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The problem with the line of thinking that China deliberately engineered/created/released sars-cov-2 is that there's zero motivation for it. What could they pos

The problem with the line of thinking that China deliberately engineered/created/released sars-cov-2 is that there's zero motivation for it. What could they possibly gain from it? What's the strategic value of it?

barnacled 6y ago
Oh god... I didn't say it was deliberate!!!! The argument is that they were profoundly negligent. As for the lab side of things, the argument is that it was an accidental release (as happened multiple times with SARS 1). My point is whether or not it walked out of the lab (by ACCIDENT) given they knew in 2003 that certain things were major risks, they should have come down on them like a ton of bricks. The fact they re-opened wet markets and took no further steps to tackle that makes them responsible through negligence.
- strogonoff 6y ago
  The combination of facts is (I’m also giving some references to your points): 1) China is known to have contributed[0] to bat coronavirus research, my speculation is that Wuhan’s BSL-4 lab exists primarily for this reason. 2) There were documented lab escapes of original SARS-CoV from labs in Beijing[1] in 2004, as I recall resulting in at least one death. 3) WHO’s study starts this month, but they don’t seem to mention lab escape (not of some “engineered virus”, just straight up a natural sample escaping on a person) as a possibility[2]. I am not sure if they are playing politics or this is their sincere outlook. I can’t stress this enough: China may have been unlucky to be struck by the original SARS-CoV, so it’s reasonable that they had the motivation to study its origins; that research is valuable and it’d be absolutely bonkers to criticize scientists for having done it. Even if lab escape did indeed happen to be the cause of SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, I am not sure this should be a basis for prosecution of a particular country (as opposed to e.g. tightening of BSL security practices): there’s human factor, and mistakes happen; if it hadn’t been China it could’ve eventually been another country. What I find alarming is if an effort to obstruct the study of pandemic origins in order to save face (?) is taking place. If it was a lab escape, humanity’s future could be much safer if we knew how it happened—but how would researchers know it was a lab escape if they can’t look in that direction? [0] https://virologyj.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12985-015-0422-1 https://virologyj.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12985-... (2015, two authors are with Wuhan Institute of Virology) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002–2004_SARS_outbreak#April_2004 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002–2004_SARS_outbreak#April_... [2] https://www.who.int/publications/m/item/who-convened-global-study-of-the-origins-of-sars-cov-2 https://www.who.int/publications/m/item/who-convened-global-...
  - barnacled 6y ago
    yeah I'm not unreasonable about the pandemic situation, and of course it's feasible it occurred through no fault of their own in the first place, however it is clear that they were WELL aware after SARS1 that wet markets/traditional Chinese medicine/etc. were major pandemic vectors and re-opened e.g. wet markets very quickly after both SARS and SARS2-CoV. This is actually insane (as in mentally unwell) levels of arrogance and negligence. Secondly they covered up the outbreak. Had it been reported a few weeks earlier apparently up to 95% of deaths could have been prevented. That is really insane. The lab side of it is interesting and it seems just so much of a coincidence that the lab was right next to the oubreak, of all the places in all of the huge country of China. I don't doubt they were motivated to study bat coronaviruses, of course they were and there was in fact very big competition with the US. The problem is China is such a corrupt country where health + safety + following protocols is something of a joke, as with most communist/totalitarian systems people always try to get away with as much as they can that I have zero trust in their BS4 lab being properly constructed and procedures followed correctly. They also covered up the discovery of a very similar virus some years ago (they actively anonymised records around it after covid19 emerged) in a bat cave (no pun intended) which already appeared to have bat-human transmission. It is something like 96% similar to covid19 though some scientists say it isn't feasible that it evolved into covid19 except in nature. However I wonder whether some form of natural evolution of the virus was experimented on or encouraged in the lab or whether this assumption is in fact correct. So the lab thing is definitely up for debate, however the general attitude from much of the media and certainly China is to dismiss it as a crackpot theory. Absolutely don't think it is. Also I personally do not believe at all that any of this was intentional. I think it's a mixture of negligence, cover-up and face saving. Keeping in mind the next virus might not be a 0.4% case fatality rate that mostly kills the very old, it's deeply frightening.
