[toshk]

There is also an aspect where it goes from science to policy, and there is this step where certain parts of society simple state: "how dare you think you know better then x, who studied y for x amount of year, or this scientist".

It happens here too. During Covid, also here the lab leak theory was talked as a crazy non-scientific conspiracy.

[ekianjo]

Actual scientists proposed the lab leak early on before they were prompty shut down by the Fauci establishment and the fake Lancet

[toshk]

Common sense proposed the lab leak. Was absurd and scary how easily it was dismissed in pretty much the entire Western media, not only the US. Even this forum got subjected to it.

[jkhdigital]

It was not just “common sense”. I was reading in-depth articles about the GoF line of research and all the characters involved (Ralph Baric, Shi Zhengli, etc) back in March/April 2020. Basically the entire body of circumstantial evidence pointing to the lab leak hypothesis was known and reported within months of the start of the pandemic. Every in-depth article written since then has been mostly a rehashing of what various bloggers and alternative news sites had already published.

[HKH2]

Well it's potentially racist to some, so common sense has to go out the window.

[ekianjo]

The fact that labs exist in other countries with people of different ethnicities is not racist

[Nasrudith]

But the fact it was basically a recycling of several racist "those filthy foreigners are responsible for disease" tropes along with "scheming orientals" tropes.

[jkhdigital]

No the argument is nonsensical on its face. A lab leak supposedly recycles those tropes but emergence from an unsanitary wet market does not?

[didntcheck]

As opposed to the "approved" knowledge that it came from foreigners with poor hygiene eating strange animals?

[edgyquant]

Seems more like you projecting some racist stuff no one else was thinking of.

[Arainach]

It's not "potentially" racist. It was being spouted by racists and directly leading to violence against asians in America and elsewhere. When this behavior is seen, and with the standard lack of any nuance in both reporting and social media, making such claims publicly if you're less than 95% certain is irresponsible.

[lelanthran]

What makes you certain that there was less than a 1 in 20 chance that the lab leak theory was wrong at the time?

After all, percentage fbtou are going to wait for every theory to be 19/20 chance of being correct before you announce it as a theory, no theory would have been announced at all for COVID

[Arainach]

You can't prove a negative. Again, you are ignoring my point - most science isn't trying to make claims already being used to incite violence. There is a higher standard before publicly discussing such things.

[local_issues]

The lab leak theory was not being touted by the Black people who beat up Asians in droves the last 3 years. The idea that it was Trumpists was a conspiracy theory not borne out by stats

[wait_what]

There is a huge reason to downplay it, especially in the USA, until things could cool around it or things could be worked out 100% factually and it is a science related - basic Psychology.

That reason?

Hate Crimes - https://www.npr.org/2021/08/12/1027236499/anti-asian-hate-cr...

Even in my small town of 7000, an Indian lady was assaulted to "get back at those Chinese for giving us COVID (which doesn't exist and is just made up by the lame stream media)".

[edgyquant]

No this isn’t a good reason to shutdown actual scientific discussion and this whole thing felt like a red herring specifically played up to shut down dissent.

Anti-Asian hate crimes are a real thing, but both black and white Americans endure them at a higher rate[1]. Further, these types of attacks went up across the board during the pandemic however Asian based hate crimes represented only ~8% of these attacks with most other ethnic groups having way more attacks targeted at them[2]. Seems to me like an example of cherry picked statistics being used for political gain. Asian hate crimes being something that became way more common during the pandemic is simply not grounded in reality.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/737681/number-of-racial-...

https://www.justice.gov/crs/highlights/2021-hate-crime-stati...

[dent9876543]

It’s all mess though.

It must have been really obvious to all concerned that, by running to ground the lab leak theory, if it ever did get out (what they did) that it’d be a big net loss for trust in government and science.

So it follows that they must have been really (like really /really/) scared that it was absolutely necessary — damn the consequences.

But my guess it’s actually a feedback loop gone out of control. (We knew even then that this was no Ebola.)

At the same time, in the UK, right at the start, we have those now famous words: people were “made to feel more personally vulnerable”.

My guess is that the intended recipient of that initiative was us (i.e., gen pop), but the acute recipients (i.e., those most likely to hear, actively listen and be influenced) were those already involved in the campaign.

The volume could not be turned down (because it was assumed gen pop would otherwise not listen). But very stupidly, there also was no moderating mechanism for those “in charge”. So we have our loop.

(This doesn’t fully track, because later the British PM got seriously ill. And later still, the British PM also went back to partying. So, there would have been re-injected some non-trivial rationale to the severity worries, albeit only later. And there was also apparently a very effective moderating mechanism at least in central government. But as a simple model, it explains a lot for me.)

[bonoboTP]

> It must have been really obvious to all concerned that, by running to ground the lab leak theory, if it ever did get out (what they did) that it’d be a big net loss for trust in government and science.

But a lab leak in itself would be a big loss of public trust in science. It exemplifies the worst fears of the uneducated regarding "God-playing scientists" who slice and dice the DNA like a Frankenstein, produce plagues for curiosity and "we were preoccupied with whether we could, but not whether we should"-style tropes. A real leak would validate these nutteries and play into the cards of the woo anti-science people (remember those times? Penn and Teller's Bullshit etc...). The fear around GMO etc. And this sort of research is international and wasn't localized to China and the Wuhan experiments aren't solely with Chinese involvement. So they thought better roll the dice and see if it gets out.

