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Comment by Bukhmanizer | Hacker News Reader

My personal feelings are that all 3 are possible, but approximately 0.0001% of people will actually consider the likelihood of each one, but rather, most will choose whichever one is most convenient and comfortable to believe in.

Of course as an Asian person, whatever people believe in will have a direct impact on me. I remember after 9/11, the amount of awful things that were said and done to the Sikh population in my city. It didn’t matter they had literally nothing to do with the attacks. People were angry and wanted someone to blame.

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As a white American in Beijing during the 9/11 attacks, I experienced lots of not-so-surprising behavior from my Chinese hosts. Many Chinese felt that America deserved what they got. Tensions were still high from the "Hainan Island Incident" only a few months earlier. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hainan_Island_incident

> Many Chinese felt that America deserved what they got.

I don't see how their opinion matters, since they're misinformed and orchestrated by the CCP.

The Hainan incident was caused by a Chinese fighter pilot running into a US surveillance plane. The former is agile, the latter is not, so that's the fault of the fighter.

Also, a plane in distress doesn't need permission to land. For the CCP to make a big deal out of that when there's no other runway available shows their true nature - evil and authoritarian.

The CCP has been at war with the US since the 1950s over ideology. If the US was not their enemy, the CCP would just pick another country.

I've noticed that otherwise intelligent people seem to place significance in "man in the street" conversations with people who live in totalitarian countries and have no power.

There's a phrase for that, useful idiot:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Useful_idiot

FWIW, when we heard of the incident, I think the prevailing sentiment was that America deserved it, and we are unrelated to China (in Europe).

America has made a lot of enemies and inflicted a lot of damage and terror for what seems as both good and bad reasons. After all the one-sided "interventions", I find it hard to disagree that America (not the Americans affected) deserved something in return.

As long as we stick to the concept of nation, we likely have to live with such issues. This is how group identity works, sometimes to your advantage, sometimes to your disadvantage.

I assign non-negligible probability to each of them. I don't know.

But I hate the stupid racism and hate around it. COVID-19 attacked every country. With the exception of, like, New Zealand (but it affected them as well... had to shut down their borders, etc).

These viruses are a threat to all humanity. I just want us to fight them better and help everyone.

I think it's super important that we both simultaneously hold China accountable (rhetorically, in the social sphere at very least) for aggressive expansionary actions (i.e. vs Hong Kong, Taiwan, the Philippines) and human rights abuses (Uighur, etc)...

...while simultaneously trying to help everyone do better, including the Chinese, to face common threats (like novel viruses, climate change, etc). And we must not start up a new Cold War with all its proxy conflicts, death, and unnecessary economic suffering and threat of annihilation.

Unfortunately, avoiding a new Cold War is something that would take equal effort from both sides. If just one side is eager to wage such a battle, it will happen unless the other side acquiesces at every turn.

Maybe. But annihilating isn’t really in anyone’s interests.

Actually annihilating, no. But a Cold War isn't that - it's a constant threat of such. Which can be very useful to manipulate public opinion - and there are plenty of sociopaths in politics who deem the risks worth the reward.

> But I hate the stupid racism and hate around it. COVID-19 attacked every country. With the exception of, like, New Zealand (but it affected them as well... had to shut down their borders, etc).

As someone who lives in New Zealand, we were still "attacked" by covid all the same. The only difference arguably is the coordinated response from our government compared to others. Some of that is presumably culture too (we don't have a document held to a pseudo-religious standard ie the constitution for example) although being too laid back can have its consequences too if emergency health laws were to be abused in order to infringe on personal freedoms for example

There was a lot of luck too. Not being a major travel hub meant the virus hadn’t become widespread. The New Zealand government dragged its feet at first and clamped down just in time to prevent a much worse outbreak. If they had waited a few more days the cases likely would have gone exponentially vertical, possibly made it into more vulnerable populations and the death toll would have then increased considerably. I’m very grateful for the luck!

NZ has extremely high international air traffic. With 11M international passengers per year Auckland airport is comparable with the big US airports like SFO with 13.8M international. Even kiwis often don’t realize just how busy Auckland airport is!

