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Or in 2020: "China created the virus and must be held responsible!" Except that viruses jump from other animals to humans all the time. It can happen in any co

Or in 2020: "China created the virus and must be held responsible!" Except that viruses jump from other animals to humans all the time. It can happen in any country.

throwaway_pdp09 6y ago
Can and did. I think china are getting it in the neck not so much for its origins but the way they mishandled it early on.
- riffraff 6y ago
  China is criticized for its handling of the epidemic, but the "it was made in a lab in China" conspiracy theories are very very common.
  - throwaway_pdp09 6y ago
    Those views are idiotic, but also irrelevant to my post.
  - ekianjo 6y ago
    There is always the possibility that it was not created in a lab but that it leaked from a lab where such viruses were studied. Accidents happen.
    - tunap 6y ago
      IIRC, that happened w/ Ebola in a VA monkey lab. The strain just happened to be Marburg, rather than the more infectious, deadlier Zaire strain. Good read: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hot_Zone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hot_Zone
- sudosysgen 6y ago
  Which is not an evidence based criticism nor reasonable. The virus was already in Europe by December, maybe even November.
  - throwaway_pdp09 6y ago
    It is evidence based, given the suppression of known information by china, and therefore reasonable. China screwing up was really not a big point here but in trying to cover for them you're just going to provoke people into posting more about china's screwup and attract more attention to it, sort of streisand effect.
    - sudosysgen 6y ago
      I'm not really trying to cover for them. I'm pointing out that it wouldn't have changed anything. I remember very well how it was like back in January. People had so little trust in China (and frankly a lot of it was racism) that they saw Wuhan, a city the size of NYC, being locked down, and that was really bad for us. As far as people being aware of the screw-up, as far as I'm concerned that's a good thing. What's important is that one knows that we're not where we are because of them. We're where we are because we fucked up, hard. The popular narrative right now is that if China didn't fuck up we wouldn't be in the mess we are right now, and that's false. We're in the mess we are right now 100% because we didn't take it seriously.
      - throwaway_pdp09 6y ago
        This is just misdirection. > that it wouldn't have changed anything Perhaps. Justify that. I might even agree, but still, justify that. > and frankly a lot of it was racism It is not. Anti-chinese-government attitude is not related to anti-chinese-people racism. You're trying to comflate the two so you can dismiss it as just racism. It isn't. > The popular narrative right now is that if China didn't fuck up we wouldn't be in the mess we are right now, We'd possibly be in a similar mess from the stupidity in various western governments, inc. mine in the UK. See my past posts where I make this ever so plain, indeed using phrases like 'we fucked up'. But that does not let the chinese gov't off the hook WRT their fuckups and armtwisting the WHO and general appalling behaviour. This does not let them off the hook in the same way it does not let eg. boris johnson off the hook, or trump, or bolsonaro.
        6y ago
ekianjo 6y ago
How strange that most recent pandemics mainly come from the same place. Surely that's only pure coincidence.
- RobertKerans 6y ago
  It's definitely not coincidence, because they don't come from the same place. Unless you're classifying Mexico (swine flu), China (SARS & Covid), DR Congo (Ebola) and Saudi Arabia (MERS) as the same place
  - ekianjo 6y ago
    Just posting this for your reference: https://www.who.int/csr/don/archive/country/chn/en/ https://www.who.int/csr/don/archive/country/chn/en/
    - RobertKerans 6y ago
      I'm not quite sure what you think this proves. This is not a list of pandemics, it's a list of individual cases in China of diseases that need to be reported to and monitored by the WHO because of possible epidemic risk. For the last seven years it's been exclusively Avian flu (still no sustained animal->human transmission yet). There are two pandemics (SARS and COVID) there.
dang 6y ago
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23730288 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23730288.

Or in 2020: "China created the virus and must be held responsible!" Except that viruses jump from other animals to humans all the time. It can happen in any country.

throwaway_pdp09 6y ago

Can and did. I think china are getting it in the neck not so much for its origins but the way they mishandled it early on.

riffraff 6y ago
China is criticized for its handling of the epidemic, but the "it was made in a lab in China" conspiracy theories are very very common.
- throwaway_pdp09 6y ago
  Those views are idiotic, but also irrelevant to my post.
- ekianjo 6y ago
  There is always the possibility that it was not created in a lab but that it leaked from a lab where such viruses were studied. Accidents happen.
  - tunap 6y ago
    IIRC, that happened w/ Ebola in a VA monkey lab. The strain just happened to be Marburg, rather than the more infectious, deadlier Zaire strain. Good read: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hot_Zone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hot_Zone
sudosysgen 6y ago
Which is not an evidence based criticism nor reasonable. The virus was already in Europe by December, maybe even November.
- throwaway_pdp09 6y ago
  It is evidence based, given the suppression of known information by china, and therefore reasonable. China screwing up was really not a big point here but in trying to cover for them you're just going to provoke people into posting more about china's screwup and attract more attention to it, sort of streisand effect.
  - sudosysgen 6y ago
    I'm not really trying to cover for them. I'm pointing out that it wouldn't have changed anything. I remember very well how it was like back in January. People had so little trust in China (and frankly a lot of it was racism) that they saw Wuhan, a city the size of NYC, being locked down, and that was really bad for us. As far as people being aware of the screw-up, as far as I'm concerned that's a good thing. What's important is that one knows that we're not where we are because of them. We're where we are because we fucked up, hard. The popular narrative right now is that if China didn't fuck up we wouldn't be in the mess we are right now, and that's false. We're in the mess we are right now 100% because we didn't take it seriously.
    - throwaway_pdp09 6y ago
      This is just misdirection. > that it wouldn't have changed anything Perhaps. Justify that. I might even agree, but still, justify that. > and frankly a lot of it was racism It is not. Anti-chinese-government attitude is not related to anti-chinese-people racism. You're trying to comflate the two so you can dismiss it as just racism. It isn't. > The popular narrative right now is that if China didn't fuck up we wouldn't be in the mess we are right now, We'd possibly be in a similar mess from the stupidity in various western governments, inc. mine in the UK. See my past posts where I make this ever so plain, indeed using phrases like 'we fucked up'. But that does not let the chinese gov't off the hook WRT their fuckups and armtwisting the WHO and general appalling behaviour. This does not let them off the hook in the same way it does not let eg. boris johnson off the hook, or trump, or bolsonaro.
      - 6y ago

ekianjo 6y ago

How strange that most recent pandemics mainly come from the same place. Surely that's only pure coincidence.

RobertKerans 6y ago
It's definitely not coincidence, because they don't come from the same place. Unless you're classifying Mexico (swine flu), China (SARS & Covid), DR Congo (Ebola) and Saudi Arabia (MERS) as the same place
- ekianjo 6y ago
  Just posting this for your reference: https://www.who.int/csr/don/archive/country/chn/en/ https://www.who.int/csr/don/archive/country/chn/en/
  - RobertKerans 6y ago
    I'm not quite sure what you think this proves. This is not a list of pandemics, it's a list of individual cases in China of diseases that need to be reported to and monitored by the WHO because of possible epidemic risk. For the last seven years it's been exclusively Avian flu (still no sustained animal->human transmission yet). There are two pandemics (SARS and COVID) there.

dang 6y ago

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23730288 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23730288.