Hacker News Reader

Comment by scoofy | Hacker News Reader

Also... I mean, unless I've created a false memory, I specifically remember that the discussion at the time was about a the virus literally being a bio-weapon, and not actually the entirely plausible, accidental escape of a virus.

I've always had a completely open mind about it, even if experts have repeatedly suggested that it's plausible, but unlikely.

Those prattling on about how "people called us crazy" that it was a WIV lab leak seem to completely misremember what was actually being discussed in April-May of 2020, and also seem to be trying to score political points in American politics, when it seems very obvious that the CCP should take the lion's share of any blame regarding any lack of transparency.

View on HN

I knew this would happen, so much so I'm pretty sure I even called it ahead of time. This happens so frequently that there ought to be a word for it.

Yes, some conservative personalities early on had pushed some dumb conspiracies about COVID-19 being a bioweapon. No, that was not the crux of the argument that the many scientists, journalists and internet commenters had when they argued in favor of the lab leak hypothesis. Now I personally was never very attached to the theory, but I absolutely believed that we should have researched whether or not COVID-19 was indeed leaked from a lab. An actual argument against my position was that we shouldn't as it would only further fuel racism, xenophobia and geopolitical tensions even if it were true. There was also a lot of backlash against researchers who wanted investigation into the lab leak theory, probably for similar reasons.

There's always amnesia about things like this, but I'm pretty sure COVID-19 has become a case study on how not to handle a pandemic. A lot of what happened gave people a legitimate reason to distrust authority, and if we pretend that never happened things will simply continue to get worse as it repeats indefinitely.

Again, I do agree that it was annoying seeing it become a political culture war issue about a conspiracy vs "trusting the science", but that is certainly not what I believe the majority of the lab leak hypothesis was angling for.

Wikipedia even helpfully separates the two ideas into separate articles.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_lab_leak_theory

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_misinformation#Bio-we...

> Yes, some conservative personalities early on had pushed some dumb conspiracies about COVID-19 being a bioweapon. No, that was not the crux of the argument that the many scientists, journalists and internet commenters had when they argued in favor of the lab leak hypothesis.

It's totally insane. GP is literally rewriting history and getting upvoted for it. I post a link to a Congress bill (linked from TFA), from 2023 under the Biden administration (so not Trump), saying "there's reason to believe COVID may have originated at the Wuhan lab" and I immediately get two downvotes.

It's as if the shills who tried to bury the lab leak posts back then (not the bioweapon ones, just the lab leak ones) were still actively trying to control the narrative. This time by explaining why it was normal to label everyone who talked about lab leak a "conspiracy theory cracknut" because they'd supposedly all be talking about bio-weapon (which they weren't).

> There's always amnesia about things like this, but I'm pretty sure COVID-19 has become a case study on how not to handle a pandemic. A lot of what happened gave people a legitimate reason to distrust authority, and if we pretend that never happened things will simply continue to get worse as it repeats indefinitely.

I totally agree.

The bill called for the declassification of any information related to the theory. Not a bill affirming where it came from. If there is no classified information confirming the theory, there is no reason for Biden not to sign it.

It's not 'some conservative personalities' and it's amazing to see people here so blatantly try to gaslight others. It was the president of the United States pushing the lab leak hard before any evidence fell down and then republican officials following up with the argument that it was a bioweapon. The reason why they did it was because they wanted to give people a reason to distrust authority. That was part of the M.O even though the person pushing this stuff held the highest authority office in the land!

I'm skeptical of the lab leak theory regardless if it's Trump or Biden pushing it because ultimately the US government is going to use whatever it can as a political weapon against other countries. This doesn't mean it's not potentially true, nor does it make China right, but it means people should be inherently skeptical of any positions the US takes on stuff like this.

Good comment

> I mean, unless I've created a false memory

I'm pretty sure your memory is very faulty. Of all those saying it could be a lab leak, very few were talking it being a bio-weapon.

> Those prattling on about how "people called us crazy" that it was a WIV lab leak seem to completely misremember what was actually being discussed in April-May of 2020

Not at all. You are trying to rewrite history.

Here's the bill from Congress, march 2023:

https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/senate-bill/619...

    It is the sense of Congress that--
    
    (2) there is reason to believe the COVID-19 pandemic may 
     have originated at the Wuhan Institute of Virology;

People saying "people called us crazy" do deserve apologies, not downvotes.

