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Comment by dqpb | Hacker News Reader

Sure, but the real news is it used to be taboo to say this - Sinophobic even. A lot of people are owed a serious apology.

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Context, as always, is key: https://www.npr.org/2021/08/12/1027236499/anti-asian-hate-cr...

Are these people who are owed a serious apology the ones who actually attacked Asian-Americans? Or simply the ones who stoked racial animus prompting others to attack them?

The people who are owed an apology are the people who did nothing more than to believe that the wuhan coronavirus outbreak originated from the wuhan coronavirus research lab.

That was situated in a region known for coronaviruses

Why was it so stigmatized before and now it's the preferred hypothesis for FBI and DOE?

Good question! Perhaps 'Deep Trump'? Certainly even the 3 letter agencies are not immune to what at best we might call the reactionary right, at worst proto-fascism.

Is that even true? Because I recall the opposite.

in which an evidence for zootipic origin couldn't be found.

If you had actually read the article that you are supposed to be commenting on,you would realize that this statement of the title is done in "low confidence"

No one is gonna apologize to you if you are unable to parse information

I can parse fine, can you?

From the article:

> The U.S. Energy Department has concluded that the Covid pandemic most likely arose from a laboratory leak

People used to be called racist for saying this!

I think it's different in that I think when the lab leak strategy was first introduced, it was introduced in an explicitly political manner, i.e. by a politician vs an (arguably) apolitical institution. There wasn't evidence presented to support this theory beyond the political pundits footballing the theory around, who were most certainly not medical research experts about this. At least this is how I saw it as a layperson who didn't do any serious research myself, so it all seemed like a load of political bs trying to score points instead of a seeking of actual truth.

So at first it did look like just plain ol' xenophobic politics to me. Only one party, the party that politically campaigned on xenophobia, was the one spreading the theory widely on their mainstream media.

I'm more than happy to accept lab leak theories from actual researchers who understand how to analyze outbreaks and not politicians trying to score points with voters. It just wasn't that at the beginning, probably because the researchers had to take the time to come to their conclusions.

Regular people here without a known political affiliation were ridiculed relentlessly for even mentioning the lableak hypothesis. Same goes for merely questioning lockdowns. I hope many of you are doing some serious reflection.

IDK what you mean by "here". I wasn't ridiculing anyone relentlessly and I didn't see relentless ridicule, mostly because dang generally bans people for bad faith/hostility/etc. So idk what you mean by "many of you", since you're clearly not talking to me.

I mean many people here on this forum during the worst of the pandemic. No, they weren’t modded or banned that I could tell.

It was not introduced with any political intent. It was introduced by people noticing that, wait a minute, that wet market you say the virus came from is right next to a huge virus lab, and you expect me to believe that it's a coincidence? The idea that this was a political statement is itself a piece of political propaganda.

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