Facebook Ends Ban On Posts Asserting Covid-19 Was Man-Made (wsj.com) 451
Facebook has ended its ban on posts asserting Covid-19 was man-made or manufactured, a policy shift that reflects a deepening debate over the origins of the pandemic that was first identified in Wuhan, China, almost 18 months ago. An anonymous reader shares a report: The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday that three researchers from China's Wuhan Institute of Virology became sick enough in November 2019 that they sought hospital care, according to a previously undisclosed U.S. intelligence report. "In light of ongoing investigations into the origin of COVID-19 and in consultation with public health experts, we will no longer remove the claim that COVID-19 is man-made or manufactured from our apps," Facebook said in a statement on its website Wednesday. President Biden on Wednesday ordered a U.S. intelligence inquiry into the origins of the virus. The White House has come under pressure to conduct its own investigation after China told the World Health Organization that it considered Beijing's part of the investigation complete, calling for efforts to trace the virus's origins to shift into other countries.
Maybe Social Media shouldn't... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Maybe Social Media shouldn't... (Score:5, Insightful)
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They are not going to willingly give up this power, so don't bother politely asking.
It's not a power they can claim or relinquish. It's a power granted to them by idiots who go searching for the truth on social media. The fact that they have known for years that people used their websites as a source of information and they continued to allow misinformation to spread like wildfire is the real problem.
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but from what I've read the experts closest to the evidence think that the lab theory is less likely than the bat theory.
While this is not true, let me just grant you this premise. Assuming that lab theory is less likely, does it mean that it should not be investigated? No, this is not how science works. More so, FB took it much further - it was banning credential scientists for discussing this less likely theory because FB asserted without evidence that lab leak theory is false.
It doesn't get any more damning than what FB was doing - banning PhDs with relevant research background from talking about this and FB was doing thi
Re:Maybe Social Media shouldn't... (Score:5, Insightful)
I think this shows that we just shouldn't have social media. Cancel it all. Maybe start over, maybe try again but the current crop of enormous companies aren't good steward of the truth, our data or our privacy.
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Too many people want social media. They have a psychological dependency on the sense of connectedness it gives them. Maybe this is unhealthy for them and causes depression, but so are things like alcohol, refined sugars, excessive salt or fat, etc. The very concept of freedom requires that we allow people to choose unhealthy lifestyles, and that would include something like social media.
No extreme will work. "No social media at all" is now an extreme position, and it is not workable. "Social media with
Re:Maybe Social Media shouldn't... (Score:5, Insightful)
Too many people want social media. They have a psychological dependency on the sense of connectedness it gives them. Maybe this is unhealthy for them and causes depression, but so are things like alcohol, refined sugars, excessive salt or fat, etc. .
The dependence is because it is designed that way.
https://www.psychologytoday.co... [psychologytoday.com]
https://www.sciencefocus.com/f... [sciencefocus.com]
https://www.ikydz.com/social-m... [ikydz.com]
If social media was a physical substance, it would be a schedule 1 drug.
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Social media is problematic but it's better than what we had before with oligarchic media.
Re: Maybe Social Media shouldn't... (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem goes far deeper than social media. We have payment processors deplatforming people for bucking Californian identitarian political orthodoxy. Even credit card companies and banks have jumped on the bandwagon, withdrawing service for ideological reasons. This despite no normal person assuming that merely providing mundane financial services constitutes an association or endorsement. Alternatives are created, then immediately attacked by services with which they must inter operate.
If there is a solution then it's probably broader than social media. It's a question of whether we want a world in which basic services can be subject to passing ideological purity tests, even then still being withdrawn when the mob howls or when orthodoxy shifts.
Re:Maybe Social Media shouldn't... (Score:5, Insightful)
They aren't the arbiter of anything for me. Sounds like a personal problem.
Re:Maybe Social Media shouldn't... (Score:4, Insightful)
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The only two things Big Tech can be 100% sure about are: zero and one.
The more you combine multiples of these, the lower that percentage gets.
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'zero' 'and' 'one' are three things, so big tech is 150% correct /s
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During pandemics, spreading BS about the infection is the slower equivalent to yelling "fire" in a crowded theatre when there is no fire. Lies = Dies.
