The problem is that this is proof that the slippery slope of social media censorship already has a causality. Twitter banned ZeroHedge, an irreverent but very well known financial website, for months just for pushing this theory. Yesterday’s crazy conspiracy theories become today’s plausibilities.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/twitter-bans-zero-hedge-coronav...

Strange word to describe that, seems rather fair actually. Do you think UK, south African, brazilian variant are 'despicable' ?

The thing is, the virus already had a name. He just refused to call it by its official name, because that wasn't offensive enough for him.

I think it's substantially different.

Initial outbreaks of viruses occur geographically at random (with China having a >1/6 chance); the fact that there are significant UK, South African, and Brazilian variants has a much lower random component and a much higher deterministic component. It also illustrates where those variants are still primarily spreading.

If one of those variants become globally dominant, I doubt we will continue to name them after the location.

I agree that was in poor taste, but would you say the naming of "Zika virus", "Ebola virus", or "Middle East Respiratory Syndrome" is despicable?

The WHO has issued guidance in 2015 to avoid naming issues such as you described from continuing to occur.

https://www.who.int/news/item/08-05-2015-who-issues-best-pra...

In the OP's case it was done for deflection of blame rather than trying to track where the mutations are first noted.

You might have noticed there's some stuff in the news about hate crimes against asians -- there's a direct correlation there.

You may have also noticed that one of the most active stories on HN right now is 'How U.S. media lost the trust of the public'.

You do realize the rise in attacks on Asian Americans are not simply anecdotes from the media but shows up in the statistics and police reports?

Let’s stay on topic. The truth is that many people were reluctant to even consider the lab theory because it might look anti-Chinese at a time when Trump was blatantly attacking them and blaming them for the virus with no evidence. The point is that politics led to censorship that made it difficult to consider all possibilities.

It is sad that so many people would rather compromise their integrity rather than agree with Trump.

The mere mention of the word Trump, and any sort of nuanced, pro/con conversation is lost. It becomes an emotional response. A sad state of public discourse.

He should’ve called it the CCP Virus. I actually like where he was going (let’s be real, China’s secrecy let it spread more widely), but another Trump fail.

ZH singled out an individual and made statements that could subject him to harassment. That's not merely a case of having the wrong suspicions about globally significant events.

>made statements that could subject him to harassment

Not sure what said statements were, but as described, that is not at all a reason to ban someone. On the internet, legitimate criticism very frequently leads to harassment. That is not at all the fault of the critic, and as long as they didn't intend to cause harassment, it's no reason to ban them.

Perhaps some details will clarify things. ZeroHedge published and publicized an article "Is This Man Behind The Global Coronavirus Pandemic?" with the face, address, and phone number of an individual -- along with an invitition for readers to pay him a "visit".

But the cover up is the only way Chinese government could react. This property is embedded and immutable in this type of government.

Lab accident theory is not crazy at all.

SARS escaped Beijing lab twice

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7096887/

The diplomats and scientists were worried about the safety of the lab's research on coronaviruses in animals like bats as early as January 2018.

https://www.businessinsider.com/us-officials-raised-alarms-a...

We are living in a strange world where a very plausible theory is considered as conspiracy.

"Even if it was a lab accident, it's not a reason to be outraged with the Chinese government."

Oh, yes it is.

It would be 'manslaughter' on a mass scale.

The largest ever seen.

If this were due to their negligence, then millions of dead, 10's of millions out of work, Trillions in lost productivity is unavoidably consequential.

It would be the worst 'accident' in human history and the responsibility would be squarely on their shoulders.

If you're experimenting with bombs and you blow up all your neighbours homes by accident - that's manslaughter, a very serious crime.

The geopolitical fallout would be unimaginable.

Unbelievable that you are being down-voted.

Almost all pandemics started in China in the history, apperantly habitat is suitable for that. You knew that but still play with deadly viruses there, then accidently it spreads and you try to cover up and make it worse and cause millions of deaths. Fair mistake, it is an accident!

If it is originated from a lab, I think people should not find out this. I’m not sure. It will trigger some feelings against China, hopefully it won’t turn into something racist.

Well the the US funded the lab, it shares the responsibility

There is no moral or legal connection I think, your employer is not responsible if you go into a frenzy and mow peaple down with a car 'because they pay you'.

If the US was directly involved in establishing safety procedures, then yes, that would be something.

But by and large, this is a China problem.

I doubt we will never know the answer.

If Trump had any kind of material evidence, he would have used it. Team Biden would be super strategic about it, I have no idea how they would communicate the intelligence. They would be wary of the populist consequences.

In a weird way, it might be better if we never found out that was true.

> Accidents happen. Even if it was a lab accident, it's not a reason to be outraged with the Chinese government.

It really is though. If you're going to experiment with viruses that can be lethal to humans, you'd better have a damn good set of safety protocols so they don't get out. If you can't do that, don't experiment on the viruses. Given the infectiousness, there are even theories they were experimenting with making it more virulent.

There are almost 3,000,000 deaths globally. That's equivalent to launching a Little Boy at a city the size of Hiroshima every day for 42 days. It's a third of the number of soldiers who died in WW1.

There is no conceivable way that this could be declared an "oopsie" moment. This is a colossal fuck up, even by international scales.

It has nothing to do with it specifically being China. If it was the EU, I'd be pissed at them too. Lab leaks aren't particularly uncommon, which is a problem basically everywhere. I'm concerned that Russia is allegedly messing around with anthrax, but at least they seem to be able to keep it in their labs. I would prefer that no-one in the world was working on biological weapons, but I think that's a pipedream.

> Accidents happen. Even if it was a lab accident, it's not a reason to be outraged with the Chinese government.

Agreed! Whatever did cause COVID-19, the outbreak was made worse by a lack of transparency by the CCP. It seems like no matter what, the WHO report is unlikely to discuss that much. Which is a shame, because with more transparency into what happened we would be better able to stop the next COVID-19 from happening.

I don’t think it was made worse, once the news was out the world didn’t implement any meaningful measures until it was deeply infected

Totally agreed. But also after 1 year china gov won by not able to check on it. What worry is when the next come not alone we cannot say wuhan virus vs we can say Uk variant etc (which is not racist but easier to remember), we can never track. And given the index cases from Wu han we can never stop.

Wait and be killed.

there is a precedent with an outbreak of anthrax caused by a faulty vent in a secret soviet military lab.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sverdlovsk_anthrax_leak

Coincidentally, the local Communist Party also placed the blame on meat from the local farmers' market.