from Hacker News

We Were Badly Misled About the Event That Changed Our Lives

by jbegley on 3/16/25, 12:42 PM with 23 comments

  • by Fricken on 3/16/25, 1:12 PM

    This is from the Covid Timeline on Wikipedia:

    >According to an ABC news report, the American National Center for Medical Intelligence shared intelligence in late November, based on analysis of wire and computer intercepts and satellite images, regarding a potential respiratory disease in Wuhan. This was denied by the Pentagon.[4] On 13 March 2020, the South China Morning Post reported that Chinese government records suggest that the first case of infection with COVID-19 could be traced back to a 55-year-old Hubei resident on 17 November.

    Now, I swear to god I passed over a news item about a respiratory illness spreading around Wuhan in late November, and that people were being quarantined. It sounded serious, I wondered what it's chances were of spreading everywhere. I did some googling around, I learned about the Wuhan institute of Virology, it's relationship with other biosafety level IV labs around the world, and NIH funded gain-of-function research happening there.

    A couple months later when the rest of the world was paying attention, I went to look up the information and couldn't find any of it. I gave up on trying to sort fact from fiction because there was so much bullshit going around.

  • by rayiner on 3/16/25, 2:53 PM

    Scientists and public health officials made the mistake of projecting certainty and confidence that wasn’t justified by the state of the research. This is why lawyers are trained to always qualify their opinions—you can never really know anything for certain.

    I pray none of this overconfidence and unjustified certainty applied to the mRNA vaccines. It would be a disaster if 20 years from now there’s some findings about long term impacts from first-gen mRNA vaccines. (I say that out of pure self interest—I’m vaccinated with Pfizer shot and so is my wife and eldest daughter.)

  • by mitchbob on 3/16/25, 5:32 PM

  • by sega_sai on 3/16/25, 11:22 PM

    Apparently this opinion piece, which i initially took at face value is not fully straight with the facts. I.e. on misleading journalists, here is the rebuttal based on the official testimonies: https://medium.com/@K_G_Andersen/its-not-about-getting-the-s...

  • by starspangled on 3/17/25, 12:52 AM

    This should be a very good introspective learning experience for people who blindly trusted governments and their "experts", social media and "news" corporations, "fact checkers", etc., and who believed that all being in it together meant that anybody who doubts or even questions the accepted narrative should be bullied and censored and silenced.

    I doubt many will take advantage of the opportunity, but we can only hope.

  • by hoseja on 3/18/25, 8:58 AM

    I remember learning about the furin cleavage site in the first weeks. Massive smoking gun.

  • by uppost on 3/16/25, 1:45 PM

    If only there was a credible news agency or group of influential elites that could have given some pushback against the "misleading" of the public, I would gladly subscribe. It seems like that may be an even bigger problem than GoF lab leaks; an unintelligent intelligentsia.

  • by dlcarrier on 3/16/25, 4:16 PM

    Why are conspiracy theories considered the crazy ones? Aren't a significant perron of crimes prosecuted as a conspiracy? Wouldn't a lone actor committing a complex act be far less likely than two or more conspiring to do the same?

  • by jgalt212 on 3/16/25, 2:16 PM

    All I need to know about COVID is encapsulated in the market caps of big tech in late 2019 vs the market caps of big tech now.