If one claims X about the virus, they were simply obligated to show evidence for X in proper context. In this case new evidence came out. (None it of "proves" a lab leak or what-not, only that China hid key clues.)
Re: Maybe Social Media shouldn't... (Score:3, Insightful)
It's about available facts, NOT guessing right (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes, new info is always coming in. This is after all the novel coronavirus. Just because they had incomplete evidence in the past is not a reason to make shit up.
For example, one researcher, Dr. Li-Meng Yan, claimed it was likely man-made. If you quote that one person, you should also point out that it's an outlier opinion among subject matter experts, including those who reviewed her claims. That's Reporting 101, and FB is justified in blocking posts that don't point that out.
Being accidently right does NOT morally justify skipping or abusing facts. Conclusions about important health claims should be based on verifiable facts at the time of writing.
As they say, a broken clock is right twice a day. But it's still a useless clock.
Not if lying gets people killed.
For the record, I believe FB should flag such stories with a banner linking to the reason for the flag rather than outright removal. That's a decent compromise.
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> Not if lying gets people killed.
So you want to muzzle lots of Democrats [youtube.com] then?
FWIW, I would agree that this shouldn't have been politicized like it was, but some of the restrictions (including those that lost in the Supreme Court) were absolutely not science-based. They should have banned things like singing indoors for any reason, rather than going through the various industries and hitting them with haphazard and politically-motivated rules.
I find that harmful speech is best countered with more speec
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During pandemics, spreading BS about the infection is the slower equivalent to yelling "fire" in a crowded theatre when there is no fire. Lies = Dies.
Maybe, but not necessarily. If I came out and said "CV was man-made" (which is what TFS is about), it's hard to conclude that anyone would die if they believed that. On the other hand, if I came out and said "Masks don't protect you" and you believed me, then you MAY die (but not necessarily so). So there is a distinction between the two lies as it relates to leading the believers to die.
If one claims X about the virus, they were simply obligated to show evidence for X in proper context. In this case new evidence came out. (None it of "proves" a lab leak or what-not, only that China hid key clues.)
Then there's the possibility of my saying "I don't rule out that CV was man-made." THIS is the scenario that's most t
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People were spitting and beating on Asians because they thought they had a relationship to the Chinese gov't and their "evil lab".
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People were spitting and beating on Asians because they thought they had a relationship to the Chinese gov't and their "evil lab".
That is probably the most stupid argument you could have used to support your position. By that measure, knives should be illegal because they kill people. What if it was true that CV was man-made in China? Does that then make it okay to start spitting and beating Asians?
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Tell that to the Asians being brutally assaulted in the streets of US cities.
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Re:Maybe Social Media shouldn't... (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe big tech shouldn't claim to be the arbiter of truth and justice.
Who is? This seems to be a response to an unmet need in society. There is such a distrust in the justice system, the public has demanded private corporations dispense their own brand of justice. [wikipedia.org]
The problem, as I see it, is a lack of understanding of basic philosophy. Most people have never heard the word epistemology [wikipedia.org], let alone know what it is.
Our education system teaches us truth, but it doesn't tell us how to discover it. When the truth is unclear, the public demands some authority tell us the answer, because that is how we were taught as children.
Big tech is just filling an unmet need, as any good capitalist should.
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We all claim to be arbiters of truth and justice. Isn't the premise of libertarianism that everyone associates with whoever they please and that this social (and commercial) pressure does most of the regulating? You seem to think Facebook acted unjustly, so enforce your edit of "shouldn't" by not using Facebook.
Here, Facebook made itself slightly less attractive to conspiracy cooks while people were dying in large numbers, and it has reversed itself now that things are cooling down. It might have been the w
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Trump's Big Lie is nothing but virtue signaling for GOP dictatorship.
Dictatorship? Trump won't settle for anything less than God Emperor of Mankind and a golden toilet-throne.
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> Wild accusations with no supporting evidence don't suddenly become responsible if they happen to be correct
That's how the normal thought process works. First there is no evidence, but you have a plausible theory.
Then you flush out the details of how that theory could work.
Then you formulate questions, data collection or construct tests to test that theory. It is all part of the process.
This is something that is taught, in my country, in early grade school.
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That's how the normal thought process works. First there is no evidence, but you have a plausible hypothesis.
Then you flush out the details of how that hypothesis could work.
