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I'd like for someone to throughly research and write about how it became taboo to discuss the virus leak theory. How researchers who discussed it were shunned,

by jeswin 3y ago

I'd like for someone to throughly research and write about how it became taboo to discuss the virus leak theory. How researchers who discussed it were shunned, tagged as racists, and in some cases had their posts banned from Social Media. About how almost the entire scientific community discarded the idea as impossible. How during the early pandemic years, no mainstream news media dared talk about the possibility. Tech companies too had a role to play here. For the sake of free speech, what happened here is worth discussing.

WastingMyTime89 3y ago
Was it really taboo? I didn’t get this feeling where I live (admittedly not the USA). It’s just that it became clear pretty quickly that the investigation was going nowhere as China wasn’t going to honestly cooperate. That didn’t leave much to discuss. For the official response, it was to be expected. The UN does plenty of compromises with authoritarian countries for the sake of being able to operate. It would have been surprising to see the WHO press China.
- ra1231963 3y ago
  It was absolutely taboo. If you tried to bring it up you were shouted down as a far right conspiracy theorist, or racist. Mashup of clips from the news: https://youtu.be/zl-X-Lgrlf0 https://youtu.be/zl-X-Lgrlf0 Jon Stewart was the first to call this into question publicly, which was brave at the time. Watch Colbert push back on Stewart’s line of reasoning: https://youtu.be/sSfejgwbDQ8 https://youtu.be/sSfejgwbDQ8 Honestly questioning anything covid-related was taboo at that time, including the vaccines, masks, ivermectin, etc. Please note, I am not making any claims about these things, other than it was taboo to question anything “official sources” stated.
  - coding123 3y ago
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    - PierceJoy 3y ago
      Very sorry about your Dad, but you have no evidence vaccination was related to his ALS. Hundred of millions of people were vaccinated in short period of time, and there is obviously a group of people who were always going to develop ALS within that time frame. Given the large n of the first group, overlap was inevitable. Temporal proximity doesn't establish causation when there's an overlap.
      - boredumb 3y ago
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        PierceJoy 3y ago
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        boredumb 3y ago
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      - LargoLasskhyfv 3y ago
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      - skissane 3y ago
        There is tentative evidence that COVID vaccines may rarely trigger onset of ALS in susceptible individuals - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10035647/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10035647/ It is possible you are right and it was just a coincidence - but it is also possible that the vaccine was the trigger for ALS to develop. We don’t have enough evidence yet to confidently say
        PierceJoy 3y ago
        Based on all available evidence, it is probable I am right. We have no evidence of increased rate of incidence of ALS, which you would expect to see given how many people were vaccinated. You linked to a single case report. It does not establish any type of causal link at all. That single person was most likely going to develop ALS at the time whether he had been vaccinated or not.
  - dontupvoteme 3y ago
    Wow, I already liked Stewart but really respect him to have the stones to bring that up. He doesn't fall into the left or right dichotomy.
    - nwienert 3y ago
      He is extremely far left but had a new show coming out and needed to generate a bit of hype
      - defrost 3y ago
        "extremely far left" by US standards, sure .. otherwise pretty moderate middle of the road.
        nwienert 3y ago
        By which standards? Every country is different, even within Europe there are much more conservative countries than the US.
        whimsicalism 3y ago
        > "extremely far left" by US standards, sure .. otherwise pretty moderate middle of the road. Globally the world is right of the US on most issues, but you're probably pretending that the rest of the world is just Europe.
        George83728 3y ago
        Unsurprisingly, Americans generally evaluate American media by American standards.
      - ryanbrunner 3y ago
        He's never run for political office or anything like that so most of what we can glean is from his shows, which for sure attack the right more than the left but don't advance their own policy proposals. The most overt stuff he has done politically is the late 2000s rally with Colbert which was very middle-of-the-road decorum-focused Democrat in tone, I don't think there's a lot of evidence for him being "hard left". If I had to guess, I think he'd be more in line with the Obama / Biden type camp than Sanders.
  - whimsicalism 3y ago
    Lots of people thinking you are an idiot does not mean you can't say it. I saw plenty of people saying things about vaccines, masks, ivermectin. But yes, when hundreds of thousands of people are dying globally, I think patience for those things wears thin in a personal capacity. But I would seriously question whether something is really 'taboo' if ~half of the country is watching media outlets where they ask these questions regularly, which is the case in the domestic US.
    - ra1231963 3y ago
      It is exactly the attitude you are still exhibiting that was the problem. “We’re in a crisis, no time to ask questions. Fall in line or you’re a far right conspiracy theorist/idiot.”
      - whimsicalism 3y ago
        It is a legitimate opinion and not censorious that if you are going and telling people to take ivermectin for covid you are legitimately harming people. Having that attitude is not "a problem", having opinions on dumb stuff people say is not censorious. This new interpretation that freedom of speech means freedom from having people criticize you is novel.
        deleted 3y ago
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- ftxbro 3y ago
  yes it was taboo in the media and even on hacker news. if you mentioned it then you were literally laura ingraham
  - deleted 3y ago
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  - whimsicalism 3y ago
    The fun thing about claims about Hacker News opinion is that you can actually fact check it on Algolia. [0] Most of it is either people saying that we can't know whether the lab leak is true or not and people who are claiming persecution on "Reddit/the Media/etc" because "they" are keeping the lab leak theory from being discussed. [0]: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=33&prefix=true&query=lab%20leak&sort=byPopularity&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=33&prefix=true&qu...
    - deleted 3y ago
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throwaway485 3y ago
There was a brief window at the beginning where it would have mattered to know the origin of the virus. Intervention at a wet market or in a wuhan lab could have happened. However, this theory was circulated and promoted to inspire hatred and distrust of many authority figures. Authorities who put significant resources forward to save lives. Even today we're still seeing thousands die from what may very well be a conspiracy theory. Both can be true: It originated in a lab, and the distrust that inspired is still killing many. It's dangerous to talk about it because it's still killing people. If we found out 100% the lab theory is false, you'd still have millions who want it to be true and who want to be enraged. You have millions who want to put themselves at risk. There are larger problems with society than this virus. That's what this conspiracy uncovered.
- pfannkuchen 3y ago
  Uh if it came from the lab we could still today have a shot at finding out what went wrong and then use that to improve safety at other labs worldwide. Assuming relevant records weren’t destroyed, anyway. If we can tell that they were destroyed, then USA et al should immediately stop supporting Chinese virology research in any way and pressure them to close the facilities via sanctions etc. In order to find out either of these things, we need an investigation. This all seems pretty straightforwardly true, and it totally drowns out any other second order concerns IMO.
  - throwaway485 3y ago
    We're too far removed from the time and place to accurately determine what happened. Even if we had first-hand witnesses or documentation, the disinformation 'aura' around the whole thing makes it impossible to get the honest truth out. There's no chain of custody for evidence that you, yourself would trust. That's what I mean that at this point it doesn't matter what the reality was, the damage is still compounding from it. The absolute worst thing out of the last 3 years is the terrible messaging from authority figures to unify around public safety. To say 1 thing and impress upon everyone the legitimacy of the danger, without distracting from that message and leveling conspiracies. From an objective historical point of view we want to know what happened, but no one will be able to confirm the legitimacy of that now. It's still killing people. I directly vaccinated thousands in Los Angeles, I had several family members die, and 1 of my aunts - an RN - is getting reinstated after 2 years because she was fired for telling people "the jab will kill you". This was after she tried to convince my other aunt - another RN - that she should not get the vaccine while being in a risk category. Never have we seen disinformation used to harm so many. It's too dangerous to talk about, and if we found the truth no one could corroborate it or convince others of it. It is done, millions are dead. As a sidelong thought, I'm convinced in this information age that there is no truth. The truth is anything you want it to be if you can inspire a viral cult around a contrarian thought. I'm sorry if I just sound so jaded. I still remember assisting a woman who /wanted/ the vaccine while her husband screamed at us outside the tape line with officers nearby - screaming about how the government was trying to kill black Americans and citing events like Tuskegee. We earned that, and I still see the fear in his eyes when we swabbed her arm.
harryf 3y ago
You might find https://globalhealthproject.org https://globalhealthproject.org is going some of this direction. > We’re building a community of doctors and patients affected by medical tyranny. Our goal is to rebuild the sacred trust between the medical community and those they serve.
- zimpenfish 3y ago
  > Our goal is to rebuild the sacred trust between the medical community and those they serve. Sure but looking at just one of the GHP people (Molly Rutherford) shows a Twitter timeline promoting conspiracy theories, anti-vaxxers, Epoch Times, anti-LGBTQ, etc. It doesn't engender much confidence in her reliability as a narrator.
usrme 3y ago
The best book I've read on the topic of the lab leak theory is "Viral" by Alina Chan & Matt Ridley. It goes into the nitty-gritty scientific detail as well, but also covers some of the things you mentioned too.
