311–320 of 664 posts
First gen Chinese, grew up in NA. Have contact with relatives "on the ground". My own experience: Don't ever trust the Chinese government on issues that could potentially involve the reputation of the party. Note that I'm not saying don't trust what CCP says, ever (sometimes they actually do good things) - just not on issues that involve anything to do with how the world might perceive them. Which is exactly what thi…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Epidemiology. History. The Spanish Flu was called that because at the time everyone (for xenophobic reasons... sound familiar?) blamed Spain. Today we can say with reasonable confidence that the source of the 1918 influenza epidemic was.... wait for it..... Kansas
People did not blame Spain for xenophobic reasons, just because the Spanish press was the first to report on it. And, as pertains to the virus's origin, COVID-19 did come from China, and we know that. We have epidemiology to guide us here, and the situation is altogether different from 1918 w/r/t speed of communication and the state of science.
https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/articles/2020-05-...
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-spain-...
First gen Chinese, grew up in NA. Have contact with relatives "on the ground". My own experience: Don't ever trust the Chinese government on issues that could potentially involve the reputation of the party. Note that I'm not saying don't trust what CCP says, ever (sometimes they actually do good things) - just not on issues that involve anything to do with how the world might perceive them. Which is exactly what thi…
No need for you to preach to the choir about not trusting the Chinese government. As can be seen in the thread, people would much prefer to trust conspiracy theorists and fringe scientists before they put any trust in the Chinese government. To me, the only constructive discussion that can be had at this point needs to be around actual evidence, and not the absence of it. The first documented cases, first traces of p…
Great expression! I have the same strange feeling but couldn't put in correct words. Other than the topic of this thread, there's a meta topic which reflects some interesting human natures showing up more often among politicians and lawyers: Spread bias opinions without being caught misleading, disguise subjective speculations under objective delicately organized articulation.
Being constructive in discussion is extremely difficult. Sometime I watch the debate with fun on meta topics other than topics.
Related: Scientists found SARS-CoV-2 antibodies in US blood samples taken from December 2019 to January 2020 https://academic.oup.com/cid/advance-article/doi/10.1093/cid... Edit: removed incorrect conclusion
Studies have shown that it was circulating in France back in November 2019. Not saying it originated there, there’s no indication of that, but there is a possibility that it had already been spreading for some time before December 2019.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-spain-...
Kept searching for followups, didn’t see anything till this:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S004896972...
That’s from 21 January 2021 and says:
“So far unpublished data, analysing retained wastewater samples from Barcelona, Spain, taken in March 2019 showed positive RT-qPCR results for SARS-CoV-2 (Chavarria-Miró et al., 2020). The authors conclude that the virus was introduced to the Barcelona population due to global travel and remained undetected.”
So as of then, still unpublished.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Don't ever trust the Chinese government on issues that could potentially involve the reputation of the party Seems this holds true for every government and party.
It disingenuous and lazy to make broad statements of equivalence like this. There are very obvious differences in how the world’s governments operate.
It's also disingenuous and lazy to ignore a century or more of empirical evidence.
>There are very obvious differences in how the world’s governments operate.
Are there?
https://www.amazon.com/All-Governments-Lie-Times-Journalist/...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
To me, both the official explanation and the conspiracy theory are both embarrassing for China and the CCP. SARS was supposed to have originated the same way -- in these disgusting third-world wet markets. The CCP shut them down after SARS for the sake of optics, but was too inept to "up" their health standards, and they conceded to pressure and reopened the disgusting third-world wet markets again. If this was some…
> in these disgusting third-world wet markets That's old information. The first cases of the virus had no connection with the wet market, and no connection could later be found other than it was the first major subsequent point of spreading for the virus. So it's much more likely that people spread it at the market, rather than that it came from there. However, they are indeed disgusting third-world wet markets and t…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oh yes? Shall we trust the US government in a good investigation on their motives to finance the bloody disaster that is the civil war in Syria? How about we send a Chinese delegation to check the documents inside the Pentagon or the CIA?
Regardless of your view point, there is still has freedom of speech, mostly free information and elections that matters so if the people dislike the policy they can change it. Not saying it’s all golden, but these are very meaningful differences.
Freedom of speech is irrelevant if speech doesn't have consequences to those in power. Even less so if there are plenty to tow the establishment's lines anyway...
>and elections that matters so if the people dislike the policy they can change it
LOL, yeah, they can vote between one or the other corporatist neoliberal party, complicit in everything except a few token issues they use to lure their faithful. Such choice...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The funny thing in this case is there was no reason for the CCP to cover this up. If they had just responded to the outbreak instead of trying to cover it up initially and been a little more open with the international community they would have been lauded for their handling of the situation.
> If they had just responded to the outbreak instead of trying to cover it up initially and been a little more open with the international community they would have been lauded for their handling of the situation Are we talking about China or the Trump administration?
First gen Chinese, grew up in NA. Have contact with relatives "on the ground". My own experience: Don't ever trust the Chinese government on issues that could potentially involve the reputation of the party. Note that I'm not saying don't trust what CCP says, ever (sometimes they actually do good things) - just not on issues that involve anything to do with how the world might perceive them. Which is exactly what thi…
No need for you to preach to the choir about not trusting the Chinese government. As can be seen in the thread, people would much prefer to trust conspiracy theorists and fringe scientists before they put any trust in the Chinese government. To me, the only constructive discussion that can be had at this point needs to be around actual evidence, and not the absence of it. The first documented cases, first traces of p…
I am honestly laughing like this needs to be communicated to the HN folks, like it bares any insights, like it is not already the default political correctness for majority here.
The top comment is as useless as to say the OP would believe whatever he/she would love to believe whatever the evidence presented.
New Yorker puts it well:
"The site’s now characteristic tone of performative erudition—hyperrational, dispassionate, contrarian, authoritative—often masks a deeper recklessness"