[HN Gopher] US raises 'deep concerns' over WHO report on Covid's...
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US raises 'deep concerns' over WHO report on Covid's Wuhan origins
Author : lazycrazyowl
Score : 165 points
Date : 2021-02-13 17:48 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.reuters.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.reuters.com)
| mgamache wrote:
| Related: China refused to provide WHO team with raw data on early
| COVID cases,
|
| https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-who-ch...
| f430 wrote:
| If the CCP is innocent why not prove it to the world by sharing
| their data? Why hide things?
| buran77 wrote:
| While Chinese authorities may very well be to blame for this,
| your reasoning is flawed. Governments hide a lot of things
| for a lot of reasons, whether nefarious or not, especially
| when it comes to sharing with foreign powers.
|
| The "argument" that "if you've got nothing to hide then you
| have nothing to worry about" is is just as worthless when
| promoting encryption backdoors as it is now.
| [deleted]
| katbyte wrote:
| I'm not sure you can compare the two, "why are you
| encrypting your data/communication" is very different then
| "why are you not sharing the early virus samples"
| buran77 wrote:
| I looked at the principle of claiming that "if you're
| innocent why hide things". And that's _exactly_ like
| saying that if you 're not breaking the law then you have
| no reason to hide your communication from authorities
| because "they'll only look when they suspect something
| and that would just prove your innocence". If anything,
| accusing someone and asking them to prove their innocence
| opens the door to false accusations meant only to force
| the other side to leak some information. A principle you
| wouldn't want applied to you isn't a very good one.
| fsflover wrote:
| This principle applies to individuals, not to the
| governments. The latter are created by people to serve
| people and must be open and transparent. The alternative
| is being corrupt.
| elif wrote:
| In modern discourse we use the acronym CPC rather than CCP.
| Unless of course you are intentionally invoking red scare era
| politics.
|
| Edit: ah rip karma. who was I kidding. Why would you ever
| promote neutral discourse when you can take sides.
| willis936 wrote:
| It isn't a promotion of neutral discourse. The party didn't
| change, why would the name?
| elif wrote:
| So calling things by their preferred name is not neutral?
|
| This is like making a statement about the demonrats and
| expecting to be taken seriously.
|
| It has the intellectual power of intentionally
| misgendering someone as a means of insulting them.
|
| There is a reason that neoconservatives like Mike Pompeo
| are revitalizing your preferred acronym.
| willis936 wrote:
| The fundamental reason that names are considered
| important right now is because they are tied to expressed
| identity. Has the CCP's expressed identity changed?
|
| Recall when BP changed their logo last: months after a
| horrible oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The singular
| reason why BP changed their logo was an attempt to trick
| the public. It wasn't a changing of identity. Changing
| the CCP's name when they haven't even done it themselves
| would be the same kind of disingenuousness.
| elif wrote:
| I am not debating how the governance of china has changed
| since 1990. There are plenty of cases to be made there,
| but not mine. I am making a linguistic position.
| garrettgrimsley wrote:
| "commonly known as the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)"
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Communist_Party
| elif wrote:
| being "commonly used" is not the same thing as being the
| "correct uncharged verbiage."
|
| For an example, there are many similarly charged terms
| "commonly used" to identify geographic areas surrounding
| Israel, but in modern discourse we use "Occupied
| Palestinian Territory" since 1999.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Yeah, "correct uncharged verbiage" is not the same as
| "the name that someone wants themselves called". So, I'm
| not going to call North Korea "Democratic People's
| Republic of Korea" because despite their preference for
| being called Democratic, they are not.
|
| North Korea remains North Korea. CCP remains CCP.
| Blackwater remains Blackwater, not Akademi or Xe or
| whatever bloody thing they're called now. I'm not going
| to just go along with whatever rebranding their PR agency
| told them to do.
| alisonatwork wrote:
| I find this a really fascinating instance of micro-
| propaganda. CCP could evoke associations with "CCCP", but
| CPC might remind Americans of the Congressional Progressive
| Caucus or Canadians of the Conservative Party of Canada. It
| could be that neither acronym is especially neutral, not
| after surfacing the accusation that using one is implicitly
| biased. I have to admit to having used both acronyms in the
| past, but it was never for any malicious reason, it was
| just to try create continuity with other people in the
| discussion.
|
| The funny thing is that people in China use neither of
| these acronyms, they just refer to "the government" or "the
| party". This is probably the safest terminology to avoid
| being seen as biased one way or the other.
|
| What's so interesting to me, is that even your choice of a
| three letter acronym, which literally means the exact same
| thing just with a different word order, is considered to be
| taking a side. It goes to show just how fraught
| conversation on China has become that it's even considered
| important.
| elif wrote:
| It is not "my choice" of a three letter acronym.
|
| It is the party's choice for its English language
| representation.
|
| I'm not making any political statements here. I am
| suggesting that we use common nomenclature while pointing
| out a hazard of a specific instance of dated terminology.
| alisonatwork wrote:
| I think you misunderstood my usage of "your choice". I
| was using it as an indefinite pronoun, i.e. "one's
| choice".
|
| My point was that turning one's choice of synonymous
| terminology into a marker of political bias is itself an
| interesting comment on how difficult it is for people to
| engage in curious discussion about China. Given that at
| HN we are expected to assume good faith, I think it's
| fair to assume that most people who use CCP (or CPC) are
| not deliberately trying to take a side, they are just
| using a convenient acronym.
| elif wrote:
| Consider that the scope of discussion here is that a WHO
| scientist received a summary of 174 covid cases rather
| than a full version of the data, and himself "couldn't
| comment. Whether it's political or time or it's
| difficult... But whether there are any other reasons why
| the data isn't available, I don't know. One would only
| speculate."
|
| Yet the comment I sacrificed Karma to inform of
| "potentially unconscious bias of language" was willing to
| offer nothing more than postulation that a political
| party is responsible for "hiding the data", and the
| repetition of the CCP identification.
| hartator wrote:
| > It is the party's choice for its English language
| representation.
|
| Maybe OP disagrees on the party authority to define
| language including naming itself.
| mgamache wrote:
| Well, lets say they don't know, but there's a chance of a lab
| leak. Why take the chance when you can use FUD to confuse the
| world and remove the downside risk (which is very large).
| loveistheanswer wrote:
| Perhaps they did not account for a potential Streissand
| Effect
| sixothree wrote:
| Innocent of what exactly? You seem to suggest they are hiding
| a single specific crime here. Which doesn't make any sense.
| ArkanExplorer wrote:
| But we did have data from cruise ships early in 2020 which
| showed that deaths were heavily age-specific, and that the
| death and hospitalization forecasts from organisations like
| Oxford were highly inaccurate.
|
| Yet for some reason the West seemed intent on pursuing
| lockdowns, demonising countries like Sweden and Belarus which
| didn't.
|
| Hospitals have never been overloaded (apart from places like
| New York where symptomatic patients were sent back into nursing
| homes - or Italy, with generally inadequate pandemic
| preparations) and in places like Sweden deaths in 2020 are up
| only single-digits against 2018:
|
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/525353/sweden-number-of-...
|
| As soon as we realised we were over-intubating patients, and
| that proning and oxygen treatment were sufficient for serious
| admissions, and that Vitamin D and C (and other cheap and
| generic treatments) were enough for the general population, the
| potential for hospital overload (beyond what flu waves incur
| anyway) was also eliminated.
|
| And yet we still persist with lockdowns despite them causing a
| greater amount of harm than the virus itself due to factors
| like interrupted education, mental damage, and interrupted
| regular medical treatment.
|
| There were political games afoot in both China and the West in
| terms of this virus. The fact that the American economy was
| booming just before the re-election of a non-mainstream, anti-
| China president, and that pandemic responses justified mail-in
| voting on an unprecedent scale is too coincidental to ignore.
| mhh__ wrote:
| Yes, (((they))) made up the election votes so Biden would
| win.
|
| Absolutely. It definitely cannot be that Trump never polled
| more than 50% nationwide and lost his initial vote by nearly
| 3 million.
|
| You've cracked the code!
|
| Downvoters: Facts don't care about your feelings, any
| evidence of wrongdoing?
| ArkanExplorer wrote:
| It doesn't really matter if the votes were legitimate or
| not. Just by changing to postal voting you alter the
| demographics of the voting base in ways which can change
| the outcome.
| renewiltord wrote:
| The WHO is a useless organization. For political reasons, it will
| be necessary to engage, but hopefully US authorities will not
| treat it as an information source.
|
| The US should use its own primary sources in future to evaluate
| disease spread. China _will_ lie to the WHO and the WHO _will_
| protect it.
|
| But to know the truth, we should use our modern equivalents of
| Key Hole. There is no truth but that which you have examined
| yourself.
| the-dude wrote:
| I watched the WHO press briefings in about the first month.
|
| If the Western world would have done what the WHO advised at
| the time, we all more or less would have a COVID stuation like
| the Chinese have for some time.
| ourlordcaffeine wrote:
| Taiwan, the country that arguably handled the virus best of
| all, did so well because they ignored the WHO and quickly
| closed their border, at the time when the WHO was insisting
| that countries do not restrict travel to/from China.
| katbyte wrote:
| Could you elaborate on what that situation is?
| kergonath wrote:
| Mask early, serious lockdown as soon as it becomes serious,
| and don't end lockdowns before numbers are way low. We
| masked late, put lockdowns in place late if at all, and
| ended them way too early, which means that some countries
| went through several ones. And we're not through yet.
|
| That said, I don't share the optimism of the parent poster.
| This would be a heavy burden in terms of freedom and human
| rights for a result that is far from certain. There have
| been some resurgences, the extent of which is of course
| unknown because the truth would be damageable to China. And
| there is no knowing whether the next variant would start it
| all over again, in which it would be back to square one.