Then you formulate questions, data collection or construct tests to test that hypothesis. It is all part of the process.
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And yet it still doesn't become retroactively OK to spread conspiracies as fact.
Re:Maybe Social Media shouldn't... (Score:5, Insightful)
So let me fix that for you. It comes down to two things:
1) There is some evidence that indicates something interesting is happening and you formulate a theory and test it.
2) There is no evidence of something interesting but you want to test your theory anyway. So you create a number of unbiased tests, enough to prove or disprove your theory.
IN BOTH CASES YOU DON'T GO RUNNING AROUND LIKE CHICKEN FUCKING LITTLE YELLING YOUR THEORY IS TRUE UNTIL YOU PROVE IT.
Maybe you announce you have a theory and are trying to prove it. But until you do shut the fuck up. Especially if existing evidence points strongly to the contrary, and all your unproven theory does is get in the way since at the present time finger pointing doesn't help. And that's all this is for right now, finger pointing. Something done by people who don't actually know how to solve problems.
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Thank you for the insight. Where would you insert the step "banning *all* discussion" on a theory as part of the process?
> Maybe you announce you have a theory and are trying to prove it. But until you do shut the fuck up.
So no consulting of professionals in a field?
So no open discussion of ideas?
Your approach does not sound like what I would call sound scientific principles. It is closer to how the church handled Galileo.
The earth is not the center of the solar system (Score:5, Insightful)
You mean this subject should have been blocked and banned until there was enough proof and consensus that it might be true?
How do you even float a new idea or even start thinking about a new idea or perspective if it is banned from discussion?
--All that is necessary for good to triumph is to redefine what is good. -- Eddy Bumpkis
Re:The earth is not the center of the solar system (Score:5, Insightful)
How do you even float a new idea or even start thinking about a new idea or perspective if it is banned from discussion?
The idea that "new ideas" or "thinking" happens on Facebook or Twitter is stupid. It's where flocks of birds go to chatter and make noise. The idea that "we" can't find out stuff or hold debate just because literally everybody on Earth isn't allowed into the room is dumb. It's just not where thinking or investigation happens. It's where broken telephone and mob mentality happens. Sometimes it's right, sometimes it's wrong. But it's never the place where truth is researched and where informed consensus is reached. Restricted venues for bodies that are equipped to seek the truth on complicated matters is a feature, not a bug.
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There's still no supporting evidence that it's manmade, it's a big leap from the slight possibility that it was being studied in a lab and escaped from there to SARS-CoV-2 being manmade. This is Facebook quickly jumping on the flimsiest excuse to get back into profiting off the tinfoil crowd, consequences be damned.
Re: Maybe Social Media shouldn't... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Actually, the evidence has been overwhelmingly supporting the hypothesis that the virus was the result of gain-of-function research at WIV.
Yes, and the evidence has been overwhelmingly supporting the hypothesis of the Biblical flood...in the minds of some people. Most would agree it says more about those people than about the planet.
Re: Maybe Social Media shouldn't... (Score:4, Informative)
Re: Maybe Social Media shouldn't... (Score:5, Funny)
She was on the lamb from China
No wonder it took her so long to get here!
Re: Maybe Social Media shouldn't... (Score:5, Insightful)
There was an actual Wuhan researcher who came forward and had the proof last year. She was on the lamb from China and feared the CCP retribution but did so anyway. Besides, if you are waiting for the smoking gun to be delivered on the floor of the UN when Chinas national security is involved, youâ(TM)re going to be waiting a very, very long time while the research continues.
And I have a cousin who has a friend whose third cousin had an uncle who saw Sasquatch once. Provide some proof or keep the conspiracy theories on 4chan or parler.com. Based on your logic, if you are waiting for the conclusive evidence to be delivered in the National Academy of Science for the existence of Sasquatch/The Lizard People/Gray Aliens, youâ(TM)re going to be waiting a very, very long time while the research continues ... so ... let's just use our imaginations pending the availability of 'facts' (which, let's face it, are overrated anyway) ...
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The only reason it wasn't taken seriously before was because a certain former US president was saying it was created in a lab, along with calling it the china virus, making unfounded claims like China released it on purpose, and stupid shit like that. You're doing the same thing, nobody is saying China released a bioweapon on purpose. The only viable theories are that 1) it jumped from an animal to a human or 2) it was accidentally leaked from a lab doing gain-of-function research, funded by China and the U
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If the current version of the story is true, then it's still 1), but with the virus collected to be studied in the lab and accidentally released.
