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The world needs a proper investigation into how Covid-19 started

• zpeti 5y ago
  Things like this usually come down to incentives. And right now I don’t see how almost any major power’s leaders have any incentive to push an investigation forwards. We are too dependent on China to piss them off, and so far experience shows we are much more likely to follow their demands than follow our own (Hollywood, NBA, Hong Kong, blizzard, albeit only one of those is geopolitical).
  • dkdk8283 5y ago
    All the more reason to piss them off and ween off our addiction to disposable junk and sweatshop priced labor. Given the impact to the world we all should be asking difficult questions.
    • tomp 5y ago
      This is a reasonable argument and will be exactly as effective as presenting a reasonable argument to an addict is.
      • partsKnown 5y ago
        In this case it really is not effective though. There is no drop in replacement for China. A slow transition would be impossible so it's really all or nothing in the short term.
      • adflux 5y ago
        Love this comment
    • switch007 5y ago
      You mean capitalists’ addiction to profit. Double my wage, I’ll buy made in the UK/EU much more often.
      • eurasiantiger 5y ago
        We can double your wage, but you first need to buy made in EU and stop buying cheap crap you don’t actually need.
        • imiric 5y ago
          The issue is not so much with frivolous consumerism as it is with cheap crap flooding the market, taking over certain product categories altogether. If you're in the market for any kind of electronics, toys, small tools, etc., chances are your only option is to buy a variation of the same cheap mass produced crap with a different temporary or nonexistent brand and thousands of fake 5-star reviews. Even searching for name brands you run the risk of getting a counterfeit. The system is rigged to the point where quality, and thus more expensive, brands simply can't compete. The change needs to start on the manufacturer and retailer side. Stop prioritizing cost savings from cheap Chinese factories and start building locally and in factories that prioritize quality and respect human labor and the environment. As a consumer I'd happily pay for that overhead if that option was available and was given a fair chance to compete.
        • switch007 5y ago
          Ok we’re obviously making stupid black and white arguments. But it’s patently true in many companies there is plenty of profit to be reduced and redistributed as wages (also exec comp)
          • eurasiantiger 5y ago
            You know you can’t have both that and stonks, right?
      • lottin 5y ago
        If wages doubled in the UK/EU everything made in the UK/EU would instantly also become more expensive.
        • aww_dang 5y ago
  • bilvar 5y ago
    Are we just going to brush off the US’s involvement in funding WIV? And how even Fauci tried to cover that up? China is not the sole one to blame.
    • eurasiantiger 5y ago
      Well, if we are going to play the game where covert research implicates overt funding that specifically hinges on the funds not being used on such covert research (gain-of-function studies), we will definitely be barking up the wrong tree.
      • bilvar 5y ago
        If there was no foul play why the fuss to cover it up then?
        • notacoward 5y ago
          That's a circular argument. You're using the assumption of foul play to characterize the response as a cover-up, and the putative existence of a cover-up as evidence of foul play. Be better.
          • bilvar 5y ago
            I think it’s undeniable now that the US did fund reaserch in the WIV, why do I need further evidence for that when Fauci himself has admitted so? The cover-up was Daszak and co. pre-emptively denouncing lab leak theories as an attack on science and branding them as crazy conspiracies. The only remaining thing to determine is whether the funding went into gain-of-function research, which Fauci vehemently denies but given his track record of lying it’s only natural to be hesitant in believing him. I’m far from an expert but according to the BBC[1] there do exist experts who believe Fauci not admitting it is just relying on semantics. [1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/57932699 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/57932699
    • aww_dang 5y ago
      As long as we are discussing potential incentives, it seems reasonable to have a modicum of curiosity concerning the incentives for a biosecurity state. Simply blaming one state actor over another appears as a set of false alternatives. A convenient distraction which inspires tribalism and identity. CBDC, "verified digital identities" and a host of other dystopian solutions grow into rationalized necessities from the germ of the COVID crisis. We need not look very far to see many of the same actors involved have advocated for these dystopian innovations for years, if not decades. If some of those actors hosted a simulated coronavirus pandemic exercise in October of 2019, is it appropriate to dismiss it as a mere coincidence? At a certain point you have to concede the probability of a duck being the source of the waddling and quacking.