Those who had planes flying over our homes know. The various trials the airport conducted with low A380s and other large plane were a nightmare. We aren’t in a typical flight path, but various trials put us in one. I’m not sorry to see that cease.

> NZ has extremely high international air traffic.

Maybe per capita but not per se. The US had 241 million international air passengers in 2019[1]. The UK had >160 million[2]. The US has two land borders with significant traffic and the UK had 21.5 million Chunnel passengers in 2019[3]. The volume of passenger shipping is also vastly higher in both countries. NZ also has almost no illegal border crossings.

NZ has a much smaller risk profile than these and many other countries. And this is born out by events. By the time the world became aware of what was happening the virus had already been spreading in Europe and the US for months. While it had been introduced to NZ it was still in much earlier stages.

[1] https://www.bts.gov/newsroom/final-full-year-2019-traffic-da...

[2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/303654/number-of-arrivin...

[3] https://www.statista.com/statistics/304968/number-of-passeng...

Keep in mind that NZ is less than a tenth the population of the UK and less than a 60th of USAs. And those figures are for the country, not a city. The point made that Auckland has a lot of travellers.

It is true that in absolute terms NZ has small trade and travel relative to the UK and US, but those factors are far from being the only reasons that NZ has suffered less death and destruction. It’s more that the UK and US have done poorly.

> Keep in mind that NZ is less than a tenth the population of the UK and less than a 60th of USAs.

Yes, hence my "per capita" comment. The risk of infection getting into a country is more of a function of how much total traffic it gets rather than the per-capita traffic.

> And those figures are for the country, not a city.

Auckland Airport represents the vast majority of all international traffic into New Zealand, and not just flights.

> The point made that Auckland has a lot of travellers.

Not by absolute number which is what matters most for how easy it is for a virus to find its way in and get established domestically.

> It’s more that the UK and US have done poorly.

This is an important point and I do not belittle it at all. My point isn't to defend the USA and the UK but to point out that the difficulty of NZ's response was enormously easier both absolutely and relatively given the nature of NZ's geography and the fact that the local epidemic had barely started by the lockdowns. NZ has a lot to be proud of in its response, but no reason to be smug.

NZ had swine flu just 10 days after the USA. Covid19 reached New Zealand before Berlin. Even back in 1918 the flu pandemic reached NZ in months at a time when that journey by ship wasn't much faster!

> NZ had swine flu just 10 days after the USA.

Correction, NZ had its first cases of swine flu connected directly with travel to Mexico, the epicenter of the pandemic, 10 days after the USA identified its first cases which were community spread. In other words the virus had been circulating for some time in the United States already and just happened to be observed then. Case in point. The US/Mexico border is the most crossed border in the world with 350 million documented crossings annually and undocumented crossings in the 6 figures annually. Each crossing is another chance that the virus gets in and starts spreading domestically which is why the first case was community spread and not associated with travel to Mexico.

> Covid19 reached New Zealand before Berlin.

Maybe the first detected case but considering that Germany had its first detected case in late January in Bavaria a full month before NZ's first case, again directly associated with international travel, the virus very well had opportunity to have already gotten to Berlin and elsewhere undetected.

> Even back in 1918 the flu pandemic reached NZ in months at a time when that journey by ship wasn't much faster!

This was the massive demobilization from WWI with a rush of repatriation from the epicenter of the pandemic which had been active in Europe for some time, Spain was just the first country to admit it had an epidemic. Again, my case in point, NZ was infected long after most of the rest of world because NZ is out of the way. Thank goodness it is.

> Auckland Airport represents the vast majority of all international traffic into New Zealand, and not just flights.

Yes - and that is a hell of a lot for a small place. It’s comparable to something like SFO, but at the far end of the planet. But yes, the scale is small by international standards.

> the difficulty of NZ's response was enormously easier both absolutely and relatively given the nature of NZ's geography

This helped, but there are a lot more islands that have done poorly. I’m not sure that it was enormously easier, but the few week we got were key. In terms of getting governments to move fast, NZs government moved far faster than one would have expected, and the advantage gained by the short delay due to geography undoubtedly saved us a lot of deaths. We were on a vicious exponential growth.