| ern wrote:
| I am curious about this "pro-lockdown, pro-mask" advice
| from ethe WHO.
|
| I am almost certain that they took a long time to
| recommend masking. I also am fairly confident that the
| WHO was/is opposed to lockdowns and it certainly still
| opposes travel restrictions.
| kergonath wrote:
| > I am almost certain that they took a long time to
| recommend masking.
|
| They did. Initially they recommended testing and
| isolating (which obviously could not scale much). Their
| guidelines were still happily ignored as they were
| updated, though.
| aksss wrote:
| I'm not sure the federal government has the plenary power
| to enforce such things in the United States. So it was
| never an option. Authoritarian governments or single-
| state nations are better able to mandate behavior.
|
| The lockdowns, even as implemented, extracted an enormous
| toll on small businesses and mental health.
| kergonath wrote:
| > I'm not sure the federal government has the plenary
| power to enforce such things in the United States.
|
| I am certain it hasn't. But the same reasoning applies
| for state governments. Having public health decisions
| taken at the county level is sheer madness.
|
| > The lockdowns, even as implemented, extracted an
| enormous toll on small businesses and mental health.
|
| This is entirely true, and I hope this will make people
| and governments take health issues and depression more
| seriously. Now, we don't have an alternative earth to
| experiment, but whether one strict lockdown for 6 months
| followed by progressive reopening is better or worse for
| people and the economy compared to a succession of waves
| and partial lockdowns with no end in sight should
| certainly be discussed.
|
| This is even more skewed in countries that do not have a
| proper safety net and where people have the choice
| between going to work ill or not having a job.
| Aunche wrote:
| I think it's more of a cultural difference rather than
| government one. Korea and Taiwan are democracies and
| managed to control the pandemic as well. The US
| government has the authority to declare martial law, but
| doing so would completely undermine people's faith in the
| government.
| the8472 wrote:
| _> > If the Western world would have done what the WHO
| advised at the time, we all more or less would have a
| COVID stuation like the Chinese have for some time.
|
| > Mask early_
|
| Are we living in the same timeline?
|
| https://twitter.com/WHO/status/1243972193169616898
| https://twitter.com/UNGeneva/status/1244661916535930886
| https://twitter.com/WHO/status/1234095938555260929
| https://twitter.com/WHO/status/1234871709091667969
| https://twitter.com/WHO/status/1234619007841525764
| Aunche wrote:
| Most of those tweets were discouraging the use of masks
| _for the purpose of protecting yourself from Covid_. This
| still holds true today. At the time, a lot of people were
| hoarding masks, thinking it would protect themselves.
| Letting them continue wouldn 't help control the spread,
| and probably would have increased the spread in
| hospitals.
|
| I agree the fourth tweet has aged particularly terribly.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Thank you for putting this stuff together. In the past, I
| did the same when people asked for "source?" for things
| like "Fauci and the HHS recommended _against_ masking ".
| After I go through the painful process of reacquiring
| each of the sources, these people disappear.
|
| "Source?" is now the dual of the Gish Gallop strategy. It
| is a meta-rhetorical strategy to amplify work done by
| some perceived "opponent".
|
| After all, for anyone who truly believes in sourced
| claims, they would say "I found these sources that do X.
| What have you found?" This is natural because they are
| more interested in the truth than in an argument against
| an "opponent".
|
| So now I don't respond to disproportionate requests for
| work. I am glad you did, though. And looking through
| them, it's exactly as I remember: anti-mask advocacy.
| the8472 wrote:
| I'll give credit to the WHO for not deleting their
| tweets. It would be even better if they offered a mea
| culpa explaining how they came to this position that was
| incorrect in hindsight. But not just disappearing things
| already is better than some others do.
| MrYellowP wrote:
| > they disappear
|
| https://help.archive.org/hc/en-
| us/articles/360001513491-Save...
|
| :)
| renewiltord wrote:
| Haha I mean the people disappear after firing off their
| "Source" calls. They're not really interested in sources.
| It's a technique to get you to waste your time.
|
| The sources remain. Editing for clarity.
| kergonath wrote:
| Right, yes, that was early March. The guidelines evolved
| as more information became available and they released
| new advice in early April, which is far from ideal but
| better than a lot of governments reactions.
|
| Their official stance before that was rigorous test,
| isolate, and trace, which was not done seriously anywhere
| outside China.
| alisonatwork wrote:
| I was in China during the initial lockdown that started
| in late January/early February. The instructions from the
| government were clear from day one: stay home as much as
| possible, wear a mask when you go out, wash your hands
| when you get home, open your windows and keep your place
| well-ventilated. All that advice holds true today, just
| as it held true for SARS, MERS and other similar viruses.
|
| I feel like the reporting from the WHO was deliberately
| sub-par for political reasons. For example the
| vacillating on masks - everyone knew that masks helped,
| but the WHO tried to be on the fence about it because
| some countries were experiencing shortages. Another
| example of the WHO playing politics was when they
| neglected to publish the advice not to trust folk
| remedies, since that would have gone against a Chinese
| government campaign to try softly promote TCM, perhaps as
| a form of psychological comfort to the hundreds of
| millions stuck in lockdown.
|
| Living through corona has helped me to realize that
| successful public health policy isn't just about giving
| everyone the raw facts, it's also about managing people's
| morale and trying to influence their behavior through
| propaganda. I think the WHO tried to do this, but it
| wasn't universally successful.
| the8472 wrote:
| Well, _mask early_ may not have been the best choice of
| words then. Taiwan 's reaction would qualify as early.
| And Taiwan is the thing that the WHO has been very
| conspicuously be silent about even when asked explicitly.
|
| https://twitter.com/fu7371/status/1262786140777545728
| kergonath wrote:
| I agree. They did not advise to mask early on (airborne
| transmission was still largely unproved around May, if I
| remember correctly).
|
| In my mind it was 'mask before the apparition of
| symptoms', and I realise that my wording was not ideal in
| the context.
| ern wrote:
| There was a concerted effort from government officials,
| bandwagon-joining academics (aided by journalists) in the
| West to downplay masking, and to ridicule and shame those
| who wore masks. Here is a Time article from eary March
| where it was described as the equivalent of "knocking on
| wood". https://time.com/5794729/coronavirus-face-masks/
|
| I am fairly certain that the US government reversed
| itself on masks before the WHO did (Wikipedia says WHO
| changed its advice in June).
|
| Did it have to do with a lack of evidence, or was it a
| cynical ploy to preserve mask stocks for medical
| professionals? I recall it being the latter:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/17/opinion/coronavirus-
| face-...
| Toutouxc wrote:
| I remember that at the time when we were masking up in
| the Czech Republic (first half of march, maybe..?), WHO
| was actually talking a lot about the dangers of face
| masks when used too eagerly and improperly. Or at least
| that was what had gotten through our mainstream media.
| ern wrote:
| You are remembering correctly.
|
| WHO changed its position on masks as late as June 2020.
| https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20200608/who-changes-
| stance-...
|
| The US government changed its stance by April:
| https://www.dallasnews.com/news/public-
| health/2020/04/08/why...
|
| In much of the world, people who wore masks were subject
| to ridicule, especially on social media because of the
| cynical public health messaging, which seemed to be about
| preserving stocks of masks for healthcare workers by
| telling the public that "masks don't work"
| (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/17/opinion/coronavirus-
| face-...).
|
| The New York Times op-ed above, and efforts from the
| Czech Republic made discussing public masking more
| acceptable in the US, and then the rest of the world.
| zepto wrote:
| The WHO seemed to be doing everything it could to
| _prevent_ people from talking the virus seriously at the
| beginning.
|
| https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-health-who/who-
| says...
| malandrew wrote:
| Re: masks, you need to remember that China pretty much shut
| down all exports of PPE to keep it for domestic use. There
| wasn't much more the rest of the world could have done to
| follow that directive. Even those of us that did have some
| stockpiled were asked to donate them to hospitals. Masks were
| hard to come by for a while until a cottage industry popped
| up to create second-rate masks.
| renewiltord wrote:
| I am actually very unhappy about this. I knew that masks
| were reusable. The advice against reuse explains why they
| are reusable under the right conditions.
|
| But then I gave away my N95 mask stockpile (years old1) in
| a moment of weakness because local medical personnel
| appealed on the Internet. I regret it entirely because I
| didn't want to do it, had concrete rational reasons not to
| do it, and then I felt bad when they appealed and did it
| anyway.
|
| I really regret the emotional hijack. I'll never let it
| happen again. I just know they used those masks once and
| threw them away. Or maybe they used them zero times because
| they couldn't tell if they're safe because they're from the
| public. I really really regret it.
|
| 1 Because CA sees wildfires everyone I know has boxes of
| these. And old ones are not supposed to be used either, but
| the only common failure mode over ten years isn't
| filtration, it's the elastic, which was fine on mine.
| methodsignature wrote:
| Sure, if data from US would be enough to understand and fight
| disease. Otherwise, you need to create some sort of world
| health organization to share meaningful data and investigate
| inside all country participant without the appearance of [or
| actual] invasion of sovereignty.
|
| Thus, we have the WHO. You wanna replace it, it's gonna take a
| decade to get to another agreement if one even is made. Then it
| will have its own set of issues. During a pandemic, seems
| better to me to work with and hold accountable the one we
| have... kinda like the WH is doing today.
| renewiltord wrote:
| We don't need it for this. Intelligence organizations know
| that biological threats like this _are_ intelligence
| problems. They just didn 't think them likely or that the
| sick guy would be our enemy.
|
| However, now we know the adversary is truly an adversary.
| China _will_ suppress information on pandemics started within
| its borders.
|
| The game has changed. You don't listen to China about whether
| China is sick. You listen to Keyhole and your guys on the
| ground.
| [deleted]
| ZoomerCretin wrote:
| >China will lie to the WHO and the WHO will protect it.
|
| Do you have any reason to believe that this is true?
| mamon wrote:
| How about [1]? Corrupt organizaiton's loyalties typically lie
| with those who sponsor it.
|
| [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/china-
| pled...
| edmundsauto wrote:
| This is a particularly generic bit of evidence, based on
| cynicism with a bit of directional truth about incentives.
| Do you have anything that draws this connection more
| directly?
| [deleted]
| ganoushoreilly wrote:
| The past 14 or so months?
