Covid Lab Leak Confirmed?

[Sociopathicsteelerfan]

(06-14-2023, 08:21 PM)StoneTheCrow Wrote: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/02/16/tom-cotton-coronavirus-conspiracy/

The theory was debunked in Feb 2020 apparently.

It's in The Washington Post, so it's got to be true.

[BengalYankee]

(06-14-2023, 07:52 PM)Nately120 Wrote: I was friends with one of the few black guys in town and when he came to our high school in 9th grade everyone asked him if he was in a gang and if he played basketball.  He just wanted to play soccer and go fishing, mostly.  A lot of racism is more laziness than malice, I think.

[*Nately120*]

(06-14-2023, 08:34 PM)BengalYankee Wrote:

I always thought that guy looked like a combination of the other guy from Miami Vice and every Indian man.

[Sociopathicsteelerfan]

(06-14-2023, 08:59 PM)Nately120 Wrote: I always thought that guy looked like a combination of the other guy from Miami Vice and every Indian man.

Tubbs, man.  The guy's name was Tubbs.  Show some respect!

EDIT:
As an aside, Don Johnson's daughter lived across the street from me when I lived in LA. I saw him a few times walking my pup, he was so little. It's crazy how small so many actors are.

[BengalYankee]

(06-14-2023, 08:59 PM)Nately120 Wrote: I always thought that guy looked like a combination of the other guy from Miami Vice and every Indian man.

Good Movie, but too bad movies like this "Soul Man"  and "Blazing Saddles" won't be made anymore. 

[*michaelsean*]

(06-14-2023, 01:59 PM)Crazyjdawg Wrote: I don't watch liberal news, so I have no idea what they were saying, but I always figured it was possible that it was a lab leak. Most likely unintentional but you never know. If liberal media people were saying it is racist to claim that, then just more reason for me not to watch them.

From my viewpoint, I thought the racism discussion was in response to the rise in hate crimes against Asian people by people who seemingly blamed China for the virus.

Like, you can think that a Chinese lab may have leaked the virus without hating Chinese people (especially Chinese or Asian people in America) for that. That's a reasonable thing to do. But once you start attacking Asian people in America because you think China leaked the virus, intentionally or unintentionally, then you've reached racist territory.

Viewed as generously as possible in favor of the liberal media, maybe they felt like people claiming this with no evidence (at the time) would lead to more attacks on Asian people in America, so they'd rather just shut down that discussion in fear of it creating panic among people that turns to violence?

After all, the people claiming this occurred weren't doing it because they had evidence that it occurred, they were just looking for a scape goat to blame for losing their job, losing loved ones or hating the new social distancing guidelines and the shaming associated with violating those new cultural expectations.

The battle to combat "misinformation" has always been a misguided one, in my opinion. If you censor people for saying something wrong, they're more likely to entrench in those beliefs, thinking you are censoring them "for fear of the truth getting out." It's a no win game. Just let people say stupid shit and, when necessary, counter them with accurate information if you have that available.

I would say that they can say there is currently no eveidence, but you can’t say it’s false unless you know it’s false.

[*michaelsean*]

(06-14-2023, 09:00 PM)Sociopathicsteelerfan Wrote: Tubbs, man.  The guy's name was Tubbs.  Show some respect!

EDIT:
As an aside, Don Johnson's daughter lived across the street from me when I lived in LA. I saw him a few times walking my pup, he was so little. It's crazy how small so many actors are.

Yeah it just doesn’t translate to the screen or they are good at making them look bigger.

[Millhouse]

Early on I didn't buy into the lab theory early on though I knew it was a definite possibility. I'll admit it. But now, I'm ok calling it the China Flu.

[*Nately120*]

(06-14-2023, 09:02 PM)BengalYankee Wrote: Good Movie, but too bad movies like this "Soul Man"  and "Blazing Saddles" won't be made anymore. 

Ida know, isn't the point of Blazing Saddles is how stupid and absurd all the white people are acting?  Sounds pretty at home these days if you're paying attention.

Soul Man is too dumb to take seriously, but it's not my place to say it's not offensive, though I can't imagine it really bugging people.

(06-14-2023, 09:00 PM)Sociopathicsteelerfan Wrote: Tubbs, man.  The guy's name was Tubbs.  Show some respect!

EDIT:
As an aside, Don Johnson's daughter lived across the street from me when I lived in LA.  I saw him a few times walking my pup, he was so little.  It's crazy how small so many actors are.

As a lover of absurd and unnecessary music I must admit I may have more than 0 of Tubbs' albums.

[NATI BENGALS]

I took the early identification of Wuhan as ground zero and then shortly after learning about the Wuhan Institute of Virology as a pretty big smoke signal going up. But didn't rule out the cross species considering bird flu and swine flu and the story of the fish market was a pretty good sell by the Chinese gov. And South Park said Randy banging a pangolin was the cause. So I thought we would never know the truth.

