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PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   32489 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 12, 2023

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Nothing in this article is going to come as news to anyone who's been active in centrist and center-right-leaning media spaces for the last two years but the origin of it might.

What really went on inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid erupted

Long story short the UK Sunday Times, the Newspaper to which the New York Times' name is an hommage, and as I gather from other british media the de facto voice of the establishment in the UK has endorsed the Lab Leak theory and I'm kind of surprised that no one's seems to be talking about.

The article doesn't mention Fauci by name but his ties to EcoHealth Alliance have been well documented elsewhere, and the article does acknowledge the existence of US health officials desire to bypass US safety and reporting regulations. The article also notes that while release was likely accidental, the Chinese military and intelligence services had expressed interest in using it as a weapon and had begun working on developing an inoculation for the virus over a month before it first appeared in "the wild".

I personally don't have a whole lot to add to the article itself, but I do find myself wondering what now? I expect the US media to try and bury this. After all Fauci is their golden boy, the poster-child "trust the experts". At the same time, he his, along with the behavior of many within the media itself (looking at you Yglesias) the reason that experts are not to be trusted.

If a singular person (small group of people) is revealed to have been responsible for all the death, of all the suffering, of all the economic disruption and all the curtailment of simple human livelihood that resulted from Covid 19 and the associated panic, what crime can you charge them with? Assuming you could find a court even able to try it, what punishment can even approach being proportional?

Assuming you could find a court even able to try it, what punishment can even approach being proportional?

Traditionally in history, being torn apart by a mob.

I think the latest official doctrine is "We will never know where Covid came from, there are various theories but none of them has any definite proof, it's just one of the mysteries of life and we shouldn't dwell on it too much. What difference, at this point, does it make?". This position is very resistant to any facts (you can always repeat "yes, it supports one of the theories, so what? there are many others, we'll never know" on loop) and precludes any accountability assigned to anyone. Mistakes maybe were made, but nobody knows anything for sure, so let's just all move on.

If a singular person (small group of people) is revealed to have been responsible for all the death,

The real responsibility needs to fall on the CDC and the US for funding gain of function research. Fauchi and everyone in the chain of command who signed up on this on the US and China side needs to take the hit. Further both countries need to take the blame for this, not just some proximal staff on the ground.

If the West was anything close to what it imagines itself as, they should be tried for crimes against humanity. I mean at least have some fall guys condemned to 10 years in a labor camp or something.

How is it that the Soviet Union of all places is more capable of rendering justice about its own crimes than we are?

All else aside, it is absolutely breathtaking that the mainstream position circa May 2020 was that lab leak was a "racist conspiracy" and that "they have super sketchy meat markets, really dirty people spreading all sorts of diseases" was the thing that decent people believed.

If a singular person (small group of people) is revealed to have been responsible for all the death, of all the suffering, of all the economic disruption and all the curtailment of simple human livelihood that resulted from Covid 19 and the associated panic, what crime can you charge them with?

I still think the worst crimes were the government responses rather than the actual disease. Yes, someone screwing up with a highly contagious virus and then covering it up is a Bad Thing, but I can still figure out why someone acting basically rationally would do that. The insane suite of policies that accomplished absolutely nothing other than economic ruin and political chaos on the other hand... well, it's still not fully legible to me how we wound up there. I would prefer to start with punishment for the policymakers than the scientists.

Yeah, if the US government knew about the lab leak, covering that up might have been the smart thing to do in 2020.

There's some reason to think scientists involved would have known that their gain of function research was being done in a way that intentionally loopholed restrictions against doing so. And, if a lab leak is indeed the cause, then many of them have also participated in efforts to cover it up. Any prosecutions should focus on these rather than, say, the level of safety procedures in the lab, because intentional malice is a greater concern than mere human error or inadequate consideration of risk.

I will always think of the places where liqour stores were essential business, but churches and religious services were not.

