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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 Chi

by 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.
- mjburgess 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - dahfizz 3y ago
    I think this says more about you than others. "every single instance" is a gross exaggeration. This is your personal bias at play so that when you read "lab leak", you perceive "racist conspiracy theory"
  - ChemSpider 3y ago
    That is nonsense. Even highly qualified people like Alina Chan were pushed in the conspiracy camp during the first year - just for saying that the lab leak is one (of many) possible sources of the virus.
  - LightBug1 3y ago
    Utter rubbish. The theory was on the table and was discussed at the time ... Most efforts however were focused on dealing with the immediate danger.
  - zkms 3y ago
    > I never met anyone who didn't equate "lab leak" with an intentional act by china The likes of Alina Chan and Richard Ebright are "easy mode" counterexamples for your statement. I'll swing for the fences: Even Tom Cotton was -- at least once, I am exceedingly uninterested in combing through all his tweets and media appearances -- careful to distinguish between "lab leak" and "intentional act", despite being brazenly political and probably inspired by anti-China animus. From the thread beginning at https://twitter.com/SenTomCotton/status/1229202134048133126 https://twitter.com/SenTomCotton/status/1229202134048133126: "Let me debunk the debunkers. @paulina_milla and her “experts” wrongly jump straight to the claim that the coronavirus is an engineered bioweapon. That’s not what I’ve said. There’s at least four hypotheses about the origin of the virus: 1. Natural (still the most likely, but almost certainly not from the Wuhan food market) 2. Good science, bad safety (eg, they were researching things like diagnostic testing and vaccines, but an accidental breach occurred) 3. Bad science, bad safety (this is the engineered-bioweapon hypothesis, with an accidental breach) 4. Deliberate release (very unlikely, but shouldn’t rule out till the evidence is in) Again, none of these are “theories” and certainly not “conspiracy theories.” They are hypotheses that ought to be studied in light of the evidence, if the Chinese Communist Party would provide it. We ought to be transparent with the American people about all this. Maybe some of these so-called experts think they know better. I don’t. And they really don’t either."
shri_krishna 3y ago
It is funny how you say it so nonchalantly that the reason for not discussing lab leak theory is it lead to "marked rise in violent attacks on anyone of Asian descent". However none of this applies to rhetoric against Russia, Middle East or any such country where US is at War with right now. How come no US citizen is attacking Russians, or Middle Easterners (Libyans, Syrians, Iraqis, Afghans etc) in US soil when the Media is 24 x 7 discussing how these countries are the "Enemy" of the United States? Do you not see the dichotomy here? It totally feels orchestrated. Someone somewhere in the US establishment needed an excuse to not discuss about the lab leak theories. So the attacks on people of Asian descent turned out to be the perfect excuse. That's what it comes across to me as an observer of US politics. There is literally no reason for censoring information on discussion of a lab leak that did not even happen on US soil but in Wuhan. If you can discuss Russia, 9/11, terror attacks in various parts of the globe, without US citizens going bonkers and attacking people of those races, I am pretty sure discussing lab leak theory would not piss US citizens off that much. But bring in race attacks angle and you have the people by your side asking for and justifying censorship. Let me ask you another question: How do you think people in Asia discussed the COVID pandemic? Did people in China not question their own government (CCP) and its role in the pandemic? How sure are you that they all believed that the virus did not come from the Wuhan lab but, as per CCP, came from the West?
- cygx 3y ago
  However none of this applies to rhetoric against Russia [...] How come no US citizen is attacking Russians [...] Quoting https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/03/03/anti-russian-sentiment-us/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/03/03/anti-russia... As Putin’s invasion of Ukraine intensifies, some Russian-themed businesses and Russian Americans in the United States are suddenly getting a frosty reception — and in a few cases, experiencing outright hostility. A Russian restaurant in Washington, D.C., called Russia House, was vandalized and the owner indicated that he thought anti-Russian sentiment might be to blame. Some Russian Americans say their children are being bullied at school. “Americans were encouraged to sympathize with the people of Russia rather than the government. And that seems to me to be what is really different from what we’re seeing now, where you see people at protests with signs saying all Russians are to blame for Putin’s aggression,” he said. Thulien pointed to another incident in which the parents of a close friend, a couple in their 80s, had their car scratched and vandalized overnight this week. Also note that in the context of the US culture war, Russia is seen as an ally against the 'woke left', leading to the bizarre situation where Putin himself made references to Harry Potter author JK Rowling in a speech about the invasion of another sovereign country. This might shield Russians against at least some antagonism from that part of the political spectrum.
015UUZn8aEvW 3y ago
I think you overstate how much the lab leak and the bioweapon stories were being conflated. I recall that most people were able to distinguish between them, and that the most prominent figures raising red flags about a potential leak weren't talking about bioweapons. In any case, the most alarming aspect of the lab leak hypothesis is that gain-of-function research is STILL being done, and that the same thing could happen AGAIN. Since this risks creating another pandemic, suppressing the story because of concerns about street crime is very misguided.