[StrictlyBiz]

(06-14-2023, 09:00 PM)Sociopathicsteelerfan Wrote: Tubbs, man.  The guy's name was Tubbs.  Show some respect!

EDIT:
As an aside, Don Johnson's daughter lived across the street from me when I lived in LA.  I saw him a few times walking my pup, he was so little.  It's crazy how small so many actors are.

Why was Don Johnson walking your dog? 

(I kid....I kid. My grammar and spelling are pretty shitty so Im not one to police it, but that's the way that I read it at first)

I guess the better question is....Was his daughter hot? How'd she look? I have this conception that celebrities usually produce good looking offspring. 

[*michaelsean*]

(06-15-2023, 07:56 AM)StrictlyBiz Wrote: Why was Don Johnson walking your dog? 

(I kid....I kid. My grammar and spelling are pretty shitty so Im not one to police it, but that's the way that I read it at first)

I guess the better question is....Was his daughter hot? How'd she look? I have this conception that celebrities usually produce good looking offspring. 

He has a pretty famous daughter named Dakota (50 Shades of Gray among others). Not sure if she is the one SSF is talking about.

[StoneTheCrow]

(06-15-2023, 02:46 AM)NATI BENGALS Wrote: And South Park said Randy banging a pangolin was the cause. So I thought we would never know the truth.

And South Park never misses. So while obviously it wasn’t the cartoon character, but SOMEONE defiled that poor pangolin.

[Sociopathicsteelerfan]

(06-15-2023, 07:56 AM)StrictlyBiz Wrote: Why was Don Johnson walking your dog? 

(I kid....I kid. My grammar and spelling are pretty shitty so Im not one to police it, but that's the way that I read it at first)

I guess the better question is....Was his daughter hot? How'd she look? I have this conception that celebrities usually produce good looking offspring. 

Yes, my grammar in that sentence was awful.

(06-15-2023, 08:28 AM)michaelsean Wrote: He has a pretty famous daughter named Dakota (50 Shades of Gray among others). Not sure if she is the one SSF is talking about.

Yeah, it was her.  She didn't live there long, just over a year.  Must have bought a new place with that 50 Shades money.  Dan Auerbach, from The Black Keys moved in after her.  Fairuza Balk lived three doors down, not to be mean but the years have not been kind to her.  Michael C. Hall lived directly across the street for about three years, I used to run into him all the time while we walked our dogs.  My old pup actually met a lot of celebrities.  They were filming on my street and she jumped on Ray Liotta when he was walking from set.  He was very nice about it and pet her for a moment.  Always liked him, but anyone who is good with animals goes up several notches in my book.  

It is funny, and not to derail my own thread, but living in LA some things are normal that would absolutely blow other people's minds. 

[*michaelsean*]

(06-15-2023, 12:12 PM)Sociopathicsteelerfan Wrote: Yes, my grammar in that sentence was awful.


Yeah, it was her.  She didn't live there long, just over a year.  Must have bought a new place with that 50 Shades money.  Dan Auerbach, from The Black Keys moved in after her.  Fairuza Balk lived three doors down, not to be mean but the years have not been kind to her.  Michael C. Hall lived directly across the street for about three years, I used to run into him all the time while we walked our dogs.  My old pup actually met a lot of celebrities.  They were filming on my street and she jumped on Ray Liotta when he was walking from set.  He was very nice about it and pet her for a moment.  Always liked him, but anyone who is good with animals goes up several notches in my book.  

It is funny, and not to derail my own thread, but living in LA some things are normal that would absolutely blow other people's minds. 

RIP Ray.  Goodfellas will always be one of my favorite movies, and I do believe I heard he was pretty cool.  Someday I'll get out to LA.  Reading the Bosch and Alex Delaware books where they kind of give you a tour interests me.  

[Sociopathicsteelerfan]

(06-15-2023, 02:39 PM)michaelsean Wrote: RIP Ray.  Goodfellas will always be one of my favorite movies, and I do believe I heard he was pretty cool.  Someday I'll get out to LA.  Reading the Bosch and Alex Delaware books where they kind of give you a tour interests me.  

Maybe put the visit off for a few years.  I lived in LA for close to twenty years and I still work in the area.  Seeing what it's deteriorated into is heartbreaking.  If we vote Gascon out next election and get a real DA in office things could turn around.  

[Dill]

I take the lab-leak issue seriously, in part because hyper-distrust of government and MSM fuels the kind of conspiracy thinking that makes government difficult to the point of unworkable. 

Two years ago there was a good op ed by Ross Douthat on the stakes of the lab-leak theory, which includes two very plausible hypotheses regarding forces shaping MSM reporting in the post-Benghazi/MAGA media environment. 

