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Comment by px43 | Hacker News Reader

At a high level, it's pretty simple. There was a very well coordinated and intentional conflation of the term "lab leak" with the conspiracy theories around China and the WHO intentionally developing and deploying bio-weapons as a means of global population control.

These conspiracy theories lead to a marked rise in violent attacks on anyone of Asian descent in the US, and generally fed into the wet dream fantasies of western warlords looking for any excuse to enter that eternal war against Eastasia.

Any time that anything relating to information around Wuhan labs was released, there was a massive flood of how the "lab leak" theories were right all along, and China is, in fact, trying to kill us all. This is the sort of virulent hatred that no social media company wants to help propagate.

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> These conspiracy theories lead to a marked rise in violent attacks on anyone of Asian descent in the US,

It should be noted that the statistics don't support the media narrative and there was no wave of white supremacist attacks on Asians.

Here are the stats from New York ("Arrest Statistics by Bias Motivation"): https://www.nyc.gov/site/nypd/stats/reports-analysis/hate-cr...

This article from the Guardian says there was an uptick

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jul/21/asian-americ...

There was an uptick but its taboo to talk about the demographic.

From your own link "hate-crime-complaints-by-motivation-annual" 2020 vs 2021:

+Anti-Asian 2019: 1

Anti-Asian 2020: 27

Anti-Asian 2021: 131

*+ Edit: Added 2019 as suggested below

Looks like there was a general increase in complaints as lockdowns eased. From the data, there were upticks in anti-jewish, anti-gay, anti-muslim and more. Asians still saw relatively more of an uptick than other motivations.

That could be an increase in reporting. After all you'd expect the uptick to happen in 2020-- it was COVID-19 after all.

Also worth to know that anti-asian hate was also a narrative pushed by the CPC to label things like supporting Hong Kong democracy protests or criticizing uighur genocide as "anti-asian hate", which happened after the CPC noticed the effectiveness of BLM protests in sowing us discord (mid-2020) so to trust any stats post 2020 it would at least need to segregate the two use cases.

This is maybe more interesting.

Anti-Asian 2019: 0.2%

Anti-Asian 2020: 10%

Anti-Asian 2021: 25%

EDIT: Regarding an uptick in anti-jewish etc.

Anti-Jewish 2019: 57%

Anti-Jewish 2020: 43%

Anti-Jewish 2021: 37%

I take it these are percentages of all complaints? Because the number of complaints for anti-Jewish hate crimes was 116 in 2020, but 198 in 2021, so a definite increase, but hate crime overall basically doubled as well, so the relative amount to the total is lower.

yes that is what the trend I posted shows.

> complaints for hate crimes

> hate crime

These are not the same thing and especially when comparing over time you need to take into account how the definitions for the categories themselves change.

Shouldn't you be looking for these numbers as a percent of total crime?

You should be comparing 2019 to 2020.

2019 is the pre-covid default state.

2020 is when covid rhetoric was hot.

2021 is Vaccines and Biden is president

2019 stats are in the archive at the bottom of the page. I’d pull them but on a phone.

Good call. I was going to, but for some reason I didn't see the report in 2019 when checking. Edited into the original comment

How long does it take from pent-up anger and rhetoric to action?

2021 values could be the result of 2020's rhetoric.

Worth noting the west coast states with larger Asian populations were largely "locked down" in 2020. Schools didn't reopen until 2021. 2020 didn't have as many opportunities for individual interactions that could lead to such crimes.

Arrests involving Anti-Asian hate crime incidents in 2020:

BLACK: 11 (55%)

WHITE HISPANIC: 5 (25%)

BLACK HISPANIC: 2 (10%)

WHITE: 2 (10%)

Total: 20

2021:

BLACK: 31 (53%)

HISPANIC: 15 (26%)

WHITE: 7 (12%)

ASIAN / PACIFIC ISLANDER: 5 (8%)

UNKNOWN: 1 (2%)

Total: 59

2022:

BLACK: 39 (49%)

WHITE HISPANIC: 20 (25%)

WHITE: 17 (22%)

ASIAN / PACIFIC ISLANDER: 2 (3%)

BLACK HISPANIC: 1 (1%)

Total: 79

How come those numbers could be used to support anti-ethical policies, to not say outright conspiracy, that prevented the elucidation of a pandemic that decimated millions?

As a personal anecdote, living as an Asian in a US city with a population over 1M people, I definitely saw a change in peoples' stance towards Asians in general and Chinese in particular, and not in a good way. There was a lot more suspicion about Asians, their businesses, etc. It wasn't the same level of suspicion as during post-9/11 America but it had a similar vibe. A lot of dog whistling with sentiments like, "I'm criticizing the Chinese government, not the Chinese people." (spoiler alert: it was both) Maybe that didn't result in violent crime, but it was not (and still isn't) a good time to be Chinese or display pride in one's Chinese heritage.

I hope one day we can look back at this period and think about how to better critically think about these things without applying personal biases and fears to a whole population.

Sorry you had to go through that. But I have to ask about this:

> A lot of dog whistling with sentiments like, "I'm criticizing the Chinese government, not the Chinese people." (spoiler alert: it was both)

Did you have some extra context there? Or do you just assume that anyone criticizing the ccp is also criticizing chinese people? Because I feel like that's a reasonable stance towards any nation.

It seems like sometimes people aggressively read between the lines (probably because of real past experiences with shitty people), and it makes it so that reasonable people now can't express reasonable ideas and have other people understand what they're actually saying.

I especially notice this in online forums where some topics have been discussed in depth by a subset of the population. Through all that discussion, they've basically invented a whole field of study, and turned everyday phrases into jargon with unintuitive subtext.

Then someone new comes along, says something that seems completely innocuous, and the community jumps on them for the subtext that they're not even aware exists.

>A lot of dog whistling with sentiments like, "I'm criticizing the Chinese government, not the Chinese people."

This is a reasonable thing to say. I think mainland Chinese are oppressed by the Chinese Communist Party, and I hope I live to see the end of this cruel regime.

