Covid19 - clinical / epidemiological thread

[We'llBeDoneIn15Minutes]

I'm old enough to remember when the lab leak theory was a conspiracy, school closures were harmless ,natural immunity didn't exist, toddlers had to mask for preschool and you had to show a vax card to enter a restaurant.

Looking back, that Florida Man seemed to be right about a lot of things.

New campaign slogan,
"DeSantis 24...
Same Trump Sense,
Without the Trump Nonsense"

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[We'llBeDoneIn15Minutes]

No one died in my family but I’m not giving my PPP loan back and it was a lot more than 9k.

It wasn't required to pay back PPP loans? Only in America.

 

[nimbus]

It wasn't required to pay back PPP loans? Only in America.

Correct. As long as the money was used for payroll.

 

[We'llBeDoneIn15Minutes]

Correct. As long as the money was used for payroll.

Oh ok. So it simply wasn't pocketed by you as pure government cheese... except that you coincidentally tripled your stated salary for that time period haha.

 

[nimbus]

Oh ok. So it simply wasn't pocketed by you as pure government cheese... except that you coincidentally tripled your stated salary for that time period haha.

Payroll goes straight into my pocket. It was pure government cheese. Pretty sure the vast majority of doctors got it. It was about time doctors got some government cheese like bankers and farmers have in the past. Their cheese dwarfed our cheese.

 

[We'llBeDoneIn15Minutes]

Payroll goes straight into my pocket. It was pure government cheese. Pretty sure the vast majority of doctors got it. It was about time doctors got some government cheese like bankers and farmers have in the past. Their cheese dwarfed our cheese.

I guess I should have

 

[Nephro critical care]

Gain in function research on coronaviruses was jointly conducted between US scientists and the Wuhan institute of virology. The research was approved by NIH and was funded by a grant from NIH and NIAID.
You cannot trust anything coming out of China. They have vastly undercounted their deaths. My sister-in-law’s father lives in China and contracted Covid in December 2022. He was in his 70s or early 80s. The hospital told him that nothing could be done for him and he should just go home and die. He died of Covid at home.

 

[vector2]

New Data Links Pandemic’s Origins to Raccoon Dogs at Wuhan Market

Genetic samples from the market were recently uploaded to an international database and then removed after scientists asked China about them.

www.nytimes.com

Unfortunately the article conflicts with my pre-existing conspiratorial confirmation bias about lab leaks so I guess I'll just have to ignore it.

 

[We'llBeDoneIn15Minutes]

New Data Links Pandemic’s Origins to Raccoon Dogs at Wuhan Market

Genetic samples from the market were recently uploaded to an international database and then removed after scientists asked China about them.

www.nytimes.com

Unfortunately the article conflicts with my pre-existing conspiratorial confirmation bias about lab leaks so I guess I'll just have to ignore it.

Then you completely missed the point. Nobody is trying to cancel you, harass you, or shut you up for having a plausible theory. Compare that to the insane reactions to those pointing out, hey guys, don't you think having a corona virus lab right there along with the area under Chinese lockdown from any foreign investigation looks possibly a tad suspicious and needs looking into?

 

[vector2]

Then you completely missed the point. Nobody is trying to cancel you, harass you, or shut you up for having a plausible theory. Compare that to the insane reactions to those pointing out, hey guys, don't you think having a corona virus lab right there along with the area under Chinese lockdown from any foreign investigation looks possibly a tad suspicious and needs looking into?

Portraying the average lab leak proponent as a thoughtful skeptic simply proposing alternative plausible theories is just a hilariously inaccurate misrepresentation of both the proponent and the data so far as we know it. Not even a page ago we have people acting as if a low confidence statement from the FBI was slam dunk proof.

Not to mention the conspiratorial "cancel you, harass you, or shut you up" line doesn't even gel with the fact that Fauci is in the record saying that no theory has been definitively proven one way or another.

