4 ms·

If it did come out of the lab in Wuhan then the US/NIH also has to answer questions regarding their involvement in the lab. For this reason I doubt we will ever

If it did come out of the lab in Wuhan then the US/NIH also has to answer questions regarding their involvement in the lab. For this reason I doubt we will ever find out what really happened as there is a lot of blame to go around. Do we really need to know? Lab leaks are nothing new and regardless need to prevented at all cost. Maybe there needs to be an independent international regulatory setup that inspects these labs.

vcavallo 6y ago
> Do we really need to know? If this were the case and we had more details on the engineering of the virus, we could have (could still) improved our approach to dealing with it. So to the extent that damage to life and prosperity could have been at least partially mediated, yes, we need(ed) to know.
- bryanlarsen 6y ago
  Somebody needs to know and somebody needs to take corrective action if appropriate. You & I don't need to know.
  - dahfizz 6y ago
    This is straight up dystopian. Why hide this information?
    - bryanlarsen 6y ago
      Because the subsequent witch hunt will make future disclosures even less likely.
  - hirundo 6y ago
    Public pressure is a crucial motivator for taking corrective action. The less you and I know, the less chance we can collectively apply that force, if appropriate.
    - anoonmoose 6y ago
      What you're saying is mostly accurate...if you're talking about Western Democracies (for some value of "Western" and some value of "Democracy", at least). It is not accurate for China.
  - vcavallo 6y ago
    We’re going to fundamentally disagree there, but that’s ok - I don’t think it’s worth getting in to. We’re mostly on the same page.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
ffdhghggg 6y ago
The space shuttle was safe and saved money - until we had actual data regarding it's performance. We need to understand the actual risk associated with these labs. One mitigation I can think of right now would be to build the labs in very remote locations, and require anyone leaving to isolate themselves for a month to check for disease. But no measures of that severity will be undertaken without evidence supporting the risks.
everdrive 6y ago
>If it did come out of the lab in Wuhan then the US/NIH also has to answer questions regarding their involvement in the lab. What do you mean by this?
- KoftaBob 6y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galveston_National_Laboratory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galveston_National_Laboratory “ In 2020, the United States Department of Education launched an investigation of the Galveston National Laboratory regarding any past interaction with the Wuhan Institute of Virology.“ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Consulate-General,_Houston https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Consulate-General,_Hou... “ Within the hours after the announcement, videos emerged on Houston's locally broadcast KPRC-TV showing documents being burned in barrels in the courtyard of the consulate.[12] Local police and fire departments received reports of the fires at around 8 pm local time,[18] and as first responders arrived at the consulate, they were denied entry.”
  - everdrive 6y ago
    This seems strange, because a consulate usually has equipment for securely destroying documents, which usually doesn't involve conspicuously burning them outside.
    - skinkestek 6y ago
      Even US burns documents if necessary I think, isn't there a well known case with the embassy in Iran? While I was in the military I sometimes operated a secure shredder. It is a long time ago but I remember this: despite its rather large size the speed and the number of pages it would process was really limited. It had one thing going for it though: the output was thinly sliced :-)
      - everdrive 6y ago
        I was under the impression that the Iranians were able to successfully reconstruct many of the shredded documents. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embassy_of_the_United_States,_Tehran https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embassy_of_the_United_States,_... "The Muslim Student Followers of the Imam's Line published documents seized in the embassy (including painstakingly reconstructed shredded documents) in a series of books called "Documents from the US Espionage Den" (Persian: اسناد لانه جاسوس امریكا, Asnād-e lāneh-e jasusi Amrikā).[10] These books included telegrams, correspondence, and reports from the United States Department of State and Central Intelligence Agency, some of which remain classified to this day."
dahfizz 6y ago
> If it did come out of the lab in Wuhan then the US/NIH also has to answer questions regarding their involvement in the lab. There is a legitimate question about how this pandemic started, and the CCP apologists come out in droves to shift blame onto western governments.
clusmore 6y ago
The desire from Western governments to pin all of the blame on China seems staggering to me. Even if it were true that a lab leak triggered the pandemic, the appalling response by most governments is clearly the cause of the majority of the deaths. To say otherwise is to admit that you as a government our powerless to prevent hundreds of thousands of deaths from a hypothetical biological weapon in the future.

