zlacker

>>datafl+(OP)
The origin of COVID-19 is going to be one of the biggest news stories in 2021-22 IMO. China's global reputation is going to take a hit. I don't think they did this intentionally. I think everyone had the best of intentions and either they found something deep in a bat cave or there was a lab mishap. I've gone down the rabbit hole on this issue. Here are some interesting links https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=R01AI110964&hl=en&as_sd... is the papers done by a NIH grant to Eco Health Alliance. This shows they were looking for new variants of Coronavirus at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7089274/pdf/114... This shows they were artificially synthesizing Coronaviruses and incubating them in monkey cells. Dr. Peter Daszak seems to be in the center of a lot of this and IMO had a conflict of interest being on the WHO COVID-19 origins report.

>>Bayesi+M41
> I don't think they did this intentionally.

Then why did they cover up and downplay the seriousness at the start?

>>sumedh+Tl1
It’s not far fetched to say if a lab escape did occur, it would be in the government’s best interest to keep that secret (it could easily affect reputation/blame from others).

An analogous example would be a hit and run by a drive. The driver may have driven recklessly but not have meant to do damage to others, after damage is done the driver doesn’t want to be discovered. Similarly if this was a lab escape, the government doesn’t want their recklessness to be known.