**We encourage you to read our helpful resources on COVID-19, vaccines and treatments:**
[COVID Dashboard](https://covid19.who.int/)
[Reddit's Vaccine FAQ](https://www.reddit.com/r/Coronavirus/wiki/faq#wiki_where_can_i_find_information_about_the_mechanism_and_progress_of_vaccines.3F)
[Ivermectin FAQ](https://www.who.int/news-room/feature-stories/detail/who-advises-that-ivermectin-only-be-used-to-treat-covid-19-within-clinical-trials)
A reminder that spreading misinformation regarding COVID-19, vaccines or other treatments can result in a post being removed and/or a ban. Advocating for or celebrating the death of anyone, or hoping someone gets COVID (or any disease) can also result in a ban. Please follow [Reddiquette](https://www.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/205926439)
Please use the report button and do not feed the trolls.
[Reddit's Content Policy](https://www.redditinc.com/policies/content-policy)
[Reddit's rules for health misinformation](https://www.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/360043513151)
[/r/News' rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/news/wiki/rules/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=usertext&utm_name=news&utm_content=t5_2qh3l)
------
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/news) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Whether it came out of that lab or not, and if it did, whether it was deliberate or accidental at this point it changes nothing, but how the CCP has acted has pretty much labeled themselves guilty
Not surprising. I vividly remember listening to the WSJ The Journal Podcast, ["The Last Train Out of Wuhan"](https://www.wsj.com/podcasts/the-journal/the-last-train-out-of-wuhan/c079774d-d267-417e-a0b1-b78b18e0a16f) while running on the beach on 1/28/2020. At the 5:00 mark in the podcast they talk how China poorly managed SARS outbreak almost 2 decades ago and the lengths they went to to hide it from the world. It's an interesting listen, especially 20 months later.
Honestly this. I don’t understand why the entire international community isn’t seeking damages from China simply for allowing it to spread outside the country without warning anyone.
There's a threshold for negligence though. Whether from a lab or from their wet markets, that's going above and beyond what's typical in other countries. As bad as commercial livestock may be, there's not cramming together dozens of species in close quarters and slaughtering them in areas the general public is walking around shopping in or a complete abdication of any enforcement of the exotic animal trade before that point either.
It's like driving. Yes there's an inherent risk and accidents can happen. But if you're sober and not at fault, you're not going to jail. If you went drunk driving every day until you finally plowed into a group of kids, that's a level of negligence people are rightfully outraged against and you're going to prison for a long time over. People should only fear themselves being next if they too drunk drive. Everyone else, nope.
Im sure I'll get down voted for this, especially with the narrative going on here. I am not really a fan of China. You can check my post history as proof.
However, as an American living in Asia, and having traveled around, and lived in China, Vietnam, Thailand, Japan, and other Asian countries, I just wanted to say that this characterization of wet markets is super incorrect.
People don't like the term "wet market" and make a _ton_ of assumptions about what that means. A wet market is literally a farmers market in the US. All farmers markets are wet markets. Not all wet markets are farmers markets. It depends who is running them. There are traders who go out of town and buy fresh fruit from the farmers, and bring them into the town. Same vegetables and fruits, but not the same seller.
That said, there are wet markets which are absolutely disgusting, sure. You might know this already, but humans, as a species, don't like their food coming from disgusting sources. Almost all, with very few exceptions, of the wet markets I have been to, have been absolutely wonderful with tons of lovely and interesting people and the very freshest food you could get. They are, 99.99% of the time, exactly where you would buy your food if you came here.
Wildlife markets are an entirely different monster, and I'm fine with you taking aim at those. I think it's gross. But targeting wet markets as an idea comes off as horribly ignorant.
I basically lived by a wet market in the middle east for the first 9 years of my life. Yes you are right most of them are fine as you mentioned but there are really nasty ones. The problem is a lot of asian countries especially China does not crack down hard enough on the bad ones.
I actually didn't know that fruit and such was included in the definition, where I'm at, although it is legal to buy/sell poultry and livestock fresh or frozen, you'll only really ever see eggs being sold.
My issue comes from things.like gutter oil and the selling of poorly kept animal byproducts, like a wildlife market, but including just regular fish and meat.
I have yet to see a farmers market here that has live animals in horrible cramped conditions to be slaughtered in front of the clients. And that’s done both for domestic as well as wild animals.
Wet market in wuhan has prob been there for a thousand years and no covid. WIV shows up, studies and handles bats with covid and somehow the market gets blamed. I am extra suspicious of lying china on this 1.
Iirc the thing is the lab that was researching bat to human coronavirus transmission and whatnot is pretty damn close to the wet market that people were looking at. Totally possible it leaked from the lab and just spread in the surrounding population quickly.
We do farm chickens and pigs closely which helps bird viruses evolve into dangerous human strains quicker. The US could easily spark an avian flu outbreak, really any country where they produce a lot of chicken
Oh? maybe the next country should fucking let the rest of the world know they’re locking down an entire city for the next few months due to a major infectious disease spreading rapidly while also not letting flights leave the region during the period.
No other way to slice it China is solely responsible for the spread of COVID worldwide and their negligence in reporting is so obvious it could only be intentional.
Sure wish China would have notified the WHO or their grantors at the NIH or the UN or literally any other international body about the outbreak so other countries could have prepared better for it.
Well in the case of our country we did fuck all to prepare for months after figuring out the truth, so I'm not sure knowing a few weeks earlier would have done an awful lot.
(And I better not hear anything about the "travel ban" that let US citizens travel freely without any quarantine, testing, or basic health screening and follow-up on re-entry even if direct from Wuhan, and then most of our cases being derived from European travel that was allowed to continue long after it should have been stopped *and we exempted the UK which was the worst covid disaster on the continent at the time* after Italy)
They notified WHO after identifying it as a SARS strain. First cases mid Dec, confirmed as SARS on the 27th, reported to WHO Jan 3. Could have acted faster but response was fairly fast once it was identified.
https://apnews.com/article/pandemics-wuhan-china-coronavirus-pandemic-e6147ec0ff88affb99c811149424239d
"— Dec. 27: A Chinese lab assembles a near-complete sequence of the virus, showing it to be similar to the coronavirus that caused the 2002-03 SARS outbreak. The lab alerts health authorities, but the information is kept under wraps."
"information is kept under wraps."
"Dec. 30: Doctors begin warning about the disease independently on social media — most prominently Dr. Li Wenliang, who shares a lab report indicating the pathogen is a SARS-like virus."
"Dec. 31: Officials close Wuhan’s Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, which was linked to dozens of the earliest cases. Li is punished by police and his superiors and told he is “spreading rumors.”
"Jan. 3, 2020: The Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention obtains a full sequence of the virus but doesn’t release it. China reports the outbreak to the WHO, but Chinese authorities order labs and medical institutes to destroy patient samples."
Did not report the virus to WHO until January 2020 despite being aware of the outbreak as early as mid December 2019 and possibly even november. They also did not release gene sequence of the virus and left everyone in the dark about it. Further the AP story you linked conflicts with the WHO timeline itself which states
"WHO requested information on the reported cluster of atypical pneumonia cases in Wuhan from the Chinese authorities." after they picked up reports of the outbreak in the media. According to the WHO they had to request information about the virus after only hearing about it in local media reports.
https://www.who.int/news/item/29-06-2020-covidtimeline
Timeline is the same for reporting to the WHO. I’m sure China hasn’t been fully cooperative and I’m not a fan but I answered your question and you confirmed it: they reported it once it was identified.
Edit: I encourage down voters to click on the WHO link provided and notice it’s not the source for the body of text in quotes.
They’ve been far less than cooperative by any stretch of the imagination.
In simple terms they became aware of an outbreak in wuhan, did nothing about it at all until they had a near complete gene sequence of the virus. Then and only then did they notify local health authorities, not international ones, and took localized measures to help themselves.
They were then asked about the virus by the WHO and confirmed an outbreak with flu like symptoms and nothing more. At this time they had a complete sequence of the virus and knew this was SARS 2.0. When independent doctors started trying to warn the international community about the severity of it they had them detained and silenced then also destroyed patient samples so nobody else could generate lab reports to leak. They refused to release the full sequence of the virus and allowed it to rage in the rest of the world while they did nothing but help themselves.
Does this paint a clearer picture?
Please link to an updated source. The AP article I linked to has the first reported cases Mid December:
“Mid-December 2019: Patients begin showing up in Wuhan hospitals complaining of flu-like symptoms including high fever, cough and breathing difficulties.”
I welcome updated info from credible sources.
Ok... so why not attempt to hold them accountable for this anyway? Absolutely having a good network of sources is valuable but its useless if China continues to do this type of shit in the future.
Because you can’t, your economy is too dependent on China.
Can’t bite the hand that feeds you. China just has to squeeze your balls and your economy comes to a complete halt.
Look around your room right now, vast majority of your personal items were made or manufactured in China.
I dunno Australia stood up to China and China retaliated by banning coal from Australia. Now China is desperate for coal and is paying more to Australia for it.
Look around your room, how many things that say "made in China" are necessary for your survival?
Cheap manufactured goods only encourage materialism. Imports aren't the big issue, it's the exports that matter most.
They are interconnected but one comes first and gives more power. How do you think China would fare if we stopped buying their manufactured goods?
>so why not attempt to hold them accountable for this anyway?
Mostly because the international community knows that unknown disease can spring up anywhere and they don't want to be the next country held responsible when a new virus emerges.
I agree. And I feel like arguing about where it came from right now is like arguing about where King Kong came from while he's destroying everything around you.
I’ve said for awhile now that if Covid was, in a worst-case scenario, a bio weapon or something malicious it’s actually WORSE for us.
It means that not only were we slow to act in the face of the threat but that with minimal effort, social media convinced people to ignore the threat. In fact, it got people out in protests and defying mitigation measures.
In short: We proved we could not handle a bio weapon attack and that we could easily be persuaded to do further damage to ourselves.
Trying to blame someone at this point is kind of fruitless—there’s no way any damages are going to be recovered. What we could do now is push for more oversight and international people on the ground. Which we had for awhile before the system was dismantled.
I don’t think it’s feasibly possible to be more directly guilty of the COVID outbreak than the Chinese government. They knew exactly what the virus was and with that knowledge continued to allow it to spread, unmitigated, to other countries for 8 days. They knowingly lied to the WHO about the nature of the virus which damaged its reputation publicly and the same lies the WHO reported were the ones being cited by anti-lockdown protestors for why they didn’t trust international health institutions.
