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How I learned to stop worrying and love the lab-leak theory

• deleted 5y ago
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• InTheArena 5y ago
  Just so people know who is posting this - Donald McNeil Jr was the chief voice at NYT focusing on covid. He was ousted earlier because of some remarks that he allegedly made to a school group a few years ago, but before that, the NYT was pushing for him to get a Pulitzer for his reporting on COVID. Him starting legitimize the lab-leak theory as possible is reflective of the people more generally taking the lab-leak hypothesis seriously. That's never to legitimize violence, or score political points, but maybe to get us a bit closer to what sparked the pandemic.
  • 3327 5y ago
    Its astonishing “scientist” in labs are so detached from the real world and dismissive as always. The virus wasn’t tampered with. Th lab in Wuhan is “GAIN OF FUNCTION” testing. read it again. Gain of function means nudging viral samples so they gain functions on their own without human gene editing or modification that can easily be traced. Why now? Why not 5 years ago? The animal markets have always been there. Occams Razor.
    • AstralStorm 5y ago
      Why MERS was in 2009? Why not 2007 or 2001? Etc. The animals were there since millions of years. This argument is bootless. Viral mutations and spread happen according to anomalous diffusion statistics that are inherently chaotic at outset. For those who do not know what chaotic means, it is extremely sensitive to initial conditions. Most of which are actually unknowns. Risk is always there, but details are never initially predictable.
    • lamontcg 5y ago
      Why did SARS-CoV-1 jump from Bats in Yunnan to humans in Guangdong in 2003?
    • theptip 5y ago
      Your logic here isn’t sound. “Why not 5 years ago?” - the mechanism here is that each year there is a low but non-zero probability of a virus jumping to humans. That is why you have infrequent intermittent epidemics like Spanish Flu, or more recently SARS, and not constant evolution of new crossover viruses. It seems that crossovers happen more on the timescale of decades than mere years. (Though I’m excluding crossovers of unviable infections that don’t go anywhere, of course). None of the above argues against the lab escape theory. As the OP details it’s possible. Just your specific line of reasoning here oversimplifies, hence the downvotes.
• Wowfunhappy 5y ago
  I’m getting a 500 error on this story. Only me?
  • picardythird 5y ago
    Working for me.
• p1necone 5y ago
  Working out the initial cause of this Covid outbreak is far far far less important/actionable than working out what we should do differently when (not if) another virus starts spreading. This concept should be familiar to those in tech already: https://codeascraft.com/2012/05/22/blameless-postmortems/ https://codeascraft.com/2012/05/22/blameless-postmortems/
  • maybelsyrup 5y ago
    What if doing the first thing helps us do the second thing?
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  • lukeholder 5y ago
    You can do both. If a plane crashes, you find out the cause. During that evaluation, if you also find that the pilots response to the engine failure was also wrong, you fix that too.
    • tolbish 5y ago
      There is a noticeable trend here of gatekeepers crying foul when others decide to talk about this. They try to shame you into silence, claiming that you are caring about the wrong thing, as if you cannot pay attention to more than one issue simultaneously. Whenever there is a trend of similar talking points on a hot topic it makes me wonder how much of that is influence from outside groups.
      • loopz 5y ago
        Speculation about it might be detrimental. So it seems like a bad tradeoff unless one can find evidence one way or the other, and what constructively to do about it first.
• tawa10093 5y ago
  “Chinese labs sell their dead experimental animals in food markets.” This is actually true and not uncommon.
  • salawat 5y ago
    Note section 9.5 of Project Evidence 9.5 Arrest of Lab Animal Seller From the same ECNS article in the previous section: We are looking for contributors who can read Mandarin to help us find and translate the original article from The Paper that details the arrest of the ’top academician’. Medical staff and experts have long been asking for better regulation and supervision of biological research institutes in China, but with mixed results. A top academician at the Chinese Academy of Engineering earned 10.17 million yuan ($1.46 million) by illegally selling off lab animals and experimental milk, according to a report in the Shanghai-based The Paper. Li Ning, a leading expert at transgenic technologies at China Agricultural University, was sentenced to 12 years in prison on January 2 for grafting 37.56 million yuan. Author’s Note: "Li Ning" and the "top academician" appear to be two different people. Li Ning was sentenced to prison for allegedly embezzling research grant funds. The academician’s arrest shows that the regulations concerning lab safety were either too lacking or not properly enforced and enable a bad actor to put many others in danger for their own profit. The new biosafety rules were likely put in place to rectify these deficiencies. If a "top academician" was selling lab animals at the Chinese Academy of Engineering, could a worker at the WIV or WHCDC have been doing the same thing? Why not? Could one of these lab animals have been sold to the Huanan Seafood Market? @https://project-evidence.github.io/ https://project-evidence.github.io/ The "it's common" may be overstated, but it is not unprecedented.