- lillecarl 3y ago
  I've said the same thing since the beginning. "It would be weird if the world superpowers that develop nukes and other weapons of mass destruction wouldn't research biological warfare(and stuff)". I never thought the leak was intentional though.
- pfisherman 3y ago
  > the most alarming aspect of the lab leak hypothesis is that gain-of-function research is STILL being done, and that the same thing could happen AGAIN. This right here is an example of why we can’t have reasoned discussion around the topic. You can explain one of the many reasons why gain of function research is necessary: anticipating next year’s version of the flu, designing drugs and vaccines such that resistance mutations reduce evolutionary fitness. You can explain how it is done: lots of computational simulations, and some benchtop with results feeding back into computational methods. You can explain some of the safeguards in place: BSL 3/4 facilities, regulatory / institutional oversight, security services, etc. And then someone will stand up on a chair and yell “SUPER VIRUS!” Anyway from my perspective, the “lab leak” theory tends to be people pushing an unsubstantiated theory to either (1) blame China for an “act of god/nature” or (2) argue for a moratorium on infectious disease / vaccine / therapeutic research. Please note that no one here is calling you a racist. But I think calling parts of your comment uninformed or misinformed is fair game for discussion.
  - stormfather 3y ago
    > the “lab leak” theory tends to be people pushing an unsubstantiated theory to either For me it's just common sense. It probably came from the coronavirus lab with a bad safety record it popped up next to. Duh. And I "push" it because I value the truth and want to live in a rational society where the truth isn't gamed for emotional or political reasons. And that's probably the same for most of us.
revelio 3y ago
> These conspiracy theories lead to a marked rise in violent attacks on anyone of Asian descent in the US Where? Can you back this up with clear evidence? And assuming this claim isn't simply made up, in what universe would it be a good strategy to address a USA specific problem by systematically and globally destroying the credibility of the entire scientific, media and public health establishment? The solution to violence is police; no one in their right mind would decide the best solution to this would be to establish a global conspiracy. No, the above is all retroactive justification. We have the emails from the virologists as they planned the letter that claimed it was all a conspiracy theory. They weren't motivated by violent attacks. They were worried about being blamed for it, and that maybe it'd be harder to fund work in China in future. They say that, in writing.
yarg 3y ago
I never believed it was a bioweapon. Why? Because China was behind on vaccine development, and when they finally produced on it was not only late, but barely functional. Late is one thing - if you release a bioweapon, it's far too suspicious to release a co-developed vaccine simultaneously. But ineffective? When it got out the WHO was parroting China's talking points from day one - it's not airborne, that's just a racist conspiracy. It was nuts. And from the same group that was ignoring the big red flags from Taiwan's early warning system (Taiwan, who incidentally is refused membership as part of the world's China appeasement policy). Then China shutdown domestic travel from Wuhan, while still allowing it internationally. They didn't develop it as a bioweapon - but that did not stop them from weaponising it after the fact.
- Jochim 3y ago
  > Then China shutdown domestic travel from Wuhan, while still allowing it internationally. Lie[0]: > On April 21, Ferguson provided an “update” to his April 5 column in which he acknowledged, “Data from sensors tracking actual flight paths would seem to indicate that no flights left from Wuhan itself to other countries in the world after January 23.” [0] https://www.factcheck.org/2020/05/trumps-flawed-china-travel-conspiracy/ https://www.factcheck.org/2020/05/trumps-flawed-china-travel...
  - yarg 3y ago
    The Chinese government responded to Covid the same damned way they responded to SARS; with a cover up - no joke, they were arresting doctors. The biggest difference was that we didn't have someone like Gro Harlem Bruntlant [1] to competently handle the WHO's response [2] and call them out for their bullshit. Both China and Taiwan looked at the SARS outbreak, and made efforts to prevent it from happening again. Taiwan set up a robust early warning system in order to detect and contain such outbreaks in the future. China on the other hand, set out to inject themselves into the WHO to protect themselves from future embarrassment [3]. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gro_Harlem_Brundtland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gro_Harlem_Brundtland [2] - https://www.who.int/news/item/05-07-2003-sars-outbreak-contained-worldwide https://www.who.int/news/item/05-07-2003-sars-outbreak-conta... [3] - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19771957/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19771957/
faangsticle 3y ago
And yet maybe it was right?
peppermint_gum 3y ago
> These conspiracy theories lead to a marked rise in violent attacks on anyone of Asian descent in the US, It should be noted that the statistics don't support the media narrative and there was no wave of white supremacist attacks on Asians. Here are the stats from New York ("Arrest Statistics by Bias Motivation"): https://www.nyc.gov/site/nypd/stats/reports-analysis/hate-crimes.page https://www.nyc.gov/site/nypd/stats/reports-analysis/hate-cr...
- djbusby 3y ago
  This article from the Guardian says there was an uptick https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jul/21/asian-americans-hate-incidents-study https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jul/21/asian-americ...
  - justaman 3y ago
    There was an uptick but its taboo to talk about the demographic.
- speff 3y ago