- randomperson01 3y ago
  Another good book is Dark Winter by epidemiologist Raina MacIntyre. Touches on COVID origin and similarity of the inital market excuse to the Sverdlovsk lab leak coverup by Soviets https://unsw.press/books/dark-winter/ https://unsw.press/books/dark-winter/ Looking forward to reading Pandoras Gamble by Alison Young next https://www.amazon.com.au/Pandoras-Gamble-Leaks-Pandemics-World/dp/1546002936 https://www.amazon.com.au/Pandoras-Gamble-Leaks-Pandemics-Wo...
deanCommie 3y ago
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- nononotme 3y ago
  Not all of the early lab-leak voices were racist. Some people went for that conclusion because of the proximity of the outbreak to the Wuhan lab which was researching that sort of virus. They may have been a little quick to do so but they guessed right. It wasn't that big of a leap, and it wasn't anti-Chinese to think that, just sort of obvious. I know that because I felt that way at the time. And then there were the Tucker Carlsons who called it the "Chinese coronavirus" and all that, and you're probably right about them.
  - Snacktivist 3y ago
    > Not all of the early lab-leak voices were racist. That sort of statement is always true, but that doesn't negate the real dangers of the Right using it for political advantage. Their general approach is to drive a wedge between different groups in the US (and abroad), pit them against each other, and have them take out their rage on each other as a means to distract them from the real issues going on. It was clear at the time that the Trump administration wasn't after "the truth" but more after a way to keep people occupied - and if that puts a lot of people in danger, they don't really care. And before anyone tries to defend the Right, take a look at these basekless attacks on drag queens. Meanwhile we have school shootings happening all the time and they don't do anything about it. It's a big shame because the a large portion of the USA isn't about trying to make things better - they just want to rage and cause damage towards others.
    - bondarchuk 3y ago
      So you are really a proponent of the post-truth society? It is better to believe a lie than to believe the same truth as right-wing people?
      - deanCommie 3y ago
px43 3y ago
At a high level, it's pretty simple. There was a very well coordinated and intentional conflation of the term "lab leak" with the conspiracy theories around China and the WHO intentionally developing and deploying bio-weapons as a means of global population control. These conspiracy theories lead to a marked rise in violent attacks on anyone of Asian descent in the US, and generally fed into the wet dream fantasies of western warlords looking for any excuse to enter that eternal war against Eastasia. Any time that anything relating to information around Wuhan labs was released, there was a massive flood of how the "lab leak" theories were right all along, and China is, in fact, trying to kill us all. This is the sort of virulent hatred that no social media company wants to help propagate.
- ra1231963 3y ago
  I don’t think people attacking Asians had that nuanced of a motive. More like: it came from Asia so they resented Asians, regardless of whether it was designed or leaked or whatever.
- Daz1 3y ago
  This is some amazing damage control well done
- ipaddr 3y ago
  The news was reporting on anti Asian feelings prior to covid. When covid hit this automatically became racist. Wearing a mask was racist. Bizarre. It caused many to ignore media/leaders because they were so obviously off base and constantly proven wrong and backtracking they lost credibility.
  - whimsicalism 3y ago
    > Wearing a mask was racist Not sure what crazy publications you all were reading.
- Ancapistani 3y ago
  > There was a very well coordinated and intentional conflation of the term "lab leak" with the conspiracy theories around China and the WHO intentionally developing and deploying bio-weapons as a means of global population control. I don’t recall a single instance of this. A year ago, people were saying on this site and elsewhere was that the issue was conflating “lab leak” with “intentionally engineered”. A year before that, people argued that the issue was conflating “lab leak” with “leaked from WIV”, when WIV was established in that location due to the prevalence of novel coronaviruses in the region. The goalposts keep moving.
HlessClaudesman 3y ago
Humans have a bias towards: "That would be terrible if true, therefore it is not true."
localplume 3y ago
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blub 3y ago
How did it become taboo to discuss biological sex, race, the effects of migration on society and other topics in democratic, liberal countries? How did it become taboo to discuss the pros and cons of a specific vaccine or the complex geopolitical background of the Russo-Ukrainian war? An ad-hoc coalition of political parties, NGOs, activists and journalists has hijacked public discourse, are manufacturing an official narrative and selling it as as unassailable truth while bullying and mobbing any dissenters.
misja111 3y ago
The problem was that the epidemic started in the middle of the US election campaign. At some point the Trump team started to support the lab leak theory. And then it became political; Biden supporters started framing them as conspiracy theorists, anybody who dared to support the leak theory was labeled as a Trump supporter etc. In China some people must have been amazed how the US was arranging such a thorough cover-up all by themselves.
- shri_krishna 3y ago
  > The problem was that the epidemic started in the middle of the US election campaign. At some point the Trump team started to support the lab leak theory. And then it became political; Biden supporters started framing them as conspiracy theorists, anybody who dared to support the leak theory was labeled as a Trump supporter etc. You hit the nail on the head. > In China some people must have been amazed how the US was arranging such a thorough cover-up all by themselves. Exactly. Even in India we were amazed by the cover-up. I am pretty sure every Asian country knew it was a cover-up. The very first reports on Coronavirus I came across was not even in the media. It was on a Korean Youtuber who posted regular video updates on the virus leak in China even before the news was picked up in the West. He was warning how CCP was arresting scientists who put out information about the virus and even sharing videos of doctors who had recorded themselves warning about the virus itself (one of the first few who treated patients of the virus and fell sick themselves). I can't, for the life of me, find that channel on Youtube anymore. But yeah there was, and still is, a lot of censorship aided and abetted by Big Tech.
  - Jochim 3y ago
    > He was warning how CCP was arresting scientists who put out information about the virus and even sharing videos of doctors who had recorded themselves warning about the virus itself (one of the first few who treated patients of the virus and fell sick themselves). I can't, for the life of me, find that channel on Youtube anymore. But yeah there was, and still is, a lot of censorship aided and abetted by Big Tech. The death of the doctor was widely reported on throughout the pandemic[0][1][2]. [0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/06/whistleblower-chinese-doctor-dies-from-coronavirus https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/06/whistleblower-... [1] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/coronavirus-whistleblower-doctor-feared-dead-wuhan/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-diseas... [2] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-55963896 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-55963896
saiya-jin 3y ago
What the heck are you writing about, this was discussed in all mainstream media I ever cared to look at, since almost beginning of lockdowns. Maybe you watch some strange subset of those? Sure, the overall narrative was that this is just an unproven theory and nothing more, but it was out there, people were discussing probabilities of some lab employees error who went to nearby wet market afterwards. I am not saying this didn't happen in scientific community, I don't follow them closely enough to claim that. I recall few cases in Europe where paranoid scientists were claiming this, on top of quite a few other crank theories about various topics, also ie pushing hard for high doses of Ivermectin, dismissing all vaccinations etc. Understandably, with just throwing around various claims without backing them up with facts, they were not received well in community.
patrickk 3y ago
It would be interesting to know the background of the infamous Lancet letter[1]. According to journalist Paul Thacker, the Lancet letter "helped to guide almost a year of reporting, as journalists helped to amplify Daszak’s message and to silence scientific and public debate." This affected reporting on the origins of the virus, "characterising the lab leak theory as unworthy of serious consideration". [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancet_letter_(COVID-19) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancet_letter_(COVID-19)
okeuro49 3y ago
Michael Shellenberger covered the topic regarding censorship on twitter. Gives an interesting interview here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mqi4JbpsbVc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mqi4JbpsbVc
BurningPenguin 3y ago
Not from the US, but i don't see how it was ever a "taboo". The general gist was "we don't know" or "unlikely". However, what i did see on Social Media, was a bunch of nutjobs pushing their nonsense about "deep state", "population control" and so on.
- sharperguy 3y ago
  I believe that these 'nutjobs' were promoted to the forefront of popular discussion for purposes of sensationalism and to discredit more careful dissenting voices by association. In many ways, it makes sense to try to get the entire population on board with a single narrative, in order to have a coherent response to an emerging situation. On the other hand, it opens the doors to corruption by leaving those in charge with no credible voices willing to criticize or draw attention to the holes in that narrative.
  - BurningPenguin 3y ago
    These nutjobs were all over Twitter, Facebook & Co. Usually platforms that reward engagement with more visibility. The people who were pushing this narrative were relying heavily on a mix of gullible people, fake accounts and bots. Many accounts being merely a few weeks or up to a month old. This is essentially the reason i left Twitter in the first place. I'm observing the conspiracy milieu for over 10 years now. This tactic isn't new, they already used this in 2009 to push comments on certain websites to their side. Back then, it was mostly manual work. Also, thanks to social media, they don't need help from trashy news agencies to be seen.
  - mtlmtlmtlmtl 3y ago