At least in CA, few liquor-licensed businesses sell only alcohol - there's just not enough clientele. The vast majority are restaurants, convenience stores, or groceries. Particularly with regard to off-sale-only licenses, there's no distinction between "bottle shop that only sells wine" and "Safeway that has a wine aisle in addition to 30k sq. ft. of groceries. It would have been legally difficult to make distinctions on the basis of "if business sells alcohol, then not essential" without also impinging food-sellers (particularly given the lazy & wooden ways that alcohol law is enforce in the state to begin with).

Alcohol withdrawal can kill you. Forcing liquor stores to close would've put more stress on hospitals at a time when they were predicting overflow (remember all the temp hospitals, etc).

I definitely agree some churches were treated very unfairly but liquor stores is a poor comparison.

If only that was the worst... We had places where somebody bathing alone in the sea was arrested, but healthy seniors were forcefully housed with sick people, essentially sentencing them for horrible death. And literally nobody bore any responsibility for that, or even apologized for any of that.

In theory the lockdowns made sense to me.

But when I saw that aspect of it starting to form, I realized how much of a shitshow it was going to be.

It’s nice when society’s priorities match mine.

What’s your issue with Yglesias?

Assuming you could find a court even able to try it, what punishment can even approach being proportional?

Recklessness and negligence (foreseeably) leading to megadeaths should result in people being tortured for the rest of their lives.

This is basically what happened to people at Guantanamo Bay or certain prisons in Iraq, where the prisoner's crimes were much, much, much less serious.

Have a quick skim through the wikipedia page of what happened there. 'Forced injections' and 'being locked in confined cells' are karmically appropriate but those are just the beginning. Beatings, sleep deprivation, being chained in the foetal position for 24 hours and forced to soil oneself...

If the US tortured Afghans semi-randomly (per Rumsfields complaints about Guantanamo being misused "We need to stop populating Guantanamo Bay (GTMO) with low-level enemy combatants... GTMO needs to serve as an [redacted] not a prison for Afghanistan.") then it is appropriate to torture vastly more damaging people.

leading to megadeaths should result in people being tortured for the rest of their lives.

I'm down for public executions. Preferably using a nuke or large quantities of TNT. Actually public executions will be way more acceptable than torture. And not one of those bullshit injection executions either. It needs to be grand, it needs to be awe inspiring, it needs to freeze the blood of onlookers at the final moment.

You're not really making a coherent argument here, but I guess writing some torture porn for yourself was the point of this comment.

Edit: "If [thing no one thinks was justified] was justified, then [this other horrible thing that I am describing in lascivious detail] is justified too!"

You should tell that to the US government. They clearly do think it was justified since they went and did it and refused to punish anyone for it.

I read that article and I'm not clear on what they're claiming is the new information. The Wuhan lab for studying coronaviruses was studying coronaviruses isn't news; of course they were working with SARS-CoV-1-like viruses and how to make vaccines for them, that's their job. Nor is the fact that China actively covered up any research into the origins of SARS-CoV-2.

The article makes no attempt to engage with the evidence for the market hypothesis (link is to a podcast discussing the papers, but there's also links to the papers): (1) the market is epicenter of the early cases and (2) there were two separate introductions to the market weeks apart of two separate lineages of SARS-CoV-2. It's certainly possible that SARS-CoV-2 was twice introduced to the market and nowhere else via two separate lab leaks that coincidentally happened near the specific stalls where the animals hypothesized to be most likely the source of a spillover were sold (maybe someone at the lab sold an infected animal to someone who then sold it at the market? Maybe the market is just the busiest place the accidentally infected people from the lab went, and they quickly realized they should isolate so the market spread swamped any other spread, and the position within the market was coincidence?), but that requires more evidence than "look over there: scary virus lab with military funding".

And, as I've mentioned before on this topic, China desperately wants the cause of the pandemic to be anything but a market spillover because the market hypothesis puts the blame squarely on China for stopping enforcement of the post-SARS measures they had in place to prevent exactly that from happening.

