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Comment by ejb999 | Hacker News Reader

I wonder how many people who are seemingly willing to believe the self-serving CCP party-line on this, would be just as believing of the owners of a nuclear power plant in their town, once the drinking water became radioactive, claiming "it didn't come from the plant, someone else down the street must have done it" - that is just about as believable as this.

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I don't think it's a coincidence that the pandemic started in Wuhan, but probably not in the way you're thinking: Wuhan is the largest railway hub in all of China [1]. And that's likely the reason why both the institute and the market were situated there in the first place.

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

A good point. Another factor reducing the "coincidence" of a (probable) bat-originated coronavirus pandemic starting in a city with a lab studying bat coronaviruses is that labs studying viruses of type X tend to be located in areas where viruses of type X are found.

To take ejb999's example of radioactive water being found near a nuclear power plant, is it more likely that the radioactive water was found because there is increased monitoring of radiation near nuclear power plants?

It is important not to make emotional leaps to conclusions. Apparent correlations deserve study, but they are not proofs.

Maybe it was somebody in the flea market selling scrapped smoke detectors. Possible... but not my first guess. But it's worth keeping in mind that sometimes the most obvious answer is not the correct one.

In 1984: "During routine monitoring at a Pennsylvania nuclear power plant, a worker was found to be contaminated with radioactivity. A high concentration of radon in his home was subsequently identified as responsible."

For anyone who, like me, was curious about this, the worker's name was Stanley Watras. There's more on him on JSTOR if you want to read up: https://www.jstor.org/stable/44534629

Pure emotional argument without substance.

You made no effort at all to criticize the methodology (which looks pretty standard to me, consistent with methods used to pinpoint the origin of other disease outbreaks besides COVID), or the raw data. Not one of the listed authors is Chinese, nor do any of them have any Chinese institutional affiliations.

What is your actual argument for why I should disregard this, beyond 'CCP bad'?

The authors of this paper might well be honest and smart, but they - as we all - have to rely on raw data provided by China.

But the gp isn't making the argument that the data is suspect, and so carefully curated as to point to a misleading conclusion. Rather, it accuses the paper of reproducing a political party line.

If China is messing with the data, why do we even have data that shows the epicenter of infection moving southeast? Why not just hide or falsify it?

> Not one of the listed authors is Chinese, nor do any of them have any Chinese institutional affiliations.

Those are pretty naive criteria based on what we already know about the situation. One of the biggest opponents of investigating the lab leak hypothesis was Peter Daszak, a British zoologist who is certainly not Chinese nor does his EcoHealth Alliance have any surface level ties to the Wuhan Institute of Virology. EcoHealth Alliance provided grants for the coronavirus research (and the activity that has been labeled by some as gain-of-research) and authored the misleading Lancet letter [0] that was used to ostracize anyone who publicly disagree with the animal-spillover hypothesis as well as enabled social media platforms and fact-checking sites to censor any content or discussion of the lab leak hypothesis.

TL;DR: people can have agendas that may not be obvious to you at first glance.

[0] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...

I wouldn't be complaining if the op had made an effort to establish such a linkage as you did for your example. Is it my job to validate an assertion which op didn't bother to support with an argument?

Of course not and op's reply was not, on its own, a very convincing rebuttal to the article. My only point is that the objectivity of the authors (really, any author on this subject at this point) should be assumed to be cloudy until proven otherwise. There's very few people on either side arguing in good faith about the source of COVID at this point.

My personal view is that it's impossible to know: the CCP has done everything possible to look guilty of hiding something, but unless there's some breakthrough where a source animal is found or someone in the CCP security apparatus makes a deathbed confession, I consider this an unresolvable discussion. That being said, I'm still 100% behind the shaming of people like Peter Daszak who have been shown to have acted in bad faith to cover their own asses.

> I wonder how many people who are seemingly willing to believe the self-serving CCP party-line on this

Which of the paper's authors do you believe are beholden to the "self-serving CCP party-line"? Do you see flaws in the paper's analysis, or are you perhaps employing a thought-terminating cliche?

Your comment is orthogonal to the parent's comment and there's no reason to assign malice to the commenter.

