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I suspect that minor gotchas like this are capable of having the opposite effect: neutral people who care about nuance will feel like you are slightly adapting facts to suit anti-CCP narrative. Compounded by the fact that there is little verifiable information due to heavy censorship, this makes any argument on the topic quite challenging.
After your top-level comment got downvoted I didn’t feel comfortable expressing my opinion: some might think I downvoted you and/or others will mistake me for an astroturfer. Personally, I’ve upvoted it and I agree on general sentiment.
I agree that kind of thing can erode the argument so thank you for pointing it out, I wasn't actually aware of that fact re: Japan and probably I'd put less emphasis on that knowing that there can be other alternative explanations.
I don't agree that it's a struggle to criticise the CCP more generally however as while they lock down as much information as they can, plenty leaks out (as always with totalitarian regimes) and there is overwhelming evidence including video, testimony, etc. as to treatment of Uighurs and Falon Gong. I intentionally added references to my original post as to avoid such criticism... for all the good it did me!
And please feel free to express yourself, I have upvoted you also :)
[0]:https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/468111?jou...
The argument is that they were profoundly negligent.
As for the lab side of things, the argument is that it was an accidental release (as happened multiple times with SARS 1).
My point is whether or not it walked out of the lab (by ACCIDENT) given they knew in 2003 that certain things were major risks, they should have come down on them like a ton of bricks. The fact they re-opened wet markets and took no further steps to tackle that makes them responsible through negligence.
1) China is known to have contributed[0] to bat coronavirus research, my speculation is that Wuhan’s BSL-4 lab exists primarily for this reason.
2) There were documented lab escapes of original SARS-CoV from labs in Beijing[1] in 2004, as I recall resulting in at least one death.
3) WHO’s study starts this month, but they don’t seem to mention lab escape (not of some “engineered virus”, just straight up a natural sample escaping on a person) as a possibility[2]. I am not sure if they are playing politics or this is their sincere outlook.
I can’t stress this enough: China may have been unlucky to be struck by the original SARS-CoV, so it’s reasonable that they had the motivation to study its origins; that research is valuable and it’d be absolutely bonkers to criticize scientists for having done it. Even if lab escape did indeed happen to be the cause of SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, I am not sure this should be a basis for prosecution of a particular country (as opposed to e.g. tightening of BSL security practices): there’s human factor, and mistakes happen; if it hadn’t been China it could’ve eventually been another country.
What I find alarming is if an effort to obstruct the study of pandemic origins in order to save face (?) is taking place. If it was a lab escape, humanity’s future could be much safer if we knew how it happened—but how would researchers know it was a lab escape if they can’t look in that direction?
[0] https://virologyj.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12985-... (2015, two authors are with Wuhan Institute of Virology)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002–2004_SARS_outbreak#April_...
[2] https://www.who.int/publications/m/item/who-convened-global-...
Secondly they covered up the outbreak. Had it been reported a few weeks earlier apparently up to 95% of deaths could have been prevented. That is really insane.
The lab side of it is interesting and it seems just so much of a coincidence that the lab was right next to the oubreak, of all the places in all of the huge country of China.
I don't doubt they were motivated to study bat coronaviruses, of course they were and there was in fact very big competition with the US.
The problem is China is such a corrupt country where health + safety + following protocols is something of a joke, as with most communist/totalitarian systems people always try to get away with as much as they can that I have zero trust in their BS4 lab being properly constructed and procedures followed correctly.
They also covered up the discovery of a very similar virus some years ago (they actively anonymised records around it after covid19 emerged) in a bat cave (no pun intended) which already appeared to have bat-human transmission.
It is something like 96% similar to covid19 though some scientists say it isn't feasible that it evolved into covid19 except in nature. However I wonder whether some form of natural evolution of the virus was experimented on or encouraged in the lab or whether this assumption is in fact correct.
So the lab thing is definitely up for debate, however the general attitude from much of the media and certainly China is to dismiss it as a crackpot theory. Absolutely don't think it is.
Also I personally do not believe at all that any of this was intentional. I think it's a mixture of negligence, cover-up and face saving.
Keeping in mind the next virus might not be a 0.4% case fatality rate that mostly kills the very old, it's deeply frightening.
I agree completely.