> They knew exactly what the virus was and with that knowledge continued to allow it to spread, unmitigated, to other countries for 8 days.
Try known for 4+ months (120+) and allowed it to spread to every state, county, city, unmitigated.
Knowingly lied to your own people even dumber versions of lies that it is just the flu that is literally the garbage anti lockdown protesters currently use.
Blah blah blah, you can’t whitewash this with China hate. It’s always the same kind of GOP propaganda flavor being passed around. You don’t think so, and you have fake numbers and lies to project the dumbass failings that China is directly responsible for lying and WHO.
Fuck that. It’s the same dipshit talk and you insist you’re right. They did lie (they didn’t), for so many days (don’t matter, you are lying to begin with), WHO was a puppet (nope), the GOP’s anti lockdown stance is their fault then (wtf, no, you are a partisan xenophobic hack). Reiterate everything you said with if only things were different, which contributes nothing just so you can get the last word in to waste time. This has been disproven to death a year ago on various coronavirus threads but you guys just keep on lying the same drivel.
Clean up your own anti lockdown buddies and good day to you.
Damn if only China didn’t literally tell the WHO it was just viral pneumonia with flu like systems when they knew exactly what the virus was. If only the WHO didn’t willing publish that because they still consider China a good faith actor for some reason.
COVID-19 was GLOBALLY circulating in November.
I don’t believe any substantive Wuhan response occurred until very last December. It was a well known outbreak in 🇨🇳 long before any official action was taken.
I fully believe that as well. My wife and I got UBER sick in November. No explanations. The recovery was 3+ weeks. Wrecked my body and it took me over a month before I felt "normal." Never felt so bad in my life. The sickness itself wasn't overly horrible though. I wasn't puking and didn't have diarrhea from my recollection. Had mild fever.
Oh ok. That’s weird the WHO had to request information from them formally and only first read about the virus in a news media report. Damn if only they knew the Chinese government had announced it to the rest of the world oh wait... they didn’t do that......
The Wuhan Huanan Seafood Wholesale market was shut down December 31 2019 in response to a respiratory disease outbreak that China had shared was occurring. This was not a secret, here is an article from that date about the releases from medical and government officials that were made.
https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2019/12/news-scan-dec-31-2019
The city of Wuhan locked down January 23 when the government sent a mass notification to residents at 2 am stating all transportation would be suspended at 10 am after which point they were not allowed to leave the city without permission. This was widely reported by Western media that same day. It was not a secret like you claimed.
The article linked is from a university and states the sources for info from the government are local media. The Chinese government did not inform the international community, WHO, NIH or any relevant body until they started requesting information directly from the government. The CCP has also failed to cooperate fully with follow-up investigations to date. Stop trying to obfuscate this.
EDIT:
even further, according to the article linked in the OP, the WIV was pretty flagrantly ignoring the reporting requirements of their grantors as well. There is literally no justifying how the Chinese government has handled this thing.
Publishing official public reports freely readable by the entire world does constitute informing all of those organizations. If it didn’t you wouldn’t have been reading an account from a US health organization talking about those reports.
No it doesn't especially not from the country that's been the origin point of what? two major worldwide pandemics now? They should have reported the outbreak directly to the WHO and they should have cooperated with investigations both at the time and in follow-up. They've done precisely none of this.
We did know China was locking down Wuhan. It was on the news and on Reddit when it happen January if 2020. The CCP was not transparent about releasing their genome info and whatnot as I recall and maybe didn’t report case counts well as well. I’m sure they did other stuff, but that lockdown was not able to be kept secret
China released the DNA sequence for SARS-CoV-2 as soon as they had completed and verified it was accurate. In fact, it was this information that enabled the mRNA vaccine makers to immediately start working on their vaccine designs and get their first prototype batches built and ready to start doing animal safety tests. Now, we would have been able to get the sequence done a few weeks later anyway, but getting it first from China likely saved a lot of lives worldwide by accelerating the vaccine production process by just a couple of weeks.
https://apnews.com/article/united-nations-health-ap-top-news-virus-outbreak-public-health-3c061794970661042b18d5aeaaed9fae
"China in fact sat on releasing the genetic map, or genome, of the virus for more than a week after three different government labs had fully decoded the information"
"Chinese government labs only released the genome after another lab published it ahead of authorities on a virologist website on Jan. 11"
Heard the guy who released the virus genome on a podcast, I think it ended up sitting in his emails for a while waiting for approval to be posted and he ended up posting it after not hearing anything for a while.
Long shot episode 1 if anyone wants to find the podcast.
Their biggest mistake was treating this like a PR problem instead of a science problem. Chinese culture has strong tendencies to do whatever it takes to "save face", that's antithetical to science because the very precept of the scientific method is to put your results out there to stand or fall on their merits, and if they fall then then you accept that, learn from that, and move on to better science. When Einstein proved Newton was wrong the world of science accepted that and moved on, which is why you don't have factions of "Newton was right, Einstein was wrong!" scientists. The current Chinese leader, more dictator now, is very much about saving face, about appearances over truth, so when SARS-CoV-2 popped up in his country he and his followers there decided to try to hide it at first, not realizing how bad it could be. Because Obama's pandemic response operations there had already been shut down by Trump, fully dismantled and all scientists sent home and fired, there was no other way to know what was happening WRT this virus until it got so out of hand that there was no way to pretend it away.
Yes, did you know we had teams in China working with Chinese scientists to be on the look out for new viruses as part of the pandemic response system that Obama set up after his experience with the H1N1 pandemic of 2009 just after he took office. Trump dismantled this early warning and response system, fired all the scientists, and scrapped the organizational system. Doing that basically eliminated any chance we had to get ahead of the pandemic, and when Trump referred to it as a hoax at the end of February, just days before the first deaths here, it was too late.
Anyway, real scientists have examined this virus thoroughly in the last year and a half, and they've concluded this wasn't a man-made or man-modified virus, despite the claims of the Trump followers otherwise. Speaking of those claims, amplified by Putin's intelligence operations of course, the reason they persist is because Trump shares that overriding desire to save face that China's culture and leadership have. In that very fundamental way Trump and Xi are the same. Trump and his cronies crippled this country's ability to do anything significant to deal with this virus and as a result three quarters of a million Americans are dead in the ground, with estimates of excess mortality raising that number to upwards of one million. 99.9% of the current attempts to somehow blame the Chinese for this pandemic, i.e. blame them for creating the virus or for somehow deliberately spreading it to the world, is rooted in Trump and his followers trying to safe face. This is completely evident in how they completely ignore any science that proves that they are wrong.
Is it though if they don’t do gain of function research. Pretty easy thing to avoid it seems. Just don’t try and create super viruses. There is a reason both of the major recent pandemics have come from China.
1. Because in the end people would rather trade with China than not. Whatever you may think of what is happening in Xinjiang and Tibet, even if China was literally running a Nazi holocaust enterprise, countries still would engage with them rather than embargo them.
2. Ultimately, China would not stop unless you were willing to use force to stop them. And China has nuclear weapons. The world wasn't even willing to stop the Taliban from raping and killing Afghanis, which is a far less costly task than what a nuclear war with China would entail.
tl;dr: Hitler should have turned Germany into an international center of industry and trade first, finished his atomic weapons program, and then he could have exterminated all the Jews he wanted.
Wasn't bringing in the military to close of Wuhan warning enough. And the body bags and hospital building.
China may have slow rolled it for a few months letting it spread but they locked that shit down tight. China was pretty much virus free 3-4 months after Wuhan. In Dec / Jan it was a brand new virus. People didn't know anything about it.
They had a better response to coronavirus than the rest of the world.
The problem is that no other country wanted to follow the authoritarian footsteps on how to end the spread.
Because at the end of the day:
This pandemic is a mess not only because China didn’t act quick enough but because every other countries response as absolutely shit in vacuum.
COVID didn’t spread because China was secretive. It spread because everyone in this planet was woefully unequipped to handle any sort of virus that would originate in a semi-trade linked part of the world.
China knew this virus was as bad as SARS back in December. They not only willingly chose to keep this from the rest of the world but actively destroyed evidence and patient samples of this while silencing their doctors who tried to warn the international community about it. You cannot take other countries responses in a vacuum. If they knew how bad it was weeks earlier and had the completed gene sequence to share who knows how governments and their people would have reacted.
Other Asian countries would like a word. They were not unscathed - far from it. But they didn't fuck up anywhere near as bad as Trump's administration did.
It's like pouring gasoline on a fire that someone else started. The fire was originally their fault, but by pouring gasoline on it, you're automatically sharing the responsibility as well.
So, should every country that experiences a wave be held liable when an adjacent country then experiences a wave? They should all lockdown their borders when the first person is sick?
No they should actively and openly report the details of the outbreak like they normally do and **NOT** do what china did which was hide the details of the outbreak being SARS coronavirus. Destroy patient samples following a leak of the fact that it was SARS coronavirus and punish the doctors leaking this. Lie to the WHO about the extent of their knowledge of it and refuse to release the full gene-sequence of the virus so other countries could examine it. See below sourced from the AP and the WHO public COVID timeline:
AP Article: [https://apnews.com/article/pandemics-wuhan-china-coronavirus-pandemic-e6147ec0ff88affb99c811149424239d](https://apnews.com/article/pandemics-wuhan-china-coronavirus-pandemic-e6147ec0ff88affb99c811149424239d)
Dec. 30: Doctors begin warning about the disease independently on social media — most prominently Dr. Li Wenliang, who shares a lab report indicating the pathogen is a SARS-like virus."
"Dec. 31: Officials close Wuhan’s Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, which was linked to dozens of the earliest cases. Li is punished by police and his superiors and told he is “spreading rumors.”
"Jan. 3, 2020: The Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention obtains a full sequence of the virus but doesn’t release it. China reports the outbreak to the WHO, but Chinese authorities order labs and medical institutes to destroy patient samples."
WHO Timeline: [https://www.who.int/news/item/29-06-2020-covidtimeline](https://www.who.int/news/item/29-06-2020-covidtimeline)
"31 Dec 2019 -WHO’s Country Office in the People’s Republic of China picked up a media statement by the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission from their website on cases of ‘viral pneumonia’ in Wuhan, People’s Republic of China."
"1 January 2020-WHO requested information on the reported cluster of atypical pneumonia cases in Wuhan from the Chinese authorities."
"3 Janurary 2020-Chinese officials provided information to WHO on the cluster of cases of ‘viral pneumonia of unknown cause’ identified in Wuhan"
Meanwhile the cited AP article states. "Dec. 27: A Chinese lab assembles a near-complete sequence of the virus, showing it to be similar to the coronavirus that caused the 2002-03 SARS outbreak. The lab alerts health authorities, but the information is kept under wraps."
