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Comment by followtheplot | Hacker News Reader

"... proponents of lab escape can explain all the available facts about SARS2 considerably more easily than can those who favor natural emergence."

"The natural emergence theory battles a bristling array of implausibilities."

This is a fantastic article, but amazingly almost all of it is year-old news. Most of this was known in March 2020, and nearly all of it by the end of 2020. How does it take so long for the truth to win?

I published a meta-analysis covering much of the same ground in November 2020 and this was only after waiting and expecting for several months that someone with a better platform would do so first. The article above covers the most important points but the story does go deeper: https://followtheplot.org/covid19

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Your article mentions the "Wuhan Institute of Virology", which one also finds named in a couple of news articles and scientific publications. However what is rarely discussed is that the Wuhan CDC (武汉市疾病预防控制中心), which also has a virus lab and was also researching coronaviruses is in walking distance from that wet market! I took a screenshot of it, in the top right is the Huanan Seafood Market, in the bottom the CDC, which includes a virus lab: https://i.imgur.com/smODVQe.png

Unfortunately you won't find it on Google Maps but anyone who is able to read Chinese can check this themselves. All the early cases were centered around this area, including the hospital that treated the first cases. It's absurd that this is almost never talked about anywhere. On the CDC website they had an open position looking for a researcher to study, among others, exactly the kind of bat CoV that's been identified as most closely related to SARS-CoV-2. This has since been deleted but it could still be accessed during the early days of the outbreak.

One reason this theory is becoming more mainstream lately is the lack of results looking for the natural reservoir of the virus after more than 1 year of searching and an amazing number of animals tested all over China.

What bothers me about it is not only did it take a long time for the “truth to win”, but mainstream media orgs actively suppressed it because of tribal stupidity.

It was used as an example of “fake news”: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/02/technology/biden-reality-...

> “ Hoaxes, lies and collective delusions aren’t new, but the extent to which millions of Americans have embraced them may be. Thirty percent of Republicans have a favorable view of QAnon, according to a recent YouGov poll. According to other polls, more than 70 percent of Republicans believe Mr. Trump legitimately won the election, and 40 percent of Americans — including plenty of Democrats — believe the baseless theory that Covid-19 was manufactured in a Chinese lab.”

What makes my blood boil about this is the NYT is supposed to be able to tell the difference - this kind of self righteous stupidity explains the rise of trump and distrust of media orgs more than anything else, it’s what lays the groundwork for baseless conspiracy.

Yes there were dumb conspiracies about a manufactured and intentionally released bio weapon, but the accidental release from the lab that actually exists and studies these exact viruses in Wuhan and the additional context of the lies from the CCP about the Pangolin (and just general suspicious blocking of access) made it a reasonable hypothesis.

What irony that in a piece pushing support for a “reality czar” (presumably to censor certain stories?) is the position of the NYT so divorced from reality itself.

Pair this with the WHO rep being afraid to say the word Taiwan and it looks bad there too: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-who-ta...

In a lot of ways it feels like the west is under constant attack from disinformation and self-inflicted censorship (movies, Apple, nba, etc. all afraid to be critical of the CCP) and doesn’t even realize what’s going on. I think the CCP understands what they’re doing.

This is an ideological war, we’re already under attack, and the west is losing. The CCP (and Russia to a lesser extent) understand where our vulnerabilities lie and they’re exploiting them.

Edit: Whenever this comment reaches +1 it’s quickly downvoted to -2, dang - if you see this do you have a way to tell if this is legitimate (users behaving as they wish to) or something else? I only consistently see this behavior on comments that mention the CCP.

Ok, I checked. The users who downvoted the comment are well-established users with no obvious concentration on the topics you're posting about, and I didn't see any of the signs of suspicious behavior that we normally look for. Actually I recognize some of the usernames as good HN contributors, who are interested in and participating on a variety of topics. You might recognize some of them too.

I also downvoted the comment, by the way, so I can explain at least one of the downvotes. It wasn't because I disagree with you. It was because ideological battle is against the HN guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

When your blood is boiling, that's not a good state in which to post to HN. Better to wait for it to cool and then post in the key of curiosity. That's what HN is supposed to be for. I mean, I know you know this. But it's not so easy in practice, especially when you feel like you're under attack and your side is losing [1].

