by lazycrazyowl on 2/13/21, 5:48 PM with 632 comments
by ttz on 2/13/21, 7:17 PM
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".
by tripletao on 2/13/21, 8:17 PM
The 1977 Russian Flu pandemic was genetically near-identical to a strain from 1950, without the expected mutations that should have appeared after 27 years of undetected circulation among humans or animals. It's been widely suspected in mainstream literature to have escaped from a research or vaccine manufacturing accident, to the point that the NEJM casually wrote:
> The reemergence was probably an accidental release from a laboratory source in the setting of waning population immunity to H1 and N1 antigens
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMra0904322
But at the time, the WHO said:
> Laboratory contamination can be excluded because the laboratories concerned either had never kept H1N1 virus or had not worked with it for a long time.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2395678/pdf/bul...
And it's absolutely bizarre to me that people are asking why the origin even matters. After thousands of people died in Bhopal, did it matter whether better chemical safety standards could have prevented that? So with millions dead now, how could you possibly not wonder whether our current standards for the sampling and manipulation of poorly-understood pandemic-candidate viruses are adequate?
by mgamache on 2/13/21, 6:39 PM
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-who-ch...
by mgamache on 2/13/21, 7:33 PM
https://www.biospace.com/article/1nih-awards-ecohealth-allia...
by esja on 2/13/21, 7:04 PM
by Fricken on 2/13/21, 10:17 PM
https://mobile.twitter.com/PeterDaszak/status/13605511085659...
https://mobile.twitter.com/TheaKFischer/status/1360590441817...
by tebuevd on 2/13/21, 7:42 PM
by zug_zug on 2/13/21, 6:53 PM
by Leary on 2/14/21, 7:52 AM
by mc32 on 2/13/21, 6:37 PM
by rossdavidh on 2/13/21, 6:53 PM
by knolax on 2/14/21, 6:39 AM
The only article that I can find that actually tries to levy complaints of obstruction is this one from the NYT[0]. However, several of the WHO investigators quoted have gone on Twitter accusing the NYT of twisting their words[1]. Makes me pretty doubtful that there was any obstruction.
On one side we have a country with half a million cases that has since December been accusing China with "coverups" without materializing much evidence, despite document leaks and now an international investigation. On the other side we have a country with orders of magnitude fewer total and per capita cases, whose case demographics have matched up with numbers from other countries, and whose export numbers in neighboring countries has also been consistent with their reported numbers. At this point if there was some sort of obstruction or coverup the Whitehouse would have a smoking gun by now.
Other comments here talking about the "lab origin" theory pretty much hinge on theological logic. "Well it could come from a lab, and there's no proof yet that it didn't, so I have faith". It isn't Bayesian reasoning if you don't bring up rigorous statistics to prove your point.
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/12/world/asia/china-world-he...
[1] https://www.moonofalabama.org/2021/02/caught-in-the-act-new-...
by bloomfilter on 2/14/21, 7:12 AM
Not to mention thousands of large social gatherings that happened way after the virus was already causing thousands of death.
If you can’t control other countries, maybe we should at least figure out how to improve our response?
What if some other virus comes out of nature next time when we have no one to blame?
by berdario on 2/14/21, 11:48 AM
https://twitter.com/PeterDaszak/status/1360551108565999619
https://twitter.com/TheaKFischer/status/1360590441817772034
https://twitter.com/LiuXininBeijing/status/13607416005072691...
And people wonder why I complain about propaganda in the western world :/
by ggm on 2/14/21, 12:12 PM
On the other hand zoonotic disease is known to exist.
Please do not allow dislike of a state party system to pollute your thinking. Your views about China do not inform what happened and in the end, this becomes repetitive.
I might add that I dislike many things about other economies just as much. I too indulge these "they musta dunnit" fantasies. But, I wake up to myself: wasting too much time on motive and belief is not helpful.
There is no strong evidence of lab caused leakage. The WHO scientists are competent. WHO politics are ugly, all UN politics are ugly. Read the science.
by endisneigh on 2/13/21, 6:59 PM
by dm319 on 2/13/21, 6:36 PM
by hereforphone on 2/13/21, 7:55 PM
by jchook on 2/13/21, 7:16 PM
https://academic.oup.com/cid/advance-article/doi/10.1093/cid...
Edit: removed incorrect conclusion
by xnfra on 2/14/21, 9:34 AM
by prof-dr-ir on 2/14/21, 12:15 AM
Unfortunately this is not yet possible because, well, the WHO scientists are still working on it.
by WarOnPrivacy on 2/14/21, 5:19 AM
by Sparkyte on 2/14/21, 5:49 AM
by amelius on 2/14/21, 12:44 PM
by jpswade on 2/14/21, 9:27 AM
by yawaworht1978 on 2/14/21, 10:17 AM
by robomartin on 2/13/21, 7:29 PM
This is what gets me in politics: For all the well-deserved vilification Trump was subjected to, it seems that every day we are discovering some of the important policies and opinions they issued were right on point. The dichotomy, it seems, is one of vilification due to his often insolent and down-right ignorant public style and presence rather than anything I would characterize as substantive.
