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Why the Wuhan lab leak theory shouldn't be dismissed
301–310 of 1001 posts
Re: Why the Wuhan lab leak theory shouldn't be dismissed
#302Like, so what? Should we care a lot about the safety and security of places where dangerous infectious diseases are studied? sure! I think we should care A LOT MORE about our [apparent total lack of] ability to quickly deploy effective public health responses to new infectious diseases (regardless of their source). Maybe it was an accident at a sloppy lab, ok, so labs on the other side of the planet in sovereign coun…
> We should get better at responding fast and saving lives (my opinion). I think you're wrestling with a strawman here, no one's arguing the inverse. But in any investigation (arson, murder, etc.) the details do matter -- where, how, what weapon, when, and so on.
Respectfully, there is still a sizeable contingent of the US population that thinks that the pandemic is "no worse than the annual flu" and that efforts to combat the pandemic are at best a wild over-reaction and at worst some kind of sinister plot by the government.
Re: Why the Wuhan lab leak theory shouldn't be dismissed
#303Like, so what? Should we care a lot about the safety and security of places where dangerous infectious diseases are studied? sure! I think we should care A LOT MORE about our [apparent total lack of] ability to quickly deploy effective public health responses to new infectious diseases (regardless of their source). Maybe it was an accident at a sloppy lab, ok, so labs on the other side of the planet in sovereign coun…
Worrying about where it came from is misdirection to distract us from the real issue that you pointed out: That nearly all countries totally failed to effectively deal with it and contain the spread, resulting in a body count that should be totally unacceptable. We got extraordinarily lucky that it wasn't super deadly. Imagine if the next COVID is 20X deadlier and hits uniformly across age ranges. We're doomed if we take the approach we took this time around.
Re: Why the Wuhan lab leak theory shouldn't be dismissed
#304Like, so what? Should we care a lot about the safety and security of places where dangerous infectious diseases are studied? sure! I think we should care A LOT MORE about our [apparent total lack of] ability to quickly deploy effective public health responses to new infectious diseases (regardless of their source). Maybe it was an accident at a sloppy lab, ok, so labs on the other side of the planet in sovereign coun…
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Re: Why the Wuhan lab leak theory shouldn't be dismissed
#305This has honestly been my unbiased opinion since essentially day 1. I believe that the release was almost certainly a complete accident, but there's just no realistic chance a novel virus coincidentally originates in the same isolated place as a lab that specializes in that exact same type of virus. The denialists, including the WHO and CDC and everyone else, need to get real and own up to what happened and figure ou…
My favorite conspiracy theory bend on this is that it’s the best place to intentionally release it too, especially if WIV is absolutely not studying anything like COVID-19 because it looks so appealing to dig into the bio safety level four lab, but there’s probably nothing there so it will be eventually dismissed.
All that said I think it is really unlikely and a pointless effort as government bureaucracies wouldn’t be able to even formulate a reaction to an intentional or even accidental release so I think we will not try too hard to imply that for political reasons.
Re: Why the Wuhan lab leak theory shouldn't be dismissed
#306This has honestly been my unbiased opinion since essentially day 1. I believe that the release was almost certainly a complete accident, but there's just no realistic chance a novel virus coincidentally originates in the same isolated place as a lab that specializes in that exact same type of virus. The denialists, including the WHO and CDC and everyone else, need to get real and own up to what happened and figure ou…
I subscribe to this theory. I didn't subscribe to it originally because it seemed to dystopian. However on reading the recent politico article ( https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/03/08/josh-rogin... ) really changed my opinion about it. To be clear I think it would have been an accident at a Chinese government lab that was underfunded and overworked. Seems to me like the likeliest candidate. I don't think t…
I'd also assign a small but non-zero probability to the US not wanting to point the finger because they prefer the scenario where the general population comes to believe that the lab accident was responsible, but no hard evidence is ever produced.
Why? Because it seems like US institutions and people (right up to Fauci) were involved in this research and may not want the domestic blowback.
Conveniently the CCP don't want a paper trail either.
I'd be pretty sure the various scenarios have already been gamed out in both countries.
