zlacker

This is the most naive take of the real world. Yes. The Chinese government can easily make Chinese scientists lie when needed.

"with zero evidence"? The Chinese government told their labs destroy lab samples at the beginning of the pandemic. The Chinese government refuse to give raw data of early patients to the WHO investigation team. Not matter what the origin of the virus is, the "covering up" is strongly supported by evidence.

>>temp89+(OP)
> The Chinese government told their labs destroy lab samples at the beginning of the pandemic.

I know the news reports you're referring to, but they're a good example of sensationalist reporting on China.

Very early on, when several patients in Wuhan had pneumonia of unknown cause, doctors sent samples from the patients across the country for testing. When it turned out that they had a novel coronavirus, that triggered rules about dealing with dangerous pathogens. You can't just have something like SARS-CoV-2 sitting around in any diagnostic lab. Labs with lower standards of biosecurity were required to either transfer their samples to labs with better biosecurity or to destroy them.

These sorts of rules are not unique to China. The US has very similar rules. However, in the hands of the news media, this story has been misrepresented.

> The Chinese government refuse to give raw data of early patients to the WHO investigation team.

Good luck getting any government to allow you to take 75000 de-anonymized patient records out of the country.

>>Diogen+Tt
Nobody is asking for "75000 de-anonymized patient records" at all. You lost total credibility by making this kind strawman attack.

>>temp89+t01
I'm not "attacking" them for wanting to have access to large amounts of raw patient records (which is, in fact, what the dispute was about). It's just not surprising that a sovereign country would refuse to allow foreigners to have that data.