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> Can you imagine how many scarce resources would have been mispent if SARS-CoV-2 had begun with worldwide knowledge that China was responsible? OTOH if we kne

> Can you imagine how many scarce resources would have been mispent if SARS-CoV-2 had begun with worldwide knowledge that China was responsible? OTOH if we knew that China was responsible, won't the future be better served by putting safeguards to prevent a worse thing happening again?

ethbr0 3y ago
I'm of two minds on that. On one hand: yes, more data will inform future technical approaches and procedures. On the other hand: no, people are technically ignorant, xenophobic, and more willing to scapegoat and project anger than reflect on their own behavior.
- epicureanideal 3y ago
  I've lived in many US states, including in the south, and I have not met very many of these ignorant, xenophopic, scapegoat-seeking people that everyone claims to be worried about. Seems like those people, if they exist in any significant numbers, are just an excuse to lie to the public "for their own good".
  - rnk 3y ago
    If you didn't meet those people, then either you're ignorant yourself -(with all due respect), or you are not looking closely. I'm from the south. I went to high school there, I got my college degree from there. I live there from the time I was born until my mid-20s. The south is full of racist, horrible people, it was common in my youth to hear people talk badly about Jewish people, people dropped the n word. I heard people talking about non-Christians shouldn't get to vote. I heard plenty of sexist words about women for men. It just beggars belief that you would never hear this kind of speech. I just don't commonly hear this on the west coast in the US like I did in my years in the south. And unfortunately I still hear it when I go to visit. Not everyone is like that! But enough people are that, so that you're going to encounter it over and over again.
    - claytongulick 3y ago
      "The south". Like it's all one thing. You know, that big geographic area that's much larger than most countries in the world, with a population at least as diverse. The most racist place I ever lived was about 30 mins from Philadelphia. Grew up there, and there were literally burning crosses in people's yards and race riots in my high school. I've lived in "the south" now for almost 20 years and never encountered even a fraction of the racism I saw growing up.
      - rnk 3y ago
        When I was a kid in the south my barber constantly talked about the problems of black people and that he saw crosses being burned and that he didn't want his daughter to like black boys. I'm not making this up! They literally burned crosses in the town I grew up in.
        claytongulick 3y ago
        Looks like you found a racist dude in one of the over 128 million people that live in the south. I'm sure you could find some more if you look. It's over 38% of the county's population, and by far the most populous region of the U.S. [1]. You can find racism anywhere. Mostly in very small percentages, mostly in uneducated populations, and not restricted to any particular ethnicity. [1]https://www.census.gov/popclock/data_tables.php?component=growth https://www.census.gov/popclock/data_tables.php?component=gr...
        rnk 3y ago
        In my very first comment I said that not all people are like that. Yet sadly, to this day, I constantly do meet people making casual racist comments when I go to the south. And when I say the south, I include the state where I was born which is one of the states that fought against the US government in the civil war. Not all people are like that but there is an issue that a lot of people are like that.
        retrac 3y ago
- sterlind 3y ago
  I don't like being lied or condescended to, just because most people can't handle the information. Also, it often backfires. Like, in early 2020, when the CDC said masks were unnecessary, then that N95s were unnecessary, it was glaringly obvious that this was propaganda to keep the public from panic-buying PPE and causing shortages. Some people believed them, took inadequate protections, got sick or died. It led to ineffective safety policies. It torched the CDC's credibility right out of the gate. They got called out later for flip-flopping. It led to "trust the science" being so ridiculed. Mostly, I got mad that it was such an obvious lie.
  - avereveard 3y ago
    This. The many little white lies killed trust in institutions. People knew things were not adding up. The mistrust drive them to search and search for answers, and if you search long enough on internet, something will turn up because search engine don't have discernment. That created the breeding ground for conspiracy theorist to gain unprecedented audience.
    - carlmr 3y ago
      >if you search long enough on internet, something will turn up Next crisis like this with chatGPT will be way more of this, imagine all the hallucinations.
  - plagiarist 3y ago
    How can that be the reason "trust the science" is ridiculed when the people scoffing also refused to wear any sort of mask?
    - carlmr 3y ago
      It's ridiculed because trust was immediately violated, and trust is not what science is built on. However just being an everything skeptic without any scientific education is not good either. The problem was the politicization, the dishonesty, the corruption. Both camps were wrong plenty of times, none would admit to it, and public discourse suffered because neither side was willing to cede ground to actual science.
- cscurmudgeon 3y ago
  > On the other hand: no, people are technically ignorant, xenophobic, and more willing to scapegoat and project anger than reflect on their own behavior. Doesn't matter. Truth should be prioritized first. There are mechanisms to deal with Xenophobia and hate and those should be strengthened.
willcipriano 3y ago
China wouldn't be solely responsible, this was a US project.
- cscurmudgeon 3y ago
  No, US funded part of it, but China ran the lab 100%.
kornhole 3y ago
The Ecohealth Alliance received funding from NIH for the gain of function research which means it would not be just China to blame. https://www.science.org/content/article/nih-says-grantee-failed-report-experiment-wuhan-created-bat-virus-made-mice-sicker https://www.science.org/content/article/nih-says-grantee-fai...
- cscurmudgeon 3y ago
  Who ran the lab?
ajross 3y ago
Seems like the future would be better served by putting safeguards in whether or not China was responsible. What safeguards specifically are you proposing, and why do they demand a culprit?
rnk 3y ago
I don't think that we would have done anything differently if we knew that China was responsible. It wouldn't have changed our treatments or vaccination strategies or anything. Could it have made some people who are crazy against China feel differently? Maybe. I don't think it would have made the doofuses who took ivermectin act differently though.
- fsckboy 3y ago
  > I don't think it would have made the doofuses who took ivermectin act differently though from NIH https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7539925/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7539925/ "Ivermectin: an award-winning drug with expected antiviral activity against COVID-19... with demonstrated antiviral activity against a number of DNA and RNA viruses, including severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2)" Whether or not ivermectin ultimately turned out to be efficacious against Covid19 is not the main point, it was/is a widely known, completely safe, anti-viral, and while everything else in the toolbag was being thrown at Covid19, ivermectin was a good candidate, especially since it showed positive results in some clinical conditions. (and I've heard it pointed out that in order to get profitable approval for experimental mRNA vaccines to be released, there was a huge financial incentive to declare a priori that ivermectin did not work) If you "believe in science" you wouldn't call people who tried ivermectin "doofuses", doing so you're simply looking in the doofus mirror. It's best not to join one partisan camp or the other and politicize science, but look at evidence. Ivermectin has well known antiviral properties, and coronavirus is a virus. > I don't think that we would have done anything differently if we knew that China was responsible you are fixating on the wrong aspect. Whether or not covid19 is the result of the leak of "man-made" gain-of-function research is extremely important to what we do in the future. The public has a right to know. you keep arguing your own point here, that "no harm is no foul and we wouldn't have done anything differently so we don't need to look" and to me that's simply you saying you support the politics that played out and you don't want to look at it. To me, science was ignored in favor of politics and it's all exactly what I want to look at.
  - rnk 3y ago
    I just don't buy the international conspiracy to block ivermectin. I've considered it and discussed it with my poor father who became convinced by Fox News and endless Facebook forwarded postings. There are hundreds, perhaps thousands of drugs and substances that have an antiviral effect. Ivermectin was one that was tested and there were some early results that were positive but then later with more thorough testing it didn't appear as efficacious. There are plenty of other drugs that were also promoted as blocking COVID, that lupus drug. It became a conservative conspiratorial fantasy that there was a widespread governmental attempt to block them from using other things than coronavirus vaccines. My father went out and found alternative sources for these substances. Fortunately he never took any of them. I do think knowing the actual source of COVID is good information to have.

