9 ms·

Peter Daszak of Eco Health Alliance Faces Calls to Quit

30 points by jeffrwells 4y ago

IndoorPatio 4y ago
Newsweek is always good for a laugh these days. "Calls to Quit"? Sounds serious. By how many people? More than 10? No?
rcme 4y ago
This guy always cracks me up: > A Freedom of Information Request has shown that Daszak organized a letter to squash rumors that COVID leaked from a lab, in a way that did not link back to collaborations between WIV and EHA. Before his organizing role was revealed, Daszak called the lab leak theory terms such as "preposterous," "baseless," and "pure baloney," and claimed the WIV wasn't culturing viruses similar to SARS-CoV-2. > It later emerged that WIV had been working with RaTG13, one of the closest know relatives of SARS-CoV-2. Daszak had denied WIV had been actively working on RatG13, telling Wired: "We thought it's interesting, but not high-risk... So we didn't do anything about it and put it in the freezer." I'm surprised the calls are only that he resign. He should be under criminal investigation for unleashing one of the most disruptive contagions in human history.
- sfusato 4y ago
  > Peter Daszak is pictured leaving the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China on February 3, 2021, as a members of the World Health Organization COVID origins investigation team. You can’t make this up. Then they wonder how/why the people lost the trust in the institutions.
  - amalgamated_inc 4y ago
    Why do you hate science!
    - amalgamated_inc 4y ago
      Jeez people cool it with the downvoting. Obviously sarcasm.
- systemvoltage 4y ago
  Lab leak theory proponents were flagged on HN in 2020. So much for us trying to say this, comes off as rich. I just wish we could be a bit more self-critical and introspective.
  - TechBro8615 4y ago
    I posted a link [0] to project-evidence.github.io [1] in April 2020. I think it got flagged at the time, but a year later somebody vouched for it when I complained about the previous flagging in a comment on another thread just like this one. It's an unbiased document that has aged pretty well, IMO. FWIW, I also think many (not all) of the tweets from @EthicalSkeptic have aged well. But he's definitely not for everyone (and his - or their - pseudonymity does reduce trust, regardless of how understandable it is in this climate... after all, I'm using a pseudonym for the same reasons!). [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22912353 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22912353 [1] https://project-evidence.github.io/ https://project-evidence.github.io/
  - credit_guy 4y ago
    The system is imperfect, but how do you design a better system? It's easy to design a system that prevents the flagging in this particular case, but will it be better overall? I feel that it's quite inevitable in a community like HN for this theory to get flagged. It's undesirable, but the alternative is worse. Why? Because at its core, the HN community is a polite, considerate one. We try to apply the charitable interpretation when possible. The postings about the lab-leak theory could be interpreted in a charitable way too, but unfortunately, the lab-leak theory has a dark undercurrent: "China is bad". Of course, lots of people on HN are smart enough to understand that the lab leak was a joint China-US fiasco (of stupendous proportions). But they also understand that these nuances will be lost in translation. "China bad" is the only thing that comes out. For more than half a year there were numerous attacks on Asian people in the US. This was not just a theoretical exercise, it resulted in actual hate in the US. So flagging the lab-leak postings was in line with the HN's tendency to go for the charitable interpretation.
    - nradov 4y ago
scohesc 4y ago
I wonder who made the call that the WIV virus leak was a conspiracy, that we shouldn't believe in it, and that anybody spreading such a preposterous idea were racists, idiots, conspiracy theorists, horse medicine eating luddites? It's amazing how easy it is to control the narrative. Just plant a couple seeds at the highest level of media organizations and the journalists/social media companies, etc. do the social policing themselves.
- klyrs 4y ago
  The reasoning I saw was that regardless of origin, finger-pointing was counterproductive to the primary goal of dealing with the immediate concerns of the pandemic. Firefighters do their job first, then the forensics team comes in after. Now is the appropriate time for investigating how it happened.
  - systemvoltage 4y ago
    Both could have happened in parallel. The fact that it is a lab leak vs. something else wouldn't have any effect on pandemic containment. What it did is sow incredible distrust in our institutions. It lead to long lasting damage which was compounded by institutions going on full defensive mode, doubling down on their old premises instead of adopting humility and compassion, admitting to mistakes. Those that continue to justify this in the name of "containment" are chipping away what little is left.
    - klyrs 4y ago
      Meanwhile Trump and his followers were out there making racist comments and saber-rattling at China. That astoundingly boneheaded diplomatic failure unnecessarily ratcheted international tensions to the point where, no, we absolutely were not able to simultaneously research the cause and also collaborate on mitigating the impact of the virus. That diplomatic tension was repeatedly highlighted as a specific reason that investigation would not be tenable. If you're going to talk about the erosion of trust, be honest and look at how the conspiracy theorists have been contributing to that erosion.
justinclift 4y ago
(2021)
DynamicDude 4y ago
Quit? He should be in prison.

