4 ms·

I believe the poster is trying to say if you provide an objective assessment of the situation, a person who hasn't been tainted by the media would have the more

I believe the poster is trying to say if you provide an objective assessment of the situation, a person who hasn't been tainted by the media would have the more accurate take. Large chunks of the media assured us that it was not only impossible that the virus came from a lab but also racist and xenophobic to even suggest it. If you told the average person who didn't watch the news that a lab that studies corona viruses is in a city where a corona virus started many would just assume it came from the lab.

hotpotamus 4y ago
I always just assumed that it didn't come from a lab because it's not like polio or HIV or Chicken Pox came from a lab either.
- lazyeye 4y ago
  Would need to confirm the detail but I think polio and chicken pox appeared before labs were a thing, and HIV came from Africa where they dont have labs. This is compared to the coronavirus which first appeared just down the road from a lab which studies coronaviruses.
  - hotpotamus 4y ago
    Yes, the idea is that we had viruses emerge without labs in the past, so my first assumption would be that covid emerged like any other past virus had. Also, it seems quite unclear to me what people claim the lab's role was. I can accept that we may never truly know the origin, and I can also say that it seems like a good idea to impose strict restrictions on viral research no matter the origin of covid, but I doubt that China will take much heed of my preferences. It seems that progress in technology is inevitable, and biotech/viruses are not an exception.
autoexec 4y ago
I agree that learning about a subject without having to unlearn a bunch of misinformation is a lot easier! > Large chunks of the media assured us that it was not only impossible that the virus came from a lab but also racist and xenophobic to even suggest it. I don't think that's a fair assessment of "the media", at least not the mass media. When the lab leak theory started there was no evidence at all to support it beyond "A lab exists" and "We don't like China" which gave it status as a conspiracy theory. As evidence grew suggesting that the virus wasn't engineered in a lab and could have jumped from animals to humans, the people who clung to, and very aggressively promoted, the lab leak theory were rightly called out for it. They were dismissing the evidence that we had which was increasingly suggesting it jumped to humans from animals, to support a fringe theory that had no evidence. Wild fantasies were popping up too, like how the virus was developed in the US or was a bio-weapon attack against China. This was all just conspiracy theory. Some of it was clearly borne from anti-Chinese sentiment. In fact it caused a huge spike in violence against innocent Asian Americans which did kind of spoil the lab leak theory and made people hesitate to consider it for fear of being lumped in with bigots and conspiracy theorists. We kept investigating the possibility though, and gradually, we started to get evidence that China was hiding things. They hid early cases and pressured doctors to keep quiet about them. They denied investigators access to records and locations they needed. Researches at the lab had been hospitalized with covid-like symptoms. There was still zero direct evidence of a lab leak, everything was circumstantial, but it was suspicious enough that there were lots of people increasingly calling for more investigation. The mass media reported on all of these things. At a certain point it became actually justified to support the lab leak theory, but people who were spouting off lab leak theories, even the more sensible theories, in the early months of the pandemic were not, and still are not, vindicated. Their suspicions were not based on evidence or reached through investigation of the facts we had. Today we still have no real evidence for the lab leak theory. The department of energy says they have evidence that they won't share with us, and the other agencies they have shared it with were not impressed and haven't changed their views. At this point I'd say the lab leak theory is about as credible as a natural origin. We just don't have conclusive evidence either way. Because all the information we need is in China's hands, and they've been obstructing investigations, I suspect we might not ever never know the truth.
- lazyeye 4y ago
  The evidence for not being a lab leak was just as weak as being a lab leak. But only one of these scenarios was ridiculed, cancelled, censored, banned by the media. We also know that senior people in the US medical establishment responsible for funding research at the Wuhan lab had a strong motive to discredit the lab leak hypothesis. I agree we may never know the truth with certainty but we can be 100% certain that the media is garbage, pure and simple.
  - autoexec 4y ago
    > The evidence for not being a lab leak was just as weak as being a lab leak. Not at all, because the evidence for a lab leak was non-existent and the people and sources spreading the conspiracy theory often admitted as much. Tom Cotton, one of the first republicans to push the theory, said himself: "Now, we don’t have evidence that this disease originated there, but because of China’s duplicity and dishonesty from the beginning, we need to at least ask the question to see what the evidence says" when the washington times jumped into the game their own article included this admission: "In principle, outward virus infiltration might take place either as leakage or as an indoor unnoticed infection of a person that normally went out of the concerned facility. This could have been the case with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, but so far there isn’t evidence or indication for such incident." (https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/jan/26/coronavirus-link-to-china-biowarfare-program-possi/ https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/jan/26/coronavirus...) Meanwhile the evidence for not a lab leak was actual science like genome analysis. That work was published by scientists in preprints for the world to scrutinize unlike the politicians whose claims were based on suspicion alone. There was no science supporting the lab leak theory in January 2020, just speculation.
    - lazyeye 4y ago
      Nonsense. Given labs obviously keep a library of natural viruses for research purposes, how does "actual science like genome analysis" prove it wasn't a lab leak? This argument is just bs put forward by scientists highly motivated to discredit the lab leak hypothesis. Using the same level of analysis there was zero evidence for the wet market transmission either (other than the massive levels of obsfucation, misdirection and disinformation that a nation state like China is able to inject into the discussion).