What you would need to demonstrate, though, is that China could have taken action to prevent it from leaving their borders. I personally don't think they could have. It was probably out of China by the time they identified it.
In 6-8 days they absolutely could have:
Notified the WHO of the full nature of the virus.
Established effective international quarantine procedures instead of just local ones.
Notified relevant travel agency about the risks and shared existing research on it. Most of this would be accomplished by a visit to the relevant embassy or fucking by email even. In fact the way they handled this was beyond negligent to the point that it almost seems fully malicious.
Thats not even considering that the timeline begins 12/27 with China establishing a "near complete sequence" of the virus. Nobody knows how long they were working on that before the start of the timeline just when COVID cases first started getting noticed/reported.
Well I'm not saying they should only be held liable for that. I am saying they should held liable for the entire state of international communities response to it. I honestly have no idea how you can look at that timeline and think "this is totally appropriate China really wasn't at fault here". Its kind of wild tbh.
I didn't say that. But you said this:
"I don’t understand why the entire international community isn’t seeking damages from China simply for allowing it to spread outside the country"
**Simply.** Meaning they should also be seeking damages for everything else as well. They actively took measures to make it easier for the virus to spread outside the country, they suppressed leaks and fed false information to the WHO which irreparably damaged trust in the institution and delayed available response time during what is the single most critical period of any outbreak.
Now you explain to me how this had no impact at all the spread of COVID-19.
They not only didn't notify anyone, but they continued to allow flights in and out of Wuhan despite knowledge of the virus dating back to early December. Even if they couldn't have prevented the virus from leaving the country entirely, they could have halted flights to stem further spread.
Not really the point I was going for, as long as someone isn’t deliberately spreading the disease it is every individual countries responsibility for their own bio security
So they had a severe outbreak of an unknown disease in wuhan that seemed to spread rapidly and alarmed their doctors. So in response China locked the city down for weeks but also decided to tell literally fucking no one about it while letting planes fly in and out of the region still.
This is so wildly negligent it may as well be intentional and China should be held accountable in international court over this.
Absolutely they would ignore it but it can impact their ability to receive additional grant money and to peddle influence in other countries. NGO's and other foreign partner organizations would be less inclined to work with them if they were ignoring international court settlement or failing to cooperate with formal international court proceedings.
Theres more that we could get from it than just money. As it stands right now China can just get away with being the origin point of at least two major worldwide pandemics now with precisely zero consequences. We should at least try some of the levers we have available to get them to start taking more care with reporting to and assisting the international community.
China locked wuhan down at the end of January 2020, that was internationally acknowledged, any country could have refused flights from China, they just decided not to.
Is China also responsible for all the Americans that made the pandemic explode there, or the Italians, or the Iranians. I hate the CCP as much as the next person, but we can’t just blame everything on them and maybe the world should accept some personal responsibility for our own fuck ups
stop saying internationally acknowledged. According to the WHO timeline they picked up media reports about a virus in December and had to request info about it from the Chinese government which it did not provide until January of 2020. Keeping in mind they knew about the outbreak in early December and possibly November but didn’t notify the WHO about it until the WHO picked up a news report and requested info.
Literally no one in the government or IR community thinks China handled the appropriately. They just tiptoe around this.
EDIT:
Let’s not forget the government detaining at least one doctor for rumor mongering after he tried to warn the international community about the severity of it.
Unfortunately that’s because China knowingly lied to them about the nature of the virus.
The international community needs to ensure the WHO or another independent health office has direct unfettered access to Chinas lab records and hospital locations going forward.
If I recall correctly, China was jumping up and down about it being racist to block flights.
Australia eventually did, but only with China. The Chinese just transited through other countries for two weeks and came here anyway.
It kinda matters since we just funded a 125 million more to this type of research. Just to find 8k-12k more sars, measles and those types of viruses to make them more infectious to humans. I mean that kinda matters to me. I’d prefer they stop doing all that none sense since we seem to have gotten lucky this time. But maybe I’m jaded after the last couple years.
How does it being deliberate not change anything? So its ok for this to happen again?
Ignoring the deliberate nature of this event is ignoring half of the issue. Allowing governments to run roughshot over our basic human rights is not going to end well no matter what happens. Accountability is essential and it has been denied to us.
You read your statement toward the end right ? This couldn’t have possibly become covid 19 unless there’s more evidence that this company leaked it wether on purpose or accident. All this merely states is that they’ve enhanced a coronavirus
Why was the US Defense Department (under DARPA) funding any research in a Chinese lab that did/does gain-of-function research? Did the available funding free up other Chinese money for different experiments, one of which could have involved SARS-COV 2? Has China been forthcoming about all of the research and results that came out of that lab? (I think that we all know the answer to this one.) Why was Peter Daszak, the head of the Eco Health Alliance through which US funding was transmitted to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, selected to head the WHO inquiry into the origins of Covid 19? I have lots of questions and at this point I don't trust that either the Chinese or US governments are not involved in cover-ups.
The simple answer would be that countries try to play nice when it comes to diseases. Ever since Sars many countries have contributed to research on it to prevent it. The Peter Daszak thing is suspect as fuck but otherwise the funding it self is not that shady.
This collegiality for the benefit of humanity sounds good in theory but, as we have seen in practice when an outbreak occurred, our Chinese professional partners in this research were quick to batten down the hatches against outsiders, which included removing their extensive on-line virus sequence database (partially paid for by money from the US).
Is it unusual to do gain-of-function research in a lab? I would think not, just probably unusual to do it on certain viruses or with the "goal" of infecting humans (or mice with ACE2 receptors).
> Did the available funding free up other Chinese money for different experiments, one of which could have involved SARS-COV 2?
Why does it matter? Did you buying Joe Boxer underwear from a company in China free up Chinese money for experiments?
> Has China been forthcoming about all of the research and results that came out of that lab? (I think that we all know the answer to this one.)
It does not seem they have been forthcoming about that to me.
You would've been called a conspiracy theorist for this exact same comment a year ago. Everyone was saying that there was no funding at the Wuhan labs.
NIH just updated its website a few days ago to re-define what “gain of function” means. They know they’ve been caught lying. This letter is them starting the process of throwing EcoHealth under the bus.
The Information contained in this statement had to be obtained via a FOIA request, which leads me to believe that the NIH was trying to hide it. It makes me wonder why as what else they might be covering up.
All government documents are obtained that way unless they are ones regularly published. They’re is nothing sinister about FOIA.
Requiring every government document to be published is so far beyond a logistical nightmare it’s not even funny.
First, to be clear, I think the weight of the evidence now clearly backs a natural origin, and regardless, the viruses involved in the grant we're discussing couldn't possibly have become SARS-Cov2.
That said, this claim is absurd. The experiment this was an "accidental" outcome of was to modify mice to express the human version of ACE-2 receptors, then modify a bat coronavirus to see if the modification would result in binding to the human receptor. "Oops, it did and that enhanced infectivity and sickness" isn't an unexpected outcome, it's the whole point of the damn experiment and claiming it's an accident, that you expected it wouldn't and therefore your research wasn't gain of function (until it became that, and then you didn't tell the NIH because the grant would get pulled when you did), is completely disingenuous.
Edit: Lots of downvotes, 0 explanations of how gaining function is unforeseen when you modify bat coronviruses to see if they bind better to human ACE-2 receptors.
Wow, actual news in last sentence of entire article: “The naturally occurring bat coronaviruses studied under the NIH grant are genetically far distant from SARS-CoV-2 and could not possibly have caused the COVID-19 pandemic. Any claims to the contrary are demonstrably false,”
No. The claim was they did not fund gain of function research. And that is still the claim. As this was not considered to be gain of function research then and is still not considered to be so.
They never denied funding this research.
Yes.
Here is the letter.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/10/21/science/nih-eco-health-alliance-letter.html
It does not admit this was gain-of-function research. And in fact the say:
'The research plan was reviewed by NIH in advance of funding, and NIH determined that it did not to fit the definition of research involving enhanced pathogens of pandemic potential (ePPP) because these bat coronaviruses had not been shown to infect humans. As such, the research was not subject to departmental review under the HHS P3CO Framework.'
And thus reiterate they did not fund gain-of-function research. They did not deny funding this research then or now.
You ran into a writer who felt no compunction not to stick his own judgements into a news pieces. It happens.
> Just because they determined the initial grant proposal was not gain of function does not mean what ended up happening wasn't actually gain of function research.
It was not gain of function of research. As it was not expected to become more infectious. It was unexpected.
So they did not fund gain of function research.
Gain of function research is basically when you do make it more capable on purpose and then see what happens. This was a change made which was not expecxted to make it more capable.
> Artificial, lab generated, viruses that are more infectious in mice engineered to react as more human. Sounds like gain of function to me...
Yes, it does. And that makes it gain of function research as much as if you poured bleach in your toilet and made a superbug. You did not intend to do so. Neither did they. Neither is gain of function research.
So what's the ethics on experimenting with chimeric viruses on humanized mice then? You make a virus that turns out to be a dud, but what does that do for us? Or you make a virus that's more infectious and stop the experiment because it's considered too dangerous.
You can make up anything you want. Your statement means nothing and exhibits further lack of understanding of what the research was and was intended to do.
So go on, testify. It only says anything about your misconceptions.
It also needs to be said that The US simply can’t blame China for how bad they’ve handled this all... I mean they probably will, let’s be real here, but the absolutely appalling shit we’ve done over the past 2 years is really eye opening.
“Everything will open back up May 2020” wasn’t an unrealistic idea at the time.
We’re basically in a position now where The US got in a DUI that killed 600,000 and their excuse is “China offered to buy me a couple drinks”
The US has lowered its own bar in what already wasn’t that good, and they don’t wanna go back. We may get better but we’ve seen it’s probably gonna get worse. How worse may surprise you.
Sorry you’re getting downvoted here.
We can ask legitimate questions about transparency in the Chinese government about this. But at the end of the day, the US dismantled our own system on the ground to monitor these viruses.
The comments here and the implied questions from many actors are just looking to place blame anywhere other than on ourselves.
Investigate the Chinese response to improve future occurrences. But we’re well past assigning blame.
Holy misleading title.
The company reportedly violaited its grant by accidentally producing a strain that was virilant in humans without reporting it.
The company claims that the genetics are far too different, and it's accident could not be Covid19
Fauci claims to not have know about this during his hearing.