In what way did they claim to be criticizing the Chinese government but actually criticized Chinese culture? Because it is possible and valid to criticize the Chinese government and not the people. And it is also a possibility that your own personal biases could make it difficult to differentiate between the two. We have a surplus of Americans who take any criticism of America, the nation-state, as a personal insult, so I'm sure the same thing happens elsewhere.

> A lot of dog whistling with sentiments like "I'm criticizing the Chinese government, not the Chinese people." (spoiler alert: it was both)

'Dog-whistling', meaning they don't overtly say it and you infer that they mean it. If they make it overt such that it doesn't need to be inferred, they're not longer dog whistling.

How do you know your inference is correct and that is their intent? How can you be sure that wasn't just an impression given to you by [social] media? The CCP has a vested interest in conflating any criticism of itself or the PRC generally with racist criticism of all Asians. They also say that criticism of their Uyghur genocide is dog whistling anti-Asian racism. The CCP say this of anything that criticizes them, and their narratives do not stop dead at their borders. I've heard it echoed by some of my coworkers, PRC nationals working in America, and even western media that might not endorse such narratives will still give voice to consideration of those narratives.

Now allow me to be frank; during the supposed surge of anti-Asian hatred ostensibly motivated by Trump and perpetrated by white nationalists, much of anti-Asian crimes that were being reported had been perpetrated by African Americans. It was probably crime motivated by class/social/economic inequality, and insofar as it disproportionately targeted Asian Americans at all (rather than selective reporting merely creating that appearance) it probably had nothing to do with any politician's covid rhetoric and was instead was an artifact of geographic proximity and inequality in policing (Asian American neighborhoods receive less protection from the police, making Asian Americans an easier target for crime.) In this last regard, you can easily show that racism against Asian Americans played a role, but such inequalities in policing are problems that go back many generations and have little if anything to do with covid.

I hope other readers will note that, in response to the above user’s account of sinophobia in the US, the comments here on HN have overwhelmingly attempted to invalidate those experiences. Responses have ranged from outright hostility to gaslighting behavior, even an attempt to deflect the discussion onto Black Americans despite the original comment mentioning no race other than Asian or Chinese.

The above commenter’s experiences will ring true for many Chinese living in the US, because we are the ones who experience and are impacted by sinophobia (this can also extend to other E/SEA diaspora to an extent). Whereas the commenters claiming that we’re biased or influenced by propaganda, as if they are uniquely exempt from such things, are not.

The comments rightly ask for clarification: did the user witness or experience discrimination or bias, or is the user equating criticisms of China with criticisms of individuals of Chinese descent. If the above user doesn't make that distinction, then it does invalidate the user's observations.

Criticisms of the Cuban government are absolutely independent of criticisms of individual Cubans like myself. If another Cuban person felt that they were being individually criticized when other people criticize Cuba, I'd tell them they need to learn to distinguish between the two - it's not the responsibility of the public to avoid any criticism of the Cuban government. This isn't an attempt to "deflect the discussion", it's using another country as an example to make it clear that this is a distinction we're perfectly capable of making for other ethnic group.

The point of using the term “sinophobia” rather than simply “prejudice” is that no, it does seem that some subset of people are uniquely unable to “criticize” PRC policy without injecting some trope about mainland Chinese people and culture. In fact, the point is to repeat the stereotype as if it were fact. The policy (whether it exists or not) is just an excuse.

For that matter, sincere requests for clarification are not immediately followed by attempts to dismiss the underlying concern as invalid. This inherently makes the request insincere.

If the criticism of the PRC were mixed in with Sinophobia, then doom2 should have expanded on that. As written, there's nothing to suggest that doom2 witnessed anything other than criticisms of the PRC. The idea that it's mixed in with stereotypes about mainland China would be a good example, but it's entirely your injection, not something stated in doom2's comment.

Remember, allegations of "dog-whistles" are really just saying "I'm assuming other people are implying XYZ." My conservative relatives think words like "diversity" or "inclusion" are dog-whistles for anti-white discrimination. They're earnest when they say the feel attacked, but that's entirely on account of their own assumptions and does not indicate any actual racism. If doom2 wants to make point, they should actually explain what they witnessed that was bigoted or hateful - don't just allege "dog-whistling" and do nothing to substantiate that claim.

Being a Russian post-invasion, I feel this is awfully familiar.

This may not be entirely fair but citizens of a country which is being shit to others feeling negative consequences due to their countries shitty actions is generally a good thing. It's up to Russians to fix their government and its up to Chinese to fix theirs - unless you are advocating for foreign invasion, which will probably make things a lot worse for you no matter where you currently live.

Add to that that there are many Russians publicly supporting the war and/or their government. The same goes for the Chinese and for corona specifically you had a lot of them travelling the world while the virus spread was heating up.

Ultimately, humans are pattern seeking animals and if you fit into a pattern of shitty people you better make sure that you make it clear you are not one of them. It would be better if people could be more discerning but I'd rather take this than not having any pushback for countries and other groups of people misbehaving.

What would you do to make it clear you are not one of a shitty group of people?

Agreed, like the cold shoulder shown to white South Africans during Apartheid. Overall, it helped to change national sentiment and led to the end of Apartheid even though it might've harmed some people living abroad who were opposed to the system.

I don't think we've worked out a better way to deal with this yet, and it will always be a factor of the way populations are broadly responsible for their governments in democracies and even semi-democracies.

This kinda just seems like an argument in favour of bigotry. I find it odd that you are so casual in your justification of it. This reminds me to always be mindful of the social norms of my current environment, because we could very easily be the oppressors/bigots/racists etc., and not even realize it until decades later...

> Add to that that there are many Russians publicly supporting the war

There are many white people being racist towards white people, should I give all white people the cold shoulder so one day it will end racism?

I think it is unkind to treat people in a punitive manner for something that is beyond that individual person.

> you fit into a pattern of shitty people

What an awful thing to say to another person

Which data points are you referencing from your source? There is a spike YOY between 2019 to 2020.

