Hi I'm not "coming to China's defense" here. I am no fan of the Chinese government I literally find them horrifically oppressive and a place I would /never/ want to live. I am no fan of China. I also anticipated this exact criticism and wrote a whole response to it. See here (#4): https://drive.google.com/file/d/1vRbACWf90iBC35xNOwlI5bWcUq0...

Hi again jeduehr,

I want to apologize for some of my attitude in my comments to you here. Some of what I said I regret. Some of what I said was probably incorrect, and a lot of it was rude. Other parts, I still believe I would stand by, but I have to admit I haven't yet worked my way fully through your document, and it was poor form of me to give you that much grief especially given that fact, and, whether I agree with you or not, my way of expressing disagreement could have been less bad. Thank you for all your contributions on this.

While I do have my doubts reading some of your responses (which do not always seem to address concerns head on, especially responses to questions about lab leaks of natural viruses, which I've seen you respond to with something about engineered viruses, which wasn't the question), I believe you may be sincere, and I understand the value of extending the benefit of the doubt. I hope this discussion doesn't color your experience in a bad way.

I'll say one thing about China… it will surprise you (general "you") and defy your assumptions. Jaw-dropping moments are a daily occurrence. Of course we could say the same thing about most countries though.

You have repeatedly been an asshole in this thread. That's seriously not cool, regardless of how wrong other commenters are or you feel they are.

Attacking users for being new is particularly bad. Do we want HN to be a smug, insular community or welcoming to newcomers? Obviously the latter. Please don't poison it.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Sorry! I'll reexamine myself on the comments in this thread. I suppose I was kind of triggered by certain aspects, which may not be a good excuse. And I realize this is only part of it, but I definitely don't want to attack someone for being new.

Hey,

Let me know what proof you would want to show I am who I say I am.

Thanks

I'm too ignorant of this field to form any opinion on it, but I'm curious how much you would wager with even odds that COVID-19 didn't originate from a virology lab?

Not with me, because as I said I'm too ignorant of this field to form any opinion on it, but with some of the people who are pushing back against your posts.

I don't really have a lot of money (I'm 300k in debt from medical school and PhD school and undergrad combined) but sure...

if Yuri Deigin or Alina Chan wagered with me, I would probably bet like.... idk $2,000 that it was a natural zoonotic event? Like I said I don't have a lot of money in my bank account. That would be about how much I spend out of my student loans for rent, food, utilities, bills, etc. in a given month.

The problem with a wager like that is that we will probably /never/ be truly 100% sure either way. The thing I would push on, though, is that we would need to set forward exactly the criteria we would use to reassess our positions or give up the bet.

I set out exactly what that criteria is for me in this last section of my original writeup: https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/gk6y95/covid19_did...