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Comment by JMTQp8lwXL | Hacker News Reader

What's Facebook's angle for discouraging the view that Covid may have originated from a lab? E.g, what do they gain from this perspective? Sidenote: because it was being suppressed, I genuinely believed it was fringe theory. I didn't weigh the merits, that is, I considered the filter to just be the truth (because it seemed genuinely reasonable to conclude it was fringe, just because there is so much misinformation out there). My internal metric is: "Does this seem tin foil hat-y?" And I concluded "yes", and moved on. It was a concerning introspection of how I personally evaluate news.

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If you see a flash of light in the sky and without further evidence exclaim that aliens have landed and are going to subjugate us and steal our women then you are a crackpot not merely because you are wrong but because you drew your conclusion with a faulty thought process.

If it later turns out that aliens HAVE landed but on a diplomatic mission not an invasion force you are still a crackpot who was partially right not by dint of sagacity but more or less by accident.

The lab story was usually promoted as part of a wider narrative where covid was either portrayed as a deliberate attack by the Chinese or the accidental release of a bioweapon a narrative designed not to explicate but to distract one from laying blame on the Trump administration for its incompetent response. It frequently mixed hypothesis, conjecture, and outright lies.

You can probably be forgiven for having not known there might be a useful hypothesis when it was largely being promoted by liars with corrupt motivation mixed with lies.

It was supported by Trump. Most mainstream media and Silicon Valley (which both align Democrat) therefore opposed it.

I love that you’re getting downvoted for telling the actual truth instead of everyone else who is now rewriting history to explain why they’ve had this sudden change of heart. At least CNN was honest yesterday when they said “trump said it so we immediately took the other side, no we look kinda foolish”

At the time, it gave air to Trump's 2020 election campaign ("orange man bad").

Now, it's an excuse to take the air out of conservative political sentiment.

They face a hostile media and political complex, as well as several thousand aggressively activist employees, that all demand that right-wing information be suppressed.

If Facebook doesn't do what those groups demand, they will be smeared in the media, suffer internal strife, and face punitive antitrust probes.

And of course, many tech executive are true believers in left-wing politics and like that they can use their positions to advance those ideas.

Alot of those activist employees actively suppress non-progressive talking points on hn. Can I prove that with data as Dang has asked me to do...? Only if I have access to the logs is my answer.

It was a fringe theory pushed largely but not exclusively by racists and opportunists that wanted to paint China as the bad guy and shield the previous administration and other politicians from blame for how they reacted to the pandemic.

Totally independent of that, the general scientific community seemed to be much more opposed to the lab theory early on than they are now. It still doesn't appear to be much evidence for it beyond circumstantial stuff, but it is a possibility that more people are engaging with.

Combine these two and it isn't surprising that these platforms cracked down on this type of talk early and are slow to allowing it to start happening again.

The circumstantial evidence both then and now was largely favor of lab leaks. Members of the scientific community with a potential culpability in a lab leak helped silence discourse by framing it as a political issue as opposed to a scientific one, helped by America’s ever so controversial President coming out in support of a lab leak.

With Trump gone and even more time elapsing with no reasonable natural origin of COVID found, a lab leak is back in the mainstream, even though we should’ve been discussing it from the beginning based on circumstantial evidence. It’s plainly evident that allowing these platforms to regulate our speech in this manner is poisonous. But whatever it takes to silence Trump and his ilk, I guess.

Edit: I see I’ve been downvoted for this. I suggest people look at the facts themselves and decide whether a lab leak should’ve ever been dismissed as a crockpot theory.

https://thebulletin.org/2021/05/the-origin-of-covid-did-peop...

You can't just point to circumstantial evidence as justification for any theory you want. You are doing the exact same thing here. You have circumstantial evidence of a motive (scientists wanting to avoid culpability) and are taking it as justification that they are guilty of silencing discourse about the lab origin theory. Where is the direct evidence of either the lab origin or malicious silencing of discourse by Western scientists?

I don't think it is unreasonable to wait for direct evidence of guilt before signing off on blaming someone for millions of deaths. That is a heavy accusation that needs to come with a degree of confidence that goes beyond the normal conspiracy theory approach of "just asking questions".

You’re conflating two different things. Peter Daszak’s original statements and articles about COVID and its origins last year led to a significant amount of pressure within the scientific community to not even look for a possible origin involving human error coming from a lab leak. The Lancet letter, being published by one of the most prestigious journals in the world, firmly established that COVID had a natural origin, and the media picked that up as evidence to rail against any possibility of a lab based origin. You can look at many of the articles published in the wake of the Lancet letter discrediting the lab leak, like Vox’s here: https://www.vox.com/2020/4/23/21226484/wuhan-lab-coronavirus... that literally quotes Daszak and Dennis Carroll, another signee of the Lancet letter who directly and without question say a lab leak is preposterous and unlikely. Is that good enough direct evidence for scientists pressuring the global discourse against a lab leak?