    • cdot2 5y ago
      That really doesn't help the credibility of rest of his article
    • tawa10093 5y ago
      The universities and labs in China usually subcontract the work a few levels down to some people who have no training or idea about what they are dealing with. And they would be more than happy to "recycle" whatever that can be "recycled", including dead experiment animals. For what is worth I had probably ate a frog I dissected from a school restaurant many years ago.
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• tootie 5y ago
  This is a very lengthy and well-researched story that basically just says "we don't know but could be". Which I think is where we've been for the past few months. There was a lot of whiplash early on between conspiracy theorists trying to peg this as a biological weapon attack and scientists trying to stick to the evidence. McNeil does a really thorough job dissecting the mess of nonsense and looking at evidence. But the result is still that we don't know. And probably never will.
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• monkeycantype 5y ago
  The accidental lab leak theory proven would actually be great news, as the alternative is that civilization has reached the threshold where we have a hyper connected population in contact with so many natural disease reservoirs that pandemics are emerging spontaneously. If it’s a lab leak we change pathogen containment practices, otherwise we curtain our freedom of movement and association
  • cdot2 5y ago
    We can have all of the best possible pathogen containment practices but if they're not followed then they're of no use. We would also need a way to ensure that they're followed
  • kadoban 5y ago
    I mean, that's obviously happening anyway, and it's not only a modern occerance. Pandemics have a long and varied history, no? I guess this would modify how often we think that happens?
  • ocschwar 5y ago
    For persons of average intelligence or more, it is indeed good news. For persons of Asian appearance, living in physical proximity to persons of lower than average intelligence, it's dangerous news, unfortunately.
    • encryptluks2 5y ago
      Can you provide recent statistical data during the pandemic about actual hate crimes to back that up, specifically about the race committing the crime?
      • snypher 5y ago
        https://www.csusb.edu/sites/default/files/FACT%20SHEET-%20Anti-Asian%20Hate%202020%203.2.21.pdf https://www.csusb.edu/sites/default/files/FACT%20SHEET-%20An... https://secureservercdn.net/104.238.69.231/a1w.90d.myftpupload.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/210312-Stop-AAPI-Hate-National-Report-.pdf https://secureservercdn.net/104.238.69.231/a1w.90d.myftpuplo...
• cm2012 5y ago
  This is a great, in depth fact filled article. Really explores the subject completely.
• divbzero 5y ago
  McNeil Jr also references this letter from epidemiologists and biologists in Science [1] calling for a new investigation. [1]: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/372/6543/694.1 https://science.sciencemag.org/content/372/6543/694.1
  • throwawaysea 5y ago
    There's also an earlier open letter from March from a different group of scientists, which includes a list of limitations with the WHO’s visit and investigation, and what they would like to see happen in a new investigation: https://s.wsj.net/public/resources/documents/COVID%20OPEN%20LETTER%20FINAL%20030421%20(1).pdf https://s.wsj.net/public/resources/documents/COVID%20OPEN%20... Reason magazine wrote about this letter and circumstantial evidence that has been piling up in support of exploring the lab leak hypothesis further: https://reason.com/2021/05/12/did-covid-19-leak-from-a-wuhan-lab/ https://reason.com/2021/05/12/did-covid-19-leak-from-a-wuhan...
  • skwb 5y ago
    The "viable" in the "Theories of accidental release from a lab and zoonotic spillover both remain viable" is doing a lot of legwork there.
• whipaway 5y ago
  Is it a stretch to imagine that the same country that created a news spectacle from their rocket falling back to earth uncontrolled, can't manage their bio research?