Annual for 2019: 1 out of 420

Annual for 2020: 27 out of 265

Is that not enough of a percentage increase for you? Edit: Apologies for not seeing the other users' replies who have already made this point.

They didn’t say white supremacist attacks

You’re conflating hate crime with white on everyone else hate crime and the law (and stats) don't reflect that

You went as far as to add those words, which is fascinating to say the least

> There was a very well coordinated and intentional conflation of the term "lab leak" with the conspiracy theories around China and the WHO intentionally developing and deploying bio-weapons as a means of global population control.

I don’t recall a single instance of this. A year ago, people were saying on this site and elsewhere was that the issue was conflating “lab leak” with “intentionally engineered”. A year before that, people argued that the issue was conflating “lab leak” with “leaked from WIV”, when WIV was established in that location due to the prevalence of novel coronaviruses in the region.

The goalposts keep moving.

> I don’t recall a single instance of this.

I saw the birth of r/WuhanFlu and other related subreddits that were created in early 2020, and accusations of it being a bioweapon were there from the start, and once someone looked up "Wuhan" on Google Maps and saw the virology institute, people were saying it was a lab leak.

What goalposts? Just because you didn’t personally experience something doesn’t mean it prant exist/didn’t happen.

You didn't see any 'Wuhan flu' bioengineering conspiracy theories about how china made covid on purpose to attack America? If not, you're either intentionally not seeing it or I want to use your media filter because it was literally everywhere.

Of course I did, but that's not what was posited in the parent post:

> China and the WHO intentionally developing and deploying bio-weapons as a means of global population control

This is what I mean about moving goalposts - these two theories might both assert that it was a bioweapon, but they are otherwise very different.

I think you overstate how much the lab leak and the bioweapon stories were being conflated. I recall that most people were able to distinguish between them, and that the most prominent figures raising red flags about a potential leak weren't talking about bioweapons.

In any case, the most alarming aspect of the lab leak hypothesis is that gain-of-function research is STILL being done, and that the same thing could happen AGAIN. Since this risks creating another pandemic, suppressing the story because of concerns about street crime is very misguided.

I've said the same thing since the beginning. "It would be weird if the world superpowers that develop nukes and other weapons of mass destruction wouldn't research biological warfare(and stuff)".

I never thought the leak was intentional though.

> the most alarming aspect of the lab leak hypothesis is that gain-of-function research is STILL being done, and that the same thing could happen AGAIN.

This right here is an example of why we can’t have reasoned discussion around the topic.

You can explain one of the many reasons why gain of function research is necessary: anticipating next year’s version of the flu, designing drugs and vaccines such that resistance mutations reduce evolutionary fitness.

You can explain how it is done: lots of computational simulations, and some benchtop with results feeding back into computational methods.

You can explain some of the safeguards in place: BSL 3/4 facilities, regulatory / institutional oversight, security services, etc.

And then someone will stand up on a chair and yell “SUPER VIRUS!”

Anyway from my perspective, the “lab leak” theory tends to be people pushing an unsubstantiated theory to either (1) blame China for an “act of god/nature” or (2) argue for a moratorium on infectious disease / vaccine / therapeutic research.

Please note that no one here is calling you a racist. But I think calling parts of your comment uninformed or misinformed is fair game for discussion.

> the “lab leak” theory tends to be people pushing an unsubstantiated theory to either

For me it's just common sense. It probably came from the coronavirus lab with a bad safety record it popped up next to. Duh. And I "push" it because I value the truth and want to live in a rational society where the truth isn't gamed for emotional or political reasons. And that's probably the same for most of us.

> For me it's just common sense

> Duh

This is the kind of argument one makes when they don't have an argument

It's so obvious that an appeal to common sense is all that's necessary. How many markets do you think are in China? 100,000? 1,000,000? And how many of those are within driving distance of the one lab where:

- They study novel coronaviruses - They sampled the same regions where the closest relatives to the virus were found - They applied to put a furin cleavage site in a coronavirus before the pandemic - They were cited in diplomatic cables for poor safety standards - The database containing records of the viral sequences was taken down right before the pandemic - A scientist working at the lab at the time of the origin disappeared - A scientist who patented a coronavirus vaccine a few months into the pandemic "jumped off the roof"?

Does a lab accident not immediately jump out as the obvious leading possibility to you?

'Common sense' says that the thing which has occurred periodically throughout human history (plagues and epidemics) completely naturally and is occurring around the same period after the last one ('Spanish' flu of 1918-20) would have the same causes as those before it, but with accelerated time frames due to ease of travel and population density.

There have been plenty of lab leaks in history too.

There have been more cases of 'almost epidemic but for action by health officials' with SARS and avian flu etc which makes it 'common sense' that these things occur pretty frequently and would be happening more often naturally if not for luck and structures in place to mitigate them. Those structures also happened to be dissolved by the US leaders in charge at the time, which seems to fit the puzzle.

So, 'things happened before' are heavily tilted towards 'nature did it' in any case.

So tell me, looking at history, of all outbreaks that have occurred within 20 miles of a biolab studying the same disease family, how many were zoonotic versus lab accidental?

My common sense doesn't have that information on hand. Sounds to me like 'common sense' is a terrible way to try to investigate complicated things, eh?

from the WHO in 2006, page 236 on SARS: "the risk of a laboratory source is potentially greater"

  https://apps.who.int/iris/handle/10665/207501

That's great. I am countering the notion that evidence is not required because it is 'common sense'.

Actually you just said that common sense would indicate a natural origin, which was, at least in the case of SARS, just refuted.

No, I am saying that relying on 'common sense' is stupid because it can take you in any direction you want since you aren't going past a surface level evaluation. You just proved it by having to dig a little to try and refute my 'common sense' take.

>It's so obvious that an appeal to common sense is all that's necessary. How many markets do you think are in China? 100,000? 1,000,000?

This is why "common sense" is very often wrong and we have to refer to data instead. You're making assumptions that are very wrong.