"I have a completely open mind about that, despite people saying that I don’t. I have a totally open mind about that,” Fauci told host Chuck Todd. “But if you look at the preponderance of evidence that has been accumulated by international group of highly respected, evolutionary virologists, they feel and they’ve written peer reviewed papers on that, that the evidence strongly points to this being a natural occurrence of a jumping of a virus from a bat to an animal species to human, hasn’t been definitively proven. But the evidence on that is pretty strong. Having said that, we still all have to keep an open mind as to what the origin

Fauci Says He Has a 'Completely Open Mind' to Covid Lab Leak Theory

Dr. Anthony Fauci said he has an "open mind" about Covid-19's origins and the lab leak theory but that evidence points to natural origin of the virus.

www.google.com

​

 

[nimbus]

New Data Links Pandemic’s Origins to Raccoon Dogs at Wuhan Market

Genetic samples from the market were recently uploaded to an international database and then removed after scientists asked China about them.

www.nytimes.com

Unfortunately the article conflicts with my pre-existing conspiratorial confirmation bias about lab leaks so I guess I'll just have to ignore it.

To be fair, that story does not exclude a possible lab leak. Raccoon dogs may have been a….vector….but they had to get it somewhere too. Due to China’s opacity, I’d be surprised if that question is ever definitively answered.

 

[vector2]

To be fair, that story does not exclude a possible lab leak. Raccoon dogs may have been a….vector….but they had to get it somewhere too. Due to China’s opacity, I’d be surprised if that question is ever definitively answered.

Indeed, I agree it's likely we'll never know definitively. However, the leading theory by actual scientists (and not hyperpartisan conspiracy theorists) is bat -> intermediary animal -> human, so I think actually finding an intermediary animal lends some degree of credence.

 

[vector2]

I think a fair amount of skepticism of any scientific data coming from China is healthy these days. Anyone who would shoot down lab leak proponents out of hand (or call them racist, conspiracy nuts, etc) should be laughed out of the room.

The credulity that some ordinarily very smart people have to the Chinese government in all this is perhaps one of the greatest efforts I’ve ever seen to not learn from historical precedent.

Generally it goes like this: Are they authoritarian? Yes—> Should you take everything they say that happens to completely exonerate them as true? No.

I’m sure a lot of Stalinists would insist that the Holodomor wasn’t an engineered famine. They probably have books worth of seemingly convincing evidence that it was “completely natural processes” that killed 10 million people.

Again, it's funny that whenever folks with generally charitable views toward lab leak proponents bring them up, they always pretend they're talking about serious, rational, Sherlock Holmes-esque investigators engaged in skeptical, scientific inquiry.....when in reality 999 times out of 1000 a lab leak proponent is a conspiratorial partisan charlatan like Rand Paul who ---- let's be clear here --- could not possibly care less about the truth or what [non-Chinese] professional virologists / epidemiologists say about COVID origins.... just as long as he can score cheap political points and stick a finger in the eye of China for self-serving reasons.

I think many people would take the lab leak hypothesis somewhat more seriously if its proponents weren't essentially all conservative people who are absolutely convinced of its veracity despite (for whatever reason) a lack of any substantial confirmatory evidence to date.

 

[nimbus]

Truth about COVID.
View attachment 367894

That looks like a pangolin, not a raccoon dog. Wrong critter

 

[Dr. Rude]

Again, it's funny that whenever folks with generally charitable views toward lab leak proponents bring them up, they always pretend they're talking about serious, rational, Sherlock Holmes-esque investigators engaged in skeptical, scientific inquiry.....when in reality 999 times out of 1000 a lab leak proponent is a conspiratorial partisan charlatan like Rand Paul who ---- let's be clear here --- could not possibly care less about the truth or what [non-Chinese] professional virologists / epidemiologists say about COVID origins.... just as long as he can score cheap political points and stick a finger in the eye of China for self-serving reasons.

I think many people would take the lab leak hypothesis somewhat more seriously if its proponents weren't essentially all conservative people who are absolutely convinced of its veracity despite (for whatever reason) a lack of any substantial confirmatory evidence to date.

You mean like John Stewart?