• cletus 5y ago
  So I generally give like zero weight to conspiracy theories. That being said, I don't believe anyone can reasonably claim with any degree certainty that Covid was a lab-leak BUT the WHO investigation simply hasn't done their due diligence to a sufficient degree to eliminate this theory. Unfortunately the WHO's credibility is trained here. In the early days of the pandemic the WHO bent over backwards not to upset China. More to the point, it took China's denials on face value. So it's more than a year after the pandemic started before the WHO investigators got any sort of access to investigate (which, incidentally is not a good look for neither China or the WHO). But here are two demonstrable and known shortcomings of the WHo investigation: 1. In 2019 there was a database of coronaviruses that China had. In late 2019 it was taken offline. Super-weird timing. By itself that doesn't prove anything but the WHO hasn't investigated it. Did they ask? If not, why not? 2. Wuhan labs do investigate coronaviruses. The WHO has never been given access to what coronaviruses they have. It is weird that 1-1.5 years later we're still unsure of the origin (unlike, say, SARS or MErS). Oh and, for the record, I don't believe for a second this virus was in any way engineered.
  • tawa10093 5y ago
    If you believe RaTG13 is genuine, then you should look past no where. At the same time (2012-2013), same place (TongGuan, Yunnan), some miners are infected by a virus with symptoms very similar to covid, and WIV was involved during the time and has the samples from the patients which have never been released. All this is documented in a graduate thesis by a student from a local college in 2013.
  • lwf 5y ago
    s/trained/strained/
    • scarmig 5y ago
      Strained is closer in Levenshtein distance, but I'd bet tainted was the original word.
      • Judgmentality 5y ago
• eloff 5y ago
  There's basically no evidence either way, although the outbreak being in a city with a class 4 bio lab actively studying sars viruses does on the surface seem to make the lab leak more probable. Bit of a coincidence. What really makes me think though is the way China is being uncooperative. You'd think if they were innocent they wouldn't need to limit access to data and prevent investigation of the Wuhan lab. Maybe that's just in their nature as a totalitarian regime, but it's not doing them any favors here.
  • ddingus 5y ago
    Another way to get at a similar disconcerting place: Where is the animal population that harbored the virus?
    • lamontcg 5y ago
      Same problem with SARS-CoV-1. The Bat SL-CoV-WIV1 virus that is closest related to that is also from Horseshoe bats in Yunnan. The SARS-CoV-1 outbreak in humans was >700 miles away in Guangdong. The virus may or may not have used an intermediate animal like civets to jump to humans. We've seen this happen before and we know there was no lab leak involved.
      • ddingus 5y ago
        The lack of cooperation complicates all of this, which was my primary point.
        • AstralStorm 5y ago
          The problem is, there is nothing to cooperate in. Any source or fact given by Chinese government or scientists will not be trusted.
          • ddingus 5y ago
            It is necessary for global involvement. Direct research, investigations, data collection, the works. Being open enough to understand what is actual is the cooperation.
• rllearneratwork 5y ago
  IMHO, this is a great likelihood-based analysis of various origin theories: https://www.rootclaim.com/analysis/What-is-the-source-of-COVID-19-SARS-CoV-2 https://www.rootclaim.com/analysis/What-is-the-source-of-COV...
  • stareatgoats 5y ago
    whoa - that looks like an interesting project! Thanks for the link. Slightly OT but I tentatively agree with the premise: this kind of service seems far better at trying to assess credibility of an unproven claim than general chatter to and fro. Looks like their track record backs it up too.
• sashavingardt2 5y ago
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  • dokem 5y ago
    It is not socially acceptable to point fingers or raise suspicion of anyone but the western man. The lack of honest and genuine conversation is concerning.
• leric 5y ago
  No one mentioned Dr. Limeng Yan, you won't get it right.
• sashavingardt2 5y ago
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  • speedyapoc 5y ago
    Am I cynical for thinking there would be no punishment or accountability?
• 99_00 5y ago
  They are easing you into the revelation of the virus being a lab leak and the CCP being maliciously irresponsible costing millions of lives from the initial leak and holding back information after the fact. Revealing it all at once would cause economic and social chaos. The racist assaults alone would be horrendous. Not to mention the political and economic consiquences. It's no coincidence that the Uygar genocide is being talked about now despite going on for several years.