It's in your interest, though. Boiling-blood comments are like a Maxwell's demon who not only has energy to separate molecules into disjoint compartments, but enough left over to keep them buzzing angrily. You'll get upvotes and praise from people who already agree with you, and downvotes and anger from people who already disagree. But what you should be doing instead, if you want to help your own view, is trying to persuade the persuadable. That requires an entirely different, molecule-enticing strategy. A Maxwell's angel perhaps?

---

[1] I don't know how many of us would have guessed it, but one thing has become apparent from trying to keep HN interesting: functioning curiously requires developing one's ability to experience difficult feelings and somehow carry them and not let them drive you into reaction—which is a pretty deep human task. It turns out that simply trying to optimize HN for one thing—curiosity—has counterintuitive consequences, some of which ask a lot of us.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

I wrote about some of those consequences here, if anyone is interested in reading further: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23308098.

Thanks - appreciate the thoughtful response and you checking for me. I'll be better about this.

Exactly!

2020 will be forever the year I lost total trust in mainstream media. It's one thing to just "get it wrong" it's an entirely different thing when the powers that be are actively trying to promote a false narrative.

And then to turn around and label actual journalism and truth seeking as "conspiracy-theorist" and "crack pots" it is just too much to bear.

Filling the news with endless critiques and shaming of the proper way and material of mask to wear but deflect any attempts at uncovering, How the Hell this thing Started in the First Place!

They have become the anti-thesis of news and journalism and a driving force of division in the United States.

A pillar of democracy and free speech has become the thing it was intended to prevent and is now firmly a Fifth Column [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifth_column

Whether or not you have grokked this seems to be one of the fundamental political divisions in the U.S. today.

It's always been this way.

Worse yet, a recent NYT headline described the lab escape hypothesis as "debunked", which is even more egregious and incorrect than "baseless".

>Ex-C.D.C. Director Favors Debunked Virus Origin Theory

Basically trying to portray the ex-CDC director - a virologist - as an unhinged nutjob for saying such a thing.

After a ton of backlash, they relented and changed it from "debunked" to "unproven" and added an editor's note of "The theory is unproven, not debunked", which took a bit of the wind out of their original angle.

>What irony that in a piece pushing support for a “reality czar” (presumably to censor certain stories?) is the position of the NYT so divorced from reality itself.

Yeah, what could possibly go wrong with a Ministry of Truth?

Amazingly succinct post.

However I think the CCP are overplaying their hand now. They are doing too much too fast too aggressively. Hong kong, NBA, now going after Australia. It's going to backfire IMO.

Especially if you start to think about non first world countries. What's india going to do once they're massive covid wave is over? Is it going to improve india-china relations? You are going to have 1bn people with a border with China very very pissed I think at them.

We are only 1 year into this pandemic, and I think many geopolitical issues haven't been worked through yet.

Unfortunately, I don't think it will backfire. Conspiracy theorists like to talk about heavy metals in the atmosphere being used to brainwash us, however, this past year has shown us it's way simpler than that.

If you just repeat the same thing over and over from different sources, people come to accept it as true. Whether they believe it or not doesn't matter, behavior is still dictated by what we're told, and no one wants to be the nail sticking out.

I dont think it is going to backfire, I think everything is going exactly as they want it to go. Look at what is happening to the Uighurs. They are actively running concentration camps for millions of people and governments have for the most part just shrugged their shoulders. This is a massive boost to the Chinese as they now know they can get away with massive human rights violations with no consequences. Their airforce and navy is modernizing at a fantastic pace while the US has sunk a trillion into what for all purposes appears to be a dud in the JSF. They have the new silk road initiative under way, have built massive influence in Africa and are essentially claiming the entire south china sea for themselves. The Hong Kong situation is close to resolved and the only thing the world did was watch a few youtube videos or maybe wear a slogan on a tshirt. The next time there is an isolationist US president they will likely take Taiwan. They have all the time in the world.

It would be helpful if the people that downvoted your post would explain why they did so.

NYT only cares about keeping their stupid costumers happy within their echo chamber. It’s not a non-profit. Garbage desires in, garbage consequences out. The free market can’t do magic.

