The world needs a proper investigation into how Covid-19 started
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We are too dependent on China to piss them off, and so far experience shows we are much more likely to follow their demands than follow our own (Hollywood, NBA, Hong Kong, blizzard, albeit only one of those is geopolitical).
People fear what might happen if China suddenly blocked all exports to their country, and rightly so. China is a country where the government wields that kind of totalitarian power. However, this hasn't happened even once yet. The Chinese government knows that, once they play that particular card on one nation, every other nation in the world is going to freak out, stop talking about diversifying away from Chinese manufacturing, and actually do it.
The world absolutely should press the Chinese government to behave in an open and responsible manner on COVID and on many other fronts. China will respond with their usual hostage-taking and "wolf warrior" diplomacy, but it's a sham backed by thin air. China needs the world as its customers even more than the world needs cheap Chinese manufacturing. If the world's governments are willing to show a little solidarity then much can be accomplished.
It's unlikely to happen in the short term but it's entirely possible in a decade or two if nothing significant changes in the meantime.
Given the impact to the world we all should be asking difficult questions.
The change needs to start on the manufacturer and retailer side. Stop prioritizing cost savings from cheap Chinese factories and start building locally and in factories that prioritize quality and respect human labor and the environment. As a consumer I'd happily pay for that overhead if that option was available and was given a fair chance to compete.
Sounds like you're suggesting that made in UK/EU is too expensive, and if only people were paid enough they would be buying local. Is there any evidence that's actually the case? Do SV engineers, doctors, and lawyers buy US made goods significantly more than anyone else?
Simply blaming one state actor over another appears as a set of false alternatives. A convenient distraction which inspires tribalism and identity.
CBDC, "verified digital identities" and a host of other dystopian solutions grow into rationalized necessities from the germ of the COVID crisis. We need not look very far to see many of the same actors involved have advocated for these dystopian innovations for years, if not decades. If some of those actors hosted a simulated coronavirus pandemic exercise in October of 2019, is it appropriate to dismiss it as a mere coincidence?
At a certain point you have to concede the probability of a duck being the source of the waddling and quacking.
The cover-up was Daszak and co. pre-emptively denouncing lab leak theories as an attack on science and branding them as crazy conspiracies.
The only remaining thing to determine is whether the funding went into gain-of-function research, which Fauci vehemently denies but given his track record of lying it’s only natural to be hesitant in believing him. I’m far from an expert but according to the BBC[1] there do exist experts who believe Fauci not admitting it is just relying on semantics.
That seems to be a problem... No?
Maybe we should be pushing our political and business leaders to fix that. If a nation.. openly hostile to our interests is able to cause a worldwide pandemic that no one can investigate because it might upset that nations feefee's. That imo is much bigger problem than the pandemic itself
What interests of ours is China openly hostile to?
Price fixing of the yuan to keep Chinese manufacturing significantly cheaper than everywhere else. https://www.investopedia.com/trading/chinese-devaluation-yua...
Taiwan's independence. The emergence of TSMC is pretty critical at this point in time and the US and other European countries have paid them a lot of money to open plants in their territories.
Chinas aircraft carrier program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_aircraft_carrier_progr...
Chinas claims that the j20 can "beat" the f22. https://guardingindia.com/china/china-claims-that-j-20-can-b...
And the most recent and my latest favorite: China has started up 250 ICBM silos for nuclear weapons https://apnews.com/article/technology-europe-business-scienc....
This is most likely in direct response to the latest US anti missile capabilities. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminal_High_Altitude_Area_De...
China now has to either pretend is has way more nuclear missiles or actually make them (and maintain them).
The US and China are in this constant state of "our biggest trade partner is also our current biggest rival". I'm not really sure what the end game of that entails but I'm really hoping it just maintains at dick waving status.
It's going to be very interesting if/how China steps into Afghanistan. That was basically Russia's vietnam. The current US situation with it should be pretty obvious to everyone at this point.