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| Remember that time a high up WHO representative was asked
| about COVID in Taiwan and he faked the video call freezing
| and disconnected? Then remember when they got him back he was
| again asked about Taiwan and said they had already discussed
| China?
|
| I remember thinking that the WHO wasn't what it seemed. Just
| one small example of course.
| f430 wrote:
| > China will lie to the WHO and the WHO will protect it.
|
| No idea why you are being downvoted for speaking the truth.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Thanks. Site guidelines discourage comments like yours but I
| was definitely rapidly getting downvoted till you said
| something. Interesting stuff.
|
| I don't think anything I said about the WHO is particularly
| controversial considering the last year and their
| disinformation campaign.
|
| Anyway, bodies like the WHO can't be effective information
| sources because you get in trouble if a novel contagious
| disease started in your country. It has to lead to increased
| money flow _to_ the diseased site at disease onset and
| decreased money flow to sites likely to risk creating novel
| disease.
|
| That is, market pandemic bonds structured on a regional basis
| will probably yield a better indicator than the WHO.
| kergonath wrote:
| There is no winning with you... Of course it cannot be too
| powerful, because then nationalists would scream bloody murder
| and refuse to have anything to do with it.
|
| The WHO is a forum to coordinate strategy and exchange
| information. Obviously, this requires a minimum of good faith,
| which seems to be difficult for some countries (yes,
| particularly dictatorships). But even then, it is better to
| have them within, collaborating on their terms, than to leave
| them outside, in which case it would be even harder to get any
| information out of them.
|
| So yes, China will lie, which will make life worse for
| epidemiologists and governments across the globe, but not as
| worse as it could be with China being entirely uncooperative.
|
| It is not the world police, and it won't come anywhere and do
| anything against the local government's wishes. Otherwise the
| screams world be even louder, and justifiably so.
| CyberRabbi wrote:
| The WHO has shown itself to be practically useless. The
| premise that sovereign nations need the WHO to cooperate is
| false. Diplomacy and cooperation between nations was the norm
| for many years prior to the WHO and will be the norm for many
| years after the WHO's inevitable abandonment and demise.
| kergonath wrote:
| Do you have a concrete example of public health cooperation
| amongst more than 2 nations before WWII? As far as I
| remember, every country just covered its metaphorical arse
| during the Spanish Flu pandemic, for example.
|
| Of course, cooperation is always possible, but what would
| be the extent of cooperation between say China, Russia, and
| the US if a new treaty were signed today?
| renewiltord wrote:
| I don't think anyone wants the WHO to be _powerful_. They
| want the WHO to be _honest_. And they aren 't. But that isn't
| the WHO's fault or anyone working there. It's a property of
| what the WHO is.
| kergonath wrote:
| > They want the WHO to be honest. And they aren't
|
| They are working with what they have, which comes from
| governments and governmental health agencies. If they don't
| have information, they say 'we don't know', even though
| everyone knows that the most likely scenario involves
| emergence in China.
|
| If one wants them to be able to coerce information out of
| China, then by definition it would need to be more
| powerful.
| OminousWeapons wrote:
| > They are working with what they have, which comes from
| governments and governmental health agencies.
|
| Their problem is not that their data is bad. Their
| problem is that they are acting like a political entity
| when they are supposed to be an impartial, data driven,
| scientific organization. For example, the WHO railed
| against common sense risk mitigation strategies such as
| travel restrictions (i.e. isolate China) early on with
| COVID when they were precisely what was needed to reduce
| risk. They did so for political or monetary reasons
| (closing borders harms economies). Xi latched on to this
| and used it as justification to keep borders open.
| Unsurprisingly, COVID subsequently spread rapidly between
| China and countries that had maintained open borders with
| China.
|
| It is not the WHO's job to consider the economic
| ramifications of their policy suggestions: that is the
| job of politicians. It is their job to put forward
| suggestions for how to limit the spread of disease
| regardless of the impact to economies or governments.
| xxpor wrote:
| Maybe the US shouldn't have abandoned our leadership
| position then. Ofc China would fill that vacuum given the
| opportunity.
| OminousWeapons wrote:
| Changing the political entity the WHO is beholden to
| doesn't solve the problem.
| xxpor wrote:
| Depends on your perspective, doesn't it?
| salawat wrote:
| If they are "working with what they have", then they
| should not speak from a position of authority.
|
| Authority is derived from something being something that
| _everyone has_. In the past, achieving that goal
| practically guaranteed authenticity to within a
| comfortable enough quanta for everyone to work with.
|
| With more advanced remote sensing equipment, the
| decreased cost to publish, reach one can attain for
| relatively little cost nowadays, that is no longer a
| luxury we can all afford to continue to entertain. We
| must all see with our own eyes. In the case that is
| frustrated or made impossible, it should not a surprise
| that the world acts as badly as it does.
|
| This is why the collective lie is the most powerful
| weapon fielded by modern civilization, and why there is
| such a jockeying for control of what the definition of
| allowable evidence is. Perception management is a weapon
| of mass destruction, and should be called out for what it
| is.
| specialist wrote:
| How's you do things, if you had a blank slate?
| specialist wrote:
| Agreed.
|
| Government is just people trying to do triage, discern
| signal from noise, coordination, move the ball forward...
| with a bunch of other people.
|
| People expect too much. It's amazing anything works at
| all. We should all marvel at the progress we've somehow
| achieved thus far.
|
| While striving too do better, of course.
| Frost1x wrote:
| >But even then, it is better to have them within,
| collaborating on their terms, than to leave them outside, in
| which case it would be even harder to get any information out
| of them.
|
| I tend to agree with this sentiment, however I'm always on
| the fence as to if acting on no new information is better
| than acting on false or misleading information. If you can't
| trust the source the data is almost worthless. Anyways,
| that's for self reported information. Getting any direct
| access to gather independent information I'd say is nearly
| always valuable unless it's also targeted with disinformation
| campaigns.
| xupybd wrote:
| The problem is that the WHO appears to have more legitimacy
| and authority than they do. I have no problem with the WHO
| existing and doing their job but we have to accept they are
| bound by international politics. In developed countries we
| should rely on local medical bodies first.
| kergonath wrote:
| That is definitely a problem; it tends to be seen either
| as the saviour of humanity or as a globalist evil. It is
| not perfect and not a substitute for proper public health
| policies.
| kergonath wrote:
| > I'm always on the fence as to if acting on no new
| information is better than acting on false or misleading
| information.
|
| Yeah, neither is good.
|
| > If you can't trust the source the data is almost
| worthless.
|
| It's worse than worthless, because you are expecting
| disinformation. Though to be fair you can also get
| disinformation from sources you trust...
|
| > Getting any direct access to gather independent
| information I'd say is nearly always valuable unless it's
| also targeted with disinformation campaigns.
|
| That's why it's good to have inspectors. But even then,
| there are limits. Inspectors usually cannot go anywhere
| they please (otherwise nobody would sign that treaty), so
| it's always possible to hide things from them.
|
| Our governments have also the right to be critical when
| reading reports, particularly based on data from
| untrustworthy countries. We elect them to do their job, and
| that job involves quite a bit of critical thinking when
| dealing with other countries. They also have experts and
| often scientific cooperation agreements that can complement
| the WHO.
|
| So yes, the WHO is imperfect. Perfecting it is quite
| difficult without causing countries to drop out, and
| countries should not be reliant on only one source anyway.
| SurfingToad wrote:
| WHO does seem like a bureaucratic mess, though. I read their
| situation reports from the beginning of the pandemic, and was
| surprised by how often they messed up. Links were wrong,
| random files went down, and they were released at seemingly
| random time points. Their press conferences were often hours
| late. And Tedros Adhanom praised China to an honestly
| embarrassing extent.
|
| Before the pandemic, I thought the WHO was a relatively
| capable organization. But from what I witnessed they just
| seem like a prestige farm used as a stepping stone to more
| lucrative careers.
| kergonath wrote:
| There is certainly quite some room for improvement.
| toiletfuneral wrote:
| right dude, china needs to be truthful just like the US has
| been /s
| addicted wrote:
| You mean primary sources like the program that had US
| scientists embedded in Chinese laboratories that Trump
| dismantled in 2019?
|
| Also, you clearly don't understand what the WHO does and how
| critical it has been in the reduction and even eradication of
| disease spread across the world over decades.
|
| Further, the WHO, much like most multilateral organizations is
| dependent on its member states for strength. When the most
| powerful member state voluntarily and unilaterally chose to
| disengage over the past half decade, it shouldn't be surprised
| that the 2nd most powerful member state is calling the shots.
| throwawaysea wrote:
| Has the WHO really been that critical or are we ascribing
| successes to them that are really the result of business and
| technological innovation? At least in the recent decade or
| two, they seem to consistently be bad at their job and mired
| in politics. Even before the coronavirus there were issues
| like their failures in managing the Ebola outbreak
| (https://time.com/4123858/ebola-crisis-who-response-
| failure/).
