Crazy NYT article on the lab leak theory for COVID

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's stupid to burn public trust for arbitrary guidelines that have no basis in science. It was stupid to shut down a reasonable theory when all we had were theories anyway.

All this destroyed trust in institutions and frayed the public cohesion.

Please explain how speculating on the origins of the virus helped Americans in spring of 2020.
Did if affect developing treatments?
Did it help us getting a handle on testing and tracing?

Is there some rule that you can only think about one thing at a time? Do you frequently shut down thoughts or conversation that doesn't address the objective an inch from your face?

People process information differently. Present minded people are task-oriented, practical, solve the immediate problem types. The past can't be changed so it doesn't matter and the future has too many variables for them.

Past-oriented people are methodical, relentless, detail-oriented and dig into all the facts to understand why something occurred. If you don't understand history, you are doomed to repeat it.

Future oriented people are good at speculation of current situations and imagining possible outcomes of different paths.

There is value to all approaches. There is no reason we couldn't both investigate amd speculate about the origin of the virus that upended our society AND have people focused on the practical tasks of developing treatments.

Please explain how we were going to investigate.
Our opportunity disappeared when we dismissed our team. Our opportunity excited BEFORE the pandemic, not after.
Afterward was just finger pointing and distraction.

This. Too bad Trump was president.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The issue with liberal politicians and press/media mocking the lab theories and dismissing them as conspiracies is that it erodes public trust in both politicians and the media. Who can you believe when you are being mocked for something that turned out to be correct? It might not be a big deal per se whether it came from a lab or not, but the consequences of these small lies are long-lasting and great.

They were being mocked for pushing a theory based on zero evidence.

China has a long history of unethical research practices. I wouldn’t say zero evidence.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The issue with liberal politicians and press/media mocking the lab theories and dismissing them as conspiracies is that it erodes public trust in both politicians and the media. Who can you believe when you are being mocked for something that turned out to be correct? It might not be a big deal per se whether it came from a lab or not, but the consequences of these small lies are long-lasting and great.

They were being mocked for pushing a theory based on zero evidence.

How could anyone have evidence to proof/disprove something so early on, in a country with a government known for its opacity? it was a theory like any other and certainly not far-fetched.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The issue with liberal politicians and press/media mocking the lab theories and dismissing them as conspiracies is that it erodes public trust in both politicians and the media. Who can you believe when you are being mocked for something that turned out to be correct? It might not be a big deal per se whether it came from a lab or not, but the consequences of these small lies are long-lasting and great.

They were being mocked for pushing a theory based on zero evidence.

How could anyone have evidence to proof/disprove something so early on, in a country with a government known for its opacity? it was a theory like any other and certainly not far-fetched.

Dp- thank you for at least admitting there were no way to investigate.
So the benefit of theorizing at the time was what exactly?
Oh that’s right : distract the public and beat up Asian people.
👍

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’m liberal and I’ve always thought the CCP sucks donkey dicks.
However I ( and many other very smart people) thought pointing fingers at China was a distraction in the beginning.
Because it was a distraction.
It didn’t matter how it arrived.
It arrived and we didn’t have our sh—- together to deal with it.
The CDC was such an unmitigated cluster, I’m still in awe of how badly they responded. Testing was such a shocking failure. In my life I never would have believed the US would blow the response so spectacularly.
Between that and the Afghanistan withdraw… my faith in our institutions has truly been shook.

Well public health professionals had been declaring for decades that we were unprepared for the next pandemic. We had dismantled our response apparatus. Funders (read:politicians) did not listen.

So, the response was no surprise to those of us in the field. Trump in fact defunded a pandemic planning initiative that Obama had initiated . Your vote matters people.

(The government does not chug along protecting us behind the scenes if you elect people who are dedicated to smaller government, deregulation and capitalism over prosocial policies.

[Anonymous]

The epidemiological evidence for origins at the wet market is strong, with vendors and delivery people who worked there among the earliest cases admitted to hospitals. The majority of the early cases had direct links to the market, and the transmissibility of the virus was such that early cases not identified as linked to the market very well could have been, similar to one person who became infected who had been visited by a friend who did work at the market, even though that patient had not been to the market himself.

Plus there is no epidemiological evidence AFAIK for the virus originating from the lab.
As for the intelligence community, only 1 agency (not identified in their unclassified report) reported "with low confidence" that there was a lab origin.