Re: Maybe Social Media shouldn't... (Score:4, Informative)
The lab in Wuhan was doing research to genetically modify coronavirus and make it more infectious in humans [thebulletin.org].
Re: Maybe Social Media shouldn't... (Score:5, Interesting)
The article you linked to was a slanted, speculative opinion piece. The kind of research on viruses you mention does happen, but it's still pure speculation, and a conspiracy theory that this happened in this case. It is, of course, readily obvious that Chinese officials reflexively try to cover things up. For a great example, there was a massive fish die-off in a Chinese river right after a massive chemical depot explosion upriver at a site where cyanide was stored and officials were insisting that the fish did not die of cyanide poisoning, but of "oxygen deprivation". Oxygen deprivation is actually exactly how cyanide kills things.
However, as even the article you linked points out, the Institute in question was involved in collecting virus samples from bats, with a special interest in those that could cross species. So, if there was a leak from the lab, chances are still quite a lot more likely that it originated from one of those samples rather than a genetically manipulated virus. So, based on that, it still seems likely that, if it was a lab leak, it was a lab leak of a natural virus that jumped from an animal to a human.
Also, a little more on the author of the piece you linked to. He's a journalist and author, not a scientist. At least one of his books falls into the category of what is generally referred to as "scientific racism". He basically argues the genetic superiority of Europeans over Asians and especially Africans. He uses a "soft" approach not claiming that Europeans are genetically superior in all ways, just that they are better adapted to being part of a modern civilization whereas he believes Africans are better suited to, essentially, an uncivilized existence. White supremacists eat this stuff up.
I will concede, he's a clever writer. Reading the piece you linked, he's very good at subtle manipulation and using logical fallacies so gently that you barely notice. It looks like he was Cambridge educated in natural science in the early 60's. It looks like he would have been a few years ahead of my father. A pity, I could have asked my father if he knew him if they were a few years closer in age. Anyway, he does appear to know his stuff reasonably well, but he's a science writer, so it's probably a mix of knowing some of it well, and then being good at faking his way through the parts he does not know so well. Like many speculative authors though, he appears to suffer from the traditional issue where he blurs the line between science and science fiction dredged from his own imagination.
So, I'm just going to stick with the facts we actually know right now. To be clear, you technically stuck to the facts in what you wrote as well, but there are real issues with the piece you linked to.
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As time has progressed it has become less and less likely as investigators have been unable to find evidence of how it jumped species. It's rare for a virus to jump species, but it's obviously not unheard of... but when it does jump it often is not transmissible, that would be extremely rare. There's usually evidence that a virus has jumped species and you can follow the mutations that it takes for it to jump and become transmissible.
It's always been really clear that this is a combination of a virus found in pangolins and a virus found in bats. We just don't know if it went bat -> pangolin -> human or pangolin -> bat -> human.
At the same time you have the reports that the first known cases originated in Wuhan, which happens to have multiple labs doing research on coronaviruses. At a time of year when the bats in question are hibernating and would need to travel hundreds of miles beyond their natural ranges to reach Wuhan to infect someone.
Testing old blood samples found cases in rural areas months before that, and we've found evidence of it being in Europe before the Wuhan outbreak.
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Many diseases in humans jumped from animals. While it's rare if you count the number of times it happened versus number of humans, it's actually common if look at the origin of diseases. Most "novel" diseases in the last century are quite likely to have jumped from other species: SARS, ebola, Marburg, HIV, Lyme disease. Even the 1918 flu, H1N1, was a variant that came from birds. And the classic in the past, Bubonic plague.
Re: Maybe Social Media shouldn't... (Score:2)
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The right answer for them would have been: if it is legal, it has a place on our platform.
And yet, I'm 100% sure you have spam filtering on your mailbox. For a broadcast medium (which spamming techniques have made email too in these terms) you cannot allow uncensored commercial speech. Make no mistake too, none of this is really private speech either. The "anti-vaxxers" are just mindlessly repeating the lies which someone profits from. Most of the political campaigns that come up widely are astro-turfing by some commercial interest such as the tobacco industry [stanford.edu] or oil [scientificamerican.com].
