Coronavirus and You - Page 694

On June 18 2023 19:07 BlackJack wrote:


This is such a nonsensical argument. Pretty much everything that violated the social media COVID misinformation policies was discussed in some way in the media. Are you suggesting that nothing was suppressed or censored on social media because the mainstream media was there to dole out the facts of the day they received from the experts?

On June 18 2023 19:40 Elroi wrote:

That's two different arguments.

1) Sure, the lab leak theory was not treated like the Tienanmen square massacre in Chinese media (ie, never ever mentioned). The lab leak theory was instead by and large treated as a right wing conspiracy theory. In the articles you linked on the last page it was basically equated with the Iranian Ayathollah's claim that Covid was an american bio-weapon. It's such an obvious example of how polarization and politicization destroyed rational public discourse during Corona. "Censorship" is perhaps a word that is too strong, I'll give you that, but at the same time I think it's fair to say that censorship comes in many forms. In this case it involved banning from social media, prevented monetization and public shaming.

Washington Post:

(...)

What the U.S. officials learned during their visits concerned them so much that they dispatched two diplomatic cables categorized as Sensitive But Unclassified back to Washington. The cables warned about safety and management weaknesses at the WIV lab and proposed more attention and help. The first cable, which I obtained, also warns that the lab’s work on bat coronaviruses and their potential human transmission represented a risk of a new SARS-like pandemic.

“During interactions with scientists at the WIV laboratory, they noted the new lab has a serious shortage of appropriately trained technicians and investigators needed to safely operate this high-containment laboratory,” states the Jan. 19, 2018, cable, which was drafted by two officials from the embassy’s environment, science and health sections who met with the WIV scientists. (The State Department declined to comment on this and other details of the story.)

(...)

The research was designed to prevent the next SARS-like pandemic by anticipating how it might emerge. But even in 2015, other scientists questioned whether Shi’s team was taking unnecessary risks. In October 2014, the U.S. government had imposed a moratorium on funding of any research that makes a virus more deadly or contagious, known as “gain-of-function” experiments.

As many have pointed out, there is no evidence that the virus now plaguing the world was engineered; scientists largely agree it came from animals. But that is not the same as saying it didn’t come from the lab, which spent years testing bat coronaviruses in animals, said Xiao Qiang, a research scientist at the School of Information at the University of California at Berkeley.

“The cable tells us that there have long been concerns about the possibility of the threat to public health that came from this lab’s research, if it was not being adequately conducted and protected,” he said.

There are similar concerns about the nearby Wuhan Center for Disease Control and Prevention lab, which operates at biosecurity level 2, a level significantly less secure than the level-4 standard claimed by the Wuhan Insititute of Virology lab, Xiao said. That’s important because the Chinese government still refuses to answer basic questions about the origin of the novel coronavirus while suppressing any attempts to examine whether either lab was involved.

(...)

Inside the Trump administration, many national security officials have long suspected either the WIV or the Wuhan Center for Disease Control and Prevention lab was the source of the novel coronavirus outbreak. According to the New York Times, the intelligence community has provided no evidence to confirm this. But one senior administration official told me that the cables provide one more piece of evidence to support the possibility that the pandemic is the result of a lab accident in Wuhan.

(...)

The Economist:

(...)

An origin among bats seems overwhelmingly likely for sars-cov-2, too. The route it took from bat to human, though, has yet to be identified. If, like mers-cov, the virus is still circulating in an animal reservoir, it could break out again in the future. If not, some other virus will surely try something similar. Peter Ben Embarek, an expert on zoonoses (diseases passed from animals to people) at the World Health Organisation says that such spillovers are becoming more common as humans and their farmed animals push into new areas where they have closer contact with wildlife. Understanding the detail of how such spillovers occur should provide insights into stopping them.

In some minds, though, the possibility looms of enemy action on the part of something larger than a virus. Since the advent of genetic engineering in the 1970s, conspiracy theorists have pointed to pretty much every new infectious disease, from aids to Ebola to mers to Lyme disease to sars to Zika, as being a result of human tinkering or malevolence.

The politics of the covid-19 pandemic mean that this time such theories have an even greater appeal than normal. The pandemic started in China, where the government’s ingrained urge to cover problems up led it to delay measures that might have curtailed its spread. It has claimed its greatest toll in America, where the recorded number of covid-19 deaths already outstrips the number of names on the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, dc.

These facts would have led to accusations ringing out across the Pacific come what may. What makes things worse is a suspicion in some quarters that sars-cov-2 might in some way be connected to Chinese virological research, and that saying so may reapportion any blame.