    - tim333 6y ago
      The fact that the BSL4 lab had a grant for "characterization of SARSr-CoV spillover risk" using "in vivo infection experiments" at around the time of the breakout is also a bit of a coincidence.
    - 6y ago
njanirudh 6y ago
Look at economic situation of all big countries and China. Its atleast an important motivation.
ekianjo 6y ago
Whether it's deliberate is besides the point - they clearly lied about it, misled the WHO, and let their people transmit the disease worldwide for months before starting to share what they knew.
- CyanBird 6y ago
  > they clearly lied about it I fail to see the value of this, China is not Sweden, I am not sure why you hold them to the same standards, that seems strange to me But anyhow, I just wanted to add that the CIA and the US state department was aware of a new Pneumonia surging on China back in November and sped to warn NATO and Israel of it[0], after all, no one ever needed to actually listen to what the Chinese government says, that's what intelligence agencies are for [0] https://www.timesofisrael.com/us-alerted-israel-nato-to-disease-outbreak-in-china-in-november-report/ https://www.timesofisrael.com/us-alerted-israel-nato-to-dise...
  - Melting_Harps 6y ago
    > I fail to see the value of this, China is not Sweden, I am not sure why you hold them to the same standards, that seems strange to me Did a CCP shill/wumao just admit that the CCP should not be held to the same standards as other members of the International Community and is perplexed that even during a pandemic the refusal to disclose this information is 'strange' when trying to contain the pandemic that has ravaged the World and that ultimately the biggest source of confusion is from outsiders trying to grasp why that is? If so, you just summed up why the CCP has been successful at indoctrinating a billion people and subjugating them with such ease; when this type of brainwashing being this effective one has to realize we are fighting a losing battle by engaging in discourse as some may never be able to question their reality even as countless deaths occur World wide due to the corruption, coverups and deadly negligence and belligerence from the CCP. The truth is I think you may be doing this as a source of income and you really don't believe what you wrote, at least I really hope so, which makes me even sadder than if you did believe it as it shows just toxic so many people's existence is when it relies on the acceptance and dependence of totalitarian regimes is. Edit: Keep down voting, I don't care about your fake internet points, unlike your social credit point system I gain nothing from the number associated to my handle and is irrelevant to my existence. But it proves you have no real points to make that aren't already obvious with these practices and further prove the criticisms more than any illogical rebuttal could. 光復香港，時代革命!
Melting_Harps 6y ago
> The problem with the line of thinking that China deliberately engineered/created/released sars-cov-2 is that there's zero motivation for it. What could they possibly gain from it? What's the strategic value of it? I want preface that I agree that as of right now there isn't enough evidence to determine that the CCP deliberately released the virus. But they certainly gained a lot in the process and capitalized in every possible way and tried to cover their corruption and continued to dissapear physicians, journalists and anyone who tried to expose their incompetence and maleficence in regards to COVID. None of the death numbers or cases align with the population size and exposure rates and they can get away with it because 'It's China.' Hong Kong and the yellow movement was created during massive protests in 2014 that escalated again in 2019 with the advent of the extradition bill, these protests were a complete throne in the side of the CCP as it put into question China's real power in the region. Hong Kong was in complete disrepute by the Summer and had violent protest that led to deaths on the streets until the outbreak of the pandemic in late December. While the CCP boarded up Wuhan citizens it didn't stop the outflow of mainlanders to HK despite public outcry from HK medical professionals who recalled the SARS pandemic that killed so many in Hk as result of CCP negligence and continued to overwhelm the hospitals and mainlanders got exemptions from mandatory quarantine measures put in place to reduce to the contagion of COVID, so the infection numbers kept up: but why is this important? Because HK then went into lockdown and