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Comment by LeonB | Hacker News Reader

Early on the article makes a conjecture that others also make which I think is part of why the topic is so hot:

“Whether the virus emerged as a result of a leak from a laboratory or from nature has become one the most controversial problems in science.”

The words “in science” are my problem here: people thinking this is a “scientific” question.

It’s a history question, a political question, and could be made into a forensic question. But science does not ask this kind of question!

Is it possible for a lab to leak a virus? That’s a question science can ask, but it doesn’t answer this one.

So we end up with a belief that scientists can answer this question… but it isn’t a “scientific” question in the first place.

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> but it isn’t a “scientific” question in the first place.

... which is true of the pandemic response in general. "Science" doesn't tell society how to react to something. Science is a process to test hypothesizes--it isn't a book of facts or direct answers on the trade-offs of various mitigation techniques. It can only inform, not dictate.

There was a peer reviewed paper earlier in the pandemic where scientists used their knowledge of viral anatomy to argue it wasn’t engineered.

Subsequent scientific have disagreed.

But this isn’t purely historical.

Apologies to those accused of being conspiracy theorists, xenophobic, and spreading misinformation will be going out shortly.

They will not, because those accusations came from people who intended to use them to discredit Chinese people in general, or that closely associate the leak with the Chinese way of doing things and so on. These accusation led to racist attacks against Asian people all over the us.

Ok, so the original motivations for some making that claim were suspect. Should that automatically excuse or prevent discussion that better safety protocols should be used or a better “ways of doing things” should be undertaken when handling viruses and pathogens that are capable of killing 7M people? I think it’s a valid topic and important one that should be verboten lest the next time we accidentally kill 14M with carelessness as the cause.

If the people making that claim had been sane, instead of pushing it in the middle of; "it's not deadly, just a flu," "masks do nothing," "maybe a bit of bleach is fine in the lungs," "hydroxychloroquine cures everything," "no, wait, it is horse paste that cures everything," "the vaccine will kill you in X months, guaranteed," and "GREAT RESET," it'd be easier to transition into a serious discussion about studying deadly viruses in labs.

I honestly don’t see much difference in the level of extremism between everything you listed vs people deciding a specific topic is off limits just because the theory may not be politically correct, or because the alt opinion may have some factual basis.

Yes, of course, everyone should treat disingenuous propagandists as if they were attempting to have a serious discussion. If anyone objects to that, it is "deciding a topic is off-limits," which is insane. Of course we should let them run their horse paste grift and just patiently repeat over and over, "no, no, studies show it doesn't work. Please wear a mask to reduce spread."

Considering that you are intentionally misconstruing that ivermectin position that folks were discussing at the time using the same tired and dishonest “horse paste” media talking point, I’ll assume that “disingenuous propaganda” runs in many directions.

The middle ground always gets pushed to the extremes when there's a strong push to alienate some views.

Covid was worse than the flu, but the flu is also deadly and we should be paying more attention to vaccinating it. The deaths aren't evenly distributed, either, young healthy people have less to worry about, but "less" isn't "nothing." For masks, you really wanted N95 masks, not cloth, and you still have to avoid large indoor gatherings.

Nobody said that bleach in the lungs was good. Trump mentioned disinfectant presumably butchering a description of the HealLight which would use UV to destroy the virus, effectively "disinfecting" the lungs. There are always idiots poisoning themselves with bleach, though, but nobody pays much attention to the poison control stats most of the time. HCQ and Ivermectin had some promising studies but no real effectiveness for the things people wanted them for. There probably is some rise in myocarditis due to vaccines... but they're still a lot safer if you look at mortality rates. "Great Reset" was from an actual policy proposal someone put out, but doesn't really stand for the things the conspiracies say it does.

All of these things got pushed into extreme caricatures depending on what side you trust.

I thought that Ivermectin was proven to be helpful in places where parasitic infestations are extremely common (most of the world).

