1) Is the report substantially correct?
2) Why do the Republicans think that this message will help them politically?
Bonus points to anyone who gets through that minefield insulting the intelligence of their political opposition.
“More likely than not..”
“More information is needed…”
“As noted by the WHO Scientific Advisory Group for the Origins of Novel Pathogens, the COVID- 19 Lancet Commission, and the U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence 90-Day Assessment on the COVID-19 Origins, more information is needed to arrive at a more precise, if not a definitive, understanding of the origins of SARS-CoV-2 and how the COVID-19 pandemic began”
So completely dismissing a report just because it “might” be politically motivated or came from 1 party shows your bias. HN usually dismisses the content of a report, not the author’s affiliations. When will we learn to stop picking sides?
Everything is political when you're trying to figure out why this disease was encouraged
(Torturing those who warn us of it is encouraging spread, no? Ignoring warnings from competent authorities is encouraging spread, no? Twitting out that there's no evidence of human to human spread while not verifying the claim is encouraging spread, no?
I mean, it was such a shitshow by the 10s of thousands of public officials whose job is to safeguard us from such an outcome that there's no way CYA isn't going to be the dominant motivation from those officials and they're superiors)
Since most of academia is liberal, aren't practically all the byproducts of that sphere inherently majorly biased? And no, the Stephen Colbert "reality has a liberal bias" line is a cheap and slimy holier-than-thou cop-out. If we use any of the standards that left-leaning people cleaved to for the entire pandemic and even before, i.e. how society is systemically (evil from) X or Y, how is that the most powerful institutions completely ignore their own flagrant systemic bias?
This assumes that most people let their ideology drive their science. And also, what is the source of the claim that most of academia is in fact liberal? Any hypothesis why? Liberals ganging up and pushing out conservatives, or voluntary non-participation by conservatives, or what?
Besides, since when is something being political a problem? You'd expect the party in opposition to investigate the wrongdoings of the government, that's part of their job.
“The voting machines are rigged…”
I like Bill Barr’s answer: “It’s all bullshit”
Going from one BS story to the next, seeing what sticks then saying “see we were right” is growing old.
How about providing evidence with each new theory.
Now did China engineer the virus, or was it one that they were studying and it escaped? I’m having a hard time keeping up.
Peer-review studies are not exactly trustworthy on this topic, are they? The peers in question are virologists and others who directly enabled their work.
- impossible to have ONLY rational discussion
- Unfashionable points of view being suppressed on HN by those with the numbers/power.
Here's some rational discussion which I was originally unable to post because the submission had been reflexively flagged and killed: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33370251
That being said, the corporate media and the politicians (mostly Democrats) who called this theory "preposterous" and a conspiracy deserve to be thrown out on their asses. Because those were talking points that had nothing to back them up. But when you're dealing with the "pandemic", what else is new?
It reports a significant finding:
> Based on the analysis of the publicly available information, it appears reasonable to conclude that the COVID-19 pandemic was, more likely than not, the result of a research-related incident.
Look at all of the cautionary language in this statement. This isn't a group of Republicans fear mongering. It's a group trying to make sense of the information that currently exists.
Knowing the origin of the pandemic is the only way we can hope to prevent the next one. This topic is not a political issue, it's a scientific and humanitarian one.
I knew it from the day 1; my layman understanding was that Covid variants in nature are not that virulent as Covid-19. Covid-19 was GOF experiment which went wrong in a sense that it lab leaked. Lab leaks happen all the time but not as impactful as this one. We should learn from our mistakes not sweep them under the carpet.
My understanding is that at the start of COVID19 scientists in related fields immediately assumed that a lab leak was the likely cause, and were dumbfounded to hear such a strong and immediate consensus (the Nature letter, for example) against such.
Honestly, that's terrifying to read. Do you have references to numbers of leaks or other information on the subject?
You can also search previous Covid related discussions here on HN for more information.
The answer to that is "we don't know". And the corollary, unfortunately, is "... but we can make a lot of political hay out of taking guesses."
Excerpt from the conclusion on p.26:
"Based on the analysis of the publicly available information, it appears reasonable to conclude that the COVID-19 pandemic was, more likely than not, the result of a research-related incident. New information, made publicly available and independently verifiable, could change this assessment. However, the hypothesis of a natural zoonotic origin no longer deserves the benefit of the doubt, or the presumption of accuracy."
(1) Hospice; he reported it as called the 'ghost room' as the rest of the occupants were terminal cancer patients.