  From your own link "hate-crime-complaints-by-motivation-annual" 2020 vs 2021: +Anti-Asian 2019: 1 Anti-Asian 2020: 27 Anti-Asian 2021: 131 *+ Edit: Added 2019 as suggested below
  - naasking 3y ago
    Looks like there was a general increase in complaints as lockdowns eased. From the data, there were upticks in anti-jewish, anti-gay, anti-muslim and more. Asians still saw relatively more of an uptick than other motivations.
    - throwawaymaths 3y ago
      That could be an increase in reporting. After all you'd expect the uptick to happen in 2020-- it was COVID-19 after all. Also worth to know that anti-asian hate was also a narrative pushed by the CPC to label things like supporting Hong Kong democracy protests or criticizing uighur genocide as "anti-asian hate", which happened after the CPC noticed the effectiveness of BLM protests in sowing us discord (mid-2020) so to trust any stats post 2020 it would at least need to segregate the two use cases.
delfinom 3y ago
Yea, unfortunately the conspiracy theorists hijack talking points and social media platforms amplify their bullshit to the extreme. Meanwhile they ignore all the near misses the US seems to have with anthrax and smallpox being misplaced in US labs every year lol.
lordfrito 3y ago
I find it deeply disturbing that excuses as flimsy as "hate" or "possible hate crime reaction" would be used as justification to suppress the truth, especially with a situation as grave as COVID-19. Who is to say whether the uptick with Asians is causation and not just correlation? Meanwhile, thousands of Americans were dying daily during the peak of the pandemic. Everyone was scared, needed to know what was going on. The average person was much more worried about the potential harm to millions of citizens than a much smaller uptick in one particular sector. It's of paramount importance that we don't repeat the mistakes that led to the pandemic in the first place. The only way we can do that is getting to the bottom of what happened. If "possible Asian hate crimes" was the best excuse that the censorship industrial complex could come up with, then it is clear to me that any excuse would have done, and the conclusions I draw is that the suppression was 100% politically motivated. I want to know who was involved in making the decision to suppress, and to what ends they were trying to shape public opinion. At the minimum I want to know who I should be working to vote out of office. How can I know who to vote for when we're normalizing lying as a justifiable policy up and down the chain of government communication and mass media?
- rtkwe 3y ago
  It wasn't just the lab leak theory going around though, it was extremely tightly coupled with the "COVID bioweapon" conspiracy which really tainted it especially in the early days when there really wasn't much more info available other than it was first detected as a big outbreak in the same city as the coronavirus lab. In an ideal situation they'd be separable but they were so closely deployed trying to address the bioweapon conspiracy caught a lot of less out there discussion of the lab leak. Also important though is it never really went away. For all the talk of censorship and suppression the possibility of a lab leak never left the investigation. It's also a very difficult thing to investigate without access to the labs to see what strains they were working on looked like which we still don't have afaik. It's been a process of eliminating other possiblities to some extent as other vectors that could be looked into were and turned out to be less likely.
  - lordfrito 3y ago
    > Also important though is it never really went away. Sort of true -- but only because you can't kill the idea, the need to find the cause of the pandemic to avoid a repeat. This is cold comfort to the people who were getting banned had their accounts cancelled for suggesting things that turned out to be actually true. There's was a lot of collateral damage here, all in the name of... well I'm not sure. Trust is hard to build, and once broken takes a long time to regain. The point is, as a society we're heading in the wrong direction. Freedom of speech is becoming freedom for those who keep their mouths shut.
HaZeust 3y ago
I can, and will, continue to advocate and affirm that criticizing the Chinese Communist Party - and people with Chinese descent - are 2 very different things, and that the former is acceptable.
jbritton 3y ago
“There was a very well coordinated and intentional conflation of the term "lab leak" with the conspiracy theories” Only by those wishing to shutdown legitimate discussion. So back to the original question. Who was behind trying to change the narrative. Dr. Fauci’s emails have shown he orchestrated deceiving the public. I’m not sure that is sufficient to explain the total media backlash against a lab-leak.
lobocinza 3y ago
Combating marginal conspiracy theories with a real mainstream media/government conspiracy. Surely that did way more harm than good.
Slava_Propanei 3y ago
[dead]
PM_me_your_math 3y ago
Hiding the truth because some bad people might do bad things is a pitiful excuse. Absolutely shameful to anyone with even a teardrop of integrity. Few people want war with China. But I know of plenty that think China should be footing the bill and paying the entire world damages for their incompetence (or malice) in mishandling their bioweapon. Communists have no integrity. ChiComs blamed the US for the virus, which is ironic, since the NIH knowingly or unwittingly (incompetence) funded it through Eco Health Alliance.
2devnull 3y ago
“conspiracy theories lead to a marked rise in violent attacks on anyone of Asian descent in the US,” Extremely dubious. Your first paragraph was on point. Then you descend into ideologically driven speculation. You also seem to not grasp the basic chronology of how the early pro-China slant of the WHO plays into the whole gestalt. And overlook the fact that social media companies are filled with government workers who are paid to manipulate (censor) views that don’t align with those of the government, a government who in this case funded the research that caused the pandemic.