• dang 5y ago
  There's another ongoing thread on the same topic, with a different root article, but perhaps a similar impetus (the recent letter to Science): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27160898 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27160898
• temp8964 5y ago
  > It spawned racist rumors like “Chinese labs sell their dead experimental animals in food markets.” First, I don't see how is this racist. Second, this is not rumor, there are Chinese articles about how some lab members were punished. The author lost credibility here.
  • mdoms 5y ago
    Suggesting that because it has happened before in China, "Chinese labs" do it, is indeed racist.
    • baggy_trough 5y ago
      What rubbish. There must be some way to comment on Chinese practices that isn't racist.
      • swader999 5y ago
        CCP is a better descriptor as they are the ones pushing and regulating policy there.
    • Nathanba 5y ago
      Calling pattern recognition racist is a bad move because due to being necessary for survival it will never go away. You should probably focus on what is factual instead of what you dont want to be true and then calling it racist.
• kstenerud 5y ago
  edit Changed "character" to "structure" because my intent is being misunderstood. This is ultimately about human psychology (as in homo sapiens), not particular nations or peoples. Each of us could very well have but for chance been placed in any of these boats, and our behavior would change to match because we're not morally special. There are a number of things at play here that stoke up distrust, mainly due to China's current national structure. The world won't get China's cooperation on this, and there will be no smoking gun evidence one way or the other. But we can stop and think about it rationally. In fact, someone already has, and I recommend reading it if you haven't already, putting the lab leak theory to rest: https://old.reddit.com/r/science/comments/gk6y95/covid19_did_not_come_from_the_wuhan_institute_of/ https://old.reddit.com/r/science/comments/gk6y95/covid19_did... So what's going on with China then? Well first off, they're an autocratic nation, which makes them EXTREMELY sensitive to criticism and dissent. An autocratic nation deals with criticism by dismissing it, dodging it, blocking it, and crushing it. You're not going to get cooperation on something negative like a pandemic outbreak because they don't know where it came from either, and it's better for them to just block everyone than to allow any potential negativity to stick to them. Again, this behavior is nothing new for autocratic nations. Secondly, they're an up-and-comer nation. They've finally reached the big leagues (again), and that means that they expect big league treatment. It means that they can push back against anyone they choose and punish those who step on their toes. They've been doing this for years now, buying or bullying compliance like their more established brethren from smaller nations and organizations, even to the point of cowing the WHO (who, for the record, have always deferred somewhat to the powerful because they have no actual teeth and would lose access to that nation otherwise). Third, they have a legacy to uphold as the Kingdom of Heaven. Xi's mission for the nation is a moral one to once again become the shining beacon of civilization, the center of the Earth. For a nation on such a mission, minor things like a pandemic are merely a distraction that could potentially be used by the other nations to disrupt their sacred task of purifying their people and seating themselves at their rightful place as THE representatives of humanity's best. So no, the lab leak theory holds no water. And no, there will be no investigation. And unless you want to invade China or something equally drastic, that's how things will stand.
  • civildude 5y ago
    Its so disgusting that I believe you
• cbHXBY1D 5y ago
  I tend to trust Prof Shi Zhengli on this one. She has been open [1] to investigations into her lab and has the most evidence in her favor. Notably, she's showed that miners who died 8 years ago didn't die of Sars-Cov-2 and that none of her staff had antibodies. [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-55364445 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-55364445
• bredren 5y ago
  What about the private cell phone data that showed the lab shut down in October? Was this shown to be false?
• pussyfart69 5y ago
  Came from nature = no accountability
• YeBanKo 5y ago
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  • dang 5y ago
    I understand how intense the magnetic pull can be, but this is off topic in this thread. We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27190749 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27190749.
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• pussyfart69 5y ago
  So in essence, the lab leak theory got scrapped right off the bat b/c we as a society have developed an aversion to Trump?
• Johnny555 5y ago
  And China’s lack of candor is disturbing. It denies access to the institute’s lab logs and whatever messages were swapped during its own investigations, took down 2018 statements critical of lab biosecurity protocols, retaliated against Australia for advocating an open investigation and sharply restricted the W.H.O. investigators. Would the USA have been any more open if an American government lab was suspected as the source of an outbreak? Especially under the former administration which outright lied to the American people about the severity of the pandemic.