Yes, the NYT seems to have lost the ability to treat both sides of an argument skeptically. Disappointing.

Wow, well said and well summarized.

Unfortunately, the reality is that we have no new data on the origin of covid-19.

No on-the-ground analysis has been allowed in China.

But the article explains why no data actually leads credence to the lab-escape hypothesis.

For SARS and MERS we had data within months.

We don't have data on animals because it was a lab-escape event.

The claim that lab workers got flu-like symptoms in late 2019 blew my mind.

I wish I had time to investigate myself, but I'm 90% convinced that the reporter is correct and this is a lab-escape event.

"The U.S. government has reason to believe that several researchers inside the WIV became sick in autumn 2019, before the first identified case of the outbreak, with symptoms consistent with both COVID-19 and common seasonal illnesses."

US government had many perverse reasons to believe things that turned out to be false.

I'm putting exactly zero trust in what US government says about what happens or happened in other countries especially those deemed by them as adversarial.

And even if such thing happened it's way more probable that it was just common seasonal illness.

As this is now over a year later, this is a data point.

It isn't proof. But it is a data point, not lack of data.

I mean, doesn't that alone kinda point us in one direction?

Well, I can relate to that. Most of 2020 we were focused on fighting the aftermath of the crisis.

Now that things slowly are getting back to normal, at least in some Western countries, our focus shifts to the origins.

I was also very skeptical in the beginning about the escape theory tbh. But after reading a couple of pieces I’m opening up to the possibility.

Or you can look at this and say that nothing more convincing was found to support this idea in a year so it isn't any more feasible explanation than it was a year ago when we didn't know anything about this virus and how easily it mutates to infect humans easier. And it mutates a lot, perfectly spontaneously.

Below the surface level question of "did it escape a lab" is the question of why that matters to people. Both escaping a lab and evolving naturally in the wild are in essence freak accidents. A roll of the cosmic dice. A bristling array of implausibilities. What difference does it make that we got unlucky in this way as opposed to that way?

Would the logical conclusion from the "escaped a lab" theory be that China shouldn't be allowed to have virology research? Should any nation? Who gets to decide? Exactly what actionable conclusion depends on knowing if the origin of the virus was a lab or not?

There are maybe one in a dozen proponents of the lab theory that are legitimately interested in these questions. For the remaining 11 out of 12, the Wuhan Lab theory is just a belief that they wear in public to signal "China bad". An alarming number of people think China created the virus and released it on purpose. I once heard someone say China released the virus just to prove that our healthcare system is bad. Let me highlight the absurdity here. This person believes China engineered a virus and then released it on their own people in a city most foreigners were unaware of so that it would eventually make it to the US. They did all this just to prove some politically left point about socialized healthcare. That's not a real belief about how the world works. That's thinly veiled "I hate liberals and China".

Most of these people are trying to reach a conclusion that the world should punish China with sanctions or (in extreme cases) war. More than a few of them are using the lab theory as a fig leaf over blatant racism. There's a huge overlap between people who believe the lab theory and people who insist on calling it the "China virus" or "Wuhan Flu". That's not a coincidence. In short, the majority of the people agreeing with your theory aren't actually on your side. When you say "How does it take so long for the truth to win?", they have a very different idea of what "the truth" means.

Don't give them legitimacy or talking points. Being honest about the lab theory in the face of people who will use your words dishonestly is a fools errand. Don't be the fool who thinks he can be nuanced enough to pull it off. Until you know you are talking with someone who cares about the lab theory for the right reasons, the correct thing to say is "it absolutely evolved naturally and did not escape a lab".

I know you’re trying to be high minded, but yes if it escaped from a lab, China should stop doing independent unsupervised virology. Full stop.

EDIT: If a kid crashes a car, you sure as hell are going to make them take more driving lessons before letting them drive again. And hearing them then say “it was a cosmic accident, why should anyone be allowed to drive” is not going to absolve them of negligence

China isn't a kid. People crash cars all the time and go back to driving the next day. There is absolutely such a thing as legally recognized non-negligent car accidents. Your example doesn't at all support your point.