by px43 3y ago

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.

mjburgess 3y ago
[flagged]
- dahfizz 3y ago
  I think this says more about you than others. "every single instance" is a gross exaggeration. This is your personal bias at play so that when you read "lab leak", you perceive "racist conspiracy theory"
- ChemSpider 3y ago
  That is nonsense. Even highly qualified people like Alina Chan were pushed in the conspiracy camp during the first year - just for saying that the lab leak is one (of many) possible sources of the virus.
- LightBug1 3y ago
  Utter rubbish. The theory was on the table and was discussed at the time ... Most efforts however were focused on dealing with the immediate danger.
- zkms 3y ago
  > I never met anyone who didn't equate "lab leak" with an intentional act by china The likes of Alina Chan and Richard Ebright are "easy mode" counterexamples for your statement. I'll swing for the fences: Even Tom Cotton was -- at least once, I am exceedingly uninterested in combing through all his tweets and media appearances -- careful to distinguish between "lab leak" and "intentional act", despite being brazenly political and probably inspired by anti-China animus. From the thread beginning at https://twitter.com/SenTomCotton/status/1229202134048133126 https://twitter.com/SenTomCotton/status/1229202134048133126: "Let me debunk the debunkers. @paulina_milla and her “experts” wrongly jump straight to the claim that the coronavirus is an engineered bioweapon. That’s not what I’ve said. There’s at least four hypotheses about the origin of the virus: 1. Natural (still the most likely, but almost certainly not from the Wuhan food market) 2. Good science, bad safety (eg, they were researching things like diagnostic testing and vaccines, but an accidental breach occurred) 3. Bad science, bad safety (this is the engineered-bioweapon hypothesis, with an accidental breach) 4. Deliberate release (very unlikely, but shouldn’t rule out till the evidence is in) Again, none of these are “theories” and certainly not “conspiracy theories.” They are hypotheses that ought to be studied in light of the evidence, if the Chinese Communist Party would provide it. We ought to be transparent with the American people about all this. Maybe some of these so-called experts think they know better. I don’t. And they really don’t either."

