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US raises ‘deep concerns’ over WHO report on Covid’s Wuhan origins

reuters.com

501–510 of 664 posts

Re: US raises ‘deep concerns’ over WHO report on Covid’s Wuhan origins

#501
post #53

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…

That applies to any government. US lies, cheats, steals as admitted by Mike Pompeo when he was head of CIA.

Hahahahahahhahahahahahahaha "So no, this often repeated fallacy by the west that they condemn CCP not the Chinese people is not only ignorant but supremely arrogant and condescending in assuming 1.4B are somehow mindless robots at the mercy of the few."

So are they or are they not mindless robots? It's not only ignorant but supremely arrogant and condescending to assume the 1.4B can't tell the difference between real and fake news and need to be restricted in what information they can consume. Qubit000 has the same username on reddit and twitter. He posts lots of pro-CCP garbage

Re: US raises ‘deep concerns’ over WHO report on Covid’s Wuhan origins

#502
Hahahahahahhahahahahahahaha

"So no, this often repeated fallacy by the west that they condemn CCP not the Chinese people is not only ignorant but supremely arrogant and condescending in assuming 1.4B are somehow mindless robots at the mercy of the few."

So are they or are they not mindless robots? It's not only ignorant but supremely arrogant and condescending to assume the 1.4B can't tell the difference between real and fake news and need to be restricted in what information they can consume. Fuck you

Re: US raises ‘deep concerns’ over WHO report on Covid’s Wuhan origins

#503
post #53

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…

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.

That's a false narrative western politicians/media want people to believe.

If there was a 'coverup' it was by local municipal authorities which should not be conflated with central govt. Even if true, the actual reporting of first case was only delayed by 1 week with the genome sequenced shared w/WHO rest of world less 2wks later.

Re: US raises ‘deep concerns’ over WHO report on Covid’s Wuhan origins

#504

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe in BSL-5 labs? Must be in rural isolation, NOT a city. The administrators and janitors and everyone has to sleep inside the fence. Getting out requires spending 40 days in a quarantine hotel in a different nearby fenced area. Armed guards patrol the fence. (EDIT: To be clear. BSL-5 doesn't exist yet... but it should.)

You’re not going to get any good researchers to live in a quarantine bubble for their whole lives.

The point isn’t to live there their whole lives, but periods where they can get a lot of work done safely.

Re: US raises ‘deep concerns’ over WHO report on Covid’s Wuhan origins

#505
post #225

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.

Which freedom of speech? That they don't send you to prison if you say something your neoliberal high priesthood does not like? Perhaps not, but you very well might lose your job. Otherwise go search in your free speech media anything about Assange. Now try to compare objectively Assange to Navalny and tell me why not.. Your freedom of speech is in a large part imaginary. As to the rule of law, if your legal system would get the attention it deserves, people would see that it is also in a large part a Hollywood myth

Re: US raises ‘deep concerns’ over WHO report on Covid’s Wuhan origins

#506

Earlier 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…

We’re just not following a good process of discerning truth here. We started with a blatant, baseless conspiracy theory “this is a weapon China created”. Then we white wash the theory to “China created it, but maybe it was an accident”. Then suddenly the burden of truth is on China to disprove this claim. It’s just not a sensible process, rooted in the fallacy of the middle ground; as you said we need to start from t…

While from a US political perspective, it may appear that the lab leak hypothesis began with the conspiracy theory that China created a weapon, this is not the dominant perspective among scientists who have expressed doubt publicly (and privately).

Our prior is that novel viruses come from zoonotic sources. We haven't ever experienced a pandemic derived from a laboratory leak. It seems fanciful, because it would be unprecedented. But, what would it look like if it did happen? How would it be any different than what we've seen?

Given the situation, yes, we cannot make any conclusions without evidence. And this implies a burden of proof on governments. The fact that this outbreak began in China is unfortunate, but it does not make it right for them to withhold information on the origins of the virus. They should share every scrap of information and evidence that they have, or expect exactly the kind of reaction that you are critiquing.

There is no fallacy of middle ground here. There is simply a lack of hard evidence to confirm a particular hypothesis about where this virus came from. And, there is an uncomfortable abundance of circumstantial evidence pointing in a highly unusual direction. This is not an issue that you can align with the US political spectrum. And it can be approached without needing to make any claims about how good or bad the Chinese government is. You cannot claim to know what this virus is without information that is not available.

Claims that it is zoonotic are unfortunately just as baseless as any conspiracy theories about weapon development that you've been hearing. The argument for zoonotic origin are based on a single piece of evidence that came out of the labs in the very city where the virus was first found: the sequence of a related SARS-like virus, and one with some very unusual sequence features and publication parameters. Doubt is reasonable. We should fully accept the possibility that humans were able to generate such a construct, and be ready for the next time it happens. The basic fact is that we know how to make such a virus, and that information is now out in the open whether or not this particular virus came from a lab.

Re: US raises ‘deep concerns’ over WHO report on Covid’s Wuhan origins

#507

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Suppose you find that hypothetical mutation. What next? What would you do to prevent the current situation?

Start working on a vaccine.

Has this ever been done in response to gain of function research?

Re: US raises ‘deep concerns’ over WHO report on Covid’s Wuhan origins

#509

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, I kind of like the idea that we could know in advance if a tiny mutation could turn a known disease into something that wipes us all out. Only inside level four labs, of course. But early warning (and this work on mitigation) seems important.

Maybe in BSL-5 labs? Must be in rural isolation, NOT a city. The administrators and janitors and everyone has to sleep inside the fence. Getting out requires spending 40 days in a quarantine hotel in a different nearby fenced area. Armed guards patrol the fence. (EDIT: To be clear. BSL-5 doesn't exist yet... but it should.)

Maybe a fully underground, enclosed facility where scientists work and live. Oh, wait...

Re: US raises ‘deep concerns’ over WHO report on Covid’s Wuhan origins

#510

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why did everyone brush over the Italians finding it in blood samples from September 19, 2 months before the outbreak in Wuhan? Certain actors have a narrative they would like to push.

There is also mounting evidence that the virus was in France in November. Now, it still most likely came from China but this adds to the reasonable suggestion that the Wuhan market was simply the first large outbreak but not near the origin of the virus. My 2c is that the virus will be found (if we do find its origin) to come from a rural area in Southern China.

Preface: This is rumor, although one that would require extreme cleverness and coordination to fake.

A US intelligence contractor that collects location data from apps on phones made a presentation that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was shut down from October 7 to 24, 2019. This was reported in the popular US press [1]. You probably missed that in the nightmare flood of last year. I did when it was first reported...

Thus far, the earliest-detected SARS-CoV-2 in the EU has been in November. I would bet that no evidence is ever found for it globally before late October, 2019. We may look for a long time.

[1] https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/report-sa...

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