> NZ has a lot to be proud of in its response, but no reason to be smug.

Absolutely. My view is more one of horror at the considerable reliance placed on gut feeling, belief systems and hope rather than science and cooperation.

Being a small island country certainly played a role, no? Not to take anything away from your impressively functional government.

Being small kind of a bigger deal than being an island. Air travel doesn’t care much if you’re an island or not. The US is practically an island in many senses except for Mexico and Canada, but the virus didn’t come over land, it came over air in multiple places, especially from folks going on Alpine ski trips.

If we had shut down air travel early on globally (not just China...) and pursued a vigorous in-country test and trace program, we would’ve had a chance.

Unlikely imo. False reliance on testing has created more issues than it helped. Look at Taiwan (another small island nation). They don't bother testing. If you are sick, it's assumed you have COVID and you quarantine for two weeks. Much smarter and safer imo.

I disagree, and think small island nations do have much better chances. Otherwise we'd probably have great success stories in places like Andorra, Armenia, and Vatican City. I'm sure island countries to be more self reliant, with fewer major transport hubs that can be locked down.

Vatican City is not a near-island like the US, tho. It’s a micro state with massive travel to/from the rest of Italy (which was hit early).

Taiwan had high mask usage early on. That would’ve helped a lot in the US.

Testing was very successful, actually, in places like Singapore. Didn’t help that there was official discouragement of wearing masks followed by culture-war mask avoidance in the US.

I don’t think the ‘island’ part is the important bit, but the ‘small’ might be. Hawaii and the the UK are examples of islands that haven’t done that well.

See my other comment. Neither have Andorra, Armenia, or Vatican City.

I think from what we've seen, you need to be a small island nation AND have a strong policy response to have a chance at averting this crisis.

> But I hate the stupid racism and hate around it.

What is most astonishingly stupid about this particular racism is that while the CCP doesn’t come off looking great in significant ways, Taiwan comes away looking spectacular! Japan, Korea and Vietnam also have a lot to be commended for major aspects of their responses! Asians in the United States have on average done an excellent job of staying safe and therefore keeping our communities safer! The rest of us should be studying their policies and behaviors with a mind to adapt and emulate not having racist delusions.

Singapore and Thailand also have done quite well so far.

> must not start up a new Cold Way

At least for now, the powers at be seem content just continuing the existing one.

> These viruses are a threat to all humanity. I just want us to fight them better and help everyone.

It would be more accurate to say: these viruses are a threat to the current socioeconomic and sociopolitical status quo.

Take air travel for instance. It was key to spreading this and other pandemic viruses. Yet no one is questioning air travel. Note: I'm not suggesting it should be shut down, only that the idea of international flights being normalized should be revisited.

Looking at Forbes latest list to the richest people in the world tells us 2020 was a great year for wealth redistribution (from the bottom to the top). It was a great year for the status quo, for the globalists. As for the rest of us? 2020 was not so good.

Ultimately, the virus is a symptom.

Nitpick, but important: saying "wealth redistribution (from the bottom to the top)" implies there's a fixed amount of wealth, like a pie, and the "top" are getting a bigger and bigger slice. A lot of people actually think like this, and it's incorrect.

It's more correct to think of e.g. Carlos or Elon as leading efforts to bake lots and lots more pie, and then keeping a lot of the pie for themselves. The dominant theme is that they're creating value that didn't exist before, not taking a larger proportion of already-existing value.

Not true. The people in the middle expand the pie, the people at the top (the 1% of the 1%) eat it. And the people at the bottom are indeed having a harder and harder time.

I hear what you're saying, and I think it hinges on how you assign credit for making more pie. Did the employee make the pie, or did the person choosing deploying the capital that particular way make the pie?

In any case, the point I think is important, and which I wanted to make, is "more pie, not dividing up the same pie" which works with both our stories.