There is no evidence for the claim. Western experts say categorically that the sequence of the new virus’s genome—which Chinese scientists published early on, openly and accurately—reveals none of the telltales genetic engineering would leave in its wake. But it remains a fact that in Wuhan, where the outbreak was first spotted, there is a laboratory where scientists have in the past deliberately made coronaviruses more pathogenic.

(a long section detailing the evidence for a natural origin)

Filippa Lentzos, who studies biomedicine and security at King’s College, London, says the possibility of sars-cov-2 having an origin connected with legitimate research is being discussed widely in the world of biosecurity. The possibilities speculated about include a leak of material from a laboratory and also the accidental infection of a human being in the course of work either in a lab or in the field.

Leaks from laboratories, including bsl-4 labs, are not unheard of. The world’s last known case of smallpox was caused by a leak from a British laboratory in 1978. An outbreak of foot and mouth disease in 2007 had a similar origin. In America there have been accidental releases and mishandlings involving Ebola, and, from a lower-containment-level laboratory, a deadly strain of bird flu. In China laboratory workers seem to have been infected with sars and transmitted it to contacts outside on at least two occasions.

Here’s one I made earlier
Things doubtless leak out of labs working at lower biosafety levels, too. But how much they do so is unknown, in part because people worry about them less. And as in other parts of this story the unknown is a Petri dish in which speculation can grow. This may be part of the reason for interest in a lab at the Wuhan Centre for Disease Control and Prevention. A preprint published on ResearchGate, a website, by two Chinese scientists and subsequently removed suggested that work done there may have been cause for concern. This lab is reported to have housed animals—including, for one study, hundreds of bats from Hubei and Zhejiang provinces—and to have specialised in pathogen collection.

Richard Pilch, who works on chemical and biological weapons non-proliferation at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, in California, says that there is one feature of the new virus which might conceivably have arisen during “passaging experiments” in which pathogens are passed between hosts so as to study the evolution of their ability to spread. This is the “polybasic cleavage site”, which might enhance infectivity. sars-cov-2 has such a site on its spike protein. Its closest relatives among bat coronaviruses do not. But though such a cleavage site could have arisen through passaging there is no evidence that, in this case, it did. It could also have evolved in the normal way as the virus passed from host to host. Dr Holmes, meanwhile, has said that there is “no evidence that sars-cov-2...originated in a laboratory in Wuhan, China.” Though others have speculated about coincidences and possibilities, no one has been able, as yet, to undermine that statement.

Forbes:

The theory COVID-19 originated in a laboratory in Wuhan, China — and not naturally in wildlife — has emerged as an explosive claim pitting scientists, who remain skeptical of the claim, against Trump administration officials, who have rallied around the theory as the White House turns to deflecting attention away from criticism it faltered in its handling of the outbreak and casting blame onto China; here’s a timeline laying out the progression of the theory:

(gives a detailed timeline describing how the hypothesis gained traction)

China has become a target for Trump and Republicans looking to cast blame for the crisis in the U.S. The Trump administration has been faulted for its own response to the virus, and the theory that the virus spread from a lab has emerged as a potentially powerful way to change the subject. Still, Trump, Pompeo and other administration officials have yet to produce any public evidence supporting the claim. Scientists from multiple countries have said that evidence suggests the virus originated from wildlife, not a lab — and most intelligence agencies remain skeptical evidence can be found to prove any lab claim as well. A few scientists have suggested it’s possible the virus accidentally infected one of the researchers in the lab, but many scientists have dismissed the theory. The New York Times reported on April 30 that some U.S. intelligence officials are worried the pressure from Trump officials could muddy any assessments about the origins of the virus and be used as fodder in an ongoing political battle with China. An American intelligence report linking the origin of the outbreak to the Wuhan lab would have devastating implications for U.S.-Chinese relations.

CHIEF CRITIC
In an editorial, the state-controlled Chinese newspaper, the Global Times, wrote that Pompeo should provide evidence for his lab claim. "Since Pompeo said his claims are supported by 'enormous evidence,' then he should present this so-called evidence to the world, and especially to the American public who he continually tries to fool," the editorial said.

SURPRISING FACT
Scientists say that all seven known human coronaviruses originated in bats, mice or domestic animals.

TANGENT
On April 25, Politico reported that a memo from the National Republican Senatorial Committee instructed GOP campaigns to say China caused the virus “by covering it up” and that Democrats are “soft on China.”