There is no possibility
Re:Maybe Social Media shouldn't... (Score:5, Insightful)
They never wanted this role.
They absolutely did want this role. "Big Tech" isn't some monolithic thing, it is multiple organizations founded by people who keenly recognize the value of mass surveillance, staffed by a great many individuals who absolutely love controlling what other people are allowed to publish on their service.
We've all met people like this IRL. Imagine the nosiest most annoying busybody knowitall you've ever met being given access to a continuous feed of everything you browse online and all of your communications and a mic to snoop on your conversations, alongside a giant Mute button. You don't think they'd get a kick out of pressing it?
Re: Conspir-A-Matic (Score:3)
Who rated this other than -5?
>In general the big social network CEO's are libertarians and don't prefer censorship.
Invented stuff. You have no idea what you are talking about.
>However, it's become ever clearer that their "addiction engines" fuel conspiracy thinking, and the conspiracy nuts are doing ever more dangerous things (Jan. 6, for example).
Are you proposing something like minority report? Or that Social media becomes the new FBI and CIA? All the people on that day are already apprehended.
>T
Edicts from the Ministry Of Truth (Score:3, Insightful)
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It had nothing to do with "protecting Asians from attack", it was all about catering to the Chinese market and to do that requires absolute fealty to the Chinese Communist Party.
Re:Edicts from the Ministry Of Truth (Score:4, Insightful)
Except Facebook (and Instagram and Whatsapp) don't work in China. And they won't work in China. China does not allow foreign social networks and, as long as the CCP is in charge, never will.
So in this case it really has absolutely nothing to do with the 'Chinese market'.
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Except Facebook (and Instagram and Whatsapp) don't work in China. And they won't work in China. China does not allow foreign social networks and, as long as the CCP is in charge, never will. So in this case it really has absolutely nothing to do with the 'Chinese market'.
Their advertisers do.
Re:Edicts from the Ministry Of Truth (Score:4, Interesting)
The liberal zeal to protect Asians from racist attacks ... did influence liberals push the idea that the virus came from wet markets.
This seems backward to me. I lived in Asia and have seen many wet markets, with live animals being butchered amid the stench of feces and offal. They are disgusting. The sight of wild animals in cramped cages waiting for their turn on the butcher's block is even worse.
Blaming Covid on wet markets is playing directly into the worst racist stereotypes of Asians.
But blaming it on a lab leak shifts the culpability onto the ruling CCP, not the Chinese people.
Re:Edicts from the Ministry Of Truth (Score:5, Insightful)
I lived in Asia and have seen many wet markets, ... Blaming Covid on wet markets is playing directly into the worst racist stereotypes of Asians.
I don't understand -- if the wet market are exactly what people imagine them to be (and not an exaggeration), how is that a "racist stereotype" then?
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The liberal zeal to protect Asians from racist attacks and to counter anything Trump said
You mean those aren't good factors in determining what is true and false, possible and impossible?
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If the truth panels had existed in 2013, you would have never heard of the wild conspiracy theory being spread by Edward Snowden.
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Apologize for what? The Republicans were so wrong we had to remove their wrong-think on every platform. Democrats are superior to Republicans in that even when looking at the same data and coming to the same conclusions, the Democrats came to the right conclusion and the Republicans came to the wrong conclusion. That's just how it is because anyone who doesn't think like a Democrat must be racist. And racism is wrong. So everything about them is wrong. Social media sites now allowing this content is to corr
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You should have not checked the AC tag, that is about the funniest thing I have read on this article so far.
Re:Edicts from the Ministry Of Truth (Score:4, Insightful)
It doesn't get more important than getting to the root cause of COVID and they got it wrong!
Stating there is no credible evidence when there is no credible evidence is not wrong even if credible evidence eventually materializes.
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The proximity of the Wuhan Lab alone is enough credible evidence to warrant serious investigation.
How is it "racist" to suggest the virus leaked from China's only L2 virus lab but it's not to insist that it came from a Chinese wet market because the Chinese like to eat bats or whatever?
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As well as the history or poor containment procedures which lead to the SARS outbreak. It was a pretty likely possibility, and it was obvious that it wasn't even looked into when the WHO went over there to look into the origins.