We specifically did pacific theatre exercises with the japanese self defense force and the south korean military with shit like launching land based JSDF missles from USN ships target guidance and plenty of other joint operations to show China(maybe Russia?) the capabilities of the US armed forces and it's allies.
inb4 "the usa started it". Yeah probably. China has been playing the military dick measuring game for the last 10 years pretty hard tho. I didn't think any country was as stupid as the USA to put as much money into defense spending but here we are (I am a US citizen).
tl;dr China is openly hostile to US military and economic influence in SE Asia.
If covid did leak from a lab, accidentally, but there was a cover up, that's also worth exploring no?
It feels like you are choosing because of political motivations.
The whole "lab leak investigation" is a political side show attempt to distract people away from the real question, which is how did almost every country on earth utterly fail to control the spread and avert catastrophe? Both questions are fine to answer, but one of them might provide actionable information for future pandemics, and the other one is purely political blame-game.
We can't learn from our mistakes if we are prevented from finding out what the mistake was...
If the virus did get released from a supposedly secure research facility, this has huge implications for research policy and biosecurity standards worldwide. If the virus did originate from gain-of-function research, this again has implications upon whether we permit it or ban it worldwide. It was already banned in the US and other Western nations on safety grounds; maybe it's not safe anywhere in the world given that it could result in a global pandemic.
But without concrete evidence and open discussion, it won't be possible to make policy based upon rational discussion and decision-making.
Given the global impact of the pandemic, it would behoove us to give such investigation a high priority, given its profound importance to our long-term health and prosperity.
Swindlers and liars need to be exposed, and held outside of politics. It's not ok to stand in front of hundreds of millions of people and lie right in their faces. We've seen how such mental assaults ended before.
I don't think that's the case with most of them. There are a lot of movements coming from different backgrounds, believing in different things that are meeting at "it's not real, don't get vaccinated". The Bill-Gates-Wants-To-Kill-Us-people aren't conspiring with the Big-Pharma-Wants-A-Perpetual-Vaccine-Business-People, they just happen to come to the same conclusion ("don't do it").
From what little exposure I had to them, I think they're honest in their ideas. I believe they're wrong on most counts, but I don't think they're sitting at home scheming how to fool the masses. I'm sure there are some who seek to influence public opinion by spreading false narratives, but the large majority seems to just have lost pretty much all trust in Western governments and looks for alternative theories that explain the state of the world.
So, who benefits when Americans lose faith in their government?
The public at large if it results in more critical thinking, greater liberty or accountability.
I just don't think there's much evidence that losing faith in government leads to any of those benefits. And my experience tells me that it does the opposite.
I'm not sure they are. I mean, sure, for some things, there's likely someone somewhere making it up, but others just come to live by themselves.
A lot of them remind me of the preppers. They also have plenty of scenarios and end up in similar places on practical questions. And companies around that also were created or took up some of the content to market to them. This might be the same here: websites trying to attract these people for other reasons instead of those websites being the source of the ideas.
Since a lot of it is happening online, I guess it should theoretically be/have been visible, do you know of any reports that trace it back to those who created the different conspiracy theories?
The CCP knowingly hid information about infections. This whole thing could have been contained in China with the right information at the right time. If it was a lab accident that could be avoided in the future too with better protocols.
I’m baffled that after millions have died some people just think we should let this go. Would you let it go if the us government accidentally killed millions of people in a nuke test or a chemical spill or any other accident of the same magnitude?
The only thing an investigation at this point will do is waste time and money and divert experts from more useful tasks (like finding the next potentially catastrophic pathogen). I believe that demands for one should be considered purely performative. The only thing they achieve is to declare allegiance to one group and drum up discrimination against another.
This can and should be investigated and dealt with on it's own, irrelevant to if the source was a lab or natural causes.
My theory has always been that if you look at what was happening with China on a world stage at the time of the outbreak, HK protests, building military bases on atolls, Uyghur Camps, perhaps more. China was in a pretty bad place.
Then along comes this virus, and I'm sure they were like "oh crap, lets not bring any more attention to ourselves, maybe this will all just go away". Of course, it didn't. It was 100x worse than they probably imagined.
