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
Wait a second. The report was from the WHO not china. WHO have consistently confirmed it is not a lab virus. Or are we saying that the international group that entered china were some how in league with the CCP?

>>onetho+ob1
"Senior WHO official dodges questions about Taiwan’s WHO membership; praises China": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UlCYFh8U2xM

Japan's deputy prime minister calls the WHO the "Chinese Health Organization": https://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2020/04/29/commentary/w...

> are we saying that the international group that entered china were some how in league with the CCP?

There may be reason to expect that they or their superiors are ... biased.

>>waterh+Pb1
I agree on the Taiwan front, that's BS and annoying. But given WHO needed as much of China's cooperation at that time I can understand not wanting to aggravate them.

Really... Japan... because there is no history of tension between China and Japan that would make me doubt Japan's agenda here.

WHO is an international organisation, literally people from around the world work there... are ALL of these people actually secretly Chinese agents? Tell me how that works.

>>onetho+jd1
Let's assume that at least some key superiors at WHO are biased, but the majority of the lower-level investigators are honest and not especially biased. What can the WHO superiors do to try to prevent the investigation from producing an embarrassing report? Stratagems that come to mind: choose which investigators to send, choose who to lead the teams of investigators, get involved in writing up the final reports (either directly or by leaning on those who do). The investigators' work was presumably divided up; perhaps someone could have arranged for a CCP-friendly investigator to be in charge of a particularly sensitive area. Or the report summaries could omit or spin certain issues. I don't know how the investigation was organized, or the reports for that matter, but there's probably at least some room for the superiors to inject their bias into the overall outcome.

>>waterh+ng1
But that isn’t what happened. Investigators have been from US, Australia, Europe. Findings have been critical of China in terms of access to data, and access to sites.

They still have confirmed that it is not a lab grown virus, and have consistently confirmed it’s from the wild.