Edit: Should any nation do "independent unsupervised virology". I've heard people in this very thread say that the lab theory, if true, means we should "stop funding this research in China". I take that to mean no longer having a CDC outpost that cooperates with them. So which one is it. should we cut the CDC out of there completely, or should we not let them be independent and unsupervised? The lab origin theory can't imply both at the same time.

Ok, sorry for being folksy, maybe this works better.

A certified truck driver crashes their truck because they didn't follow the strict safety procedures that the trucking regulatory body set to prevent said crash. They were hauling Anhydrous Ammonia. The resulting blast kills 4 million people globally.

Are you going to make them take more safety lessons before letting them haul again?

Or will hearing them then say “it was a cosmic accident, why should anyone be allowed to haul” absolve them of negligence?

Maybe to further your point, should everyone stop hauling Anhydrous Ammonia, or should just the person who let the accident happen?

> "There are maybe one in a dozen proponents of the lab theory that are legitimately interested in these questions. For the remaining 11 out of 12, the Wuhan Lab theory is just a belief that they wear in public to signal "China bad"."

> "Don't give them legitimacy or talking points. Being honest about the lab theory in the face of people who will use your words dishonestly is a fools errand. Don't be the fool who thinks he can be nuanced enough to pull it off. Until you know you are talking with someone who cares about the lab theory for the right reasons, the correct thing to say is "it absolutely evolved naturally and did not escape a lab"."

This kind of second order thinking and attempted manipulation is a big reason the mainstream press has lost all of its trust.

The same nonsense was why people tried to justify saying "masks don't work" was okay. "Well, we need the masks for healthcare workers so just lie to the public so they don't try to buy too many".

There are a lot of problems with this.

1. First I think it's largely a lie, the people making these arguments are not masterminds working on 3 levels, they're making stupid tribal arguments of a similar depth to the people blaming China out of "China bad".

2. It fails, the attempted manipulation is obvious and comes out as wrong - this further discredits the press and weakens the trust of the public in institutions. This plays directly into the hands of the 'people who will use your words dishonestly'.

3. We should give a shit about the truth independent of tribal affiliation, second order manipulations are stupid - people that act to cover that up are not as clever as they think they are.

As the sister reply to your comment suggests, there should be consequences for negligence that leads to a global pandemic killing millions.

>We should give a shit about the truth independent of tribal affiliation

We should, but the reality is we don't. (the general we, not the specific you and me). There would be far more people (in the West) accepting the natural origin theory if the virus started in the EU or US. People give a shit about "the truth"^{tm} only when it suits them.

Some people in China have done some really spurious gene sequencing studies to try and prove the virus actually started anywhere-but-China. Their theory of "it must have started outside of China" is just as much motivated reasoning as "it must have been a malicious/incompetent act by China". Of course everyone involved really pretends to give a shit about the truth. Anyone who actually cares about the truth knows better than to wade into that cesspool. Being earnest in this context only results in you getting covered in shit.

>As the sister reply to your comment suggests, there should be consequences for negligence that leads to a global pandemic killing millions.

That really gets to the heart of it. Was it negligence, or was it just a thing that could have happened at any of the BSL labs with some small probability? What exactly is the mistake rate in similar labs around the world? Was it really more likely to have happened in WuHan, or is that just where the cosmic dice landed? There's this pervasive assumption in your comment and others that the virus escaping a Chinese lab must have been due to the incompetence of the Chinese government. Yet the Chinese governments response to the virus was more serious and more competently executed than almost anywhere else. They practically reopened months ago. How do you square that circle?

When someone is only looking at theories which have someone to blame, they aren't really being disinterested seekers of truth. Trying to explain the nuance of "there is some evidence it might have escaped a lab but that by itself doesn't necessarily imply anyone is at fault" isn't worth my time. Additionally explaining the difference between "I don't reject the lab theory" and "I believe the lab theory" also isn't worth my time. I already know 11 out of 12 aren't really listening / digesting the nuance. The only thing I can say that won't get lost in translation is "it evolved in bats, full stop".

Blame thinking is easy. Wouldn't it be great if we could just fix all our future problems by finding the people who do the wrong thing and punishing them until there's no more sinners left. The alternative of a fundamentally random universe where bad things happen for no reason is a bitter pill to swallow.

