Fauci was receiving credible death threats and even on this topic thread here there are a number of dead comments with comments similar to (and I quote): Fauci must be executed for us to move forward.
The idea that people voice approval for executing people they disagree with is so repugnant and contrary to the idea of civil discourse I don't find it surprising people start yelling in science meetings about the topic.
Or should they just be forgiven because they were scientists with good intentions.
The US President promoted the virus spread because it hurt NY and NJ more than the South.
If you execute everyone negligent, society will collapsed. And then when you look at the negligent executions, more.
There's a lot of people in power all over the world who have made decisions these past few years and it won't be surprising when people seek retribution (some of which who will seek for it to be payable in such decision makers blood).
And it could be worse, if the aggrieved are not satiated (within or outside the rule of law), people may seek retribution payable by such decision makers friends and families… metadata trails left all over the place would make such easy at scale…
If someone released this plague on purpose, then it would be the clearest case for the death penalty that has ever occurred. Do you honestly disagree?
Essentially none of the virus’s main mutations are things that could have occurred without human involvement and certainly not on the timescale since its last common ancestor.
If you knowingly drive a car with no brakes and kill someone, how is it less bad than driving a functional car and killing someone on purpose?
They knew the Wuhan labs had massive safety issues, from years prior to the pandemic. They knew GoF research was risky, and did it anyway. They knew covering it up was criminal behavior, yet did it anyway.
But if it were developed with good intent, and released by a pure non-negligent accident, that would
Roughly, if it was deliberately developed with the intent to release, that would justify the same for everyone in the management chain with knowledge of the plot. But that responsibility would stop at the level where the plot intent was hidden.
From the article, it seems the most likely clue would be that the entire US chain and the WIV lab leadership was intent on developing knowledge to stop pandemics, but the Chinese military's involvement in the lab produced corrupt work on some team. Whether this was even known to the lab leadership, or they could know it is doubtful.
To take that and say that everyone all the way up the chain to Fauci should be executed is to advocate for guilt by association. If you want that, you should move to China, Russia, or some other autocracy, because it has no place in a democracy.
If you have some evidence that Fauci had intent and directed anyone to create and release such a virus, you need to produce that evidence before calling for his execution.
(note, I know you specifically avoided making such a call, but your message is easily read as supporting such calls)
My objection was to this idea that “death” is so far afield from the realm of reasonable discourse... and that there’s definitely nothing going on and we should just move on with the rest of our lives.
There needs to be the largest criminal investigation the world has ever seen. It should make the 9/11 commission look like peanuts. The possibility that this was done on purpose needs to be taken more seriously than probably any issue in the history of human civilization, because if people are able to do this in purpose and get away with it, then it’ll likely lead to the end of human civilization. Perhaps no one committed any crimes… but millions died and we need to be damned sure that we know exactly why.
It could even end up not only as a cause for death penalties, but for a hot war.
One huge problem is that China also knows that they would be the target in a hot war. So, they will do what they're already doing - attempt to destroy all evidence and bar access to the rest.
The other huge problem is that scientists would see such an investigation as, at the very least, risking the end of much viral research for generations. So, it may be hard to find enough good scientists in the field who DGAF about the consequences for their field, despite the fact that one of the best arguments for continued research is a finding that it WAS a weaponization attempt. Far better to make actual bio-secure facilities and develop models and vaccines than get blindsided by something even worse. But anti- hysteria will more likely rule the day.
There may be some solution to these problems, but I haven't got it.
So at this point, we are obviously already in a war against autocracies. As can be seen with RUS supplies of EU natgas, the result of interdependency is coercion, not actual democracy springing up via interchanve. CCP is obviously implementing similar long-term plans on many strategic technologies.
The only way forward today is to literally ban cooperation on this kind of research with such autocracies. CCP has just demonstrated that they will NEVER provide key information in an emergency, no matter how much they 'promised' or 'contracted' to be open.
Yes, international cooperation among peoples can be a wonderful thing.
But we've already done the experiment. If the other people are ruled by an autocracy, it is only poisoning our democracies and building vulnerabilities to future coercion.