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Comment by btilly | Hacker News Reader

Please don't spread conspiracy theories without linking to a reliable source.

Defnitely not the official stance, but Lijian Zhao (China Spokesperson & Deputy Director General, Information Department, Foreign Ministry) tweeted "It might be US army who brought the epidemic to Wuhan."

https://twitter.com/zlj517/status/1238111898828066823

Just as Tom Cotton (Senator from Arkansas) declared on Fox news that it was a Chinese bioweapon. All governments have wingnuts.

I think it's clearly not a bioweapon, and there would be no benefit to China for releasing it, but it's exactly the sort of thing that lab was investigating, so part of me wonders if there wasn't a leak of a research sample. Even if it were so, I would never blame all Chinese people for it.

Occam's razor is for the obvious, it was a cross species jump of a disease from another animal (in this case a bat). Which happens somewhat regularly, and was already known to be a concern.

Maybe, but I somehow don't feel like their government would have fought to hide as much info about it unless they were embarrassed about something, so I feel like the razor cuts the other way. Can we really trust a government that hid things for so long? That said, I doubt we'll have any real proof one way or another.

Local officials hid information because nobody wants to be the bearer of bad news. This is an ancient tradition in China.

Once the news bubbled up to smart people at the top who understood math, their reaction reversed.

There is no way that if people at the top had known what was really going on, they would have let the Moon festival happen.

He did it because Mike Pompeo keeps calling it the China or Wuhan virus, instead of Covid-19, and it irritates China. Now Trump calls it "China virus" consistently...

There's many ways to debunk Lijian Zhao's conspiracy theory including the fact that the people who participated in the Wuhan military games and admitted to the hospital for an "unknown respiratory illness" was confirmed to be malaria by the hospital itself.

He knows it, and anyone who did brief research knows (there are lots of Chinese who believe it, though...they are the Chinese equivalent to MAGA supporters).

Yes. Highly placed individuals promote conspiracy theories. Given our President's past behavior on Twitter, we are in no position to criticize.

However the official conclusion of China that I have seen matches the international community - this started in a wet market in China.

In China, you are not allowed to talk about Wuhan as the source of outbreak anymore [1]. A prominent microbiologist is forced to apologize after saying the virus was originated Wuhan seafood market and blaming the culture of eating wild animals[2]. The whole country is trying to shape US as the source of virus, at least on Chinese social media.

1. https://www.ft.com/content/d420ce18-641f-11ea-b3f3-fe4680ea6... 2. https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/health-environment/artic... 3. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/13/world/asia/coronavirus-ch...

> A prominent microbiologist is forced to apologize

Uh, from the literal headline of the article itself, the apology is probably because he blamed it on, quote, "inferior Chinese culture".

And obviously you already knew that. So you're just trying to push a narrative here.

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