| aaomidi wrote:
| WHO is like your IT team. You only see their failures.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Okay, I'm happy to amend to "The WHO is useless for
| information on novel disease spread". That's what I intended
| anyway but clearly did not constrain the sentence correctly.
|
| Yeah, I'm sure as a multilateral platform for cooperation on
| things that everyone wants done they're good.
|
| But as an information source for novel epidemics, clearly we
| should use our spy sats.
| jlmorton wrote:
| How do we use our spy satellites for information about an
| epidemic?
|
| I'm really struggling to understand what you're suggesting
| here. I'm aware there is a whole cottage industry of
| conspiracy theorists that point to satellite photos of busy
| parking lots outside hospitals in Hubei Province as
| evidence of earlier spread of Covid than has been
| officially acknowledged. But there's no way to distinguish
| a busy parking lot caused by a severe influenza outbreak
| (which existed prior to Covid in Hubei) and a novel
| pathogen.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Using "spy sats" in a _pars pro toto_ sense. The
| intelligence apparatus.
| ssss11 wrote:
| The WHO needs to be credible and trustworthy as an impartial
| source of truth otherwise it is not required.
|
| Unfortunately this particular topic is heavily politically-
| loaded and CCP's track record of handling the virus leads the
| common person to believe the WHO won't receive the full
| information.
|
| In this case the WHO's hands seem tied. How are they supposed
| to fix that? (Genuine question, I would like the WHO to be able
| to fulfill its role well and serve the global public good)
| tebuevd wrote:
| "Deep concerns" over Navalny's poisoning. "Deep concerns" over
| Navalny's imprisonment. "Deep concerns" over the coup in Myanmar.
| And now "deep concerns" over China refusing to provide data to
| the WHO.
| sjg007 wrote:
| If it was lab created independent scientists would be able to
| figure it out and there would be evidence that it was. But it
| looks like there is not:
|
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9
|
| Now maybe the virus mutated from those initial 174 cases but
| that's unlikely.
|
| China does have a narrative that covid19 reinfections are coming
| from imported frozen foods though so I'm not sure why they are
| pushing that angle. It's probably an economic one and to save
| face. But maybe it's real.. if it is we are screwed.
| mgamache wrote:
| Firstly that was in March. Secondly it discounts the serial
| passage research which leaves little genetic evidence. All the
| potential sources are unlikely, so why discount a lab accident?
| jchook wrote:
| I don't feel convinced by the argument. Maybe someone can help
| me understand better.
|
| - Virus infects human ACE2 suboptimally, therefore it's not lab
| grown. Why? Because a virus engineer is always going for
| maximizing spread rate? Seems plausible that less-than-ideal
| infection rates of humans could be a feature rather than a bug.
|
| - A polybasic clevage site was not seen in SARS-CoV... but it's
| function is not known. Okay?
|
| - The virus backbone was "0day" and not previously known to
| researchers. Seems like a feature that a covert bio warfare lab
| would desire.
|
| The rest of the speculation seems to ride on the assumption
| that the virus originated in China (despite evidence showing
| otherwise[1][2]), and their discovery seems biased toward any
| data to support that conclusion.
|
| 1. https://academic.oup.com/cid/advance-
| article/doi/10.1093/cid...
|
| 2. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10654-020-00716-2
| loveistheanswer wrote:
| >Why? Because a virus engineer is always going for maximizing
| spread rate? Seems plausible that less-than-ideal infection
| rates of humans could be a feature rather than a bug.
|
| You are correct. There is both gain of function and loss of
| function happening in these types of experiments.
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK285579/
| tripletao wrote:
| I don't know whether SARS-CoV-2 escaped from a lab. But if it
| did, then not only is it probably not the first lab-origin
| pandemic, but it's also not the first time the WHO initially
| excluded that possibility.
|
| The 1977 Russian Flu pandemic was genetically near-identical to a
| strain from 1950, without the expected mutations that should have
| appeared after 27 years of undetected circulation among humans or
| animals. It's been widely suspected in mainstream literature to
| have escaped from a research or vaccine manufacturing accident,
| to the point that the NEJM casually wrote:
|
| > The reemergence was probably an accidental release from a
| laboratory source in the setting of waning population immunity to
| H1 and N1 antigens
|
| https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMra0904322
|
| But at the time, the WHO said:
|
| > Laboratory contamination can be excluded because the
| laboratories concerned either had never kept H1N1 virus or had
| not worked with it for a long time.
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2395678/pdf/bul...
|
| And it's absolutely bizarre to me that people are asking why the
| origin even matters. After thousands of people died in Bhopal,
| did it matter whether better chemical safety standards could have
| prevented that? So with millions dead now, how could you possibly
| not wonder whether our current standards for the sampling and
| manipulation of poorly-understood pandemic-candidate viruses are
| adequate?
| jchook wrote:
| Related: Scientists found SARS-CoV-2 antibodies in US blood
| samples taken from December 2019 to January 2020
|
| https://academic.oup.com/cid/advance-article/doi/10.1093/cid...
|
| Edit: removed incorrect conclusion
| mgamache wrote:
| That's not what is suggests: "These findings suggest that SARS-
| CoV-2 may have been introduced into the United States prior to
| January 19, 2020."
|
| Without Chinese data the origin will remain a mystery.
| kergonath wrote:
| Studies have shown that it was circulating in France back in
| November 2019. Not saying it originated there, there's no
| indication of that, but there is a possibility that it had
| already been spreading for some time before December 2019.
| f430 wrote:
| If the CCP have nothing to hide then why do they do everything
| they possibly can to hide things from the rest of the world?
| jeswin wrote:
| The domestic narrative in China is that the virus is of foreign
| origin, with the CCP press strongly suggesting that it's of US
| origin - eg:[1].
|
| The truth probably is that they know it originated (from
| animals) in China, and don't want the WHO to officially reach
| that conclusion. That's not particularly damaging to most
| countries, but in a communist country with tightly controlled
| information flow, the citizenry isn't shown a government making
| mistakes.
|
| 1: https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1183658.shtml
| OminousWeapons wrote:
| Politics. China is keen to not have the blame for COVID pinned
| on them. Accepting the blame makes Xi look weak and inept. It
| also opens up the door for countries to demand reparations.
| Meanwhile, every other country (especially the US) is eager to
| manufacture a narrative in which China eats the full blame for
| this because it absolves their politicians of responsibility
| for their complete mismanagement of the crisis. It sounds a lot
| better to say "we had a bioweapon unleashed against us and
| there was nothing we could do" than to say "this is just like
| the last 10 times we had a pandemic and we still botched our
| responses".
| pessimizer wrote:
| Surveillance and covert activity launched from the US and
| Western Europe is not done openly. If a US government agency
| discovered a US origin for covid-19 tomorrow, do you seriously
| think you'd hear about it, or that it would ever be reported in
| a mainstream media outlet? If it escaped from a US lab, they
| knew it at the time, and had no way of stopping domestic
| spread, do you think that US agencies would be above covertly
| also releasing it in Wuhan as cover, and getting Chinese assets
| to report about suspicious deaths on social media? China is
| secretive about important things, and the West is secretive
| about important things.
|
| To be clear, these scenarios are entirely and spontaneously
| made up, but they're also entirely _possible,_ and we 've
| fallen into the trap of believing any old bullshit about China
| simply because it's _possible_ , and reconciling our spreading
| it and our obvious ignorance with racist "inscrutable Chinese"
| tropes.
|
| The reason we don't know more about China is not because
| they're quiet, the reason we don't know about China is because
| we ban and censor media coming from China (just as they do to
| us, but moreso.) Somehow it's become mainstream to believe that
| the public shouldn't know what the Chinese government thinks
| (or the Russian government, or the Iranian government) and that
| it's better to rely on rumor and retired generals.
| ttz wrote:
| First gen Chinese, grew up in NA. Have contact with relatives "on
| the ground".
|
| My own experience: Don't ever trust the Chinese government on
| issues that could potentially involve the reputation of the
| party. Note that I'm not saying don't trust what CCP says, ever
| (sometimes they actually do good things) - just not on issues
| that involve anything to do with how the world might perceive
| them.
|
| Which is exactly what this issue is about.
|
| That's not to say we have _compelling_ evidence that this was a
| lab virus, either. I think, for me, it 's a, "we don't know, but
| I wouldn't be shocked at all if it was a lab virus".
| getpolarized wrote:
| Do we / did we even have the tech co be able to build this in a
| lab? I don't think we do.
|
| It MIGHT have been possible but Occam's Razor says it's more
| plausible it evolved naturally and just jumped species.
|
| FAR FAR FAR more plausible.
| mancerayder wrote:
| Why does it have to be "built"? It could have been isolated
| from bats and studied, and an error / human mistake occurred
| and it got out.
|
| There's a rational reason to study this one, since SARS (1.0)
| was a big deal in the early 2000's, and anyway why wouldn't
| you study something you don't fully understand as a matter of
| course. It's not a stretch if it was found that it leaked
| from the lab by accident and a cover-up ensued.
| ern wrote:
| The problem is that an accidental release from a lab has
| been deliberately conflated with the idea of a bioweapon
| and labeled a conspiracy theory. Coupled with aggressive
| propaganda efforts from China, and the fact that the Trump
| Administration pushed the theory of a lab release (turning
| the concept into political kryptonite for more than 50% of
| the US population) its discussion has become verboten.
| RegnisGnaw wrote:
| In the the more common lab theory is that it was a natural
| virus being studies in the lab. It escaped by accident.
|
| China has had multiple SARS escape accidents.
