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Comment by dominotw | Hacker News Reader

I am still perplexed by the fact that no one is holding China accountable. How is this possible? Is it because we don't want to mess with the dope dealer that has us hooked on cheap junk.

How can Peter Daszak be on who commission given his deep ties with the wuhan lab. Why does no one care. what am i missing here.

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In what way should China be held accountable in your view?

For the cover up and not letting WHO investigate what happened

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/feb/14/who-investigat...

How is this not a big deal.

I read it more as a how rather than a why.

Refuse to do any more business with them. Cut them off economically, cut trade routes and flights.

Is that all?

It seems as though economic sanctions are the modern way of holding countries accountable. This can be done to the country being held accountable or to their trading partners.

Hasn't the US been sanctioning Chinese firms for a while now? If you do a quick search, it goes anywhere from tariffs, banning export of key technologies to outright imprisoning executives.

The latest move is to de-list Chinese firms from American exchanges, which is going to severely damage Chinese tech firms ability to raise capital.

Black Death(Plague), Spanish Flu and COVID-19 originated in China.

If you ask me how to to prevent future pandemics idk ask experts but something has to be done. Get global public health standards or something.

The black death originated in central or east Asia but I don't think there's any indication that it was in China. Given the proximity, China might have been one of the first nations to be affected with the ability to document it, though.

The Spanish Flu most likely originated in the US.

You're likely right about covid, though.

Spanish/1918 Flu originated in China https://www.nationalgeographic.com/adventure/article/140123-...

Black Death originated near China in Asia and was brought to Europe by Silk Road traders. None of this pandemics originated either in Europe or US(North America).

Significant harm has been done, for which they very well may bear a certain level of responsibility. Speaking to that effect would be a start.

I suspect people in media are afraid of speaking out against China. For example, there may be consequences to speaking out if China ever invades and occupies other countries - at that point dissidents will be in danger, especially those that spoke against them in the media.

> I suspect people in media are afraid of speaking out against China.

could it be because that might cause more anti-asian hate crimes?

I doubt it. The Chinese communist party isn't really Chinese in origin anyway... it's an imported western idea that destroyed much of Chinese culture and life (see: cultural revolution).

Also, Taiwanese people are every bit as much true Chinese as anyone from mainland China.

Media articles could easily point these things out.

China did everything to stop the virus. When the virus arrived in Italy or U.S soil they were already on lockdown. They have controled the virus and offered help to multiple countries. It seems to me that it's easy to blame "the evil communists" than to realize we've fucked up and our government/social economic system have failed us.

China did everything to stop the virus within their own country, but not to keep it from escaping China. They ripped up roads from Wuhan to other domestic regions, but still allowed citizens from Wuhan to travel internationally.

There are better sources, but here's one to get started if you need: https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/blogs/Whathappensif/how...

> How is this possible?

I can think of only a few scenario's where China messed up and the West remains silent. One would be where personal interests or blackmail would cause the decision makers to change their tune. A plausible one is where the West does not want to step on any toes, to safeguard that little data coming from China, while it is silently gathering international support for when the pandemic is under control. Another where SARS-2 developed from SARS-1 when it recombined in Wuhan in a HIV-patient (perhaps after a failed vaccine trial). If you are interested in protecting the health of the population, it is more important to shield possible victims of panic and hate, than to have a million negative mentions of HIV, China, and vaccines in the news.

I suspect Peter Daszak will face accountability due to the Streisand effect of his PR campaign against "conspiracies". You can't write a paper condemning scientists for even suggesting it was a lab leak of a human-intervented virus, and then field an objective origins investigation. A lot happened in 2020, but I doubt we forget that blatant mess.

Even if this turns out zoonotic (I hope it does), Daszak will scream he was right suppressing any investigation into opposing hypothesis. No scientist should live that down.

What are you missing? The fact that it doesn't really matter if the virus was transmitted from bats to pangolins to humans or from bats to humans in a cave or from a mishandled synthetic virus. Who cares at this point? The damage is done and we knew with near 100% certainty that it was only a matter of time before something like this happened, and China was always a potential hotspot.

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