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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

by ttz 6y ago

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 this issue is about. That's not to say we have compelling evidence that this was a lab virus, either. I think, for me, it's a, "we don't know, but I wouldn't be shocked at all if it was a lab virus".

throwaway54095 6y ago
It's crazy that at this point we still keep with this delusion. Of course this is a lab virus. This info is getting old: https://project-evidence.github.io/ https://project-evidence.github.io/ https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-origins-genome-analysis-suggests-two-viruses-may-have-combined-134059 https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-origins-genome-analy... Who was really behind this, and the whole history of it, is something surely we won't know for know. "When war is declared, truth is the first casualty"
- AshWolfy 6y ago
  a lot of this is just really bad, like just off the top of my head 96 percent related genetics is not very much, thats the same similarity between humans and monkeys
  - GauntletWizard 6y ago
    96% of human vs monkey DNA similarly is not a lot, because most of that DNA is shared throughout all of the animal kingdom. Since human DNA is close to a billion codons long, the remaining 4% is still tens of millions of codons. COVID-19 is ~30,000 base pairs long (10,000) codons. The 4% difference is 400 codons. That's not a lot. There are many singular proteins longer than that. Is that proof? No, the same way gravity is just a theory.
    - AshWolfy 6y ago
      A theory is something that has been rigorously tested, this is speculation, and shaky speculation at best. Id be willing to bet sars and covid 19 have a similar level of genetic similarity or other things like assuming someone is dead based on the fact that they dont have a picture online and dont wanna talk to press ive seen youtube conspiracy videos more convincing
- tim333 6y ago
  There remains uncertainty. It could be zoonotic. Spreads in some remote village that no one takes notice of, then a villager does a trip to Wuhan.
bsd44 6y ago
Well if you say so then it must be true. I mean this is internet after all.
- ttz 6y ago
  Not sure where in my post it postulates anything about "truth". The entire point of the post is to say, we don't know the truth, but in the balance of probabilities, I wouldn't trust the CCP's version. Did you even read what I wrote, or are you just knee jerking?
  - refenestrator 6y ago
    I can't see what you're responding to, but if people make an accusation without evidence, the accused party's trustworthiness is kind of irrelevant, right? Fine, you don't trust their denial, but that doesn't affirmatively prove anything either. They could deny killing JFK, as well, and it shouldn't change anything.
    - ttz 6y ago
      There's no accusation. Everything I said in my post is opinion. Please read the original post, in its entirety.
      - refenestrator 6y ago
        I said "people" are making accusations, didn't mean to say you were.
  - pishpash 6y ago
    Your balance of probabilities relies entire on priors. It's kind of useless and particularly uninformative.
    - ttz 6y ago
      Priors matter here, as we have no good data to actually verify or refute the issue, because Chinese gov't won't release the early data for scientific community at large around the world to analyze. So you can only rely on: - do I trust the WHO - do I trust the CCP I don't really trust either - but this is just my opinion, based on my interpretation of historical events and evidence. We are all adults here, we can choose to agree or disagree - that's what makes forums and free speech really work. Some of my reasons for my choice to not trust the CCP: The Chinese government has numerous reports of it conducting human rights abuses against Uighurs and other populations (Falun Gong, etc). There is constant state denial, but in my eyes, the evidence is compelling. Let's not play the "oh but other countries do this too" - other countries are not relevant to the issue at hand, and my opinion on them is similarly irrelevant here. If you want to be absolutely pedantic, sure, we have no evidence to conclusively say anything - we also can't say evolution is correct, but it's the most likely theory given prior evidence. Note that my original post says that we have no smoking gun evidence (and again, I'd really want to stress, my original post was OPINION. It was meant in passing, but somehow it got the attention of people on both sides who clearly have a bone to pick). But, in the "balance of probabilities", my priors suggest to me that I wouldn't trust the CCP. I'm not saying I'm right. I'm not saying you need to believe me. I am simply exercising my right to say my opinion, based on what I think are fairly reasonable priors given CCP track record. CCP isn't an evil regime, which I feel like is what some of the stauncher replies in this thread feel that any criticism of the party secretly says. They've done great things for the country and its people. Healthcare, stability, infrastructure, and tried to right the wrongs of Mao and the GLF. But that doesn't mean you have to trust everything a government says. Your parents provide you with food and shelter, it doesn't mean you need to blindly believe that they are incapable of doing dishonest things. This is also not an attack on the Chinese people, contrary to some silly posts I've seen saying "demonizing the CCP means demonizing thr Chinese people". I totally understand why Chinese people tolerate the government. When you emerged from a generation that suffered incredible rural poverty, like my own family, a government that promises you a stable paycheck, food, and housing seems reasonable to support and stay loyal to. I am fortunate enough that my father was talented and lucky enough to be able to leave for a country where we could obtain those things without needing to profess that loyalty unflinchingly.
Udik 6y ago
> Don't ever trust the Chinese government on issues that could potentially involve the reputation of the party Seems this holds true for every government and party.
- mc32 6y ago
  The difference is there is no opposition to question the official stance. So I’d say it’s naive to imply the same holds true everywhere. Even Russia and Turkey have vocal dissidents.
  - sa-mao 6y ago
    Last time I checked Turkey is still democracy. A better example would be Egypt or KSA or UAE.
    - mc32 6y ago
      They’re a democracy in the same way Russia is a democracy.
      - edgyquant 6y ago
        Hmm I don’t think so. They’re autocratic for sure but Turkey has been an autocratic democracy for a hundred years so there is a culture of republicanism. I get what you mean but Russia is so new to the voting thing that the comparison isn’t apt imo.
      - sa-mao 6y ago
        I wouldn’t go as far as comparing Turkey to Russia. The recent Turkish elections have shown that the ruling Party in Turkey can lose key strongholds like Istanbul, this never happens in Russia. In Egypt, most contenders to the presidency are in prison now. Current president Al Sissi (a bloody dictator won by 97%) Erdogan om the other hand won by 53%. Putin by 73% while some major opposition leaders barred from running. Turkey is often unfairly criticised by western media, which obviously prefers military dictators in power.
- 6y ago
getpolarized 6y ago
Do we / did we even have the tech co be able to build this in a lab? I don't think we do. It MIGHT have been possible but Occam's Razor says it's more plausible it evolved naturally and just jumped species. FAR FAR FAR more plausible.
- RegnisGnaw 6y ago
  In the the more common lab theory is that it was a natural virus being studies in the lab. It escaped by accident. China has had multiple SARS escape accidents.
- bcrosby95 6y ago
