That reads as reasonable to me, but raises a subsequent question: if these lapses are so common and so many countries possess the capacity for serious mistakes, why don't we see more regular outbreaks (if not full-blown pandemics) caused by labs? In other words, what makes COVID special? I didn't find a satisfactory answer to the latter question in the article.
It's my (uninformed, uneducated) opinion that the severity of the author's claims don't correspond to the reality of the last few national and international disease crises (AIDS, Ebola, Zika, COVID). Which isn't to say that we should absolutely dismiss the possibility that COVID originated in a lab, only that claims that it did amount to currently unsubstantiated claims about COVID's special status among other recent pandemics.
The problem I have is that China isn't interested in investigating the start of the pandemic. They've thrown away their wastewater samples, there's some evidence WHO found of SARS-CoV-2 spreading locally prior to December 2019, but no backtesting of any samples. Nobody seems to be looking at the bats in Hubei for sarbecoviruses.
By blocking study of the zoonotic origin of the pandemic, they can use the theory it was imported in food for domestic propaganda. For external propaganda they're happy to have conspiracy theories flying about this lab leak theory creating a "firehose of falsehoods" and distractions. They can rely on American scientists to get engaged with the conspiracy theory and debunk it, wasting their efforts and then they can use that also for domestic propaganda.
Meanwhile nobody gets fucking outraged that China isn't properly investigating the origin of the virus and isn't aggressively looking at the bats in Hubei and any animal farms in the surrounding area. My suspicion is that animal farms (like minks) functioned as a bioreactor that had many opportunities to spillover from bats and then the close contact allowed it to spread well and mutate to optimize it for a more human-like ACE2 receptor, then the mink contact with humans allowed multiple spillover events until it started to spread epidemically in humans.
Which wouldn't that be in China's interest?
I don't get why the 'cover up' (maybe i'm too biased with that term, utter lack of cooperation) beyond just the top down controlling nature of the CCP.
Their actions don't lend us any trust so we do have to ask why..
https://www.wsj.com/articles/possible-early-covid-19-cases-i...
They are acting without any concern for the outside world - not for how they are perceived, not for any consequences. They are acting with pure self-determination. This works because they know they can be self sufficient and have a long term plan to get there.
Controlling the information/narrative domestically is the only variable they need to manipulate that matters. So as an outsider, it all seems quite inexplicable, but if you see it as a way to achieve long term political and infrastructure goals while maintaining social harmony locally - most of their actions make sense, even if they may not be morally justifiable to some/many/all people in some/many/all situations :)
Of course, all this allows the media to disclaim the party’s responsibility for basically everything.
Also, yeah; they view China as a self-determined empire stretching back 5000 years. The Chinese generally view Americans as arrogant children and not that smart. I suggest any white person who doesn’t understand racism go to China — they don’t give a fuck that you’re white and in many places will actively disdain you. If you tried to date a Chinese woman outside the large coastal cities you’d likely be literally run out of town. They are reaching the point where they don’t really need us; their own internal consumption is overtaking their exports to the US.