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It doesn't get more important than getting to the root cause of COVID and they got it wrong!
Stating there is no credible evidence when there is no credible evidence is not wrong even if credible evidence eventually materializes.
That is not all that happened. There was no credible evidence for any of the provided explanations, lab leak or zoonotic origin, yet discussion of lab leak was banned and zoonotic origin promoted. For purely political reasons! It is only after Bret Weinstein took personal risks (and was suspended for that!) to explain what gain of function research is did we got the full picture.
Re:Edicts from the Ministry Of Truth (Score:5, Informative)
It doesn't get more important than getting to the root cause of COVID and they got it wrong!
Spreading the best available data is different than spreading rumors only to find out it may be half-true later.
I still don't see any evidence of it being man made. Poor protocol studying virus from the wild would make a lot more sense, because what would be the point of a virus that doesn't kill all that many people overall? A bio-weapon?
Spreading any information about it being man made is still just conspiracy theories at this point.
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https://www.theguardian.com/us... [theguardian.com]
That has some quotes from Trump when he claimed it was a lab leak. I don't see him saying there that it was man made, only that there was things he couldn't talk about that pointed to it possibly being a leak from a lab.
The $600k that was spent, under Fauci's control, was for studying transmission vectors between bats and humans for Coronaviruses, why wouldn't it be possible that during those studies, they were able to see a transmission, that because of poor lab protocols
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I don't see him saying there that it was man made, only that there was things he couldn't talk about that pointed to it possibly being a leak from a lab.
Then I guess that probably doesn't have anything to do with the conspiracy theory in question that was banned on Facebook, which was a policy specifically about the virus being man made.
Spending money won't give you much evidence that the virus was transmitted from the lab simply because there was no virus collected from the workers who got sick at the time. And why would it be collected? There was no reason to suspect anything at that point. Current evidence makes it more likely bad field protocols than
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Not always it doesn't (see "serial passage"): https://thebulletin.org/2021/0... [thebulletin.org] Moreover, there were markers that were incredibly strange (in support of lab theory): namely, the codons present at COVID's furin cleavage site
It spreads very well indoors and ver
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oh ok thanks, ill check back next week to see what opinions i should hold.
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Who is saying it was bioengineered? I haven't been able to find that in the parent you are replying to, or in the comments made by Trump at the time.
https://www.theguardian.com/us... [theguardian.com]
The assertion was that it was a lab leak, and that is what is now being called a distinct possibility, when previously it was called a conspiracy theory. The gain of function research claim is possibly a conspiracy theory, I have seen no evidence that the lab was or wasn't doing those things, but claiming it is unlikely seems
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See, here we go. What you just stated is false. The summary doesn't even say that, let alone it being actually established. You are the internet rumor mill.
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This is Slashdot, we expect real evidence, not "many people say so, believe me". At this point we just know China was and is acting cagey, but despots always act cagey. Remember the WMDs? Despots use FUD and censorship out of habit.
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It would be difficult for Saddam to prove he didn't have weapons.
However, China has the motivation and the political means to uncover peripherally infected species or early variants of the virus that would prove it was a natural phenomenon. But they have yet to find anything to clear their name.
Re: Edicts from the Ministry Of Truth (Score:2)
Lab leak doesn't necessarily mean man-made
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It is monumentally naive to pretend that giving a the biggest liar the biggest megaphone has no adverse effect on public discussion.
Trump isn't the biggest liar. He is the loudest liar. There are far more skilled liars out there. Trump's lack of skill at lying ironically is what makes you think he is the biggest liar (because his lies are so obvious). But that doesn't mean censorship is OK as the topic at hand should show. A broken watch is right twice a day. Don't let Trump define you, because what he says has no relation to the truth.
Re:Edicts from the Ministry Of Truth (Score:5, Informative)
That a few lab workers got some kind of flu in Nov. 2019. I'm not sure exactly when that was known and/or verified. Anybody got a good link on that?
It was known by the WHO team and they tested the lab workers and they didn't carry antibodies https://edition.cnn.com/2021/0... [cnn.com]
Partisan responses (Score:2)
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When you have one side calling the other side assholes for wearing a mask [archive.is], and then completely flipping the script once guidance changes, it's a bit hard to not have a partisan response
That's funny, despite that one individual's account on Reddit, I was never called names for wearing or not wearing a mask this entire past year.