The wet market was over 50,000 square metres in size and one of the largest in China. The idea that there are hundreds or millions of these things is completely backwards.

The conditions were unsanitary, animals were slaughtered on site, and large numbers of wild animals were sold.

This is exactly the sort of place you'd expect a zoonotic spillover event to occur. It was flagged beforehand as a danger site.

It's not impossible that it could have been a lab leak, but consider that this market had hundreds of thousands of animals being kept, slaughtered and sold, in unsanitary conditions, shitting and pissing on each other, bleeding everywhere and biting humans and each other.

Now compare that to a secure biolab holding a small number of samples whilst following biosecure protocols. Even if they weren't perfect, which environment provides the best chance of a spillover event?

Well, according to a quick search there are 40k wet markets in China. How big do you think the average wet market is? Even guessing 1000 square meters, which is very conservative, the wuhan wet market only represents about 0.1% of wet market square footage in China. By this back of the envelope math, the chance that a zoonotic spillover at a wet market would occur so close to the lab is less than 0.1%.

And sure, the wuhan market is a great place for a zoonotic spillover to occur, but any wet market would be, so the wuhan market in particular isn't the exact place you would expect. In fact I would expect it to occur at a market much closer to where the most similar viruses were found.

However, since the wuhan market is the enormous unsanitary market near the novel coronavirus lab, it is the exact place I would expect the first super spreader event to occur following a leak at that lab.

There is significant delay between lab leak in mid-September-mid-October 2019 and start of epidemic in December in Wuhan.

Can such contagious virus as SARS-CoV-2 cross the distance between lab in Wuhan and wet market in Wuhan in few days? Of course. In few months? No way.

fwiw... there were posts floating around at the beginning of 2020 claiming that the epidemic was well established in Wuhan by December, and that cases were seen back to September, October.

It's unfortunate in so many way - admit a mistake was made, acknowledge the problem, and clean it up is so much more respectful of everybody's time and resources. Between Asian traditions of saving face, and US traditions of lawyers suing anything that moves, that approach never stood a chance of course.

Yes, there is correlation between World Military Games in Wuhan in October 2019 and Covid[0].

Also, Russian media informed about spike of pneumonia cases in November 2019[1].

[0]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7813667/

Note: This page below crashes my browser (Firefox at Fedora Linux) even when requested from Wayback archive. Beware!

[1]: http://web.archive.org/web/20191119113457/https://www.1tv.ru...

Not all the early cases could be traced back to the wet market, so there is no reason to suspect it started there if you don't already suspect a zoonotic spillover origin. And exponential curves ramp up slowly at first.

Yes, covid was in the US months before we bothered to check and count cases. There were rumors of a virus spreading months before it was officially acknowledged

Most likely, Covid19 was introduced into USA from World Military Games[0], or from Russia in October-November 2019.

If someone went to Novosibirsk to check situation after blast at BSL4 lab "Vector", then (IMHO!) he may contracted the virus and spreaded it in USA after return, which (IMHO!) explains why USA three letter agency covers that blast.

[0]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7813667/

It’s absolutely not common sense, we have tens of thousands of years of evidence that viruses can evolve to cause human illness, and zero documented examples of a man-made novel virus doing so.

It would be an extraordinarily rare and noteworthy event in human history. The bar to prove that it happened to cause COVID is very high and the direct evidence (not circumstantial) for it is so far very low.

Did GP imply if a virus was leaked it must be man-made? Obviously the fact that the exact virus hadn't been seen before is suggestive of that but it's not inconceivable the lab happened to have samples of a never-before-seen naturally occurring virus that they were planning to do research on. That wasn't the same lab that released the first genome sequencing of the virus though (I gather it was in Shanghai). Not sure how virus research is usually done but I would have thought genome sequencing would be one of the first procedures you'd undertake, and there's no suggestion the Wuhan lab had done such sequencing (implying if they had, it was covered up).

Btw this seems to be a pretty thorough and technical overview of the various hypotheses: https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/mbio.00583-23 It concludes zoonotic origin to be the most likely, though certainly doesn't rule out other alternatives.

Imperiale, the last author is a known gain of function proponent with a history of downplaying the possibility of a lab leak

https://twitter.com/emilyakopp/status/1620884457032155136?t=...

> Did GP imply if a virus was leaked it must be man-made?

This is what the “lab leak” theory is. It’s why every conversation of lab leak is tied up with comments about gain of function, etc.

The interesting thing about SARS-COV-2 is that it can infect humans and cause illness (unlike the vast majority of known viruses). When people talk about the origin of the pandemic, it is the origin of this property specifically that they mean. The lab leak theory is that this property originated in a lab.

The paper I linked to above has as one hypothesis that it was a naturally occurring virus, cultures of which had been stored or worked on at the lab, and "leaked" by way of infection of workers there. Seems just as plausible as some source virus having been manipulated to increase its infectiousness to humans.

I think real risk is testing these chimera viruses on mice with humanized cells.

Letting viruses evolve in-vivo is the problem especially when they are so viral.

There needs to be limitations on what R is allowed to be produced in-vivo, even more so because calculating the risk of virality of the outbreak is trivial if in-vitro studies are done.

Chimera virus. You mean like a spike protein expressing VSV? Do you think that (pseudo virus) requires a higher or lower BSL certification to work with than bonafide Coronavirus? Why?

And why are you worried about humanized mice and not human cell lines like HEK or CALU? Why not primary cells or organoids? Somewhere the “Outbreak” monkey is crying.

I admit that I am being a bit snarky and passive aggressive here; but for the past few years I have watched people butcher bioscience in online discussions. Imagine being a classically trained pianist and having to watch people misattribute all of Mozart’s work to Brahms. It is enough to drive anyone mad.

A classically trained pianist's profession does not carry the risk of killing millions of people! There is zero proof outside of circumstantial conjecture that SARS2 has a natural origin. Up to 20 million people have died due to an animal virus modified to be highly infectious towards humans and you expect everyone to just take your word for it?