  • syshum 5y ago
    >>We are too dependent on China to piss them off, That seems to be a problem... No? Maybe we should be pushing our political and business leaders to fix that. If a nation.. openly hostile to our interests is able to cause a worldwide pandemic that no one can investigate because it might upset that nations feefee's. That imo is much bigger problem than the pandemic itself
    • partsKnown 5y ago
      Cheap goods for everyone in the world at the expense of Chinese slave labor, sounds like a deal too good to pass up.
    • thaumasiotes 5y ago
      > a nation.. openly hostile to our interests What interests of ours is China openly hostile to?
      • bwship 5y ago
        Democracy, freedom, individual rights.
      • virtue3 5y ago
        Sure. Price fixing of the yuan to keep Chinese manufacturing significantly cheaper than everywhere else. https://www.investopedia.com/trading/chinese-devaluation-yuan/ https://www.investopedia.com/trading/chinese-devaluation-yua... Taiwan's independence. The emergence of TSMC is pretty critical at this point in time and the US and other European countries have paid them a lot of money to open plants in their territories. Chinas aircraft carrier program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_aircraft_carrier_programme https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_aircraft_carrier_progr... Chinas claims that the j20 can "beat" the f22. https://guardingindia.com/china/china-claims-that-j-20-can-beat-us-f-22-and-indian-rafale/ https://guardingindia.com/china/china-claims-that-j-20-can-b... And the most recent and my latest favorite: China has started up 250 ICBM silos for nuclear weapons https://apnews.com/article/technology-europe-business-science-china-79388639f73d8c8835001982bcb016d6#:~:text=Researchers%20at%20the%20Federation%20of,being%20built%20in%20western%20China https://apnews.com/article/technology-europe-business-scienc.... This is most likely in direct response to the latest US anti missile capabilities. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminal_High_Altitude_Area_Defense https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminal_High_Altitude_Area_De... China now has to either pretend is has way more nuclear missiles or actually make them (and maintain them). The US and China are in this constant state of "our biggest trade partner is also our current biggest rival". I'm not really sure what the end game of that entails but I'm really hoping it just maintains at dick waving status. It's going to be very interesting if/how China steps into Afghanistan. That was basically Russia's vietnam. The current US situation with it should be pretty obvious to everyone at this point. We specifically did pacific theatre exercises with the japanese self defense force and the south korean military with shit like launching land based JSDF missles from USN ships target guidance and plenty of other joint operations to show China(maybe Russia?) the capabilities of the US armed forces and it's allies. inb4 "the usa started it". Yeah probably. China has been playing the military dick measuring game for the last 10 years pretty hard tho. I didn't think any country was as stupid as the USA to put as much money into defense spending but here we are (I am a US citizen). tl;dr China is openly hostile to US military and economic influence in SE Asia.
  • beloch 5y ago
    It's important to realize that the world's dependence on China is actually interdependence. People fear what might happen if China suddenly blocked all exports to their country, and rightly so. China is a country where the government wields that kind of totalitarian power. However, this hasn't happened even once yet. The Chinese government knows that, once they play that particular card on one nation, every other nation in the world is going to freak out, stop talking about diversifying away from Chinese manufacturing, and actually do it. The world absolutely should press the Chinese government to behave in an open and responsible manner on COVID and on many other fronts. China will respond with their usual hostage-taking and "wolf warrior" diplomacy, but it's a sham backed by thin air. China needs the world as its customers even more than the world needs cheap Chinese manufacturing. If the world's governments are willing to show a little solidarity then much can be accomplished.
    • 411111111111111 5y ago
      i wouldnt too sure about that. Most of the things that china imports have super low ramp up time, so a planned exodus is significantly easier for them. It's unlikely to happen in the short term but it's entirely possible in a decade or two if nothing significant changes in the meantime.