    >I believe that these 'nutjobs' were promoted to the forefront of popular discussion for purposes of sensationalism and to discredit more careful dissenting voices by association. That just sounds like an unfounded conspiracy theory. More likely is that extreme statements on social media generate more reactions, which is more engagement, so they get more traction in feeds because that is what social media is optimised to do, irrespective of what the content is. And these nutjobs routinely invoked the term "lab leak", which organically led to an association in most people's minds between the term "lab leak" and crazy conspiracy theories.
AdamN 3y ago
The problem was that almost nobody was saying the source 'might' have been a lab leak - they were saying that the source was 'definitely' a lab leak and then usually adding that Fauci sponsored gain of function research into viruses and then into conspiracy theory land. Most of us were open to the idea of a lab leak but the disinformation was so hard around the topic that sensible people had to push back and the loser was the legitimate 'theory' that a lab leak was a possible source. This is still a theory btw and not proven.
- gizmo 3y ago
  No no no. The problem was that talking about a lab leak in any way was considered deplorable. So much so that the only people who still dared to speak about the lab leak in public were outcasts, lunatics, and people who didn't have a reputation that could be destroyed. In times of crisis a large fraction of the population will latch on to authoritarianism. This is universally true, and there are many historical and contemporary examples. The world is messy and complicated and people desperately want simple answers. People will cheer on the collapse of hard-won civil rights and the advent of military rule if they believe it's necessary for the greater good. Thankfully it didn't come to this during covid. But not because there was an invisible line in the sand that nobody dared to cross. People were not held in check by their principles, covid just didn't "necessitate" an even harsher response. This is why many people are so upset about the censorship surrounding the lab leak theory. They got a rude awakening. One, that fundamental rights like free speech can curbed very effectively, and two, that it's the citizenry itself that demands their rights be taken away. It's scary to be suddenly robbed of naïve notions about rights and process and governance.
  - whimsicalism 3y ago
    You guys can actually just search old Hacker News discussions and also look at old media reporting to see that this narrative of "media suppression" is just blatantly false. GP is absolutely correct - people reacted negatively (and remind that someone not liking what you say does not mean you are censored) because people (including now in this thread) are saying that there is 'definite proof of lab leak' when that is just bull?
mellosouls 3y ago
It wasn't taboo - the associated conspiracy theory about the leak being a deliberate release of a bio-weapon was rightly dismissed. The idea of it being an accidental release though was discussed a lot; it merely lacked strong evidence (no doubt partly due to Chinese obfuscation) to take pole position against the meat markets theory. Additionally there was definitely a ridiculous and likely harmful "anti-racist" thrust by the usual censorious suspects, including those you mention that tried to control conversation, as they do. Unfortunately the merging of the two theories at the time (which I think is continued here by wrongly suggesting the accidental-leak case was "taboo") has never helped clear discussion.
- revelio 3y ago
  It was all dismissed as misinformation and conspiracies. https://edition.cnn.com/2020/04/13/us/coronavirus-made-in-lab-poll-trnd/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2020/04/13/us/coronavirus-made-in-la... The latest poll from the public opinion fact tank shows that misinformation around the virus is still king, even as fact checkers and public health officials work furiously to dispel it and save American lives. A total of 23% of adults polled said they believe the virus was created intentionally. This is almost certainly not true, according to the genetic detectives studying the virus’s origins. The theory that the virus originated in a lab was one repeatedly shared on One America News Network, a far-right channel favored by President Donald Trump. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-52224331 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-52224331 From the early stages of the coronavirus outbreak, conspiracy theories about the origin and scale of the disease were spread on online platforms. Among these were the false claim that the virus was part of a Chinese covert biological weapons programme. The claim that the virus was man-made has been pushed by numerous conspiracy groups on Facebook, obscure Twitter accounts and even found its way on to primetime Russian state TV." Now what we read is that the virus was man made and the WIV was doing secret military work for the PLA, with the idea being to create a virus and vaccine simultaneously so the attacker controls who survives i.e. a bioweapon. That's the same as what the BBC called a false claim and conspiracy theory. The reason this investigation was initially done by anonymous people who found each other via backchannels on Twitter is because suppression of this discussion was near total.
Symmetry 3y ago
Matthew Yglesias wrote a whole thing on how the idea initially became politicized in the US. The short of it was that when Trump was downplaying the danger of human-to-human transmission early on because his friend Xi told him that wasn't happening Senator Tom Cotton started talking up the idea that the Chinese government might be lying about because it escaped from a government lab. But then there was a game of telephone and it turned into the idea it was a Chinese bioweapon. https://www.slowboring.com/p/the-medias-lab-leak-fiasco https://www.slowboring.com/p/the-medias-lab-leak-fiasco
nonethewiser 3y ago
We need the same for the complete 180 on lockdowns. From universally against to forced lockdowns. I think people forget how strong the consensus (including medical) against lockdowns was. I was in China during the outbreak. All western media and healthcare experts had to say about lockdowns was that they were counterproductive and have never been part of the medical playbook. And that it violates civil rights. A month later this seemed to be completely forgotten. Personally, I believe this is all a function of the states ability to enforce it. It wasn’t possible before, but they found that it was possible now. But it was summarily rejected on principal prior to that.
- hospitalJail 3y ago
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  - Zetobal 3y ago
    Thank God 99% of all the other countries were in on it otherwise they would have looked really foolish as one of the only countries without lockdowns.
    - deleted 3y ago
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    - hospitalJail 3y ago
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      - Zetobal 3y ago
        Go ahead.
        hospitalJail 3y ago
        EDIT: Disclaimer, this was for one of the most principled politicians I've ever met. To this day, he will say he is an anarchist in public. (Although, he would say it in a pleasurable way) Sure, so to change 0.5% of the vote, we would find people with demographics that people vote for. For instance, if there is a women on the ballot, run another women because at least 0.5% of people vote for a women, so this splits the vote. Or find someone with similar/same names, bonus points if their signage only has their last name. Anyone with the enemy's yard sign, gets the negative ad. Each neg ad was tested considerably. There is a huge database of every voter, their petitions they signed, odds of being dem/gop, odds of voting, their pet names(if registered), etc... You go up to someone's house knowing they support guns because they signed a petition. Heck, the candidate would pretend they remembered the dog's name from a few years ago. Lying and plausible deniability is like a daily thing. Looking back on it, I would have been sacrificed in a second for putting neg ads in people's mailboxes illegally. Those are some heavy hitters. I feel like I forgot like 2 major stomach churning events, maybe I blocked them out. (Oh gosh, when I went to the enemy's campaign rally and put neg ads on everyone's cars, got followed by their staff, jumped over a fence/bush area to escape...) Okay, I'm only missing 1 stomach churning event from my memory. I think it was strategy related, maybe it had to do with old people.
ttflee 3y ago
It was kinda pro-trumpish to say that before Joe nailed the presidency.
wesapien 3y ago
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wesapien 3y ago
I think the problem is that moderates think you can have democracy without having to participate in politics which can sometimes become costly. Extremists already accepted the costs and reap the rewards (control, influnce, power) because people won't stand up to them.
Manjuuu 3y ago
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- carimura 3y ago
  and that right there is how you promulgate a social suppression campaign.
  - Manjuuu 3y ago
    No, that right there is how I remind you that if you want your hypothesis to be taken seriously you need proofs or at least a very compelling argument. There was neither.
    - cubefox 3y ago
      Nonsense. There were plenty of arguments from the very beginning for the lab leak theory. The alternative "bat cave" hypothesis had plenty of implausiblies (e.g. huge distance) and was far from being "proven".
      - cygx 3y ago
        There is, however, quite a bit of precedent for bat coronaviruses eventually infecting humans, most likely through zoonotic spillover via an intermediate species (e.g. HCoV-NL63, HCoV-229E, SARS-CoV-1, MERS-CoV, SADS-CoV), and thanks to humans shipping animals all over the globe, huge distances aren't necessarily a deal breaker.
        baja_blast 3y ago
        The difference between previous spillovers like SARS1 and MERS was these viruses rapidly mutated as they adapted towards humans allowing for the identification of the intermediate species within months. SARS2 on the other hand was already pre-adapted towards humans, had almost no adaptive mutations and no intermediate host has been found. And guess what when a virus crosses into humans the virus does not suddenly go extinct in the intermediate species, it continues to circulate, for example we still to this day find camels infected with MERS. But SARS2 we just can't seem to find this progenitor virus circulating.. . . very strange isn't it?
jkingsbery 3y ago
Jim Geraghty of National Review has written a lot about this, as he pretty early advocated for the possibility of the lab leak. Because he writes for a right-leaning publication though, there are lots of ad hominem attacks thrown his way that are pretty baseless.
carimura 3y ago
There are folks who were speaking out early despite harsh criticism. RFK JR (who happens to be running for president on the democratic ticket in the US) has another book coming out soon that will likely be very thoroughly researched around this topic.
gregwebs 3y ago