  "Building" it in a lab might be too scifi. But it's possible they were experimenting with things. E.g. "killer bees" are a product of human scientists trying to engineer a better bee - the release was accidental. It's not like we have the ability to genetically engineer a bee from the ground up. But as a species humans have been purposefully manipulating the traits of living things for thousands of years.
- andreilys 6y ago
  “Building” the virus is a sleight of hand that people use to discredit the lab theory. More likely than building the virus is studying it and accelerating it’s development. Now I’m not saying that’s what happened here however without the cooperation of the CCP we’ll have no idea what the truth of the matter is
- Amezarak 6y ago
  There was a great article in New York Magazine covering the background here and the possibilities. https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/coronavirus-lab-escape-theory.html https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/coronavirus-lab-esca... It turns out we've been doing "serial passage" research for some time, which is where we leverage natural selection to do our genetic engineering for us, rather than manually editing genes. This is how we engineer viruses to jump species - on purpose. > They did it using serial passaging: repeatedly dosing a mixed solution of mouse cells and hamster cells with mouse-hepatitis virus, while each time decreasing the number of mouse cells and upping the concentration of hamster cells. At first, predictably, the mouse-hepatitis virus couldn’t do much with the hamster cells, which were left almost free of infection, floating in their world of fetal-calf serum. But by the end of the experiment, after dozens of passages through cell cultures, the virus had mutated: It had mastered the trick of parasitizing an unfamiliar rodent. In fact, "we" (meaning humanity) have even been experimenting with serial passage into humans. > A few years later, in a further round of “interspecies transfer” experimentation, Baric’s scientists introduced their mouse coronavirus into flasks that held a suspension of African-green-monkey cells, human cells, and pig-testicle cells. Then, in 2002, they announced something even more impressive: They’d found a way to create a full-length infectious clone of the entire mouse-hepatitis genome. Their “infectious construct” replicated itself just like the real thing, they wrote. The whole article is really worth a read.
powerapple 6y ago
CCP has 90 million members. They have more opportunities because government jobs would favor CCP members. They also have responsibilities, when they are called when incidents, such as flood, and covid 19 incidents. Dr. Li Wenliang is a CCP member as well. If you ask people from any developing countries, they would express the same attitude (as you do for CCP) towards their own government. The reason is that the officials and way of work is stuck behind current standard, and that's why it is called developing country. Personally I don't care too much about if it was a lab virus or something else, it becomes all political. Could it be better? I don't think so. If it was developed in a bio-weapon lab, China would have handled it well because it would be prepared.
IIAOPSW 6y ago
I just assume the ccp default mode is to cover up, even when there is nothing to cover up. When legitimacy derives from competence rather than from election, you better never have any high profile incompetence.
- duxup 6y ago
  That's been a problem even internally in China where local government hides things from those up the chain and then things get out of hand.
  - fiftyfifty 6y ago
    This is the kind of behavior you see in organizations where the penalty for making mistakes is overly severe, the only recourse for people is to lie and cover-up the truth at all costs. This is how projects at some companies continue despite being way behind schedule and overbudget until eventually the weight of the truth brings everything crashing down.
    - AmericanChopper 6y ago
      Everybody will always have a motive to prevent others from discovering their failures. A democratically elected politician has just as much reason to want their failures covered up as a CCP member does. The reason governments like the CCP have such a hard time dealing with that issue is that their entire system is set up so that you have one party, with no opposition, all working in concert to conceal the truth from the people. The “voters” have no mechanism to scrutinize their government, and no alternative to “vote” for if they don’t like what they’re doing. A natural consequence of this is that the opacity the CCP relies on to protect itself from scrutiny, also prevents central committee members from being able to effectively scrutinize the system themselves. A good story is always made available for public consumption, but what’s known internally is equally controlled by individual political actors trying to protect their own interests.
      - kmonsen 6y ago
nickysielicki 6y ago
To me, both the official explanation and the conspiracy theory are both embarrassing for China and the CCP. SARS was supposed to have originated the same way -- in these disgusting third-world wet markets. The CCP shut them down after SARS for the sake of optics, but was too inept to "up" their health standards, and they conceded to pressure and reopened the disgusting third-world wet markets again. If this was some sort of lab mistake, as the conspiracy angle suggests, IMO that's much less embarrassing. In the "real" explanation, thousands of mainlanders are regularly eating food contaminated with bat shit, with zero health standards. In the "conspiracy", they're a first-world country doing groundbreaking science, and an accident occurred. I think they're probably telling the truth.
- yters 6y ago
  In the lab scenario their lax standards wiped out 2 million people and they covered it up. In the wet market scenario, it mostly reflects on the local inhabitants doing the usual black market stuff most local inhabitants of most countries do, and the CCP can only do so much to control their people. Plus, lab source has many other possible implications that are concerning, e.g. engineering bioweapons, IP theft, more nefarious conspiracy if it turns out to be a purposeful leak, etc. Wet market is overall much more benign. Also, from an evidential standpoint, lab outbreak seems much more plausible. Very easy to connect the dots with researchers, funders, etc. On the other hand, they cannot even determine the proximate transmission animal for the wet market theory, and the supposed bat source assembly is based on a faked dataset from the wuhan lab.
  - ummonk 6y ago
    What faked dataset are you referring to? The bat source was sequenced several years ago after guano harvesters fell sick. And the most likely lab scenario actually involves either gain of function research on that sample or that sample being exposed to animals and / or humans where it recombined to allow human to human transmission.
    - yters 6y ago
fiftyfifty 6y ago
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.
- WaxProlix 6y ago
  Is that true? It's hard for me to imagine anything China does being 'lauded' in western media, they're very much a media/political boogeyman (not necessarily saying that's unwarranted).
  - kmonsen 6y ago
    I kind of find it the opposite? They run concentration camps and acknowledge mass rape but the western media mostly shrugged. I find it hard to find anything the media take seriously these days. We are all so easily distracted, myself included.
    - MattGaiser 6y ago
      The problem is that news stops being, well, new after it has been reported and if nothing changes, attention goes elsewhere. The people were informed, they reacted as much as they are going to, and until new information comes out, the issue is where it is.
- ashtonkem 6y ago
  Authoritarian regimes develop a knee jerk response to anything that might reflect negatively on them, even if it ends up actually harming their long term interests.
  - cratermoon 6y ago
    As evidenced by the fate of a certain former occupant of the Oval Office.
  - 6y ago
yurlungur 6y ago