shri_krishna 3y ago

It is funny how you say it so nonchalantly that the reason for not discussing lab leak theory is it lead to "marked rise in violent attacks on anyone of Asian descent". However none of this applies to rhetoric against Russia, Middle East or any such country where US is at War with right now. How come no US citizen is attacking Russians, or Middle Easterners (Libyans, Syrians, Iraqis, Afghans etc) in US soil when the Media is 24 x 7 discussing how these countries are the "Enemy" of the United States? Do you not see the dichotomy here? It totally feels orchestrated. Someone somewhere in the US establishment needed an excuse to not discuss about the lab leak theories. So the attacks on people of Asian descent turned out to be the perfect excuse. That's what it comes across to me as an observer of US politics. There is literally no reason for censoring information on discussion of a lab leak that did not even happen on US soil but in Wuhan. If you can discuss Russia, 9/11, terror attacks in various parts of the globe, without US citizens going bonkers and attacking people of those races, I am pretty sure discussing lab leak theory would not piss US citizens off that much. But bring in race attacks angle and you have the people by your side asking for and justifying censorship. Let me ask you another question: How do you think people in Asia discussed the COVID pandemic? Did people in China not question their own government (CCP) and its role in the pandemic? How sure are you that they all believed that the virus did not come from the Wuhan lab but, as per CCP, came from the West?

cygx 3y ago
However none of this applies to rhetoric against Russia [...] How come no US citizen is attacking Russians [...] Quoting https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/03/03/anti-russian-sentiment-us/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/03/03/anti-russia... As Putin’s invasion of Ukraine intensifies, some Russian-themed businesses and Russian Americans in the United States are suddenly getting a frosty reception — and in a few cases, experiencing outright hostility. A Russian restaurant in Washington, D.C., called Russia House, was vandalized and the owner indicated that he thought anti-Russian sentiment might be to blame. Some Russian Americans say their children are being bullied at school. “Americans were encouraged to sympathize with the people of Russia rather than the government. And that seems to me to be what is really different from what we’re seeing now, where you see people at protests with signs saying all Russians are to blame for Putin’s aggression,” he said. Thulien pointed to another incident in which the parents of a close friend, a couple in their 80s, had their car scratched and vandalized overnight this week. Also note that in the context of the US culture war, Russia is seen as an ally against the 'woke left', leading to the bizarre situation where Putin himself made references to Harry Potter author JK Rowling in a speech about the invasion of another sovereign country. This might shield Russians against at least some antagonism from that part of the political spectrum.

015UUZn8aEvW 3y ago

I think you overstate how much the lab leak and the bioweapon stories were being conflated. I recall that most people were able to distinguish between them, and that the most prominent figures raising red flags about a potential leak weren't talking about bioweapons. In any case, the most alarming aspect of the lab leak hypothesis is that gain-of-function research is STILL being done, and that the same thing could happen AGAIN. Since this risks creating another pandemic, suppressing the story because of concerns about street crime is very misguided.

lillecarl 3y ago
I've said the same thing since the beginning. "It would be weird if the world superpowers that develop nukes and other weapons of mass destruction wouldn't research biological warfare(and stuff)". I never thought the leak was intentional though.
pfisherman 3y ago
> the most alarming aspect of the lab leak hypothesis is that gain-of-function research is STILL being done, and that the same thing could happen AGAIN. This right here is an example of why we can’t have reasoned discussion around the topic. You can explain one of the many reasons why gain of function research is necessary: anticipating next year’s version of the flu, designing drugs and vaccines such that resistance mutations reduce evolutionary fitness. You can explain how it is done: lots of computational simulations, and some benchtop with results feeding back into computational methods. You can explain some of the safeguards in place: BSL 3/4 facilities, regulatory / institutional oversight, security services, etc. And then someone will stand up on a chair and yell “SUPER VIRUS!” Anyway from my perspective, the “lab leak” theory tends to be people pushing an unsubstantiated theory to either (1) blame China for an “act of god/nature” or (2) argue for a moratorium on infectious disease / vaccine / therapeutic research. Please note that no one here is calling you a racist. But I think calling parts of your comment uninformed or misinformed is fair game for discussion.
- stormfather 3y ago
  > the “lab leak” theory tends to be people pushing an unsubstantiated theory to either For me it's just common sense. It probably came from the coronavirus lab with a bad safety record it popped up next to. Duh. And I "push" it because I value the truth and want to live in a rational society where the truth isn't gamed for emotional or political reasons. And that's probably the same for most of us.

