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[return to "Why the Wuhan lab leak theory shouldn't be dismissed"]
1. gregwe+pV1[view] [source] 2021-03-22 22:00:55
>>ruarai+(OP)
This is a great article explaining why a lab leak should always be a suspect. The alternative theory is that a virus traveled on its own (via bats or other animals) from bat caves 900km away to Wuhan where there are 2 labs researching bats. One of the labs is lesser known but is right next to the seafood market and the hospital where the outbreak was first known. [1]

This article points out that a lab outbreak could have happened in the United States and many places in the world. We need to avoid demonizing China over this if we want to ever find out the truth and learn how to prevent another pandemic outbreak.

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20200214144447/https://www.resea...

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2. strogo+R42[view] [source] 2021-03-22 22:48:18
>>gregwe+pV1
An eerily prescient quote from a paper[0] published in 2015, two of the authors of which are with Wuhan Institute of Virology:

> Understanding the bat origin of human coronaviruses is helpful for the prediction and prevention of another pandemic emergence in the future.

China has clearly contributed valuable research into bat coronaviruses. They had all the motivation to look into these after the first deadly SARS. I think it’s silly to presume CCP engineered a virus as part of some warfare strategy, or even to vilify/sanction them for a lab leak if it indeed was the cause (mistakes happen). However, CCP’s resistance to a proper thorough study of the origins of COVID is IMO not exactly appropriate.

Active research was taking place in the vicinity of suspected ground zero. Lab escapes happen—there are well-documented cases of the original SARS virus leaking from a lab in Beijing in 2004 (killing at least one person). Why was this time such a scenario discarded as so ridiculously impossible at first, and is still considered “extremely unlikely”? Is it politics?

[0] https://virologyj.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12985-...

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3. Aeolun+gk2[view] [source] 2021-03-23 00:29:47
>>strogo+R42
> However, CCP’s resistance to a proper thorough study of the origins of COVID is IMO not exactly appropriate.

It is, in fact, highly suspect. I’m not at all positive that it indeed leaked from a lab in Wuhan, but the fact they won’t let an independent investigation anywhere near it makes me lean more strongly towards that as a possibility.

The description of the last investigation into the origins of the virus felt more like a ‘guided tour’.

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4. ethbr0+bx2[view] [source] 2021-03-23 02:13:23
>>Aeolun+gk2
Or, you know, we may just be talking about a paranoid autocracy with an obsession for controlling information?

This is a government that bans talking about multiple periods of the country's history.

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5. bitrea+uD2[view] [source] 2021-03-23 03:12:18
>>ethbr0+bx2
For that very reason, we cannot accept their narrative at face value. We certainly don't have enough information to confidently eliminate the lab escape theory. The media has largely suggested that the lab escape theory has been disproved.
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6. ethbr0+9F2[view] [source] 2021-03-23 03:24:18
>>bitrea+uD2
If you ask a liar a question, and they lie, then the strongest conclusion isn't that you asked the right question -- it's that they're a liar.

China stonewalls pretty much every attempt by the international community to interfere with their internal control.

So this is more "business as usual" than "Clouseau found the smoking gun."

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7. bitrea+6Y2[view] [source] 2021-03-23 06:55:49
>>ethbr0+9F2
The smoking gun is that labs in Wuhan were studying different coronaviruses in bats at the time the virus emerged. One of those labs was right near the seafood market which had one of the first documented outbreaks.

It's all circumstantial evidence of course, but that's really all you're going to get with a country like China. We can be damn well sure that they would never admit to the virus originating from a lab leak. To me, this is the clearest and most likely source of the outbreak.

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8. j4yav+md3[view] [source] 2021-03-23 09:28:11
>>bitrea+6Y2
Can a smoking gun really be circumstantial?
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9. nickal+zc8[view] [source] 2021-03-24 19:42:31
>>j4yav+md3
Being a little bit pedantic here, but isn't all evidence, for something that can't be proven mathematically or definitionally, circumstantial?
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10. gadf+sYL[view] [source] 2021-04-07 13:48:32
>>nickal+zc8
This article, and some top comments, are shifting the narrative to how we must not "demonize" China, and must work to deal with lab leaks in future, in effect, presuming the assumption that China is unequivocally to blame, covering it with the mere color of reasonableness and fairness. So with such careful narrative massaging, we get to hold onto our desire to pretend China is 100% to blame, but frame it reasonably.

This sort of bias, or propaganda, or narrative massaging, under the guise of reasonableness, and non-demoization is pernicious.

These sentiments are like, we can frame our China-blaming as reasonable, via pretending the assumption[0], so under the guise of "not demonizing China", "giving credit were due but still holding to account" we can hold onto our excuse to blame China, we can pretend the assumption that China is unequivocally to blame.

Bullshit. Unhelpful, bs. If you want to pretend that you are doing this under the guise of actually discovering the cause, you can to satisfy your own need to pretend that, but it's dishonest, and not actually helpful to discovering the cause.

Blaming the enemy of the day for the pestilence of the season is as old as the hills, and makes boring, and biased, history. And makes you all propagating such cant, useful idiots, manipulated puppets.

Also, how is everyone forgetting the childhood lesson that the one so eager to point the finger of blame is often the one with something to hide, so desperate to deflect suspicion away from themselves?

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirming_the_consequent

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