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| "Building" it in a lab might be too scifi. But it's possible
| they were experimenting with things.
|
| E.g. "killer bees" are a product of human scientists trying
| to engineer a better bee - the release was accidental. It's
| not like we have the ability to genetically engineer a bee
| from the ground up. But as a species humans have been
| purposefully manipulating the traits of living things for
| thousands of years.
| andreilys wrote:
| "Building" the virus is a sleight of hand that people use to
| discredit the lab theory.
|
| More likely than building the virus is studying it and
| accelerating it's development.
|
| Now I'm not saying that's what happened here however without
| the cooperation of the CCP we'll have no idea what the truth
| of the matter is
| Amezarak wrote:
| There was a great article in New York Magazine covering the
| background here and the possibilities.
|
| https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/coronavirus-lab-
| esca...
|
| It turns out we've been doing "serial passage" research for
| some time, which is where we leverage natural selection to do
| our genetic engineering for us, rather than manually editing
| genes. This is how we engineer viruses to jump species - on
| purpose.
|
| > _They did it using serial passaging: repeatedly dosing a
| mixed solution of mouse cells and hamster cells with mouse-
| hepatitis virus, while each time decreasing the number of
| mouse cells and upping the concentration of hamster cells. At
| first, predictably, the mouse-hepatitis virus couldn't do
| much with the hamster cells, which were left almost free of
| infection, floating in their world of fetal-calf serum. But
| by the end of the experiment, after dozens of passages
| through cell cultures, the virus had mutated: It had mastered
| the trick of parasitizing an unfamiliar rodent._
|
| In fact, "we" (meaning humanity) have even been experimenting
| with serial passage into humans.
|
| > _A few years later, in a further round of "interspecies
| transfer" experimentation, Baric's scientists introduced
| their mouse coronavirus into flasks that held a suspension of
| African-green-monkey cells, human cells, and pig-testicle
| cells. Then, in 2002, they announced something even more
| impressive: They'd found a way to create a full-length
| infectious clone of the entire mouse-hepatitis genome. Their
| "infectious construct" replicated itself just like the real
| thing, they wrote._
|
| The whole article is really worth a read.
| renewiltord wrote:
| You can, with your own body, the right drug regimen, and
| starting with just garden variety TB and no skills
| whatsoever, "build" XDR TB.
|
| The general evidence is this is yet another reason why wet
| markets are terrible for humanity, not that it was made in a
| lab and got away. But you can build lots of things.
| reducesuffering wrote:
| Are you serious?
|
| Occam's Razor says the only (non-vet) BSL4 lab in China,
| studying bat coronaviruses, several miles from known first
| virus reports, that has had multiple previous virus leaks,
| with huge information shutdown by China for a year, is the
| more plausible culprit.
| btilly wrote:
| _Do we / did we even have the tech co be able to build this
| in a lab? I don't think we do._
|
| A random virus, no. This one, we do.
|
| We can't build a virus from scratch. But we can combine
| pieces of different viruses to build a new one. The same
| thing also happens naturally when an animal is sick with 2
| viruses at once. If both get into the same cell, you get
| various mixes created and sometimes a mixture will turn out
| to be a better virus than either parent.
|
| This virus looks like a combination of apparently unrelated
| viruses. See https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-origins-
| genome-analy... for confirmation. That happens to be
| something that can happen either naturally or artificially.
|
| Where conspiracy theorists get going is that a few years ago
| there were papers from the lab near Wuhan suggesting that a
| combination much like COVID-19's actual combination should be
| particularly effective in humans. So this looks like an
| extension of a known line of research from a lab involved in
| military work. Combine that with the local coverup and you
| can see how people go down the rabbit hole.
| enchiridion wrote:
| At that point it's just a theory, not a conspiracy theory
| highstep wrote:
| You really should cite those paper if you're going to offer
| such significant information. your comment is worthless
| otherwise.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > You really should cite those paper if you're going to
| offer such significant information.
|
| Yes.
|
| > your comment is worthless otherwise.
|
| No.
| btilly wrote:
| A good starting point is
| https://www.independentsciencenews.org/health/the-case-
| is-bu....
|
| See https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4797993/
| for one of their previous lines of research that look
| similar to the actual COVID-19 virus.
| Amezarak wrote:
| I think what makes the Wuhan lab particularly suspicious is
| that the lab was specifically doing work on the closest
| known ancestor to the COVID-19 virus, which as far as we
| know was only found naturally in bat caves more than a
| thousand miles away.
|
| I would discount the possibility that this was bioweapons
| research - the US was funding serial passage and gain-of-
| function research at this lab, of which the express purpose
| is to make viruses more infectious in different species,
| including humans.
|
| At any rate, I don't think we can expect anything to be
| definitively proven. It is absolutely possible that this
| came out of the wild. But as the NY Magazine "Lab Leak"
| article illustrates, we should probably be open to the idea
| it came out of a lab. I also think we should reconsider
| whether or not serial-passage and gain-of-function research
| is something that can be ethically conducted. Anywhere.
| powerapple wrote:
| CCP has 90 million members. They have more opportunities
| because government jobs would favor CCP members. They also have
| responsibilities, when they are called when incidents, such as
| flood, and covid 19 incidents. Dr. Li Wenliang is a CCP member
| as well.
|
| If you ask people from any developing countries, they would
| express the same attitude (as you do for CCP) towards their own
| government. The reason is that the officials and way of work is
| stuck behind current standard, and that's why it is called
| developing country.
|
| Personally I don't care too much about if it was a lab virus or
| something else, it becomes all political. Could it be better? I
| don't think so. If it was developed in a bio-weapon lab, China
| would have handled it well because it would be prepared.
| Udik wrote:
| > Don't ever trust the Chinese government on issues that could
| potentially involve the reputation of the party
|
| Seems this holds true for every government and party.
| mhh__ wrote:
| Air Pistols and machine guns are both guns, which one are you
| taking your chance against?
| SllX wrote:
| Most governments and political parties are not capable of or
| willing to exercise the same information controls that the
| CCP does. That doesn't make them trustworthy, but it does
| make it easier to 1. Check their bullshit 2. Discuss their
| bullshit freely and 3. Call them out on their bullshit
| without being disappeared, only to turn up later and sign
| false confessions/apologies/whatever the Party tells you to.
|
| Having separate and distinct parties and competitive
| elections also puts parties in the position of doing this to
| each other using the levers of power available to them.
| mc32 wrote:
| The difference is there is no opposition to question the
| official stance. So I'd say it's naive to imply the same
| holds true everywhere. Even Russia and Turkey have vocal
| dissidents.
| sa-mao wrote:
| Last time I checked Turkey is still democracy. A better
| example would be Egypt or KSA or UAE.
| mc32 wrote:
| They're a democracy in the same way Russia is a
| democracy.
| edgyquant wrote:
| Hmm I don't think so. They're autocratic for sure but
| Turkey has been an autocratic democracy for a hundred
| years so there is a culture of republicanism. I get what
| you mean but Russia is so new to the voting thing that
| the comparison isn't apt imo.
| sa-mao wrote:
| I wouldn't go as far as comparing Turkey to Russia. The
| recent Turkish elections have shown that the ruling Party
| in Turkey can lose key strongholds like Istanbul, this
| never happens in Russia. In Egypt, most contenders to the
| presidency are in prison now. Current president Al Sissi
| (a bloody dictator won by 97%) Erdogan om the other hand
| won by 53%. Putin by 73% while some major opposition
| leaders barred from running.
|
| Turkey is often unfairly criticised by western media,
| which obviously prefers military dictators in power.
| bsd44 wrote:
| Well if you say so then it must be true. I mean this is
| internet after all.
| ttz wrote:
| Not sure where in my post it postulates anything about
| "truth". The entire point of the post is to say, we don't
| know the truth, but in the balance of probabilities, I
| wouldn't trust the CCP's version.
|
| Did you even read what I wrote, or are you just knee jerking?
| refenestrator wrote:
| I can't see what you're responding to, but if people make
| an accusation without evidence, the accused party's
| trustworthiness is kind of irrelevant, right? Fine, you
| don't trust their denial, but that doesn't affirmatively
| prove anything either.
|
| They could deny killing JFK, as well, and it shouldn't
| change anything.
| ttz wrote:
| There's no accusation. Everything I said in my post is
| _opinion_. Please read the original post, in its
| entirety.
| refenestrator wrote:
| I said "people" are making accusations, didn't say you
| were.
| IIAOPSW wrote:
| I just assume the ccp default mode is to cover up, even when
| there is nothing to cover up. When legitimacy derives from
| competence rather than from election, you better never have any
| high profile incompetence.
| duxup wrote:
| That's been a problem even internally in China where local
| government hides things from those up the chain and then
| things get out of hand.
| throwaway54095 wrote:
| It's crazy that at this point we still keep with this delusion.
| Of course this is a lab virus. This info is getting old:
|
| https://project-evidence.github.io/
|
| https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-origins-genome-analy...
|
| Who was really behind this, and the whole history of it, is
| something surely we won't know for know.
|
| "When war is declared, truth is the first casualty"
| hereforphone wrote:
| "Deep concerns" don't change anything.
| jjd33 wrote:
| US also praises Saudi and Israeli rule of law and democratic
| institutions.
|
| North Korea seems a more trustworthy source of news than US
| nowdays.
| rossdavidh wrote:
| So, perhaps there is a valid reason for China to refuse to give
| the raw data on early COVID-19 victims to the WHO, but I have to
| say, as a reader who's never been particularly impressed by the
| possibility of it being lab-created, I have to say this is not a
| good look for China.
| loveistheanswer wrote:
| >as a reader who's never been particularly impressed by the
| possibility of it being lab-created
|
| It need not be "lab-created". Most samples are taken from the
| wild, and then has its evolution stimulated for research.