Why the Lab Leak Theory Matters
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/29/opinion/wuhan-lab-leak-theory-covid.html
...
The Chait-Yglesias argument is that this was a case study in media groupthink, and especially the way that putatively neutral institutions increasingly cover controversial questions...“based entirely on how they believe political actors will use the answer.” In this case, because the lab leak theory was associated early on with Republican China hawks like Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas, given prominence by conservative publications (Jim Geraghty of National Review has been an essential and evenhanded voice on the subject) and eventually picked up by the Trump administration, there was self-reinforcing pressure — among journalists who covered the story and Twitter experts who opined on it — to put the possibility in the QAnon box and leave it there.

I will leave it to the reader to consider how a similar pressure might manifest itself in other areas, from the 2020-21 murder spike to the recent rise in anti-Semitic violence, where journalists might wish to avoid making concessions to conservative interpretations of reality.

But let me offer a narrower addition to the media critique. One key change to mainstream journalism in the Trump era was the impulse to tell the reader exactly what to think, lest by leaving anything ambiguous you gave an inch to right-wing demagogy. It was not enough to simply report, “Republican politician X said conspiratorial-sounding thing Y.” You also had to specifically describe the conspiratorial thing as false or debunked misinformation, in a way that once would have been considered editorializing, so as to leave no doubt in the vulnerable reader’s mind.

I’m very skeptical that this achieved its intended purpose. (Has anyone drawn to a conspiracy theory been disabused by seeing it described as such in the mainstream media?) But even if it sometimes did, it also created expansive pressures to describe more and more things without any ambiguity and shading, and judge more and more right-wing claims pre-emptively. Which is only a good rule for a truth-seeking profession if you assume the day will never come when Tom Cotton has a point.

Strikingly, though, both Chait and Yglesias argue that this media critique is the most important thing we can take away from the Covid origins debate. “I don’t know if this hypothesis will ever be proven,” Chait writes of the lab leak theory, and “I don’t care,” because “there’s no important policy question riding on the answer.”

This seems mistaken. Yes, if we never figure out the truth of Covid’s origins, the dangers of media groupthink will be the only lesson we can draw for absolutely certain. But if we could find out the truth, and it turned out that the Wuhan Institute of Virology really was the epicenter of a once-in-a-century pandemic, the revelation would itself be a major political and scientific event.

First, to the extent that the United States is engaged in a conflict of propaganda and soft power with the regime in Beijing, there’s a pretty big difference between a world where the Chinese regime can say, We weren’t responsible for Covid but we crushed the virus and the West did not, because we’re strong and they’re decadent, and a world where this was basically their Chernobyl except their incompetence and cover-up sickened not just one of their own cities but also the entire globe.

The latter scenario would also open a debate about how the United States should try to enforce international scientific research safeguards, or how we should operate in a world where they can’t be reasonably enforced. Perhaps that debate would ultimately tilt away from China hawks, as David Frum argues in The Atlantic, because the lesson of a lab leak would be that we actually need “more binding of China to the international order, more cross-border health and safety standards, more American scientists in Chinese labs, and concomitantly, more Chinese scientists in American labs.” Or perhaps instead you would have an attempted scientific and academic embargo, an end to the kind of funding that flowed to the Wuhan Institute of Virology from the U.S.A.I.D., an attempt to manage risk with harder borders, stricter travel restrictions, de-globalization.

Either way, this debate would also affect science policy at home, opening arguments the likes of which we haven’t seen since the era of Chernobyl and Three Mile Island about the risks of scientific hubris and cutting-edge research. This is especially true if there’s any chance that the Covid-19 virus was engineered, in so-called gain of function research, to be more transmissible and lethal — a possibility raised by, among others, a former science writer for this newspaper, Nicholas Wade. But even if it wasn’t, the mere existence of that research, heretofore a subject of obscure intra-scientific controversy, would become a matter of intense public attention and scrutiny.

That scrutiny might not lead to wise decisions, just as the panic over nuclear power arguably led both energy policy and environmentalism astray. To return to the bet with which we started, the regulation of science has to exist in a balance between Martin Rees and Steven Pinker, between healthy pessimism about human blundering and healthy ambition about what human ingenuity can do. If the pandemic blossomed from a reckless blunder, any reckoning could easily go awry, with a crusade for safety pushing us deeper into technological stagnation.

[*michaelsean*]

(06-19-2023, 02:32 PM)Dill Wrote: I take the lab-leak issue seriously, in part because hyper-distrust of government and MSM fuels the kind of conspiracy thinking that makes government difficult to the point of unworkable. 

Two years ago there was a good op ed by Ross Douthat on the stakes of the lab-leak theory, which includes two very plausible hypotheses regarding forces shaping MSM reporting in the post-Benghazi/MAGA media environment. 