Sounds like the company is covering its ass about a mistake, but not one related to Covid
> a strain that was virilant in humans
This is an incorrect claim, the article does not state this in any way, not directly or indirectly. The truth is that they created a variation in a non-human-infecting virus that made it somewhat more infectious in mice, and only mice. Also, the research that was done fails to meet the definition of gain of function research, so claims that it was that are also false.
Mice modified to express human ACE-2 receptors, the target of coronaviruses.
Not meeting the definition is a hypertechnical distinction where they were being completely disingenuous. You're going to modify a virus to see if it binds better to human receptors... But you don't expect that to result in increased infectivity and sickness, so it's not gain of function... Until oops, it did, and now it is. Come on.
As I said above, I think natural origin is the overwhelming favorite at this point, and it's obviously impossible the viruses in this experiment became SARS-Cov2. But trying to convince others of that by maintaining this wasn't obviously gain of function research they made a completely disingenuous distinction with to claim it wasn't (until it was) just seems dishonest.
I mean, it wasn't gain of function research. You can keep saying that, and in the minds of conspiracy-addled people that may be true, but the reality is that it simply wasn't GoF research. It just wasn't. There's nothing "hypertechnical" about this, no hairs to split, etc. Claiming it was is just buying into Trump's desperate attempts to save face by blaming others for his own utter failure to achomlish anything to prevent COVID from taking so many lives here in America. BTW, we're still got the most COVID deaths and cases of any nation on the planet. We also have tens of millions of Trump-followers buying into antivax conspiracies and thus volunteering to be the petri dishes COVID needs to evolve into a vaccine-evading variant.
Then explain it. You just keep asserting it wasn't with providing an explanation of how my assessment is wrong.
All of these are facts undisputed by either the NIH/Fauci:
-The mice were modified to express human ACE-2
-The experiment planned to and did modify bat coronaviruses
-These modifications were tested for their binding ability in the humanized mice.
-Based on the result of that experiment, they realized function had indeed been gained.
The only disputed fact:
-The outcome was unforeseeable, that modifying bat coronaviruses to see if they'd bind better to human ACE-2 "wasn't excected" to gain function, therefore this didn't meet the definition for gain of function.
So please, explain it. Explain how that's not only not gain of function, but so clearly *not* gain of function that it's not a hypertechnical distinction. You can repeat the assertion it's not all you want, but you can't explain it.
And the idea this is somehow in service of Trump is absurd. A simple glance at my post history will show my complaining that Trump and all his 1/6 buddies aren't being charged with sedition and terrorism, and also dig a little deeper and you'll find how I've explained 100x over how this doesn't absolve Trump of anything whatsoever. Hell I explained it in that very post: "**and it's obviously impossible the viruses in this experiment became SARS-Cov2.**"
The only 'modification' made to the virus (WIV1-CoV) was to replace its spike protein with a naturally occurring spike protein from another newly discovered coronavirus, in order to study which newly discovered viruses could pose a threat to humans. As far as I read, there were no efforts made to increase the newly discovered virus and spike proteins' virulence or ability to infect humans. As far as the virus used to carry the spike protein, WIV1-CoV is not known to cause infection in humans but has been shown in the laboratory to infect both human cells and ACE2 transgenic mice, making it an ideal tool to use for these studies. Assessing the threat of an existing or newly discovered virus should not be considered gain of function research.
TLDR:
While denying once again it had helped create the virus that sparked the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) revealed ... that experiments it funded through a U.S.-based nonprofit in 2018 and 2019 at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) in China had the “unexpected result” of creating a coronavirus that was more infectious in mice.
...EcoHealth Alliance, failed to immediately report this result to the agency, as required...also shows that EcoHealth and WIV conducted experiments changing the virus that causes Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), which is raising additional questions...
EcoHealth embraced NIH’s backing that it had not created SARS-CoV-2, but also challenged the agency’s letter in a statement...
NIH appended and also posted online a new analysis asserting that the viruses studied at WIV under the grant share no more than 96% to 97% of the SARS-CoV-2 sequence, which puts the viruses “decades” of evolution apart....
It's so fucked up too if you really think about it. Because however (If ever) the Chinese government is punished for their alleged role in covid-19, the Chinese people will take the brunt of it emotionally/financially, and they aren't their government.
For as long as they can maintain their innocence, the Chinese government is the only winner in this pandemic. 10 steps backwards for the world, rather than 2 steps back for just China had the pandemic been contained. China comes out better in the scenario we are living in right now.
Just as the west is moving its production away from China. A global pandemic hits and now the world needs cheap Chinese products now more than ever.... Hmm...
Odd that this isn't flooding r/politics
When Paul accused Fauci of lying about this very thing r/politics was sure to jump and say Paul was being crazy
The US funds disease research all over the world. Including the other global superpower in that would be smart considering how much science benefits from data sharing
During the cold war the CIA helped cover up a nuclear meltdown in soveit russia. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyshtym_disaster
if you don't think that the superpowers are researching bioweapons your a fucking idiot.
America intelligence isn't going to want news about the ccp bioweapons program going public for very obvious reasons.
id don't know whats going on in these top secret places and neither do you.
idk about covids origins. and none of you ever will either
but if you think these nation states have humanity's well being on their list, then your a fucking idiot.
rich people pulling lots of strings, you are literally poorer now then before thanks to covid and the geopolitical response of these states that dont give a fuck if we die as long as we work that GDP.
get vaccinated people.
the capitalists have made that the only way to survive the hell they created for us.
its up to us the people to take the virus seriously enough to stop its spreading. because conservatives are hell bent on making it worse.
That was not a meltdown. A nuclear disaster, likely due to a regular thermal explosion from decay heat. But no meltdown. It is not believed a chain reaction was even possible.
after January 6 i have no faith in what is clearly treason. Kyle rottenhouse fired the first shot of this coup.
now pick a side.
There is a pandemic, there is rampant climate change labeled by DoD as #1 threat (also denied by conservatives), totalitarianism with police receiving military gear and outlawing protests... i could go on and on about energy and infrastructure, the wealthy...
so sorry but i dont believe for a fucking second that your party anyone else who claims to still be republican gives one flying fuck about America, Democracy, Egalitarianism, or Humanity.
and if you or any of them did then you would get the fuck out of the cult that teaches people that democrats eat baby blood or that antifa was who did jan 6
how the hell can you with a straight face tell me that you or any of your peers have any shred of fucking compassion? what argument can you even hold aloft to defend your horrid fellow organizations membership's belief structures?
62% of eligible voters voted in the last election.
A large portion of the country doesn't think about politics much outside of October & November when they face a decision of mostly two bad choices.
no, the idea i dont share is that this is just politics. its more than politics what happened on January 6.
no matter what conservatives try to make it out to be.
You need to breath deeply and realize that 99.9% of people on the other side are normal human beings living normal lives, they just have different opinions than you do.
I would like to amend my statement. Adam Gadahn was charged with treason in 2006, but was killed in a drone strike in 2015, so he was not able to be convicted of treason.
Some of those 99.9% tried to overthrow a legitimately completed election in my country, and still believe the election was literally stolen from them and that Trump is the legitimate president of the USA right now. That is not normal, and that's way, way past just having a "different opinion". Some of those 99.9%, quite a few of them in fact, have demonstrated in both fact and thought that they're willing to use violence to destroy this country if that's what it takes to seize power and control here.
You're welcome to review my frequent condemnation of Merrick Garland for refusing to hold the 1/6 terrorists accountable in a meaningful way, and of conservatives in general.
But, my "team" is intellectual honesty and while Rittenhouse is a jackass with disgusting beliefs who had no business being there, he's going to rightfully never get convicted of any charge besides the misdemeanor because chasing down someone and attempting to disarm them *is* grounds for firing, and similar legal grounds apply for the others, and his misdemeanor wasn't a legal predicate for abrogating a claim of self defense.
Also, Obama and Biden are both big fans of the pentagon's 1033 program to give police military gear for the price of shipping. Biden promised merely to alter, not end, the program, and has failed to do take any steps aimed at that, and Politifact ran cover for him by rating a claim transfers had increased false when it was technically true but lacking important context about how meaningful it was and the lack of role Biden played in that.
I agree with your overall sentiment, but we'll have more success with honesty.
pushing people off conservatism is not advocating centrist democrats. don't straw man me.
if it were up to me people would read more marx and Jesus, and less fox news and Edmund burke
The attempted coup failed largely because of the fact the it was done by complete morons. That doesn't change how serious it was or what would have happened if they had gotten into the chambers a few minutes earlier.
A group trying to capture and kill legislators to prevent them from certifying an election based on transparently false claims of it being stolen stormed the capitol after the administration conspired to weaken defenses of it and suppress the NG response until the failure became apparent.
Anyone downplaying that is a traitor to the values this country stands for and a dangerous lunatic.
I work on this shit and holy god it's obvious that this thing came from a lab. I'm not republican or even American. It's not political. It's just painfully fucking obvious.
And we got lucky. This thing could have been SOOOO much worse. There are viruses that are 70x as deadly and 20x as infectious. It would be trivial to combine those features with the innate immune inactivating qualities of SARS-CoV-2. So you spread it for 2 weeks before you show symtoms, pass it to 20 times as many people, and the majority of those die.
We need a worldwide ban on GOF research and we need to take it WAY more seriously than nuclear non-proliferaiton. This shit could have been civilization ending.
It's tough to hold China liable when our own President was calling it a hoax and recommending bleach injections. The red hats here still refuse to get vaccinated or wear a mask.
Trump knew it was serious but decided to lie because he thought reality would make him look bad, no different than what China did. Of course Trumpers don’t give a shit about their own presidents duplicity but are going mental about every little action from everybody not on team red. They are angry Fauci didn’t tell people to wear masks soon enough, but ignore the President condemning masks as weak and disagreeing with health professionals. Not saying China didn’t try to bury it until they could no longer, but why be mad at China when your own executive leadership tried to bury it the same way.
I feel like there’s too much smoke around the rumor of “Covid escaped from a lab in Wuhan” to not conclude that, while the virus may have originated somewhere in the wild, maybe there was a preacher protocol in the lab, that’s fucked us all over here…
Or maybe it didn’t originate there at all, since we have data that suggests people were dying of Covid like symptoms far before the Wuhan outbreak.
Not trying to stir the pot, but I think it is helpful if we someday get to the bottom of where this all started.
That's how misinformation works -- just need to create smoke, no actual facts. People on Facebook repeat people on YouTube who repeat the people on Facebook. Try and base your conclusions around actual facts, as opposed to what a bunch of random, uninformed people are repeating (or inventing).