| rossdavidh wrote:
| True, I should have said that differently, something more
| like "introduced to humanity from a lab sample". Important
| distinction, not least because way more likely to be possible
| given current technology. Valid point.
| underseacables wrote:
| It will take generations before China will recover from the Wuhan
| virus outbreak. However it happened, because of the CCP
| suppressing facts, people, and information, the harm to any
| credibility the Chinese government had is gone for some time.
| This could have been the China century, but for generations there
| will always be that doubt.
| lrem wrote:
| Doesn't China need relatively the least recovery from this?
| zug_zug wrote:
| Cool, glad both sides of the aisle are willing to consider all
| possible origins. It shouldn't be a political statement to want
| the most accurate answer to a health-question, and maybe it won't
| have to be anymore.
| Fricken wrote:
| What's weird is that a number of WHO investigation team members a
| week ago said China was very transparent, cooperative and
| helpful. Some have tweeted against the NYT who spun the WHO
| team's accounts into anti-China propaganda.
|
| https://mobile.twitter.com/PeterDaszak/status/13605511085659...
|
| https://mobile.twitter.com/TheaKFischer/status/1360590441817...
| bigpumpkin wrote:
| Would love to hear more from Thea Fischer, who the WSJ quotes
| extensively.
| throwawaysea wrote:
| From https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-00375-7
|
| > Dwyer says that the team didn't see anything during its visits
| to suggest a lab accident. "Now, whether we were shown
| everything? You can never know. The group wasn't designed to go
| and do a forensic examination of lab practice."
|
| From https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/13/world/asia/china-who-
| wuha...
|
| > Even in the best of circumstances, a full inquiry could take
| months, if not longer. The team must also navigate attempts by
| China to politicize the inquiry.
|
| And yet a few days ago the WHO pushed out a hasty judgment that
| it was very unlikely the virus leaked from the lab. And in the
| last day they've already started backtracking after intense
| skepticism from the world - see
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-02-12/who-backs...
| titled " WHO Backs Away From Outright Rejection of Virus Lab-Leak
| Theory".
|
| It also seems that now the virus may have been reported even
| earlier than we thought. From
| https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/12/world/asia/china-world-he...:
|
| > The Chinese scientists also acknowledged they had discovered
| that 92 people were hospitalized in Wuhan as early as October
| 2019 with symptoms such as fever and coughing. The Chinese
| experts said they had found no trace of Covid-19 in those people,
| but the tests were incomplete. The W.H.O. team members said more
| research was needed.
|
| Between the CCP's early suppression of journalism and social
| media reporting on the virus, the fact that Taiwan was the first
| to warn the world, China's repeated denials and delays in letting
| an outside team to visit the site, and their purge of all the
| coronavirus studies originating from this lab (https://www.the-
| sun.com/news/2113876/covid-cover-up-china-wu...), there is very
| little reason to trust the claim that a lab leak can be ruled
| out. If anything it only seems more likely that a massive coverup
| is in progress, and the WHO is the willing mouthpiece for it.
| foolmeonce wrote:
| I think the WHO did a fine job of writing it up. The US motive
| for proving China is at fault is largely political diversion from
| the US' mishandling, which would be mishandling no matter what
| origin.
|
| That China blocked the Who's efforts and the WHO disclosed this
| is more relevant to future health policy than where this
| particular outbreak started. (Do we really want the public health
| system to tune to this specific scenario?)
| zepto wrote:
| > The US motive for proving China is at fault is largely
| political diversion from the US' mishandling, which would be
| mishandling no matter what origin.
|
| Whether this is motivation is true or not has nothing to do
| with whether the WHO report reflects reality.
| foolmeonce wrote:
| The WHO disclosed they were blocked. You can infer a bayesian
| for a lab release of this specific virus. Now what does that
| change about the next pandemic?
| zepto wrote:
| The lab leak is not the only hypothesis the CCP may be
| seeking to avoid.
|
| What they knew and how early they knew it is at least as
| significant.
| foolmeonce wrote:
| So the fact that China didn't cooperate should affect
| future health policy?
|
| edit- make China/cooperate more explicit.
| robomartin wrote:
| > echoing concerns raised by the administration of former
| President Donald Trump, who also moved to quit the WHO over the
| issue
|
| This is what gets me in politics: For all the well-deserved
| vilification Trump was subjected to, it seems that every day we
| are discovering some of the important policies and opinions they
| issued were right on point. The dichotomy, it seems, is one of
| vilification due to his often insolent and down-right ignorant
| public style and presence rather than anything I would
| characterize as substantive.
|
| I have worked with people like that. People with sometimes deep
| personality and social issues who do great work and excel
| professionally. To take it in another direction, back when I was
| actively mentoring high school FRC teams we got all kinds of
| kids. There were kids on the Autism spectrum as well as
| Asperger's. I can say that every single one of them was superb in
| their team participation once I learned how to work with them
| and, above all, accept that they didn't sound or behave like the
| rest.
|
| I am not making a parallel between Trump and these conditions.
| Just saying that it is sometimes important to focus on substance
| rather than theater.
|
| Case in point:
|
| I just got my second COVID vaccine yesterday. Shaking and feeling
| like crap as I type this (it will last a few hours).
|
| When Trump said vaccines were coming by the end of the year
| everyone laughed at him. It was brutal. I remember watching CNN
| as they tore him to pieces for daring to "not use science" and
| raising our hopes in such ignorant ways.
|
| Well, we are currently vaccinating at a rate of approximately 1.5
| million people per day and this will go up.
|
| Did Biden do this? Look, I am in manufacturing. Have been my
| entire life. You don't produce 1.5 million per day of anything,
| distribute and administer it with some sort of a "then a miracle
| occurs" approach. Biden has only been in office a few days. There
| is absolutely no way he could have any material impact on vaccine
| delivery and administration during that time. These things have
| to be planned and well-executed for months. Which means I got my
| vaccine (and 1.5 million people are getting their vaccines)
| because of the organization and planning the Trump administration
| created and drove, likely back to March/April of last year. I'd
| be interested in hearing from anyone --WITH MANUFACTURING
| EXPERIENCE-- who thinks you can instantly go from 100K per day to
| 1.5 million per day just because there's a new boss in town. I
| mean, remember that we couldn't even produce masks and PPE at
| scale in this country (or nearly any other country). In this
| sense this should have been a massive wakeup call to the world,
| not just the US.
|
| This means that Biden's "100 million in 100 days" will be
| achieved and exceeded --by Trump-- so long as people go get
| vaccinated. And, without a doubt, Biden will take credit for 100%
| of it. This is what I hate about politics.
|
| There are other issues for which he was vilified that will turn
| out to have been right non point. I won't dive into the details
| here. Some of these include:
|
| - The Paris climate accord (seriously, google the document, read
| it and tell me how it will save the world...it's
| nonsense...expensive nonsense)
|
| - Tariffs on steel and aluminum. I am doing an aircraft design
| project right now. I can buy US-made aluminum for roughly 25%
| less than the cost of steel. That has never been the case in my
| life. Of course, everyone in the metals industry wants Biden to
| keep the tariffs in place. May I remind you Trump was called
| "racist" and all kinds of other things for enacting this?
|
| - The pipeline. Aside from the fact that tens of thousands of
| jobs will be lost (a good friend of mine lost his and is facing
| having to sell his house to survive). Everything around you
| requires oil. It doesn't matter if it is made from plastics or
| not. You don't think aluminum and steel require oil for
| manufacturing and more? Do some research. The US achieved net
| exporter status during Trump's years. That will surely go away.
| Also, cost of goods (not just gasoline) was kept under check
| because we controlled oil. Not any more. A friend in Arizona
| tells me gasoline prices have doubled there. I regularly ship
| large aerospace components in the thousands of pounds. Freight
| prices are being impacted by this (my opinion) stupid move. Yes,
| we all want everything clean. However, there's a fine line
| between wishing something and being delusional about how and when
| it can be achieved.
|
| Anyhow, I'll stop here. There's more, but I need to go to the
| couch and shake-off the vaccine side effects for a few hours. If
| you disagree with the above, be honest enough to do the research
| before forming an opinion. Above all, if you do not have
| operational experience running a business, you need to understand
| that you are not equipped to understand the many dynamics at play
| here.
|
| Simple example: If gas prices explode companies are going to have
| to raise pay for their workers. Sounds good until you understand
| at least two things. First, the worker doesn't get to use that
| raise, it goes towards paying for oil. Second, that money could
| have been used to hire more people and create jobs. In fact,
| higher oil prices could destroy jobs in areas one might not
| suspect.
|
| No, everyone isn't going to go buy electric cars and trucks. Get
| over it. This will take a long time. The infrastructure isn't
| ready.
|
| FYI: Fixing climate change by 2030/2050/2100? Delusional. We
| can't do it. And yet we are going to burn resources promoting
| pure bullshit instead of talking about how to adapt.
|
| Politics sucks. I want honest exchange of ideas judged by their
| merit, not through a political lens.
| endisneigh wrote:
| Forgive my ignorance but even if it was lab created, so what? I
| don't really understand why it matters or not. Didn't the entire
| world basically have a nearly 3 month heads up on this either
| way?
| jeswin wrote:
| That depends. Most countries have ratified the biological
| weapons treaty. If proven to be lab created, the onus will be
| on them/whoever to prove that this was not part of a
| weaponization effort. Not to mention, instant loss of goodwill
| across the world.
|
| Personally, I think the idea of this being lab created by China
| is far fetched.
| ern wrote:
| I suspect that it's simpler than that. Having it accidentally
| leak out of a lab facility where it was being studied for
| legitimate scientific reasons would still be humiliating, and
| devastating to Chin's soft-power.