I mean it sucks if it hurts your career or impacts your profession, but highly dangerous work needs to be reviewed and banned if need be!

Humanity > Your personal career

To be fair, vaccines can be created in a matter of days now so the benefit of gain of function research to anticipate the virus that will cause the next pandemic is modest at best.

Temper this proposed modest benefit with the potential cost in terms of human adapted viruses being accidentially/intentionally released in the wild given the vagaries of both biolab security protocols in the labs accross the world conducting this kind of research and individual human psychology makes the justification of such research a pretty hard sell.

I think a lot of it comes down to: if it has happened once, it is likely to happen again. If it was indeed a leak from WIV, which ended up killing millions, then what can we do to prevent that kind of thing from happening again in the future? Surely some more transparency would be helpful toward that goal.

> You can explain one of the many reasons why gain of function research is necessary: anticipating next year’s version of the flu, designing drugs and vaccines such that resistance mutations reduce evolutionary fitness.

None of these require gain of function research.

> You can explain some of the safeguards in place: BSL 3/4 facilities, regulatory / institutional oversight, security services, etc.

All of these have a long history of failures [1,2]. And those are just the acknowledged, some have actually been covered up [3].

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

[2] https://www.amazon.ca/Pandoras-Gamble-Leaks-Pandemics-World/...

[3] https://health.wusf.usf.edu/health-news-florida/2023-04-25/d...

> None of these require gain of function research.

Please elaborate on this. How should I go about anticipating which mutations in which genes / protein will result in resistance to a candidate therapy / molecule / mechanism that I am considering advancing into phase 1 trials?

It is dangerous to play bio-engineer, and then handle what you create like Gomer Pyle.

It's really arrogant to think that any argument for a moratorium must be based in lack of information.

If this research indeed caused the pandemic (and might cause more), do those things make the juice worth the squeeze?

A chance at a better flu vaccine doesn't seem like enough reward for what we all went through.

The answer is simple: yes.

I'm honestly under the impression that people are just too irresponsible to do some things. People are not machines who go into a bsl 4 lab and do proper safety precautions each and every day without slipping or becoming lax. If you have a lab making viruses, eventually, it will escape. If the viruses they are making are capable of shutting the whole world down for a year, then we really need to ask whether we should have them.its not a question of "is doing this useful?", because I'm sure it is. It is a question of is this worth doing even though we know it will inevitably go bad? You can talk about all the precautions and regulations you want, if people are involved then eventually someone or a group of someones will do something idiotic or malicious and break everything. There's literally an entire Wikipedia page about lab outbreaks. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_laboratory_biosecuri...

A few problems with this. First modifying wild animal viruses to be infectious towards humans is different than modifying human viruses to model potential mutations. Modifying animal viruses to be infectious towards humans has done nothing but cause risks. Despite this research being conducted for almost a decade it has yet to predict or prevent any pandemic and probably started this one.

Additionally the idea that modifying animal viruses to easily transmit towards humans will allow us to develop vaccines is absurd. You can't test a vaccine that is not circulating in humans, so trails can not start until the pandemic has already started.

So yes, there should be moratorium on research that modifies infectious diseases! The public has a right to consent on whether such research is worth the risks.

I frankly can't think of a more dangerous thing humanity can be doing than gain of function research.

Especially if done near population centers.

By this standard, the only people sufficiently qualified to make policy regarding this research are the people currently cashing checks to perform this research.

See any issues there?

You either recall wrongly or are looking at the wrong set of population in the world.

There was a lot of conflation, but it was almost entirely from the people attempting to debunk it, using the bioweapon one to claim no leak could happen. It was like they just couldn't understand those were two different things no matter how much people said "no, that's not what I'm saying".

Or like they were pretending that they couldn’t understand.

I find it deeply disturbing that excuses as flimsy as "hate" or "possible hate crime reaction" would be used as justification to suppress the truth, especially with a situation as grave as COVID-19. Who is to say whether the uptick with Asians is causation and not just correlation? Meanwhile, thousands of Americans were dying daily during the peak of the pandemic. Everyone was scared, needed to know what was going on.

The average person was much more worried about the potential harm to millions of citizens than a much smaller uptick in one particular sector. It's of paramount importance that we don't repeat the mistakes that led to the pandemic in the first place. The only way we can do that is getting to the bottom of what happened.

If "possible Asian hate crimes" was the best excuse that the censorship industrial complex could come up with, then it is clear to me that any excuse would have done, and the conclusions I draw is that the suppression was 100% politically motivated. I want to know who was involved in making the decision to suppress, and to what ends they were trying to shape public opinion. At the minimum I want to know who I should be working to vote out of office.

How can I know who to vote for when we're normalizing lying as a justifiable policy up and down the chain of government communication and mass media?

It wasn't just the lab leak theory going around though, it was extremely tightly coupled with the "COVID bioweapon" conspiracy which really tainted it especially in the early days when there really wasn't much more info available other than it was first detected as a big outbreak in the same city as the coronavirus lab. In an ideal situation they'd be separable but they were so closely deployed trying to address the bioweapon conspiracy caught a lot of less out there discussion of the lab leak.

Also important though is it never really went away. For all the talk of censorship and suppression the possibility of a lab leak never left the investigation. It's also a very difficult thing to investigate without access to the labs to see what strains they were working on looked like which we still don't have afaik. It's been a process of eliminating other possiblities to some extent as other vectors that could be looked into were and turned out to be less likely.

> Also important though is it never really went away.

Sort of true -- but only because you can't kill the idea, the need to find the cause of the pandemic to avoid a repeat.

This is cold comfort to the people who were getting banned had their accounts cancelled for suggesting things that turned out to be actually true.

There's was a lot of collateral damage here, all in the name of... well I'm not sure. Trust is hard to build, and once broken takes a long time to regain.

The point is, as a society we're heading in the wrong direction. Freedom of speech is becoming freedom for those who keep their mouths shut.

I never believed it was a bioweapon.

Why? Because China was behind on vaccine development, and when they finally produced on it was not only late, but barely functional.