    • davidjytang 5y ago
      Very true. Nations depends on China's cheap manufacturing as China depends on other nations' order.
    • redis_mlc 5y ago
      > It's important to realize that the world's dependence on China is actually interdependence. Nonsense, the CCP sees other nations as tributary nations. > However, this hasn't happened even once yet Man, get a clue: - The CCP has embargoed most Australian food imports to China for a year for demanding a corona investigation - The CCP has coerced several South American nations that needed corona vaccines into toeing the CCP line - The CCP has threatened the US by cutting off rare earths. - The CCP has denied capital exports since 2016 The CCP is nothing but threats.
    • 5y ago
• daavidhauser 5y ago
  why does the world need a proper investigation into that? Sometimes it seems to me that it’s just because we want someone to blame. Not because it would actually help anyone.
  • zpeti 5y ago
    If there aren’t ever any consequences to making huge mistakes that kill millions of people, what are the incentives in the future to not do it again? The CCP knowingly hid information about infections. This whole thing could have been contained in China with the right information at the right time. If it was a lab accident that could be avoided in the future too with better protocols. I’m baffled that after millions have died some people just think we should let this go. Would you let it go if the us government accidentally killed millions of people in a nuke test or a chemical spill or any other accident of the same magnitude?
    • notacoward 5y ago
      The problem is that even with an investigation there will be no consequences. For one thing, too much evidence has already been lost. Whether that is deliberate or due to mere passage of time doesn't matter; either way, we'll barely be more certain after an investigation than before. For another, even if we were absolutely certain, geopolitical concerns would preclude any real repercussions. Again, whether that's realpolitik or corruption/collusion doesn't matter; either way, anyone who does get punished will surely be a scapegoat while the real culprits walk free. The only thing an investigation at this point will do is waste time and money and divert experts from more useful tasks (like finding the next potentially catastrophic pathogen). I believe that demands for one should be considered purely performative. The only thing they achieve is to declare allegiance to one group and drum up discrimination against another.
    • copperx 5y ago
      Let go of what? It's pretty much impossible to prove COVID was an accidental lab leak, unless there's a huge smoking gun. Even if there was a proof, what would be the point of revenge? Did any country take revenge for Chernobyl?
• jgb1984 5y ago
  I mean, isn't it yet obvious where it came from? 1 + 1 = ? We're just too interwoven with that human rights violating, genocidal communist dictatorship to speak up about it.
  • White_Wolf 5y ago
    I think the earliest sample found of C19 was in Barcelona in march 2019(If I remember this well). 1+1=? I would say that you either want to blame someone in particular or Spain is a genocidal communist dictatorship.
    • syshum 5y ago
      Of course you you have a source for that right. All official sources I can find say the virus is traced to October or November 2019 origination on china with first cases in Spain from January 2020
      • blitzar 5y ago
        https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-spain-science-idUSKBN23X2HQ https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-spain-... Coronavirus traces found in March 2019 sewage sample, Spanish study shows
        • eurasiantiger 5y ago
          Funny they only find it now and not earlier. Do the researchers or the university happen to have a significant connection to China?
          • blitzar 5y ago
            If by now you mean June 2020, then yes it is funny. Could very well be false positives, probably is, could be that researchers were carrying out instructions from their 5g chips. Posted in response to people stating categorically that the parent comment made up a fact that does not exist and it was impossible to source, nothing more.
• suzzer99 5y ago
  Determining how Covid started would be extremely important imo if there was a chance its release was intentional. But every virologist take I've read suggests that the virus does not look man-made. Nor would it seem that covid's effects and behavior could have possibly been known to any usable degree without the worldwide experiment that we've all been part of the last year and a half. And finally it's really hard to come up with an incentive for intentional release - assuming the suspect is China and not some Bond villain madman. So we're left with determining if this was a possible accidental release. Which I agree is important. It's just orders of magnitude less important than determining the source of an intentional release, imo. If China accidentally released this, they screwed themselves, very hard. If it was an accidental release, and they know it, one would assume they have a strong incentive to clean up protocols in the future. If the U.S. had accidentally released something like this, they'd certainly try to cover it up, but also try to make sure it never happens again.