EDIT: just to be clear... I'm not saying it was or it wasn't a lab leak. I'm saying that there's a Congress bill from march 2023 saying there's reason to believe it was a lab-leak. And hence all those who said it was a lab-leak and who were called "conspiracy theorists" do deserve apologies.

Not disagreeing with the overall premise, but:

> I'm saying that there's a Congress bill from march 2023 saying there's reason to believe it was a lab-leak.

Congress writing up a bill asserting stuff like this isn't exactly something I consider persuasive either way.

Until a cause is completely identified, there will always be "reason to believe". That doesn't mean that it's the most likely source or the most reasonable hypothesis.

The President was also claiming the virus came from WIV back in May 2020. It was a common theory in some media circles

That same president also claimed it would be gone by the summer of 2020. The same president even claimed it would never make it to the USA! Maybe this will be a case of a broken clock being correct twice a day but it was certainly thrown in with quite a bit of incorrect information that was being spewed at those daily briefings. I don’t blame anyone for being skeptical of the information coming out of the Trump administration during that time.

I don't blame people for doubting either, especially because it was mixed in with assertions on the right that COVID was a bioweapon gone rogue.

My point isn't whether it's credible, just that one of the most powerful people in the world expressed support for Lab Leak very early on

Isn’t it equally truthful to say there is reason to believe the COVID-19 pandemic may have originated elsewhere? Josh Hawley writing this into the bill does not make it anymore valid than the counter point to that statement.

This.

I have a few family members very deep in the weeds (QAnon, Cabal, One World Order type of crap) and they love to play this narrative. In reality it seemed like it was rather obvious to anybody who looked at the facts that this pandemic had dubious origins. Just a few of these were the close proximity, same family of viruses being researched, mysterious personnel changes around the time of the initial spread, etc., yet those same family members have turned any reluctance on my part to flat out declare this pandemic as a manufactured Chinese bioweapon into flat out denial of any chance of it being anything more than a big coincidence.

I guess it boils down to conspiracy theorists believing that you're either all in, or not in at all, and there exists no middle ground to wait for more facts before coming to a conclusion one way or the other.

I also feel like noting that I didn't engage in discussion on the topic with many other people outside of aforementioned family members on the topic, so who knows, maybe I would've been ridiculed for sitting on the fence, but anecdotally I definitely remember people seeing either source as a possibility (minus the Cabal manufactured pandemic to sterilize the human race one, of course).

I can never understand if someone actually believes this or is just actively gaslighting.

Anyone trying to discuss even the possibility of a lab leak was called xenophobic, a conspiracy theorist, banned from socials…

Funny thing when the “conspiracy theorists” keep turning out to be right.

Except they haven't at all, lol

By "the “conspiracy theorists” keep turning out to be right" do you mean like how Trump won the election in 2020, Biden is an actor, Obama has been hung for treason, people around the globe are dropping dead from the vaccine, etc.? These are the people I'm talking about when I speak about conspiracy theorists, people reasonably sitting on the fence when there is conflicting information are not. You speak in absolutes about how _everybody_ who presented the possibility of a lab leak was banned and labeled a xenophobe, and while I cannot speak onto your anecdotal experiences, I never saw this in any platform I participated on at the time, in fact (as I shared in another comment on this thread), I leaned towards the likelihood of a lab leak after getting recommended a very popular youtube video on the topic from a very popular channel. As far as I know, that video is still available, although it has obviously been a long time since I last watched it.

Part of how cults are started is creation of a us versus them mentality, often where it doesn't exist. I believe this is why so many conspiracy theorists with more extreme beliefs might misconstrue their experiences in discussion around the topic, when in reality those discussing the very legitimate possibility of a lab leak never got much flak (anecdotally, as I said).

Precisely this. I don't care to speculate, read, or give a single care in the world about this. I think the hope for stopping GoF research is about as high a chance as the world "putting a pause" on AI. And this thread is littered with all of the usual conspiracy head-nods.

I think we should know more about the origins of COVID but I haven't seen a single discussion of this that doesn't immediately dove-tail into various other conspiracies or whistles.

And I'm not making excuses for anyone or saying the CDC/Trump/Biden are blameless and innocent, but I kinda don't know what the point of these conversations are at this point.

> I haven't seen a single discussion of this that doesn't immediately dove-tail into various other conspiracies or whistles.

None ever will from your perspective if you're citing "head nods" and dog whistles.

I don't know what that's supposed to mean.

No, sorry not sorry, I don't really put much stock in the analysis of people that immediately link this into their unsubstantiated handwavey global conspiracies.

