Thread

Nearly 200 people under observation after Irkutsk lab worker dies from plague

187 points · 150 comments · ericmay

robmusial · 1791169542 · focus · HN ↗
I literally just finished Annie Jacobsen's book 'Biological War: A Scenario' last week where the central plot point is an accidental release of modified form of pneumonic plague from a lab in Siberia. Very coincidental timing, especially since it made me wonder how often labs like these have accidents and we never hear about them because it is cleaned up without issue.
1. petcat · 1791170758 · focus · HN ↗
  > made me wonder how often labs like these have accidents and we never hear about them because it is cleaned up without issue.
  Did anyone ever confirm if the lab in Wuhan China was the originator of COVID? I remember that was a rumor but never heard if there was anything to it.
  1. mvlipwig · 1791171014 · focus · HN ↗
    It's difficult to say for sure, but the consensus is leaning towards zoonotic origin from a bat or pangolin in a wet market. (I'm not very well researched on this topic and don't have any formal background in it, so hedge accordingly)
    SV_BubbleTime · 1791174191 · focus · HN ↗
    >but the consensus is leaning towards zoonotic origin from a bat or pangolin in a wet market
    I literally had to check the date on this post.
    Does anyone else remember when claiming it was a lab in China that leaked was “racist”… but “they eat tainted exotic animals at wet markets” was “the consensus”?
    Wild times!
    [deleted] · 1791174814 · focus · HN ↗
    [deleted]
    porkpies101 · 1791175058 · focus · HN ↗
    We should not be eating animals period
    fr2029 · 1791175960 · focus · HN ↗
    [dead]
    mightysashiman · 1791178998 · focus · HN ↗
    They are so tasty though
    refulgentis · 1791175324 · focus · HN ↗
    Calling it the “Chinavirus” was obviously racist and weird. It was an ex posto facto thing to claim saying it was a lab leak was racist. I’m sure someone said that, however, no one serious was nor was it a common position.
    somenameforme · 1791177078 · focus · HN ↗
    People immediately started suggesting that the idea to close the border to Chinese travelers was racist. After it happened you even had the ever-politicized Lancet jump in claiming that such actions were "anchored in fear, misinformation, racism, and xenophobia." [1]
    Similarly, you're referencing a name that was uncommonly used. People mostly called it the Wuhan Virus, which would be a far more typical name than "COVID-19". Major outbreaks are regularly named based on their origin: Spanish Flu, Hong Kong Flu, Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), Ebola, West Nile Virus, Marburg Virus, Zika Virus, Mexican Swine Flu, etc.
    [1] - <a href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7133591/" rel="nofollow">https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7133591/
    happymellon · 1791179674 · focus · HN ↗
    > Major outbreaks are regularly named based on their origin: Spanish Flu
    <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu
    > The earliest probable cases were documented in March 1918 in Haskell County, Kansas, United States
    Oh.
    Yokolos · 1791180301 · focus · HN ↗
    Okay, what about all the other examples?
    somenameforme · 1791180662 · focus · HN ↗
    That's a bit misleading: "The outbreak did not originate in Spain,[49] but reporting did, due to wartime censorship in belligerent nations. Spain was a neutral country unconcerned with appearances of combat readiness, and without a wartime propaganda machine to prop up morale,[50][51] so its newspapers freely reported epidemic effects, making Spain the apparent locus of the epidemic.[52] The censorship was so effective that Spain's health officials were unaware its neighboring countries were similarly affected."
    In other words other countries were effectively censoring it out of existence owing to WW1. Spain didn't have such censorship/propaganda going on, and so was seen as the epicenter, even though it ultimately wasn't.
    [1] - <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Spanish_flu&oldid=42685098" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Spanish_flu&oldid...
    refulgentis · 1791180133 · focus · HN ↗
    They were right, closing borders with China doesn't stop the virus from spreading, there's no scientific basis for that claim.
    It's amazing how you had all those at the tip of your tongue, you are a clearly a learned medical scholar.
    A peer comment discusses where the Spanish Flu originated, and illustrates the gap between what you asked the LLM for and well, how humans think and what the people you're talking to are actually talking about.
    The LLM also went a bit overboard with the Wuhan Virus thing, it's a response, but it's hilariously out of context because, again, there's a gap between you're asking it for and what your interlocutor is communicating.
    It's so confused that it's giving "Ah, but, people didn't say the thing you said was bad, because it was bad. The politically correct version was Wuhan Virus." - thus validating exactly what I said, the Chinavirus version was weird and bad.
    SideburnsOfDoom · 1791183354 · focus · HN ↗
    [delayed]
    ipaddr · 1791177365 · focus · HN ↗
    I don't the formula: place + virus is racist. Racism is a serious issue and shouldn't be labelled on things that aren't making judgement using someone's race.
    Normally city + virus using country + virus is incorrect. But to call it racist or transphobic or fascist would be an incorrect usage.
    dwattttt · 1791177982 · focus · HN ↗
    The Spanish Flu's first known case was in Kansas. French papers changed from calling it American Flu to Spanish Flu to avoid angering an ally (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu#cite_note-fiction-57" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu#cite_note-fiction-...).
    Maybe place + virus isn't inherently racist, but it's been politically charged & exploited; best to put the combination down.
    retsibsi · 1791182215 · focus · HN ↗
    > It was an ex posto facto thing to claim saying it was a lab leak was racist. I’m sure someone said that, however, no one serious was nor was it a common position.
    I think you are misremembering.
    > The lab-leak theory had been floated by President Trump and others in his circle in April last year. It was widely dismissed at the time as an unfounded conspiracy theory with racist undertones.
    <a href="https://theconversation.com/covid-19-why-lab-leak-theory-is-back-despite-little-new-evidence-162215" rel="nofollow">https://theconversation.com/covid-19-why-lab-leak-theory-is-... (2021)
    > New York Times reporter Apoorva Mandavilli deleted a tweet Wednesday night that said the COVID-19 "lab leak theory" had "racist roots."
    <a href="https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/ny-times-covid-reporter-deletes-132728236.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/ny-times-covid-reporter-... (2021)
    > The lab-leak theory came to legitimacy by a circuitous path. It was first auditioned by Donald Trump and Mike Pompeo shortly after lockdown started, but journalists were quick to distance themselves from its overtones of crude Trumpian racism. Nevertheless the theory gained new life last spring, when some of those same journalists — abetted by a chorus of concern trolls — began to question if they had been blinded by liberal partisanship.
    <a href="https://www.nplusonemag.com/issue-42/politics/lab-leak-theory-and-the-asiatic-form/" rel="nofollow">https://www.nplusonemag.com/issue-42/politics/lab-leak-theor... (2022)
    Some of this was a case of people failing to recognise that Reversed Stupidity Is Not Intelligence, reasoning (implicitly) like this:
    Trump lies all the time + Trump said X => not X
    instead of like this:
    Trump says whatever suits him, regardless of the truth + Trump said X => no significant change to our credence in X
    > Calling it the “Chinavirus” was obviously racist and weird.
    That was a dumb Trumpism for sure, but separately from that, here in Australia, before the global spread of covid became too obvious to ignore, there was a sense among right-thinking people that even being concerned about it, let alone wanting to take any kind of action, was a manifestation of anti-Chinese racism / very literal xenophobia.
    Angostura · 1791178994 · focus · HN ↗
    > Does anyone else remember when claiming it was a lab in China that leaked was “racist”
    No. I remember it being called a conspiracy theory. And it still is.

Open on Hacker News to reply ↗

Unofficial Hacker News client; not affiliated with Y Combinator.