I have worked with people like that. People with sometimes deep personality and social issues who do great work and excel professionally. To take it in another direction, back when I was actively mentoring high school FRC teams we got all kinds of kids. There were kids on the Autism spectrum as well as Asperger's. I can say that every single one of them was superb in their team participation once I learned how to work with them and, above all, accept that they didn't sound or behave like the rest.
I am not making a parallel between Trump and these conditions. Just saying that it is sometimes important to focus on substance rather than theater.
Case in point:
I just got my second COVID vaccine yesterday. Shaking and feeling like crap as I type this (it will last a few hours).
When Trump said vaccines were coming by the end of the year everyone laughed at him. It was brutal. I remember watching CNN as they tore him to pieces for daring to "not use science" and raising our hopes in such ignorant ways.
Well, we are currently vaccinating at a rate of approximately 1.5 million people per day and this will go up.
Did Biden do this? Look, I am in manufacturing. Have been my entire life. You don't produce 1.5 million per day of anything, distribute and administer it with some sort of a "then a miracle occurs" approach. Biden has only been in office a few days. There is absolutely no way he could have any material impact on vaccine delivery and administration during that time. These things have to be planned and well-executed for months. Which means I got my vaccine (and 1.5 million people are getting their vaccines) because of the organization and planning the Trump administration created and drove, likely back to March/April of last year. I'd be interested in hearing from anyone --WITH MANUFACTURING EXPERIENCE-- who thinks you can instantly go from 100K per day to 1.5 million per day just because there's a new boss in town. I mean, remember that we couldn't even produce masks and PPE at scale in this country (or nearly any other country). In this sense this should have been a massive wakeup call to the world, not just the US.
This means that Biden's "100 million in 100 days" will be achieved and exceeded --by Trump-- so long as people go get vaccinated. And, without a doubt, Biden will take credit for 100% of it. This is what I hate about politics.
There are other issues for which he was vilified that will turn out to have been right non point. I won't dive into the details here. Some of these include:
- The Paris climate accord (seriously, google the document, read it and tell me how it will save the world...it's nonsense...expensive nonsense)
- Tariffs on steel and aluminum. I am doing an aircraft design project right now. I can buy US-made aluminum for roughly 25% less than the cost of steel. That has never been the case in my life. Of course, everyone in the metals industry wants Biden to keep the tariffs in place. May I remind you Trump was called "racist" and all kinds of other things for enacting this?
- The pipeline. Aside from the fact that tens of thousands of jobs will be lost (a good friend of mine lost his and is facing having to sell his house to survive). Everything around you requires oil. It doesn't matter if it is made from plastics or not. You don't think aluminum and steel require oil for manufacturing and more? Do some research. The US achieved net exporter status during Trump's years. That will surely go away. Also, cost of goods (not just gasoline) was kept under check because we controlled oil. Not any more. A friend in Arizona tells me gasoline prices have doubled there. I regularly ship large aerospace components in the thousands of pounds. Freight prices are being impacted by this (my opinion) stupid move. Yes, we all want everything clean. However, there's a fine line between wishing something and being delusional about how and when it can be achieved.
Anyhow, I'll stop here. There's more, but I need to go to the couch and shake-off the vaccine side effects for a few hours. If you disagree with the above, be honest enough to do the research before forming an opinion. Above all, if you do not have operational experience running a business, you need to understand that you are not equipped to understand the many dynamics at play here.
Simple example: If gas prices explode companies are going to have to raise pay for their workers. Sounds good until you understand at least two things. First, the worker doesn't get to use that raise, it goes towards paying for oil. Second, that money could have been used to hire more people and create jobs. In fact, higher oil prices could destroy jobs in areas one might not suspect.
No, everyone isn't going to go buy electric cars and trucks. Get over it. This will take a long time. The infrastructure isn't ready.
FYI: Fixing climate change by 2030/2050/2100? Delusional. We can't do it. And yet we are going to burn resources promoting pure bullshit instead of talking about how to adapt.