ethbr0 3y ago

I'm of two minds on that. On one hand: yes, more data will inform future technical approaches and procedures. On the other hand: no, people are technically ignorant, xenophobic, and more willing to scapegoat and project anger than reflect on their own behavior.

epicureanideal 3y ago
I've lived in many US states, including in the south, and I have not met very many of these ignorant, xenophopic, scapegoat-seeking people that everyone claims to be worried about. Seems like those people, if they exist in any significant numbers, are just an excuse to lie to the public "for their own good".
- rnk 3y ago
  If you didn't meet those people, then either you're ignorant yourself -(with all due respect), or you are not looking closely. I'm from the south. I went to high school there, I got my college degree from there. I live there from the time I was born until my mid-20s. The south is full of racist, horrible people, it was common in my youth to hear people talk badly about Jewish people, people dropped the n word. I heard people talking about non-Christians shouldn't get to vote. I heard plenty of sexist words about women for men. It just beggars belief that you would never hear this kind of speech. I just don't commonly hear this on the west coast in the US like I did in my years in the south. And unfortunately I still hear it when I go to visit. Not everyone is like that! But enough people are that, so that you're going to encounter it over and over again.
  - claytongulick 3y ago
    "The south". Like it's all one thing. You know, that big geographic area that's much larger than most countries in the world, with a population at least as diverse. The most racist place I ever lived was about 30 mins from Philadelphia. Grew up there, and there were literally burning crosses in people's yards and race riots in my high school. I've lived in "the south" now for almost 20 years and never encountered even a fraction of the racism I saw growing up.
    - rnk 3y ago
      When I was a kid in the south my barber constantly talked about the problems of black people and that he saw crosses being burned and that he didn't want his daughter to like black boys. I'm not making this up! They literally burned crosses in the town I grew up in.
      - claytongulick 3y ago
        Looks like you found a racist dude in one of the over 128 million people that live in the south. I'm sure you could find some more if you look. It's over 38% of the county's population, and by far the most populous region of the U.S. [1]. You can find racism anywhere. Mostly in very small percentages, mostly in uneducated populations, and not restricted to any particular ethnicity. [1]https://www.census.gov/popclock/data_tables.php?component=growth https://www.census.gov/popclock/data_tables.php?component=gr...
        rnk 3y ago
        In my very first comment I said that not all people are like that. Yet sadly, to this day, I constantly do meet people making casual racist comments when I go to the south. And when I say the south, I include the state where I was born which is one of the states that fought against the US government in the civil war. Not all people are like that but there is an issue that a lot of people are like that.
        retrac 3y ago
sterlind 3y ago
I don't like being lied or condescended to, just because most people can't handle the information. Also, it often backfires. Like, in early 2020, when the CDC said masks were unnecessary, then that N95s were unnecessary, it was glaringly obvious that this was propaganda to keep the public from panic-buying PPE and causing shortages. Some people believed them, took inadequate protections, got sick or died. It led to ineffective safety policies. It torched the CDC's credibility right out of the gate. They got called out later for flip-flopping. It led to "trust the science" being so ridiculed. Mostly, I got mad that it was such an obvious lie.
- avereveard 3y ago
  This. The many little white lies killed trust in institutions. People knew things were not adding up. The mistrust drive them to search and search for answers, and if you search long enough on internet, something will turn up because search engine don't have discernment. That created the breeding ground for conspiracy theorist to gain unprecedented audience.
  - carlmr 3y ago
    >if you search long enough on internet, something will turn up Next crisis like this with chatGPT will be way more of this, imagine all the hallucinations.
- plagiarist 3y ago
  How can that be the reason "trust the science" is ridiculed when the people scoffing also refused to wear any sort of mask?
  - carlmr 3y ago
    It's ridiculed because trust was immediately violated, and trust is not what science is built on. However just being an everything skeptic without any scientific education is not good either. The problem was the politicization, the dishonesty, the corruption. Both camps were wrong plenty of times, none would admit to it, and public discourse suffered because neither side was willing to cede ground to actual science.
cscurmudgeon 3y ago
> On the other hand: no, people are technically ignorant, xenophobic, and more willing to scapegoat and project anger than reflect on their own behavior. Doesn't matter. Truth should be prioritized first. There are mechanisms to deal with Xenophobia and hate and those should be strengthened.