essentially stopped all protests in an attempt to stop the virus spreading, these protests were giving the Western powers the ability to expose the CCP's heavy handed retaliation and violence in its illegal annexation led by a clearly corrupt regime with Lam in place allowing that would lead to the the police to become paramilitary jack booted thugs and beat, jail and murder anyone that disagreed with it, as seen in the article above. The HK police force that committed those crimes had been exposed to have uniquely mainlander/Mandarin accents and traits as opposed to the Cantonese that is spoken exclusively spoken in HK. So it seems the PLA had been introduced as the local police force in HK, essentially leadin to a justified occupation of HK by the CCP. This then allowed them to pass the National Security Law, suspend elections, remove all protections and civil liberties as the CCP sees fit and purge and put political dissidents in jail and essentially annex HK prematurely which was in direct violation of the treaty agreed upon by the UK that protected the 2 systems one country mandate that would be protected until a complete hand over would be completed in 2047--which would technically violate the process and may be actionable/trilable to return HK to British control. But none of that matters now as the rest of the World is reeling from the wide spread damage of financial crisis, lockdowns and mass unemployment due to the pandemic and in the case if the UK Brexit trade deals. The CCP just issued an international manhunt for political protestors and activists who fled HK, even though many Western countries (where they reside) have since removed their extradition treaty with China, which means, or at least suggests, that the CCP is willing to use extra judicial means to capture or kill these people in countries they have no jurisdiction in, which in incredibly dangerous precedent as seen with US internationalism that only leads to more violence and death. What this also did was consolidate the key Western leaning and affluent forward facing financial hub between the West and China (Hong Kong), in an attempt to allow places like Schenzen to act as the new hub which is in direct control of the CCP as China flexed its muscles as the indispensable gear in international supply chains of the World. If you dared to question it you were sanctioned, as seen with Australia who is highly dependent on Chinese exports and trade. This set a cooling effect throughout many Industrial nations like Germany who have been entirely silent on these atrocities since so much of their manufacturing is now dependent on Chinese factories. The 5 eyes and Japan have been creating sanctions but continue to operate with China on its terms now in many ways. I'm not even going to touch the lucrative real estate deals in HK by mainlanders as that is a book unto itself of corruption and ever eroding standards of living in the most expensive place to live on Earth. It also made it clear to the World that the CCP has Imperial ambitions and put the cross-hairs on Taiwan, a long disputed issue and a source of identity schism amongst people of Han Chinese ethnic origin. The CCP just sent 10 people to prison for trying to flee Hong Kong to what is supposedly China according to the CCP (Taiwan) for 3 years as they violated border controls under the NSL. They have essentially instilled the right to sentence people for non-existent crimes according to their own logic. I can go on, but this should at least give you some context to your frankly very ignorant position on the matter. This is all based on a contentious 5000+ years of History, and I didn't even touch on the atrocities of Tibet, Xianjing, Macau and condensed as much as possible, but suffice it say that the CCP (a frankly new regime formed in the early 20th century that hijacked and perverted the rich Chinese History for its own political agenda) will not stop at anything to unify the supposed 'greater China' territory and these atrocities and crimes against Humanity are simply another footnote in its long History as an Imperial force on the World. The CCP just uses any and all methods used from the most egregious totalitarian and authoritarian regimes, even on its own people and will not hesitate to use it on Western barbarians. Their propaganda claimed it was a US developed bio-weapon at first, and then they tried to blame Italy for it all while trying to make people ignore that there is bio-weapons lab in Wuhan, and sadly due to the damage from the floods we may never get a real answer to whether COVID originated from there. What is clear is that the CCP has essentially gained so much power it exposed Western democracies and governance as equally as totalitarian as its own all while using those methods unapologetically to further gain power in the region and create discord all while dodging what are clearly Crimes Against Humanity as seen in the article posted.