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 positive samples etc etc. It's clearly still in the early stages of discoveries so all theories are just theories. That said I don't expect this to remain a mystery forever. It will just take time, because eventually the natural origins will be pinned down and reasonable chain of events of first spread will be identified.
- turdnagel 6y ago
  Why do you think that is inevitable if the Chinese government continues to obfuscate?
  - cratermoon 6y ago
    Epidemiology. History. The Spanish Flu was called that because at the time everyone (for xenophobic reasons... sound familiar?) blamed Spain. Today we can say with reasonable confidence that the source of the 1918 influenza epidemic was.... wait for it..... Kansas
    - sebmellen 6y ago
      People did not blame Spain for xenophobic reasons, just because the Spanish press was the first to report on it. And, as pertains to the virus's origin, COVID-19 did come from China, and we know that. We have epidemiology to guide us here, and the situation is altogether different from 1918 w/r/t speed of communication and the state of science.
      - cratermoon 6y ago
        "there is strong circumstantial evidence that the virus didn't originate in Wuhan after all" https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/articles/2020-05-13/scientist-suggests-coronavirus-originated-outside-of-wuhan https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/articles/2020-05-...
deleted 6y ago
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travisgriggs 6y ago
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 abstractly, the Chinese Communist party is just the state religion. I'm not trying to play a game of whataboutism. I'm curious why these structures seem to rise, regardless of what we intend or call the them. What is it about the human experience that so often results in this. I apologize if this is overtly stereotypical, naive, assuming, or disrespectful. It wasn't meant to offend or annoy. Just cautiously curious.
- Negitivefrags 6y ago
  You could say the same thing about many companies. Would you say “Microsoft is just a corporate religion”? I think a religion is about more than just an entity that tries to avoid negative PR.
- hi5eyes 6y ago
  > Do good things and be open, but also very much protect the brand is that not the default mode for families? elementary/middle/highschool/universities? work? any communities you spend a lot of time in?
- e9 6y ago
  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.
  - pinipedman 6y ago
    This is true of capitalist economic systems and democratic political systems. The USSR was not unusual in eliminating heterodox views, not that it was ever communist in more than name.
known 6y ago
Every ruling party/regime across the world does that ;) https://archive.is/5oNEY https://archive.is/5oNEY
onethought 6y ago
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?
- waterhouse 6y ago
  "Senior WHO official dodges questions about Taiwan’s WHO membership; praises China": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UlCYFh8U2xM 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/world-commentary/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 their superiors are ... biased.
  - onethought 6y ago
    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.
    - waterhouse 6y ago
      Let's assume that at least some key superiors at WHO are biased, but the majority of the lower-level investigators are honest and not especially biased. What can the WHO superiors do to try to prevent the investigation from producing an embarrassing report? Stratagems that come to mind: choose which investigators to send, choose who to lead the teams of investigators, get involved in writing up the final reports (either directly or by leaning on those who do). The investigators' work was presumably divided up; perhaps someone could have arranged for a CCP-friendly investigator to be in charge of a particularly sensitive area. Or the report summaries could omit or spin certain issues. I don't know how the investigation was organized, or the reports for that matter, but there's probably at least some room for the superiors to inject their bias into the overall outcome.
blackrock 6y ago
There is a word for this. It’s called: obviously. How is this different from any other country? Do you think that the United States government, or any other western government, would accept any damaging rumors that would cause embarrassment to them? Just look at their hypocrisy when it comes to Assange or Snowden. But at least these two are still alive. For now. Too bad for the Australian guy that exposed Australia’s recent war crimes, he got pleasantly suicided. That’s the penalty for upsetting the western world order. Thanks for playing.
izzydata 6y ago
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.
- jedmeyers 6y ago
  And it might have been a wild virus extracted from animals that escaped from the lab due to the poor safety protocols in place. Not the first time this would have happened. Soviets released the anthrax spores due to the filter not being in place, for example.
- blackrock 6y ago
  Perhaps the virus was a lab leak. But maybe you’re looking at the wrong country for it. I mean, name any other country that has a lot of biological weapons labs all over the world.
  - mcswell 6y ago
    This is wrong, even deceitful, for a couple reasons: 1) No country (officially, or afaik in reality) has a bio weapons lab, and certainly not "all over the world". Nobody (well, nobody official) ever said the Wuhan virus lab was a bioweapon lab; it's a virology lab. 2) The Wuhan virus lab has been experimenting with corona viruses for a long time, including gain of function, and it had a history of problems. 3) There's no indication--as in zero--that any other country had covid-19 cases before China. And in this case, lack of evidence IS evidence for lack, because case records are open (except in China, it seems). Now if you want to debate this point further, I suggest that you establish with us that you are not a CCP hack. So repeat after me: Premier Xi looks like Winnie the Pooh.
    - Jon_Lowtek 6y ago
      Europa had cases in september of 2019. We didn't know at the time, but checking samples from back then revealed the virus was already internationally active https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0300891620974755 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/03008916209747... Also, if you look closely, notice that the reason we have no earlier samples then september is, because we have no earlier samples. Can't test one from august, if you don't have one from august.
deleted 6y ago
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msie 6y ago
I was thinking if a virus was first spotted in New York City and it had a virus lab, would that be immediately blamed? It’s like all there is in Wuhan is a wet market and a virus research lab and they are located next to each other. I think that’s how the world perceives Wuhan.
- astrange 6y ago
  Why is this supposed to be important? It literally doesn't matter if a virus comes out of a lab, if you can find an equally dangerous virus in the nearest bat cave. Being able to blame someone would not solve your actual problems.
  - rlt 6y ago
    What? Of course it matters. If it was accidentally released from a lab, those responsible should be held accountable so it’s less likely to happen again. If it was intentionally released, it’s even more important to know by who and why.
    - astrange 6y ago
      > What? Of course it matters. If it was accidentally released from a lab, those responsible should be held accountable so it’s less likely to happen again. Because it doesn't matter if it's accidentally released from a lab, if you're going to catch it from a bat cave anyway. You haven't eliminated it from the world.
      - kmlevitt 6y ago