The reason I - and others - commented, is that your initial comments made it sound like you believed it was 100% on purpose, that it was some weird plan of the CCP to gain power, somehow.
I fail to see the value of this, China is not Sweden, I am not sure why you hold them to the same standards, that seems strange to me
But anyhow, I just wanted to add that the CIA and the US state department was aware of a new Pneumonia surging on China back in November and sped to warn NATO and Israel of it[0], after all, no one ever needed to actually listen to what the Chinese government says, that's what intelligence agencies are for
[0] https://www.timesofisrael.com/us-alerted-israel-nato-to-dise...
I don't think there's any evidence for that. Every woke tech person I know would rather quit their job than do work that benefits the CCP. I think that's why all the biggest tech companies have tiptoed up to that point (e.g. project dragonfly) but haven't been able to cross it.
There is also quite a bit of dissonance and public vs. private attitudes that you have to sort through. The mainstream and tolerated view in mainland china is that the cultural revolution was a huge mistake - there are way too many families that were fucked up by it - but Mao was still a great guy.
- One dev has a twitter account that's a nonstop stream of pro CCP ("Tiananmen is Western propaganda") and anti HK propaganda. I found it because it's named the same as his stackoverflow page which is a very unique identifier with the same uppercasing on specific letters.
- Another doesn't believe there were famines under Mao (we were discussing the Wiki page on it) and calls it propaganda. This was from a Uighur emigrant.
- Another agrees fully with the CCP ocean territory claims in the SEA that take basically all the oceans to the west of Philippines etc.
- Another thinks China can't be a democracy because the logistics of over a billion voting are too hard
- Another left HK early on because of disdain towards the democracy protests (long before attacks on mainland businesses)
I'm sure you're right that there's heterogeneity there (that almost goes without saying and is true of any group of people) and a public vs private distinction but that doesn't contradict what I've said.
they have family/relatives in mainland... have to be careful even in abroad
would "gross negligence, face-saving, cover up and delay resulting in over a million more deaths than necessary" work better for you? [0]
[0]:https://www.zmescience.com/medicine/china-coronavirus-coveru...
China are literally harvesting organs, disappearing political dissidents and covered up the outbreak of a pandemic (to say the least you could about that), and their govt is responsible for 10's of millions of deaths of their own people.
Some nebulous Chomsky-ish nonsense doesn't rank against that, sorry.
I understand very well that there is extra pressure on a minority/contrarian view that feels embattled, but it doesn't make it ok to break the rules. When you break them it dissuades people from giving you a hearing anyhow, so individual interest and community interest are the same.
And that it's not impossible that the virus could have escaped from a lab (since the SARS virus did multiple times before [0]) by accident? Though there is some real debate about that so I'm not blindly advocating that theory, only saying it's not entirely implausible.
I mean I'd love to hear your arguments as to the contrary, since you accuse me of 'state level character assassination' by... providing a large number of references to incredibly evil behaviour by the CCP? Please feel free to rebut any 'specific' which you accuse me of refusing to discuss?
I am making specific criticisms none of which I see you have chosen to rebut or discuss rather you are instead trying to smear me. Am happy to hear your actual arguments...
[0]:https://www.the-scientist.com/news-analysis/sars-escaped-bei...
Ofc, that's why they were reformed, current meat and grocery markets commonly found are nothing like the markets of SARS
And yeah, huge reforms took place on Chinese Healthcare policy[0] alongside South Korean and Vietnamese Healthcare policy, which is why all three countries have been doing so well, they learned all the lessons from SARS which were ignored in the West
[0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK92479/
Overall sad to see that you are clearly not engaging in good faith, as these discussions are very important :/
> And that it's not impossible that the virus could have escaped from a lab by accident?
And no, once again you show the conspiracy angle, no, it is not the case because the virus has been genetically analyzed all over the world now and not datasets have been produced which could show manipulation, let alone the fact that patient Zero was found a while ago[1], but of course I am sadly not expecting you to actually accept it, as I am sure you will pivot to another branch of the broader "China == Evil" conspiracy-adjacent beliefs :/
[1] https://amp.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3074991/coro...
You're either a troll, very naive, a patriot to the point of delusion or in the employ of the CCP. Think for yourself and think about what you're defending.