barnacled 6y ago

Oh god... I didn't say it was deliberate!!!! The argument is that they were profoundly negligent. As for the lab side of things, the argument is that it was an accidental release (as happened multiple times with SARS 1). My point is whether or not it walked out of the lab (by ACCIDENT) given they knew in 2003 that certain things were major risks, they should have come down on them like a ton of bricks. The fact they re-opened wet markets and took no further steps to tackle that makes them responsible through negligence.

strogonoff 6y ago
The combination of facts is (I’m also giving some references to your points): 1) China is known to have contributed[0] to bat coronavirus research, my speculation is that Wuhan’s BSL-4 lab exists primarily for this reason. 2) There were documented lab escapes of original SARS-CoV from labs in Beijing[1] in 2004, as I recall resulting in at least one death. 3) WHO’s study starts this month, but they don’t seem to mention lab escape (not of some “engineered virus”, just straight up a natural sample escaping on a person) as a possibility[2]. I am not sure if they are playing politics or this is their sincere outlook. I can’t stress this enough: China may have been unlucky to be struck by the original SARS-CoV, so it’s reasonable that they had the motivation to study its origins; that research is valuable and it’d be absolutely bonkers to criticize scientists for having done it. Even if lab escape did indeed happen to be the cause of SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, I am not sure this should be a basis for prosecution of a particular country (as opposed to e.g. tightening of BSL security practices): there’s human factor, and mistakes happen; if it hadn’t been China it could’ve eventually been another country. What I find alarming is if an effort to obstruct the study of pandemic origins in order to save face (?) is taking place. If it was a lab escape, humanity’s future could be much safer if we knew how it happened—but how would researchers know it was a lab escape if they can’t look in that direction? [0] https://virologyj.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12985-015-0422-1 https://virologyj.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12985-... (2015, two authors are with Wuhan Institute of Virology) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002–2004_SARS_outbreak#April_2004 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002–2004_SARS_outbreak#April_... [2] https://www.who.int/publications/m/item/who-convened-global-study-of-the-origins-of-sars-cov-2 https://www.who.int/publications/m/item/who-convened-global-...
- barnacled 6y ago
  yeah I'm not unreasonable about the pandemic situation, and of course it's feasible it occurred through no fault of their own in the first place, however it is clear that they were WELL aware after SARS1 that wet markets/traditional Chinese medicine/etc. were major pandemic vectors and re-opened e.g. wet markets very quickly after both SARS and SARS2-CoV. This is actually insane (as in mentally unwell) levels of arrogance and negligence. Secondly they covered up the outbreak. Had it been reported a few weeks earlier apparently up to 95% of deaths could have been prevented. That is really insane. The lab side of it is interesting and it seems just so much of a coincidence that the lab was right next to the oubreak, of all the places in all of the huge country of China. I don't doubt they were motivated to study bat coronaviruses, of course they were and there was in fact very big competition with the US. The problem is China is such a corrupt country where health + safety + following protocols is something of a joke, as with most communist/totalitarian systems people always try to get away with as much as they can that I have zero trust in their BS4 lab being properly constructed and procedures followed correctly. They also covered up the discovery of a very similar virus some years ago (they actively anonymised records around it after covid19 emerged) in a bat cave (no pun intended) which already appeared to have bat-human transmission. It is something like 96% similar to covid19 though some scientists say it isn't feasible that it evolved into covid19 except in nature. However I wonder whether some form of natural evolution of the virus was experimented on or encouraged in the lab or whether this assumption is in fact correct. So the lab thing is definitely up for debate, however the general attitude from much of the media and certainly China is to dismiss it as a crackpot theory. Absolutely don't think it is. Also I personally do not believe at all that any of this was intentional. I think it's a mixture of negligence, cover-up and face saving. Keeping in mind the next virus might not be a 0.4% case fatality rate that mostly kills the very old, it's deeply frightening.
  - tim333 6y ago
    The fact that the BSL4 lab had a grant for "characterization of SARSr-CoV spillover risk" using "in vivo infection experiments" at around the time of the breakout is also a bit of a coincidence.
  - 6y ago

njanirudh 6y ago

Look at economic situation of all big countries and China. Its atleast an important motivation.

ekianjo 6y ago

Whether it's deliberate is besides the point - they clearly lied about it, misled the WHO, and let their people transmit the disease worldwide for months before starting to share what they knew.

CyanBird 6y ago
> they clearly lied about it I fail to see the value of this, China is not Sweden, I am not sure why you hold them to the same standards, that seems strange to me But anyhow, I just wanted to add that the CIA and the US state department was aware of a new Pneumonia surging on China back in November and sped to warn NATO and Israel of it[0], after all, no one ever needed to actually listen to what the Chinese government says, that's what intelligence agencies are for [0] https://www.timesofisrael.com/us-alerted-israel-nato-to-disease-outbreak-in-china-in-november-report/ https://www.timesofisrael.com/us-alerted-israel-nato-to-dise...
- Melting_Harps 6y ago
  > I fail to see the value of this, China is not Sweden, I am not sure why you hold them to the same standards, that seems strange to me Did a CCP shill/wumao just admit that the CCP should not be held to the same standards as other members of the International Community and is perplexed that even during a pandemic the refusal to disclose this information is 'strange' when trying to contain the pandemic that has ravaged the World and that ultimately the biggest source of confusion is from outsiders trying to grasp why that is? If so, you just summed up why the CCP has been successful at indoctrinating a billion people and subjugating them with such ease; when this type of brainwashing being this effective one has to realize we are fighting a losing battle by engaging in discourse as some may never be able to question their reality even as countless deaths occur World wide due to the corruption, coverups and deadly negligence and belligerence from the CCP. The truth is I think you may be doing this as a source of income and you really don't believe what you wrote, at least I really hope so, which makes me even sadder than if you did believe it as it shows just toxic so many people's existence is when it relies on the acceptance and dependence of totalitarian regimes is. Edit: Keep down voting, I don't care about your fake internet points, unlike your social credit point system I gain nothing from the number associated to my handle and is irrelevant to my existence. But it proves you have no real points to make that aren't already obvious with these practices and further prove the criticisms more than any illogical rebuttal could. 光復香港，時代革命!