  • dannyw 5y ago
    If China accidentally released this then the world deserves to know what happened so all labs in the world can learn from it.
    • pvaldes 5y ago
      > If China accidentally released this then the world deserves to know what happened "China" didn't accidentally released anything, and is easy to see why. The group of scientists that were working in Wuhan (some Chinese, other not) don't represent the government or the entire country. How they could? Would be so absurd as to claim that "US" or "Italy" released accidentally covid-19 because a few scientists from US or Italy worked in the same project. The reason to use the words in this way and to use the mass media to fix this wrong idea in the people is 100% political and should be a red flag about the real purpose of this (gain leverage with post-truth, instead to find the truth). The problem is that post-truth could mes enough to bury the truth forever, and all actors are interested into saving face and sneaking their own version.
      • 5y ago
• peakaboo 5y ago
  To find out where it came from, you have to look at conspiracy theories to be honest. There is nothing in the mainstream media even remotely true about its origins.
• cblconfederate 5y ago
  Why? What would that change, apart from distracting everyone into another giant anti-china campaign? Would we solve covid if we knew how it came to be synthesized?
  • syshum 5y ago
    I bet if their was a chance that a US lab leaked the virus you would not be wanting to just let is go
  • read_if_gay_ 5y ago
    For one, we could take action to help prevent another Covid from happening. It’s really not that hard to see how it could be useful to know about the origins of Covid. Really tired of people making it about racism (or whatever) against China. And I say that as a Chinese person.
    • luckylion 5y ago
      How would we make sure another Covid couldn't happen if we knew that this one stems from a lab and was intentionally released? Do we ban the creation and release of highly contagious bio-weapons? We already have, haven't we? Do we start a nuclear war to make sure China is no more and therefore they can't do it again (but anyone else could)? I'm not suggesting there's no use in finding out how it came to be, but unless it was some guy eating a bat and we can all agree on not doing that anymore and create a bat police to enforce that, I don't see how knowing who did it would prevent anyone else from doing it.
      • read_if_gay_ 5y ago
        > How would we make sure another Covid couldn't happen I don't know, I'm not an expert. But clearly, having more information is strictly better than not having it. So let me flip the question around and ask why should we not investigate?
        • luckylion 5y ago
• Clewza313 5y ago
  https://archive.is/2aP1f https://archive.is/2aP1f
• darawk 5y ago
  Honestly though, do we? Why? It almost certainly wasn't man made and intentional. That's the only case we really need to know the origin story for, and I don't think anyone serious thinks that is plausible. Otherwise, the worst case is that it was a lab accident of some kind. It'd be fun to point and blame China for it and all, but is it something we really need?
  • sushikokk 5y ago
    Yes.like air crash investigations, to avoid it happening again.
  • philliphaydon 5y ago
    We don’t know if it was man made or not, or intentional or not. There’s a lot of conflicting evidence. What we do know is the ccp is blocking any sort of investigation into the origin and possible cause. They began trying to sweep it under the rug just like SARS. The downside of all this is that the people of China suffer, when it’s not china that’s to blame. It’s the ccp.
  • ramblerman 5y ago
    The problem with the boeing 737 MAX was also not intentional. Unless you would argue we shouldn't investigate that either, why do you make a distinction here?
    • blitzar 5y ago
      Boeing has been fined $2.5bn by the US justice department after being charged with fraud and conspiracy in connection with two fatal crashes of its 737 Max airliner. Sounds like the DOJ found intention in there.