Assertion without evidence (Score:4, Insightful)
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Exactly! This is what is frustrating me. As new evidence arises, opinions change. That's how it should be.
But initial unfounded suspicions treated as "See, we were right all along" when new details are uncovered later... that's how you wind up with people believing Qanon lunacy.
Re:Assertion without evidence (Score:4, Insightful)
All of what evidence? That the lab exists and a few people got really sick but the virus they had was never collected and sequenced? It's definitely not evidence that the virus was man made or that China released it intentionally, which are the conspiracies under debate here.
The fact that it may have escaped the lab is the only thing credible from that evidence. And the evidence is thin because nobody could have known to collect samples at that point in time. It's not likely something that will ever have truly solid evidence, simply because the data can no longer be gathered.
Re:Assertion without evidence (Score:5, Informative)
It's still an assertion without evidence that the virus is man made. Lab escape does not mean lab made. They had thousands of samples of virus from bats all over the country already, and the virus could easily have been among them or mutated from them.
Even "China did it intentionally" wouldn't run afoul of a ban on asserting that the virus was man made.
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That same lab was among the leading researchers in sequencing the virus. They published in February that it was 96.2% similar to a specific known bat virus. Among those who got sick at the lab, none tested positive for antibodies for COVID-19.
There's not a lot of evidence of the virus escaping that lab as far as I'm aware. It sounds like with the shift in focus to US researching the leads now that China claims to be done, Facebook is adjusting policies specifically to protect accidental misstatements ins
Re: (Score:2)
The "conspiracy theory" accusation... (Score:3)
Just saying.
So much of the news turns out to be wrong. Or at best baseless. Have you all noticed that?
Also, anything in the form "just because... doesn't mean" comes across as a weak argument
Re: (Score:2)
What about assertions that were made with evidence of previous pandemics being caused in this way?
SARS was released from a lab in China.
The Wuhan lab, using US funding, was researching transmission vectors between bats and humans of coronaviruses.
Trump said he couldn't talk about the evidence he had, not that there was no evidence. That was taken by the entire left wing media to mean that there was no evidence, and he was called a liar, and ignored.
https://www.theguardian.com/us... [theguardian.com]
Doesn't make any difference (Score:2)
How would that change what we are doing?
All the more reason... (Score:5, Insightful)
to stop using these platforms. Social media has outlived its purpose. Initially it was about "connecting" people with one another. Seemed like a noble enough goal - allowing you to catch up with old friends and keep in touch with family. All for free. Then they discovered advertising. Soon afterwards they set about to track your every move, whether it was on the FB site or elsewhere on the internet, and sell your personal data to the highest bidder. No thought, or concern, was given to what was done with that personal information. Their customer was the advertisers, not you the FB user. They could care less about you. All that mattered was that they got paid.
Then along came the news feed. At first it seemed to be more or less neutral. Then they started to target the feed based on your "likes". Eventually all of that was abandoned in favor of their own, mostly leftist, views. The problem is that a lot of people don't realize that they are being manipulated.
Social media is a disease. Do yourself a favor and stop using it.
Prisoners dilemma (Score:2, Insightful)
Facebook Ends Ban On Posts Asserting Covid-19 Was Man-Made
And this is perhaps the root of the "lack of trust" by people refusing to get vaccinated.
Lots and lots of things have been asserted as ground-level truth and any disagreement is a lie, literally, and can get you banned.
The biggest one is, of course, that the vaccination is safe and yet... reports of complications from getting the vaccine are suppressed, individual dissent from highly qualified individuals is censored, and anyone with doubts is insulted and abused. You can get fired for not getting vaccinate
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Yes, there's some distrust when information is suppressed, but I'd guess that a lot fewer people are affected compared to when mis-information is wide spread.
When exaggerations or outright lies are spread, that has a pretty big effect, even if some people are able to distinguish between bad information and good, plenty will just believe whatever they read. Remember when people were burning down cell towers because they thought 5G caused covid19?
"Vaccination is safe" (Score:5, Insightful)
Nothing is perfectly safe. A sane adult calculates the risk and gets on with his life.
The news does not cater to sane, fully functional adults. It either sensationalizes risk or ignores it entirely. The news caters to morons, probably because they're easier to cater to.