 

[Iso4ane]

To be fair, it’s not like the US isn’t studying biological agents in their military labs. And they’ve had a few breaches too, we’ve just been lucky that it didn’t lead to a pandemic.

 

[vector2]

Your characterization of lab leak people is way off, and honestly laughably snobby and prejudicial.

You and others need to stop watching so much CNN and Stephen Colbert. Not all conservatives are trailer trash like you seem to think.

Again and again, you all keep repeating this mischararacterization of lab leak proponents as
some kind of bonafide skeptics. If these people really were of the position that they're simply keeping an open mind and not ruling anything out, then that's one thing. Unfortunately, the actual facts show that the lab leak proponents are 1. Largely partisan, 2. Aren't just "not ruling it out" but believe it to be true, in contrast to the vast majority of actual scientific opinion.

I know entire departments of physicians who wouldnt rule it out, and we’re not all partisan shills.

Lmao, I love how you believe this adds credence. Physicians, due to their above average intelligence, are kings of Dunning-Kruger'ing themselves into thinking they're experts on things they actually don't know jacksht about. Doesn't matter if we're talking about stocks/finance or viruses/epidemiology.

 

[vector2]

I’d really love to know where the “actual scientific opinion” formers gets their data from on this. My guess is whatever they’re being fed is carefully calculated by people who would spend every bit of money they could to make this look like an accident.

Were any of them that aren’t Chinese nationals personally working at the institute of virology and knew everything going on there? No? Then there’s literally no amount of evidence they could produce that could be thought of as credible.

Again, the credulity these experts have for whatever the Chinese government sees fit to provide them is astonishing. How do you know every bit of data and evidence they’re getting isn’t some fabrication or misdirection by people who only have all the motivation in the world to fabricate and misdirect all of this?

Do you not think there’s a high possibility that these experts are maybe, just maybe, being made fools of?

This has nothing to do with the dunning Kruger effect. No one thinks they’re an expert on virology. However, we are smart enough to be skeptical of people who have repeatedly given us reasons to be skeptical by fabricating tomes of economic, population, scientific data all while engaging in large scale intellectual property theft of the rest of the worlds advancements.

Would you take the word of an expert in chiropractic? After all, they have a much better command of “the science” of chiropractic than you do. How about someone who works for Purdue pharmaceutical? Their scientists definitely know more about how opioids work than any of us, after all.

I don't understand why you think that the scientists or general public who are skeptical or agnostic toward the lab leak theory are only or mostly forming their opinions based on what the Chinese are feeding to them. Of course China is going to obscure or conceal any information related to the source of the virus.

But the important point here is that:

...the CPC would rather deal with a hostile external environment in which no smoking gun can be produced that proves SARS-CoV-2 originated in China, whether zoonotically or from a lab accident, than allow a global audience to closely scrutinize its missteps.

Why China won't cooperate on finding the origins of COVID-19

For Beijing, winning its u2018peopleu2019s waru2019 against the coronavirus by controlling the propaganda narrative is more important than learning the truth about the pandemic.

www.japantimes.co.jp

Lab leak proponents take China's stonewall lack of cooperation to mean 100% that their hypothesis is true, but in reality China is not going to cooperate even if the origin is natural (which it most likely is). Thus, the most rational position is one that acknowledges that 1. So far pretty much every epidemic/pandemic of this nature has had a zoonotic origin, 2. There is no scientific evidence to date proving that SARS-CoV-2 originated from a lab accident.

 

[vector2]

Ok, sure, but regular people aren’t exactly known for being perfectly rational actors.

I mean look at the facts. Millions of people thought it was necessary to change and disinfect their clothes and bodies when they got home from Covid hospitals, even though we knew beyond a shadow of a doubt it was not spread through surface contact. Millions of people wore masks while outside for years even though we knew 100% this was unnecessary

No evidence in the world could have convinced them these things weren’t necessary, but we know they weren’t being rational.