hotpotamus 4y ago

I always just assumed that it didn't come from a lab because it's not like polio or HIV or Chicken Pox came from a lab either.

lazyeye 4y ago
Would need to confirm the detail but I think polio and chicken pox appeared before labs were a thing, and HIV came from Africa where they dont have labs. This is compared to the coronavirus which first appeared just down the road from a lab which studies coronaviruses.
- hotpotamus 4y ago
  Yes, the idea is that we had viruses emerge without labs in the past, so my first assumption would be that covid emerged like any other past virus had. Also, it seems quite unclear to me what people claim the lab's role was. I can accept that we may never truly know the origin, and I can also say that it seems like a good idea to impose strict restrictions on viral research no matter the origin of covid, but I doubt that China will take much heed of my preferences. It seems that progress in technology is inevitable, and biotech/viruses are not an exception.

autoexec 4y ago

I agree that learning about a subject without having to unlearn a bunch of misinformation is a lot easier! > Large chunks of the media assured us that it was not only impossible that the virus came from a lab but also racist and xenophobic to even suggest it. I don't think that's a fair assessment of "the media", at least not the mass media. When the lab leak theory started there was no evidence at all to support it beyond "A lab exists" and "We don't like China" which gave it status as a conspiracy theory. As evidence grew suggesting that the virus wasn't engineered in a lab and could have jumped from animals to humans, the people who clung to, and very aggressively promoted, the lab leak theory were rightly called out for it. They were dismissing the evidence that we had which was increasingly suggesting it jumped to humans from animals, to support a fringe theory that had no evidence. Wild fantasies were popping up too, like how the virus was developed in the US or was a bio-weapon attack against China. This was all just conspiracy theory. Some of it was clearly borne from anti-Chinese sentiment. In fact it caused a huge spike in violence against innocent Asian Americans which did kind of spoil the lab leak theory and made people hesitate to consider it for fear of being lumped in with bigots and conspiracy theorists. We kept investigating the possibility though, and gradually, we started to get evidence that China was hiding things. They hid early cases and pressured doctors to keep quiet about them. They denied investigators access to records and locations they needed. Researches at the lab had been hospitalized with covid-like symptoms. There was still zero direct evidence of a lab leak, everything was circumstantial, but it was suspicious enough that there were lots of people increasingly calling for more investigation. The mass media reported on all of these things. At a certain point it became actually justified to support the lab leak theory, but people who were spouting off lab leak theories, even the more sensible theories, in the early months of the pandemic were not, and still are not, vindicated. Their suspicions were not based on evidence or reached through investigation of the facts we had. Today we still have no real evidence for the lab leak theory. The department of energy says they have evidence that they won't share with us, and the other agencies they have shared it with were not impressed and haven't changed their views. At this point I'd say the lab leak theory is about as credible as a natural origin. We just don't have conclusive evidence either way. Because all the information we need is in China's hands, and they've been obstructing investigations, I suspect we might not ever never know the truth.

lazyeye 4y ago
The evidence for not being a lab leak was just as weak as being a lab leak. But only one of these scenarios was ridiculed, cancelled, censored, banned by the media. We also know that senior people in the US medical establishment responsible for funding research at the Wuhan lab had a strong motive to discredit the lab leak hypothesis. I agree we may never know the truth with certainty but we can be 100% certain that the media is garbage, pure and simple.
- autoexec 4y ago
  > The evidence for not being a lab leak was just as weak as being a lab leak. Not at all, because the evidence for a lab leak was non-existent and the people and sources spreading the conspiracy theory often admitted as much. Tom Cotton, one of the first republicans to push the theory, said himself: "Now, we don’t have evidence that this disease originated there, but because of China’s duplicity and dishonesty from the beginning, we need to at least ask the question to see what the evidence says" when the washington times jumped into the game their own article included this admission: "In principle, outward virus infiltration might take place either as leakage or as an indoor unnoticed infection of a person that normally went out of the concerned facility. This could have been the case with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, but so far there isn’t evidence or indication for such incident." (https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/jan/26/coronavirus-link-to-china-biowarfare-program-possi/ https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/jan/26/coronavirus...) Meanwhile the evidence for not a lab leak was actual science like genome analysis. That work was published by scientists in preprints for the world to scrutinize unlike the politicians whose claims were based on suspicion alone. There was no science supporting the lab leak theory in January 2020, just speculation.
  - lazyeye 4y ago
    Nonsense. Given labs obviously keep a library of natural viruses for research purposes, how does "actual science like genome analysis" prove it wasn't a lab leak? This argument is just bs put forward by scientists highly motivated to discredit the lab leak hypothesis. Using the same level of analysis there was zero evidence for the wet market transmission either (other than the massive levels of obsfucation, misdirection and disinformation that a nation state like China is able to inject into the discussion).