revelio 3y ago

> These conspiracy theories lead to a marked rise in violent attacks on anyone of Asian descent in the US Where? Can you back this up with clear evidence? And assuming this claim isn't simply made up, in what universe would it be a good strategy to address a USA specific problem by systematically and globally destroying the credibility of the entire scientific, media and public health establishment? The solution to violence is police; no one in their right mind would decide the best solution to this would be to establish a global conspiracy. No, the above is all retroactive justification. We have the emails from the virologists as they planned the letter that claimed it was all a conspiracy theory. They weren't motivated by violent attacks. They were worried about being blamed for it, and that maybe it'd be harder to fund work in China in future. They say that, in writing.

yarg 3y ago

I never believed it was a bioweapon. Why? Because China was behind on vaccine development, and when they finally produced on it was not only late, but barely functional. Late is one thing - if you release a bioweapon, it's far too suspicious to release a co-developed vaccine simultaneously. But ineffective? When it got out the WHO was parroting China's talking points from day one - it's not airborne, that's just a racist conspiracy. It was nuts. And from the same group that was ignoring the big red flags from Taiwan's early warning system (Taiwan, who incidentally is refused membership as part of the world's China appeasement policy). Then China shutdown domestic travel from Wuhan, while still allowing it internationally. They didn't develop it as a bioweapon - but that did not stop them from weaponising it after the fact.

Jochim 3y ago
> Then China shutdown domestic travel from Wuhan, while still allowing it internationally. Lie[0]: > On April 21, Ferguson provided an “update” to his April 5 column in which he acknowledged, “Data from sensors tracking actual flight paths would seem to indicate that no flights left from Wuhan itself to other countries in the world after January 23.” [0] https://www.factcheck.org/2020/05/trumps-flawed-china-travel-conspiracy/ https://www.factcheck.org/2020/05/trumps-flawed-china-travel...
- yarg 3y ago
  The Chinese government responded to Covid the same damned way they responded to SARS; with a cover up - no joke, they were arresting doctors. The biggest difference was that we didn't have someone like Gro Harlem Bruntlant [1] to competently handle the WHO's response [2] and call them out for their bullshit. Both China and Taiwan looked at the SARS outbreak, and made efforts to prevent it from happening again. Taiwan set up a robust early warning system in order to detect and contain such outbreaks in the future. China on the other hand, set out to inject themselves into the WHO to protect themselves from future embarrassment [3]. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gro_Harlem_Brundtland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gro_Harlem_Brundtland [2] - https://www.who.int/news/item/05-07-2003-sars-outbreak-contained-worldwide https://www.who.int/news/item/05-07-2003-sars-outbreak-conta... [3] - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19771957/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19771957/

faangsticle 3y ago

And yet maybe it was right?

peppermint_gum 3y ago

> These conspiracy theories lead to a marked rise in violent attacks on anyone of Asian descent in the US, It should be noted that the statistics don't support the media narrative and there was no wave of white supremacist attacks on Asians. Here are the stats from New York ("Arrest Statistics by Bias Motivation"): https://www.nyc.gov/site/nypd/stats/reports-analysis/hate-crimes.page https://www.nyc.gov/site/nypd/stats/reports-analysis/hate-cr...

djbusby 3y ago
This article from the Guardian says there was an uptick https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jul/21/asian-americans-hate-incidents-study https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jul/21/asian-americ...
- justaman 3y ago
  There was an uptick but its taboo to talk about the demographic.
speff 3y ago
From your own link "hate-crime-complaints-by-motivation-annual" 2020 vs 2021: +Anti-Asian 2019: 1 Anti-Asian 2020: 27 Anti-Asian 2021: 131 *+ Edit: Added 2019 as suggested below
- naasking 3y ago
  Looks like there was a general increase in complaints as lockdowns eased. From the data, there were upticks in anti-jewish, anti-gay, anti-muslim and more. Asians still saw relatively more of an uptick than other motivations.
  - throwawaymaths 3y ago
    That could be an increase in reporting. After all you'd expect the uptick to happen in 2020-- it was COVID-19 after all. Also worth to know that anti-asian hate was also a narrative pushed by the CPC to label things like supporting Hong Kong democracy protests or criticizing uighur genocide as "anti-asian hate", which happened after the CPC noticed the effectiveness of BLM protests in sowing us discord (mid-2020) so to trust any stats post 2020 it would at least need to segregate the two use cases.