And, as I've mentioned before on this topic, China desperately wants the cause of the pandemic to be anything but a market spillover because the market hypothesis puts the blame squarely on China for stopping enforcement of the post-SARS measures they had in place to prevent exactly that from happening.

anything?

(2) there were two separate introductions to the market weeks apart of two separate lineages of SARS-CoV-2.

Doesn't this make the argument that the outbreak started with a spillover from animals at the market much less likely rather than more? That there was a distribution of covid within wild animals that split into two lineages before being transferred to humans? Fine enough. That both those lineages happened to transfer over to humans at the same place a few weeks apart, instead of literally anywhere else in the country? That seems spectacularly improbable. A far simpler hypothesis for why this could happen is that both lineages were circling in humans prior to the market and that the market being the epicentre is what caused the detection of the second at the market too. It also makes the lab leak hypothesis more likely, as a lab leak being repeated due to the same undetected problem with safety causing two distinct leaks is more probable than two outbreaks starting in close proximity by sheer random chance.

The reasoning for that supporting the market hypothesis is that it suggests the virus was spreading among animals within a farm that sold its animals to the market. It's exactly what you'd expect a zoonotic spillover event to look like. But it could also be explained by other theories, for instance the lab repeatedly selling infected animals to the market.

A far simpler hypothesis for why this could happen is that both lineages were circling in humans prior to the market

That's not supported by the data. In order for this to be true, either (1) the data has been manipulated to omit cases not linked to the market, (2) all of those humans were closely linked to the market, or (3) all of those humans were very careful (or coincidentally happened to) not spread the virus except at the market.

the market is epicenter of the early cases

This shows spread occurred at the market; it does not show the disease originated there. If you look at the early cases it looks rather like a population map, which is not surprising.

there were two separate introductions to the market weeks apart of two separate lineages of SARS-CoV-2.

Even if true, this is not evidence which distinguishes a lab leak from a market event. I see no reason to believe that "two lab leaks" is less likely than "two separate natural zoonotic events at the market".

And, as I've mentioned before on this topic, China desperately wants the cause of the pandemic to be anything but a market spillover because the market hypothesis puts the blame squarely on China for stopping enforcement of the post-SARS measures they had in place to prevent exactly that from happening.

This is ridiculous. A leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology puts even greater blame squarely on China. There is no way they prefer a lab leak hypothesis (at least not a leak from a Chinese lab; they already tried to blame the US Army) to a market hypothesis.

Even if true, this is not evidence which distinguishes a lab leak from a market event. I see no reason to believe that "two lab leaks" is less likely than "two separate natural zoonotic events at the market".

If I’m understanding @token_progressive’s point correctly, shouldn’t we expect “two separate lab leaks that spread directly to the same market” to be less likely than “two separate natural zoonotic events at the market”.

The latter only encodes information regarding origin, while former encodes information regarding origin and spread.

As we add more stipulations, the probability must fall, no?

If I’m understanding @token_progressive’s point correctly, shouldn’t we expect “two separate lab leaks that spread directly to the same market” to be less likely than “two separate natural zoonotic events at the market”.

I don't see why. We don't know any of the probabilities involved. Most particularly we do not know that the "probability of two separate natural zoonotic events" is less than or equal to the "probability of two lab-created zoonotic events".

I don't see why.

Then I recommend following up on the sources I linked. I am not a scientist with expertise in this area; I am just doing my best to link to them and summarize their arguments.

I read that article and I'm not clear on what they're claiming is the new information.

Like I said, it's not new. What's new is that the voice of the UK Government Establishment is endorsing what 12 months ago the vast majority of users here would have dismissed as an absurd conspiracy theory. And that their various shills are trying to play it off as NBD.

Who's "engaging in misinformation" now.

endorsing what 12 months ago the vast majority of users here would have dismissed as an absurd conspiracy theory.

Are you serious? Source that.

Example.

Grandparent : blames gof research, 20 upvotes. Parent : calls the mainstream belief 'bat psyop', 11 upvotes. Child : thinks genomics shows it's 80% not gof, 3 upvotes.