Edit: oh, and I think it's probably not true that the people at the bottom are having a "harder and harder time". It of course would depend on which metrics you pick, but I generally understand that sort of sentiment as popular in the media but wrong in a Better-Angels-of-our-Nature kind of way. I could believe that people at the bottom are getting a smaller share percentage-wise, but the actual amount of pie they're getting is growing. People are living longer, healthier lives, there's less food insecurity, etc.

If you look at the 2020 data, the last time I checked, that's not what happened.

Despite what a lot of people think we had covid here in NZ too, people died - but like China we did a nationwide lockdown and people actually took it seriously, people only went out to buy food for 6 weeks. The government opened its pockets and made sure people, could live and still had jobs when it was over, and the economy was ready to be restarted.

If SARS-CoV-2 emerged due to the WIV's research activities, then it was potentially with the knowledge and funding of the American government, via the EcoHealth Alliance. Racism is always stupid, but in this case it's particularly so.

This absolutely shouldn't be China vs. USA, and it's deeply unfortunate that the Trump administration's early, characteristically unsupported rhetoric made it so. The WIV's safety was probably below American standards, but probably closer than a wet market is to American agricultural standards. So it's ridiculous to think a lab vs. natural origin makes it "more China's fault". If the CCP is currently covering up a lab accident, then they're probably quite unhappy that they've been "forced" to do so, and wishing in retrospect they'd instead decided a year ago to publicly blame the rogue, American-funded researcher.

Long before the pandemic, this was an obscure academic debate, between virologists who wanted to perform certain risky experiments and others who thought they presented an unacceptable risk:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7097416/

With the possibility (absolutely not proven; but not disproven either) that such an experiment has just killed 2.9M people, that debate takes on a terrible new significance.

Anti-Chinese racism is stupid and toxic, yes, but you're missing the point.

People here generally aren't blaming China because that's where COVID-19 originated. That would be stupid.

No, they're blaming the CCP for covering it up in the early days, which allowed it to spread and become the global pandemic which it became. Big difference.

It's not China's fault that COVID originated there (lab leak or otherwise). It is their fault for covering up the scale of the problem and thereby helping it spread.

The article is about the earliest origins of SARS-CoV-2, whether that arose from the activities of the WIV or naturally. My comment is as well.

Once the pandemic emerged, the CCP's response was certainly terrible in many well-known ways (e.g., their attempt to suppress Yan Limeng's initial alarm, and the disappearance of multiple citizen journalists from Wuhan), though it's impossible to know whether a better response could have suppressed its worldwide spread. That's a separate question from those earliest origins, though.

Agreed that it's a separate question.

I just don't think the anti-CCP sentiment is unjustified, though.

Whether it was a lab leak is important but a misdirection.

Their cover-up of the true scale of the problem (lab leak or not) made it hard for politicians in other countries to lock down quickly. It helped it spread intentionally to multiple countries and by then it was too late.

If they were blasting their sirens early in 2021 instead of covering it up we might have had swifter border closures etc.

I don't think we disagree? There's plenty of reason to dislike the CCP, in relation to their handling of SARS-CoV-2 and otherwise. I just don't think SARS-CoV-2 originating in a WIV lab accident would add to that.

It would add to it, because it would significantly increase the number of lies they told the rest of the world, given that they've been maintaining that it isn't a lab leak.

The thing with covid was it caught everyone by surprise. It’s not like the US even caught on first. It devastated Italy before we even flinched, so that alone is evidence that, at least for the US response, we would have gone to shit no matter who warned us.

The counterfactual is hard to reason about. SARS-1 was contained because international travel was restricted immediately after the first few cases. Once you seed multiple countries with it, competence matters for little.

Sars 1 made it to the US and many countries. Short story was it was contained because it was much more deadly, and transmission was tied to symptoms so it was more easily detected.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-did-the-world-shut-...

One of the first things done by the Trump administration was close borders with China, but it was not enough.

Depending on the official, the CCP also seems to be maintaining that SARS-CoV-2 didn't originate naturally in China either, thus their (entirely unsupported) frozen food theory and push for sampling in other SE Asian countries. So I again see plenty of reason to dislike the CCP, but little specific to actual lab vs. non-lab origin.