You're rewriting history. For large swaths of the pandemic no one had any idea the precise mechanisms of transmission and to what degree it was spread by contact, droplets, airborne, etc. And during that time is was perfectly rational to change/disinfect potentially contaminated objects. Same goes for masks. Regardless, you're talking about a virus that killed millions upon millions of people, so pretending that some added degree of protection was irrational is the very definition of you being irrational.

Also, even if we grant that people later in the pandemic were being irrational, what's your ultimate point here? That lab leak theorists similarly have a right to be irrational? Two wrongs don't make a right.

This is a similar situation. Sure, it hasn’t happened before that we know of that a virus has been created in a lab, but it’s certainly possible that they were trying to do this, and decided to make a bunch of copies of these potentially deadly viruses that they found, and then very well may have intentionally let loose one to cause worldwide economic havoc. I think there’s a high degree of possibility that they allowed this virus to leak, knowing what would happen. Everything that has happened since it was released has allowed the communists to tighten their control over the people, and it also has the benefit of disrupting the entire world economy, who are their enemies, for 3 years.

This is a quintessential example of what a conspiracy theorist sounds like. You take some very vague generality (like some viruses are studied or modified in labs), and from there make a bunch of unsupported leaps and jumps to a theory that specifically states SARS-CoV-2 was not only created in a Chinese lab but was intentionally spread by the CCP to cause worldwide havoc, including on their own people. The only problem is that you don't have any evidence for these claims. Just speculation that sits upon extremely circumstantial base claims.

Whether or not they actually created the virus for this purpose is almost irrelevant.

Yeah, this is the end-state of the conspiracy. The unproven original claim is just accepted as true and we don't even worry about whether any motive actually makes any gd sense.

 

[deleted1156848]

SARS viruses are studied in biosafety level 3 facilities of which there is more than 100 in China. Essentially the pandemic could have started in any city and people with no knowledge would have perseverated on it being a lab leak. Now the department of commerce and department of veteran affairs have low confidence that it was most likely released from a lab.
Now Fauci can be executed.

 

[vector2]

Not rewriting history at all:

Surfaces Are ‘Not the Main Way’ Coronavirus Spreads, C.D.C. Says (Published 2020)

If you’re worried about wiping down grocery bags or disinfecting mailed packages, this C.D.C. guidance might bring some relief. It’s not new information; the agency has been saying this for months.

www.nytimes.com

Printed May 2020, specifically states “the agency (CDC) has been saying this for months”.

Well, your post said "Millions of people thought it was necessary to change and disinfect their clothes and bodies." You weren't talking about grocery bags and mail packages. Are you telling me you went to the hospital, intubated some covid patients, then skipped the hand sanitizer, went home in your scrubs, and kissed your family?

But again. Regardless. We're talking about changing clothes, wiping down your counters, and using masks during a pandemic that was killing millions of people. Even if those were later discovered to be unnecessary things, doing them wasn't irrational on the same level as what you're positing about a Chinese lab leak.

I’m not accepting it as true, but I’m not accepting it as false either, and I know few real people beyond pundits who are 100% convinced of any theory. I’m just saying it can’t be completely known, and there are extremely strong motives for an authoritarian government to be a malicious actor and release this virus.

Right, and if it can't be completely known, the rational thing to do is accept that (for many reasons) there is an absence of any concrete evidence whatsoever for a Chinese lab origination of specifically SARS CoV2 and an absence of any concrete evidence for an intentional release to the Chinese public and the world.

But that's not what Rand Paul and Ted Cruz and millions of their constituents are doing. What they're doing is assuming their theory is absolutely 100% true and then shouting for Fauci to be thrown in jail.

More control over its people. Economic havoc for the rest of the world. They lock down their population and let it spread, knowing the west couldn’t lock theirs down like they did.

Sorry, but this is a stupid theory.

 

[vector2]

Well, your post said "Millions of people thought it was necessary to change and disinfect their clothes and bodies." You weren't talking about grocery bags and mail packages. Are you telling me you went to the hospital, intubated some covid patients, then skipped the hand sanitizer, went home in your scrubs, and kissed your family?