Late is one thing - if you release a bioweapon, it's far too suspicious to release a co-developed vaccine simultaneously.

But ineffective?

When it got out the WHO was parroting China's talking points from day one - it's not airborne, that's just a racist conspiracy. It was nuts.

And from the same group that was ignoring the big red flags from Taiwan's early warning system (Taiwan, who incidentally is refused membership as part of the world's China appeasement policy).

Then China shutdown domestic travel from Wuhan, while still allowing it internationally.

They didn't develop it as a bioweapon - but that did not stop them from weaponising it after the fact.

> Then China shutdown domestic travel from Wuhan, while still allowing it internationally.

Lie[0]:

> On April 21, Ferguson provided an “update” to his April 5 column in which he acknowledged, “Data from sensors tracking actual flight paths would seem to indicate that no flights left from Wuhan itself to other countries in the world after January 23.”

[0] https://www.factcheck.org/2020/05/trumps-flawed-china-travel...

The Chinese government responded to Covid the same damned way they responded to SARS; with a cover up - no joke, they were arresting doctors.

The biggest difference was that we didn't have someone like Gro Harlem Bruntlant [1] to competently handle the WHO's response [2] and call them out for their bullshit.

Both China and Taiwan looked at the SARS outbreak, and made efforts to prevent it from happening again.

Taiwan set up a robust early warning system in order to detect and contain such outbreaks in the future.

China on the other hand, set out to inject themselves into the WHO to protect themselves from future embarrassment [3].

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gro_Harlem_Brundtland

[2] - https://www.who.int/news/item/05-07-2003-sars-outbreak-conta...

[3] - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19771957/

It is funny how you say it so nonchalantly that the reason for not discussing lab leak theory is it lead to "marked rise in violent attacks on anyone of Asian descent". However none of this applies to rhetoric against Russia, Middle East or any such country where US is at War with right now. How come no US citizen is attacking Russians, or Middle Easterners (Libyans, Syrians, Iraqis, Afghans etc) in US soil when the Media is 24 x 7 discussing how these countries are the "Enemy" of the United States? Do you not see the dichotomy here?

It totally feels orchestrated. Someone somewhere in the US establishment needed an excuse to not discuss about the lab leak theories. So the attacks on people of Asian descent turned out to be the perfect excuse. That's what it comes across to me as an observer of US politics. There is literally no reason for censoring information on discussion of a lab leak that did not even happen on US soil but in Wuhan. If you can discuss Russia, 9/11, terror attacks in various parts of the globe, without US citizens going bonkers and attacking people of those races, I am pretty sure discussing lab leak theory would not piss US citizens off that much. But bring in race attacks angle and you have the people by your side asking for and justifying censorship.

Let me ask you another question: How do you think people in Asia discussed the COVID pandemic? Did people in China not question their own government (CCP) and its role in the pandemic? How sure are you that they all believed that the virus did not come from the Wuhan lab but, as per CCP, came from the West?

However none of this applies to rhetoric against Russia [...] How come no US citizen is attacking Russians [...]

Quoting https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/03/03/anti-russia...

As Putin’s invasion of Ukraine intensifies, some Russian-themed businesses and Russian Americans in the United States are suddenly getting a frosty reception — and in a few cases, experiencing outright hostility. A Russian restaurant in Washington, D.C., called Russia House, was vandalized and the owner indicated that he thought anti-Russian sentiment might be to blame. Some Russian Americans say their children are being bullied at school.

“Americans were encouraged to sympathize with the people of Russia rather than the government. And that seems to me to be what is really different from what we’re seeing now, where you see people at protests with signs saying all Russians are to blame for Putin’s aggression,” he said.

Thulien pointed to another incident in which the parents of a close friend, a couple in their 80s, had their car scratched and vandalized overnight this week.

Also note that in the context of the US culture war, Russia is seen as an ally against the 'woke left', leading to the bizarre situation where Putin himself made references to Harry Potter author JK Rowling in a speech about the invasion of another sovereign country. This might shield Russians against at least some antagonism from that part of the political spectrum.

Okay and have these attacks stopped coverage against Russia in the US media? If the argument for censoring lab leak discussion is "attack on Asians" then why isn't coverage on Russia censored for "attack on Russians"?

I don't believe the main reason for suppression (insofar as that happened) and ridicule of the lab leak theory was a reasoned evaluation of any negative consequences. Rather, it became a partisan issue, and instead of being seen as an independent hypothesis that one should evaluate on its own merits, it became part of a whole package contentious issues (masks, vaccines, ivermectin, ...) that divided people along party lines. That the lab-leak hypothesis was pushed by the conspiracy crowd of course did not help.

There's a whole lot of Russian expats who have been quite vocal in supporting the war against Ukraine by Russia.

When Russians complain they're being victimised, it might behold you to consider that "Russian" is pretty much not an identifiable group amongst the wide range of eastern Europeans who have immigrated - including Ukrainians.

So when Russians complain they're being mistreated, is worth asking what they were doing at the time. Because it tends to be vocally supporting the Russian invasion[1] or the whole idea of it is being straight up invented and pushed by Kremlin propaganda agents[2].

[1] https://www.rferl.org/a/germany-pro-russia-rallies-discrimin...

[2] https://time.com/6257372/russia-ukraine-war-disinformation/

The point I was making is not whether Russians feel mistreated or Asians feel mistreated etc. That is a separate debate. I am only making a limited point on "Lab leak theory was censored because it lead to rise in Asian hate crime". This makes absolutely no sense to me. Investigating possible lab leak theory that lead to one of the worst pandemics in recent times should be done irrespective of whether there is hate crime or not. Both have no correlation. And investigation can be done behind the scenes too. The problem is that there was absolutely no attempt at doing proper investigation. Whether it leads to conclusion or not is secondary.

You introduced Russia not me, and my point is that your example isn't even slightly equivalent.

It is 100% equivalent. You are saying we will censor A topic because it will hurt X race. In the same breath, you will not censor B topic even if it hurts Y race. That is hypocrisy. Everyone sees through it. Some may choose to be blind to this hypocrisy. And that is not my problem.

