"Deep concerns" don't change anything.
The administration is making its first steps toward building the relationships that it wants. Signaling expectations is fine for that.
US raises ‘deep concerns’ over WHO report on Covid’s Wuhan origins
331–340 of 664 posts
Re: US raises ‘deep concerns’ over WHO report on Covid’s Wuhan origins
#332Earlier quoted context omitted.
In Trump circles, the narrative has been "FUCK CHINA FOR THIS VIRUS" since day 1. Seriously, this has their mantra the entire pandemic. Everything from being a lab virus to lying about numbers are what they've discussed. Really funny to see them on the same page with some Chinese.
Although disagree with almost everything about trump, I think he was in some way right about China. I don’t think it has anything to do with the Chinese people though. Also, I don’t think he went about it in an effective way at all, it seems like the ccp was betting on him just going away after a while and just suffering the pain for a while.
What you mention deserves to be repeated. The chinese people and the CCP are not the same thing, just as the national security apparatus of the US... and US citizens are separate too.
its natural to catch flak, but it happens to both sides.
The saudi arabia govt is friendly to our govt, but the vast majority of their population thinks its totally OK to blow up US citizens.
Iranian leadership is constantly at odds with the US military leadershp, but iranians themselves welcome tourists from the US with open arms , love US culture and movies, and want americans to visit.
Re: US raises ‘deep concerns’ over WHO report on Covid’s Wuhan origins
#333Earlier quoted context omitted.
If it was lab created then you know some group intentionally or through their negligence caused millions and millions of people to die. They won't be held accountable unless China itself would decide to do so (assuming in this hypothetical that it was created by China of course). If it was being developed as a biological weapon you would tend to assume there's likely progress on how to defend against it by those who…
> If it was lab created then you know some group intentionally or through their negligence caused millions and millions of people to die. Just 2.4 millions as today. Not millions and millions. This is not 1918 flu levels (yet).
More will die in 2021 than died in 2020. We'll be very lucky if 2022 doesn't see a further increase.
Re: US raises ‘deep concerns’ over WHO report on Covid’s Wuhan origins
#334Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
"there is strong circumstantial evidence that the virus didn't originate in Wuhan after all" https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/articles/2020-05-...
You are quoting an article that's very first sentence is:
"There's no doubt that the novel coronavirus ... originated in China."
As a response to the statement: "COVID-19 did come from China" in the previous post, the article you linked directly confirmed that statement.
Re: US raises ‘deep concerns’ over WHO report on Covid’s Wuhan origins
#335First 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…
Is it just me or is there a deep irony here? I find it interesting that one of the oft maligned attributes of religious communities, especially those in authority in said communities, is this same behavior. Do good things and be open, but also very much protect the brand. As a naive westerner I've hear/learned/assumed that Chinese communism/society was areligious.
When described as you (OP) put it, it seems that abstractly, the Chinese Communist party is just the state religion.
I'm not trying to play a game of whataboutism. I'm curious why these structures seem to rise, regardless of what we intend or call the them. What is it about the human experience that so often results in this.
I apologize if this is overtly stereotypical, naive, assuming, or disrespectful. It wasn't meant to offend or annoy. Just cautiously curious.
Re: US raises ‘deep concerns’ over WHO report on Covid’s Wuhan origins
#336Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's been a problem even internally in China where local government hides things from those up the chain and then things get out of hand.
This is the kind of behavior you see in organizations where the penalty for making mistakes is overly severe, the only recourse for people is to lie and cover-up the truth at all costs. This is how projects at some companies continue despite being way behind schedule and overbudget until eventually the weight of the truth brings everything crashing down.
The old story of the Chinese general Chen Shen comes to mind:
Apparently he was running late due to rainstorms and the penalty for appearing this late to the Qin emperor was execution. Since that’s the same penalty for open rebellion, he decided he might as well try that too. And that was the beginning of the end of the Qin dynasty.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chen_Sheng_Wu_Guang_uprising
If the penalty for lying and being caught is the same league as screwing up, people are going to cover up problems.
Re: US raises ‘deep concerns’ over WHO report on Covid’s Wuhan origins
#337Isn't it well established by now that Covid-19 was present in samples taken in Europe and elsewhere way before Wuhan incidents? https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-spain-...
In science, a single test of a single sample is a galaxy away from "well established."
Re: US raises ‘deep concerns’ over WHO report on Covid’s Wuhan origins
#338Isn't it well established by now that Covid-19 was present in samples taken in Europe and elsewhere way before Wuhan incidents? https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-spain-...
It's bizarre that Reuters thought that this preprint was fit to report on. 8 months later, it still hasn't passed peer review. If a Mar 2019 introduction in Spain were real, they would have found more cases and been able to sequence them, instead of just getting a little blip on a super-sensitive assay.
Re: US raises ‘deep concerns’ over WHO report on Covid’s Wuhan origins
#339Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Comments by experts who went on the WHO mission https://mobile.twitter.com/TheaKFischer/status/1360590441817...
Right now, I trust WHO slightly more than I trust CCP. Biden is right to re-engage them, but they have a lot of work to do to get its reputation back.
They can probably start by capping payments from any one country as to minimize the effects of soft power.
An under-funded WHO is better than a biased WHO.
Re: US raises ‘deep concerns’ over WHO report on Covid’s Wuhan origins
#340Um I shared analysis 15 days ago from a doctor who did an in-depth analysis and determined it to be from a lab. My post got one comment. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25965751
Disclaimer: I didn't read much of the analysis you linked. I'm not a virologist, but I do have a PhD in Bayesian Statistics.
As a general rule, I don't take this kind of analysis via repeated repeated repeated repeated repeated repeated repeated application of Bayes' Rule with somewhat-to-completely arbitrary probabilities at each step very seriously. At all.
It's a kind of gish gallop [1] with additional window dressing purporting to wrap it all up into one easy number. From a probabilistic point of view it ignores any dependency between observed facts, which is a serious issue but not necessarily the most damning one.
This particular case is even worse than usual. According to a quick Ctrl-F-aided skim of the document, the author doesn't identify a single fact that increases the probability of zoonotic origin, which is extremely suspicious. If every single available fact in a complicated issue points to the same conclusion that's probably because you are messing with your facts, not because that's how things actually are.
After noticing the one-sided-ness of the Bayesian updates I rolled my eyes and closed the tab.