        The problem is this extremely dangerous research is bound to lead to a leak eventually, because in fact there have already been hundreds of lab virus leaks around the world in the past, and the stakes get higher as the viruses they engineer get more and more lethal. China is actually doubling down and increasing the amount of risky virus research they are doing. If it isn’t regulated eventually something even worse could leak out of another lab. So yeah, it is important to find out what the origin of this virus was because whatever the reason was we want to ensure that it isn’t the same reason for the next big pandemic.
cauliflower2718 6y ago
What other issues would you not trust the Chinese government on? For example, is food safety one of them?
- nervlord 6y ago
  Well, yes. Chinese tourists come into Australia and buy up all available baby formula, as the baby formula produced in china was literally killing children, I think a total of 300?
mkolodny 6y ago
There's a real possibility that a gain-of-function experiment created SARS-CoV-2: "Lipsitch’s activists (calling themselves the Cambridge Working Group) sent around a strong statement on the perils of research with “Potential Pandemic Pathogens,” signed by more than a hundred scientists. The work might “trigger outbreaks that would be difficult or impossible to control,” the signers said. Fauci reconsidered, and the White House in 2014 announced that there would be a “pause” in the funding of new influenza, SARS, and MERS gain-of-function research." [0] In December 2017, the US began funding gain-of-function research on these deadly diseases again. This research creates deadly diseases that may not have existed otherwise. This pandemic has been enough for me to strongly believe that there should be a global ban on gain-of-function experiments on deadly viruses and bacteria. I'd like to help prevent a future pandemic, and that's one clear way we can help. [0] https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/coronavirus-lab-escape-theory.html https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/coronavirus-lab-esca...
- rlt 6y ago
  > This research creates deadly diseases that may not have existed otherwise. This seems like a supremely bad idea.
  - alasdair_ 6y ago
    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.
    - JenniferRM 6y ago
      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.)
handedness 6y ago
I've said it here before, and I'll say it again: Every Asia-focused analyst will tell you that the only aspect of China's state-reported numbers you can assume with a high degree of confidence is that they're heavily massaged for PR purposes.
mnming 6y ago
I found it interesting that on HN, without concrete evidence, when OP says: don't ever trust {A} on issue {B}. Depending on what A, B is, OP will usually get treated differently. A -> CCP. OP -> a concerned citizen. A -> Race/Color/Religion/Gender. OP -> Racist/Sexist. A -> Trump. OP -> a concern citizen. A -> Scientist. OP -> conspiracist. But one thing that I am sure is that it'll never ever be constructive. Not mean to be disrespectful, but I do hope this type of comment won't ever get to the top of HN.
- rlt 6y ago
  I mean, if you say “don’t ever trust” an entire race/sex, then yeah, by definition you are racist/sexist.
  - knolax 6y ago
    Reading HackerNews has lowered my trust in the demographic categories that make up the majority of this forum, including ones I belong too.
  - P0l83q4p1Hw3Ul 6y ago
    What about pointing out more factually based claims such as which groups commit more crimes, etc?
    - jb775 6y ago
      If you find yourself in this scenario, you're likely already stuck in a Kafkatrap situation[1]. [1] https://www.thedailybell.com/all-articles/editorials/wendy-mcelroy-beware-of-kafkatrapping/ https://www.thedailybell.com/all-articles/editorials/wendy-m...
  - vinay427 6y ago
    I agree. The problem arises when people predominantly of a certain race or sex attempt to define the narrative around racism or sexism that affects another race or sex. It's a little difficult to find that trustworthy, in my opinion. People should be trusted to speak about data and other verifiable sources as well as their own experiences.
knolax 6y ago
And I'm an albino penguin from Mars. If you'd actually have relatives in China you would be able to see very clearly that they handled the pandemic far better than the US. It's disappointing that this generic "don't trust the communists" comment is the top comment instead of any actual debate about the merit of the report or the US gov't's accusations. > shocked at all if it was a lab virus That's a useless statement. It's just a weak appeal to authority with no proof in any direction. I live in the US. Me saying that "I wouldn't be surprised" it came from the US wouldn't mean jack squat without evidence.
throw7 6y ago
You could say exactly what you said about the U.S. and I am "First gen American, grew up in NA, have contact with relatives 'on the ground'" Do you believe the devil doesn't exist?
paulie_a 6y ago
To whom are they worried about regarding reputation. They already have a terrible one
jb775 6y ago
Well if people can't prove that Covid came from China, shouldn't they simply forget it and accept that it came from somewhere else? "What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence." And how dare them for even asking to see the data, those conspiracy theorists. ...Or has this logic changed since the election fraud controversy? (and no, it's not really a different situation if you think about it)
mytailorisrich 6y ago
That's typical baseless FUD, which is what this whole "lab virus scenario" has been from the start with the backing of US agencies.
qubit000 6y ago
That applies to any government. US lies, cheats, steals as admitted by Mike Pompeo when he was head of CIA.
- fuckCCP0 6y ago
  Fucking kill yourself, CCP shill
- fuckCCP0 6y ago
  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
  - berdario 6y ago
    Look at what happened with QAnon and anti-maskers. It's not about 1.4G people: it's about 7G people... The whole of humanity is suffering because a small vocal minority has been deceived and is causing problems for others. Before the pandemic, I thought just like you that control of the mass media... Some kind of censorship was incontrovertibly a bad thing Now I think otherwise: if it allows us to save 2.4M lives (and counting!) I'm ok with censorship, as long as you can still use VPNs, TOR or other ways to circumvent it... And the fines for violating censorship are just little bit more than a slap on the wrists
    - fuckCCP0 6y ago
      Ok retard
sverhagen 6y ago
I'm naive, I'll own that. But I don't see how having a virus start within your borders is a decided reputation issue. Particularly if your numbers end up so well compared to, say, the US. So, the lack of transparency then makes China look real guilty, making the lab virus option seem a lot more likely.
odiroot 6y ago
It's like in any communist state before (we had the same in Poland). You can blame an individual, even sentence them to death, but you cannot ever criticise the system/party. Nor shine a light at any evidence that the system is wrong. This is a deadly sin. For the party to admit, there's flaws in the system, would collapse their whole authority.
- pinipedman 6y ago
  This is true of any political system. You are not allowed to criticize what the system claims to be. For state capitalist nations like China or the former USSR which claim to be communist you are unable to criticize communism. In an oligarchy like America which claims to be a democracy you are unable to criticize democracy. They differ in the means by which they marginalize dissidents but in either case you are rendered unable to threaten the presiding political order.
snarf21 6y ago
It is possible that we'll never know. However, remember that we also recently have SARS, MERS, EBOLA, etc. This isn't some isolated event. We've made the world small, there is no where too remote. Some animal from the remotest village on earth can be sold on the street in NYC in two days. Who knows what ancient pathogens are being re-released from the permafrost? I fear this is the beginning of mother earth fighting back, not the end.