Why the Lab Leak Theory Matters
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/29/opinion/wuhan-lab-leak-theory-covid.html
...
The Chait-Yglesias argument is that this was a case study in media groupthink, and especially the way that putatively neutral institutions increasingly cover controversial questions...“based entirely on how they believe political actors will use the answer.” In this case, because the lab leak theory was associated early on with Republican China hawks like Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas, given prominence by conservative publications (Jim Geraghty of National Review has been an essential and evenhanded voice on the subject) and eventually picked up by the Trump administration, there was self-reinforcing pressure — among journalists who covered the story and Twitter experts who opined on it — to put the possibility in the QAnon box and leave it there.

I will leave it to the reader to consider how a similar pressure might manifest itself in other areas, from the 2020-21 murder spike to the recent rise in anti-Semitic violence, where journalists might wish to avoid making concessions to conservative interpretations of reality.

But let me offer a narrower addition to the media critique. One key change to mainstream journalism in the Trump era was the impulse to tell the reader exactly what to think, lest by leaving anything ambiguous you gave an inch to right-wing demagogy. It was not enough to simply report, “Republican politician X said conspiratorial-sounding thing Y.” You also had to specifically describe the conspiratorial thing as false or debunked misinformation, in a way that once would have been considered editorializing, so as to leave no doubt in the vulnerable reader’s mind.

I’m very skeptical that this achieved its intended purpose. (Has anyone drawn to a conspiracy theory been disabused by seeing it described as such in the mainstream media?) But even if it sometimes did, it also created expansive pressures to describe more and more things without any ambiguity and shading, and judge more and more right-wing claims pre-emptively. Which is only a good rule for a truth-seeking profession if you assume the day will never come when Tom Cotton has a point.

Strikingly, though, both Chait and Yglesias argue that this media critique is the most important thing we can take away from the Covid origins debate. “I don’t know if this hypothesis will ever be proven,” Chait writes of the lab leak theory, and “I don’t care,” because “there’s no important policy question riding on the answer.”

This seems mistaken. Yes, if we never figure out the truth of Covid’s origins, the dangers of media groupthink will be the only lesson we can draw for absolutely certain. But if we could find out the truth, and it turned out that the Wuhan Institute of Virology really was the epicenter of a once-in-a-century pandemic, the revelation would itself be a major political and scientific event.

First, to the extent that the United States is engaged in a conflict of propaganda and soft power with the regime in Beijing, there’s a pretty big difference between a world where the Chinese regime can say, We weren’t responsible for Covid but we crushed the virus and the West did not, because we’re strong and they’re decadent, and a world where this was basically their Chernobyl except their incompetence and cover-up sickened not just one of their own cities but also the entire globe.

The latter scenario would also open a debate about how the United States should try to enforce international scientific research safeguards, or how we should operate in a world where they can’t be reasonably enforced. Perhaps that debate would ultimately tilt away from China hawks, as David Frum argues in The Atlantic, because the lesson of a lab leak would be that we actually need “more binding of China to the international order, more cross-border health and safety standards, more American scientists in Chinese labs, and concomitantly, more Chinese scientists in American labs.” Or perhaps instead you would have an attempted scientific and academic embargo, an end to the kind of funding that flowed to the Wuhan Institute of Virology from the U.S.A.I.D., an attempt to manage risk with harder borders, stricter travel restrictions, de-globalization.

Either way, this debate would also affect science policy at home, opening arguments the likes of which we haven’t seen since the era of Chernobyl and Three Mile Island about the risks of scientific hubris and cutting-edge research. This is especially true if there’s any chance that the Covid-19 virus was engineered, in so-called gain of function research, to be more transmissible and lethal — a possibility raised by, among others, a former science writer for this newspaper, Nicholas Wade. But even if it wasn’t, the mere existence of that research, heretofore a subject of obscure intra-scientific controversy, would become a matter of intense public attention and scrutiny.

That scrutiny might not lead to wise decisions, just as the panic over nuclear power arguably led both energy policy and environmentalism astray. To return to the bet with which we started, the regulation of science has to exist in a balance between Martin Rees and Steven Pinker, between healthy pessimism about human blundering and healthy ambition about what human ingenuity can do. If the pandemic blossomed from a reckless blunder, any reckoning could easily go awry, with a crusade for safety pushing us deeper into technological stagnation.

ie the right wingers made us do it. Funny stuff.

[Dill]

(06-19-2023, 11:16 PM)michaelsean Wrote: ie the right wingers made us do it. Funny stuff.

We are so different. 

If I disagreed with that post/article, or thought something odd about it, I'd cut it down and respond to any troublesome points.
And I make sure that I understood it.


I wouldn't copy the entire post just to drop a defensive one-liner.  

[basballguy]

https://www.dni.gov/index.php/newsroom/press-releases/press-releases-2023/item/2394-odni-releases-report-on-the-potential-links-between-the-wuhan-institute-of-virology-and-the-origin-of-covid-19