As to what Facebook caters to, well... it doesn't cater to me.
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reports of complications from getting the vaccine are suppressed,
If you're just saying that everything posted by public commenters on VAERS not being treated as verified fact is suppression, then I don't think you understand how research works.
The vaccination is probably safe - at least relatively safe compared to the virus itself. But all versions of the vaccine still bind to the ACE2 receptor (I think - at least the mRNA ones that replicate the spike protein) and run the risk of causing blood clotting problems. Especially if you have other risk factors for clotting p
Here's a remarkable and funny video (Score:3)
TL;DW, it was a scam by a lawyer to sue pharma companies and a doctor who wanted to sell testing kits for a made up disease. Media covered it for ratings and it spun out of control from there.
Stop (Score:3)
I agree with the notion of stop using these social media platforms. Until they are willing to allow the free exchange of all ideas, they aren't truly social networks.
In my opinion, the biggest problem is folks are getting their news from these sites and believing that it's true. There should be a banner on everyone's Facebook home page that says "all opinions here are those of their owners and none should be believed without further research using reputable sources".
Maybe... (Score:2)
https://imgflip.com/i/5b5y1x [imgflip.com] (SFW)
Why? (Score:2)
That people studying viruses got sick early on does not mean that it is not entirely natural ... ....Virologists in the USA got sick with covid-19 while studying it as well ...
Still betting on a natural origin ... (Score:3)
The simplest answer (Occam's razor) is inter-species infection with recombination ...
Why? It did happen before with the original SARS then the MERS outbreaks.
The Wuhan wet market is full of wild and domesticated animals of all sorts. I recall one biologist who visited that same Wuhan market a few months before the pandemic saying he counted the number of species of live animals there. It was 60 or something like that.
The market can be where the jump to humans happened, but not necessarily where the recombination from the reservoir species to the intermediate species (plural).
And these animals have to come from somewhere, be that a farm somewhere, or captured in the wild and transported. Add to that the fact that bats cover a large area when they go out to feed every night, and you see that a more plausible scenario is that a bat carrying a common ancestor to SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2, or a descendant of the former urinated and/or defecated, and an animal somewhere was infected. The virus mutated inside that intermediate host, and pieces of RNA form both 'parents' recombined. Other animals from the same species (farmed or wild), were infected and more rounds of mutation and natural selection happened, before it jumped to humans.
Then one of these animals was taken to Wuhan. Or a hunter/farm-worker got infected and traveled to Wuhan, where more people were infected.
Which intermediate species (singular or plural) is yet to be found. Note that with SARS, it took two years to link palm civets as an intermediate species (pandemic first started in 2002, pandemic ended 2003, and civet link in 2004). Here is just one paper [nih.gov] reviewing the available research as of 2007.
It took two years to identify the intermediate species for SARS. So not surprising that it will take that long with the current one.
And it is well known that other Coronaviruses did jump species without wet markets in Arabia (the MERS epidemic), and in pig farms in Mexico (flu), and China (flu). Heck, even the Spanish Flu is traced back to a farm in Kansas as the most likely starting place. And the Nipah virus affects people who drink palm sap that bats have urinated in. And so on and so forth ...
Back to Coronaviruses...
To add to all the above, swabs were taken from sick children in Sarawak. They are from rural areas where extended families live in a long house, with domesticated animals. Guess what they found? That some of these kids have Coronaviruses that is a recombined form from both Canine and Feline Coronaviruses (people living with cats and dogs in close proximity). There is no conclusion that it was this virus that made them sick, since they are pre-school age (immune system still naive), and already have other viruses. But the point is: the viruses replicated in these kids, so viruses jump species (three of them in this case) and recombine all the time.
Click on the PDF link here [oup.com] and see for yourself. Oh, and there is no virology institute anywhere on Borneo...
Could it be a lab escape scenario? Yes, if you mean that viruses collected from wild bats or other species were in the Wuhan Institute of Virology, then someone got infected by that natural virus. How likely? Not very likely that an fat enveloped respiratory virus that is easily eliminated by soap and water would infect someone by inhalation in a lab setting.
Note that lab escape is very different from 'engineered by humans'. That is so remote of a possibility that it has to be discounted based on all the research into the genome by prominent virologists.