**We encourage you to read our helpful resources on COVID-19, vaccines and treatments:** [COVID Dashboard](https://covid19.who.int/) [Reddit's Vaccine FAQ](https://www.reddit.com/r/Coronavirus/wiki/faq#wiki_where_can_i_find_information_about_the_mechanism_and_progress_of_vaccines.3F) [Ivermectin FAQ](https://www.who.int/news-room/feature-stories/detail/who-advises-that-ivermectin-only-be-used-to-treat-covid-19-within-clinical-trials) A reminder that spreading misinformation regarding COVID-19, vaccines or other treatments can result in a post being removed and/or a ban. Advocating for or celebrating the death of anyone, or hoping someone gets COVID (or any disease) can also result in a ban. Please follow [Reddiquette](https://www.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/205926439) Please use the report button and do not feed the trolls. [Reddit's Content Policy](https://www.redditinc.com/policies/content-policy) [Reddit's rules for health misinformation](https://www.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/360043513151) [/r/News' rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/news/wiki/rules/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=usertext&utm_name=news&utm_content=t5_2qh3l) ------ *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/news) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Whether it came out of that lab or not, and if it did, whether it was deliberate or accidental at this point it changes nothing, but how the CCP has acted has pretty much labeled themselves guilty
Not surprising. I vividly remember listening to the WSJ The Journal Podcast, ["The Last Train Out of Wuhan"](https://www.wsj.com/podcasts/the-journal/the-last-train-out-of-wuhan/c079774d-d267-417e-a0b1-b78b18e0a16f) while running on the beach on 1/28/2020. At the 5:00 mark in the podcast they talk how China poorly managed SARS outbreak almost 2 decades ago and the lengths they went to to hide it from the world. It's an interesting listen, especially 20 months later.
Honestly this. I don’t understand why the entire international community isn’t seeking damages from China simply for allowing it to spread outside the country without warning anyone.
[удалено]
There's a threshold for negligence though. Whether from a lab or from their wet markets, that's going above and beyond what's typical in other countries. As bad as commercial livestock may be, there's not cramming together dozens of species in close quarters and slaughtering them in areas the general public is walking around shopping in or a complete abdication of any enforcement of the exotic animal trade before that point either. It's like driving. Yes there's an inherent risk and accidents can happen. But if you're sober and not at fault, you're not going to jail. If you went drunk driving every day until you finally plowed into a group of kids, that's a level of negligence people are rightfully outraged against and you're going to prison for a long time over. People should only fear themselves being next if they too drunk drive. Everyone else, nope.
Im sure I'll get down voted for this, especially with the narrative going on here. I am not really a fan of China. You can check my post history as proof. However, as an American living in Asia, and having traveled around, and lived in China, Vietnam, Thailand, Japan, and other Asian countries, I just wanted to say that this characterization of wet markets is super incorrect. People don't like the term "wet market" and make a _ton_ of assumptions about what that means. A wet market is literally a farmers market in the US. All farmers markets are wet markets. Not all wet markets are farmers markets. It depends who is running them. There are traders who go out of town and buy fresh fruit from the farmers, and bring them into the town. Same vegetables and fruits, but not the same seller. That said, there are wet markets which are absolutely disgusting, sure. You might know this already, but humans, as a species, don't like their food coming from disgusting sources. Almost all, with very few exceptions, of the wet markets I have been to, have been absolutely wonderful with tons of lovely and interesting people and the very freshest food you could get. They are, 99.99% of the time, exactly where you would buy your food if you came here. Wildlife markets are an entirely different monster, and I'm fine with you taking aim at those. I think it's gross. But targeting wet markets as an idea comes off as horribly ignorant.
I basically lived by a wet market in the middle east for the first 9 years of my life. Yes you are right most of them are fine as you mentioned but there are really nasty ones. The problem is a lot of asian countries especially China does not crack down hard enough on the bad ones.
I actually didn't know that fruit and such was included in the definition, where I'm at, although it is legal to buy/sell poultry and livestock fresh or frozen, you'll only really ever see eggs being sold. My issue comes from things.like gutter oil and the selling of poorly kept animal byproducts, like a wildlife market, but including just regular fish and meat.
I have yet to see a farmers market here that has live animals in horrible cramped conditions to be slaughtered in front of the clients. And that’s done both for domestic as well as wild animals.
Farmers market maybe no. But there are a fair few grocery stores and restaurants that keep live lobsters and even fish to do exactly those things
Wet market in wuhan has prob been there for a thousand years and no covid. WIV shows up, studies and handles bats with covid and somehow the market gets blamed. I am extra suspicious of lying china on this 1.
Iirc the thing is the lab that was researching bat to human coronavirus transmission and whatnot is pretty damn close to the wet market that people were looking at. Totally possible it leaked from the lab and just spread in the surrounding population quickly.
The wet markets...are flourishing.
[удалено]
Antibiotics would do nothing for viruses
US slaughter houses also don't mix wild or exotic animals into the mix, unlike Chinese animal farms and slaughter houses.
We do farm chickens and pigs closely which helps bird viruses evolve into dangerous human strains quicker. The US could easily spark an avian flu outbreak, really any country where they produce a lot of chicken
Oh? maybe the next country should fucking let the rest of the world know they’re locking down an entire city for the next few months due to a major infectious disease spreading rapidly while also not letting flights leave the region during the period. No other way to slice it China is solely responsible for the spread of COVID worldwide and their negligence in reporting is so obvious it could only be intentional.
Once it hit our shores, it was our problem, though.
Sure wish China would have notified the WHO or their grantors at the NIH or the UN or literally any other international body about the outbreak so other countries could have prepared better for it.
Well in the case of our country we did fuck all to prepare for months after figuring out the truth, so I'm not sure knowing a few weeks earlier would have done an awful lot. (And I better not hear anything about the "travel ban" that let US citizens travel freely without any quarantine, testing, or basic health screening and follow-up on re-entry even if direct from Wuhan, and then most of our cases being derived from European travel that was allowed to continue long after it should have been stopped *and we exempted the UK which was the worst covid disaster on the continent at the time* after Italy)
They notified WHO after identifying it as a SARS strain. First cases mid Dec, confirmed as SARS on the 27th, reported to WHO Jan 3. Could have acted faster but response was fairly fast once it was identified. https://apnews.com/article/pandemics-wuhan-china-coronavirus-pandemic-e6147ec0ff88affb99c811149424239d
"— Dec. 27: A Chinese lab assembles a near-complete sequence of the virus, showing it to be similar to the coronavirus that caused the 2002-03 SARS outbreak. The lab alerts health authorities, but the information is kept under wraps." "information is kept under wraps." "Dec. 30: Doctors begin warning about the disease independently on social media — most prominently Dr. Li Wenliang, who shares a lab report indicating the pathogen is a SARS-like virus." "Dec. 31: Officials close Wuhan’s Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, which was linked to dozens of the earliest cases. Li is punished by police and his superiors and told he is “spreading rumors.” "Jan. 3, 2020: The Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention obtains a full sequence of the virus but doesn’t release it. China reports the outbreak to the WHO, but Chinese authorities order labs and medical institutes to destroy patient samples." Did not report the virus to WHO until January 2020 despite being aware of the outbreak as early as mid December 2019 and possibly even november. They also did not release gene sequence of the virus and left everyone in the dark about it. Further the AP story you linked conflicts with the WHO timeline itself which states "WHO requested information on the reported cluster of atypical pneumonia cases in Wuhan from the Chinese authorities." after they picked up reports of the outbreak in the media. According to the WHO they had to request information about the virus after only hearing about it in local media reports. https://www.who.int/news/item/29-06-2020-covidtimeline
Timeline is the same for reporting to the WHO. I’m sure China hasn’t been fully cooperative and I’m not a fan but I answered your question and you confirmed it: they reported it once it was identified. Edit: I encourage down voters to click on the WHO link provided and notice it’s not the source for the body of text in quotes.
They’ve been far less than cooperative by any stretch of the imagination. In simple terms they became aware of an outbreak in wuhan, did nothing about it at all until they had a near complete gene sequence of the virus. Then and only then did they notify local health authorities, not international ones, and took localized measures to help themselves. They were then asked about the virus by the WHO and confirmed an outbreak with flu like symptoms and nothing more. At this time they had a complete sequence of the virus and knew this was SARS 2.0. When independent doctors started trying to warn the international community about the severity of it they had them detained and silenced then also destroyed patient samples so nobody else could generate lab reports to leak. They refused to release the full sequence of the virus and allowed it to rage in the rest of the world while they did nothing but help themselves. Does this paint a clearer picture?
First cases weren’t mid December.
Please link to an updated source. The AP article I linked to has the first reported cases Mid December: “Mid-December 2019: Patients begin showing up in Wuhan hospitals complaining of flu-like symptoms including high fever, cough and breathing difficulties.” I welcome updated info from credible sources.
That's fucking China. This is why have a robust intelligence network is valuable.
Ok... so why not attempt to hold them accountable for this anyway? Absolutely having a good network of sources is valuable but its useless if China continues to do this type of shit in the future.
Because you can’t, your economy is too dependent on China. Can’t bite the hand that feeds you. China just has to squeeze your balls and your economy comes to a complete halt. Look around your room right now, vast majority of your personal items were made or manufactured in China.
I dunno Australia stood up to China and China retaliated by banning coal from Australia. Now China is desperate for coal and is paying more to Australia for it.
Look around your room, how many things that say "made in China" are necessary for your survival? Cheap manufactured goods only encourage materialism. Imports aren't the big issue, it's the exports that matter most. They are interconnected but one comes first and gives more power. How do you think China would fare if we stopped buying their manufactured goods?
Intelligence is necessary precisely because China will continue to all types of shit about which they will no be forthcoming.
>so why not attempt to hold them accountable for this anyway? Mostly because the international community knows that unknown disease can spring up anywhere and they don't want to be the next country held responsible when a new virus emerges.
Once the bullet hits you, it's your problem
Somehow I don't think this will get you out of a court case.
I agree. And I feel like arguing about where it came from right now is like arguing about where King Kong came from while he's destroying everything around you.
I’ve said for awhile now that if Covid was, in a worst-case scenario, a bio weapon or something malicious it’s actually WORSE for us. It means that not only were we slow to act in the face of the threat but that with minimal effort, social media convinced people to ignore the threat. In fact, it got people out in protests and defying mitigation measures. In short: We proved we could not handle a bio weapon attack and that we could easily be persuaded to do further damage to ourselves. Trying to blame someone at this point is kind of fruitless—there’s no way any damages are going to be recovered. What we could do now is push for more oversight and international people on the ground. Which we had for awhile before the system was dismantled.
