Comment by briandear | Hacker News Reader

Comment by briandear | Hacker News Reader

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Perhaps we could hold those responsible accountable? Especially if it came from research Fauci said wasn’t happening but actually was? Specifically gain of function. Look at how BP got hammered for an oil spill. Why wouldn’t China proportional penalties given that if it were a lab leak it lead to a global economic and health disaster. That it was coincidence that the virus happening near a research facility where they were researching similar viruses is beyond belief. The mental gymnastics being used to discredit the lab leak (or intentional release) theory is astounding. People have been sent to prison for life on far weaker circumstantial evidence.

What would we do differently? We put people like Fauci in prison for funding dangerous research that was specifically prohibited by the Obama admin —- then lying about it. We’d defund and disband the WHO for lying to our face while carrying water for China. Even the name “Covid” was made up to protect the Chinese. The WHO didn’t rename MERS, Zika, Ebola or any number of dangerous diseases with a regional connection. But for Covid? They bent over backwards to obfuscate Chinese responsibility. And Fauci? Lying to the American people and Congress over and over again while knowing good and well he helped fund it. And note the NIH and other US federal agencies aren’t required to disclose royalty payments from scientists in their employ. People making decisions about this virus literally got paid from the very corporations creating the treatments. If any scientist that had any influence got paid a single dollar from a company benefiting from their decisions — that’s a conflict of interest of extraordinary proportions. If an Army general gets paid a royalty from a defense contractor that general would be thrown in prison. Rick Marcinko went to federal prison for allegedly doing when happens all the time in our national health agencies.

The world should be outraged and Fauci should be in prison. What would we do differently? Not fund Chinese research. Demand full and absolute transparency from our public health agencies especially when it comes to research funding and financial ties to those who profited immensely from this.

Rand Paul’s questioning of Fauci was spot on. But people are too blinded by political parties to open their eyes.

It wasn't "Chinese" research. It was Chinese-American research.

Same as how the toxic trash USA sent to China for fake recycling was USA trash, and same as how the outsourced manufacturing of "American" products to American specs is Chinese-American manufacturing.

That would depend on the facts, and who made what decisions, and who had what control when.

at this point, all of that has been scrubbed for good, and nothing factual will ever come out.

Hard to not conclude that in the US with our complete disinterest in finding out what happened.

The whole thing is so strange. I think back to the odd videos from China at the very start of people collapsing in the street. Only the first videos the world seen of the pandemic and they had nothing to do with reality but no one cares. No big deal.

And if we did all of that, how much would it decrease our future risk of zoonotic spillover?

The comment you are responding to, talks about alleged malfeasance, and morally bankrupt acts.

Your response is, oh well?

In terms of spillover, there is zero guarantee it would happen naturally. For any virus, it could, it may, and for some it has.

But for any specific virus, it is absolutely not guaranteed.

And purposefully training for human compatibility in a lab, clearly makes that maybe, a certainty, and if insufficient precautions are taken, that is a crime against humanity.

This whole thing is absurd. We go after corps for spying on people, governments for bias, but if the truth is a lab leak killed 100s of millions, "Oh well".

Come on!

What's the goal here? Is this some weird US political "my guy vs your guy" thing?

No, my response was not "Oh well."

It was "And if we did all of that, how much would it decrease our future risk of zoonotic spillover?"

And if we banned thalidomide, how much would that help pregnant women with morning sickness? The fact that you're trying to prevent one kind of harm (morning sickness, natural-origin pandemics) doesn't excuse causing unlimited amounts of a different kind of harm (birth defects, research-origin pandemics).

The non-absurd version of this argument is that risky virological research will provide a public benefit offsetting the possible harm. None of its advocates seem able to articulate significant examples of that benefit yet, though, and even a small probability of millions of deaths is quite a lot of harm.

I haven't said it excuses it: I've just said that I don't see blame as productive. Something can be morally wrong and also less important to pursue.

The non-absurd version of this argument is that we can't police everything, everywhere, especially across national borders with sovereign, independent governments in power.

So taking that into account, there's always going to be a fog over truth in certain places.

We can spend substantial amount of effort trying to pierce that, probably fruitlessly, or we can focus that effort on things we can actually change and improve.

>>The non-absurd version of this argument is that we can't police everything, everywhere, especially across national borders with sovereign, independent governments in power.

By that logic, why bother trying to stop human CO2 emissions, or nuclear profileration. Afterall, controlling them requires policing phenomena that occur across international borders under the jurisdiction of numerous independent governments.

It would not, but it would sure as hell reduce the risk of a lab leak. The whole idea of GoF research was to preempt evolution on bad viruses. If instead, the research is causing the evolution of bad viruses, it should be shut down.

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