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Bill Maher invites guests to talk about The "lab" origins of SARS-CoV-2 - aka "The coronavirus"

arg-fallbackName="Deleted member 42253"/>
This one might turn out to be interesting

 
arg-fallbackName="Nesslig20"/>
Some notable episodes of the TWiV (this week in virology) podcast with actual virus experts talking about SARS-CoV-2 and its origins



Here is also Laurence Moran blog post explaining the recent claims of NewsWeek about the "lab leak hypothesis"
 
arg-fallbackName="Deleted member 42253"/>
Should be safe to say, that the "Lab Leak Hypothesis" is a conspiracy theory at this point.
 
arg-fallbackName="Led Zeppelin"/>
Either way, I think China has pretty much destroyed any credibility they might have had with the global health community. Trying to cover up the outbreak and blame it on the US and Europe was a bad idea.
 
arg-fallbackName="Deleted member 42253"/>
China never had any credibility to begin with. China is so incredible, people would double check if the CCP told them, the sun was shining.
China also took about 2 month to inform the global community of Corona. How long does it take, in your opinion, to figure out that something is a pandemic and not just a bad case of flue? And that was early enough for Japan, Taiwan and Korea to avoid an outbreak, enough time for pretty much any island nation and Australia to avoid an outbreak ... Anything that happened in Europe, the UK and US is on their respectiv governments, not on China.
 
arg-fallbackName="Sparhafoc"/>
Did Trump destroy any credibility the US has by accusing the WHO of covering up for China, of the WHO being a puppet of China, of the WHO 'getting it wrong' when they should've listened to him... etc.

Or do we all actually all end up not really taking these things into long term account because we realize they have a context, and that there's a more important future to be working towards together?
 
arg-fallbackName="Led Zeppelin"/>
Did Trump destroy any credibility the US has by accusing the WHO of covering up for China, of the WHO being a puppet of China, of the WHO 'getting it wrong' when they should've listened to him... etc.
I cant really second guess anything the Trump or the WHO did. Trump does have a big mouth though.
Or do we all actually all end up not really taking these things into long term account because we realize they have a context, and that there's a more important future to be working towards together?

I get that. But where do we go from here? The western world has been supplying China with funds and scientists for years, specifically to guard against such an outbreak and China basically pissed on all of us in return.
 
arg-fallbackName="Led Zeppelin"/>
Factually incorrect. Thankfully, Potholer has already dusted this off.


Right away I wonder why this video says that on "January 9th, China finally admitted to the severity of the outbreak".

They admitted to an outbreak on the 9th and released the gene sequence. That is all. The WHO then, following the narrative of China, praised China in a public statement, while privately expressing concerns that China was not providing the data needed to back up the China narrative.

China was still telling the world that the coronvirus was "preventable and controllable" on Jan 19th. The next day they finally acknowledged human to human transmission. By then it had spread all over the world.

Shouldnt they have known right when they had the virus sequenced that it was Sars-like and likely human to human transmission was accoring?


 
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arg-fallbackName="Deleted member 619"/>
I wonder why you're countering his sourced presentation with blind assertion.
 
arg-fallbackName="Led Zeppelin"/>
I wonder why you're countering his sourced presentation with blind assertion.
I just edited my post to include this
Shouldnt they have known right when they had the virus sequenced that it was Sars-like and likely human to human transmission was happening?
 
arg-fallbackName="Deleted member 619"/>
By linking unsourced news pieces that contain assertions
Shouldnt they have known right when they had the virus sequenced that it was Sars-like and likely human to human transmission was accoring?
It's not a given.

The sources you give me are unsourced news articles, and are flatly contradicted by the sources in the video, such as the WHO communications.

There's no doubt that China downplayed the danger, but there are shades of the McCarthy mind-virus at play in the way people are talking about China. The worst offenders for downplaying the danger, of course, were Drumpf and BoZo.
 
arg-fallbackName="Greg the Grouper"/>
By linking unsourced news pieces that contain assertions

It's not a given.

The sources you give me are unsourced news articles, and are flatly contradicted by the sources in the video, such as the WHO communications.

There's no doubt that China downplayed the danger, but there are shades of the McCarthy mind-virus at play in the way people are talking about China. The worst offenders for downplaying the danger, of course, were Drumpf and BoZo.
Well in Trump's defense, covid isn't much of a threat to someone with his access to medical care, and who else is he even capable of thinking about anyway?
 
arg-fallbackName="Sparhafoc"/>
I cant really second guess anything the Trump or the WHO did. Trump does have a big mouth though.


I get that. But where do we go from here? The western world has been supplying China with funds and scientists for years, specifically to guard against such an outbreak and China basically pissed on all of us in return.


I just don't share your belief that they're in some way criminally to blame. I think it's a function of the kind of state they have, where free information is seen as dissent or a challenge to state's monopoly on power.

I think this is the kind of failure we should expect of autocratic states, and we can certainly point to it as a reason why that form of government is dysfunctional, but I don't think it's about China pissing on us as if we're the target of their ineffective governmental structures.
 
arg-fallbackName="Sparhafoc"/>
The worst offenders for downplaying the danger, of course, were Drumpf and BoZo.

I think it only fair to add that there are numerous other world leaders who did even worse in this respect, it's just they're not in the West or the English speaking world, so they tend to be overlooked. Brazil's Bolsanaro was a total verminous clown and is still actively harming Brazil's efforts to overcome the terrible effects of covid there, then you have all manner of tinpot clown dictators pretending it's the gays, the west, or that praying to God is the only thing that can save their Glorious Nation.
 
arg-fallbackName="Greg the Grouper"/>
I guess I really should pay attention to the rest of the world more; I'm a little shocked to hear that some governments actively did worse than Trump did in this.
 
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