Good article by a scientist written for general readership: https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2023-03-08/covid-lab-leak-energy-department-fbi

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m liberal and I’ve always thought the CCP sucks donkey dicks.
However I ( and many other very smart people) thought pointing fingers at China was a distraction in the beginning.
Because it was a distraction.
It didn’t matter how it arrived.
It arrived and we didn’t have our sh—- together to deal with it.
The CDC was such an unmitigated cluster, I’m still in awe of how badly they responded. Testing was such a shocking failure. In my life I never would have believed the US would blow the response so spectacularly.
Between that and the Afghanistan withdraw… my faith in our institutions has truly been shook.

Well public health professionals had been declaring for decades that we were unprepared for the next pandemic. We had dismantled our response apparatus. Funders (read:politicians) did not listen.

So, the response was no surprise to those of us in the field. Trump in fact defunded a pandemic planning initiative that Obama had initiated . Your vote matters people.

(The government does not chug along protecting us behind the scenes if you elect people who are dedicated to smaller government, deregulation and capitalism over prosocial policies.

EXACTLY

I mean, the "gotcha" stuff now is so unhelpful. Can't we all just agree that figuring out what happened and trying to prevent it in the future would be a good thing? Why rehash old arguments that get us nowhere?

We experienced a horrible pandemic. It might have been manmade. Our response sucked and our political divisions made it so much worse.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Liberal here who just didn’t care if it was lab leak or from a wet market, as long as it wasn’t intentional. I don’t see why it would matter otherwise. NYT published an article 5 months before we shut down about the decrease in lab funding and the risks that meant for the next pandemic. Google it. October 2019.

Covid killed 1,000,000 Americans. Imagine if China had some kind of massive super tanker run by the Chinese state that was transporting toxic chemicals and it crashed off our shores due gross negligence and it killed 1,000,000 of our citizens in California. Are you really going to sit there and claim it doesn’t matter how the accident happened or who was responsible? You are truly insane. At a bare minimum, the entire world needs to cut off all ties economically with China to punish them for potentially causing the deaths of 25,000,000 people. One does not simply kill millions of people due to gross negligence and get off Scot free with no repercussions.

China had millions of deaths and completely derailed their own economy (and likely will not economically recover under the current leadership). They learned their lesson.

And guess what? A lab leak of a virus will happen again. Maybe in Europe. Maybe in the United States. Maybe in Asia. But it will happen. So before you go on a vengeance war path, just know that it could be us on the back foot the next time (especially with budget cuts to R&D).

My bigger concern is that countries will be even less open and transparent about this research, therefore it will take us longer to figure out an outbreak has happened. At least with COVID, the Chinese published their genetic sequence of the virus in January 2020, which enabled vaccine researchers to begin their work that same month.

This is very valid. All humans (including brilliant, well intentioned scientists of any national origin) are capable of making mistakes. Mistakes which could have killed them.

China’s government is not honest ur transparent. That impedes science .

But coloring this pandemic with some nationalized villain flag really misses the point of what we should learn from it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Can someone explain to me why it mattered AT THE TIME?
How would knowing how the virus appeared help Americans in spring of 2020?
How was that a good use of time and resources?

We wouldn’t have wasted precious public health resources trying to find an animal reservoir that didn’t exist, we would have substantial international pressure against China who at the time was blocking WHO and other independent investigators from accessing the lab, and more importantly we wouldn’t have had so much damage in trust for the public health and government institutions who were shutting down debate about this despite the obvious signs. People aren’t stupid and suspected a lab leak from the beginning but the way the health experts were reflexively saying it was a conspiracy theory was extremely damaging to the public trust.

Yes, it matters. Even now.

I fundamentally agree with this and am so frustrated and angered about the reflexive, defensive postures even 4 years out. I know I’ll get mocked but I am a lifelong progressive Democratic voter and supporter. Understanding what actually transpired can help the populace who, like me, are by and large not scientists, understand what’s meant by gain of function research, what’s potentially at stake when federal funds are distributed to researchers who accept without critique and collaborate with foreign labs conducting research without adequate biosafery measures. It can help those who, like me, lost a grandparent to COVID before vaccination was available, put some of those emotions permanently to bed. It doesn’t increase the likelihood that I wake up tomorrow a right-wing xenophobe, nor wipe my memory of Kushner calling the pandemic a blue-state issue, nor alter my recall of the varied lies Trump told. It still matters, and I praise and am grateful to Dr. Chan for her op-Ed. I have more to say when I can organize and settle my thoughts.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Like so many things back then, it became a big issue because people HAD TO BE oppositional to Trump no matter how obvious the truth was.

Also see democrats refusing to fill up the SPR at rock bottom prices during Covid. An objectively smart decision that senate Dems stopped because Trump was for it.

