Totalitarianit
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User ID: 3448
Totalitarianit
20d ago
The same geographical gap existed for SARS which originated in Guangdong, but whose origins were in Yunnan too.
Chinese studies don't have a good reputation at the best of times, even on non-political issues. It's extremely naive to believe a study on something so controversial would be done by the book, and with no pressure to come to the politically correct conclusion.
The 2022 study Worobey study was an international collab that involved western scientists and that was also peer-reviewed. I'm not oblivious to the fact that people have political leanings, but this isn't just about China. If it is a lab leak, America has a hand in it too. Bottom line is that Bayesian analysis works for both sides.
Totalitarianit
23d ago
I think this point makes it hard to lean definitively on the other side of this debate, but do I think there is a reasonable Bayesian counter to the lab leak:
- SARS likely originated from a market
- While wet markets do exist all over China, Wuhan is a massive transportation and population hub.
- Wildlife trafficking into Wuhan from places where bat coronaviruses occur naturally was very common and very poorly regulated, meaning even though these bat species weren't local, the market supply chains were.
- Studies from 2022 show early case clusters centering around the Huanan Seafood Market with positive environmental samples
This doesn't prove zoonosis, but the presence of illegal wildlife trade, specific species susceptibility to Covid, the crazy density of these environments, as well as the historical precedent all provide for a decent argument in favor of zoonotic spillover.
Totalitarianit
23d ago
Fair enough. My point in saying exceptionally deadly was to make a relative comparison to other modern and common diseases like the flu. It was statistically more deadly than the modern flu both in absolute and relative terms. Higher hospitalization rates, higher death rates. If the word "exceptionally" is too strong then I can use another word. It was notably or demonstrably more deadly than the flu.
As far as our reaction, yes, it does sort of track that way. Before it had really spread across the US, the world was watching Covid destroy Italy. Our country's reaction in March and April of 2020 was totally understandable given what we knew at the time. What was less understandable were the prolonged lockdowns with exceptions for racial justice protests that were backed by open letters from medical professionals, demonization of Ivermectin (like it was poison), accusations of racism for entertaining the idea that Covid might've leaked from a lab, constant narrative shifts on the efficacy of the vaccine, etc.
Totalitarianit
23d ago
But it wasn't a nothingburger. It was a somethingburger. The mainstream lied, often and badly, but that doesn't mean Covid itself wasn't siginificant.
Totalitarianit
25d ago
We don't disagree that diversity has been used manipulatively and that it has become a loaded term. The deeper point here though is about the loss of a shared version of reality, and our liberal framework's helplessness when it comes to stopping it. Diversity of opinion and thought is great, but not at the expense of an epistemic unraveling that was built over countless generations. State capacity can be quite a burden if it's no longer representative of its people, and in a society that can't decide what it represents, state involvement is obviously becoming more and more in the way. The problem with the liberalist notion is that the absence of a state or central authority results in a vacuum that will inevitably be filled whether you'd like it or not. To that, I would say the state isn't created and maintained out of desire. It's created and maintained out of necessity.
I can't tell if you're addressing me personally, or the idea of people in general pushing Christianity, but if you're presenting that as the only alternative then, yes, I would support that change in direction, at least temporarily. I see a world where people crave meaning, and while the response doesn't need to be some 1950s style cultural Christianity, my intuition and experience tells me there probably should be some type of fundamental moral architecture that can't be uprooted so easily.
Totalitarianit
25d ago
I don't have a direct answer to your question, but I also don't think there's really any way around the fact that Covid was exceptionally deadly when compared to the common flu, and that given what they knew at the time the public health response was somewhat reasonable. That being said, a widespread tailored approach that focused on vulnerable individuals with at least one comorbidity probably would have softened the blow to the global economy, but almost certainly would have killed more people. The blowback to their approach coupled with the political environment was probably unavoidable, but the disgusting behavior of the Western media apparatus made it worse. Every dissenting opinion was met with accusations of racism or conspiracy theory. It was so difficult to wade through all of it at the time because the shear magnitude of manipulation and moral blackmail that was occurring through the media caused me to warp my own perception of what was medically true and what wasn't. The Ivermectin trend I latched onto had me reading all types of studies and meta-analyses that I thought were sufficient enough to support the efficacy of it. It took me a while to emotionally accept the dubious nature of those studies because my hatred of our mainstream and expert class was so deep at the time.
I was less emotionally invested in the lab leak theory although, due to the media's treatment of it, I also ended up digging into it as well. I found myself more fascinated from a curiosity standpoint with the lab leak vs. market origins than my continued efforts at trying to find a grain of truth supporting the efficacy of alternative treatments and prophylactics. Admittedly, this probably had to do with the fact that there no longer seemed to be a light at the end of the Ivermectin tunnel. Overall, I wasn't greatly affected by the lockdowns, or the Pfizer vaccine I took, but I felt and still feel deeply affected by everything the mainstream did outside of that. At the time, I was unable to distinguish between the lies and the medical truths that were being shelled out by the same group of people.
Totalitarianit
25d ago
It is true that forced duty can backfire and create resentment. In fact, I think my own repudiation of the progressive left's control of our institutions made me doubt all structure for a time due to me seeing how structure was weaponized against me. However, as my intuitions and experiences evolve, so does the realization that structure is necessary, and that to always err on the side of freedom over any structure removes all durability from society.
A "culture" that prizes individualism above all else will eventually treat its own moral frameworks and shared norms as arbitrary and/or oppressive. The meaning of words, morals, etc. are challenged and end up being replaced or evolve at a rate that doesn't allow the members within this "culture" to adapt to or internalize. The obvious strength of liberalism is the freedom it allows and pushes for, but the not-so-obvious weakness is that it offers no internal mechanism to preserve that freedom or the culture that allowed to exist in the first place. Over time, this pursuit of individuality erodes the foundations that made "free" expression possible, which results in the ultimate irony of Liberalism unintentionally serving as the driving force behind a new structured (and sometimes more oppressive) system replacing the old one.
I'm no advocate for a hyper-structured or authoritarian society. That being said, a society with no sense of shared purpose, no accepted moral vocabulary, no uniting telos, is one that drifts toward decadence. Liberalism, in its purest form, ends in fragmentation. Fragmented societies typically don't do well.
I'm not convinced of either, which is why I think it is so interesting. There was clearly a political angle that tried to suppress lab leak.
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