Chris Martenson did a lot of this as it was ongoing- of course his YouTube videos got flagged. As another commenter mentioned Dazik had a big role- he lead the delegation that went to China to investigate the origin even though he had an obvious conflict of interest. 60 minutes interviewed him without digging into the conflict of interest. There are now public emails between Fauci and others coordinating the NIH position that there was no lab leak. That silences much of the scientific community that doesn’t want problems with their grants. Not to mention Fauci constantly going on TV doing interviews to try to control the conversation.
- calvinmorrison 3y ago
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  - spookthesunset 3y ago
    > goose stepping along to lead the largest propaganda and brainwashing effort in our lifetimes. It's crazy really. I wonder how many decades will have to go by before it becomes okay to acknowledge what a major fuckup the response to covid was. Currently, there is way too many people, at least on forums like this, that haven't woken up to how badly mislead they were. Pure hysteria, politics and poorly interpreted data all bundled into one package. Shit was crazy.
- ricksunny 3y ago
  >Dazik Daszak.
- joshstrange 3y ago
  I think Chris Martenson/Peak Prosperity goes too far on certain things (a little too-prepper/gold+silver) but I did find his videos for the first few months of COVID to be informative and well done especially when it came to the lab leak theory. His coverage of Hydroxychloroquine was well measured for the time it came out and I felt like he did an appropriate about-face once it was clear it didn't help.
jasonlotito 3y ago
> I'd like for someone to throughly research and write about how it became taboo to discuss the virus leak theory It was politicized. At the same time, it was a "theory" based on little to no evidence early on. Rather than let scientists work through and figure things out, people were shouting it through the roof as if it was confirmed. Basically, it was an answer in search of evidence, rather than using the evidence to direct the answer. There was a lot of pushback against that sort of talk, especially here. Couple that with a divisive administration here in the US that caused confusion and chaos, there was little to no hope for it being anything other than taboo.
somenameforme 3y ago
This is a weird topic to me, because I'm unsure if I live in a different bubble, or we're all just kind of playing the euphemism game (with a bit of self censorship on top) or what. Because what happened is hardly ambiguous. One thing, more than any, that the Twitter files provided evidence of was various governmental organizations, and individuals, pressuring at least one large tech company to censor for often arbitrary, and sometimes overtly fake, reasons. I think the chances of that behavior being limited to Twitter, or even tech companies in general, are zero. The tech companies are obviously, at the minimum, complicit. Because "pressure" is just that - pressure. When the 'Russian trolls' narrative was being built up in Congress, Twitter knew it was entirely fabricated, and even referred to the requests as coming from "Congressional Trolls", and then they gave those said trolls nearly everything they wanted, and remained absolutely silent about what was happening. That strongly reflects upon the character, or lack thereof, of former Twitter leadership - but the source is the government. The large scale centralization of speech has created an angle shoot of the 1st amendment. Pressure a handful of companies into censoring whatever you want censored and you likely achieve even more than a law would have, since you end up censoring it on a far larger scale than just domestically. Expecting politicians of a country to actually care about the intent of the constitution of that country is clearly no longer a reasonable expectation to have.
sixQuarks 3y ago
In the beginning of the pandemic, I fell for Fauci's lies. I saw him as a pillar of truth and science against the backdrop of Trump's idiocracy. So, I can empathize with those who still think he's a good person, they have not been exposed to all the evidence of how he orchestrated lies and smears to cover up the lab leak theory, and how he funded the gain of function research that likely lead to the pandemic (even though gain of function was outlawed in the US). He even lied about it under oath. And why has nothing happened? Because big pharma is one of the biggest beneficiaries of the pandemic and they are the biggest advertisers on corporate mainstream media. The whole thing is sick and twisted. And I know this sound like a conspiracy nut to those who have not looked into this deeply, but it is what it is.
- randomperson01 3y ago
  Emily Kopp has a well researched article on the coverup of lab leak discussion by Fauci and instigation by him to publish the Proximal Origin paper. https://usrtk.org/covid-19-origins/timeline-the-proximal-origin-of-sars-cov-2/ https://usrtk.org/covid-19-origins/timeline-the-proximal-ori...
  - sixQuarks 3y ago
    It’s ridiculous that your comment has been downvoted. This is a great article. Those who defend Fauci and the establishment narrative do so with a religious fervor. No amount of reasoning or logic seems to get through to them.
sampo 3y ago
> I'd like for someone to throughly research and write about how it became taboo to discuss the virus leak theory. I think the story is pretty much documented in Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EcoHealth_Alliance#COVID-19_pandemic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EcoHealth_Alliance#COVID-19_pa... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Daszak#COVID-19_pandemic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Daszak#COVID-19_pandemic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancet_letter_(COVID-19)#Critical_commentary https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancet_letter_(COVID-19)#Criti... Unless you mean to ask, why was their PR stunt so very successful? For that I don't have an answer.
- chrisbrandow 3y ago
  Because trump said it in the most inflammatory way possible, so folks like me discounted it immediately. I still don’t know what the truth is but I’m certainly open to a full range of possibilities now.
elorant 3y ago
That's because China finances a lot of western institutions and research labs which where afraid that speaking publicly would harm their grants.
cookiengineer 3y ago
I have a treat for you: https://the-eye.eu/public/Random/wuhan%20coronavirus/ https://the-eye.eu/public/Random/wuhan%20coronavirus/
- andyfos 3y ago
  What info can i get from this?
ricksunny 3y ago
I HN-submitted the parent article originally. By way of demonstrating topic familiarity, I have a track record of submitting origns content to HN. (It usually founders or gets user-flagged). I didn't guess that this one would garner quite so much attention. >I'd like for someone to throughly research and write about how it became taboo to discuss the virus leak theory IMO part of it was a lot of self-preservation instinct of biomedical research scientists, operating in the context of a calcified monopsony of a national funding organization. In other words, any biomedical scientist's legitimizing LLH too stridently would not necesssrily have healthy to one's grant fundng prospects. Caveating that 'none of the content of this comment necessarily reflects the opinion of BiosafetyNow', I also serve on BiosafetyNow's leadership team. BN was formed in the wake of the wagon-circling & gaslighting of the lab leak hyp. https://biosafetynow.org/ https://biosafetynow.org/ (Richard Ebright, mentioned elsewhere in the comments, is also on the leadership team. More familiar names are Colin Butler, & Milton Leitenberg). We recently released a petition to ban ePPP research (i.e. 'GoF') https://www.change.org/prohibit-ePPP https://www.change.org/prohibit-ePPP. It just passed 1000 signatures yesterday. I would love for concerned visitors to these comments to add their name. Despite that we advocate a simple ban today, our org has in its mission statement to see a moratorium on ePPP research until sufficent biosafety measures are put in place whereupon it becomes (highly) regulated ePPP researxh instead of out-and-out banned. The definition of 'sufficient' is not left to scientists alone to determine, and I contribute toward representing the non-scientist public to advocate for what should be considered sufficient biosafety measures.(Pro-tip: More representation of the non-scientist public remains needed here :) ) The nonprofit still operates on a shoestring budget, so if readers were inclined to help with that, it would be most appreciated. (Can also find origins censorship-themed merchandise which some folks might find fun :) ) If you'd like to volunteer your talents - software and otherwise - to BiosafetyNow's advocacy effort, it would be similarly most welcome.
deleted 3y ago
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tmaly 3y ago
> But the Wuhan institute withheld information about the mine deaths from EcoHealth and the US government. This reads more like CYA piece
bart_spoon 3y ago
There seems to be a tendency for many to believe that academics, researchers, and physicians are above personal and political bias, particularly when it comes to their fields. But as far as I can tell, it largely stemmed from the fact that some of the earliest insinuations around the origins came from fringe right-wing talking heads, and particularly people surrounding Donald Trump, immediately caused many in positions of power, either in academic or media circles, to shut down such notions as racism, xenophobic, anti-intellectual conspiracy theories not based on facts. This despite those same people were largely coming to that conclusion in an anti-intellectual manner also not based on facts.
P_I_Staker 3y ago
[flagged]
randomperson01 3y ago
Paul Thacker https://unherd.com/2022/03/is-the-media-still-stifling-the-lab-leak-theory/ https://unherd.com/2022/03/is-the-media-still-stifling-the-l... Ian Birrell https://unherd.com/2021/06/beijings-useful-idiots/ https://unherd.com/2021/06/beijings-useful-idiots/ and Ashley Rindsberg have all done a good job on reporting on this https://unherd.com/2021/08/did-the-new-york-times-stifle-lab-leak-debate/ https://unherd.com/2021/08/did-the-new-york-times-stifle-lab...
eimrine 3y ago
> I'd like for someone to throughly research and write about how it became taboo to discuss the virus leak theory. How researchers who discussed it were shunned (...) and in some cases had their posts banned from Social Media. I would like exactly the same about anti-vaxxers but excluding those people who are against any other vax. Anti-covid-vaxxers in other words. Covid is not a pox and all the strict measures were happened just because our digital world just allows such a blatant declassification of freedom people. Compare the peak number of deaths from Covid with the average deaths from alcohol and you realize that this is just a normal year. BTW mass deaths from non-violent reasons is not something totally bad in obviously overpopulated world. And I do not see much discussions about who sets the borders to our government's behavior in such a situations.
firstlink 3y ago
The good news is that everything else the US government suppressed really was outrageous lies that are only supported by racists, like the mRNA vaccines being completely ineffective and often fatal.