  • Johnny555 5y ago
    It's not like they've been forthcoming in the past: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2015/05/28/biolabs-pathogens-location-incidents/26587505/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2015/05/28/biolabs-patho... A USA TODAY Network investigation reveals that hundreds of lab mistakes, safety violations and near-miss incidents have occurred in biological laboratories coast to coast in recent years, putting scientists, their colleagues and sometimes even the public at risk. Oversight of biological research labs is fragmented, often secretive and largely self-policing, the investigation found. And even when research facilities commit the most egregious safety or security breaches — as more than 100 labs have — federal regulators keep their names secret.
• wokwokwok 5y ago
  > The whole world, China included, needs a hard answer, whoever is to blame — so we can prevent this from happening again. Really? Is that what will happen if someone confirms the lab leak theory? We just tighten bio security in labs and off we go, back to normal? Don’t make me laugh. This isn’t about science any more, it’s about playing the blame game and deflecting responsibility for a massive public health disaster by an administration that lacked competence to deal with it. It would be economically catastrophic for China to admit any evidence that implicated them. So... given the overwhelming cost of releasing evidence, what the hell benefit is there from pinpointing blame? Restore trust? It’ll only cost you trillions of dollars in blame and finger pointing... yeah right. That is never going to happen. So... we’ll never know. Attempts to resolve this haven’t convinced me that the effort is not better spent trying resolve the current situation, rather than blame someone else for it. Am I missing something? Seriously, given how plausible either animal or lab leak scenarios are, we are required to address both to prevent future pandemics. How does knowing one way or another help?
• h0l0cube 5y ago
  We may never know for 100% certain if it truly was a lab leak, but what we can be certain of is the denialism and withholding of information in the crucial first 2 months of the emergence of the virus. In at least this, China is culpable for devastating millions of lives and disrupting the global economy, all for the Chinese government to save face. Edit: Removed claim about Chinese new year
  • platinumrad 5y ago
    Chinese New Year celebrations were cancelled and travel restrictions were imposed in January of 2020.
    • h0l0cube 5y ago
      From what I've read they were cancelled, but the motivation from the government to keep transit operation in the lead up to Chinese New Year might have been to allow citizens to get home. This would be to avoid backlash from citizens who couldn't be with their family for, what is for many, their one holiday a year. Which seems reasonable. I believe by CNY the gene sequence and other data had been leaked by a rogue scientist in China to the rest of the world, and the cover was blown.
    • dbuder 5y ago
      But they called Australia racist for imposing travel restrictions in February?
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• jb775 5y ago
  So if the lab leak theory turns out to be true, how will people deal with the fact that they've been vehemently disregarding it as a "Q-anon conspiracy theory"? And would it be worth questioning if any other recent topics labeled as "conspiracy theories" may in fact also be true?
  • newacct583 5y ago
    > So if the lab leak theory turns out to be true, how will people deal with the fact that they've been vehemently disregarding it as a "Q-anon conspiracy theory"? If the lab leak theory turns out to be true, I'll admit I was wrong about my intuition. It's not impossible, but it's extremely unlikely. We've had literally thousands of new virus strains evolve in the past century of viral research and like three known "lab leaks". As has been repeated ad nausum, there is absolutely nothing surprising about SARS-CoV-2's structure or relatives or evolution and no reason to doubt that like every other pandemic this is a naturally evolved pathogen. Now tell me why people keep INSISTING that this must be true absent evidence[1], and explain what you'll do when (as with basically every conspiracy theory) it turns out that there never really was any real evidence. [1] Or don't. We all know why. The lab leak theory casts a convenient boogieman in the part of the villain, and distracts from fingerpointing aimed at parties closer to home who could have reacted well to the pandemic but chose not to. It "makes it all someone else's fault", so there's no surprise why it's so popular.
    • handmodel 5y ago
      I would believe that Covid started elsewhere in China before believing in started in a wet market in Wuhan. It is extremely unlikely to start there given that isn't where the bats in China are or where new corona viruses are. In fact, if you read any research that had been published by the WIV on coronoaviruses pre-2020 they all start by talking about expeditions to collect bat droppings 1500 miles away.