delfinom 3y ago

Yea, unfortunately the conspiracy theorists hijack talking points and social media platforms amplify their bullshit to the extreme. Meanwhile they ignore all the near misses the US seems to have with anthrax and smallpox being misplaced in US labs every year lol.

lordfrito 3y ago

I find it deeply disturbing that excuses as flimsy as "hate" or "possible hate crime reaction" would be used as justification to suppress the truth, especially with a situation as grave as COVID-19. Who is to say whether the uptick with Asians is causation and not just correlation? Meanwhile, thousands of Americans were dying daily during the peak of the pandemic. Everyone was scared, needed to know what was going on. The average person was much more worried about the potential harm to millions of citizens than a much smaller uptick in one particular sector. It's of paramount importance that we don't repeat the mistakes that led to the pandemic in the first place. The only way we can do that is getting to the bottom of what happened. If "possible Asian hate crimes" was the best excuse that the censorship industrial complex could come up with, then it is clear to me that any excuse would have done, and the conclusions I draw is that the suppression was 100% politically motivated. I want to know who was involved in making the decision to suppress, and to what ends they were trying to shape public opinion. At the minimum I want to know who I should be working to vote out of office. How can I know who to vote for when we're normalizing lying as a justifiable policy up and down the chain of government communication and mass media?

rtkwe 3y ago
It wasn't just the lab leak theory going around though, it was extremely tightly coupled with the "COVID bioweapon" conspiracy which really tainted it especially in the early days when there really wasn't much more info available other than it was first detected as a big outbreak in the same city as the coronavirus lab. In an ideal situation they'd be separable but they were so closely deployed trying to address the bioweapon conspiracy caught a lot of less out there discussion of the lab leak. Also important though is it never really went away. For all the talk of censorship and suppression the possibility of a lab leak never left the investigation. It's also a very difficult thing to investigate without access to the labs to see what strains they were working on looked like which we still don't have afaik. It's been a process of eliminating other possiblities to some extent as other vectors that could be looked into were and turned out to be less likely.
- lordfrito 3y ago
  > Also important though is it never really went away. Sort of true -- but only because you can't kill the idea, the need to find the cause of the pandemic to avoid a repeat. This is cold comfort to the people who were getting banned had their accounts cancelled for suggesting things that turned out to be actually true. There's was a lot of collateral damage here, all in the name of... well I'm not sure. Trust is hard to build, and once broken takes a long time to regain. The point is, as a society we're heading in the wrong direction. Freedom of speech is becoming freedom for those who keep their mouths shut.

HaZeust 3y ago

I can, and will, continue to advocate and affirm that criticizing the Chinese Communist Party - and people with Chinese descent - are 2 very different things, and that the former is acceptable.

jbritton 3y ago

“There was a very well coordinated and intentional conflation of the term "lab leak" with the conspiracy theories” Only by those wishing to shutdown legitimate discussion. So back to the original question. Who was behind trying to change the narrative. Dr. Fauci’s emails have shown he orchestrated deceiving the public. I’m not sure that is sufficient to explain the total media backlash against a lab-leak.

lobocinza 3y ago

Combating marginal conspiracy theories with a real mainstream media/government conspiracy. Surely that did way more harm than good.

Slava_Propanei 3y ago

[dead]

PM_me_your_math 3y ago

Hiding the truth because some bad people might do bad things is a pitiful excuse. Absolutely shameful to anyone with even a teardrop of integrity. Few people want war with China. But I know of plenty that think China should be footing the bill and paying the entire world damages for their incompetence (or malice) in mishandling their bioweapon. Communists have no integrity. ChiComs blamed the US for the virus, which is ironic, since the NIH knowingly or unwittingly (incompetence) funded it through Eco Health Alliance.

2devnull 3y ago

“conspiracy theories lead to a marked rise in violent attacks on anyone of Asian descent in the US,” Extremely dubious. Your first paragraph was on point. Then you descend into ideologically driven speculation. You also seem to not grasp the basic chronology of how the early pro-China slant of the WHO plays into the whole gestalt. And overlook the fact that social media companies are filled with government workers who are paid to manipulate (censor) views that don’t align with those of the government, a government who in this case funded the research that caused the pandemic.