by ttz 6y ago

throwaway54095 6y ago

It's crazy that at this point we still keep with this delusion. Of course this is a lab virus. This info is getting old: https://project-evidence.github.io/ https://project-evidence.github.io/ https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-origins-genome-analysis-suggests-two-viruses-may-have-combined-134059 https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-origins-genome-analy... Who was really behind this, and the whole history of it, is something surely we won't know for know. "When war is declared, truth is the first casualty"

AshWolfy 6y ago
a lot of this is just really bad, like just off the top of my head 96 percent related genetics is not very much, thats the same similarity between humans and monkeys
- GauntletWizard 6y ago
  96% of human vs monkey DNA similarly is not a lot, because most of that DNA is shared throughout all of the animal kingdom. Since human DNA is close to a billion codons long, the remaining 4% is still tens of millions of codons. COVID-19 is ~30,000 base pairs long (10,000) codons. The 4% difference is 400 codons. That's not a lot. There are many singular proteins longer than that. Is that proof? No, the same way gravity is just a theory.
  - AshWolfy 6y ago
    A theory is something that has been rigorously tested, this is speculation, and shaky speculation at best. Id be willing to bet sars and covid 19 have a similar level of genetic similarity or other things like assuming someone is dead based on the fact that they dont have a picture online and dont wanna talk to press ive seen youtube conspiracy videos more convincing
tim333 6y ago
There remains uncertainty. It could be zoonotic. Spreads in some remote village that no one takes notice of, then a villager does a trip to Wuhan.

bsd44 6y ago

Well if you say so then it must be true. I mean this is internet after all.

ttz 6y ago
Not sure where in my post it postulates anything about "truth". The entire point of the post is to say, we don't know the truth, but in the balance of probabilities, I wouldn't trust the CCP's version. Did you even read what I wrote, or are you just knee jerking?
- refenestrator 6y ago
  I can't see what you're responding to, but if people make an accusation without evidence, the accused party's trustworthiness is kind of irrelevant, right? Fine, you don't trust their denial, but that doesn't affirmatively prove anything either. They could deny killing JFK, as well, and it shouldn't change anything.
  - ttz 6y ago
    There's no accusation. Everything I said in my post is opinion. Please read the original post, in its entirety.
    - refenestrator 6y ago
      I said "people" are making accusations, didn't mean to say you were.
- pishpash 6y ago
  Your balance of probabilities relies entire on priors. It's kind of useless and particularly uninformative.
  - ttz 6y ago
    Priors matter here, as we have no good data to actually verify or refute the issue, because Chinese gov't won't release the early data for scientific community at large around the world to analyze. So you can only rely on: - do I trust the WHO - do I trust the CCP I don't really trust either - but this is just my opinion, based on my interpretation of historical events and evidence. We are all adults here, we can choose to agree or disagree - that's what makes forums and free speech really work. Some of my reasons for my choice to not trust the CCP: The Chinese government has numerous reports of it conducting human rights abuses against Uighurs and other populations (Falun Gong, etc). There is constant state denial, but in my eyes, the evidence is compelling. Let's not play the "oh but other countries do this too" - other countries are not relevant to the issue at hand, and my opinion on them is similarly irrelevant here. If you want to be absolutely pedantic, sure, we have no evidence to conclusively say anything - we also can't say evolution is correct, but it's the most likely theory given prior evidence. Note that my original post says that we have no smoking gun evidence (and again, I'd really want to stress, my original post was OPINION. It was meant in passing, but somehow it got the attention of people on both sides who clearly have a bone to pick). But, in the "balance of probabilities", my priors suggest to me that I wouldn't trust the CCP. I'm not saying I'm right. I'm not saying you need to believe me. I am simply exercising my right to say my opinion, based on what I think are fairly reasonable priors given CCP track record. CCP isn't an evil regime, which I feel like is what some of the stauncher replies in this thread feel that any criticism of the party secretly says. They've done great things for the country and its people. Healthcare, stability, infrastructure, and tried to right the wrongs of Mao and the GLF. But that doesn't mean you have to trust everything a government says. Your parents provide you with food and shelter, it doesn't mean you need to blindly believe that they are incapable of doing dishonest things. This is also not an attack on the Chinese people, contrary to some silly posts I've seen saying "demonizing the CCP means demonizing thr Chinese people". I totally understand why Chinese people tolerate the government. When you emerged from a generation that suffered incredible rural poverty, like my own family, a government that promises you a stable paycheck, food, and housing seems reasonable to support and stay loyal to. I am fortunate enough that my father was talented and lucky enough to be able to leave for a country where we could obtain those things without needing to profess that loyalty unflinchingly.

Udik 6y ago

> Don't ever trust the Chinese government on issues that could potentially involve the reputation of the party Seems this holds true for every government and party.

mc32 6y ago
The difference is there is no opposition to question the official stance. So I’d say it’s naive to imply the same holds true everywhere. Even Russia and Turkey have vocal dissidents.
- sa-mao 6y ago
  Last time I checked Turkey is still democracy. A better example would be Egypt or KSA or UAE.
  - mc32 6y ago
    They’re a democracy in the same way Russia is a democracy.
    - edgyquant 6y ago
      Hmm I don’t think so. They’re autocratic for sure but Turkey has been an autocratic democracy for a hundred years so there is a culture of republicanism. I get what you mean but Russia is so new to the voting thing that the comparison isn’t apt imo.
    - sa-mao 6y ago
      I wouldn’t go as far as comparing Turkey to Russia. The recent Turkish elections have shown that the ruling Party in Turkey can lose key strongholds like Istanbul, this never happens in Russia. In Egypt, most contenders to the presidency are in prison now. Current president Al Sissi (a bloody dictator won by 97%) Erdogan om the other hand won by 53%. Putin by 73% while some major opposition leaders barred from running. Turkey is often unfairly criticised by western media, which obviously prefers military dictators in power.
6y ago

getpolarized 6y ago

Do we / did we even have the tech co be able to build this in a lab? I don't think we do. It MIGHT have been possible but Occam's Razor says it's more plausible it evolved naturally and just jumped species. FAR FAR FAR more plausible.

