zlacker

>>lazycr+(OP)
First gen Chinese, grew up in NA. Have contact with relatives "on the ground".

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".

>>ttz+rc
To me, both the official explanation and the conspiracy theory are both embarrassing for China and the CCP. SARS was supposed to have originated the same way -- in these disgusting third-world wet markets. The CCP shut them down after SARS for the sake of optics, but was too inept to "up" their health standards, and they conceded to pressure and reopened the disgusting third-world wet markets again.

If this was some sort of lab mistake, as the conspiracy angle suggests, IMO that's much less embarrassing. In the "real" explanation, thousands of mainlanders are regularly eating food contaminated with bat shit, with zero health standards. In the "conspiracy", they're a first-world country doing groundbreaking science, and an accident occurred.

I think they're probably telling the truth.

>>nickys+ST
In the lab scenario their lax standards wiped out 2 million people and they covered it up. In the wet market scenario, it mostly reflects on the local inhabitants doing the usual black market stuff most local inhabitants of most countries do, and the CCP can only do so much to control their people. Plus, lab source has many other possible implications that are concerning, e.g. engineering bioweapons, IP theft, more nefarious conspiracy if it turns out to be a purposeful leak, etc. Wet market is overall much more benign. Also, from an evidential standpoint, lab outbreak seems much more plausible. Very easy to connect the dots with researchers, funders, etc. On the other hand, they cannot even determine the proximate transmission animal for the wet market theory, and the supposed bat source assembly is based on a faked dataset from the wuhan lab.

>>yters+qU
What faked dataset are you referring to? The bat source was sequenced several years ago after guano harvesters fell sick. And the most likely lab scenario actually involves either gain of function research on that sample or that sample being exposed to animals and / or humans where it recombined to allow human to human transmission.