| phyalow wrote:
| I used to think it was far fetched too, however applying
| Occams Razor and taking a read of this incredibly well
| researched article swayed me
| https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/coronavirus-lab-
| esca... it would be worth your time.
| enchiridion wrote:
| Well that was a very long read. Yep I agree, very little
| doubt it escaped from a lab. The arrogance of the corona
| virus researchers is astounding.
| pfortuny wrote:
| It was supposedly practically impossible for that to happen so
| at least someone should be held responsible.
|
| Once a guy is dead, does it matter who killed him?
| Frost1x wrote:
| If it was lab created then you know some group intentionally or
| through their negligence caused millions and millions of people
| to die. They won't be held accountable unless China itself
| would decide to do so (assuming in this hypothetical that it
| was created by China of course).
|
| If it was being developed as a biological weapon you would tend
| to assume there's likely progress on how to defend against it
| by those who created it so you could hope to leverage that work
| to get a head start on vaccines and so forth. No one could
| force China to hand that work over but they could certainly
| pressure them in full force, including some of their allies
| that may also be suffering.
|
| Overall, there's really not much in terms of actionable
| information to follow through with. It might help states target
| spies to keep a closer eye on these scenarios and prompt a
| better global response in the future.
| avaldeso wrote:
| > If it was lab created then you know some group
| intentionally or through their negligence caused millions and
| millions of people to die.
|
| Just 2.4 millions as today. Not millions and millions. This
| is not 1918 flu levels (yet).
| christkv wrote:
| I would think that if you wanted to create a bio weapon then
| this virus is perfect. Not super lethal but crates a high
| level of chaos and economic damage. An economical warfare big
| LMYahooTFY wrote:
| I think there are social/political ramifications to seriously
| consider.
|
| Similar to if we had a sudden large radiation hazard and it was
| unclear if it was some spontaneously emerging phenomenon with
| essentially no direct human cause, or a power plant/enrichment
| facility/warhead manufacturer/etc.
|
| And beyond that, there are supposedly methods of (even purely
| scientifically motivated) research that would involve
| engineering a virus with certain properties that also happen to
| make it extraordinarily deadly.
|
| Ethics committees determine all sorts of experiments to be
| prohibitively unethical, and a virus with particularly deadly
| design should certainly be held under such scrutiny.
| underseacables wrote:
| The Chinese response to international concerns over the Wuhan
| virus is very similar to the Soviet Unions response to the
| same concern over a sudden spike in nuclear radiation.
| There's something strange about a government that works so
| hard to stifle all questions and dissent. It's like they
| don't realize the act of oppression of inquiry raises the
| level of inquiry even more.
| reducesuffering wrote:
| I'm sure they realize it, but what's the alternative for
| them?
|
| "Yes, come right in, here's our primary source data
| collected, it concludes that Chernobyl (or WIV lab leak)
| did happen..."
| Supermancho wrote:
| You are correct. It makes no difference. This has been an
| exercise in "bad things will happen" used to reform political
| views and stoke sabre rattling. China is a bad actor in many
| arenas, just as the US is a bad actor in many arenas. The idea
| that any country releases some lab-grown bug will never be
| politically admitted, so the theory is irrelevant.
|
| I tend to think China is a danger to humanity at-large, but I
| could be wrong. These specific events have not surprised me
| (new virus, spread, etc) but the sheer amount of incredulity at
| the behavior of countries (China, US, etc) is disheartening.
| cbnotfromthere wrote:
| "China is a bad actor in many arenas, just as the US is a bad
| actor in many arenas. "
|
| Equating the US with China is nothing but a form of
| whataboutism. It's like equating USSR with USA. Or flu with
| ebola.
| LMYahooTFY wrote:
| While the points you make may be true, they do not
| conclusively show that it makes no difference. See my
| response to GP.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| One of most interesting facets of this to me is that China have
| created multiple zoonotic diseases in the last few years and
| caused serious loss of life and economic damage and no one
| seems to want to say anything!?
| throwawaysea wrote:
| It's not necessarily lab created but it could have been leaked
| from a lab (which studies coronaviruses and bats) even if it
| wasn't artificial. It matters because it lays more blame on
| China and creates the political expediency needed for
| sanctions. I do agree that there should be consequences for the
| Chinese government regardless of whether the virus was a leak
| or not (or artificial or not), and that it isn't dependent on
| such investigations. My reason is that the CCP suppressed early
| reports of the virus and delayed the entire world's response.
| They also did not shut down their airports for months and
| exported the virus to the rest of us as a result.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| How does that help the World fight the pandemic? All that
| does is provide a reason for political actions, that people
| already want to take, to stem Chinese power and maintain USA
| imperialism.
|
| If a country choose not to shut its airports doesn't mean
| your country has to accept incoming flights. If a country
| thinks people are coming in with a pandemic disease and don't
| shut the entry points (ports/airports) that's on that
| country's leadership.
| Udik wrote:
| > It's not necessarily lab created but it could have been
| leaked from a lab (which studies coronaviruses and bats) even
| if it wasn't artificial.
|
| I've heard this multiple times as a reasonable possibility,
| and yet it seems absurd if you think about it: are you trying
| to accuse someone of leaking into the environment a virus
| that actually _comes_ from the environment? And how do you
| even prove something like that?
| pessimizer wrote:
| The US and Western Europe find it very important to find any
| way to increase anti-China sentiment. Whether or not it is
| actually meaningful in a practical sense, accusing China of
| creating and spreading the virus adds to the ancient enemy
| status that it shares with Russia, and justifies large domestic
| expenditures.
|
| The public justification for the giant US nuclear arsenal was
| the entirely fictional "missile gap," thereby creating an
| actual missile gap in the other direction that the Soviets
| thought they had to close. I'm not saying that "If new
| coronaviruses are being cooked up in Wuhan, we'd be negligent
| if we weren't funding development of our own" thought processes
| will necessarily become ascendant, but "China is a existential
| threat to the world, and any expenditure is justified in order
| to defeat it" is absolutely common.
| katbyte wrote:
| If it was leaked in oct that's far earlier then it making it
| out into general knowledge in Ja. But granted that doesn't mean
| the world would have acted, still took most of it till like
| March to do anything about it lol
| rossdavidh wrote:
| serious vaccine work, as I understand it, began in Jan. If it
| had started in October 2019, things would be very different
| right now.
| graeme wrote:
| Not necessarily. The vaccine design work took all of a day,
| at least for the mrna vaccines.
|
| You could have frontloaded manufacturing by commissioning
| companies to produce doses while waiting for trials. But we
| didn't do that with the knowledge we had, so unclear
| earlier knowledge would have worked.
|
| Trials were the big bottleneck and for that you need
| infected patients. So I guess if they had got a vaccine to
| wuhan for trials it would have sped things up, but not
| clear it could have been used in trials there before this
| all seemed serious.
| mgamache wrote:
| If anyone is tempted to associate 'lab leak' with xenophobia or
| anti-Chinese sentiment, please remember the WIV lab was in
| partnership with the U.S. NIH (National Institutes of Health).
|
| https://www.biospace.com/article/1nih-awards-ecohealth-allia...
| loveistheanswer wrote:
| Also noteworthy is Dr. Fauci has been a long time proponent and
| sponsor of gain of function experiments as head of the NIAID,
| the infectious diseases arm of the NIH.[1]
|
| After a few different US lab leaks involving anthrax, smallpox,
| and avian flu in 2014 the Obama administration put a ban on the
| fuding of gain of function research.[2]
|
| The ban was eventually overturned in 2018.[3]
|
| [1]https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/a-flu-virus-risk-
| wor...
|
| [2]https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-anthrax-labs-
| analysis...
|
| [3]https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3
| ...
| justnotworthit wrote:
| I don't get why supporters of GoF experiments with CoV in
| Wuhan aren't shouting from the rooftops that (1) They were
| right to predict the danger of a CoV originating from that
| area of the world and that (2) their research, years in the
| making, is thankfully (despite opposition's cries of danger)
| here to protect us. Instead, I can't find anything about the
| latest years of their research.
| mgamache wrote:
| good point. the silence is deafening. They should be
| lobbying for _more money_...
| esja wrote:
| I am yet to see a single piece of evidence which rules out the
| lab leak hypothesis. Meanwhile the circumstantial evidence in
| favour of that hypothesis (including China's behaviour) continues
| to pile up. We may never discover the truth, but I really hope we
| do.
| pgodzin wrote:
| What evidence could ever rule it out?
| tripletao wrote:
| Identification of an animal host? For MERS-CoV, that host
| (camels) was identified in a little more than a year, and
| genetic analysis shows multiple spillovers:
|
| https://elifesciences.org/articles/31257
|
| For the original SARS, it's palm civets, identified in less
| than a year. (The link to bats wasn't discovered until much
| later, by Shi Zhengli; but the intermediate host is enough to
| feel pretty confident it's natural-origin.)
|
| For SARS-CoV-2, we're still waiting for that intermediate
| host. That's the significance of the early pangolin papers;
| but as Alina Chan and many others have noted, those papers
| have significant data quality issues, and even the Chinese
| have pretty much abandoned the pangolins.
|
| https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.07.184374v1
| kjakm wrote:
| >> Meanwhile the circumstantial evidence in favour of that
| hypothesis (including China's behaviour) continues to pile up.
|
| What circumstantial evidence?
| tripletao wrote:
| Alina Chan's WSJ article is a decent popular summary,
|
| https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-world-needs-a-real-
| investig...