RegnisGnaw 6y ago
In the the more common lab theory is that it was a natural virus being studies in the lab. It escaped by accident. China has had multiple SARS escape accidents.
bcrosby95 6y ago
"Building" it in a lab might be too scifi. But it's possible they were experimenting with things. E.g. "killer bees" are a product of human scientists trying to engineer a better bee - the release was accidental. It's not like we have the ability to genetically engineer a bee from the ground up. But as a species humans have been purposefully manipulating the traits of living things for thousands of years.
andreilys 6y ago
“Building” the virus is a sleight of hand that people use to discredit the lab theory. More likely than building the virus is studying it and accelerating it’s development. Now I’m not saying that’s what happened here however without the cooperation of the CCP we’ll have no idea what the truth of the matter is
Amezarak 6y ago
There was a great article in New York Magazine covering the background here and the possibilities. https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/coronavirus-lab-escape-theory.html https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/coronavirus-lab-esca... It turns out we've been doing "serial passage" research for some time, which is where we leverage natural selection to do our genetic engineering for us, rather than manually editing genes. This is how we engineer viruses to jump species - on purpose. > They did it using serial passaging: repeatedly dosing a mixed solution of mouse cells and hamster cells with mouse-hepatitis virus, while each time decreasing the number of mouse cells and upping the concentration of hamster cells. At first, predictably, the mouse-hepatitis virus couldn’t do much with the hamster cells, which were left almost free of infection, floating in their world of fetal-calf serum. But by the end of the experiment, after dozens of passages through cell cultures, the virus had mutated: It had mastered the trick of parasitizing an unfamiliar rodent. In fact, "we" (meaning humanity) have even been experimenting with serial passage into humans. > A few years later, in a further round of “interspecies transfer” experimentation, Baric’s scientists introduced their mouse coronavirus into flasks that held a suspension of African-green-monkey cells, human cells, and pig-testicle cells. Then, in 2002, they announced something even more impressive: They’d found a way to create a full-length infectious clone of the entire mouse-hepatitis genome. Their “infectious construct” replicated itself just like the real thing, they wrote. The whole article is really worth a read.

powerapple 6y ago

CCP has 90 million members. They have more opportunities because government jobs would favor CCP members. They also have responsibilities, when they are called when incidents, such as flood, and covid 19 incidents. Dr. Li Wenliang is a CCP member as well. If you ask people from any developing countries, they would express the same attitude (as you do for CCP) towards their own government. The reason is that the officials and way of work is stuck behind current standard, and that's why it is called developing country. Personally I don't care too much about if it was a lab virus or something else, it becomes all political. Could it be better? I don't think so. If it was developed in a bio-weapon lab, China would have handled it well because it would be prepared.

IIAOPSW 6y ago

I just assume the ccp default mode is to cover up, even when there is nothing to cover up. When legitimacy derives from competence rather than from election, you better never have any high profile incompetence.

duxup 6y ago
That's been a problem even internally in China where local government hides things from those up the chain and then things get out of hand.
- fiftyfifty 6y ago
  This is the kind of behavior you see in organizations where the penalty for making mistakes is overly severe, the only recourse for people is to lie and cover-up the truth at all costs. This is how projects at some companies continue despite being way behind schedule and overbudget until eventually the weight of the truth brings everything crashing down.
  - AmericanChopper 6y ago
    Everybody will always have a motive to prevent others from discovering their failures. A democratically elected politician has just as much reason to want their failures covered up as a CCP member does. The reason governments like the CCP have such a hard time dealing with that issue is that their entire system is set up so that you have one party, with no opposition, all working in concert to conceal the truth from the people. The “voters” have no mechanism to scrutinize their government, and no alternative to “vote” for if they don’t like what they’re doing. A natural consequence of this is that the opacity the CCP relies on to protect itself from scrutiny, also prevents central committee members from being able to effectively scrutinize the system themselves. A good story is always made available for public consumption, but what’s known internally is equally controlled by individual political actors trying to protect their own interests.
    - kmonsen 6y ago

nickysielicki 6y ago

To me, both the official explanation and the conspiracy theory are both embarrassing for China and the CCP. SARS was supposed to have originated the same way -- in these disgusting third-world wet markets. The CCP shut them down after SARS for the sake of optics, but was too inept to "up" their health standards, and they conceded to pressure and reopened the disgusting third-world wet markets again. If this was some sort of lab mistake, as the conspiracy angle suggests, IMO that's much less embarrassing. In the "real" explanation, thousands of mainlanders are regularly eating food contaminated with bat shit, with zero health standards. In the "conspiracy", they're a first-world country doing groundbreaking science, and an accident occurred. I think they're probably telling the truth.

yters 6y ago
In the lab scenario their lax standards wiped out 2 million people and they covered it up. In the wet market scenario, it mostly reflects on the local inhabitants doing the usual black market stuff most local inhabitants of most countries do, and the CCP can only do so much to control their people. Plus, lab source has many other possible implications that are concerning, e.g. engineering bioweapons, IP theft, more nefarious conspiracy if it turns out to be a purposeful leak, etc. Wet market is overall much more benign. Also, from an evidential standpoint, lab outbreak seems much more plausible. Very easy to connect the dots with researchers, funders, etc. On the other hand, they cannot even determine the proximate transmission animal for the wet market theory, and the supposed bat source assembly is based on a faked dataset from the wuhan lab.
- ummonk 6y ago
  What faked dataset are you referring to? The bat source was sequenced several years ago after guano harvesters fell sick. And the most likely lab scenario actually involves either gain of function research on that sample or that sample being exposed to animals and / or humans where it recombined to allow human to human transmission.
  - yters 6y ago

fiftyfifty 6y ago

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.