by jeswin 3y ago

WastingMyTime89 3y ago

Was it really taboo? I didn’t get this feeling where I live (admittedly not the USA). It’s just that it became clear pretty quickly that the investigation was going nowhere as China wasn’t going to honestly cooperate. That didn’t leave much to discuss. For the official response, it was to be expected. The UN does plenty of compromises with authoritarian countries for the sake of being able to operate. It would have been surprising to see the WHO press China.

ra1231963 3y ago
It was absolutely taboo. If you tried to bring it up you were shouted down as a far right conspiracy theorist, or racist. Mashup of clips from the news: https://youtu.be/zl-X-Lgrlf0 https://youtu.be/zl-X-Lgrlf0 Jon Stewart was the first to call this into question publicly, which was brave at the time. Watch Colbert push back on Stewart’s line of reasoning: https://youtu.be/sSfejgwbDQ8 https://youtu.be/sSfejgwbDQ8 Honestly questioning anything covid-related was taboo at that time, including the vaccines, masks, ivermectin, etc. Please note, I am not making any claims about these things, other than it was taboo to question anything “official sources” stated.
- coding123 3y ago
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  - PierceJoy 3y ago
    Very sorry about your Dad, but you have no evidence vaccination was related to his ALS. Hundred of millions of people were vaccinated in short period of time, and there is obviously a group of people who were always going to develop ALS within that time frame. Given the large n of the first group, overlap was inevitable. Temporal proximity doesn't establish causation when there's an overlap.
    - boredumb 3y ago
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      - PierceJoy 3y ago
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        boredumb 3y ago
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    - LargoLasskhyfv 3y ago
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    - skissane 3y ago
      There is tentative evidence that COVID vaccines may rarely trigger onset of ALS in susceptible individuals - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10035647/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10035647/ It is possible you are right and it was just a coincidence - but it is also possible that the vaccine was the trigger for ALS to develop. We don’t have enough evidence yet to confidently say
      - PierceJoy 3y ago
        Based on all available evidence, it is probable I am right. We have no evidence of increased rate of incidence of ALS, which you would expect to see given how many people were vaccinated. You linked to a single case report. It does not establish any type of causal link at all. That single person was most likely going to develop ALS at the time whether he had been vaccinated or not.
- dontupvoteme 3y ago
  Wow, I already liked Stewart but really respect him to have the stones to bring that up. He doesn't fall into the left or right dichotomy.
  - nwienert 3y ago
    He is extremely far left but had a new show coming out and needed to generate a bit of hype
    - defrost 3y ago
      "extremely far left" by US standards, sure .. otherwise pretty moderate middle of the road.
      - nwienert 3y ago
        By which standards? Every country is different, even within Europe there are much more conservative countries than the US.
      - whimsicalism 3y ago
        > "extremely far left" by US standards, sure .. otherwise pretty moderate middle of the road. Globally the world is right of the US on most issues, but you're probably pretending that the rest of the world is just Europe.
      - George83728 3y ago
        Unsurprisingly, Americans generally evaluate American media by American standards.
    - ryanbrunner 3y ago
      He's never run for political office or anything like that so most of what we can glean is from his shows, which for sure attack the right more than the left but don't advance their own policy proposals. The most overt stuff he has done politically is the late 2000s rally with Colbert which was very middle-of-the-road decorum-focused Democrat in tone, I don't think there's a lot of evidence for him being "hard left". If I had to guess, I think he'd be more in line with the Obama / Biden type camp than Sanders.
- whimsicalism 3y ago
  Lots of people thinking you are an idiot does not mean you can't say it. I saw plenty of people saying things about vaccines, masks, ivermectin. But yes, when hundreds of thousands of people are dying globally, I think patience for those things wears thin in a personal capacity. But I would seriously question whether something is really 'taboo' if ~half of the country is watching media outlets where they ask these questions regularly, which is the case in the domestic US.
  - ra1231963 3y ago
    It is exactly the attitude you are still exhibiting that was the problem. “We’re in a crisis, no time to ask questions. Fall in line or you’re a far right conspiracy theorist/idiot.”
    - whimsicalism 3y ago
      It is a legitimate opinion and not censorious that if you are going and telling people to take ivermectin for covid you are legitimately harming people. Having that attitude is not "a problem", having opinions on dumb stuff people say is not censorious. This new interpretation that freedom of speech means freedom from having people criticize you is novel.
      - deleted 3y ago
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ftxbro 3y ago
yes it was taboo in the media and even on hacker news. if you mentioned it then you were literally laura ingraham
- deleted 3y ago
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- whimsicalism 3y ago
  The fun thing about claims about Hacker News opinion is that you can actually fact check it on Algolia. [0] Most of it is either people saying that we can't know whether the lab leak is true or not and people who are claiming persecution on "Reddit/the Media/etc" because "they" are keeping the lab leak theory from being discussed. [0]: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=33&prefix=true&query=lab%20leak&sort=byPopularity&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=33&prefix=true&qu...
  - deleted 3y ago
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throwaway485 3y ago

There was a brief window at the beginning where it would have mattered to know the origin of the virus. Intervention at a wet market or in a wuhan lab could have happened. However, this theory was circulated and promoted to inspire hatred and distrust of many authority figures. Authorities who put significant resources forward to save lives. Even today we're still seeing thousands die from what may very well be a conspiracy theory. Both can be true: It originated in a lab, and the distrust that inspired is still killing many. It's dangerous to talk about it because it's still killing people. If we found out 100% the lab theory is false, you'd still have millions who want it to be true and who want to be enraged. You have millions who want to put themselves at risk. There are larger problems with society than this virus. That's what this conspiracy uncovered.

pfannkuchen 3y ago
Uh if it came from the lab we could still today have a shot at finding out what went wrong and then use that to improve safety at other labs worldwide. Assuming relevant records weren’t destroyed, anyway. If we can tell that they were destroyed, then USA et al should immediately stop supporting Chinese virology research in any way and pressure them to close the facilities via sanctions etc. In order to find out either of these things, we need an investigation. This all seems pretty straightforwardly true, and it totally drowns out any other second order concerns IMO.
- throwaway485 3y ago
  We're too far removed from the time and place to accurately determine what happened. Even if we had first-hand witnesses or documentation, the disinformation 'aura' around the whole thing makes it impossible to get the honest truth out. There's no chain of custody for evidence that you, yourself would trust. That's what I mean that at this point it doesn't matter what the reality was, the damage is still compounding from it. The absolute worst thing out of the last 3 years is the terrible messaging from authority figures to unify around public safety. To say 1 thing and impress upon everyone the legitimacy of the danger, without distracting from that message and leveling conspiracies. From an objective historical point of view we want to know what happened, but no one will be able to confirm the legitimacy of that now. It's still killing people. I directly vaccinated thousands in Los Angeles, I had several family members die, and 1 of my aunts - an RN - is getting reinstated after 2 years because she was fired for telling people "the jab will kill you". This was after she tried to convince my other aunt - another RN - that she should not get the vaccine while being in a risk category. Never have we seen disinformation used to harm so many. It's too dangerous to talk about, and if we found the truth no one could corroborate it or convince others of it. It is done, millions are dead. As a sidelong thought, I'm convinced in this information age that there is no truth. The truth is anything you want it to be if you can inspire a viral cult around a contrarian thought. I'm sorry if I just sound so jaded. I still remember assisting a woman who /wanted/ the vaccine while her husband screamed at us outside the tape line with officers nearby - screaming about how the government was trying to kill black Americans and citing events like Tuskegee. We earned that, and I still see the fear in his eyes when we swabbed her arm.

harryf 3y ago

You might find https://globalhealthproject.org https://globalhealthproject.org is going some of this direction. > We’re building a community of doctors and patients affected by medical tyranny. Our goal is to rebuild the sacred trust between the medical community and those they serve.

zimpenfish 3y ago
> Our goal is to rebuild the sacred trust between the medical community and those they serve. Sure but looking at just one of the GHP people (Molly Rutherford) shows a Twitter timeline promoting conspiracy theories, anti-vaxxers, Epoch Times, anti-LGBTQ, etc. It doesn't engender much confidence in her reliability as a narrator.

usrme 3y ago

The best book I've read on the topic of the lab leak theory is "Viral" by Alina Chan & Matt Ridley. It goes into the nitty-gritty scientific detail as well, but also covers some of the things you mentioned too.