CCP screwed up massively. Was the screw up in a lab or not is secondary. They had the opportunity to stop it, but they didn't. That's the breakdown that needs to be discussed. I don't think that is a breakdown that is as politically charged or questionable.
Plenty of CCP members have already been punished for their failure to contain the virus. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/11/china-fires-tw...
Maybe they weren't really the ones responsible. But if someone is powerful enough to avoid the CCP-internal punishment and have others take the blame, they're not going to let themselves be inconvenienced by foreign investigators.
It certainly looks that way. Given pandemics are a naturally occuring event, the origin of the event itself doesnt excuse the breakdowns in government, policy and to a certain extent personal human behaviour. It is not promisiong as there were precedents and plans in place, but we learnt nothing from inquiries into past pandemics.
Every person probably needs to have their own personal inquiry, no matter which side; 'its jsut the flu' to 'this is the end of humanity' and everywhere in between.
If this thing leaked from a lab, of course we would want to know! There can be lessons learned to prevent this in the future, and if the chinese government knew and covered it up, the world should definitely hold them accountable.
There are cases where someone close to animals might get it, a farmer typically, but it rarely becomes transmissible between humans — not unless it mutated first and for that it would need to be endemic among farmers. When we observe cases among relatives of the farmers who are not exposed, that’s when we panic. Swine flu and bird flu would fall in that case: there had been many cases among farmers, for decades, and they learned to dismiss them (making cases harder to track). When relatives got sick, epidemiology authorities were suddenly a lot more worried, to the puzzlement of farmers who had been sick prior.
More so, viruses are endemic in bats (who have notoriously poor immunity) but most of them can’t be transmitted to an animal with high immunity, like humans; not without going through mutation and selection through another animal with a more selective immunity, hence the idea of an intermediary host. The pangolin was suggested for a while, if you remember. There was a lot of talk about which animal, but what those stories didn’t really clarify is the “the” in “the pangolin”: whether virologists were expected:
1. widespread infection among pangolins living together; the meaning the species — but then we would have noticed entire groups being sick; or
2. if one single animal was infected by a bat, and someone was unlucky enough to be host to a human-compatible mutation (very unlikely) and then that human was host to another mutation that made it human-to-human-transmissible (also unlikely).
A lot of the early debate on Covid was surprised at how it seemed to have skipped that middle step, or how we couldn’t find it. If you are more familiar with physics, that’s a bit like saying you saw the tunnel effect at the human scale. Sure, we know it’s possible in theory, but… so unlikely, we would probably need to change the science to account for it anyway. Physicists would naturally side with whomever is trying to debunk the observation. That’s how science works: the burden of the proof is on who is making an unlikely claim given current model. The natural history explanation of Covid is possible, but extremely unlikely given “species barrier”.
Once again: I’m not a biologist, but a lot of the scenario that would make that possible would change our approach to epidemiology:
1. if the virus was undetected among humans close to bats for a while, and mutated to become transmissible, we’d need to think of monitoring asymptomatic humans;
2. if the virus was present and undetected in an intermediary species, that’s more likely but still very worrisome and would require significant changes to veterinary practices;
3. if there was a genetic manipulation towards gain of function, the political consequences would be a shit-show but it would preserve our understanding of how frequently and consistently viruses mutate.
In that particular case, the instinct of scientists was split, between people who see the gains-of-function research valuable and those who defend the model — which is why there isn’t a clear view of what “scientists” think. However, don’t let that disagreement confuse you: clarifying what happened will have scientific impact, be it ban a controversial approach, or change our understanding of inter-species viral transmission.
I’m not dismissing that it happen —I can’t imagine you’ve read anything like that in my comment— but the natural origin theory changes our understanding of how fast it can happen.
In this particular case there were reports that the virus was present in Spain and Italy before China. They seem to ignore that and keep screeching that CHina is to blame.
Edit: added source: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-spain-...
The problem with this, if it were true, is that it will be very difficult to explain why there were not a lot of cases of misdiagnosed respiratory diseases in 2019 as we do know now that it is very contagious and what the symptoms are; they were not reported and definitely not on any scale.