Politics sucks. I want honest exchange of ideas judged by their merit, not through a political lens.
by throwitaway1235 on 2/14/21, 1:21 AM
https://www.reuters.com/article/health-coronavirus-italy-tim...
by steve76 on 2/14/21, 4:29 PM
Authoritarians, their unchecked ambition, unrestrained by laws replace life with nothing. To them, a place with plagues and murder is a good place. Billions of people are something to be processed, to be mined for hollow celebrity and ambitious license unrestrained by laws. A genetic weapon released from a communist military lab??? Everyone is very lucky they're still breathing. This could have easily killed the world. And for what? A 1% margin on soy bean prices? Americans, people we trusted with power and money rushed to defend their precious marxism like some teenage girl catfished by jihadis in 2014.
Since everyone gets to what they want, I'm going to emit a matter wave into the center of the sun. The sub orbits a black hole. I make it so the surface of that black hole is a faster, easier path than completing an orbit around it. I expand that to the surface of the Earth for gravity applications, coherent control of pair production. All observable celestial bodies are thermal effects of what's here on Earth.
It's one thing to mine an asteroid with fuel cells and drones. It's another thing to microwave it out of the sky, as if I command the weather around us, the clouds above, and even the great heavenly bodies themselves!!!
by renewiltord on 2/13/21, 6:40 PM
The US should use its own primary sources in future to evaluate disease spread. China will lie to the WHO and the WHO will protect it.
But to know the truth, we should use our modern equivalents of Key Hole. There is no truth but that which you have examined yourself.
by count_chockula on 2/14/21, 4:20 AM
by f430 on 2/13/21, 6:49 PM
by throwawaysea on 2/13/21, 6:57 PM
> Dwyer says that the team didn’t see anything during its visits to suggest a lab accident. “Now, whether we were shown everything? You can never know. The group wasn’t designed to go and do a forensic examination of lab practice.”
From https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/13/world/asia/china-who-wuha...
> Even in the best of circumstances, a full inquiry could take months, if not longer. The team must also navigate attempts by China to politicize the inquiry.
And yet a few days ago the WHO pushed out a hasty judgment that it was very unlikely the virus leaked from the lab. And in the last day they’ve already started backtracking after intense skepticism from the world - see https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-02-12/who-backs... titled “ WHO Backs Away From Outright Rejection of Virus Lab-Leak Theory”.
It also seems that now the virus may have been reported even earlier than we thought. From https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/12/world/asia/china-world-he...:
> The Chinese scientists also acknowledged they had discovered that 92 people were hospitalized in Wuhan as early as October 2019 with symptoms such as fever and coughing. The Chinese experts said they had found no trace of Covid-19 in those people, but the tests were incomplete. The W.H.O. team members said more research was needed.
Between the CCP’s early suppression of journalism and social media reporting on the virus, the fact that Taiwan was the first to warn the world, China’s repeated denials and delays in letting an outside team to visit the site, and their purge of all the coronavirus studies originating from this lab (https://www.the-sun.com/news/2113876/covid-cover-up-china-wu...), there is very little reason to trust the claim that a lab leak can be ruled out. If anything it only seems more likely that a massive coverup is in progress, and the WHO is the willing mouthpiece for it.
by blackrock on 2/14/21, 4:25 AM
That the Chinese eat bats? Or that this was a lab leak?
Because it obviously cannot be both!
But yet, all the racist white people of the world, and yes, they were all white people, were accusing the Chinese of being disgusting and eating bats.
The western world claims that they are multicultural, and not racist, but yet, this one thing caused them to show their true racist colors.
Surprisingly, no normal white people, came to the defense and shouted down the racists among them. Thus validating the fact, that their silence meant that they supported all the racist vitriol that came out from their fellow brethren.
The truth hurts. I know. I expect that my comment will be flagged and censored.
by howtofly on 2/14/21, 3:27 AM
by elchief on 2/14/21, 2:11 AM
by anovikov on 2/14/21, 9:23 AM
by diogenescynic on 2/14/21, 5:06 AM
by gfodor on 2/14/21, 1:08 AM
by coldtea on 2/14/21, 3:08 AM
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-spain-...
by underseacables on 2/13/21, 7:56 PM
by jjd33 on 2/13/21, 7:22 PM
North Korea seems a more trustworthy source of news than US nowdays.
by sgt101 on 2/14/21, 9:50 AM
To me this is like a magician distracting the audiences attention from the gold penny - you are all looking in the wrong place while the real issue is being forgotten.
by bluepirate on 2/14/21, 12:27 AM
by sjg007 on 2/13/21, 7:14 PM
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9
Now maybe the virus mutated from those initial 174 cases but that's unlikely.
China does have a narrative that covid19 reinfections are coming from imported frozen foods though so I'm not sure why they are pushing that angle. It's probably an economic one and to save face. But maybe it's real.. if it is we are screwed.
by foolmeonce on 2/13/21, 8:01 PM
That China blocked the Who's efforts and the WHO disclosed this is more relevant to future health policy than where this particular outbreak started. (Do we really want the public health system to tune to this specific scenario?)