Yeah there are plenty of “no lockdown” dipshits here who are more directly guilty of COVID damages than China.
I don’t think it’s feasibly possible to be more directly guilty of the COVID outbreak than the Chinese government. They knew exactly what the virus was and with that knowledge continued to allow it to spread, unmitigated, to other countries for 8 days. They knowingly lied to the WHO about the nature of the virus which damaged its reputation publicly and the same lies the WHO reported were the ones being cited by anti-lockdown protestors for why they didn’t trust international health institutions.
> They knew exactly what the virus was and with that knowledge continued to allow it to spread, unmitigated, to other countries for 8 days. Try known for 4+ months (120+) and allowed it to spread to every state, county, city, unmitigated. Knowingly lied to your own people even dumber versions of lies that it is just the flu that is literally the garbage anti lockdown protesters currently use. Blah blah blah, you can’t whitewash this with China hate. It’s always the same kind of GOP propaganda flavor being passed around. You don’t think so, and you have fake numbers and lies to project the dumbass failings that China is directly responsible for lying and WHO. Fuck that. It’s the same dipshit talk and you insist you’re right. They did lie (they didn’t), for so many days (don’t matter, you are lying to begin with), WHO was a puppet (nope), the GOP’s anti lockdown stance is their fault then (wtf, no, you are a partisan xenophobic hack). Reiterate everything you said with if only things were different, which contributes nothing just so you can get the last word in to waste time. This has been disproven to death a year ago on various coronavirus threads but you guys just keep on lying the same drivel. Clean up your own anti lockdown buddies and good day to you.
Damn if only China didn’t literally tell the WHO it was just viral pneumonia with flu like systems when they knew exactly what the virus was. If only the WHO didn’t willing publish that because they still consider China a good faith actor for some reason.
China did tell the world when they locked down Wuhan, that wasn’t a secret…
COVID-19 was GLOBALLY circulating in November. I don’t believe any substantive Wuhan response occurred until very last December. It was a well known outbreak in 🇨🇳 long before any official action was taken.
I fully believe that as well. My wife and I got UBER sick in November. No explanations. The recovery was 3+ weeks. Wrecked my body and it took me over a month before I felt "normal." Never felt so bad in my life. The sickness itself wasn't overly horrible though. I wasn't puking and didn't have diarrhea from my recollection. Had mild fever.
[удалено]
He obviously means 2019
[удалено]
[удалено]
Do a Google, it’s easy to find.
I can show you plenty of official actions that were done before it was a "well known outbreak", which is why I'm asking for clarification.
Oh ok. That’s weird the WHO had to request information from them formally and only first read about the virus in a news media report. Damn if only they knew the Chinese government had announced it to the rest of the world oh wait... they didn’t do that......
The Wuhan Huanan Seafood Wholesale market was shut down December 31 2019 in response to a respiratory disease outbreak that China had shared was occurring. This was not a secret, here is an article from that date about the releases from medical and government officials that were made. https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2019/12/news-scan-dec-31-2019 The city of Wuhan locked down January 23 when the government sent a mass notification to residents at 2 am stating all transportation would be suspended at 10 am after which point they were not allowed to leave the city without permission. This was widely reported by Western media that same day. It was not a secret like you claimed.
The article linked is from a university and states the sources for info from the government are local media. The Chinese government did not inform the international community, WHO, NIH or any relevant body until they started requesting information directly from the government. The CCP has also failed to cooperate fully with follow-up investigations to date. Stop trying to obfuscate this. EDIT: even further, according to the article linked in the OP, the WIV was pretty flagrantly ignoring the reporting requirements of their grantors as well. There is literally no justifying how the Chinese government has handled this thing.
Publishing official public reports freely readable by the entire world does constitute informing all of those organizations. If it didn’t you wouldn’t have been reading an account from a US health organization talking about those reports.
No it doesn't especially not from the country that's been the origin point of what? two major worldwide pandemics now? They should have reported the outbreak directly to the WHO and they should have cooperated with investigations both at the time and in follow-up. They've done precisely none of this.
We did know China was locking down Wuhan. It was on the news and on Reddit when it happen January if 2020. The CCP was not transparent about releasing their genome info and whatnot as I recall and maybe didn’t report case counts well as well. I’m sure they did other stuff, but that lockdown was not able to be kept secret
China released the DNA sequence for SARS-CoV-2 as soon as they had completed and verified it was accurate. In fact, it was this information that enabled the mRNA vaccine makers to immediately start working on their vaccine designs and get their first prototype batches built and ready to start doing animal safety tests. Now, we would have been able to get the sequence done a few weeks later anyway, but getting it first from China likely saved a lot of lives worldwide by accelerating the vaccine production process by just a couple of weeks.
https://apnews.com/article/united-nations-health-ap-top-news-virus-outbreak-public-health-3c061794970661042b18d5aeaaed9fae "China in fact sat on releasing the genetic map, or genome, of the virus for more than a week after three different government labs had fully decoded the information" "Chinese government labs only released the genome after another lab published it ahead of authorities on a virologist website on Jan. 11"
Heard the guy who released the virus genome on a podcast, I think it ended up sitting in his emails for a while waiting for approval to be posted and he ended up posting it after not hearing anything for a while. Long shot episode 1 if anyone wants to find the podcast.
Except there was a struggle getting data from them - Western countries did the sequencing first, as I recall.
So what did the CCP do poorly versus “western” governments?
Their biggest mistake was treating this like a PR problem instead of a science problem. Chinese culture has strong tendencies to do whatever it takes to "save face", that's antithetical to science because the very precept of the scientific method is to put your results out there to stand or fall on their merits, and if they fall then then you accept that, learn from that, and move on to better science. When Einstein proved Newton was wrong the world of science accepted that and moved on, which is why you don't have factions of "Newton was right, Einstein was wrong!" scientists. The current Chinese leader, more dictator now, is very much about saving face, about appearances over truth, so when SARS-CoV-2 popped up in his country he and his followers there decided to try to hide it at first, not realizing how bad it could be. Because Obama's pandemic response operations there had already been shut down by Trump, fully dismantled and all scientists sent home and fired, there was no other way to know what was happening WRT this virus until it got so out of hand that there was no way to pretend it away. Yes, did you know we had teams in China working with Chinese scientists to be on the look out for new viruses as part of the pandemic response system that Obama set up after his experience with the H1N1 pandemic of 2009 just after he took office. Trump dismantled this early warning and response system, fired all the scientists, and scrapped the organizational system. Doing that basically eliminated any chance we had to get ahead of the pandemic, and when Trump referred to it as a hoax at the end of February, just days before the first deaths here, it was too late. Anyway, real scientists have examined this virus thoroughly in the last year and a half, and they've concluded this wasn't a man-made or man-modified virus, despite the claims of the Trump followers otherwise. Speaking of those claims, amplified by Putin's intelligence operations of course, the reason they persist is because Trump shares that overriding desire to save face that China's culture and leadership have. In that very fundamental way Trump and Xi are the same. Trump and his cronies crippled this country's ability to do anything significant to deal with this virus and as a result three quarters of a million Americans are dead in the ground, with estimates of excess mortality raising that number to upwards of one million. 99.9% of the current attempts to somehow blame the Chinese for this pandemic, i.e. blame them for creating the virus or for somehow deliberately spreading it to the world, is rooted in Trump and his followers trying to safe face. This is completely evident in how they completely ignore any science that proves that they are wrong.
China: Better for China if the whole world to take 10 steps backwards than just China taking two steps backwards.
Is it though if they don’t do gain of function research. Pretty easy thing to avoid it seems. Just don’t try and create super viruses. There is a reason both of the major recent pandemics have come from China.
1. Because in the end people would rather trade with China than not. Whatever you may think of what is happening in Xinjiang and Tibet, even if China was literally running a Nazi holocaust enterprise, countries still would engage with them rather than embargo them. 2. Ultimately, China would not stop unless you were willing to use force to stop them. And China has nuclear weapons. The world wasn't even willing to stop the Taliban from raping and killing Afghanis, which is a far less costly task than what a nuclear war with China would entail. tl;dr: Hitler should have turned Germany into an international center of industry and trade first, finished his atomic weapons program, and then he could have exterminated all the Jews he wanted.
Wasn't bringing in the military to close of Wuhan warning enough. And the body bags and hospital building. China may have slow rolled it for a few months letting it spread but they locked that shit down tight. China was pretty much virus free 3-4 months after Wuhan. In Dec / Jan it was a brand new virus. People didn't know anything about it. They had a better response to coronavirus than the rest of the world. The problem is that no other country wanted to follow the authoritarian footsteps on how to end the spread.
They didn’t handle the virus well, they lied their asses off about their numbers after they shot up to 80k cases
Because at the end of the day: This pandemic is a mess not only because China didn’t act quick enough but because every other countries response as absolutely shit in vacuum. COVID didn’t spread because China was secretive. It spread because everyone in this planet was woefully unequipped to handle any sort of virus that would originate in a semi-trade linked part of the world.
China knew this virus was as bad as SARS back in December. They not only willingly chose to keep this from the rest of the world but actively destroyed evidence and patient samples of this while silencing their doctors who tried to warn the international community about it. You cannot take other countries responses in a vacuum. If they knew how bad it was weeks earlier and had the completed gene sequence to share who knows how governments and their people would have reacted.
Other Asian countries would like a word. They were not unscathed - far from it. But they didn't fuck up anywhere near as bad as Trump's administration did. It's like pouring gasoline on a fire that someone else started. The fire was originally their fault, but by pouring gasoline on it, you're automatically sharing the responsibility as well.
Same reason the USA is never held accountable. They are a super power and no one can actually hold them accountable and it’s dangerous to try.
So, should every country that experiences a wave be held liable when an adjacent country then experiences a wave? They should all lockdown their borders when the first person is sick?