> “That really gets to the heart of it. Was it negligence, or was it just a thing that could have happened at any of the BSL labs with some small probability? What exactly is the mistake rate in similar labs around the world? Was it really more likely to have happened in WuHan, or is that just where the cosmic dice landed? There's this pervasive assumption in your comment and others that the virus escaping a Chinese lab must have been due to the incompetence of the Chinese government. Yet the Chinese governments response to the virus was more serious and more competently executed than almost anywhere else. They practically reopened months ago. How do you square that circle?”

This is precisely why the truth matters and learning about the origins is important.

The cover up and lies out of China don’t necessarily mean it wasn’t a “cosmic dice” situation, but it doesn’t inspire confidence. The false PR about it having to have originated outside of the country makes it look even worse.

Maybe their response was more serious and competent because they had a better understanding of what they were dealing with? They also suppressed information - it wasn’t until the doctor went public that we began to learn the truth of its severity.

A lot of their measures (fever tents, mandatory isolation) play to the strengths of an authoritarian society.

Without knowing the truth it’s hard to evaluate the level of negligence. The western media should not be participating (wittingly or not) in the CCP’s disinformation.

> “Trying to explain the nuance of "there is some evidence it might have escaped a lab but that by itself doesn't necessarily imply anyone is at fault" isn't worth my time”

I’d argue this is the only thing worth your time. The truth absent political tribalism is the thing that can persuade people. Nuance is important, it helps make you more persuasive, even when the people you’re trying to persuade are mostly driven by motivated reasoning.

Is it still "PR" when the person writing it has genuinely drank the cool-aid? My point wasn't about China releasing a bullshit study as propaganda. My point was the lab hypothesis reeks of similar "motivated science" but we can't see it in our own cultural context as easily as we can see it in others.

Anyway we could look at the "cosmic dice rate" for all the labs we do know about. But the funny thing about that is we can ask and reasonably answer the question about low-probability but ultra-high risk research without ever needing to investigate this particular outbreaks origin story. Conversely, even if tomorrow some one dug up smoking gun evidence that it evolved naturally in the wild and had nothing to do with any lab, the question about lab risks and future pandemics would still be worth asking. Could you imagine anyone saying "well I used to be in favor of reviewing our risk factors, but now that I know coronavirus was all natural I no longer give any shits about the safety risks of this research."?

If you care about future pandemics, there's a million better ways to spend your energy than trying to figure out if there was or wasn't a coverup in a (formerly) obscure lab in a (formerly) obscure city over a year ago in a country that isn't known for transparency. Anyone who actively contributes to the "debate" is being counterproductive. In my view, the main practical use of the lab origin theory is as an inadvertent shibboleth to identify who's hooked on tribalism / motivated reasoning / spurious logic.

>The truth absent political tribalism is the thing that can persuade people.

This sounds like the sort of thing I would have said before "post-factual" entered our lexicon. Behind every cynic is a disappointed idealist.

> What difference does it make that we got unlucky in this way as opposed to that way?

Is this a serious question?

How about, if this is true the US government should not be funding any research like this in China.

How about, the research must be done at BSL-4 instead of 2/3 as noted in the paper.

How about, we need to massively step up our surveillance efforts on the current state of respiratory viruses going forward. Something like the Seattle Flu Study at national scale. This last point is true regardless of the origin story for SARS-CoV-2.

>How about, we need to massively step up our surveillance efforts on the current state of respiratory viruses going forward. Something like the Seattle Flu Study at national scale. This last point is true regardless of the origin story for SARS-CoV-2.

You literally just proved my point. The origin story isn't actually all that relevant to preventing future pandemics.

At the very least, people are concerned with the origin story far above and beyond its practical importance. It is at a point where you can safely assume that anyone preoccupied with the origin story is mostly interested in tribal shit-slinging.

>How about, if this is true the US government should not be funding any research like this in China.

Do you have a short list of countries the CDC shouldn't cooperate with? What exactly is your criteria? What change could China possibly enact that would get it off this list?

No. Your conclusion is lawyer/politician/bureaucrat-thinking presented as science. In science there is no "noble lie".

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