Stupid is as stupid does.

Your warrior and pundit Jon Stewart seems to disagree with your entire world view, just so you know. Whereas you’ve made me certain I’d never invite you into my home, as I don’t deal well with total jerks.

“The larger problem with all of this is the inability to discuss things that are within the realm of possibility without falling into absolutes and litmus-testing each other for our political allegiances as it arose from that,” Stewart added.

“My bigger problem with that was, I thought it was a pretty good bit that expressed kind of how I felt, and the two things that came out of it were, I’m racist against Asian people, and how dare I align myself with the alt-right," he added.

Stewart said the backlash he received from people on the left was “swift, immediate and quite loud.”

“The part that I don’t like about it is the absolutes and the dismissive like ‘f**k you, I’m done with you. I will never forgive you, you have crossed an unforgivable line. You’ve expressed an opinion that is antithetical to mine, or not mine,’” Stewart continued.

Lol, "my warrior." You're a funny guy. Disingenuous and full of logical inconsistencies for sure (as if one credulous liberal comedian's social commentary proves or disproves any of the actual claims or hypotheses you've made). But definitely funny.

And yeah, I did go home to my roommate without drenching myself I’m bleach and decontaminating. Guess what? He never got it. Womp womp

Wait, are you saying you didn't wash/sanitize your hands?

Also, good thing there's no other germs transmitted by contact in the hospital.

 

[chessknt]

I have still yet to see an answer as to why anyone should care if it was a lab leak or not. Even if all their wildest dreams are true--china hand made the virus then released it on purpose to destroy the west--what should we do about that? The global world order won't allow us to economically strangle China and declaring war on them would end the world way more effectively than covid tried to, so what exactly is the point of poking this over and over again? What specific action s would the USA (or the world) realistically take if this was true?

 

[vector2]

I think I’ll just let other people form their opinions of who’s more rational based on the tone we both take. You seem angry, and I hope you can figure it all out and end up being right.

Should we base rationality on tone.....or should we base it on the fact that you have absolutely no concrete evidence for the things you believe about the origins of the virus and its supposed intentional release?

 

[nimbus]

I have still yet to see an answer as to why anyone should care if it was a lab leak or not. Even if all their wildest dreams are true--china hand made the virus then released it on purpose to destroy the west--what should we do about that? The global world order won't allow us to economically strangle China and declaring war on them would end the world way more effectively than covid tried to, so what exactly is the point of poking this over and over again? What specific action s would the USA (or the world) realistically take if this was true?

Maybe a sternly worded arrest warrant like the International Criminal Court issued for Putin and Lvova-Belova.

ICC judges issue arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin over alleged war crimes — Guardian US

Arrest warrants issued for Russian leader and his children’s rights commissioner for ‘unlawful deportation’ of Ukrainian children

apple.news

 

[pgg]

And for your information, people do have the right to be a little irrational and not be labeled as conspiracy nut jobs. The people who do that ought to be embarrassed and check their privilege and their own irrationalities. Irrationality is part of the human condition, and this othering of the irrational is one of the biggest drivers of people like trump being elected to shove it in the labelers faces.

This is the first time I've seen someone seriously suggest that some arguments or behaviors are defensible because they're irrational.

 

[nimbus]

When the conspiracy theorists try to sabotage your hospital. My condolences to anybody who works there.


“Before last year, the public monthly meetings of the board of Sarasota Memorial Hospital in Sarasota, Florida, were sleepy affairs, typically drawing just a handful of attendees. The hospital, a 98-year-old public healthcare system that serves more than a million patients a year, was considered a crown jewel of the community: A highly rated public safety net institution composed of two hospital buildings and several clinics, its core mission is to serve people who are uninsured or underinsured. At a typical board meeting, members would discuss the hospital’s priorities, from finding healthcare providers who practiced in specialties that the community lacked to building a new cancer center.