|
| https://archive.is/R6kwN
|
| There's also been a string of academic preprints and
| articles, like
|
| https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/2102/2102.03910.pdf
|
| The authors tend to be kind of fringe, not surprisingly given
| the reputational cost (and given that if a lab origin is ever
| confirmed, many of the techniques that top researchers have
| spent their lives mastering will probably become illegal). A
| lot of very senior virologists are on the record as open to
| the possibility of a lab escape, though, for example:
|
| > Baric said he still thought the virus came from bats in
| southern China, perhaps directly, or possibly via an
| intermediate host, although the smuggled pangolins, in his
| view, were a red herring. The disease evolved in humans over
| time without being noticed, he suspected, becoming gradually
| more infectious, and eventually a person carried it to Wuhan
| "and the pandemic took off." Then he said, "Can you rule out
| a laboratory escape? The answer in this case is probably
| not."
|
| https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/coronavirus-lab-
| esca...
|
| I don't recommend that article in general; the author uses
| his talents as a novelist to paint a more vivid picture than
| I believe the evidence justifies. I do trust him to
| faithfully print the quote, though.
| dm319 wrote:
| This is worth a read:
|
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9
| godelmachine wrote:
| >>*Although the evidence shows that SARS- CoV-2 is not a
| purposefully manipulated virus, it is currently impossible to
| prove or disprove the other theories of its origin described
| here.*
|
| From the conclusion section
| 2bitencryption wrote:
| my understanding of primitive/early vaccines is this:
|
| 1. take a virus that is highly adapted to humans, and inject
| it in another animal (like a rabbit)
|
| 2. the virus will cause a very low-grade infection in the
| rabbit, since the virus is adapted to humans, not rabbits -
| but it will still be a non-zero level of effectiveness
|
| 3. at the peak level of the rabbit's low-grade infection, the
| mutants of the virus that are more effective against rabbits
| will be expressed more than any others, and replicate
| themselves more than any other mutant
|
| 4. capture these variants from the rabbit, and inject them
| into another rabbit.
|
| 5. step 3 and 4 repeat as the virus becomes less human-
| specific and more rabbit-specific
|
| 6. if all goes well, you will have transformed the human-
| effective virus into a rabbit-effective virus. But the virus
| still has enough of the same characteristics that it will
| provoke an immune response in humans that will also protect
| against the human-specific variant
|
| I imagine if you wanted to do the _opposite_ , and craft a
| virus that is _more_ effective against humans instead of
| less, you would simply follow the steps in reverse.
|
| Since these steps are so simple, and require no direct
| modification of the genetic material (you simply encourage it
| to drift in a certain direction) it seems like it would be
| hard to tell which viruses were manipulated in this way.
| mgamache wrote:
| This was from early last year and really focuses on Pangolins
| which have been downgraded as a zoonotic source. Serial Passage
| is the most likely source (as all sources are low probability).
| f430 wrote:
| The thing is they claimed it originated from the seafood
| market yet couple blocks across the street there was a BS4
| bio lab literally working with the materials.
|
| It's amazing so many people will just take CCP's narrative at
| face value, there are still many that think it came from the
| seafood market.
|
| Nature has lied to protect the CCP before:
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/01/world/asia/china-
| springer...
| agumonkey wrote:
| I don't know what happened obviously, and I'm not really
| wishing for any theory to win (lab or nature). But I've
| read Chinese virology labs were made in partnership with
| France and french experts/teachers said many safety
| protocols were not fully applied.
| ZoomerCretin wrote:
| >Nature has lied to protect the CCP before:
|
| >https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/01/world/asia/china-
| springer...
|
| Your article does not support your claim. "One of the
| world's largest academic publishers was criticized on
| Wednesday for bowing to pressure from the Chinese
| government to block access to hundreds of articles on its
| Chinese website."
| mgamache wrote:
| In the first few weeks the main source of info was the CCP
| and well known virologists. Both have conflicts of
| interest.
| f430 wrote:
| We simply don't know the author's connection to the CCP. Why
| not share that publicly as to add credibility to their claims?
|
| Not the first time Nature was caught covering for the CCP:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/01/world/asia/china-springer...
|
| Why are all the criticisms of CCP downvoted and flagged on HN?
| ZoomerCretin wrote:
| This is supposed to be a scientifically-literate forum. Ad
| hominem dismissal of good data/analysis because it _could_
| come from a source you 've been taught to dislike isn't
| conducive to good discussion. If you're curious about the
| authors' links, they are in the article you didn't read.
| oasisbob wrote:
| Conspiracy theories regarding genetically engineered viruses
| don't do well here.
| vixen99 wrote:
| Much work has been done on genetically engineering viruses
| and that includes coronoviruses. We certainly know very
| well how to do it for one purpose or another. This is a
| fact not a theory. Currently it's impossible to say
| Covid-19 resulted, maybe in part, from this activity _or
| not_. Terrible not to know something for a fact but that 's
| how it is. Call a particular view a conspiracy theory if
| you like but that's just rhetoric and takes us not a step
| further towards a definitive answer.
| mgamache wrote:
| You should understand what Serial Passage and Gain of
| Function is. It's using natural selection in a lab and not
| easily detected. It was also a type of research that was
| being done at that lab. The paper addresses Serial Passage
| in the last part.
| throwaway4good wrote:
| Boo. The Americans need to shut up or actual provide evidence for
| their outrageous claim that the virus escaped from a lab.
| jchook wrote:
| I've seen papers from several scientists who believe that SARS-
| CoV-2 had laboratory origins. You can find them on Google
| Scholar or similar search engines, but you cannot post them to
| HN or Twitter because they get instantly censored.
|
| The evidence against laboratory origins seems flimsy to me as
| well. The most cited paper says because the virus infects
| humans suboptimally it must not be lab grown in human cells.
| Also they examined the "only" 3 relevant features of the virus
| and determined they evolved naturally from other SARS strains.
| Not exactly convincing.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Why would you think that we would have to do that? It's only
| people who are being threatened that have to talk their way out
| of it. It's not only easy to casually threaten China, it's
| required to avoid charges of being a secret agent sent to
| destroy American unity.
| dempseye wrote:
| I don't know either way, but the claim that the virus escaped
| from a lab is hardly outrageous. It is well within the sphere
| of possibilities that are worth examining. Lab leaks have
| happened before.
| mc32 wrote:
| Beside the danger of adding function to an infectious virus, the
| biggest danger is the complete politicization of the virus. The
| WHO has changed their tune back and forth, often vehemently with
| little to back up its position. In that light the US should
| consider withdrawing completely from this body.
| mgamache wrote:
| The US just rejoined after Biden reversed Trumps withdrawal.
| mgamache wrote:
| Here's one article about the Who reversal:
|
| "The scientific community applauded President Joe Biden's
| decision to rejoin the World Health Organization and other
| global efforts designed to stop and prevent COVID-19."
|
| https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2021/01/22/scient.
| ..
| bpodgursky wrote:
| HN is reflexive with downvotes. It's not personal.
|
| A response of "Trump did thing, Biden undid thing" after a
| comment of "US should do thing" can be interpreted as
| support of Trump and criticism of Biden.
|
| This is not a good thing to be true. Thus, it is downvoted.
| mgamache wrote:
| you're right... I updated the post to remove the comment.
| addicted wrote:
| The WHO is not an organization with a military or the power to
| enforce anything. It's completely at the mercy of the member
| states to pressure each other to allow it to do its job.
|
| The reality is that it was up to the member states to pressure
| China in early 2020 to release the information they should have
| shared. And as the only member state as large or larger than
| China, this was the US's job. At the time, however, the Trump
| administration was entirely focused on closing a trade deal
| with China that Trump could use in his election campaign. Which
| is why the US said nothing which prevented the WHO from getting
| the support they needed to investigate the origins of the
| pandemic.
|
| For the first few months the US, and especially Trump, was
| basically going on about how well Xi Jinping was handling
| everything.
| addicted wrote:
| This is what Trump was saying February of last year instead
| of giving WHO the support that it needed to push China.
|
| https://www.nationalreview.com/news/trump-praises-xi-for-
| han...
|
| It's precisely the vacuum created by the US's voluntary
| defanging of itself in multilateral institutions that has
| allowed China to resist these institutions and even take
| control of some of them. The answer to that isn't to continue
| unilaterally reducing its own power.
| jayd16 wrote:
| What is withdrawal going to do? Why not work to get it right
| instead?
| mc32 wrote:
| Conversely what good is it belonging to an organization which
| has no agency and does whatever it's told to do?
|
| Better form a new org that is apolitical and concerns itself
| with promulgating health and disease prevention rather than
| some political agenda?
| brundolf wrote:
| That's literally the whole point of the WHO. Leaving it
| would mean either a) starting a "new" version and asking
| all the same people to join it (which seems to be what
| you're suggesting; what purpose would that serve?) or b)
| having no forum at all for global coordination over health
| crises.
| aaomidi wrote:
| Because WHO does so much more than finding out where a
| disease started.
| danbolt wrote:
| What do you feel an apolitical organization would look like
| on the world stage?
| kergonath wrote:
| There is no such thing as an apolitical organisation.
| That's the definition of politics.
|
| It is not a police, it has no coercive power. The reason is
| obvious if you think more than 10 seconds about how to get
| sovereign governments to cooperate on public health
| matters.
|
| What would be your ideal organisation? One subservient to
| the American government? Or do you want it to be a world
| government above sovereign states? How do you think it
| would fly?
| kergonath wrote:
| Of course it has! Our knowledge of the virus and disease has
| changed quite a lot since December 2019. Initially we had no
| idea about the transmission rate, survivability in air or on
| surfaces, contact transmission, transmission to other species,
| etc. What should they have done?
|
| If anything they were cautious before February 2020.
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