randomperson01 3y ago
Another good book is Dark Winter by epidemiologist Raina MacIntyre. Touches on COVID origin and similarity of the inital market excuse to the Sverdlovsk lab leak coverup by Soviets https://unsw.press/books/dark-winter/ https://unsw.press/books/dark-winter/ Looking forward to reading Pandoras Gamble by Alison Young next https://www.amazon.com.au/Pandoras-Gamble-Leaks-Pandemics-World/dp/1546002936 https://www.amazon.com.au/Pandoras-Gamble-Leaks-Pandemics-Wo...

deanCommie 3y ago

[flagged]

nononotme 3y ago
Not all of the early lab-leak voices were racist. Some people went for that conclusion because of the proximity of the outbreak to the Wuhan lab which was researching that sort of virus. They may have been a little quick to do so but they guessed right. It wasn't that big of a leap, and it wasn't anti-Chinese to think that, just sort of obvious. I know that because I felt that way at the time. And then there were the Tucker Carlsons who called it the "Chinese coronavirus" and all that, and you're probably right about them.
- Snacktivist 3y ago
  > Not all of the early lab-leak voices were racist. That sort of statement is always true, but that doesn't negate the real dangers of the Right using it for political advantage. Their general approach is to drive a wedge between different groups in the US (and abroad), pit them against each other, and have them take out their rage on each other as a means to distract them from the real issues going on. It was clear at the time that the Trump administration wasn't after "the truth" but more after a way to keep people occupied - and if that puts a lot of people in danger, they don't really care. And before anyone tries to defend the Right, take a look at these basekless attacks on drag queens. Meanwhile we have school shootings happening all the time and they don't do anything about it. It's a big shame because the a large portion of the USA isn't about trying to make things better - they just want to rage and cause damage towards others.
  - bondarchuk 3y ago
    So you are really a proponent of the post-truth society? It is better to believe a lie than to believe the same truth as right-wing people?
    - deanCommie 3y ago

px43 3y ago

At a high level, it's pretty simple. There was a very well coordinated and intentional conflation of the term "lab leak" with the conspiracy theories around China and the WHO intentionally developing and deploying bio-weapons as a means of global population control. These conspiracy theories lead to a marked rise in violent attacks on anyone of Asian descent in the US, and generally fed into the wet dream fantasies of western warlords looking for any excuse to enter that eternal war against Eastasia. Any time that anything relating to information around Wuhan labs was released, there was a massive flood of how the "lab leak" theories were right all along, and China is, in fact, trying to kill us all. This is the sort of virulent hatred that no social media company wants to help propagate.

ra1231963 3y ago
I don’t think people attacking Asians had that nuanced of a motive. More like: it came from Asia so they resented Asians, regardless of whether it was designed or leaked or whatever.
Daz1 3y ago
This is some amazing damage control well done
ipaddr 3y ago
The news was reporting on anti Asian feelings prior to covid. When covid hit this automatically became racist. Wearing a mask was racist. Bizarre. It caused many to ignore media/leaders because they were so obviously off base and constantly proven wrong and backtracking they lost credibility.
- whimsicalism 3y ago
  > Wearing a mask was racist Not sure what crazy publications you all were reading.
Ancapistani 3y ago
> There was a very well coordinated and intentional conflation of the term "lab leak" with the conspiracy theories around China and the WHO intentionally developing and deploying bio-weapons as a means of global population control. I don’t recall a single instance of this. A year ago, people were saying on this site and elsewhere was that the issue was conflating “lab leak” with “intentionally engineered”. A year before that, people argued that the issue was conflating “lab leak” with “leaked from WIV”, when WIV was established in that location due to the prevalence of novel coronaviruses in the region. The goalposts keep moving.

HlessClaudesman 3y ago

Humans have a bias towards: "That would be terrible if true, therefore it is not true."

localplume 3y ago

[dead]

blub 3y ago

How did it become taboo to discuss biological sex, race, the effects of migration on society and other topics in democratic, liberal countries? How did it become taboo to discuss the pros and cons of a specific vaccine or the complex geopolitical background of the Russo-Ukrainian war? An ad-hoc coalition of political parties, NGOs, activists and journalists has hijacked public discourse, are manufacturing an official narrative and selling it as as unassailable truth while bullying and mobbing any dissenters.

misja111 3y ago

The problem was that the epidemic started in the middle of the US election campaign. At some point the Trump team started to support the lab leak theory. And then it became political; Biden supporters started framing them as conspiracy theorists, anybody who dared to support the leak theory was labeled as a Trump supporter etc. In China some people must have been amazed how the US was arranging such a thorough cover-up all by themselves.

shri_krishna 3y ago
> The problem was that the epidemic started in the middle of the US election campaign. At some point the Trump team started to support the lab leak theory. And then it became political; Biden supporters started framing them as conspiracy theorists, anybody who dared to support the leak theory was labeled as a Trump supporter etc. You hit the nail on the head. > In China some people must have been amazed how the US was arranging such a thorough cover-up all by themselves. Exactly. Even in India we were amazed by the cover-up. I am pretty sure every Asian country knew it was a cover-up. The very first reports on Coronavirus I came across was not even in the media. It was on a Korean Youtuber who posted regular video updates on the virus leak in China even before the news was picked up in the West. He was warning how CCP was arresting scientists who put out information about the virus and even sharing videos of doctors who had recorded themselves warning about the virus itself (one of the first few who treated patients of the virus and fell sick themselves). I can't, for the life of me, find that channel on Youtube anymore. But yeah there was, and still is, a lot of censorship aided and abetted by Big Tech.
- Jochim 3y ago
  > He was warning how CCP was arresting scientists who put out information about the virus and even sharing videos of doctors who had recorded themselves warning about the virus itself (one of the first few who treated patients of the virus and fell sick themselves). I can't, for the life of me, find that channel on Youtube anymore. But yeah there was, and still is, a lot of censorship aided and abetted by Big Tech. The death of the doctor was widely reported on throughout the pandemic[0][1][2]. [0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/06/whistleblower-chinese-doctor-dies-from-coronavirus https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/06/whistleblower-... [1] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/coronavirus-whistleblower-doctor-feared-dead-wuhan/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-diseas... [2] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-55963896 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-55963896

saiya-jin 3y ago

What the heck are you writing about, this was discussed in all mainstream media I ever cared to look at, since almost beginning of lockdowns. Maybe you watch some strange subset of those? Sure, the overall narrative was that this is just an unproven theory and nothing more, but it was out there, people were discussing probabilities of some lab employees error who went to nearby wet market afterwards. I am not saying this didn't happen in scientific community, I don't follow them closely enough to claim that. I recall few cases in Europe where paranoid scientists were claiming this, on top of quite a few other crank theories about various topics, also ie pushing hard for high doses of Ivermectin, dismissing all vaccinations etc. Understandably, with just throwing around various claims without backing them up with facts, they were not received well in community.

patrickk 3y ago

It would be interesting to know the background of the infamous Lancet letter[1]. According to journalist Paul Thacker, the Lancet letter "helped to guide almost a year of reporting, as journalists helped to amplify Daszak’s message and to silence scientific and public debate." This affected reporting on the origins of the virus, "characterising the lab leak theory as unworthy of serious consideration". [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancet_letter_(COVID-19) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancet_letter_(COVID-19)

okeuro49 3y ago

Michael Shellenberger covered the topic regarding censorship on twitter. Gives an interesting interview here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mqi4JbpsbVc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mqi4JbpsbVc

BurningPenguin 3y ago

Not from the US, but i don't see how it was ever a "taboo". The general gist was "we don't know" or "unlikely". However, what i did see on Social Media, was a bunch of nutjobs pushing their nonsense about "deep state", "population control" and so on.

sharperguy 3y ago
I believe that these 'nutjobs' were promoted to the forefront of popular discussion for purposes of sensationalism and to discredit more careful dissenting voices by association. In many ways, it makes sense to try to get the entire population on board with a single narrative, in order to have a coherent response to an emerging situation. On the other hand, it opens the doors to corruption by leaving those in charge with no credible voices willing to criticize or draw attention to the holes in that narrative.
- BurningPenguin 3y ago
  These nutjobs were all over Twitter, Facebook & Co. Usually platforms that reward engagement with more visibility. The people who were pushing this narrative were relying heavily on a mix of gullible people, fake accounts and bots. Many accounts being merely a few weeks or up to a month old. This is essentially the reason i left Twitter in the first place. I'm observing the conspiracy milieu for over 10 years now. This tactic isn't new, they already used this in 2009 to push comments on certain websites to their side. Back then, it was mostly manual work. Also, thanks to social media, they don't need help from trashy news agencies to be seen.
- mtlmtlmtlmtl 3y ago
  >I believe that these 'nutjobs' were promoted to the forefront of popular discussion for purposes of sensationalism and to discredit more careful dissenting voices by association. That just sounds like an unfounded conspiracy theory. More likely is that extreme statements on social media generate more reactions, which is more engagement, so they get more traction in feeds because that is what social media is optimised to do, irrespective of what the content is. And these nutjobs routinely invoked the term "lab leak", which organically led to an association in most people's minds between the term "lab leak" and crazy conspiracy theories.