The problem being that treating someone with steroids also strengthens parasites, which burdens the immune system even more.

So in parts of the world where parasites are common, it makes sense to treat with an anti-parasite drug from the beginning (no need to test for actual parasites).

In parts of the world without widespread parasite infections (for example, the US), the costs outweigh the benefits.

This caused lots of confusion because there were quite a few papers promoting Ivermectin as part of treatment. The fine print said “in developing countries” but nobody reads the fine print.

So you want to let the conspiracy theorists dictate discussion. And not everyone claiming there could have been a lab leak was pushing for those other things. There were sane claims. You seem to want to ignore the possibility that the Chinese and American governments had something to coverup, if there was a lab leak given the kind of research done there.

So, pointing out implicit racism now gets you downvoted to hell on Hacker News, as long as China's involved. Good to know.

The one with Peter Daszak who was hand picked by the CCP for the investigation and money trail back to the CCP??

There’s a lab at U of A that accidentally infected their student researcher with cholera, and another case of campylobacter.

It’s just sloppy work, but when you’re there for 12 hours a day for 5-6 days a week, you’re bound to get sloppy

"Is it possible for a lab to leak a virus? "

What do you mean? Ofc it's possible and has been done hundreds of times in the past with different viruses and lab security levels.

> But science does not ask this kind of question!

I disagree, it is a scientific question. Whether we can answer it in isolation of politics and prejudice is the question for me.

But if you observe some gravitational waves in a single event, you can correlate it to optical or radio observations, you can try to analyse the signals to match them to existing hypotheses of gravitational waves origination etc. The singularity of the event doesn't make it not science. Same as the emergence of a novel virus.

It is just a shame that most of the evidence is subjective and non-scientific. But the question itself is well posed scientific endeavour.

The top level question is not a scientific question.

In order to investigate it, many many many smaller questions may be asked, some of which are scientific.

I think it's splitting hairs, but even then I disagree. I can't see how the evolution and emergence of a virus is not a question of applied science.

That it is commingled with a million political questions, yes it's true. But to me that's a nuisance variable, not fundamentally changing the underlying question.

I think when they say Science they actually mean: the scientific community.

Which actually means: a scientific community.

One of the allegations is that one or more lab workers were sick with covid in 2019.

Their colleagues - the scientific community - cannot through science alone determine if this was true.

If it happened then they went to a nearby hospital. To investigate there is possibly a police matter, certainly a health matter, a political matter and many things - but is not answered by waving the magic science wand. And so on.

People who claim it’s a science question are shallow or deceitful.

why not? it is an important scientific question to guide research to mitigate the virus and prevent similar future disasters

How is science not involved in a major way here? Of course science will continue to play a huge role in the matter.

A few possible reasons.

The communist party is sensitive doesn't want it to be known that a Chinese lab leaked a dangerous virus (see also "how does RBMK reactor explode?")

The ecohealth alliance that Fauci and Dazack were involved in don't want it widely known that they had a hand in the WIV GoF (that Obama banned stateside) and worked early in the pandemic to obscure their own involvement in it.

Trump doesn't want it widely known that his administration contributed $100k to the Ecohealth alliance.

Lots of powerful people working to not take responsibility and obfuscate reality.

Science very much does ask that kind of question - what is the origin of some thing. With SARS1 it also answered it easily - testing showed if came from palm civets at the market. This time though scientific investigation has been blocked by the politics.

Of course it could be a scientific to estimate the probability that ...

Is the big bang theory science or history, by that logic?

So, science doesn't have a problem when results of experiments are faked, because science doesn't ask this question, it's a question for politics, forensics, and history? Nice try! Still your move.

Yes, you nailed it properly. If results of experiments cannot be reproduced and confirmed by two independent researchers at least, then it's not a scientific process. History of science is full of fakes.

I interpreted it as “in the scientific community”.

Please, scientists, no need to peer review Wuhan.

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