      • hungryforcodes 5y ago
        So one bad flew 2400 kilometers, bit some people in Wuhan, then died? It started in Wuhan spontaneously. There are no intermediary COVID19 infections in a migration trail of any kind from those bat reservoirs in Yunnan to Hubei.
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• pl-94 5y ago
  Let's say that a serious proof of a lab leak emerged, what would be the political consequences? Will countries ask China for compensation?
• avan1 5y ago
  There are two things actually and sadly no one investigate both of them: 1. Is Covid a lab leak ? (which had poor investigation) 2. Could China stop it (Whether its lab-leak or not) in early stages and prevent it from spreading out of their borders ? (which they achieved successfully for other provinces)
• skwb 5y ago
  FWIW I'm going to defer to the virology experts on this one. I know when I am out of my depth, and when to seek expert advise. https://twitter.com/angie_rasmussen/status/1394257028558639108?s=21 https://twitter.com/angie_rasmussen/status/13942570285586391...
  • tripletao 5y ago
    Angela Rasmussen is indeed a virologist and is heavily quoted in the media, but this appears to be more because she specifically seeks that (she has a publicist!) than due to any prior distinction. Ralph Baric invented modern coronavirology. He was Zhengli Shi's mentor, and published frequently with her in the past. He signed Jesse Bloom's and Alina Chan's letter in Science calling for further investigation of the origins of SARS-CoV-2: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/372/6543/694.1 https://science.sciencemag.org/content/372/6543/694.1 As to the specific tweet that you've linked, David Baltimore seems to disagree: > “When I first saw the furin cleavage site in the viral sequence, with its arginine codons, I said to my wife it was the smoking gun for the origin of the virus,” said David Baltimore, an eminent virologist and former president of CalTech. https://thebulletin.org/2021/05/the-origin-of-covid-did-people-or-nature-open-pandoras-box-at-wuhan/ https://thebulletin.org/2021/05/the-origin-of-covid-did-peop... My own impression is that the FCS points only weakly towards lab origin (and other evidence, like the origin city, lack of intermediate host, and pre-adaptation to humans is much more significant), but I'm not the one with the Nobel prize. But my point is that if you choose experts by almost any metric other than Twitter follower count, you'll see a very different picture.
    • skwb 5y ago
      > Ralph Baric invented modern coronavirology. He was Zhengli Shi's mentor, and published frequently with her in the past. He signed Jesse Bloom's and Alina Chan's letter in Science calling for further investigation of the origins of SARS-CoV-2: I read the Science article; the way it was drafted doesn't really specifically rule any particular thing out however. It's just calling for a further investigation, and says that both hypotheses remain "viable", which is an extremely low bar in science. Combing Jasnah's thread with another by Andersen (https://twitter.com/K_G_Andersen/status/1391507230848032772 https://twitter.com/K_G_Andersen/status/1391507230848032772), it paints a picture that any explicit engineering seems a bit far fetched. I have yet to seen any specific responses to these critiques of lab engineered FCN site hypothesis. Instead, I see mountains of people who are not in a position to critically evaluate these claims. Science is both an institution and a process, and not everyone is equally qualified to evaluate the evidence.
• nickysielicki 5y ago
  The problem I have with the lab leak theory is that if it was a lab leak, what do we make of SARS? Was SARS a lab leak, too? If it was reasonable for SARS to naturally jump from bats to humans, why couldn’t COVID, too?
  • thu2111 5y ago
    Wade's article explains that. With SARS-1 they did find the animal transmission path very quickly (within months). Part of the argument here is that despite an overwhelmingly large and well incentivised search, no such path has been found for SARS-2. Meanwhile there is microbiological evidence that is suggestive of lab work. Unfortunately due to China's stonewalling there is no way to prove anything beyond doubt. However, the balance of probabilities at this point says that the WIV was doing GOF research on these sorts of viruses and one escaped. One reason to believe this is likely is that they apparently were not working at especially high biosafety levels. Just ordinary lab coats and gloves.