I am still livid at Kamala suggesting the Covid vaccine was unsafe because it developed under Trump’s presidency. That is the most irresponsible comment I’ve ever seen a VP make and it won’t be memory holed.

That’s funny
Cause I’m still livid that Trump tried to kill Biden by knowingly concealing he had covid at the debates.
I’m also livid that Trump made a bunch of statements that he was going to force the vaccine to be released regardless of it was ready or not ( hence Kamala’s statement)
I’m also living that the Trump White House had ZERO plans to roll out the vaccine to the public.
Remember when Trump and all of his friends got covid from AMY Barret’s SCJ soirée and a few of the low rung maga dickheads died, but Trump and the higher ups hogged the new treatment and Trump told all the weaklings to suck it up and stop let the virus “dominate” them.
Fun times down memory lane…

Viruses are responsible for Covid, not people. To suggest Trump or anyone else deliberately tried to spread covid is disgusting. I thought we had all moved past the moralistic “you’re killing grandma” condemnations of the pandemic era but maybe you’re still stuck in it. News flash: Covid doesn’t care what political party you are. It’s a virus. It spreads.

Good thing Trump launched operation warp speed (to the ridicule of the media and liberals at the time).

wow this is rich

Trump knew he had covid and went to the debate anyway

this is fact

No he didn’t, he and Meadows thought it was a false positive. Stop repeating partisan lies.

“Meadows says the positive test had been done with an old model kit. He told Trump the test would be repeated with “the Binax system, and that we were hoping the first test was a false positive”.
After “a brief but tense wait”, Meadows called back with news of the negative test. He could “almost hear the collective ‘Thank God’ that echoed through the cabin”, he writes.“

And they felt no obligation to inform their elderly opponent that he had tested positive?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's stupid to burn public trust for arbitrary guidelines that have no basis in science. It was stupid to shut down a reasonable theory when all we had were theories anyway.

All this destroyed trust in institutions and frayed the public cohesion.

Please explain how speculating on the origins of the virus helped Americans in spring of 2020.
Did if affect developing treatments?
Did it help us getting a handle on testing and tracing?

China accidentally drops a nuke on a US city killing 1,000,000 Americans. Please tell me why knowing the origin of whom accidentally dropped the nuke matters and why it'd be of any relevance during the aftermath of the destruction?


Your logic is truly absurd. At a minimum, if China conducted high risk research with way to lax oversight (e.g..doing this kind of research on a BSL2 lab), there are many actions the world can take. For example, maybe scientific journals should blacklist all Chinese research going forward from publication. Perhaps sanctions can be put into place on all scientific equipment and supplies manufactured from other countries that are trying to be sold in China. There SHOULD be consequences for gross negligence that leads to 25,000,000 deaths.

The craziest part is that this isn't even the first time a virus has leaked from a state run virology lab in China. The original SARS virus also escaped one of their labs a long time ago and infected people. How many millions of deaths and trillions of dollars in blown up economies should the world tolerate until it concludes that China cannot be trusted with things like risky viral research?

Not exactly correct. There were several outbreaks of the original SARS. some of them (later outbreaks) traced to labs in Beijing, Singapore, and Taiwan. The origin of the very first outbreak, in 2002, was linked to people involved in food handling, including living near or working at live animal markets. Lab leak outbreaks came later, in 2003 and 2004, i.e. lab workers who became infected.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's stupid to burn public trust for arbitrary guidelines that have no basis in science. It was stupid to shut down a reasonable theory when all we had were theories anyway.

All this destroyed trust in institutions and frayed the public cohesion.

Please explain how speculating on the origins of the virus helped Americans in spring of 2020.
Did if affect developing treatments?
Did it help us getting a handle on testing and tracing?

China accidentally drops a nuke on a US city killing 1,000,000 Americans. Please tell me why knowing the origin of whom accidentally dropped the nuke matters and why it'd be of any relevance during the aftermath of the destruction?


Your logic is truly absurd. At a minimum, if China conducted high risk research with way to lax oversight (e.g..doing this kind of research on a BSL2 lab), there are many actions the world can take. For example, maybe scientific journals should blacklist all Chinese research going forward from publication. Perhaps sanctions can be put into place on all scientific equipment and supplies manufactured from other countries that are trying to be sold in China. There SHOULD be consequences for gross negligence that leads to 25,000,000 deaths.

The craziest part is that this isn't even the first time a virus has leaked from a state run virology lab in China. The original SARS virus also escaped one of their labs a long time ago and infected people. How many millions of deaths and trillions of dollars in blown up economies should the world tolerate until it concludes that China cannot be trusted with things like risky viral research?