So it came as a surprise late last year when attendance at the board meetings began to grow: More than a hundred people showed up in December’s monthly board meeting, then 200 in January, and 300 in February. The attendees, some traveling from hours away, lambasted the hospital for adhering to the CDC’s recommended Covid protocols, accusing emergency care physicians of murdering patients. “We were getting people complaining, and they’ve never even had a family member in the hospital, and they’re talking about the horrible treatment they’ve received,” Dr. James Fiorica, the hospital’s chief medical officer, told me. “You wonder if there is a different agenda than how we treated the particular patient.”

Mike Flynn and MAGA activists wage war against a Florida hospital

“You wonder if there is a different agenda than how we treated the particular patient.”

www.motherjones.com

 

[nimbus]

https://www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/assessments/Report-on-Potential-Links-Between-the-Wuhan-Institute-of-Virology-and-the-Origins-of-COVID-19-20230623.pdf

 

[chessknt]

The answer remains supremely irrelevant. Whether China intentionally or unintentionally created a bioweapon and released it on us, nobody in the world is going to do **** about it, especially now. Pointless to keep investigating.

 

[We'llBeDoneIn15Minutes]

The answer remains supremely irrelevant. Whether China intentionally or unintentionally created a bioweapon and released it on us, nobody in the world is going to do **** about it, especially now. Pointless to keep investigating.

Couldn't disagree more. If intentional that is one of the biggest crimes against humanity in the history of the earth. We should know everything possible about it, even if it very obvious at this point where it originated and very obvious that the Chinese government has no issue exporting the virus to the world while at the same time trying to contain it in one area of their country.

 

[chessknt]

Couldn't disagree more. If intentional that is one of the biggest crimes against humanity in the history of the earth. We should know everything possible about it, even if it very obvious at this point where it originated and very obvious that the Chinese government has no issue exporting the virus to the world while at the same time trying to contain it in one area of their country.

Mkay so in your ideal world what are the next steps after this discovery? Nuke China? Economic sanctions (that actually do something)? A strongly worded letter?

 

[rowsdower88]

Mkay so in your ideal world what are the next steps after this discovery? Nuke China? Economic sanctions (that actually do something)? A strongly worded letter?

Broad based international regulations of future gain of function research? Resource sharing and collaboration on future developments?

We don't have to be limited to punitive measures only. We could do these things even if it wasn't the case that it was engineered, but then we get into more practical questions that I won't pretend to have answers for like:

If it wasn't the case that existing research standards were insufficient to prevent the pandemic (i.e. an error in wuhan caused the pandemic), would there be as serious a need to devote resources to improve those standards?

 

[chessknt]

Broad based international regulations of future gain of function research? Resource sharing and collaboration on future developments?

We don't have to be limited to punitive measures only. We could do these things even if it wasn't the case that it was engineered, but then we get into more practical questions that I won't pretend to have answers for like:

If it wasn't the case that existing research standards were insufficient to prevent the pandemic (i.e. an error in wuhan caused the pandemic), would there be as serious a need to devote resources to improve those standards?

Why would you think that an actor willing to engineer a virus like Covid would adhere to any rules you want to make up?

Any action taken is going to antagonize China and unlike showing support for Tawain this antagonism has no benefit/gain for anyone. Nobody interested in this question is worried about creating collaborations to try to help the future, they are people who want to hurt China or take vengeance in some way except of course neither of these things can actually happen without severe consequences that nobody actually has an appetite for.

 

[We'llBeDoneIn15Minutes]

Mkay so in your ideal world what are the next steps after this discovery? Nuke China? Economic sanctions (that actually do something)? A strongly worded letter?

No.
Unsure.
No.

If I'm making foreign policy of course I want to know if a large super power is guilty of unspeakable crimes at worst or maybe just gross dangerous negligence or maybe nothing at all. Information like that is highly critical to future interactions and decisions with said country. "Hey, let's be attentive but we might be able to trust them" vs "Holy crap that government is evil and be very skeptical and overly cautious when dealing with them." Seems important to me to know.

 

[rowsdower88]

Why would you think that an actor willing to engineer a virus like Covid would adhere to any rules you want to make up?