• me_me_me 5y ago
  Suppose there was a leak, or an employee sold a test animal to the wet market make extra cash. Seems that cov2 was going to jump to humans eventually, given the state of the wet markets. My question is, so what? China is not going to ever agree nor allow an investigation. They will deny any allegations. So it there is no evidence for human tinkering with the virus what can be done? I mean, we have account of alive human organs harvest, slave labour, forced assimilation of minorities... nothing was done
• Rapzid 5y ago
  I think this ignores why the "lab leak" theory was being squashed in public: 1. There was no evidence 2. The conspiracies going around in early days prompting the response was that China manufactured the virus as a weapons and/or released it on purpose. 3. There was no evidence People were reading the WHO reports as information was coming in and they were talking about no transmission outside familial groups and saying "Ahah! The WHO is in China's pocket, they were lying about the virus!" or "They are incompetent and don't know what they are doing!". Zero understanding that the reports were pretty much just raw information and analysis on what was known at the time. This was just over a year ago peeps, but people were forgetting like 2 months on haha.
  • unanswered 5y ago
    No eVIdEnCE is exactly what you would expect to see from a lab leak in China, and the exact opposite of what you would expect in literally any other situation. So it's still no direct evidence, but it is increasingly strong circumstantial evidence.
• graderjs 5y ago
  Follows are my reflections on the comments on this thread and on the article re speculation about why there have been no candidate natural viruses revealed, or a definitive origin. People speculate China is concealing malicious intent and such is indicated these two facts (and many others). I'd like to address these. I think that some people are misjudging why it might be in China's interests to not reveal an origin, nor a candidate natural virus, even if it had concluded its internal investigation and discovered definitive answers, even if those answers exculpated China of any mal intent. I'm not saying they're doing this, just offering another perspective with context and strategic reasoning. As China has engaged with the world in the last 15 years, it has founds its soft power advances rebuffed, obstructed and aggressively countered, even as its international institutional standing, economic power and strategic dominance (at least in APAC/MEA) has grown. Mainstream Western presses run night and day printing stories to support "China bogeyman" narrative staples like "China virus", "China debt trap diplomacy", "China oppression", "Foreign influence", "Xinjiang genocide", "HK freedom fighters" to name a few currently popular ones. Faced with this hostile international media environment what can China do? Domestically it must counteract and throw words-of-kind back, and diplomatically it has leant into the same. These are expected and required responses. But the strange thing is, while it looks to be on the back foot, and while it may not be the sort of positive, glowing, appreciative and respectful international press coverage China might have dreamt of in its recent path of rapid growth, given that foreign presses and their audiences display an appetite for these stories, China might actually be serving its own interests by simply feeding those appetites and fanning the flames. This sounds crazy. Why would China want the foreign press to gorge itself on anti-China stories and go off its rocker on "China bad"-conspiracy theories. Why would it be in China's interests for people of other countries to receive this "biased education" about China? Why would China, if it had evidence, arguments, platforms and means to counter these narratives, not run its own operations night and day to paint a different picture? I think there are a couple of advantages of what I'm proposing is a deliberate strategy, and there are certainly opportunities for China in the current hostile international media environment. 1. Controlled opposition. Once the "rabid dog Western press" has found its preferred China-hate narrative, it seems quite happy to continue munching on that big juicy bone and not letting it go. China could try to "prize the bone from the mouth", but that will likely reinforce the rabid dog's grip, no? Maybe a better strategy is to simply keep feeding the dog similar tasty tidbits and not reveal the "tasty bone" is actually rancid and expired (dog may not care, but hey), at least for now. In this way China achieves a measure of control of the anti-China stories. In this way China deftly turns the Western's presses preferred appetite (and by some it's perceived "strength") into a vulnerability. 2a. Domestic mileage and protection. Chinese people might come across Western anti-China articles, which will only increase their proud nationalism and support any narratives the central government might want to launch about how biased and anti-China the western countries are. This incredible power actually insulates the central government from any foreign criticism, and weakens the ability of "foreign adversaries" to dislodge the Chinese government from their people (an likely impossible goal anyway, but many wedges have attempted to be inserted, no doubt to the amusement of regular Chinese who see foreigners trying to get Chinese to hate Chinese as a fool's errand), because its so easy to dismiss the chorus of Western critics by how unhinged and hypocritical they are. The risk for China here is that it can insulate itself from internal legitimate critics, by the feintest association with "crazy" foreign ideas. So it will need to balance that insulation with practicality. 