We know it was in Wuhan well before January 2020 so that other sample from that month in Spain or other places would not be strange. A year earlier of course would be.
It will only fuel anti-science sentiment all over the world and put scientists under scrutiny and attacks.
We need more science, not more science attacks.
It will also vindicate Trump like anti-scientists just when we need more science to tackle climate change, inequality, gender gap, and yes, search for viruses with pandemic risk due to human encroachment on wild life so we can be ready for them.
Any sort of lab leak confirmation will basically destroy the science of virology just when we need it most.
Just look at what Fukushima did to nuclear energy acceptance. Now more people die of coal burning radioactivity than ever died because of nuclear energy one. Do we really want to do the same with virology and molecular engineering, which are life saving sciences?
Science doesn't care if the result could be construed to be pro or anti Trump. You are speaking about science as if it is religion.
You argument is exactly the same one the Church used to prevent Copernicus's idea that the earth rotated around the sun.
Antivaxers will just make shit up - properly exploring the science is not strengthening their argument, refusing to do so is strengthening their argument.
Ok - if you’re going to ban me from restaurants, gyms and events, if you’re going to make me lose my job… but I’m willing to take a normal vaccine like Sinopharm why not just approve that? Why not let me import that vaccine for $10k so I could save my job? Or even better let me prove I have better protection than vaccinated because I had prior infection. That proof is also meaningless because the vaccine is somehow magical - even though there are a ton of breakthrough cases and boosters will be needed after 8 months.
Give people alternatives if they don’t trust RNA. Is that too much to ask? Apparently yes it is - to whoever really runs the US Gov.
It’s really not that hard to see how it could be useful to know about the origins of Covid. Really tired of people making it about racism (or whatever) against China. And I say that as a Chinese person.
Do we start a nuclear war to make sure China is no more and therefore they can't do it again (but anyone else could)?
I'm not suggesting there's no use in finding out how it came to be, but unless it was some guy eating a bat and we can all agree on not doing that anymore and create a bat police to enforce that, I don't see how knowing who did it would prevent anyone else from doing it.
I don't know, I'm not an expert. But clearly, having more information is strictly better than not having it.
So let me flip the question around and ask why should we not investigate?
Doing an investigation to find "the real truth", which from what I gather in most threads here would be essentially "where did it come from and why was it the Wuhan lab that intentionally released it?", wouldn't really get us anywhere.
None of the large powers would cooperate if they felt threatened and there's nothing to win unless we believe that we automatically get a perfect cure if only we find the GPS coordinates where patient zero got infected. Would it? I don't think so.
I also believe that there's nothing we can do to stop another similar event by knowing where it came from. What's more relevant is how it spread so quickly around the globe, and as far as I understand, we have a pretty good understanding of that and it's mainly international air-plane travel. I don't think we'll see a lasting change in that regard, but maybe we will, and we will have fever-checks before boarding planes or non-regional trains.
We shouldn't be conflating the result from a professional investigation with the prevalent popular opinion.
> I also believe that there's nothing we can do to stop another similar event by knowing where it came from.
Your viewpoint kind of hinges on this point and you haven't really supported it yet besides making the assertion. Why would we gain absolutely nothing from having more information about its origin, with respect to either dealing with current or future COVIDs? That conclusion seems very nonobvious to me.
Maybe I'm too cynical, but professional investigations tend to be politically charged and popular opinion tends to be created by the same interests who create politics.
And it's not that we totally, absolutely wouldn't learn anything that would ever help us. It's just that we likely won't find a magic bullet (which would be worth a lot of trouble), but will probably create conditions where countries will cooperate less and mislead more the next time it happens. I mentioned amnesties previously, and I believe they work in a similar fashion. Hunt down the evil-doers who lost a civil war, if you want to remain in a perpetual state of civil war. Don't do it if you want to return to some kind of normalcy and peace.
So, what I don’t understand is how accepting uncooperativeness is going to make them more cooperative in the future. I see how it would work with a group of individuals. But we’re at a different level of abstraction here, dealing with federal governments.