I've seen articles, research, professionals talking about the evidence. Which aren't headnods and whistles. And I read it. And that's why I don't have any strong opinion, contrary to whatever I think is being implied in your comment. But comments? Public discussion? It's the same thing every time.

Skepticism is this cool thing where instead of assuming an unclear premise and then immediately linking it to bigger, even less substantiated conspiracies theories that thereby reinforce how "true" my assumptions must be!!... I accept that I don't have the full picture.

> I haven't seen a single discussion of this that doesn't immediately dove-tail into various other conspiracies or whistles.

> None ever will from your perspective if you're citing "head nods" and dog whistles.

It means that if you consider mentioning the lab leak theory an automatic dogwhistle for bioweapon then of course every single discussion about these lab leak immediately dove-tails into various other conspiracies or whistles. It's circular reasoning and you're making it impossible to express nuance.

Well now you're definitely making up stuff I didn't say and don't think. Thanks but no thanks. Like, I'm pretty annoyed that what I did say managed to get that twisted in your head, especially when I took multiple attempts at indicating that I am doing my own research and keeping an open mind, but thanks for kinda just demonstrating my point. Waste of time. Speculative nonsense and infighting so someone gets to be right. It's just silly.

So we're very clearly, I absolutely 0% think that talking about a lab leak means the speaker thinks that it was an intentional bioweapon leak or something. At all. Like, that's just straight up strawmanning in my head, but you kinda just projected that on me...

You never said this?

> And this thread is littered with all of the usual conspiracy head-nods.

> I think we should know more about the origins of COVID but I haven't seen a single discussion of this that doesn't immediately dove-tail into various other conspiracies or whistles.

You literally said "I haven't seen a single discussion of this [the lab leak theory] that doesn't immediately dove-tail into various other conspiracies or whistles"

So where are the head nods and dogwhistles in this thread? At what point did this discussion, just like every single lab leak discussion you've seen, dove-tail into conspiracies and whistles? Because I don't see the whistles and head nods in the current thread about this (this being the lab leak theory). They're all either deleted or flagged at this point for me.

You're remembering incorrectly or your experience was narrow. At facebook, censoring discussion of a possible lab leak was literal written policy which wasn't changed until June of 2021: https://reason.com/2021/06/04/lab-leak-misinformation-media-...

And Twitter's files showed that the government (through multiple departments), members of Congress, and private companies were directly sending lists of hundreds of names of people to ban or deemphasize for talking about it.

From your own article, we learn that your claim is wrong:

> we will no longer remove the claim that COVID-19 is man-made or manufactured from our apps

This illustrates the problem nicely: because there was so much blatant lying about the virus being a bio weapon, people forget that there was all along more sober discussion about it being a possible leak of a natural virus and that those discussions were never banned.

You’re similarly misrepresenting what little was in the “Twitter files”, no doubt because terms of service violations are a lot less exciting.

You've created a false memory.

Even back then, there weren't any good counter-arguments against the "lab leak" theory (except "it's racist" because somehow "the Chinese are so filthy their food markets cause pandemics" isn't racist?!), so to censor it, the powers that be (Big Tech, Mainstream Media) instead attacked the adjacent, but very different "bioweapon" theory.

The most popular human origin theory was a lab leak. It was easier to argue against the crazies claiming a bioweapon so that's what most did and that's what got the most press. But the primary human origin story was an accidental release.

Accidental release and bioweapons research are not incompatible.

Bioweapons research and got infected in a lab that was at BSL 2 ARE incompatible. If you expect it to be able to infect humans, you are going to take more precautions.

The theory here is that they were doing research on animal models and didn't think that humans could catch it from mice. Therefore they took too few precautions, and it escaped through them.

People were being banned from twitter, youtube, facebook ext for mentioning lab leak... Now you want to gas light everyone saying "it was perfectly ok to talk about in 2020

That is not accurate at all...

> Facebook made a quiet but dramatic reversal last week: It no longer forbids users from touting the theory that COVID-19 came from a laboratory.

> "In light of ongoing investigations into the origin of COVID-19 and in consultation with public health experts, we will no longer remove the claim that COVID-19 is man-made or manufactured from our apps," the social media platform declared in a statement.

> [...]

