[noduerme]

I don't think it was a conspiracy to make people sick. I also don't think the lab leak theory should be a partisan issue. I was in the camp at the time shouting that we needed to enforce masking and stay-at-home orders, and to say that the Trump admin bungled the response is too kind.

What was a conspiracy was the cover-up by health officials who knew that it had escaped a lab. And by the Chinese government, which knew even earlier, and which I believe saw an economic and strategic advantage in keeping the information and the genome of the virus to itself for a few months while it was already circulating in Wuhan.

One does not have to believe that the lab leak was intentional to believe that once it happened, the responsible parties conspired to cover it up.

As for the gain of function research itself, though defensive in nature and benign in intent, it was something that was deemed too risky to be performed in the US, and outsourcing it to a country with a much poorer safety record was wildly irresponsible. When it backfired, a cover-up naturally ensued.

I'm not a MAGA person (I've always voted Democrat, actually). This is just my take as to the most likely scenario given what's publicly known. And of course the virus has mutated in the wild, as viruses do. The question is whether the initial strain was given genetic advantages that were evolved under human guidance - defensively or not.

[pstuart]

It's still conjecture. I'm well aware of confirmation bias (that we're all susceptible to), but a recent query of the Goog says it's unclear and leans towards a natural mutation.

This does a good job of painting that picture: https://skeptoid.com/episodes/933

But this also returns to the "so what" path. The conspiracy paints GOF as "evil government doing bad things" (which is not unreasonable conjecture in many contexts), but the work is primarily intended for defensive measures:

https://asm.org/getmedia/ef3e09db-a3c3-4eff-8e73-5d7edbcabb4...

Search Google for this: "did the us outsource GOF research into sars to wuhan labs in china"

I found the answer to be reasonable and credible. Again, governments lie but so do conspiracy theories.

To make this more HN aligned I'll share a story:

I was introduced to Chuck Peddle at a wedding not long after the turn of the century. I first learned assembly language on the 6502 so I knew who he was and was thrilled to meet him and hear his stories. At that point in time he was working on some hardware startup in Malaysia (IIRC), and was a seasoned world traveller.

The last part of our conversation was his observation through his travels that due to the nature of overcrowded cities in third world countries and the advent of air travel where people could disperse rapidly to anywhere else in the world, he shared a fear that a deadly outbreak would eventually happen and would travel the world in days, with horrifying consequences.

That came to mind when Covid happened.

Lastly, I'm not at all fond of these types of conspiracies because they spread like a virus and their value is primarily in giving people the feeling that they know what's going on and they know better than everyone else -- and it becomes such a part of their identity that trying to debunk that conspiracy is only perceived as a personal attack -- there's no room for reason.

All of this "the truth is out there" while we have real conspiracies happening in broad daylight and people just shrug like "oh, that just happens, whatever". I'm referring to the current US presidential administration.

[noduerme]

Once again, I'm not an identitarian, nor was I trying to personally attack anyone, nor is my take on what happened an attempt to gain a sense of control over my environment (anymore than anyone's attempt to understand anything is an attempt to prepare oneself for future events). I find that your need to skew the conversation toward my personal psychology actually is a form of ad hominem, and your own anectdotes or what you found on Google have no relevance other than speciously attempting to increase your credibility in this conversation.

I think my point stands that once a gain of function-mediated virus escaped a lab, the incentives aligned in such a way that the people and the government responsible for that fuckup took steps to cover it up, and that is a perfectly logical and reasonable conclusion.

[pstuart]

I'm sorry if it came across that way, I was addressing the issue and my frustrations with the community that pursue it -- I did not have you in mind personally at all, just the topic.

I absolutely agree that government coverups are absolutely unacceptable.

I state my conclusion as "it seems to be this way" whereas I read you as saying "no, it was this, case closed".

Intent matters. In the courtroom and out of it. My frustration is that (from my perspective) the intent behind the lab leak theory is to turn it into a government plot against the people (and yes, those can happen), and that the whole affair of dealing with Covid was a nefarious plot to harm the population and importantly to force vaccines upon the masses.

As the purported incident happened in China, there will likely never be any admission or redress. And the torches and pitchforks will continue coming for vaccine research. And I have every right to be less than happy about that.

[noduerme]

The backlash against vaccines was/is idiotic, and tying vaccine fast tracking and (some) forced vaccination to some grand conspiracy notion of a virus being released in order to force nefarious vaccines on people, is completly unserious and falls into loony-bin conspiracy territory. I wouldn't even engage with anyone holding that theory. I actually think that, short-term pitchfork weilding reactionaries aside, covid was the best thing t happen since the mid-20th Century to advance both vaccine science and general uptake in the long run. In any case, I get my covid shot every year, and I own a lot of Moderna stock and feel fairly good about their platform curing other diseases.

I would say this about the purported incident happening in China: From the perspective of the Chinese government, it really didn't matter whether it was a lab leak or not, as their concealment of the problem for 2-3 critical months would likely have happened even if saving face was not an issue. It was a simple projection to say that an authoritarian regime with a top-down economy and an unlimited ability to lock down outbreaks would gain an edge in relative GDP growth over a disorganized, democratic adversary, which would compound for every day they withheld information even though they were attempting to contain the spread within their own borders. That's the economic calculation I called an act of war.

[pstuart]

> And I have every right to be less than happy about that.

Sure.

Face saving in China is a cultural institution (not that it doesn't happen in the US and elsewhere). Ascribing that to an intentional act of war is a stretch. Coverups are virtually all motivated by CYA by their very nature.

China is handily winning the economic war without taking the tactic you suggest, and if we are unable to shake the current regime and it's scions, will mop the floor with us.

The reason I am so testy about this conspiracy is that it focuses all attention off the conspiracy that Grump did by dismantling the institutions that were built to protect us from such an outbreak, and then bungle the reaction to it actually happening.

Again: let's say China comes out tomorrow and says: "Sorry, we fucked up. Our researchers got sloppy and lied to us. We're sorry"

What does that do to either protect us from future events (which can be from out of the wild)? Other than the satisfaction of "I told you so", what do we get from that?

RFK Jr is running the show, and must appease his boss and his whims. They'd likely take that confession and use it as a parade and patting themselves on the back while they continue to destroy the science and institutions that are there to prevent future pandemics.

[noduerme]

I see the same things you see, but I contend that the causes are reversed. I think Trump's election, and subsequent dismantling of our institutions and safeguards, was a direct result of our country losing a war. It began as an information war in 2015. The installation of RFK Jr is a further result of us losing a biological war, which may have not been started intentionally, but which by mid-2020 was being conducted as one. I'm not trying to shift any blame away from this administration, either for the specific mishandling of covid or for its broader corruption, authoritarianism, and traitorous destruction of our democracy. But I think this administration is merely an effect, not a cause. Most Americans don't realize that we lost a war. The loss of democratic governance in our country, a corrupt puppet who worships autocrats, the decline of living standards and life expectancy, the shattering of our institutions and the lingering effects of covid are all part of the price.