You might make a case that it would actually help, or not. I don't know. I don't particularly care, not next to the huge magnitude of wanting the tiniest bit of truth and justice.
Well even if it was a lab leak. A response to a pandemic with totalitarian lock down using the military is something you need to address with your government
That is NOT a proper response to a illness for any nation claiming to value individual rights and individual liberty
First and foremost I am opposed to any use of the military on the citizens of their own nation. That in itself IMO should be considered off limits. A nations military has the primary purpose to eliminate or destroy the nations enemies, if the military is being used on the citizens that means the citizens have become the enemy...
Where does this weird narrative come from? The idea that properly investigating an event that completely shook the world to its core is somehow "insensitive".
I mean, let's just not investigate anything where we might not like the answer... Is that really a legitimate strategy in your mind.
What would it change? How about knowledge that could help prevent a future pandemic and the deaths of millions of people? Why do I even have to make this statement?
It almost certainly wasn't man made and intentional. That's the only case we really need to know the origin story for, and I don't think anyone serious thinks that is plausible.
Otherwise, the worst case is that it was a lab accident of some kind. It'd be fun to point and blame China for it and all, but is it something we really need?
There’s a lot of conflicting evidence. What we do know is the ccp is blocking any sort of investigation into the origin and possible cause. They began trying to sweep it under the rug just like SARS.
The downside of all this is that the people of China suffer, when it’s not china that’s to blame. It’s the ccp.
Unless you would argue we shouldn't investigate that either, why do you make a distinction here?
Sounds like the DOJ found intention in there.
So we're left with determining if this was a possible accidental release. Which I agree is important. It's just orders of magnitude less important than determining the source of an intentional release, imo. If China accidentally released this, they screwed themselves, very hard. If it was an accidental release, and they know it, one would assume they have a strong incentive to clean up protocols in the future. If the U.S. had accidentally released something like this, they'd certainly try to cover it up, but also try to make sure it never happens again.
"China" didn't accidentally released anything, and is easy to see why. The group of scientists that were working in Wuhan (some Chinese, other not) don't represent the government or the entire country. How they could?
Would be so absurd as to claim that "US" or "Italy" released accidentally covid-19 because a few scientists from US or Italy worked in the same project. The reason to use the words in this way and to use the mass media to fix this wrong idea in the people is 100% political and should be a red flag about the real purpose of this (gain leverage with post-truth, instead to find the truth).
The problem is that post-truth could mes enough to bury the truth forever, and all actors are interested into saving face and sneaking their own version.
An accidental release is still the host country's responsibility, though. If that's what happened, it's important to understand how it happened to reduce the chance of it ever happening again. Such a conclusion would also lead to international demands for compensation which could put a damper on China's political and economic aspirations.
You have blinders on if "every virologist take [you've] read suggests that the virus does not look man-made." You probably formed this opinion prior to spring 2021. Before that, "trusted" authorities were all declaring that a lab leak was virtually impossible. Things have changed dramatically, with disclosure of some of Fauci's emails and a bunch of virologists now backtracking, saying they're either unsure or think the lab leak hypothesis is more likely.
Email from a virus researcher at Scripps to Fauci, early on (2020/01/31), suggested in a preliminary assessment that small portions (probably the portion of the spike protein everyone's concerned with) look potentially engineered:
https://nypost.com/2021/06/02/fauci-was-warned-that-covid-ma...
wsj and nyt (2021/06): Not specifically by virologists, but two of the more mainstream articles suggest it was a lab leak, and cite evolving opinions of virologists:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/25/opinion/coronavirus-lab.h...
Directed evolution in a lab (e.g. serial passage in humanized mice, or even captive bats) would be one thing. Would you consider that "man made" or "created", or is it natural?
Small genome sequence edits for experimental purposes would be another type of modification. Would you consider that "man made" or "created", or still natural?
Full genetic synthesis base pair by base pair is more difficult (longer sequences become much more difficult), but as I understand it is technologically possible... barely. If someone takes the genome from a natural virus genome sequence and synthesizes it that way in a lab, possibly with minor edits, would that be "man-made" or "created", or still natural?