> Consider that Facebook's new declaration sits atop its About page, just above the site's previous policy on coronavirus-related misinformation—dated February 8, 2021—which was to vigorously purge so-called "false claims," including the notion that the disease "is man-made or manufactured." The mainstream media had deemed this notion not merely wrong but dangerously absurd, and tech companies followed suit, suppressing it to the best of their abilities.

https://reason.com/2021/06/04/lab-leak-misinformation-media-...

I remember learning a lot of the reasoning behind why I thought it was most likely a lab leak from a video I got as a top recommendation on youtube from a rather large channel that had near or over a million views at the time, so anecdotally I think perhaps a lot of the people who got banned for their discussion on the topic were either grouped up with people positing more extreme possibilities, or just an example of over reach. Either way, I personally don't remember people presenting the possibility of a lab leak being shredded (at least on youtube, I can't speak for the other platforms as I use them very infrequently).

Do you have any examples of someone who was banned simply for saying it could have leaked, as opposed to lying about it being a man-made bio weapon? The latter was common in right-wing circles because it excused their leaders’ incompetent handling of the pandemic and scientists pretty quickly established there weren’t signs of genetic modification, but throughout the process there were people discussing the possibility of a sample leaking through a lab safety failure.

It was facebook[1] stated policy to prevent all discussion, so even if there was not a user level bann they were removing all posts and discussions about it

Twitter banned lots people for it (and other COVID "misinformation") it would be hard to point to a perfect example as often people that wanted to discuss lab leak also talked about masking, masking policy, vaccine efficacy, and Vaccine mandate policies. All of which were also forbidden topics. If you dared to speak out against "The Experts" at the cdc or WHO then you were either shadow-banned (i.e posts hidden, de-ranked, etc) or outright banned

[1] https://reason.com/2021/06/04/lab-leak-misinformation-media-...

Not everyone is terminally online mate. My experience mirrors theirs, lots of speculation and jokingly considering the various conspiracies at the time.

Bioweapon was definitely one of the options that was boosted by china's outlandishly overreacting at the start, welding people into their home etc

No you misremember.

Here I was ridiculed.

Specifically remember a columnist at Parool, a Dutch local newspaper, talking about it how he was pressured by colleagues days after just mentioning a column it might be from the Lab.

There was a consensus in the West it didn't came from the Lab, and those who suggested otherwise were non-scientific lunatics.

Shit, I remember arguing with people like him back when the whole pandemic started that it was a distinct possibility, one of several, that should be fairly evaluated like every other. And people like him just waved it off as conspiracy theory garbage like we're seeing here. Same shit, different day, except now with the flavour of gaslighting along with it.

It was wild.

The most obvious theory was ridiculed.

Some groups are very good at creating narritives in western media.

You fell for the straw man.

The media argued against the most outrageous and conspiratorial version of the lab leak theory to discredit it. They successfully made you associate lab leak with racist conspiracy

> the discussion at the time was about a the virus literally being a bio-weapon,

This was the part that media outlets and government seized upon to call any discussion of the lab leak theory racist. There was no "discussion" about covid being a "bio-weapon," it was a bunch of anti-China hawks repeating it over and over again based on absolutely nothing. They were so obviously nationalist anti-Chinese that the theory that covid happened because Chinese people are dirty and eat weird diseased things was able to be sold as the not-racist theory.

I definitely remember it being discussed as a lab leak on HN sometime from December 2019 to March 2020

> Also... I mean, unless I've created a false memory, I specifically remember that the discussion at the time was about a the virus literally being a bio-weapon, and not actually the entirely plausible, accidental escape of a virus.

If you've created a false memory, then I've created a similar one.

I remember very early some member of Congress saying it was a Chinese engineered bio-weapon deliberately released to cripple the US economy.

There were lots of narratives. The main one that was coming out was that it did NOT come from the WIV. That gain of function was NOT happening at the WIV. That it likely came from people outside Wuhan who brought it to Wuhan and that the the Wet market was not the source either (though the CCP was pushing that narrative, others were making it more vague saying it came from the hinterlands). A second narrative by skeptics/conspiracists was that it had escape the WIV and that the WIV was conducting gain of function research. A third fringe theory was that it was a bio-weapon (this idea is idiotic given the guaranteed blowback/footgun you would get)

Also people were being banned, shadowbanned, demonetized, etc. for proposing a lab-leak theory. But, I guess that's par for the course. Remember when politicians (I mean Nancy) said, unmasked, don't worry, go back to Chinatown and do business (slightly before they then imposed restrictions)

Also, don't forget, people who saw strange unexpected repetitions (filler) in the sequencing were scoffed at.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com