Because it didn't just affect the U.S., moron. Millions of Chinese people were killed too so your analogy doesn't hold. A better analogy would be China intentionally setting off nukes in China and allowing the nuclear radiation to float over the U.S.

If it was lax oversight, then let's tighten it procedures so this doesn't happen again. Let's also prefund research into vaccines from the next most likely viruses to jump to humans as well as the manufacturing capacity to scale these things up. And Democrats pushed back on the initial story because of the myriad of lies and conspiracy theories surrounding COVID and the Trump administration. He had no credibility because of this and also because he was pushing scapegoating Asian people as well as "blue cities" instead of dealing with the fallout. If Trump had been consistently honest and truthful, I think the reaction would've been much different. Oh, and if he had just let the experts do their job, he'd probably still be President.

Thanks for reiterating my point, dumbazz.


The Chinese state potentially conducted research with such gross incompentce it less to the deaths of 25,000,000 people.

And morons like you think there should be no consequences from the world to China. And remember the joke WHO that tried to claim China had very little to with it and was acting as a mouthpiece for the Chinese state the whole time? Yeah, maybe an entire organization like the WHO needs to be burned to the ground like everyone said because they were gaslighting the world help China tying to deflect their role in potentially starting the pandemic. What good is WHO to the world if they're just going to lie to people the next pandemic?

They have a delicate role to play. And the world will definitely not be better off in the face of the next public health crisis with no neutral organizing body.

[Anonymous]

One thing I learned during Covid is that I’m much better informed if I cancel my subscription to the New York Times. Who wants to wait four years to hear the truth?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’m a liberal but never said that. I said who cares if it’s from a lab or a wet market? Neither can make me think any less of China. There’s a million reasons to reprimand China. Uyghurs? Child labor? Forced labor? IP theft? The list is soooooo long! I guess we overlook everything because pandas.

Also a liberal and said almost the exact same thing almost four years ago on one of the many threads. It could have been either wet markets or a lab leak and I don’t know what difference it makes. The Chinese government is awful and American business has sold its sold (and the American labor market) by outsourcing so much production to China over the past 20 years. PP was joking about pandas—the real answer is that the American consumer is addicted to cheap consumer products. Part of the reason everyone is screaming about inflation now is that we’re starting to move some production of some items outside China because businesses started to realize during the pandemic that so much dependency was a bad idea.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Like so many things back then, it became a big issue because people HAD TO BE oppositional to Trump no matter how obvious the truth was.

Also see democrats refusing to fill up the SPR at rock bottom prices during Covid. An objectively smart decision that senate Dems stopped because Trump was for it.

I am still livid at Kamala suggesting the Covid vaccine was unsafe because it developed under Trump’s presidency. That is the most irresponsible comment I’ve ever seen a VP make and it won’t be memory holed.

That’s funny
Cause I’m still livid that Trump tried to kill Biden by knowingly concealing he had covid at the debates.
I’m also livid that Trump made a bunch of statements that he was going to force the vaccine to be released regardless of it was ready or not ( hence Kamala’s statement)
I’m also living that the Trump White House had ZERO plans to roll out the vaccine to the public.
Remember when Trump and all of his friends got covid from AMY Barret’s SCJ soirée and a few of the low rung maga dickheads died, but Trump and the higher ups hogged the new treatment and Trump told all the weaklings to suck it up and stop let the virus “dominate” them.
Fun times down memory lane…

Viruses are responsible for Covid, not people. To suggest Trump or anyone else deliberately tried to spread covid is disgusting. I thought we had all moved past the moralistic “you’re killing grandma” condemnations of the pandemic era but maybe you’re still stuck in it. News flash: Covid doesn’t care what political party you are. It’s a virus. It spreads.

Good thing Trump launched operation warp speed (to the ridicule of the media and liberals at the time).

wow this is rich

Trump knew he had covid and went to the debate anyway

this is fact

No he didn’t, he and Meadows thought it was a false positive. Stop repeating partisan lies.

“Meadows says the positive test had been done with an old model kit. He told Trump the test would be repeated with “the Binax system, and that we were hoping the first test was a false positive”.
After “a brief but tense wait”, Meadows called back with news of the negative test. He could “almost hear the collective ‘Thank God’ that echoed through the cabin”, he writes.“

And they felt no obligation to inform their elderly opponent that he had tested positive?

I feel like the meadows/Trump justification is such a man response. Among us women, if you got one positive pregnant rest and a second negative test…..wouldn’t we all be peeing on a third stick? You don’t just pick your favorite response if it’s important. At least get a tie breaker!