I'm absolutely not saying the origin doesn't matter for anything--if 2.9M people died due to a particular class of research, then that absolutely should affect our judgment as to whether that research should be funded or permitted (though that cost/benefit tradeoff seems grossly unfavorable to me regardless). The link between that question and China's perceived culpability just seems bizarrely overstated to me, divorced from the reality that the USA was entirely supportive of that research pre-pandemic.

Isn't that just one rogue official on Twitter? The mainstream CCP narrative is that it originated in a Wuhan market.

So a lab leak, if true, would indeed significantly increase the number of lies being told.

As far as I can tell, the mainstream CCP narrative is basically everywhere except China:

https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1181292.shtml (USA, misidentified as vape lung)

https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1183658.shtml (something with Fort Detrick)

https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202101/1214376.shtml (not the Huanan market, maybe imported seafood)

I guess you could try counting up and comparing the total lies implied by each origin, but the volume is so high that seems pointless to me. Their strategy seems more like a general fog of confusion to me than a particular story intended to be believed.

> Their cover-up of the true scale of the problem (lab leak or not) made it hard for politicians in other countries to lock down quickly. It helped it spread intentionally to multiple countries and by then it was too late.

I disagree. The actions from a lot of countries were absolutely lacking, even when they could see how bad it was given both China's data, and Italy, Israel's initial incidents.

China locked down super hard towards late February/mid-March.

During this time there was countless reports about the "ridiculous" and "draconian" lockdowns that occurred in China. The West basically pointed fingers, laughed, and said we'd be fine. And yet they're still not.

> If they were blasting their sirens early in 2021 instead of covering it up we might have had swifter border closures etc.

I agree that even earlier warning would have been good. I just don't see it changing anything. Countries only started to take it seriously when it really started to affect them. They didn't want to risk a political/ financial hit on taking the measures that were needed, and they paid for it.

Well said. China botched it at the beginning. They could have prevented a worldwide pandemic, but they started acting to late. However, what I know now is that pretty much any western country couldn't have prevented a pandemic, if the origin of the virus would have been them.

I'm in Germany and the whole situation is a joke. Incompetence in any way possible, everywhere. Half heated "soft lockdowns" whenever things get worse, reopen everything as soon as it gets a little better, then be all surprised that incidents are on a rise again, rinse and repeat. Obviously every state does this without any coordination with neighboring ones.

And it's not surprising. Do you think any politician is even remotely qualified for the position they have? Usually you get your position as minister of health, or defense, or whatever, but because everything in Germany just goes its way and nothing is wrong, you do your four years, pass a few meaningless bills, and that's it. Now that we have a pandemic at our hands and the minister of health would have to actually do something for the first time in several decades, the whole spiel falls apart.

Let’s be honest if Xi Jinping called up Trump and told him to shut down borders and instate mandatory curfews he’d have done the opposite.

The Trump white house was a superspreader

We should also blame the CCP for screwing up containment. Chinese culture is still deeply corrupt in ways that prevent honest and open discussion of safety issues. Honest and open discussion of safety issues should be table stakes for facilities like that in Wuhan. The rest of the world should be pressuring China to not operate these sorts of high-risk enterprises.

Heh?

Who is we? Who is pressuring the US to do anything?

DPRC is a sovereign state and can do as they damn well please just like the US.

Get off your high horse.

Countries pressure other countries to do or not do stuff all the time, no?

No. They don't. I think my question was objectively straight forward too. who pressures the US to do anything?

So either you're trolling me and pretending geopolitical hierachy doesn't exist or you may think my question is stupid. Either way...

I don't mean to troll. It just seems obvious to me that countries are pressuring other countries to do stuff all the time. Of course some countries have more power than others. Malawi isn't going to be able to lean on Poland in the same way the U.S. will be able to.

By the way, one of the big proponents of gain-of-function research was Anthony Fauci. It makes sense that he came out and tried to control the narrative around the virus given that he may have been responsible for its creation.

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