2b. Useful distraction. The loader and crazier the Western press and commentariat seems, the more China can allow such insanity to pierce its information control for useful effect. Bad press from provincial officials cramping the central government's recent achievements style? A dash of "China hate" from the foreign press is sure to refocus netizen's attention and bring people together in solidarity against external opposition. Again, the risk with this is China utilizes this massive power (of foreign hatred) too liberally to tune out of useful internal dissent. Given it's rapid progress and stellar achievements I don't think it seriously risks a lack of introspection, but the louder the Western "evil CCP" commentariat grows, the bigger this power grows, and so the bigger the risk that China might go overboard in using this domestically. 3. Future reveal payoffs. Just say China was manipulating foreign presses into printing anti-China narratives, but had bulletproof evidence against the claims (such as endless video evidence, investigations and interviews with people in Xinjiang, or legal arguments and foreign influence proof in HK, or a closest relative natural virus that originated in Italy in 2018), why would it hold off on providing that right now? Probably because the reasons above are so compelling and useful. China is interested in domestic narrative shaping and information control, and successfully achieves these objectives through many means. The above possibilities are useful tools that assist in this. But there's another reason. A sort of "kill shot" to end the credibility of the Western press and paint China itself as "unfairly and racistly persecuted victim" (not altogether inaccurate). Say China brought out information (but didn't reveal it had been sitting on it) to decisively end many of the anti-China claims, it would be able to constantly play that up to convince Westerners they can't trust their own "free press". A pretty strong card to have, particularly as soft-power will become more important as China's influence ability grows. But not a card you'd need to play right now, not only because you'd miss out on the above. China can bide its time and watch the West score own-goals and commit unforced errors in its media game against China, that it can dredge up later to reveal Western incompetence and bias. 4. Catalysis for change. Say some place in China or some policy was an issue for the central government, but it was having a hard time cultivating the domestic momentum and provincial political will required for a successful change, what could it do? How could it utilize the current "winds of chaos" to assist it in its own goals? What if the West was directly inciting HK violence (or not involved, doesn't matter here), and China knew, and allowed that to occur, until the time was right (and the justification big enough) for it to step in and change the law? Without every firing a single shot (itself), or ever sending in the troops (to do anything but clean up the roadway after people had departed). Guiding the winds of Western obsession and hate into the sails of a ship China is steering, could be a useful strategy for particularly challenging issues. All that Western press fanned those flames, blew those winds, puffed those sails --- to sail that ship right into China's harbor. Pretty deft "covert" or "paradoxical" soft power. I think many of these issues are simply useful for reasons 1 - 3, but what other targets might be good candidates for this strategy? Xinjiang strategy needs a change, but is resisted by the elements who benefitted from version 1.1? Maybe. Need to send more people and money to build up naval supremacy in reefs and islands? Get the West to escalate its anti-rhetoric to show China how scared they are of that, and against China doing that, to lend support to it seeming like a good thing to do to counter Western projection, in that case. GZ or SZ having issues with provincial leaders, their cliques and ambitions? Seed some "political oppression" stories in the Western press to create a chaos and a grassroots movement for less central intervention, allow the movement to catch fire, then tie it to the South's irresponsible leadership (and relative economic liberalism and Western links, for good measure) and use that to oust the provincial leaders as incompetent and complicit. It's hard to think about these hypothetical candidates, but I'm sure there's many opportunities. Probably the flames of Western narratives can be used in some manner or another as part of larger strategies. As China's control and stability (and success) increases, its ability to deploy these strategies will diminish. But now seems like a good time and many opportunities, as the West eagerly lurches from one "China-hate" to the next. One risk is the West might wise up to this, and start trying to "counter manipulate" China, by feigning outrage at a non-issue or trying to force a Chinese concession by successfully cultivating an irrational populist narrative in a Chinese area that's to drive a change that's against Chinese interests. Time will tell if the West develops this strategic narrative sophistication. They've been on top for so long, they may have grown soft and uncritical, while China has had to grow clever in the hostile climate it found itself emerging in internationally. Of the West, in this, perhaps it's like Bane says, "Victory has defeated them." In the soft power sense, in these aspects, I think that's partly true.