Direct evidence of guilt is going to be hard considering the CPC’s reticence to allow an independent investigation, which honestly is another point in my opinion towards a lab leak. But regardless, regardless! When you combine the following facts:

1. There was a lab in Wuhan studying bat-related coronaviruses in gain of function research.

2. The virus was well adapted to humans at the beginning of the pandemic, very uncharacteristic of a zoonotic spillover.

3. The virus had no evidence of a natural origin then and it still doesn’t despite ones being found for MERS and SARS-1 within a few months.

4. Of the first 40 or so cases, not all could be definitively linked to the wet market that the CPC said the virus originated in.

How could we not take a lab leak seriously? All 4 of those facts were true even last year, though 3 was a bit weaker since we’d only had a few months since case 0 and not the year and a half we do now. Our social media platforms should NEVER have been silencing this debate, and it’s absolutely ridiculous that its still even remotely controversial to bring it up. Calling it a conspiracy theory, when the questions I’m asking are profound and grounded in science that’s well agreed upon, does nobody any favors.

Edit:

For those who don’t read my original source, Daszak is the head of an organization EcoHealth Alliance that directly partnered with the WIV to study gain of function using bat-originated coronaviruses.

>Is that good enough direct evidence for scientists pressuring the global discourse against a lab leak?

No, because your accusation wasn't that they simply impacted global discourse. Your accusation was that they maliciously silenced discourse as an effort to avoid their own personal culpability. Where is the evidence for that?

All four facts you list are circumstantial and you even admit that one of them wasn't truly known at the time this theory was first being popularized. To repeat myself, I don't think it is unreasonable to want more than that before leveling these accusations, especially when it is known ahead of time that some people will use your "questions" to support their own political and anti-scientific motives.

My original claim was that the scientists who wrote that letter and went to the press saying it was a natural origin helped frame the debate in a political lens rather than a scientific one. It became politically expedient for many mainstream media outlets to claim the lab leak was a conspiracy theory based on statements made by scientists with clear conflicts of interest, in direct response to a sitting President claiming it was a lab leak. Should Trump have just gone out and said that without presenting a coherent argument? No, but the media shouldn’t have called lab leak discussion the talk of crackpot conspiracy theorists either.

The evidence I listed is so strong that it’s now being seriously considered by many scientists, including Fauci who originally said it was far fetched. Saying its circumstantial to deride its importance is anti-scientific. And I’d clarify that even last year it was remarkable that the incredibly effective Chinese govt couldn’t produce evidence of a biological spillover 4 to 5 months after the first reported cases.

I’m not saying any of these scientists were directly responsible. Was gain of function research irresponsible? Probably, yes. Should these scientists go to prison? Of course not, not without evidence of bad intent. But should we at least have been these discussions last year? Yes! That’s all I’m saying.

Edit: I will point out that there is some serious evidence against Daszak for authoring that Lancet letter and declaring no conflict of interest when his org was partnering with WIV, which was the lab coming under scrutiny. That alone does deserve some serious investigation into why he’d lie about that. Him and any scientists who signed the letter who were also involved with Daszak or WIV.

The strongest fact that you listed was the one that wasn't evident at the time this theory was first popularized. We are talking about what was known in early 2020. The opinion of the scientific community today has changed as our understanding of the facts change. "Well the outbreak happened in the same city as the lab" is not strong evidence and it is reasonable to dismiss a theory that uses that as one if its primary pieces of supporting evidence.

It is perfectly reasonable for the media to put more trust in the word of scientists in comparison to the words of the last President due to the literally thousands of times he has publicly lied for a variety of motives.

>I’m not saying any of these scientists were directly responsible. Was gain of function research irresponsible? Probably, yes. Should these scientists go to prison? Of course not, not without evidence of bad intent. But should we at least have been these discussions last year? Yes! That’s all I’m saying.

You certainly seemed to imply "bad intent" in your original comment when you said the following:

>Members of the scientific community with a potential culpability in a lab leak helped silence discourse by framing it as a political issue as opposed to a scientific one

They are all quite strong of facts. There's an easily explainable origin of the virus, being the lab. If you read the article there is even an explanation about the exact virus this seems to be quite similar to that was discovered in 2013 and sent to WIV. In fact, I would say that an animal origin for the virus being in Wuhan is MORE outrageous in this case if you were to actually look at the natural ranges of bats in China. Bats dont exist in Wuhan. Their natural ranges are in the Southern provinces of China, which makes sense considering that's where SARS originated. Wuhan makes absolutely 0 sense if you're evaluating a natural origin from a scientific perspective.

We have a complete aberration in viral behavior that defines all known facts of how viruses jump from species to species. It's an extraordinary exception that we haven't seen in any other similar virus.

We have no known a natural origin, went over that already.

The strongest fact may actually be the last one. A majority 40 victims could not be in any way linked to the place that the CPC claims the virus had started. That's actually really, really extraordinary. Think about what this means - there's either missing viral victims in the early outbreak (a whole lot of them) or there's transmission vectors we missed. So why should we default to the natural origin as the default explanation and call everything else a conspiracy theory, which you're continuing to do?

So yeah, when you take all 4 of those facts together and try to explain them with a natural origin hypothesis, it just falls apart. If you frame them from the perspective of a lab leak, it's far easier to link them together and explain them.

