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> There was a clear consequence of tying COVID-19 with some sort of WMD released by the Chinese and it was the increase in violence against AAPI folks. Nobody

> There was a clear consequence of tying COVID-19 with some sort of WMD released by the Chinese and it was the increase in violence against AAPI folks. Nobody said WMD. Most likely culprit is irresponsibly risky experimentation combined with documented poor lab safety practices. That said, even if there was a direct link between theories about Covid-19 origins and a rise in hate crimes, does that mean that those theories shouldn't be discussed? If the search for truth leads to unintended and unfortunate side effects, does that mean that the search for truth should be abandoned in favor of burying our heads in the sand? Or worse, adopting an alternate reality that is more harmful to us, like maybe the Chinese Communist Party "theory" that Covid came from a US Army lab.

acdha 5y ago
> Nobody said WMD. This was in fact a not uncommon claim. It wouldn’t have gotten anywhere near the backlash if concerns about an accidental leak been expressed as questions rather than with certainty, by people who weren’t also making racist statements or otherwise acting in bad faith about the pandemic (you could easily find Republicans saying it was both mostly harmless and a Chinese attack just sentences apart).
manuelabeledo 5y ago
> If the search for truth leads to unintended and unfortunate side effects, does that mean that the search for truth should be abandoned in favor of burying our heads in the sand? I think this is a take as naive as it can be. Not only can we read about this lab leak hypothesis across all media outlets, there is an ongoing debate about its validity in most respectable ones. Debates should include opposing opinions, I presume? There are also plenty of historical examples of why public opinion driven by media outlets does not qualify as the “search of truth”. Reporting itself has mostly nothing to do with that, either. This hypothesis and many others could be true or false, but the vast majority of the population is simply not able to reach an informed conclusion, even more if we take into account that not even experts have enough information to do so. Thus, one shouldn’t believe otherwise, while ignoring the fact that it is already being used to push public opinion in a certain direction.
- pageandrew 5y ago
  > Not only can we read about this lab leak hypothesis across all media outlets, there is an ongoing debate about its validity in most respectable ones. This was not the case throughout 2020, into 2021. Discussing the lab leak publicly was a great way to get banned from Twitter or branded a misinformation-spreading fringe alt-righter, a-la-Rogan. This was despite the fact that there was no less evidence supporting its probability.
  - manuelabeledo 5y ago
    > This was despite the fact that there was no less evidence supporting its probability. In the first half of 2020 there was no evidence whatsoever. Even if the hypothesis is proven true in the future, promoting it without any supporting evidence is indistinguishable from just lying. It was indeed peddled by right wing outlets earlier in 2020, coinciding with the ongoing trade war between the US and China [1]. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_lab_leak_theory https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_lab_leak_theory

acdha 5y ago

> Nobody said WMD. This was in fact a not uncommon claim. It wouldn’t have gotten anywhere near the backlash if concerns about an accidental leak been expressed as questions rather than with certainty, by people who weren’t also making racist statements or otherwise acting in bad faith about the pandemic (you could easily find Republicans saying it was both mostly harmless and a Chinese attack just sentences apart).

manuelabeledo 5y ago

> If the search for truth leads to unintended and unfortunate side effects, does that mean that the search for truth should be abandoned in favor of burying our heads in the sand? I think this is a take as naive as it can be. Not only can we read about this lab leak hypothesis across all media outlets, there is an ongoing debate about its validity in most respectable ones. Debates should include opposing opinions, I presume? There are also plenty of historical examples of why public opinion driven by media outlets does not qualify as the “search of truth”. Reporting itself has mostly nothing to do with that, either. This hypothesis and many others could be true or false, but the vast majority of the population is simply not able to reach an informed conclusion, even more if we take into account that not even experts have enough information to do so. Thus, one shouldn’t believe otherwise, while ignoring the fact that it is already being used to push public opinion in a certain direction.

pageandrew 5y ago
> Not only can we read about this lab leak hypothesis across all media outlets, there is an ongoing debate about its validity in most respectable ones. This was not the case throughout 2020, into 2021. Discussing the lab leak publicly was a great way to get banned from Twitter or branded a misinformation-spreading fringe alt-righter, a-la-Rogan. This was despite the fact that there was no less evidence supporting its probability.
- manuelabeledo 5y ago
  > This was despite the fact that there was no less evidence supporting its probability. In the first half of 2020 there was no evidence whatsoever. Even if the hypothesis is proven true in the future, promoting it without any supporting evidence is indistinguishable from just lying. It was indeed peddled by right wing outlets earlier in 2020, coinciding with the ongoing trade war between the US and China [1]. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_lab_leak_theory https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_lab_leak_theory