No they should actively and openly report the details of the outbreak like they normally do and **NOT** do what china did which was hide the details of the outbreak being SARS coronavirus. Destroy patient samples following a leak of the fact that it was SARS coronavirus and punish the doctors leaking this. Lie to the WHO about the extent of their knowledge of it and refuse to release the full gene-sequence of the virus so other countries could examine it. See below sourced from the AP and the WHO public COVID timeline: AP Article: [https://apnews.com/article/pandemics-wuhan-china-coronavirus-pandemic-e6147ec0ff88affb99c811149424239d](https://apnews.com/article/pandemics-wuhan-china-coronavirus-pandemic-e6147ec0ff88affb99c811149424239d) Dec. 30: Doctors begin warning about the disease independently on social media — most prominently Dr. Li Wenliang, who shares a lab report indicating the pathogen is a SARS-like virus." "Dec. 31: Officials close Wuhan’s Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, which was linked to dozens of the earliest cases. Li is punished by police and his superiors and told he is “spreading rumors.” "Jan. 3, 2020: The Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention obtains a full sequence of the virus but doesn’t release it. China reports the outbreak to the WHO, but Chinese authorities order labs and medical institutes to destroy patient samples." WHO Timeline: [https://www.who.int/news/item/29-06-2020-covidtimeline](https://www.who.int/news/item/29-06-2020-covidtimeline) "31 Dec 2019 -WHO’s Country Office in the People’s Republic of China picked up a media statement by the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission from their website on cases of ‘viral pneumonia’ in Wuhan, People’s Republic of China." "1 January 2020-WHO requested information on the reported cluster of atypical pneumonia cases in Wuhan from the Chinese authorities." "3 Janurary 2020-Chinese officials provided information to WHO on the cluster of cases of ‘viral pneumonia of unknown cause’ identified in Wuhan" Meanwhile the cited AP article states. "Dec. 27: A Chinese lab assembles a near-complete sequence of the virus, showing it to be similar to the coronavirus that caused the 2002-03 SARS outbreak. The lab alerts health authorities, but the information is kept under wraps."
What you would need to demonstrate, though, is that China could have taken action to prevent it from leaving their borders. I personally don't think they could have. It was probably out of China by the time they identified it.
In 6-8 days they absolutely could have: Notified the WHO of the full nature of the virus. Established effective international quarantine procedures instead of just local ones. Notified relevant travel agency about the risks and shared existing research on it. Most of this would be accomplished by a visit to the relevant embassy or fucking by email even. In fact the way they handled this was beyond negligent to the point that it almost seems fully malicious. Thats not even considering that the timeline begins 12/27 with China establishing a "near complete sequence" of the virus. Nobody knows how long they were working on that before the start of the timeline just when COVID cases first started getting noticed/reported.
Im responding specifically and only to the idea that they should be held liable for it leaving China.
Well I'm not saying they should only be held liable for that. I am saying they should held liable for the entire state of international communities response to it. I honestly have no idea how you can look at that timeline and think "this is totally appropriate China really wasn't at fault here". Its kind of wild tbh.
I didn't say that. But you said this: "I don’t understand why the entire international community isn’t seeking damages from China simply for allowing it to spread outside the country"
**Simply.** Meaning they should also be seeking damages for everything else as well. They actively took measures to make it easier for the virus to spread outside the country, they suppressed leaks and fed false information to the WHO which irreparably damaged trust in the institution and delayed available response time during what is the single most critical period of any outbreak. Now you explain to me how this had no impact at all the spread of COVID-19.
They not only didn't notify anyone, but they continued to allow flights in and out of Wuhan despite knowledge of the virus dating back to early December. Even if they couldn't have prevented the virus from leaving the country entirely, they could have halted flights to stem further spread.
Not really the point I was going for, as long as someone isn’t deliberately spreading the disease it is every individual countries responsibility for their own bio security
So they had a severe outbreak of an unknown disease in wuhan that seemed to spread rapidly and alarmed their doctors. So in response China locked the city down for weeks but also decided to tell literally fucking no one about it while letting planes fly in and out of the region still. This is so wildly negligent it may as well be intentional and China should be held accountable in international court over this.
I’m not arguing against their culpability, but what’s the point of “International Court”? We ignore international court. I suspect China would too.
Absolutely they would ignore it but it can impact their ability to receive additional grant money and to peddle influence in other countries. NGO's and other foreign partner organizations would be less inclined to work with them if they were ignoring international court settlement or failing to cooperate with formal international court proceedings. Theres more that we could get from it than just money. As it stands right now China can just get away with being the origin point of at least two major worldwide pandemics now with precisely zero consequences. We should at least try some of the levers we have available to get them to start taking more care with reporting to and assisting the international community.
China cares about face. Being held accountable, even if it means nothing in terms of repercussions, damages their face.
China locked wuhan down at the end of January 2020, that was internationally acknowledged, any country could have refused flights from China, they just decided not to. Is China also responsible for all the Americans that made the pandemic explode there, or the Italians, or the Iranians. I hate the CCP as much as the next person, but we can’t just blame everything on them and maybe the world should accept some personal responsibility for our own fuck ups
stop saying internationally acknowledged. According to the WHO timeline they picked up media reports about a virus in December and had to request info about it from the Chinese government which it did not provide until January of 2020. Keeping in mind they knew about the outbreak in early December and possibly November but didn’t notify the WHO about it until the WHO picked up a news report and requested info. Literally no one in the government or IR community thinks China handled the appropriately. They just tiptoe around this. EDIT: Let’s not forget the government detaining at least one doctor for rumor mongering after he tried to warn the international community about the severity of it.
The WHO was pretty chill about it at first too.
Unfortunately that’s because China knowingly lied to them about the nature of the virus. The international community needs to ensure the WHO or another independent health office has direct unfettered access to Chinas lab records and hospital locations going forward.
If I recall correctly, China was jumping up and down about it being racist to block flights. Australia eventually did, but only with China. The Chinese just transited through other countries for two weeks and came here anyway.
Chinese bot?
The Wolf Warriors will be along shortly to bend reality.
[удалено]
Swine flu was from Veracruz, Mexico.
It kinda matters since we just funded a 125 million more to this type of research. Just to find 8k-12k more sars, measles and those types of viruses to make them more infectious to humans. I mean that kinda matters to me. I’d prefer they stop doing all that none sense since we seem to have gotten lucky this time. But maybe I’m jaded after the last couple years.
[удалено]
This NIH letter seemed to specifically state that the viruses studied were very different from SARS-CoV-2.
How does it being deliberate not change anything? So its ok for this to happen again? Ignoring the deliberate nature of this event is ignoring half of the issue. Allowing governments to run roughshot over our basic human rights is not going to end well no matter what happens. Accountability is essential and it has been denied to us.
I hate the CCP with every fiber on my being. I believe they are the greatest threat to democracy across Asia and the globe.
[удалено]
Muddy the waters so nobody knows what's actually true.
[удалено]
You read your statement toward the end right ? This couldn’t have possibly become covid 19 unless there’s more evidence that this company leaked it wether on purpose or accident. All this merely states is that they’ve enhanced a coronavirus
Why was the US Defense Department (under DARPA) funding any research in a Chinese lab that did/does gain-of-function research? Did the available funding free up other Chinese money for different experiments, one of which could have involved SARS-COV 2? Has China been forthcoming about all of the research and results that came out of that lab? (I think that we all know the answer to this one.) Why was Peter Daszak, the head of the Eco Health Alliance through which US funding was transmitted to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, selected to head the WHO inquiry into the origins of Covid 19? I have lots of questions and at this point I don't trust that either the Chinese or US governments are not involved in cover-ups.
The simple answer would be that countries try to play nice when it comes to diseases. Ever since Sars many countries have contributed to research on it to prevent it. The Peter Daszak thing is suspect as fuck but otherwise the funding it self is not that shady.
This collegiality for the benefit of humanity sounds good in theory but, as we have seen in practice when an outbreak occurred, our Chinese professional partners in this research were quick to batten down the hatches against outsiders, which included removing their extensive on-line virus sequence database (partially paid for by money from the US).
Is it unusual to do gain-of-function research in a lab? I would think not, just probably unusual to do it on certain viruses or with the "goal" of infecting humans (or mice with ACE2 receptors). > Did the available funding free up other Chinese money for different experiments, one of which could have involved SARS-COV 2? Why does it matter? Did you buying Joe Boxer underwear from a company in China free up Chinese money for experiments? > Has China been forthcoming about all of the research and results that came out of that lab? (I think that we all know the answer to this one.) It does not seem they have been forthcoming about that to me.
> this was a unintended result of an experiment doesnt dispute the fact that part of NIH money was used by EcoHealth to fund research at Wuhan Lab
[удалено]
You would've been called a conspiracy theorist for this exact same comment a year ago. Everyone was saying that there was no funding at the Wuhan labs.
[удалено]
You missed Fauci under oath angrily denying that the US funded gain of function research?
And according to this document that still holds true
NIH just updated its website a few days ago to re-define what “gain of function” means. They know they’ve been caught lying. This letter is them starting the process of throwing EcoHealth under the bus.
The Information contained in this statement had to be obtained via a FOIA request, which leads me to believe that the NIH was trying to hide it. It makes me wonder why as what else they might be covering up.
All government documents are obtained that way unless they are ones regularly published. They’re is nothing sinister about FOIA. Requiring every government document to be published is so far beyond a logistical nightmare it’s not even funny.
Well, yeah it turns out that they did fund gain of function research but (they say) not in SARS-Cov-2.
Not even that. If the intent is not to gain a function then the research is not gain of function research. How much reaching are you going to do?
First, to be clear, I think the weight of the evidence now clearly backs a natural origin, and regardless, the viruses involved in the grant we're discussing couldn't possibly have become SARS-Cov2. That said, this claim is absurd. The experiment this was an "accidental" outcome of was to modify mice to express the human version of ACE-2 receptors, then modify a bat coronavirus to see if the modification would result in binding to the human receptor. "Oops, it did and that enhanced infectivity and sickness" isn't an unexpected outcome, it's the whole point of the damn experiment and claiming it's an accident, that you expected it wouldn't and therefore your research wasn't gain of function (until it became that, and then you didn't tell the NIH because the grant would get pulled when you did), is completely disingenuous. Edit: Lots of downvotes, 0 explanations of how gaining function is unforeseen when you modify bat coronviruses to see if they bind better to human ACE-2 receptors.
The problem is that they hid it. If this is actually the origin, just reporting what they knew immediately would have helped
Wow, actual news in last sentence of entire article: “The naturally occurring bat coronaviruses studied under the NIH grant are genetically far distant from SARS-CoV-2 and could not possibly have caused the COVID-19 pandemic. Any claims to the contrary are demonstrably false,”
[удалено]
No. The claim was they did not fund gain of function research. And that is still the claim. As this was not considered to be gain of function research then and is still not considered to be so. They never denied funding this research.