willcipriano 3y ago

China wouldn't be solely responsible, this was a US project.

cscurmudgeon 3y ago
No, US funded part of it, but China ran the lab 100%.

kornhole 3y ago

The Ecohealth Alliance received funding from NIH for the gain of function research which means it would not be just China to blame. https://www.science.org/content/article/nih-says-grantee-failed-report-experiment-wuhan-created-bat-virus-made-mice-sicker https://www.science.org/content/article/nih-says-grantee-fai...

cscurmudgeon 3y ago
Who ran the lab?

ajross 3y ago

Seems like the future would be better served by putting safeguards in whether or not China was responsible. What safeguards specifically are you proposing, and why do they demand a culprit?

rnk 3y ago

I don't think that we would have done anything differently if we knew that China was responsible. It wouldn't have changed our treatments or vaccination strategies or anything. Could it have made some people who are crazy against China feel differently? Maybe. I don't think it would have made the doofuses who took ivermectin act differently though.

fsckboy 3y ago
> I don't think it would have made the doofuses who took ivermectin act differently though from NIH https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7539925/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7539925/ "Ivermectin: an award-winning drug with expected antiviral activity against COVID-19... with demonstrated antiviral activity against a number of DNA and RNA viruses, including severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2)" Whether or not ivermectin ultimately turned out to be efficacious against Covid19 is not the main point, it was/is a widely known, completely safe, anti-viral, and while everything else in the toolbag was being thrown at Covid19, ivermectin was a good candidate, especially since it showed positive results in some clinical conditions. (and I've heard it pointed out that in order to get profitable approval for experimental mRNA vaccines to be released, there was a huge financial incentive to declare a priori that ivermectin did not work) If you "believe in science" you wouldn't call people who tried ivermectin "doofuses", doing so you're simply looking in the doofus mirror. It's best not to join one partisan camp or the other and politicize science, but look at evidence. Ivermectin has well known antiviral properties, and coronavirus is a virus. > I don't think that we would have done anything differently if we knew that China was responsible you are fixating on the wrong aspect. Whether or not covid19 is the result of the leak of "man-made" gain-of-function research is extremely important to what we do in the future. The public has a right to know. you keep arguing your own point here, that "no harm is no foul and we wouldn't have done anything differently so we don't need to look" and to me that's simply you saying you support the politics that played out and you don't want to look at it. To me, science was ignored in favor of politics and it's all exactly what I want to look at.
- rnk 3y ago
  I just don't buy the international conspiracy to block ivermectin. I've considered it and discussed it with my poor father who became convinced by Fox News and endless Facebook forwarded postings. There are hundreds, perhaps thousands of drugs and substances that have an antiviral effect. Ivermectin was one that was tested and there were some early results that were positive but then later with more thorough testing it didn't appear as efficacious. There are plenty of other drugs that were also promoted as blocking COVID, that lupus drug. It became a conservative conspiratorial fantasy that there was a widespread governmental attempt to block them from using other things than coronavirus vaccines. My father went out and found alternative sources for these substances. Fortunately he never took any of them. I do think knowing the actual source of COVID is good information to have.