AdamN 3y ago

The problem was that almost nobody was saying the source 'might' have been a lab leak - they were saying that the source was 'definitely' a lab leak and then usually adding that Fauci sponsored gain of function research into viruses and then into conspiracy theory land. Most of us were open to the idea of a lab leak but the disinformation was so hard around the topic that sensible people had to push back and the loser was the legitimate 'theory' that a lab leak was a possible source. This is still a theory btw and not proven.

gizmo 3y ago
No no no. The problem was that talking about a lab leak in any way was considered deplorable. So much so that the only people who still dared to speak about the lab leak in public were outcasts, lunatics, and people who didn't have a reputation that could be destroyed. In times of crisis a large fraction of the population will latch on to authoritarianism. This is universally true, and there are many historical and contemporary examples. The world is messy and complicated and people desperately want simple answers. People will cheer on the collapse of hard-won civil rights and the advent of military rule if they believe it's necessary for the greater good. Thankfully it didn't come to this during covid. But not because there was an invisible line in the sand that nobody dared to cross. People were not held in check by their principles, covid just didn't "necessitate" an even harsher response. This is why many people are so upset about the censorship surrounding the lab leak theory. They got a rude awakening. One, that fundamental rights like free speech can curbed very effectively, and two, that it's the citizenry itself that demands their rights be taken away. It's scary to be suddenly robbed of naïve notions about rights and process and governance.
- whimsicalism 3y ago
  You guys can actually just search old Hacker News discussions and also look at old media reporting to see that this narrative of "media suppression" is just blatantly false. GP is absolutely correct - people reacted negatively (and remind that someone not liking what you say does not mean you are censored) because people (including now in this thread) are saying that there is 'definite proof of lab leak' when that is just bull?

mellosouls 3y ago

It wasn't taboo - the associated conspiracy theory about the leak being a deliberate release of a bio-weapon was rightly dismissed. The idea of it being an accidental release though was discussed a lot; it merely lacked strong evidence (no doubt partly due to Chinese obfuscation) to take pole position against the meat markets theory. Additionally there was definitely a ridiculous and likely harmful "anti-racist" thrust by the usual censorious suspects, including those you mention that tried to control conversation, as they do. Unfortunately the merging of the two theories at the time (which I think is continued here by wrongly suggesting the accidental-leak case was "taboo") has never helped clear discussion.

revelio 3y ago
It was all dismissed as misinformation and conspiracies. https://edition.cnn.com/2020/04/13/us/coronavirus-made-in-lab-poll-trnd/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2020/04/13/us/coronavirus-made-in-la... The latest poll from the public opinion fact tank shows that misinformation around the virus is still king, even as fact checkers and public health officials work furiously to dispel it and save American lives. A total of 23% of adults polled said they believe the virus was created intentionally. This is almost certainly not true, according to the genetic detectives studying the virus’s origins. The theory that the virus originated in a lab was one repeatedly shared on One America News Network, a far-right channel favored by President Donald Trump. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-52224331 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-52224331 From the early stages of the coronavirus outbreak, conspiracy theories about the origin and scale of the disease were spread on online platforms. Among these were the false claim that the virus was part of a Chinese covert biological weapons programme. The claim that the virus was man-made has been pushed by numerous conspiracy groups on Facebook, obscure Twitter accounts and even found its way on to primetime Russian state TV." Now what we read is that the virus was man made and the WIV was doing secret military work for the PLA, with the idea being to create a virus and vaccine simultaneously so the attacker controls who survives i.e. a bioweapon. That's the same as what the BBC called a false claim and conspiracy theory. The reason this investigation was initially done by anonymous people who found each other via backchannels on Twitter is because suppression of this discussion was near total.

Symmetry 3y ago

Matthew Yglesias wrote a whole thing on how the idea initially became politicized in the US. The short of it was that when Trump was downplaying the danger of human-to-human transmission early on because his friend Xi told him that wasn't happening Senator Tom Cotton started talking up the idea that the Chinese government might be lying about because it escaped from a government lab. But then there was a game of telephone and it turned into the idea it was a Chinese bioweapon. https://www.slowboring.com/p/the-medias-lab-leak-fiasco https://www.slowboring.com/p/the-medias-lab-leak-fiasco

nonethewiser 3y ago

We need the same for the complete 180 on lockdowns. From universally against to forced lockdowns. I think people forget how strong the consensus (including medical) against lockdowns was. I was in China during the outbreak. All western media and healthcare experts had to say about lockdowns was that they were counterproductive and have never been part of the medical playbook. And that it violates civil rights. A month later this seemed to be completely forgotten. Personally, I believe this is all a function of the states ability to enforce it. It wasn’t possible before, but they found that it was possible now. But it was summarily rejected on principal prior to that.

hospitalJail 3y ago
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- Zetobal 3y ago
  Thank God 99% of all the other countries were in on it otherwise they would have looked really foolish as one of the only countries without lockdowns.
  - deleted 3y ago
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  - hospitalJail 3y ago
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    - Zetobal 3y ago
      Go ahead.
      - hospitalJail 3y ago
        EDIT: Disclaimer, this was for one of the most principled politicians I've ever met. To this day, he will say he is an anarchist in public. (Although, he would say it in a pleasurable way) Sure, so to change 0.5% of the vote, we would find people with demographics that people vote for. For instance, if there is a women on the ballot, run another women because at least 0.5% of people vote for a women, so this splits the vote. Or find someone with similar/same names, bonus points if their signage only has their last name. Anyone with the enemy's yard sign, gets the negative ad. Each neg ad was tested considerably. There is a huge database of every voter, their petitions they signed, odds of being dem/gop, odds of voting, their pet names(if registered), etc... You go up to someone's house knowing they support guns because they signed a petition. Heck, the candidate would pretend they remembered the dog's name from a few years ago. Lying and plausible deniability is like a daily thing. Looking back on it, I would have been sacrificed in a second for putting neg ads in people's mailboxes illegally. Those are some heavy hitters. I feel like I forgot like 2 major stomach churning events, maybe I blocked them out. (Oh gosh, when I went to the enemy's campaign rally and put neg ads on everyone's cars, got followed by their staff, jumped over a fence/bush area to escape...) Okay, I'm only missing 1 stomach churning event from my memory. I think it was strategy related, maybe it had to do with old people.

ttflee 3y ago

It was kinda pro-trumpish to say that before Joe nailed the presidency.

wesapien 3y ago

[flagged]

wesapien 3y ago

I think the problem is that moderates think you can have democracy without having to participate in politics which can sometimes become costly. Extremists already accepted the costs and reap the rewards (control, influnce, power) because people won't stand up to them.

Manjuuu 3y ago

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carimura 3y ago
and that right there is how you promulgate a social suppression campaign.
- Manjuuu 3y ago
  No, that right there is how I remind you that if you want your hypothesis to be taken seriously you need proofs or at least a very compelling argument. There was neither.
  - cubefox 3y ago
    Nonsense. There were plenty of arguments from the very beginning for the lab leak theory. The alternative "bat cave" hypothesis had plenty of implausiblies (e.g. huge distance) and was far from being "proven".
    - cygx 3y ago
      There is, however, quite a bit of precedent for bat coronaviruses eventually infecting humans, most likely through zoonotic spillover via an intermediate species (e.g. HCoV-NL63, HCoV-229E, SARS-CoV-1, MERS-CoV, SADS-CoV), and thanks to humans shipping animals all over the globe, huge distances aren't necessarily a deal breaker.
      - baja_blast 3y ago
        The difference between previous spillovers like SARS1 and MERS was these viruses rapidly mutated as they adapted towards humans allowing for the identification of the intermediate species within months. SARS2 on the other hand was already pre-adapted towards humans, had almost no adaptive mutations and no intermediate host has been found. And guess what when a virus crosses into humans the virus does not suddenly go extinct in the intermediate species, it continues to circulate, for example we still to this day find camels infected with MERS. But SARS2 we just can't seem to find this progenitor virus circulating.. . . very strange isn't it?

jkingsbery 3y ago

Jim Geraghty of National Review has written a lot about this, as he pretty early advocated for the possibility of the lab leak. Because he writes for a right-leaning publication though, there are lots of ad hominem attacks thrown his way that are pretty baseless.

carimura 3y ago

There are folks who were speaking out early despite harsh criticism. RFK JR (who happens to be running for president on the democratic ticket in the US) has another book coming out soon that will likely be very thoroughly researched around this topic.

gregwebs 3y ago

Chris Martenson did a lot of this as it was ongoing- of course his YouTube videos got flagged. As another commenter mentioned Dazik had a big role- he lead the delegation that went to China to investigate the origin even though he had an obvious conflict of interest. 60 minutes interviewed him without digging into the conflict of interest. There are now public emails between Fauci and others coordinating the NIH position that there was no lab leak. That silences much of the scientific community that doesn’t want problems with their grants. Not to mention Fauci constantly going on TV doing interviews to try to control the conversation.

