Hacker News Reader

I have no strong opinions on this matter, but I'm having difficulty understanding the sarcasm here. Can someone translate for me? Is the un-sarcastic version of parent's argument that most of the claims against this being a leak were put forth by a single organization, EcoHealth Alliance, which has an agenda for convincing people that this is not a leak?

View on HN

> EcoHealth Alliance, which has an agenda for convincing people that this is not a leak?

Exactly that. The first paper which discredited the lab leak theory published in The Lancet early last year by a number of scientists was later found out to have been organized behind the scenes by EcoHealth, which also asked for it's name not to appear on the paper.

https://www.independentsciencenews.org/news/ecohealth-allian...

I'm with you, the parent's sarcasm is really malformed. They're claiming that EcoHealth has conflicts of interests that led them to disavow the WIV lab theory.

Are you saying EcoHealth/Daszak do not have material conflicts of interest in this matter? On what basis?

It doesn't seem to me like parent is disputing the factual accuracy of the argument, but rather saying that the sarcasm was not well constructed (possibly because of the multiple negatives, which require a certain amount of gymnastics to understand), and is thus not as effective as it could be.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com