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Comment by realiswhatyoufe | Hacker News Reader

Geez. Taking the parent post in horrible faith, really unfortunate to see on this platform. All the parent did was point out a few comments from the piece which certainly add a tinge of bias - stating with certainty that Covid was not lab-made for one.

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"No voices should have been silenced, no ideas should have been left off the table. Open Data. Open Science. Open honest scientific communication was the way, not censorship. There are a lot of bad ideas that are wrong, bad, or dangerous. But the moment we have the hubris to say we know which ideas they are is the moment we lose our ability to find the truth, to find solutions, the very things that make science beautiful and powerful." - Lex Fridman

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rszIyPnBvYc

We live in the ultimate year of censorship. So many have taken part of or defended it. All who have done that have made humanity a little worse, made living in this world for everyone, a little worse. Shame on you.

What's unfortunate to see on this platform is amount of armchair virology experts who reject scientific process.

Again, it’s a very reasonable theory that the virus was lab-made. Stop taking other people’s reasonable conjecture in the worst faith, it is anti-intellectual.

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/06/the-lab-leak-theory-...

Again, it's a theory that has so far no basis in science - it's speculations, mostly by people who have no virology background. They maybe even PhD in other biology fields, but having them present their opinions, with no actual data to back it as facts, is as valid as database experts applying their intuition to reason about how to build ML models.

Meanwhile, viruses jumping spices is extremely well document behavior, and COVID like viruses are known to exists in other mammals. Actual data, and Occam's razor point to lab-made virus being invalid theory. Can experts pursue it? Sure, but until they have actual data, presenting it to the general public is click bait fear mongering.

And you also conveniently ignore that OP also had issues with vaccines, which effectiveness have as much backing by science as any theory could possibly have.

The theory that Covid was naturally occurring is also a theory. A true scientist wouldn’t reject a theory out of hand because the theory calls into question finding and research priorities of the scientists doing the rejecting. A lot of this theory rejection isn’t about science but about CYA.

Evolution is also a theory right?

To reject natural origin of COVID you need a lot of research and hard data. Memos and journalists investigations aren’t that.

Equating man made and natural origin as two equally valid theories is just dishonest.

Virologist here :

https://news.cnrs.fr/articles/the-origin-of-sars-cov-2-is-be...

I feel like "unintentionally escaped from a lab that was studying coronaviruses" is a lot different from the conspiracy theory type talk about being maliciously engineered. It's unfortunate that this distinction seems to get lost a lot.

There are many reasonable theories out there, competing for the explanation of various phenomena.

And then there are those who pick and choose the theories they want to relentlessly push and promote, because they support the deepest, most burning desires coming out of their guts.

What’s even more unfortunate is when scientific leaders reject scientific process for political motivations.

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