The mainstream media shouldn't have taken the scientists at face value when their conclusions were baseless! There was even less evidence for a natural origin than a lab leak, but we accepted it as common fact! It's not as if a natural origin is the default explanation we should fall back on when we have no other explanation - we need to have probable cause to declare that and establish anything else as a conspiracy theory that early on. It was irresponsible on the scientists involved and it was irresponsible of the media. And it was even worse for the tech platforms to silence people for daring to talk about this just because Trump said it, and everything Trump says is bad.

Yeah, that statement is still true, by the way. Peter Daszak had a conflict of interest, lied about it, and now it looks like his conclusions were wrong. So, yeah. That's at least one actor with some "bad intent".

Once again, we are talking about what was known at the time and not today. You need to stop using evidence that we know today as support that the theory should have been believed from the start.

>The strongest fact may actually be the last one. A majority 40 victims could not be in any way linked to the place that the CPC claims the virus had started. That's actually really, really extraordinary. Think about what this means - there's either missing viral victims in the early outbreak (a whole lot of them) or there's transmission vectors we missed. So why should we default to the natural origin as the default explanation and call everything else a conspiracy theory, which you're continuing to do?

You are mixing different theories together and the evidence for and against them. You need to keep the specific evidence matched with the specific theory. The lab theory is not "the virus didn't originate in the market". The lab theory is the virus originated in the lab. Therefore victims not being linked to the market is not evidence of the lab theory. How many of the victims are linked to the lab? That would be evidence in support of the lab theory?

>Yeah, that statement is still true, by the way. Peter Daszak had a conflict of interest, lied about it, and now it looks like his conclusions were wrong. So, yeah. That's at least one actor with some "bad intent".

And yet again you are assuming intent not proving intent. Someone being wrong doesn't guarantee that were intentionally wrong. Someone not disclosing a potential conflict doesn't guarantee that a conflict exists and is impacting their behavior.

The only fact that wasn’t known at the time was how long we hadn’t figured out a zoonotic origin for the virus. That’s the only one.

To your second point, if there are things that cant be explained about the theory using available evidence we need to conduct an independent investigation. The CPC is not allowing us to do this. It raises questions as to why.

And to your last point, Daszak directly lied about having no conflict with the research in question, it wasn’t a failure to disclose without prior prerogative. It was a direct lie.

I understand your skepticism and I’m not even saying that WIV was the source. I’m trying to present you an argument that shows it’s just not that outrageous of a thing to raise questions about. We need to be able to have these discussions. The original linked article was about censorship, and I hope you’ll agree that we need to be able to talk about these things without being accused of racism or having an agenda.

I think you've been reading too much left-wing propaganda. Certain groups within the political and media class love calling Tom Cotton and and Mike Pompeo racists, but that doesn't make it true. You can read Tom Cotton's April 21, 2020 op-ed[0] where he says the lab leak was a theory.

If there are other writings or speeches from these 2 people that were talking about the lab leak theory where they were being racist, I would love to see it, but I don't think it exists (I'm happy to be corrected).

[0] https://www.cotton.senate.gov/news/press-releases/-cotton-op...

Both of those guys were pushing the lab leak theory from almost the very start and months before that press release you linked was written.

Pompeo also got into multiple spats with other diplomats for specifically pushing people to call it the "Wuhan virus" in order to deflect blame towards China. Promotion of terms such as that likely resulted in more racial tension in the US.

I didn't say the theory was only pushed by racists and I'm not going to call someone like Pompeo a racist just for supporting this theory, but he certainly fits in the opportunists category I mentioned in my previous comment. He clearly pushed the theory for political gain not some allegiance to finding the truth.

There's multiple levels of blame to be given. You can say China is responsible for 100% of all deaths, but you can also be critical of the US response and ask how many additional deaths were due to a botched Federal response and a patchwork state-by-state approach.

The fairest characterization would be to say both share some weight. We would expect China to have contained the outbreak to minimize the impact to itself and other nations, but we also expect the US to protect us from foreign viral/bacterial agents as a matter of national security.

I agree with what you are saying here, but it doesn't change the fact that people like Pompeo were clearly trying to shift a greater percentage of the blame from the US to China and the lab origin theory was part of that effort.

"More racial tension in the US"

I've seen no evidence of increased asian-related racial tensions aside from black people cold-cocking more Asians than usual. I don't think black street criminals are taking their cues from Trump or Mike Pompeo.

https://www.csusb.edu/sites/default/files/FACT%20SHEET-%20An...

Do some research about exactly who is randomly attacking all of these Asians. You'll find that I'm right: it's basically just a huge uptick in black-on-asian violence.

I provided a link to research that backs up my point. Do you want to provide a link to research that backs up yours?

https://reason.com/volokh/2021/05/27/another-example-of-why-...

Ahh, the Wuhan Virus bit, I did forget about that, thanks for the reminder. I don't consider that racist, but some people seem to.

For people talking about th lab leak theory, I found another piece I remember from the time from April 3 (18 days prior to Cotton's piece): https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/04/coronavirus-china-tra...

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