Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

371–380 of 664 posts

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

#371

Post by AzzieElbab »

hcknwscommenter wrote: post #346
lenkite wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

World governments were formally advised by the WHO to not impose any travel restrictions. The WHO also laughably said there is no "human transmission" of the virus. The WHO chief just blindly parroted whatever the CCP said for nearly 2 months while the pandemic spread and got out of control. That man deserves to be stripped out of his position. But he will face no justice for the many, many lives he has taken. The en…

There is a reason, the U.S. has traditionally had a U.S. WHO representative in China since the first SARS outbreak, well until TRUMP. Trump's removal of the U.S. presence "on-the-ground" made it easy for the Chinese gov't to delay the real-time reporting while they struggled to figure out on their own whether they had something really serious to worry about or not. Covid-19 is not ENTIRELY Trump's fault, but he sure…

"Covid-19 is not ENTIRELY Trump's fault" - in what way is it his fault at all? Also, the timeline of events you are sighting is intentionally misleading.

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

#372

Post by btilly »

adolph wrote: post #303
btilly wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is. But then you descend down the rabbit hole to a government coverup of a release from a secret bioweapons research lab that was intended to target US military members at the 2019 Military World Games in late October in Wuhan. And now it becomes pretty clearly a conspiracy theory.

No, the theory is that the US service members brought it with them and infected Wuhan. Earlier in March, Zhao Lijian, an outspoken Chinese diplomat, raised a suspicion on his personal Twitter account that it might have been the US army representatives to the Military World Games who brought the novel coronavirus to Wuhan in October 2019, after a top US health official admitted detecting coronavirus infections on some…

To the people holding the theory that I just gave, that's a Chinese disinformation campaign that is part of the coverup. They are accusing others of what they did.

But, there is more than one conspiracy theory here. And probably will be forever. As a hopefully rational third party, I would like it investigated.

But I'm currently giving good odds to "accidental release from program intended to research possible future pandemics". And if that winds up seeming at all likely, I believe that the whole world should commit to having better controls on this type of research to avoid future accidental releases. Because accidental mass murder isn't OK.

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

#373

Post by refenestrator »

AzzieElbab wrote: post #371
hcknwscommenter wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a reason, the U.S. has traditionally had a U.S. WHO representative in China since the first SARS outbreak, well until TRUMP. Trump's removal of the U.S. presence "on-the-ground" made it easy for the Chinese gov't to delay the real-time reporting while they struggled to figure out on their own whether they had something really serious to worry about or not. Covid-19 is not ENTIRELY Trump's fault, but he sure…

"Covid-19 is not ENTIRELY Trump's fault" - in what way is it his fault at all? Also, the timeline of events you are sighting is intentionally misleading.

He encouraged people not to wear masks as a lifestyle choice and cultural signalling thing. Some % of transmission rate is directly attributable to him -- he could have said wearing a mask owns the libs and massively helped instead of hurting.

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

#374

Post by unishark »

refenestrator wrote: post #367
unishark wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The tone and tenor of the investigation has always been to find a way to absolve local politicians of responsibility for their incompetence in managing this issue by blaming China. I think you have this backwards. The obsession has always been first and foremost with US domestic politics because so many americans on the internet have an unhealthy obsession with domestic politics. Present discussion is a yet another…

Because ulterior motives are the best motives! There's a huge incentive to blame China for our fuckups. Really, it should be assumed unless proven otherwise. After all, aside from the whole "no evidence" thing, what does it matter if it's a lab accident or a bat bite or whatever? We had months of warning and fucked it up badly. They were blindsided and recovered nicely. Clearly this must be their fault.

> After all, aside from the whole "no evidence" thing, what does it matter if it's a lab accident or a bat bite or whatever?

Indeed because both of those leading theories point the blame at China. So if people want to blame china nothing is stopping them. Except perhaps those claiming it came from Europe or the US first. Perhaps that's the point of the stonewalling, to provide cover for being able to claim alternative theories? Since you're so into ulterior motives.

Who is the "we" you are referring to? The western world? The US?

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

#375

Post by onethought »

waterhouse wrote: post #361
onethought wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait a second. The report was from the WHO not china. WHO have consistently confirmed it is not a lab virus. Or are we saying that the international group that entered china were some how in league with the CCP?

"Senior WHO official dodges questions about Taiwan’s WHO membership; praises China": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UlCYFh8U2xM Japan's deputy prime minister calls the WHO the "Chinese Health Organization": https://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2020/04/29/commentary/w... > are we saying that the international group that entered china were some how in league with the CCP? There may be reason to expect that they or the…

I agree on the Taiwan front, that's BS and annoying. But given WHO needed as much of China's cooperation at that time I can understand not wanting to aggravate them.

Really... Japan... because there is no history of tension between China and Japan that would make me doubt Japan's agenda here.

WHO is an international organisation, literally people from around the world work there... are ALL of these people actually secretly Chinese agents? Tell me how that works.

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

#376

Post by mgamache »

cameldrv wrote: post #233
shireboy wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm assuming justification for GoF research wasn't "we want to make a bioweapon". What are the arguments in favor of this type of research?

The specific thing that they said they were trying to do was predict emerging pathogens and develop treatments and potentially vaccines for them in advance of them actually making a zoonotic jump. They were creating chimeric Coronaviruses to simulate natural recombination events, then infecting humanized mice with them to assess their potential for human emergence.

Right, playing with fire, by creating an environment that would hyper-evolve virus better than random natural species interactions.

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

#377

Post by izzydata »

ttz wrote: 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…

I don't know why whenever people bring up that the virus might have come from a lab it always gets dismissed because the virus doesn't look artificial.

Why is it never brought up that it could just be an accident? It doesn't need to be a weapon. Just poor safety during research.

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

#378

Post by e9 »

travisgriggs wrote: post #335
ttz wrote: 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…

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 abst…

Grew up in USSR. The basic premise of communism is that it's the best possible way to organize society. If you are not happy then it's not the problem with the communism(how could it be? it's the best!) but it's the problem with you. From that premise all sorts of bad things happen like you are not allowed to complain about communism or question it etc. Not unlike any authoritarian government or cult.

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

#379

Post by playerm1 »

Udik wrote: post #118
throwawaysea wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not necessarily lab created but it could have been leaked from a lab (which studies coronaviruses and bats) even if it wasn’t artificial. It matters because it lays more blame on China and creates the political expediency needed for sanctions. I do agree that there should be consequences for the Chinese government regardless of whether the virus was a leak or not (or artificial or not), and that it isn’t depende…

> It’s not necessarily lab created but it could have been leaked from a lab (which studies coronaviruses and bats) even if it wasn’t artificial. I've heard this multiple times as a reasonable possibility, and yet it seems absurd if you think about it: are you trying to accuse someone of leaking into the environment a virus that actually comes from the environment? And how do you even prove something like that?

Maybe the environment it came from has virtually no people that come in contact with it (only the specimen collectors) and was later leaked in an environment full of people (Wuhan).
Post reply on HN