Comment by 1cvmask | Hacker News Reader

Comment by 1cvmask | Hacker News Reader

It was an amusing period when all the mainstream media outlets attacked such discussions as racist and xenophobic and censorship platforms like YouTube banned it.

And then somehow noted scientists like Jon Stewart allowed for the discussion to be allowed.

This dilly dallying on the origins of Covid only shows the importance of free speech and the dangers of the mainstream media, Big Tech and their lies. Whether the real source is the Wuhan Lab is no longer relevant. Trying to force the discussion genie into the censorship bottle is the real story.

Unfortunately now they are pushing the Wuhan lab leak theory for different and nefarious purposes instead of the furtherment of medical research.

https://nypost.com/2021/09/16/jon-stewart-surprised-at-covid...

In our experience the weird lab origin controversy was broadly limited to the US and to a lesser extent the UK, and probably caused by your rather idiosyncratic politics at the moment. For most of the rest of the world it was never that big an issue, with expert opinion broadly saying that it was plausible but on balance of probabilities the virus's origin was probably zoonotic as with SARS-1.

It really didn't matter that much, beyond the discussion that if proven we should be improving lab security, but that sort of improvement should be happening anyway.

I suspect in the US & UK it was inflamed by two things: 1. A political desire from certain groups to blame China for the pandemic. 2. Some confusion and conflation early on between the lab leak hypothesis and the fringe conspiracy theory of COVID-19 as being a Chinese 'bioweapon'.

Whatever the cause, it wasn't a universal controversy.

This just reinforces my lack of faith in the "experts", and my belief that they are playing politicians. "We don't have a clue what's flying but listen to me because i'm a doctor" doesn't make sense to me.

Like https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2021/12/15/matt-ridl...?

Not at all.

Not bothered by that at all?

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