alt Hacker News"Things like" encompasses similar sentiments and yes some of them expressed similar sentiments in private, even after publishing the paper.
I've read the logs. They didn't re-evaluate in light of new evidence and no science was being done. They steadily talked themselves into believing what they wanted to believe from the start, while ignoring all the facts that would point in the other direction.
But really - why do we care what virologists think, of all people? Of course they claimed it couldn't have been them, who wants to get the blame for COVID? Their "expertise" certainly can't be cited in their own defense. When the evidence is evaluated objectively - and there is so much of it - it becomes clear that the pandemic was man made.
TBH I've found this isn't controversial anywhere outside of HN. Most people seem to accept what happened. It's only here that people cling to the idea it was natural. Heck for most people "it emerged right next to the only lab in the world doing experiments on coronaviruses" is enough by itself.
>yes some of them expressed similar sentiments in private, even after publishing the paper.
Prove it.
>They steadily talked themselves into believing what they wanted to believe from the start, while ignoring all the facts that would point in the other direction.
They stated early on what reasons they had to believe it came from a lab and what evidence would disprove that, then got exactly the evidence that they previously said would disprove it. The unusual features of the virus are found in nature. The evidence that it was a lab leak is then reduced to "it was kind of near a lab", which is pretty wimpy.
>Of course they claimed it couldn't have been them, who wants to get the blame for COVID?
So why did the virologists in question called out their colleagues for unscientifically circling the wagons and, in their published work, explicitly decline to rule out the lab leak hypothesis?
You cannot point out any bad behavior in their publications or internal communications, so you resort to innuendo.
>it emerged right next to the only lab in the world doing experiments on coronaviruses
Lots of labs are doing gain-of-function research on coronaviruses. The "lion's share" is done in the United States. The Wuhan lab was unusually large, granted.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-02873-2