4 ms·

I find it fairly amusing that people who believe in the "lableak-hypothesis" seem to usually also be in the camp of people who don't think the virus is too bad.

by sva_ 5y ago

I find it fairly amusing that people who believe in the "lableak-hypothesis" seem to usually also be in the camp of people who don't think the virus is too bad. If the virus really came from the lab, then presumably the Chinese know more about its (long term) effects than the rest of us. And looking at the fact, that they have this zero COVID policy, that should absolutely terrify anyone believing in the aforementioned hypothesis.

extheat 5y ago
> then presumably the Chinese know more about its (long term) effects than the rest of us Not necessarily true. The lab in question has been known to house coronavirus variants and done bat research. SARS-cov-2 isn't the first coronavirus out of China, remember SARS-cov-1. This is not in dispute. What was in dispute is if it leaked from there or not, or spread naturally outside human error. The proximity of the lab to the first cases, the measures taken there before the known spread of the virus and their attempt to destroy information about it is what leads to speculation. We may never know what actually happened outside anecdotal information without more information from China. Given the low likelihood of it being human engineered though, we should probably still be able to trace how it evolved in nature before spreading to humans. I don't see the correlation between this and the zero-COVID policy. Labs (ethically) work with pathogens all the time, they obviously don't inject viruses into humans without substantial cause.
- nomel 5y ago
  > Labs (ethically) work with pathogens all the time, they obviously don't inject viruses into humans without substantial cause. There's a long history that shows this is clearly not how lab leaks work.
_dain_ 5y ago
>If the virus really came from the lab, then presumably the Chinese know more about its (long term) effects than the rest of us. why would this be the case? any secret informational advantage they had at the start evaporated as soon as it got outside their borders. and today's virus is very different to the OG one they had in the lab before it was (presumably accidentally) leaked.
qwytw 5y ago
I find it more amusing that someone can think that the could CCP be seriously concerned about the long term wellbeing of the Chinese people. Surely if it disportionately affects older individuals, especially in the light of the demographic crisis China will being facing in not to distant future (and with no social security or widespread private pension schemes and limited immigration it would be reasonable that it will hurt the Chinese people more than those living in the west), culling as a many of them would help increase the average productivity of their 'citizens'? What I just wrote must sounding disgusting, but let's not forget we're talking about country which until very recently practised forced abortion upon women choose to have more than a single child (pursuing an absurd and nonsensical policy which might imply that the CCP is not the most rational bunch...) and is still sending thousands if not millions of people in to concentration/reeducation camps merely because of their ethnicity and religion.
- bllguo 5y ago
  So if the CCP truly cared about the people they'd cull the elderly. This is the quality of discussion on China these days on HN. The idea that "hey, obviously they wouldn't consider that, maybe they're not the comic-book villains I've been led to believe!" doesn't even cross your mind.
  - qwytw 5y ago
    No? I didn't mean to imply that at all. Rather the opposite. If they cared about economic growth above anything else, I don't think it would a completely beyond them to do something like that (and you don't even need to get back to the times when Mao was still alive to find proof, the one child policy was a misguided crime against humanity, was it not?). Of course engineering a virus for that purpose would be highly impractical and utterly absurd (one would hope so at least...).
  - rdtwo 5y ago
    I mean Sweden, and New York did it idk why we would put it past the Chinese. Might be cultural though
  - ailun 5y ago
bigodbiel 5y ago
If you abide by the lableak theory, then part of its mythos was that he NIH funded the research, making them equally knowledgeable on it. https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/10/nih-admits-funding-risky-virus-research-in-wuhan/amp https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/10/nih-admits-funding-r...
- rdtwo 5y ago
  The nih thing isn’t a theory. The lab leak Part is speculation

by sva_ 5y ago

extheat 5y ago

> then presumably the Chinese know more about its (long term) effects than the rest of us Not necessarily true. The lab in question has been known to house coronavirus variants and done bat research. SARS-cov-2 isn't the first coronavirus out of China, remember SARS-cov-1. This is not in dispute. What was in dispute is if it leaked from there or not, or spread naturally outside human error. The proximity of the lab to the first cases, the measures taken there before the known spread of the virus and their attempt to destroy information about it is what leads to speculation. We may never know what actually happened outside anecdotal information without more information from China. Given the low likelihood of it being human engineered though, we should probably still be able to trace how it evolved in nature before spreading to humans. I don't see the correlation between this and the zero-COVID policy. Labs (ethically) work with pathogens all the time, they obviously don't inject viruses into humans without substantial cause.

nomel 5y ago
> Labs (ethically) work with pathogens all the time, they obviously don't inject viruses into humans without substantial cause. There's a long history that shows this is clearly not how lab leaks work.

_dain_ 5y ago

>If the virus really came from the lab, then presumably the Chinese know more about its (long term) effects than the rest of us. why would this be the case? any secret informational advantage they had at the start evaporated as soon as it got outside their borders. and today's virus is very different to the OG one they had in the lab before it was (presumably accidentally) leaked.

qwytw 5y ago

I find it more amusing that someone can think that the could CCP be seriously concerned about the long term wellbeing of the Chinese people. Surely if it disportionately affects older individuals, especially in the light of the demographic crisis China will being facing in not to distant future (and with no social security or widespread private pension schemes and limited immigration it would be reasonable that it will hurt the Chinese people more than those living in the west), culling as a many of them would help increase the average productivity of their 'citizens'? What I just wrote must sounding disgusting, but let's not forget we're talking about country which until very recently practised forced abortion upon women choose to have more than a single child (pursuing an absurd and nonsensical policy which might imply that the CCP is not the most rational bunch...) and is still sending thousands if not millions of people in to concentration/reeducation camps merely because of their ethnicity and religion.

bllguo 5y ago
So if the CCP truly cared about the people they'd cull the elderly. This is the quality of discussion on China these days on HN. The idea that "hey, obviously they wouldn't consider that, maybe they're not the comic-book villains I've been led to believe!" doesn't even cross your mind.
- qwytw 5y ago
  No? I didn't mean to imply that at all. Rather the opposite. If they cared about economic growth above anything else, I don't think it would a completely beyond them to do something like that (and you don't even need to get back to the times when Mao was still alive to find proof, the one child policy was a misguided crime against humanity, was it not?). Of course engineering a virus for that purpose would be highly impractical and utterly absurd (one would hope so at least...).
- rdtwo 5y ago
  I mean Sweden, and New York did it idk why we would put it past the Chinese. Might be cultural though
- ailun 5y ago

bigodbiel 5y ago

If you abide by the lableak theory, then part of its mythos was that he NIH funded the research, making them equally knowledgeable on it. https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/10/nih-admits-funding-risky-virus-research-in-wuhan/amp https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/10/nih-admits-funding-r...

rdtwo 5y ago
The nih thing isn’t a theory. The lab leak Part is speculation