Again, I'm not saying anything about that. I am saying that public opposition to some Russian persons is not because they're Russian it's because of their direct public actions and statements - as cited in my original post.

Claims of an anti-Russian bias or set of hate crimes is literal Kremlin propaganda which amongst other things was used to justify the Ukraine invasion, the South Ossetia invasion in Georgia, and has been a general talking point as to why Russia should consider invading many other of its neighbours.

Are you sure there was absolutely no attempt at doing a proper investigation? I wasn’t super fixed on the news at the time, but I do remember a number of reports, fact finding trips, etc by international and governmental bodies trying to investigate the origins.

There is absolutely not attempt at doing a proper investigation of blast in BSL4 lab "Vector", Novosibirsk, Russia on Sep 16 2019 and following epidemic of unknown origin in Siberia, which caused hospitals overwhelmed

Wuhan was hit by strain B in December. Strain A, original virus, was released about 2 months before that. Where it was for 2 months?

Because you can't blame dear grandpa's death on Russia maybe however you try ?

I am pretty sure 9/11 - War on Terror saw a rise in aggression of muslim looking people even though it concerned less people than covid did.

You're pretending there was no such thing as people on TV blaming it on people eating "bat soup" and stuff like that.

When lab leak hypotheses were able to rise above the conspiracy theories thanks to reasonable argumentation, it was finally heard. At first only on HN, thanks to which I first gave credence to the hypothesis and now you here you have it in mainstream media. It all takes time and debate, it's normal.

The only conspiracy I see is from people, whether in the state apparatus or the scientific community that really did not want people to look too much into Gain OF Function research. I think the existence of such research and democratic control over is the debate now worth having.

> Because you can't blame dear grandpa's death on Russia maybe however you try ?

And what does it have to do with State censorship of information? The State has no societal relationships (like grandpa/grandma/brother/sister/husband/wife/son/daughter etc) that can pressure it to shutdown flow of information. We are talking about State apparatus censoring information here. With Big Tech actively aiding it.

> You're pretending there was no such thing as people on TV blaming it on people eating "bat soup" and stuff like that.

I am not pretending anything. Also people blaming people eating "bat soup" has nothing to do with lab leak theory. Both are totally different issues altogether. I don't see how they are related?

> At first only on HN, thanks to which I first gave credence to the hypothesis and now you here you have it in mainstream media.

Many of us knew it from the very beginning once the censorship started that it has to do with lab leak. The only ones interested in suppressing information are the ones who have something to hide. Age old adage.

> It all takes time and debate, it's normal.

No it is not normal. Even post 9/11 no conversation was censored in US media. Even conspiracy theories were not snubbed or wiped off. Censorship was rampant only post COVID. It only tells me, as an observer of US politics, that the people high up in the US establishment, who had a stake in the Wuhan lab, had something really nasty to hide.

> The only conspiracy I see is from people, whether in the state apparatus or the scientific community that really did not want people to look too much into Gain OF Function research. I think the existence of such research and democratic control over is the debate now worth having.

Exactly. But having a debate now is mostly useless anyways. Whatever window of opportunity we had to investigate lab leak theory is now long gone. All the actors who wanted to cover their tracks have now had enough time to do so. So even if you are able to prove that lab leak did occur (to some degree) it won't lead to any indictments. And with an authoritarian CCP, good luck getting any leads directly from the labs itself.

Most post COVID conspiracy theories have actually come true. Be it mask mandates, lockdowns, GoF, harmful vaccine side effects or lab leak theories. In a couple of years we will have even more information about why information was censored and who were behind this censorship. Such things cannot be hidden for long. That's a given. But what we lose out now on is the scale of the things that went on behind the scenes. Now that these nefarious actors have had enough time to clean their evidence, even if you find any evidence it would be really weak leading to no indictments/charges forget prosecutions and convictions.

> No it is not normal. Even post 9/11 no conversation was censored in US media

No true. 9/11 was a nearly perfect military industrial play and no one could publicly question the US actions post the event. It felt like a lockstep war machine with vengeance at an all time high. You must’ve not lived through it.

Was born in late 80s. Lived through all of the major events post that. And no you could publicly question everything back then. There were no calls for cancellations or boycotts just because you believed in controversy theories.

Look up 9/11 Truthers movement and "Bush Did It!" to get an idea of the conspiracy theories that emerged right after 9/11. The "Bush Did It!" rallies took place in September 2002, just 1 year after 9/11.

Personally I don't believe in the 9/11 Truthers movement but I wouldn't even know about it if COVID level censorship was adopted back in 2001. Mainstream media was very different back then. Compared to what it has devolved into now.

> And no you could publicly question everything back then.

You're remembering things through rose-colored glasses. Ellen DeGeneres and Laura Dern, Bill Maher and the Dixie Chicks can tell stories of what happened in the 90s and 2000s when you went against the mainstream. In fact, people were cancelled over the silliest things (remember nipplegate?). Government censorship was also alive and well: Under the Bush junior administration, NASA and EPA scientists were not allowed to use the phrase 'global warming'.

State is mainly concerned with public order as far as I can tell. What you call "State censorship" I call State asking politely CEOs who are in the same social class as most politicians to stop the spreading of (alledgedly false) rumors. And rumors, howevever false, have often cause a great deal of social unrest. The reason it happens now and it did not happen it 2001... Well had you heard of Youtube in 2001 ? Facebook ? Probably not, I know I didn't. All powers have somewhat regulated information, the US is a society where you can say almost anything except calling people to go and kill ${group). I haven't heard of a lab-leak these proponent having been arrested, nor websites taken down etc... This my friend is state censorship. Now if your concern is that most media is owned by billionaires and private law is law on their platform, well ok, but that's another concern.

> Also people blaming people eating "bat soup" has nothing to do with lab leak theory. Both are totally different issues altogether. I don't see how they are related?