Melting_Harps 6y ago

> The problem with the line of thinking that China deliberately engineered/created/released sars-cov-2 is that there's zero motivation for it. What could they possibly gain from it? What's the strategic value of it? I want preface that I agree that as of right now there isn't enough evidence to determine that the CCP deliberately released the virus. But they certainly gained a lot in the process and capitalized in every possible way and tried to cover their corruption and continued to dissapear physicians, journalists and anyone who tried to expose their incompetence and maleficence in regards to COVID. None of the death numbers or cases align with the population size and exposure rates and they can get away with it because 'It's China.' Hong Kong and the yellow movement was created during massive protests in 2014 that escalated again in 2019 with the advent of the extradition bill, these protests were a complete throne in the side of the CCP as it put into question China's real power in the region. Hong Kong was in complete disrepute by the Summer and had violent protest that led to deaths on the streets until the outbreak of the pandemic in late December. While the CCP boarded up Wuhan citizens it didn't stop the outflow of mainlanders to HK despite public outcry from HK medical professionals who recalled the SARS pandemic that killed so many in Hk as result of CCP negligence and continued to overwhelm the hospitals and mainlanders got exemptions from mandatory quarantine measures put in place to reduce to the contagion of COVID, so the infection numbers kept up: but why is this important? Because HK then went into lockdown and essentially stopped all protests in an attempt to stop the virus spreading, these protests were giving the Western powers the ability to expose the CCP's heavy handed retaliation and violence in its illegal annexation led by a clearly corrupt regime with Lam in place allowing that would lead to the the police to become paramilitary jack booted thugs and beat, jail and murder anyone that disagreed with it, as seen in the article above. The HK police force that committed those crimes had been exposed to have uniquely mainlander/Mandarin accents and traits as opposed to the Cantonese that is spoken exclusively spoken in HK. So it seems the PLA had been introduced as the local police force in HK, essentially leadin to a justified occupation of HK by the CCP. This then allowed them to pass the National Security Law, suspend elections, remove all protections and civil liberties as the CCP sees fit and purge and put political dissidents in jail and essentially annex HK prematurely which was in direct violation of the treaty agreed upon by the UK that protected the 2 systems one country mandate that would be protected until a complete hand over would be completed in 2047--which would technically violate the process and may be actionable/trilable to return HK to British control. But none of that matters now as the rest of the World is reeling from the wide spread damage of financial crisis, lockdowns and mass unemployment due to the pandemic and in the case if the UK Brexit trade deals. The CCP just issued an international manhunt for political protestors and activists who fled HK, even though many Western countries (where they reside) have since removed their extradition treaty with China, which means, or at least suggests, that the CCP is willing to use extra judicial means to capture or kill these people in countries they have no jurisdiction in, which in incredibly dangerous precedent as seen with US internationalism that only leads to more violence and death. What this also did was consolidate the key Western leaning and affluent forward facing financial hub between the West and China (Hong Kong), in an attempt to allow places like Schenzen to act as the new hub which is in direct control of the CCP as China flexed its muscles as the indispensable gear in international supply chains of the World. If you dared to question it you were sanctioned, as seen with Australia who is highly dependent on Chinese exports and trade. This set a cooling effect throughout many Industrial nations like Germany who have been entirely silent on these atrocities since so much of their manufacturing is now dependent on Chinese factories. The 5 eyes and Japan have been creating sanctions but continue to operate with China on its terms now in many ways. I'm not even going to touch the lucrative real estate deals in HK by mainlanders as that is a book unto itself of corruption and ever eroding standards of living in the most expensive place to live on Earth. It also made it clear to the World that the CCP has Imperial ambitions and put the cross-hairs on Taiwan, a long disputed issue and a source of identity schism amongst people of Han Chinese ethnic origin. The CCP just sent 10 people to prison for trying to flee Hong Kong to what is supposedly China according to the CCP (Taiwan) for 3 years as they violated border controls under the NSL. They have essentially instilled the right to sentence people for non-existent crimes according to their own logic. I can go on, but this should at least give you some context to your frankly very ignorant position on the matter. This is all based on a contentious 5000+ years of History, and I didn't even touch on the atrocities of Tibet, Xianjing, Macau and condensed as much as possible, but suffice it say that the CCP (a frankly new regime formed in the early 20th century that hijacked and perverted the rich Chinese History for its own political agenda) will not stop at anything to unify the supposed 'greater China' territory and these atrocities and crimes against Humanity are simply another footnote in its long History as an Imperial force on the World. The CCP just uses any and all methods used from the most egregious totalitarian and authoritarian regimes, even on its own people and will not hesitate to use it on Western barbarians. Their propaganda claimed it was a US developed bio-weapon at first, and then they tried to blame Italy for it all while trying to make people ignore that there is bio-weapons lab in Wuhan, and sadly due to the damage from the floods we may never get a real answer to whether COVID originated from there. What is clear is that the CCP has essentially gained so much power it exposed Western democracies and governance as equally as totalitarian as its own all while using those methods unapologetically to further gain power in the region and create discord all while dodging what are clearly Crimes Against Humanity as seen in the article posted.