BBC:

(describes the content of the cables, biolab safety protocols and security failures in detail)

Weren't there previous claims of the virus leaking from a lab?
Yes, almost as soon as the novel coronavirus came to light, there was speculation - much of it uninformed - about its origins.

One online theory that surfaced in January suggested the virus could have been engineered in a lab as a bioweapon. This allegation has been repeatedly dismissed by scientists, who note that studies show the virus originated in animals - most likely in bats.

Viruses can also be engineered for the purposes of scientific research. For example, studies may improve the ability of a pathogen to cause disease, to investigate how viruses could mutate in future.

But a US study of the coronavirus genome published in March found no signs it had been engineered. "By comparing the available genome sequence data for known coronavirus strains, we can firmly determine that Sars-CoV-2 originated through natural processes," co-author Kristian Andersen, from Scripps Research in California, said at the time.

Pathogens can be made to mutate in a laboratory without the directed manipulation of their genes. In so-called "passage experiments", viruses or bacteria are passed from one lab animal to another in order to study how the agents adapt to their hosts. Past experiments have succeeded in making viruses more transmissible between animals using this low-tech method. But, again, there is no evidence that this played any role in the origin of the novel coronavirus.

Then there is the allegation of an accidental release of a natural virus from a lab. The proximity of the Huanan Seafood and Wildlife Market in Wuhan, where the outbreak came to light, to at least two centres carrying out research on infectious diseases fuelled speculation about a link. In addition to the WIV, the city is home to another institute - the Wuhan Centre for Disease Control and Prevention.

(...)

But the predominant narrative about an origin at the food market had been questioned as early as January. A paper published at the time in The Lancet showed that, while most of the early Covid-19 patients had been directly exposed to the market, many others had no known link. However, it's also possible those other patients were connected in ways that aren't yet understood.

Dr Lentzos said the issue of the virus' origin was a "very difficult question", and added that "there have been quiet, behind-the-scene discussions... in the biosecurity expert community, questioning the seafood market origin that has come out very strongly from China".

But there is currently no evidence that any research institute in Wuhan was the source of Sars-CoV-2.

On 16 April, China's foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian addressed the matter at a news conference, telling journalists the World Health Organization's officials "have said multiple times there is no evidence the new coronavirus was created in a laboratory".

China has repeatedly been accused of lacking transparency in the early stages of the outbreak, and US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has said Beijing "needs to come clean" on what they know.

ABC News:

Coronavirus may have come from a Chinese lab, if you believe Donald Trump — but experts disagree

(short description of how the hypothesis gained traction in American politics)

Where does this theory stem from?

While this theory does not suggest the coronavirus was engineered at the lab, it does posit that a staffer may have accidentally been infected with the virus at the lab before spreading it throughout Wuhan.

To be clear, the US was not responsible for authoring this theory, but a number of prominent media organisations including Fox News, the New York Post, and the Washington Post have picked it up.

On April 14, the Washington Post revealed that senior US diplomatic officials from its Beijing embassy paid a visit to the lab over concerns about the safety of bat coronavirus experiments in 2018.

Unclassified diplomatic cables obtained by the Post said there was "a serious shortage of appropriately trained technicians and investigators needed to safely operate this high-containment laboratory".

(...)

But the bat coronavirus research project leader, Shi Zhengli, has categorically denied her lab's responsibility.

"I promise with my life that the virus has nothing to do with the lab," Ms Shi wrote on WeChat.

In a statement on its website from February, WIV said the allegations levelled against it were "causing great harm" and "interfering" with its response to the pandemic.

(gives a fairly detailed explanation of why most experts favour the zoonotic origin hypothesis)

2) This argument has been made by JimmiC a couple of time over the last pages (if I understand his posts correctly). In short you argue that since some bad people can't handle the truth (the racist harassing Asians in your example), some inconvenient truths must be withheld from the public. That is a very dangerous path and a slippery slope that leads to undermining of free speech and democratic freedoms in the long run. And it is also counterproductive since it emboldens people who actually believe in conspiracy theories - it is proof that the media is in fact lying to them not discussing inconvenient truths etc..

On June 18 2023 22:11 Elroi wrote:
maybenexttime, I don't have time to go through that wall of text right now, but I also think that that is beside the point.

Even if you can find articles discussing the lab leak hypothesis in good faith it doesn't end the discussion in the way you think (nor does it show that we are "clowns" as you put it...). I can probably find Russian articles criticizing the war in Ukraine. Does that mean that the public sphere in Russia is functional and not permeated by political propaganda or a generalized irrational suppression of some points of view?