Because the bat soup people where the first one to jump on the lab-leak theory. That did not help the cause. We use network of trust to digest information. I don't have no trust in people saying crazy stuff even though they might sometimes be right.

> Exactly. But having a debate now is mostly useless anyways. Whatever window of opportunity we had to investigate lab leak theory is now long gone. All the actors who wanted to cover their tracks have now had enough time to do so. So even if you are able to prove that lab leak did occur (to some degree) it won't lead to any indictments. And with an authoritarian CCP, good luck getting any leads directly from the labs itself.

I don't agree. It didn't matter more at the time to know if it was a lab-leak or not, situation had to be handled. Now that there's less urgency maybe we can investigate the dark corners and do something about it so it won't happen again. It m atters more than ever.

> Most post COVID conspiracy theories have actually come true. Be it mask mandates, lockdowns, GoF, harmful vaccine side effects or lab leak theories

How are mask mandates and lockdowns conspiracists predictions turned true... ? The real conspiracy was not telling people they should wear masks to protect others because there wasn't enought for everybody. How was lockdown a conspiracy rather that government trying to pretend they were doing something ? I don't think the economy benefited fromt that\

Harmful vaccine side effects ? What about getting covid side-effects ? Listen you would have caught it no matter what and it would probably be worse. The discrepancy between deaths of vaccinated and unvaccinated people should tell you much.

GOF was known before too, it just wasn't in the public eye

> Because you can't blame dear grandpa's death on Russia maybe however you try ? I am pretty sure 9/11 - War on Terror saw a rise in aggression of muslim looking people even though it concerned less people than covid did.

And yet there was no censorship on conspiracy theories about the CIA being behind 9/11, for instance.

So, the reason we didn't see CIA being behind 9/11 story in the Wall Street Journal because that actually it wasn't censored?

In contrast to the lab leak theory which made the front page more than once, was actually the was much more heavily "censored".

At the time the US had a president that routinely used race-baiting as a divisive political technique. He admired Vladimir Putin and defended Russian actions, so the Russian people weren’t a subject of his attacks.

That's a weird way to defend censorship of lab leak theory. Whatever floats your boat I guess.

> At the time the US had a president that routinely used race-baiting as a divisive political technique

What exactly did the US President, at that time, say specifically that exacerbated attacks on Asians, after breakout of COVID, and more importantly could be used as a justification for Worldwide censorship of lab leak theory? Don't forget that the lab leak theory was being suppressed on behest of the US Government by Big Tech and that suppression of information was not limited to just the US but entire World. As far as I remember, Trump was only the President of USA. He wasn't the President of the World. So you can't blame Trump if Big Tech is doing a Worldwide censorship of lab leak theory. I don't buy that argument at all.

I’m not defending anything about a lab leak. I’m addressing the previous poster’s question about why there were attacks on Asian Americans and not Russian ones.

The lab leak theory and weaponization theories were never squelched. The right wing in this country fantasizes that their viewpoints are marginalized while having their most extreme viewpoints broadcast on the top watched news programs in history. The idea that the lab theories were squelched was floated by those very same programs as part of their promotional formula.

> At the time the US had a president that routinely used race-baiting as a divisive political technique.

This is at least as true now and in 2015

> These conspiracy theories lead to a marked rise in violent attacks on anyone of Asian descent in the US

Where? Can you back this up with clear evidence? And assuming this claim isn't simply made up, in what universe would it be a good strategy to address a USA specific problem by systematically and globally destroying the credibility of the entire scientific, media and public health establishment? The solution to violence is police; no one in their right mind would decide the best solution to this would be to establish a global conspiracy.

No, the above is all retroactive justification. We have the emails from the virologists as they planned the letter that claimed it was all a conspiracy theory. They weren't motivated by violent attacks. They were worried about being blamed for it, and that maybe it'd be harder to fund work in China in future. They say that, in writing.

The news was reporting on anti Asian feelings prior to covid. When covid hit this automatically became racist. Wearing a mask was racist. Bizarre. It caused many to ignore media/leaders because they were so obviously off base and constantly proven wrong and backtracking they lost credibility.

> Wearing a mask was racist

Not sure what crazy publications you all were reading.

“There was a very well coordinated and intentional conflation of the term "lab leak" with the conspiracy theories”

Only by those wishing to shutdown legitimate discussion.

So back to the original question. Who was behind trying to change the narrative.

Dr. Fauci’s emails have shown he orchestrated deceiving the public. I’m not sure that is sufficient to explain the total media backlash against a lab-leak.

I don’t think people attacking Asians had that nuanced of a motive. More like: it came from Asia so they resented Asians, regardless of whether it was designed or leaked or whatever.

Combating marginal conspiracy theories with a real mainstream media/government conspiracy. Surely that did way more harm than good.

This is some amazing damage control well done

I can, and will, continue to advocate and affirm that criticizing the Chinese Communist Party - and people with Chinese descent - are 2 very different things, and that the former is acceptable.

Yea, unfortunately the conspiracy theorists hijack talking points and social media platforms amplify their bullshit to the extreme.

Meanwhile they ignore all the near misses the US seems to have with anthrax and smallpox being misplaced in US labs every year lol.

“conspiracy theories lead to a marked rise in violent attacks on anyone of Asian descent in the US,”

Extremely dubious.

Your first paragraph was on point. Then you descend into ideologically driven speculation. You also seem to not grasp the basic chronology of how the early pro-China slant of the WHO plays into the whole gestalt. And overlook the fact that social media companies are filled with government workers who are paid to manipulate (censor) views that don’t align with those of the government, a government who in this case funded the research that caused the pandemic.

Hiding the truth because some bad people might do bad things is a pitiful excuse. Absolutely shameful to anyone with even a teardrop of integrity.

Few people want war with China. But I know of plenty that think China should be footing the bill and paying the entire world damages for their incompetence (or malice) in mishandling their bioweapon.

Communists have no integrity. ChiComs blamed the US for the virus, which is ironic, since the NIH knowingly or unwittingly (incompetence) funded it through Eco Health Alliance.

And yet maybe it was right?

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