Edit: Not sure why this is being downvoted, but just in case it’s a reflex because I mentioned Fauci: yes, he was head of NIAID, and yes, the NIH did fund this type of research at the WIV. The grants are public information.
Re: Why the Wuhan lab leak theory shouldn't be dismissed
#307Like, so what? Should we care a lot about the safety and security of places where dangerous infectious diseases are studied? sure! I think we should care A LOT MORE about our [apparent total lack of] ability to quickly deploy effective public health responses to new infectious diseases (regardless of their source). Maybe it was an accident at a sloppy lab, ok, so labs on the other side of the planet in sovereign coun…
If it is indeed "sloppy lab" leak the virus and we don't care, it will happen again.
Re: Why the Wuhan lab leak theory shouldn't be dismissed
#308Like, so what? Should we care a lot about the safety and security of places where dangerous infectious diseases are studied? sure! I think we should care A LOT MORE about our [apparent total lack of] ability to quickly deploy effective public health responses to new infectious diseases (regardless of their source). Maybe it was an accident at a sloppy lab, ok, so labs on the other side of the planet in sovereign coun…
Maybe if it wasn’t CONCEALED by the government in the country of origin, our lives would be different now. Talk about that will you?
We had 1.5 months [1][2][3] of clear warning that this is a serious epidemic.
When China locks 35 million people in their homes, and this makes the New York Times, and we don't do anything to respond for another month, and we don't do anything meaningful for a month and half... What we have is a domestic, not a foreign problem.
These articles made the news on January 8th, January 23rd, and February 7th. The first travel ban, that only covered China was on... January 30th. The first travel ban on Europe was on March 11th (At this point, Europe had ten times the active COVID cases that China did at the end of January. Why did we wait so long to stop travel from it?)
The first state lockdown was in New York State, on March 22nd.
Exactly how much advance warning did we need to deal with this pandemic? Three months? Three years? Do you think that a president who would constantly deny reality, to the point of claiming that there would be zero cases in the US by April would have handled this crisis any better, regardless of how much lead time he was given?
I'll also eat my shoe if the CIA and/or the NSA weren't at least as aware as the NYT of the seriousness of the situation in China (It can't be hard, my co-workers with relatives in China were all aware of it from, you know, talking to folks back phone. On the phone.) And if they weren't - why on Earth are we wasting billions of dollars on their cloak-and-dagger budgets, when I can get a better take on current events by having lunch with my team?
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/08/health/china-pneumonia-ou...
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/23/world/asia/china-coronavi...
[3] https://time.com/5779678/li-wenliang-coronavirus-china-docto....
Re: Why the Wuhan lab leak theory shouldn't be dismissed
#309Like, so what? Should we care a lot about the safety and security of places where dangerous infectious diseases are studied? sure! I think we should care A LOT MORE about our [apparent total lack of] ability to quickly deploy effective public health responses to new infectious diseases (regardless of their source). Maybe it was an accident at a sloppy lab, ok, so labs on the other side of the planet in sovereign coun…
Worrying about where it came from is misdirection to distract us from the real issue that you pointed out: That nearly all countries totally failed to effectively deal with it and contain the spread, resulting in a body count that should be totally unacceptable. We got extraordinarily lucky that it wasn't super deadly. Imagine if the next COVID is 20X deadlier and hits uniformly across age ranges. We're doomed if we…
Especially considering Contagion was filmed close to 10 years ago...
Re: Why the Wuhan lab leak theory shouldn't be dismissed
#310Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why would it be more feasible this virus is leaked from the lab other than some wild animals from the market itself? Either can be equally believable yet impossible to prove.
There are cases in Wuhan which predate the wet market cluster. That appears to have been a super spreading event but not the origin. The bats this disease come from we’re not being sold in the market at this time. They’re out of season. So already the theory is assuming a multi-animal hop (some other wild animal got in contact with a bat and got infected, then captured and moved a thousand kilometers to the wet marke…
If it was within a few weeks of the outbreak, then it wasn't likely the cause. As seen in other countries, the # of cases takes a while to ramp up, and it wouldn't go from a release to a couple thousand deaths in such a short time span.