Any action taken is going to antagonize China and unlike showing support for Tawain this antagonism has no benefit/gain for anyone. Nobody interested in this question is worried about creating collaborations to try to help the future, they are people who want to hurt China or take vengeance in some way except of course neither of these things can actually happen without severe consequences that nobody actually has an appetite for.

I don't know if it was engineered or not. I'm also definitely not assuming ill intent.

For the sake of argument, let's say it was gain of function research that was accidentally released into the public.

In that scenario, I would want world governments and health bodies to engage in more collaboration and resource sharing to prevent future accidents.

I would say I'm interested in this question for that reason.

If there was ill intent, which as far as I know there is currently no evidence of, then we could begin the conversation about punitive actions.

 

[VA Hopeful Dr]

No.
Unsure.
No.

If I'm making foreign policy of course I want to know if a large super power is guilty of unspeakable crimes at worst or maybe just gross dangerous negligence or maybe nothing at all. Information like that is highly critical to future interactions and decisions with said country. "Hey, let's be attentive but we might be able to trust them" vs "Holy crap that government is evil and be very skeptical and overly cautious when dealing with them." Seems important to me to know.

Even if COVID never existed, we already knew that.

 

[chessknt]

No.
Unsure.
No.

If I'm making foreign policy of course I want to know if a large super power is guilty of unspeakable crimes at worst or maybe just gross dangerous negligence or maybe nothing at all. Information like that is highly critical to future interactions and decisions with said country. "Hey, let's be attentive but we might be able to trust them" vs "Holy crap that government is evil and be very skeptical and overly cautious when dealing with them." Seems important to me to know.

China commits genocide, controls what their population is allowed to read, is run by a dictatorship, props up a psycho with nukes who forces his population in to poverty while their families next door live in one of the wealthiest nations on the planet etc...

I don't think anybody is unsure about who/what the government of China is. They are simply too big to do anything.

 

[chessknt]

I don't know if it was engineered or not. I'm also definitely not assuming ill intent.

For the sake of argument, let's say it was gain of function research that was accidentally released into the public.

In that scenario, I would want world governments and health bodies to engage in more collaboration and resource sharing to prevent future accidents.

I would say I'm interested in this question for that reason.

If there was ill intent, which as far as I know there is currently no evidence of, then we could begin the conversation about punitive actions.

In a world where all the governments followed rulea and cared about the general benefit of mankind that would make sense, but that isn't how governments think. Especially not China who would literally execute innocent people if it spared them global embarrassment.

 

[rowsdower88]

In a world where all the governments followed rulea and cared about the general benefit of mankind that would make sense, but that isn't how governments think. Especially not China who would literally execute innocent people if it spared them global embarrassment.

We can recognize that there are bad actors in the world AND work towards improved international cooperation. Those aren't mutually exclusive, and in the scenario I described improved collaboration would be the best outcome.

We are currently sanctioning many Chinese officials for their participation in the Uygur genocide. I support that. I also support reducing the likelihood of an accidental (again, an assumption I'm making) pandemic.

Unless we can definitively say that the people responsible for Uygur genocide (or other atrocities) are the same people responsible for engineering Covid-19, I think improved collaboration is the answer here.

All of this is still highly speculative though, even our own government can't decide if it was engineered or not.

 

[We'llBeDoneIn15Minutes]

China commits genocide, controls what their population is allowed to read, is run by a dictatorship, props up a psycho with nukes who forces his population in to poverty while their families next door live in one of the wealthiest nations on the planet etc...

I don't think anybody is unsure about who/what the government of China is. They are simply too big to do anything.

Ok that's very reasonable if your thinking is we know they are horrible so this doesn't change my opinion. I thought you might be coming from a more left view of it being xenophobic to even look for possible evil covid origination.

But maybe there is benefit for those with a more warm and fuzzy outlook of the Chinese government to realize your views aren't so xenophobic as more potential evidence piles on? Should the worst be proven true, that would be of benefit for people to know, right?