vcavallo 6y ago

> Do we really need to know? If this were the case and we had more details on the engineering of the virus, we could have (could still) improved our approach to dealing with it. So to the extent that damage to life and prosperity could have been at least partially mediated, yes, we need(ed) to know.

bryanlarsen 6y ago
Somebody needs to know and somebody needs to take corrective action if appropriate. You & I don't need to know.
- dahfizz 6y ago
  This is straight up dystopian. Why hide this information?
  - bryanlarsen 6y ago
    Because the subsequent witch hunt will make future disclosures even less likely.
- hirundo 6y ago
  Public pressure is a crucial motivator for taking corrective action. The less you and I know, the less chance we can collectively apply that force, if appropriate.
  - anoonmoose 6y ago
    What you're saying is mostly accurate...if you're talking about Western Democracies (for some value of "Western" and some value of "Democracy", at least). It is not accurate for China.
- vcavallo 6y ago
  We’re going to fundamentally disagree there, but that’s ok - I don’t think it’s worth getting in to. We’re mostly on the same page.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

ffdhghggg 6y ago

The space shuttle was safe and saved money - until we had actual data regarding it's performance. We need to understand the actual risk associated with these labs. One mitigation I can think of right now would be to build the labs in very remote locations, and require anyone leaving to isolate themselves for a month to check for disease. But no measures of that severity will be undertaken without evidence supporting the risks.

everdrive 6y ago

>If it did come out of the lab in Wuhan then the US/NIH also has to answer questions regarding their involvement in the lab. What do you mean by this?

KoftaBob 6y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galveston_National_Laboratory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galveston_National_Laboratory “ In 2020, the United States Department of Education launched an investigation of the Galveston National Laboratory regarding any past interaction with the Wuhan Institute of Virology.“ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Consulate-General,_Houston https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Consulate-General,_Hou... “ Within the hours after the announcement, videos emerged on Houston's locally broadcast KPRC-TV showing documents being burned in barrels in the courtyard of the consulate.[12] Local police and fire departments received reports of the fires at around 8 pm local time,[18] and as first responders arrived at the consulate, they were denied entry.”
- everdrive 6y ago
  This seems strange, because a consulate usually has equipment for securely destroying documents, which usually doesn't involve conspicuously burning them outside.
  - skinkestek 6y ago
    Even US burns documents if necessary I think, isn't there a well known case with the embassy in Iran? While I was in the military I sometimes operated a secure shredder. It is a long time ago but I remember this: despite its rather large size the speed and the number of pages it would process was really limited. It had one thing going for it though: the output was thinly sliced :-)
    - everdrive 6y ago
      I was under the impression that the Iranians were able to successfully reconstruct many of the shredded documents. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embassy_of_the_United_States,_Tehran https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embassy_of_the_United_States,_... "The Muslim Student Followers of the Imam's Line published documents seized in the embassy (including painstakingly reconstructed shredded documents) in a series of books called "Documents from the US Espionage Den" (Persian: اسناد لانه جاسوس امریكا, Asnād-e lāneh-e jasusi Amrikā).[10] These books included telegrams, correspondence, and reports from the United States Department of State and Central Intelligence Agency, some of which remain classified to this day."

dahfizz 6y ago

> If it did come out of the lab in Wuhan then the US/NIH also has to answer questions regarding their involvement in the lab. There is a legitimate question about how this pandemic started, and the CCP apologists come out in droves to shift blame onto western governments.

clusmore 6y ago

The desire from Western governments to pin all of the blame on China seems staggering to me. Even if it were true that a lab leak triggered the pandemic, the appalling response by most governments is clearly the cause of the majority of the deaths. To say otherwise is to admit that you as a government our powerless to prevent hundreds of thousands of deaths from a hypothetical biological weapon in the future.