30 points by jeffrwells 4y ago

Newsweek is always good for a laugh these days. "Calls to Quit"? Sounds serious. By how many people? More than 10? No?

rcme 4y ago

This guy always cracks me up: > A Freedom of Information Request has shown that Daszak organized a letter to squash rumors that COVID leaked from a lab, in a way that did not link back to collaborations between WIV and EHA. Before his organizing role was revealed, Daszak called the lab leak theory terms such as "preposterous," "baseless," and "pure baloney," and claimed the WIV wasn't culturing viruses similar to SARS-CoV-2. > It later emerged that WIV had been working with RaTG13, one of the closest know relatives of SARS-CoV-2. Daszak had denied WIV had been actively working on RatG13, telling Wired: "We thought it's interesting, but not high-risk... So we didn't do anything about it and put it in the freezer." I'm surprised the calls are only that he resign. He should be under criminal investigation for unleashing one of the most disruptive contagions in human history.

sfusato 4y ago
> Peter Daszak is pictured leaving the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China on February 3, 2021, as a members of the World Health Organization COVID origins investigation team. You can’t make this up. Then they wonder how/why the people lost the trust in the institutions.
- amalgamated_inc 4y ago
  Why do you hate science!
  - amalgamated_inc 4y ago
    Jeez people cool it with the downvoting. Obviously sarcasm.
systemvoltage 4y ago
Lab leak theory proponents were flagged on HN in 2020. So much for us trying to say this, comes off as rich. I just wish we could be a bit more self-critical and introspective.
- TechBro8615 4y ago
  I posted a link [0] to project-evidence.github.io [1] in April 2020. I think it got flagged at the time, but a year later somebody vouched for it when I complained about the previous flagging in a comment on another thread just like this one. It's an unbiased document that has aged pretty well, IMO. FWIW, I also think many (not all) of the tweets from @EthicalSkeptic have aged well. But he's definitely not for everyone (and his - or their - pseudonymity does reduce trust, regardless of how understandable it is in this climate... after all, I'm using a pseudonym for the same reasons!). [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22912353 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22912353 [1] https://project-evidence.github.io/ https://project-evidence.github.io/
- credit_guy 4y ago
  The system is imperfect, but how do you design a better system? It's easy to design a system that prevents the flagging in this particular case, but will it be better overall? I feel that it's quite inevitable in a community like HN for this theory to get flagged. It's undesirable, but the alternative is worse. Why? Because at its core, the HN community is a polite, considerate one. We try to apply the charitable interpretation when possible. The postings about the lab-leak theory could be interpreted in a charitable way too, but unfortunately, the lab-leak theory has a dark undercurrent: "China is bad". Of course, lots of people on HN are smart enough to understand that the lab leak was a joint China-US fiasco (of stupendous proportions). But they also understand that these nuances will be lost in translation. "China bad" is the only thing that comes out. For more than half a year there were numerous attacks on Asian people in the US. This was not just a theoretical exercise, it resulted in actual hate in the US. So flagging the lab-leak postings was in line with the HN's tendency to go for the charitable interpretation.
  - nradov 4y ago

scohesc 4y ago

I wonder who made the call that the WIV virus leak was a conspiracy, that we shouldn't believe in it, and that anybody spreading such a preposterous idea were racists, idiots, conspiracy theorists, horse medicine eating luddites? It's amazing how easy it is to control the narrative. Just plant a couple seeds at the highest level of media organizations and the journalists/social media companies, etc. do the social policing themselves.

klyrs 4y ago
The reasoning I saw was that regardless of origin, finger-pointing was counterproductive to the primary goal of dealing with the immediate concerns of the pandemic. Firefighters do their job first, then the forensics team comes in after. Now is the appropriate time for investigating how it happened.
- systemvoltage 4y ago
  Both could have happened in parallel. The fact that it is a lab leak vs. something else wouldn't have any effect on pandemic containment. What it did is sow incredible distrust in our institutions. It lead to long lasting damage which was compounded by institutions going on full defensive mode, doubling down on their old premises instead of adopting humility and compassion, admitting to mistakes. Those that continue to justify this in the name of "containment" are chipping away what little is left.
  - klyrs 4y ago
    Meanwhile Trump and his followers were out there making racist comments and saber-rattling at China. That astoundingly boneheaded diplomatic failure unnecessarily ratcheted international tensions to the point where, no, we absolutely were not able to simultaneously research the cause and also collaborate on mitigating the impact of the virus. That diplomatic tension was repeatedly highlighted as a specific reason that investigation would not be tenable. If you're going to talk about the erosion of trust, be honest and look at how the conspiracy theorists have been contributing to that erosion.

justinclift 4y ago

(2021)

DynamicDude 4y ago

Quit? He should be in prison.