WaxProlix 6y ago
Is that true? It's hard for me to imagine anything China does being 'lauded' in western media, they're very much a media/political boogeyman (not necessarily saying that's unwarranted).
- kmonsen 6y ago
  I kind of find it the opposite? They run concentration camps and acknowledge mass rape but the western media mostly shrugged. I find it hard to find anything the media take seriously these days. We are all so easily distracted, myself included.
  - MattGaiser 6y ago
    The problem is that news stops being, well, new after it has been reported and if nothing changes, attention goes elsewhere. The people were informed, they reacted as much as they are going to, and until new information comes out, the issue is where it is.
ashtonkem 6y ago
Authoritarian regimes develop a knee jerk response to anything that might reflect negatively on them, even if it ends up actually harming their long term interests.
- cratermoon 6y ago
  As evidenced by the fate of a certain former occupant of the Oval Office.
- 6y ago

yurlungur 6y ago

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 positive samples etc etc. It's clearly still in the early stages of discoveries so all theories are just theories. That said I don't expect this to remain a mystery forever. It will just take time, because eventually the natural origins will be pinned down and reasonable chain of events of first spread will be identified.

turdnagel 6y ago
Why do you think that is inevitable if the Chinese government continues to obfuscate?
- cratermoon 6y ago
  Epidemiology. History. The Spanish Flu was called that because at the time everyone (for xenophobic reasons... sound familiar?) blamed Spain. Today we can say with reasonable confidence that the source of the 1918 influenza epidemic was.... wait for it..... Kansas
  - sebmellen 6y ago
    People did not blame Spain for xenophobic reasons, just because the Spanish press was the first to report on it. And, as pertains to the virus's origin, COVID-19 did come from China, and we know that. We have epidemiology to guide us here, and the situation is altogether different from 1918 w/r/t speed of communication and the state of science.
    - cratermoon 6y ago
      "there is strong circumstantial evidence that the virus didn't originate in Wuhan after all" https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/articles/2020-05-13/scientist-suggests-coronavirus-originated-outside-of-wuhan https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/articles/2020-05-...

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

travisgriggs 6y ago

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 abstractly, the Chinese Communist party is just the state religion. I'm not trying to play a game of whataboutism. I'm curious why these structures seem to rise, regardless of what we intend or call the them. What is it about the human experience that so often results in this. I apologize if this is overtly stereotypical, naive, assuming, or disrespectful. It wasn't meant to offend or annoy. Just cautiously curious.

Negitivefrags 6y ago
You could say the same thing about many companies. Would you say “Microsoft is just a corporate religion”? I think a religion is about more than just an entity that tries to avoid negative PR.
hi5eyes 6y ago
> Do good things and be open, but also very much protect the brand is that not the default mode for families? elementary/middle/highschool/universities? work? any communities you spend a lot of time in?
e9 6y ago
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.
- pinipedman 6y ago
  This is true of capitalist economic systems and democratic political systems. The USSR was not unusual in eliminating heterodox views, not that it was ever communist in more than name.

known 6y ago

Every ruling party/regime across the world does that ;) https://archive.is/5oNEY https://archive.is/5oNEY

onethought 6y ago

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?

waterhouse 6y ago
"Senior WHO official dodges questions about Taiwan’s WHO membership; praises China": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UlCYFh8U2xM 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/world-commentary/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 their superiors are ... biased.
- onethought 6y ago
  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.
  - waterhouse 6y ago
    Let's assume that at least some key superiors at WHO are biased, but the majority of the lower-level investigators are honest and not especially biased. What can the WHO superiors do to try to prevent the investigation from producing an embarrassing report? Stratagems that come to mind: choose which investigators to send, choose who to lead the teams of investigators, get involved in writing up the final reports (either directly or by leaning on those who do). The investigators' work was presumably divided up; perhaps someone could have arranged for a CCP-friendly investigator to be in charge of a particularly sensitive area. Or the report summaries could omit or spin certain issues. I don't know how the investigation was organized, or the reports for that matter, but there's probably at least some room for the superiors to inject their bias into the overall outcome.

blackrock 6y ago

There is a word for this. It’s called: obviously. How is this different from any other country? Do you think that the United States government, or any other western government, would accept any damaging rumors that would cause embarrassment to them? Just look at their hypocrisy when it comes to Assange or Snowden. But at least these two are still alive. For now. Too bad for the Australian guy that exposed Australia’s recent war crimes, he got pleasantly suicided. That’s the penalty for upsetting the western world order. Thanks for playing.

izzydata 6y ago

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.

jedmeyers 6y ago
And it might have been a wild virus extracted from animals that escaped from the lab due to the poor safety protocols in place. Not the first time this would have happened. Soviets released the anthrax spores due to the filter not being in place, for example.
blackrock 6y ago
Perhaps the virus was a lab leak. But maybe you’re looking at the wrong country for it. I mean, name any other country that has a lot of biological weapons labs all over the world.
- mcswell 6y ago
  This is wrong, even deceitful, for a couple reasons: 1) No country (officially, or afaik in reality) has a bio weapons lab, and certainly not "all over the world". Nobody (well, nobody official) ever said the Wuhan virus lab was a bioweapon lab; it's a virology lab. 2) The Wuhan virus lab has been experimenting with corona viruses for a long time, including gain of function, and it had a history of problems. 3) There's no indication--as in zero--that any other country had covid-19 cases before China. And in this case, lack of evidence IS evidence for lack, because case records are open (except in China, it seems). Now if you want to debate this point further, I suggest that you establish with us that you are not a CCP hack. So repeat after me: Premier Xi looks like Winnie the Pooh.
  - Jon_Lowtek 6y ago
    Europa had cases in september of 2019. We didn't know at the time, but checking samples from back then revealed the virus was already internationally active https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0300891620974755 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/03008916209747... Also, if you look closely, notice that the reason we have no earlier samples then september is, because we have no earlier samples. Can't test one from august, if you don't have one from august.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

msie 6y ago

I was thinking if a virus was first spotted in New York City and it had a virus lab, would that be immediately blamed? It’s like all there is in Wuhan is a wet market and a virus research lab and they are located next to each other. I think that’s how the world perceives Wuhan.

astrange 6y ago
Why is this supposed to be important? It literally doesn't matter if a virus comes out of a lab, if you can find an equally dangerous virus in the nearest bat cave. Being able to blame someone would not solve your actual problems.
- rlt 6y ago
  What? Of course it matters. If it was accidentally released from a lab, those responsible should be held accountable so it’s less likely to happen again. If it was intentionally released, it’s even more important to know by who and why.
  - astrange 6y ago
    > What? Of course it matters. If it was accidentally released from a lab, those responsible should be held accountable so it’s less likely to happen again. Because it doesn't matter if it's accidentally released from a lab, if you're going to catch it from a bat cave anyway. You haven't eliminated it from the world.
    - kmlevitt 6y ago
      The problem is this extremely dangerous research is bound to lead to a leak eventually, because in fact there have already been hundreds of lab virus leaks around the world in the past, and the stakes get higher as the viruses they engineer get more and more lethal. China is actually doubling down and increasing the amount of risky virus research they are doing. If it isn’t regulated eventually something even worse could leak out of another lab. So yeah, it is important to find out what the origin of this virus was because whatever the reason was we want to ensure that it isn’t the same reason for the next big pandemic.

