses are looking for better transparency and safety protocols in labs, not trying to end virology research.
- kennywinker 5y ago
  I wasn’t saying it’s a slippery slope, i was saying (and it’s evidenced in any comment section this comes up in) that anything that lends credibility to the LLH is fuel for all those more extreme viewpoints.
evv555 5y ago
It's almost like initially dismissing and censoring the lableak theory as a racist conspiracy has helped fuel all these other conspiracies. Conflicts of interests like these fuel distrust of authorities and vaccine hesitancy. It's self-inflicted
- kennywinker 5y ago
  Meh. You’re putting a lot of faith in people. More transparency sometimes helps dispel conspiracy theories - sometimes it just gives them more data to pour over to find “connections” in.
  - evv555 5y ago
    I don't think so. Avoiding loss of trust is medical governance 101.[1] "The agency organised a fake hepatitis vaccination campaign in Abottabad, Pakistan, in a bid to obtain DNA from the children of Bin Laden, to confirm the presence of the family in a compound and sanction the rollout of a risky and extensive operation. Release of this information has had a disastrous effect on worldwide eradication of infectious diseases, especially polio." 1. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(14)60900-4/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...
    - kennywinker 5y ago
      Yes, absolutely - trust is key - but I don’t think that this was the moment where scientists and governments lost the trust of the people.
      - evv555 5y ago
        It's one of several major moments throughout the pandemic
        kennywinker 5y ago
        Oh, i meant they’d lost people’s trust decades before the pandemic…

jtdev 5y ago

howLongHowLong 5y ago

I just want to comment to reject the equivalency of lab-leak hypothesis with absurd conspiracies. Humans make mistakes; it's known that contagions have escaped from labs. How does acknowledging these uncontroversial facts cause one to jump to intentional engineering, or not understanding how 5G works? I suspect that the majority of people who think "lab leak" is among the set of reasonable origin hypotheses are looking for better transparency and safety protocols in labs, not trying to end virology research.

kennywinker 5y ago
I wasn’t saying it’s a slippery slope, i was saying (and it’s evidenced in any comment section this comes up in) that anything that lends credibility to the LLH is fuel for all those more extreme viewpoints.

evv555 5y ago

It's almost like initially dismissing and censoring the lableak theory as a racist conspiracy has helped fuel all these other conspiracies. Conflicts of interests like these fuel distrust of authorities and vaccine hesitancy. It's self-inflicted

kennywinker 5y ago
Meh. You’re putting a lot of faith in people. More transparency sometimes helps dispel conspiracy theories - sometimes it just gives them more data to pour over to find “connections” in.
- evv555 5y ago
  I don't think so. Avoiding loss of trust is medical governance 101.[1] "The agency organised a fake hepatitis vaccination campaign in Abottabad, Pakistan, in a bid to obtain DNA from the children of Bin Laden, to confirm the presence of the family in a compound and sanction the rollout of a risky and extensive operation. Release of this information has had a disastrous effect on worldwide eradication of infectious diseases, especially polio." 1. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(14)60900-4/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...
  - kennywinker 5y ago
    Yes, absolutely - trust is key - but I don’t think that this was the moment where scientists and governments lost the trust of the people.
    - evv555 5y ago
      It's one of several major moments throughout the pandemic
      - kennywinker 5y ago
        Oh, i meant they’d lost people’s trust decades before the pandemic…