Lol with all the reddit talk here recently I forgot we moved off site and assumed he was talking about redditors - maybe he was doing the same?

Hlynka needs to feel he's somehow different from the rest of us.

That said, there were several high-profile users pushing the mainstream line.

It’s bizarre how he manages to conflate one of the most reflexively contrarian groups with the mainstream they constantly bitch about.

Does the mainstream think we’re mainstream? We were forced to flee our home more than once because the mainstream started encroaching. Neither them nor us think we're mainstream. What does it mean if enemies agree on a particular point? The argument's also valid for his usual claim that we're all progressives or something.

At least give us an example, the mythical group that is appropriately skeptical of the mainstream.

Hlynka needs to feel he's somehow different from the rest of us.

Would you even disagree with that?

Of course. The most flak he gets is for pretending his unremarkable, motte-popular opinions make him the lone, brave prole telling us over-educated sheep what’s what. Case in point : Airing some standard anti-mainstream talking point we all love while assigning the opinion of a guy called "token_progressive" to the sub as a whole.

Yeah. He has a few differences of opinion (as do I, BTW), but I think he fits right in. His antagonism towards educated city-dwelling alt-right left-wing progressives seems a bit forced.

'Fit in' isn't the same as 'different from,' which seems a bit of a motte and bailey. Who, specifically, is like Hylenka in nature and style, including his defining experiences that he regularly admits to, his personality and style, and his willingness to be direct to the point of offense?

Hlynka's never claimed to be a unique opinion, to my knowledge.

Everybody's different in nature and style from everybody else here. When I originally said "different from", I meant a fundamental worldview difference (by which I don't even mean a difference of opinion, but a huge difference in how he looks at, and understands the world). At least I thought that's what he's getting at with his inferential distance series, but every time he posts one of those I'm left scratching my head as to where is the distance suppose to be.

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I see. And that along with the US Dept. of Energy's "low confidence" assessment of it being a lab leak does suggest there's some classified information that hints in the direction of a lab leak that can't be made public.

Who's "engaging in misinformation" now.

I'm pretty conformable pinning that one the newspaper publishing a detailed article doing lots of hinting at facts they can't support that contradict published research they ignore. Maybe they know something they can't share, but they haven't provided much reason to believe them in that article.

I think that you are acting very naive, if not outright stupid.

  • -14

I'm just asking you to actually make an argument. I can think of plenty of (not mutually exclusive) steelmans for the lab leak theory:

  1. Strong priors for lab leak, so evidence for market hypothesis not updating you very far in that direction. I'm guessing this is the one you mean by calling me "outright stupid"?

  2. The scientists saying the evidence points towards the market hypothesis are intentionally misrepresenting the data, presumably because the concept of lab leaks make scientists as a whole look bad, although maybe also the specific scientists are under pressure from various governments or institutions to help cover up a lab leak.

  3. The scientists saying the evidence points towards the market hypothesis are being misled and credulous. e.g., China's cover-up included releasing data that points in that direction and omitting the data that doesn't.

  4. Some form of "both": i.e., lab leak via the market, either by animals or humans infected at the lab spreading via the market, so the market spread science is all true, but not indicative of spread from a wild animal.

More light, less heat, please.

What is the anti-molecular biology wing of the Motte? Genuinely confused here.

**Actual science, not the sort of science "represented" by Fauci.

At least the proximal origins paper seems to finally be falling out of favour, about 3 years and 3 months after Fauci appeared to have laundered it through proxies.

what many of us suspected on day 1, but was labeled as misinformation by major social networks.

Seems likely the US was/is performing similar research itself (and broadly approves of GOF research anyway) so “calling out China” would have been unproductive and, even if a win from a nationalist perspective, would undoubtedly also draw worldwide attention to the great dangers involved in that whole space.

Better for everyone involved in GOF research that people believe it evolved naturally.

You missed the part where it was pointed out that EcoHealth Alliance was being run by US officials as a means of bypassing the US regulatory regime didn't you?

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