cauliflower2718 6y ago

What other issues would you not trust the Chinese government on? For example, is food safety one of them?

nervlord 6y ago
Well, yes. Chinese tourists come into Australia and buy up all available baby formula, as the baby formula produced in china was literally killing children, I think a total of 300?

mkolodny 6y ago

There's a real possibility that a gain-of-function experiment created SARS-CoV-2: "Lipsitch’s activists (calling themselves the Cambridge Working Group) sent around a strong statement on the perils of research with “Potential Pandemic Pathogens,” signed by more than a hundred scientists. The work might “trigger outbreaks that would be difficult or impossible to control,” the signers said. Fauci reconsidered, and the White House in 2014 announced that there would be a “pause” in the funding of new influenza, SARS, and MERS gain-of-function research." [0] In December 2017, the US began funding gain-of-function research on these deadly diseases again. This research creates deadly diseases that may not have existed otherwise. This pandemic has been enough for me to strongly believe that there should be a global ban on gain-of-function experiments on deadly viruses and bacteria. I'd like to help prevent a future pandemic, and that's one clear way we can help. [0] https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/coronavirus-lab-escape-theory.html https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/coronavirus-lab-esca...

rlt 6y ago
> This research creates deadly diseases that may not have existed otherwise. This seems like a supremely bad idea.
- alasdair_ 6y ago
  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.
  - JenniferRM 6y ago
    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.)

handedness 6y ago

I've said it here before, and I'll say it again: Every Asia-focused analyst will tell you that the only aspect of China's state-reported numbers you can assume with a high degree of confidence is that they're heavily massaged for PR purposes.

mnming 6y ago

I found it interesting that on HN, without concrete evidence, when OP says: don't ever trust {A} on issue {B}. Depending on what A, B is, OP will usually get treated differently. A -> CCP. OP -> a concerned citizen. A -> Race/Color/Religion/Gender. OP -> Racist/Sexist. A -> Trump. OP -> a concern citizen. A -> Scientist. OP -> conspiracist. But one thing that I am sure is that it'll never ever be constructive. Not mean to be disrespectful, but I do hope this type of comment won't ever get to the top of HN.

rlt 6y ago
I mean, if you say “don’t ever trust” an entire race/sex, then yeah, by definition you are racist/sexist.
- knolax 6y ago
  Reading HackerNews has lowered my trust in the demographic categories that make up the majority of this forum, including ones I belong too.
- P0l83q4p1Hw3Ul 6y ago
  What about pointing out more factually based claims such as which groups commit more crimes, etc?
  - jb775 6y ago
    If you find yourself in this scenario, you're likely already stuck in a Kafkatrap situation[1]. [1] https://www.thedailybell.com/all-articles/editorials/wendy-mcelroy-beware-of-kafkatrapping/ https://www.thedailybell.com/all-articles/editorials/wendy-m...
- vinay427 6y ago
  I agree. The problem arises when people predominantly of a certain race or sex attempt to define the narrative around racism or sexism that affects another race or sex. It's a little difficult to find that trustworthy, in my opinion. People should be trusted to speak about data and other verifiable sources as well as their own experiences.

knolax 6y ago

And I'm an albino penguin from Mars. If you'd actually have relatives in China you would be able to see very clearly that they handled the pandemic far better than the US. It's disappointing that this generic "don't trust the communists" comment is the top comment instead of any actual debate about the merit of the report or the US gov't's accusations. > shocked at all if it was a lab virus That's a useless statement. It's just a weak appeal to authority with no proof in any direction. I live in the US. Me saying that "I wouldn't be surprised" it came from the US wouldn't mean jack squat without evidence.

throw7 6y ago

You could say exactly what you said about the U.S. and I am "First gen American, grew up in NA, have contact with relatives 'on the ground'" Do you believe the devil doesn't exist?

paulie_a 6y ago

To whom are they worried about regarding reputation. They already have a terrible one

jb775 6y ago

Well if people can't prove that Covid came from China, shouldn't they simply forget it and accept that it came from somewhere else? "What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence." And how dare them for even asking to see the data, those conspiracy theorists. ...Or has this logic changed since the election fraud controversy? (and no, it's not really a different situation if you think about it)

mytailorisrich 6y ago

That's typical baseless FUD, which is what this whole "lab virus scenario" has been from the start with the backing of US agencies.

qubit000 6y ago

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

fuckCCP0 6y ago
Fucking kill yourself, CCP shill
fuckCCP0 6y ago
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
- berdario 6y ago
  Look at what happened with QAnon and anti-maskers. It's not about 1.4G people: it's about 7G people... The whole of humanity is suffering because a small vocal minority has been deceived and is causing problems for others. Before the pandemic, I thought just like you that control of the mass media... Some kind of censorship was incontrovertibly a bad thing Now I think otherwise: if it allows us to save 2.4M lives (and counting!) I'm ok with censorship, as long as you can still use VPNs, TOR or other ways to circumvent it... And the fines for violating censorship are just little bit more than a slap on the wrists
  - fuckCCP0 6y ago
    Ok retard

sverhagen 6y ago

I'm naive, I'll own that. But I don't see how having a virus start within your borders is a decided reputation issue. Particularly if your numbers end up so well compared to, say, the US. So, the lack of transparency then makes China look real guilty, making the lab virus option seem a lot more likely.

odiroot 6y ago

It's like in any communist state before (we had the same in Poland). You can blame an individual, even sentence them to death, but you cannot ever criticise the system/party. Nor shine a light at any evidence that the system is wrong. This is a deadly sin. For the party to admit, there's flaws in the system, would collapse their whole authority.

pinipedman 6y ago
This is true of any political system. You are not allowed to criticize what the system claims to be. For state capitalist nations like China or the former USSR which claim to be communist you are unable to criticize communism. In an oligarchy like America which claims to be a democracy you are unable to criticize democracy. They differ in the means by which they marginalize dissidents but in either case you are rendered unable to threaten the presiding political order.

snarf21 6y ago

It is possible that we'll never know. However, remember that we also recently have SARS, MERS, EBOLA, etc. This isn't some isolated event. We've made the world small, there is no where too remote. Some animal from the remotest village on earth can be sold on the street in NYC in two days. Who knows what ancient pathogens are being re-released from the permafrost? I fear this is the beginning of mother earth fighting back, not the end.