  • redis_mlc 5y ago
    Everything you said is not only false, it's deliberately evasive. There's around a 90% chance it was intentionally modified and escaped one of the WIV labs (mice with humanized lungs were used for testing.) Even the moronic head of WHO, who's a doctor, admitted a couple of months ago that "obviously labs leak." See my post above for more early details. There's nothing wrong with blaming China, especially since they've been uncooperative with any investigation, and fed WHO false information until today (the previous WHO visitors to Wuhan were given a report by the CCP to use.) In fact, it's certain they're working on the next corona variant since that's the job of the WIV labs. Is the problem on HN that only a few people know the timeline and facts, or are you folks wilfully blind? I'm genuinely curious how after 18 months posts like the above are still written.
• underwater 5y ago
  If you want to chase a conspiracy that actually matters, go find out who is pushing the narrative that COVID is fake and vaccines are dangerous. That conspiracy is literally killing thousands of people.
  • padiyar83 5y ago
    I don't think that's a conspiracy. Motivations there, however misplaced they may be, are quite clear.
    • asplake 5y ago
      Groups of people deliberately creating and spreading disinformation is by any sensible definition a conspiracy
      • notacoward 5y ago
        Do you also believe that correlation implies causation? Because it's practically the same thing. A conspiracy requires that people conspire, i.e. coordinate. Correlated action is entirely possible without conspiracy, as is evident during any traffic jam or holiday shopping rush.
      • luckylion 5y ago
        No, it would be a conspiracy only they conspired to do so. I don't think that's the case with most of them. There are a lot of movements coming from different backgrounds, believing in different things that are meeting at "it's not real, don't get vaccinated". The Bill-Gates-Wants-To-Kill-Us-people aren't conspiring with the Big-Pharma-Wants-A-Perpetual-Vaccine-Business-People, they just happen to come to the same conclusion ("don't do it"). From what little exposure I had to them, I think they're honest in their ideas. I believe they're wrong on most counts, but I don't think they're sitting at home scheming how to fool the masses. I'm sure there are some who seek to influence public opinion by spreading false narratives, but the large majority seems to just have lost pretty much all trust in Western governments and looks for alternative theories that explain the state of the world.
• ghyiihdruh 5y ago
  No, it doesn't. It will only fuel anti-science sentiment all over the world and put scientists under scrutiny and attacks. We need more science, not more science attacks. It will also vindicate Trump like anti-scientists just when we need more science to tackle climate change, inequality, gender gap, and yes, search for viruses with pandemic risk due to human encroachment on wild life so we can be ready for them. Any sort of lab leak confirmation will basically destroy the science of virology just when we need it most. Just look at what Fukushima did to nuclear energy acceptance. Now more people die of coal burning radioactivity than ever died because of nuclear energy one. Do we really want to do the same with virology and molecular engineering, which are life saving sciences?
  • sullyj3 5y ago
    I hate to be be the one to tell you this, (just kidding, I get a little sadistic thrill out of it) but if you think the best way to defend science is to shy away from searching for truth, you may possibly have missed the entire point of the enterprise.
  • ramblerman 5y ago
    Seeking objective truth is precisely scientific. Science doesn't care if the result could be construed to be pro or anti Trump. You are speaking about science as if it is religion.
    • ghyiihdruh 5y ago
      Scientists need to consider the political impact of their findings. If it will only be used to bring harm in the world it's irresponsible to share it.
      • deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      • ramblerman 5y ago
        Placing what you morally or politically desire to be true over the objective truth is religious dogma. You argument is exactly the same one the Church used to prevent Copernicus's idea that the earth rotated around the sun.
• chalcolithic 5y ago
  The world needs a proper investigation into how the pandemic was handled way more than this. Viruses will come again as they always have done and mounting a less disastrous response would be really nice.
• davidjytang 5y ago
  Some comments are trying so hard to convince people NOT to have proper investigation.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• officialjunk 5y ago
  we need to solve the pandemic problem first
• somewhatbetter 5y ago
  A hearsay evidence says it was developed by the holland government.
• hammyhavoc 5y ago
  Even if the true origin was irrefutably confirmed, and it was manmade, so what? What is there to be gained rather than just dealing with the problem? Finger-pointing and violence?
  • kbelder 5y ago
    Knowledge and truth is so unimportant compared to appeasement and consensus, right?