It's quite plausible that the CCP is lying and the paper authors are honest about their findings. The problem is the analysis is only as good as the inputs. From the article:

> "Chinese government notified the World Health Organization (WHO) of an outbreak of severe pneumonia of unknown etiology in Wuhan...after careful examination of reported case histories..."

Note that:

1. The CCP claims the virus was unknown to them.

2. The CCP is in charge of what case histories are analyzed, and can carefully select those which point away from the lab leak.

I don't know to what degree there's truth in it, but Marion Koopmans has been in hot waters over her connections to the Chinese government. Last year, she has also publicly stated that the search started too late, and that they have negotiated about the outcome with the Chinese government (e.g., https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2021/03/30/een-goed-resultaat-a403..., paywalled).

Given that the existence of the lab is public knowledge, the paper could have at least acknowledged that the market was also a perfect site to distribute the virus intentionally.

This paper proves nothing beyond that there was a spatial relationship between the market and some of the initial cases. It wouldn’t have been hard for the CCP to discretely put some CV-19 distribution devices in the market, if the virus was released on purpose.

The CCP lies about everything from its GDP numbers to COVID infection rate and deaths. You simply cannot believe anything the Chinese government puts out.

This is largely from the NIH.

NIH got the data from China.

Who gets the information from.....the Chinese government.

What a weird statement to make. Sure, the coincidental nature draws extra suspicion, but new diseases appear naturally in the wild all the time. How often does drinking water in a city randomly turn radioactive from natural causes?

Hypothetically speaking, if it were a lab-leak and if it were a malicious lab tech or an that was mad at the world or compromised by a political actor, they could have dumped/micronize sprayed a vial [1] into the food market which would make the statement not entirely false. This is of course a lazy theory and would be nearly impossible to test out.

[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksrWmPMZGiY [video, gets NSFW around 2:30]

On that basis it could have also been attack to discredit China by CIA or like... Release pandemic from China then politically and economically attack them. Entirely something reasonable to consider considering history of USA...

Absolutely valid point. This theoretical scenario could be anyone that believes they stand to gain from this event. I updated my comment to reflect your point.

> This is of course a lazy theory and would be nearly impossible to test out.

Even this hypothetical theory doesn't explain the early lineage A / lineage B split and is not supported by existing data.

I have my own weak hypothesis regarding what you mention but I don't have anything really to back it up. Lineage A could have been the compromised tech and lineage B could have been an intentional engineered release that is more contagious but less lethal to improve morbidity from A and reduce or mitigate the fallout, not that anyone would ever admit doing this to the general public.

It’s painful in that scenario to give complete authority for resolving the nuclear safety issue to (1) the most likely cause of the issue, and (2) a low integrity party that has obscured their role in causation.

That's disingenuous. I don't think anybody anywhere is just taking the CCP party line at face value.

Quick reminder that the researchers at the Wuhan lab are American. So, according to the conspiracy theory, there is some motivation for Americans to help China with a cover up.

Similarly the WHO is now issuing the report that says it didn’t come from the WHO lab.

That is exactly what pfas manufacturers like 3M and others are doing to gaslight residents of towns all over America, right now

Not just America. The globe. There was a link posted here a couple of weeks ago about a European 3M plant and its PFAS problems.

I met a nurse that said one of her family members lived in a small housing development where almost everyone got terminal brain cancer. A certain company that you've heard of handled hazardous materials next door and offered to do the testing in the development. Surprise, no contamination found. And they made it clear that if you implicate them, you'll be contacted by their sizable legal department.

Everyone affected was either dead or bankrupt from paying their family's medical bills. No lawsuits against the company.

(This is is unrelated to your comment, just the username)

Trollish usernames aren't allowed on HN because they effectively troll every thread they post to.

We've learned that it's better to deal with this earlier than later, so I've banned the account. Happy to rename and unban it if you want to pick a more neutral username.

This is a borderline case—we don't want to be prudes—but I suspect most readers would rather not have "stinkass" in their face.

https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...

Dang I wanted to hear their reply

You can see posts by banned accounts by turning 'showdead' on in your profile.

Why don’t you reveal the name of the company? I’d like to know what chemicals are (not) linked to brain cancer

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