zlacker

I don't think we disagree? There's plenty of reason to dislike the CCP, in relation to their handling of SARS-CoV-2 and otherwise. I just don't think SARS-CoV-2 originating in a WIV lab accident would add to that.

>>triple+(OP)
It would add to it, because it would significantly increase the number of lies they told the rest of the world, given that they've been maintaining that it isn't a lab leak.

>>fighte+Z8
The thing with covid was it caught everyone by surprise. It’s not like the US even caught on first. It devastated Italy before we even flinched, so that alone is evidence that, at least for the US response, we would have gone to shit no matter who warned us.

>>chrisc+9b
The counterfactual is hard to reason about. SARS-1 was contained because international travel was restricted immediately after the first few cases. Once you seed multiple countries with it, competence matters for little.

>>fighte+Z8
Depending on the official, the CCP also seems to be maintaining that SARS-CoV-2 didn't originate naturally in China either, thus their (entirely unsupported) frozen food theory and push for sampling in other SE Asian countries. So I again see plenty of reason to dislike the CCP, but little specific to actual lab vs. non-lab origin.

I'm absolutely not saying the origin doesn't matter for anything--if 2.9M people died due to a particular class of research, then that absolutely should affect our judgment as to whether that research should be funded or permitted (though that cost/benefit tradeoff seems grossly unfavorable to me regardless). The link between that question and China's perceived culpability just seems bizarrely overstated to me, divorced from the reality that the USA was entirely supportive of that research pre-pandemic.

>>triple+B01
Isn't that just one rogue official on Twitter? The mainstream CCP narrative is that it originated in a Wuhan market.

So a lab leak, if true, would indeed significantly increase the number of lies being told.

>>fighte+M31
As far as I can tell, the mainstream CCP narrative is basically everywhere except China:

https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1181292.shtml (USA, misidentified as vape lung)

https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1183658.shtml (something with Fort Detrick)

https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202101/1214376.shtml (not the Huanan market, maybe imported seafood)

I guess you could try counting up and comparing the total lies implied by each origin, but the volume is so high that seems pointless to me. Their strategy seems more like a general fog of confusion to me than a particular story intended to be believed.

>>fighte+Gl
Sars 1 made it to the US and many countries. Short story was it was contained because it was much more deadly, and transmission was tied to symptoms so it was more easily detected.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-did-the-world-shut-...

One of the first things done by the Trump administration was close borders with China, but it was not enough.