Following with interest. I have a basic level of trust towards Uncle Sam and a basic level of distrust towards the CCP, but we are still very far from a reasonable bar of evidence to be cleared here yet.
Ensuring a transparent, thorough investigation of Covid-19’s origin
11–20 of 79 posts
Re: Ensuring a transparent, thorough investigation of Covid-19’s origin
#12Weren’t people being deplatformed for saying this back in March?
Re: Ensuring a transparent, thorough investigation of Covid-19’s origin
#13The State Department does not have the credibility to make statements like this right now.
I know how fashionable it is to shit on the USA, at least for another week. But you are implying the CCP does have credibility in their claims this is not true?
What advantage do you think the state dept has to put this out if it is not true? The new admin can walk it back in 1/2 a second if that’s the case.
Re: Ensuring a transparent, thorough investigation of Covid-19’s origin
#14The United States government has reason to believe that several researchers inside the WIV became sick in autumn 2019, before the first identified case of the outbreak, with symptoms consistent with both COVID-19 and common seasonal illnesses. I'd wager several researchers in any research institution because sick in autumn 2019 and had symptoms consistent with common seasonal illness. And guess what new virus also ha…
Depends exactly what symptoms they had. Rhinorrhea or cough are extremely non-specific, but if they had loss of taste or smell, or significantly abnormal low oxygen saturation, or multifocal pneumonia in young people - those are all a lot more specific given what we now know about covid
Re: Ensuring a transparent, thorough investigation of Covid-19’s origin
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
The truth track record of State Department is still much better than that of CCP.
> The truth track record of State Department is still much better than that of CCP. Maybe over the long run, but maybe not the current State Department at this moment. IIRC, over the last month it's literally been trying to stir up shit however it can to make things difficult for the incoming Biden administration. The current administration seems to think it makes sense to burn US national credibility for petty, self…
> it's literally been trying to stir up shit however it can to make things difficult for the incoming Biden administration
Examples, please? Pompeo certainly taking a more hawkish and strident stance of late, but I’m yet to see anything that suggests they’re salting the earth rather than just trying to ram through some policy aims at the end of an administration
Re: Ensuring a transparent, thorough investigation of Covid-19’s origin
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The truth track record of State Department is still much better than that of CCP. Maybe over the long run, but maybe not the current State Department at this moment. IIRC, over the last month it's literally been trying to stir up shit however it can to make things difficult for the incoming Biden administration. The current administration seems to think it makes sense to burn US national credibility for petty, self…
State department have warned about poor security at WIV before COVID-19 outbreak https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/04/14/state-dep...
These are not mutually exclusive.
Re: Ensuring a transparent, thorough investigation of Covid-19’s origin
#17Weren’t people being deplatformed for saying this back in March?
is that a threat? :)
Re: Ensuring a transparent, thorough investigation of Covid-19’s origin
#18Weren’t people being deplatformed for saying this back in March?
IIRC, yes, ZeroHedge was. They claimed it came from scientists at Wuhan and many called it a conspiracy theory. They were banned from twitter if nothing else.
Not even March, February https://www.cbsnews.com/news/twitter-bans-zero-hedge-coronav...
Now, I don't read that site. I don't know what evidence the state dept has now. I don't know where the virus came from. —- BUT, I do know CBS/Media, Twitter and critics didn't know then nor now either. To be fair ZeroHedge was guessing too.
Re: Ensuring a transparent, thorough investigation of Covid-19’s origin
#19The State Department does not have the credibility to make statements like this right now.
This is exactly why trust and credibility is so essential.
I want to believe that they have the evidence to back this up, and that we can trust what the administration says. But the United States has been trashing its own credibility on the international stage ever since 9/11 & weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The Trump administration did nothing to help this.
It's so easy to lose credibility and so hard to build it back. I wish we would stop blowing our credibility by making politically motivated statements without the evidence to back them up.
Re: Ensuring a transparent, thorough investigation of Covid-19’s origin
#20I like Carl Bergstrom's take on this:
I have reason to believe that if the outgoing administration claims to have reason to believe something but refuses to provide the evidence behind it, they are lying.
https://twitter.com/CT_Bergstrom/status/1350292056782954498
Here's a very serious, legitimate review of the possible origins of SARS-CoV-2: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-01205-5
Unfortunately, from my experience, most people are going to believe what they want to believe, based more on political affiliation more than anything else, and the empirical facts don't register too strongly.