Hacker News Reader

Comment by baq | Hacker News Reader

If you're approaching this with a western democratic frame of mind, yes.

This is not suspicious behavior in China, as the GP said - it is standard operating procedure.

I don't expect it to be suspicious or odd _in China_. What I am saying is that internationally we should not just shrug it off as "aww, it just China, they're always so sneaky and secretive even when it's nothing!" We should treat the situation as if they are indeed hiding something important every time, because otherwise, constantly acting suspiciously about everything is an effective strategy for them conceal anything important.

Barring foreign scientists, arresting journalists, and destroying evidence is always suspicious, even if they always do it, and it should always make people from open and free societies curious of why they are doing it, not shrug it off because it's the norm.

It is being used as proof that they leaked it from a lab, when it is just how societies built like China behave. You can't infer anything from normal behavior.

It is similar to the way that Hussein's actions in blocking access to presidential palaces was considered to be highly suspicious and therefore proof that he was hiding his weapons program. Turns out he was just trying to save face domestically by standing up against the weapons inspectors over something that he considered symbolic and immaterial in order to not look like a total pushover (a desperate need of dictators). It had nothing to do with weapons programs at all.

Yeah, holding strong to the logic that's like a mom concluding of her kindergartner "You're being evasive, this means definitely that you're hiding something" is ridiculous.

If the outbreak started in Colorado, and Russia wanted access to the CDC lab there, Americans (officials and public) would also be crying and screaming...

If Russia wanted access to a CDC lab, the Americans would be crying and screaming regardless of whether something happened there or not.

Said hypothetical should include the disease originating around the lab, numerous conspicuous coverups and missing people, and a lack of transparent investigation. Should such a scenario happen, I think your argument becomes a bit of a strawman (i.e. that a segment of every nation's population would always cry foul in said scenario). I would expect more than just Russia would want access, and likewise that plenty of US citizens would protest as well.

Why is it a strawman? If malfeasance is occurring, they will not want Russia looking at their lab, if malfeasance is not occurring, they still do not want Russia looking at their lab. I'm just pointing out the obvious, ((!A -> B) and (A -> B)) -> B.

It’s also worth noting that you’re talking about the US allowing the country with whom they have the most adversarial relationship investigate their labs. In reality, we’re taking about international bodies doing the investigation. The fact that China has isolated themselves so badly that the best analogy for “anyone investigates China” is “Russia investigates the US” says plenty.

Exactly. Same thing in the China-not China relations.

Firstly, we’re not talking about America right now. Even so, the US has its faults, but is vastly more transparent than the CCP. I would be shocked if the US arrested scientists and journalists to conceal the origins of a viral outbreak.

> I would be shocked if the US arrested scientists and journalists to conceal the origins of a viral outbreak.

The US are actively prosecuting a journalist on phony charges because he helped expose their war crimes, among other things. The UK is of course actively complicit, which contributed in making his life a living hell.

Given that precedent, I wouldn't be shocked at all.

And you'll read an endless trove of comments posted on this site, including from myself, in support of Assange and his work, and condemnation of what the US is doing to him.

We shouldn't even be on this tangent, because the parent comment was nothing but "what about America!" and now we're veering into even more tangential territory with "well what about America with regards to some other topic!?" This isn't a Chuck Norris movie with a good guy and a bad guy.

My point was, I didn't see much difference to what the US has done to Wikileaks, and the hypothetical arrest by the US of journalists & scientists over leaking the top secret origins of an outbreak.

Now that I think of it I was likely incorrect. There's one big difference: I expect the US would first make sure they wouldn't look too bad doing it. That's almost certainly why some Swedish prosecutor happened to blow Assange's sexual affairs utterly out of proportion: kill the name before the guy.

God damn debating with you people is useless sometimes.

My second paragraph is meant to show a possible other explanation why the Chinese didn't want foreigners snooping around their bio labs: in my belief the same evasiveness the Chinese has/had would apply to the USA if China wanted to visit and have unlimited access (for a thorough investigation) of American bio labs.

And I'm not talking about whether American journalists would be arrested. I'm just talking about the evasiveness about the labs.

You've been breaking the site guidelines so badly and so repeatedly that I've banned this account.

Please see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29916895 for more.

Didn’t work out well for him.

And the search for WMD was also politically motivated, not based on any evidence afaik.

So should we just pretend to think that it's suspicious even though it doesn't seem suspicious, or do we really need to soak our minds in the void until we actually believe that it is? How many IQ points do I need to lose before I am no longer normalizing totalitarianism?

Some of the details are unusual though especially the Wuhan Institute of Virology taking down it's previously public pathogen sequence database before the thing kicked off.

They took it down in mid September of 2019, a previously public database. They still refuse to share the data with anyone, which is weird since the database was public to begin with.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com