----

Trust is a very feeble thing, and nobody wants to do an honest postmortem. The train is simply moving forward faster and faster. Erode public trust, then smear and name-call anyone who doesn't adhere to an ever narrowing band of acceptable beliefs, dismiss them all as everything-ist nutjobs. Never admit wrong, just crank the heat up steadily year by year. Because surely that will solve the problems.

[joenot443]

I don't think we should reject reality just because we're concerned others can't handle that reality without reacting violently. The notion that we should downplay certain ideas because of crimes committed by people that misunderstand those ideas is not something I can get behind, sorry. Do you post on reddit a lot? The phrasing of your argument and the intermittent spacing has that reddity vibe to me.

[Shugarl]

GP didn't suggest to reject reality out of concern for others. He said we should make sure to be 100% certain of what the facts are before asserting what reality is to the public, especially when it comes to sensitive subjects.

The alternative is to say that reality is A, have a lot of people face (just or unjust) repercussions, then say "Oopsie! Turns out we were dead wrong". The damage is already done by that point.

[gilbetron]

For being shutdown and canceled, the lab leak theory is and has been talked about a shocking amount for the past 3+ years. Rarely a day goes by here that it hasn't been talked about, especially in 2020.

[jquery]

As someone who believed the lab leak theory from the start, I don't ever remember it being treated as a "crazy non scientific conspiracy".

I do remember some people pushing the leak theory as if it was 100% proven and them getting called out.

I also don't have any hard evidence for the lab leak theory so I'm open to being wrong. I'm just suspicious because China hasn't been forthcoming.

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

[tripletao]

Here's The Lancet in Feb 2020:

> We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin.

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...

Nothing in that condemnation is limited to claims of deliberate release. That article contributed to a false scientific consensus, which social media operators used to justify banning any account that suggested SARS-CoV-2 might have arisen from a research-related accident. For example, Facebook did so until May 2021.

[ricksunny]

> I don't ever remember it being treated as a "crazy non scientific conspiracy

Consider that this treatment may have taken place in the editorial boards & newsrooms of the outlets you read before the debate ever had the opportunity to reach to your attention.

Perhaps epistemology is not just individual in scope, but societal.

Indeed, I also didn't remember it being treated in Jan-Oct 2020 as a 'crazy non-scientific conspiracy'. But we know today, (reference any journalist talking about origins on Twitter) that lab leak was being treated amongst themselves as a wild-eyed conspiracy theory

[growingentropy]

I only remember the lab leak theory being discussed seriously once Biden had been elected. Prior to that, it was treated as unenlightened racism.

Not that I'm a Trump fan. But the man was a lightning rod like I've never seen for the left here in America.

Then again, just flippantly referring to Covid as the "Kung Flu" just might have something to do with it.

[jkhdigital]

I also felt it was the most likely explanation from the first time I read about it (March/April 2020) but even if it was “just one hypothesis” here’s the thing: if true, it has profound implications for the future of humanity. It’s not like this is just an academic question about what killed the dinosaurs. It doesn’t matter whether it can be proven; the fact that we consider it in the realm of possibility means we need to figure out what can be done to ensure the next “hypothetical” leak isn’t even worse.

[licebmi__at__]

Does it really matter? I mean we did had deadly pandemics before biolabs were a thing. Other than blaming China because that’s what Americans want to do now, I haven’t heard anything interesting about what to do if the lab leak hypotheses is right.

[tripletao]

Thoreau made a similar argument after his carelessness started a major wildfire, stating that once he lost control of his campfire, it was "as if the lightning had done it". His neighbors weren't impressed, and I'm not impressed here either.

This thinking is just bizarre. ~20M people are dead. If SARS-CoV-2 arose from a research accident at the WIV, then those deaths were all avoidable, simply by not funding research that was already considered to be an unacceptable risk by many academics (Relman, Lipsitch, etc.) before the pandemic, and actually defunded until 2017. These were real people, mothers and grandfathers and friends. Would you not rather they hadn't died?

The WIV was funded by the American NIH, and used techniques first developed by Ralph Baric at the University of North Carolina. If SARS-CoV-2 arose from a research accident there, then the American government is in no position to blame China. On the other hand, that gives the American and Chinese governments a collective incentive to downplay that possibility, as seems to have occurred.

[dent9876543]

It doesn’t matter in the sense that we just had to deal with the virus, no matter what.

But it does matter with regard to public trust in science and government.

Others have also pointed out that it matters because of it being a potential spark for racism (and that’s a reasonable concern no matter if you think the response wrong or right).

Also, I remember some concern that it may be a bio-weapon. And, although slight far fetched, it would be consistent. Ironically, I suspect the intent was to discount the possibility to prevent panic. (Though they were happy to spread lower grade fear, so go figure…)

[ModernMech]

I’ll take that over “how dare you question X YouTuber or Y politician or Z super pac who has been “studying” this since March 2020” any day.

[spookthesunset]

So basically all of the politicians who enacted crazy covid mandates for three years?