Hacker News Reader

Comment by tim333 | Hacker News Reader

There are other Chinese government behaviours also. If it wasn't a lab leak why not publish the Wuhan labs database which was public until the outbreak? I know they say hacking but they could just make a copy and upload it somewhere. Also after Xi's first speech on covid his civil servants put out instructions to improve biosecurity at the virus labs. And lots of little things that seem a bit odd.

View on HN

The only counterpoints are a) China is highly insular and rarely plays ball on even basic stuff and b) the whole Chinese idea of "saving face" where even when a person in power obviously messes up you still don't take the Western "brutally honest" approach, you do the opposite and pretend everything is still normal out of 'respect' (and in protection) of the person's social standing. The consequences happen quietly behind doors.

China not playing ball is like saying "I won't even give such a suggestion my time, how dare you ask me that".

That said - I fully agree it would have done leagues to help the narratives if they did play ball. Hell, the suggestion is that it was an accident in the first place. That should say enough on it's own if it's true.

> the Western "brutally honest" approach

Yeah, not so much these days, and probably not ever to extent that you may have meant it. Western folks are learning pretty quickly how well total reality denial has been working for... other regimes.

I am going to say Trump, but if I'm going to do that then I also need to mention an absolute procession of Western political and business leaders. Biden, Obama, Bush, Bush, Clinton, Abbot, Turnbull (he denied mathematics for god's sake), Morrison, Blair, Jobs, Ellison, Gates, Hoover, and so many other names I cbf remembering or looking up.

In fact, I think the "brutally honest" approach is exceedingly rare and always has been, in any arena in any hemisphere.

I was talking about the contrasts with western culture as a whole. Not petty national-level US political discourse via their pet D.C. reporters.

Does no one else on earth remember the initial videos out of China of people laying dead on the streets? Does no one else remeber the WHO refusing to acknowledge Taiwan is its own state?

I really struggle that anyone is seriously buying a single “truth” that is coming out of China.

I don’t know it was a lab leak, but I agree, if you are at all reasonable you can just see that China thinks it was.

I remember viral videos of big halls and hallways full of spastic people strapped into their beds. I still wonder sometimes what that was all about. Who had an interest in spreading such videos? What outcome did they hope for / get?

Maybe it was a poor attempt at trying to spur action without saying more than they were "allowed" to?

To me the whole idea of "China knew" is an oversimplification. Even if it was a lab leak, given the insane stakes, I can't imagine a majority of the Chinese government, or even a sizable portion of their own government would ever learn that.

People in China may have known and tried to do "something" without being able to outright say what the world (and even their own country's people) was about to be dealing with

Reply on news.ycombinator.com