calvinmorrison 3y ago
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- spookthesunset 3y ago
  > goose stepping along to lead the largest propaganda and brainwashing effort in our lifetimes. It's crazy really. I wonder how many decades will have to go by before it becomes okay to acknowledge what a major fuckup the response to covid was. Currently, there is way too many people, at least on forums like this, that haven't woken up to how badly mislead they were. Pure hysteria, politics and poorly interpreted data all bundled into one package. Shit was crazy.
ricksunny 3y ago
>Dazik Daszak.
joshstrange 3y ago
I think Chris Martenson/Peak Prosperity goes too far on certain things (a little too-prepper/gold+silver) but I did find his videos for the first few months of COVID to be informative and well done especially when it came to the lab leak theory. His coverage of Hydroxychloroquine was well measured for the time it came out and I felt like he did an appropriate about-face once it was clear it didn't help.

jasonlotito 3y ago

> I'd like for someone to throughly research and write about how it became taboo to discuss the virus leak theory It was politicized. At the same time, it was a "theory" based on little to no evidence early on. Rather than let scientists work through and figure things out, people were shouting it through the roof as if it was confirmed. Basically, it was an answer in search of evidence, rather than using the evidence to direct the answer. There was a lot of pushback against that sort of talk, especially here. Couple that with a divisive administration here in the US that caused confusion and chaos, there was little to no hope for it being anything other than taboo.

somenameforme 3y ago

This is a weird topic to me, because I'm unsure if I live in a different bubble, or we're all just kind of playing the euphemism game (with a bit of self censorship on top) or what. Because what happened is hardly ambiguous. One thing, more than any, that the Twitter files provided evidence of was various governmental organizations, and individuals, pressuring at least one large tech company to censor for often arbitrary, and sometimes overtly fake, reasons. I think the chances of that behavior being limited to Twitter, or even tech companies in general, are zero. The tech companies are obviously, at the minimum, complicit. Because "pressure" is just that - pressure. When the 'Russian trolls' narrative was being built up in Congress, Twitter knew it was entirely fabricated, and even referred to the requests as coming from "Congressional Trolls", and then they gave those said trolls nearly everything they wanted, and remained absolutely silent about what was happening. That strongly reflects upon the character, or lack thereof, of former Twitter leadership - but the source is the government. The large scale centralization of speech has created an angle shoot of the 1st amendment. Pressure a handful of companies into censoring whatever you want censored and you likely achieve even more than a law would have, since you end up censoring it on a far larger scale than just domestically. Expecting politicians of a country to actually care about the intent of the constitution of that country is clearly no longer a reasonable expectation to have.

sixQuarks 3y ago

In the beginning of the pandemic, I fell for Fauci's lies. I saw him as a pillar of truth and science against the backdrop of Trump's idiocracy. So, I can empathize with those who still think he's a good person, they have not been exposed to all the evidence of how he orchestrated lies and smears to cover up the lab leak theory, and how he funded the gain of function research that likely lead to the pandemic (even though gain of function was outlawed in the US). He even lied about it under oath. And why has nothing happened? Because big pharma is one of the biggest beneficiaries of the pandemic and they are the biggest advertisers on corporate mainstream media. The whole thing is sick and twisted. And I know this sound like a conspiracy nut to those who have not looked into this deeply, but it is what it is.

randomperson01 3y ago
Emily Kopp has a well researched article on the coverup of lab leak discussion by Fauci and instigation by him to publish the Proximal Origin paper. https://usrtk.org/covid-19-origins/timeline-the-proximal-origin-of-sars-cov-2/ https://usrtk.org/covid-19-origins/timeline-the-proximal-ori...
- sixQuarks 3y ago
  It’s ridiculous that your comment has been downvoted. This is a great article. Those who defend Fauci and the establishment narrative do so with a religious fervor. No amount of reasoning or logic seems to get through to them.

sampo 3y ago

> I'd like for someone to throughly research and write about how it became taboo to discuss the virus leak theory. I think the story is pretty much documented in Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EcoHealth_Alliance#COVID-19_pandemic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EcoHealth_Alliance#COVID-19_pa... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Daszak#COVID-19_pandemic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Daszak#COVID-19_pandemic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancet_letter_(COVID-19)#Critical_commentary https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancet_letter_(COVID-19)#Criti... Unless you mean to ask, why was their PR stunt so very successful? For that I don't have an answer.

chrisbrandow 3y ago
Because trump said it in the most inflammatory way possible, so folks like me discounted it immediately. I still don’t know what the truth is but I’m certainly open to a full range of possibilities now.

elorant 3y ago

That's because China finances a lot of western institutions and research labs which where afraid that speaking publicly would harm their grants.

cookiengineer 3y ago

I have a treat for you: https://the-eye.eu/public/Random/wuhan%20coronavirus/ https://the-eye.eu/public/Random/wuhan%20coronavirus/

andyfos 3y ago
What info can i get from this?

ricksunny 3y ago

I HN-submitted the parent article originally. By way of demonstrating topic familiarity, I have a track record of submitting origns content to HN. (It usually founders or gets user-flagged). I didn't guess that this one would garner quite so much attention. >I'd like for someone to throughly research and write about how it became taboo to discuss the virus leak theory IMO part of it was a lot of self-preservation instinct of biomedical research scientists, operating in the context of a calcified monopsony of a national funding organization. In other words, any biomedical scientist's legitimizing LLH too stridently would not necesssrily have healthy to one's grant fundng prospects. Caveating that 'none of the content of this comment necessarily reflects the opinion of BiosafetyNow', I also serve on BiosafetyNow's leadership team. BN was formed in the wake of the wagon-circling & gaslighting of the lab leak hyp. https://biosafetynow.org/ https://biosafetynow.org/ (Richard Ebright, mentioned elsewhere in the comments, is also on the leadership team. More familiar names are Colin Butler, & Milton Leitenberg). We recently released a petition to ban ePPP research (i.e. 'GoF') https://www.change.org/prohibit-ePPP https://www.change.org/prohibit-ePPP. It just passed 1000 signatures yesterday. I would love for concerned visitors to these comments to add their name. Despite that we advocate a simple ban today, our org has in its mission statement to see a moratorium on ePPP research until sufficent biosafety measures are put in place whereupon it becomes (highly) regulated ePPP researxh instead of out-and-out banned. The definition of 'sufficient' is not left to scientists alone to determine, and I contribute toward representing the non-scientist public to advocate for what should be considered sufficient biosafety measures.(Pro-tip: More representation of the non-scientist public remains needed here :) ) The nonprofit still operates on a shoestring budget, so if readers were inclined to help with that, it would be most appreciated. (Can also find origins censorship-themed merchandise which some folks might find fun :) ) If you'd like to volunteer your talents - software and otherwise - to BiosafetyNow's advocacy effort, it would be similarly most welcome.

deleted 3y ago

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tmaly 3y ago

> But the Wuhan institute withheld information about the mine deaths from EcoHealth and the US government. This reads more like CYA piece

bart_spoon 3y ago

There seems to be a tendency for many to believe that academics, researchers, and physicians are above personal and political bias, particularly when it comes to their fields. But as far as I can tell, it largely stemmed from the fact that some of the earliest insinuations around the origins came from fringe right-wing talking heads, and particularly people surrounding Donald Trump, immediately caused many in positions of power, either in academic or media circles, to shut down such notions as racism, xenophobic, anti-intellectual conspiracy theories not based on facts. This despite those same people were largely coming to that conclusion in an anti-intellectual manner also not based on facts.

P_I_Staker 3y ago

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randomperson01 3y ago

Paul Thacker https://unherd.com/2022/03/is-the-media-still-stifling-the-lab-leak-theory/ https://unherd.com/2022/03/is-the-media-still-stifling-the-l... Ian Birrell https://unherd.com/2021/06/beijings-useful-idiots/ https://unherd.com/2021/06/beijings-useful-idiots/ and Ashley Rindsberg have all done a good job on reporting on this https://unherd.com/2021/08/did-the-new-york-times-stifle-lab-leak-debate/ https://unherd.com/2021/08/did-the-new-york-times-stifle-lab...

eimrine 3y ago

> I'd like for someone to throughly research and write about how it became taboo to discuss the virus leak theory. How researchers who discussed it were shunned (...) and in some cases had their posts banned from Social Media. I would like exactly the same about anti-vaxxers but excluding those people who are against any other vax. Anti-covid-vaxxers in other words. Covid is not a pox and all the strict measures were happened just because our digital world just allows such a blatant declassification of freedom people. Compare the peak number of deaths from Covid with the average deaths from alcohol and you realize that this is just a normal year. BTW mass deaths from non-violent reasons is not something totally bad in obviously overpopulated world. And I do not see much discussions about who sets the borders to our government's behavior in such a situations.

firstlink 3y ago

The good news is that everything else the US government suppressed really was outrageous lies that are only supported by racists, like the mRNA vaccines being completely ineffective and often fatal.