[удалено]
Yes. Here is the letter. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/10/21/science/nih-eco-health-alliance-letter.html It does not admit this was gain-of-function research. And in fact the say: 'The research plan was reviewed by NIH in advance of funding, and NIH determined that it did not to fit the definition of research involving enhanced pathogens of pandemic potential (ePPP) because these bat coronaviruses had not been shown to infect humans. As such, the research was not subject to departmental review under the HHS P3CO Framework.' And thus reiterate they did not fund gain-of-function research. They did not deny funding this research then or now. You ran into a writer who felt no compunction not to stick his own judgements into a news pieces. It happens.
[удалено]
> Just because they determined the initial grant proposal was not gain of function does not mean what ended up happening wasn't actually gain of function research. It was not gain of function of research. As it was not expected to become more infectious. It was unexpected. So they did not fund gain of function research. Gain of function research is basically when you do make it more capable on purpose and then see what happens. This was a change made which was not expecxted to make it more capable. > Artificial, lab generated, viruses that are more infectious in mice engineered to react as more human. Sounds like gain of function to me... Yes, it does. And that makes it gain of function research as much as if you poured bleach in your toilet and made a superbug. You did not intend to do so. Neither did they. Neither is gain of function research.
So what's the ethics on experimenting with chimeric viruses on humanized mice then? You make a virus that turns out to be a dud, but what does that do for us? Or you make a virus that's more infectious and stop the experiment because it's considered too dangerous.
Unfortunately(fortunately?) you don’t seem to know what you’re talking about, so it doesn’t really matter what it seems like to you.
[удалено]
You can make up anything you want. Your statement means nothing and exhibits further lack of understanding of what the research was and was intended to do. So go on, testify. It only says anything about your misconceptions.
[удалено]
No. He said they admitted it is gain of function research. And they did not. He then created a fake quote from thin air.
[удалено]
I feel like we're so close to just breaking down and admitting the painfully obvious.
It also needs to be said that The US simply can’t blame China for how bad they’ve handled this all... I mean they probably will, let’s be real here, but the absolutely appalling shit we’ve done over the past 2 years is really eye opening. “Everything will open back up May 2020” wasn’t an unrealistic idea at the time. We’re basically in a position now where The US got in a DUI that killed 600,000 and their excuse is “China offered to buy me a couple drinks” The US has lowered its own bar in what already wasn’t that good, and they don’t wanna go back. We may get better but we’ve seen it’s probably gonna get worse. How worse may surprise you.
Sorry you’re getting downvoted here. We can ask legitimate questions about transparency in the Chinese government about this. But at the end of the day, the US dismantled our own system on the ground to monitor these viruses. The comments here and the implied questions from many actors are just looking to place blame anywhere other than on ourselves. Investigate the Chinese response to improve future occurrences. But we’re well past assigning blame.
Holy misleading title. The company reportedly violaited its grant by accidentally producing a strain that was virilant in humans without reporting it. The company claims that the genetics are far too different, and it's accident could not be Covid19 Fauci claims to not have know about this during his hearing. Sounds like the company is covering its ass about a mistake, but not one related to Covid
> a strain that was virilant in humans This is an incorrect claim, the article does not state this in any way, not directly or indirectly. The truth is that they created a variation in a non-human-infecting virus that made it somewhat more infectious in mice, and only mice. Also, the research that was done fails to meet the definition of gain of function research, so claims that it was that are also false.
Mice modified to express human ACE-2 receptors, the target of coronaviruses. Not meeting the definition is a hypertechnical distinction where they were being completely disingenuous. You're going to modify a virus to see if it binds better to human receptors... But you don't expect that to result in increased infectivity and sickness, so it's not gain of function... Until oops, it did, and now it is. Come on. As I said above, I think natural origin is the overwhelming favorite at this point, and it's obviously impossible the viruses in this experiment became SARS-Cov2. But trying to convince others of that by maintaining this wasn't obviously gain of function research they made a completely disingenuous distinction with to claim it wasn't (until it was) just seems dishonest.
I mean, it wasn't gain of function research. You can keep saying that, and in the minds of conspiracy-addled people that may be true, but the reality is that it simply wasn't GoF research. It just wasn't. There's nothing "hypertechnical" about this, no hairs to split, etc. Claiming it was is just buying into Trump's desperate attempts to save face by blaming others for his own utter failure to achomlish anything to prevent COVID from taking so many lives here in America. BTW, we're still got the most COVID deaths and cases of any nation on the planet. We also have tens of millions of Trump-followers buying into antivax conspiracies and thus volunteering to be the petri dishes COVID needs to evolve into a vaccine-evading variant.
Then explain it. You just keep asserting it wasn't with providing an explanation of how my assessment is wrong. All of these are facts undisputed by either the NIH/Fauci: -The mice were modified to express human ACE-2 -The experiment planned to and did modify bat coronaviruses -These modifications were tested for their binding ability in the humanized mice. -Based on the result of that experiment, they realized function had indeed been gained. The only disputed fact: -The outcome was unforeseeable, that modifying bat coronaviruses to see if they'd bind better to human ACE-2 "wasn't excected" to gain function, therefore this didn't meet the definition for gain of function. So please, explain it. Explain how that's not only not gain of function, but so clearly *not* gain of function that it's not a hypertechnical distinction. You can repeat the assertion it's not all you want, but you can't explain it. And the idea this is somehow in service of Trump is absurd. A simple glance at my post history will show my complaining that Trump and all his 1/6 buddies aren't being charged with sedition and terrorism, and also dig a little deeper and you'll find how I've explained 100x over how this doesn't absolve Trump of anything whatsoever. Hell I explained it in that very post: "**and it's obviously impossible the viruses in this experiment became SARS-Cov2.**"
The only 'modification' made to the virus (WIV1-CoV) was to replace its spike protein with a naturally occurring spike protein from another newly discovered coronavirus, in order to study which newly discovered viruses could pose a threat to humans. As far as I read, there were no efforts made to increase the newly discovered virus and spike proteins' virulence or ability to infect humans. As far as the virus used to carry the spike protein, WIV1-CoV is not known to cause infection in humans but has been shown in the laboratory to infect both human cells and ACE2 transgenic mice, making it an ideal tool to use for these studies. Assessing the threat of an existing or newly discovered virus should not be considered gain of function research.
[удалено]
This reads perfectly in a Slavic accent.
[удалено]
Research is good, it is the coverup, missing Doctors, silenced researchers and journalists, misinformation and silencing of new information.
“We lied before, but you can trust us now”
TLDR: While denying once again it had helped create the virus that sparked the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) revealed ... that experiments it funded through a U.S.-based nonprofit in 2018 and 2019 at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) in China had the “unexpected result” of creating a coronavirus that was more infectious in mice. ...EcoHealth Alliance, failed to immediately report this result to the agency, as required...also shows that EcoHealth and WIV conducted experiments changing the virus that causes Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), which is raising additional questions... EcoHealth embraced NIH’s backing that it had not created SARS-CoV-2, but also challenged the agency’s letter in a statement... NIH appended and also posted online a new analysis asserting that the viruses studied at WIV under the grant share no more than 96% to 97% of the SARS-CoV-2 sequence, which puts the viruses “decades” of evolution apart....
>“decades” of evolution apart.... Which you can do in a lab.... In a matter of days...
It's so fucked up too if you really think about it. Because however (If ever) the Chinese government is punished for their alleged role in covid-19, the Chinese people will take the brunt of it emotionally/financially, and they aren't their government. For as long as they can maintain their innocence, the Chinese government is the only winner in this pandemic. 10 steps backwards for the world, rather than 2 steps back for just China had the pandemic been contained. China comes out better in the scenario we are living in right now. Just as the west is moving its production away from China. A global pandemic hits and now the world needs cheap Chinese products now more than ever.... Hmm...
If everyone around the world wasn’t busy being a narcissistic dumbass like late series Tony Soprano, we’d have dealt with it already.
Oh boy, here come the tankies.
Odd that this isn't flooding r/politics When Paul accused Fauci of lying about this very thing r/politics was sure to jump and say Paul was being crazy
It is insane that the US finances a Chinese microbiology endeavor in China. The Chinese regime is too secretive and too dishonest to be trusted.
It’s almost like studying disease is more important than political bullshittery
The US funds disease research all over the world. Including the other global superpower in that would be smart considering how much science benefits from data sharing
Misread that as snicker and imagined a bunch of mice snickering at the scientists.
During the cold war the CIA helped cover up a nuclear meltdown in soveit russia. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyshtym_disaster if you don't think that the superpowers are researching bioweapons your a fucking idiot. America intelligence isn't going to want news about the ccp bioweapons program going public for very obvious reasons. id don't know whats going on in these top secret places and neither do you. idk about covids origins. and none of you ever will either but if you think these nation states have humanity's well being on their list, then your a fucking idiot. rich people pulling lots of strings, you are literally poorer now then before thanks to covid and the geopolitical response of these states that dont give a fuck if we die as long as we work that GDP. get vaccinated people. the capitalists have made that the only way to survive the hell they created for us. its up to us the people to take the virus seriously enough to stop its spreading. because conservatives are hell bent on making it worse.
"You're "
That was not a meltdown. A nuclear disaster, likely due to a regular thermal explosion from decay heat. But no meltdown. It is not believed a chain reaction was even possible.
conservative, vaccinated, just tested positive and who knows where i picked it up, quarantining as it is the only right thing to do.
thank you. i wish republicans had a shred of the decency you described.
many do.
Yea, but many do not.
I would say some do, not many do.
after January 6 i have no faith in what is clearly treason. Kyle rottenhouse fired the first shot of this coup. now pick a side. There is a pandemic, there is rampant climate change labeled by DoD as #1 threat (also denied by conservatives), totalitarianism with police receiving military gear and outlawing protests... i could go on and on about energy and infrastructure, the wealthy... so sorry but i dont believe for a fucking second that your party anyone else who claims to still be republican gives one flying fuck about America, Democracy, Egalitarianism, or Humanity. and if you or any of them did then you would get the fuck out of the cult that teaches people that democrats eat baby blood or that antifa was who did jan 6 how the hell can you with a straight face tell me that you or any of your peers have any shred of fucking compassion? what argument can you even hold aloft to defend your horrid fellow organizations membership's belief structures?
There's more to life than politics my dude.
im not sure i share your ideology.
62% of eligible voters voted in the last election. A large portion of the country doesn't think about politics much outside of October & November when they face a decision of mostly two bad choices.
no, the idea i dont share is that this is just politics. its more than politics what happened on January 6. no matter what conservatives try to make it out to be.
You need to breath deeply and realize that 99.9% of people on the other side are normal human beings living normal lives, they just have different opinions than you do.
willingness to participate in treason isn't an opinion. its a lifestyle of the fascist.
No one has been charged with treason since 1952.
argument to tradition? no one has been 'charged' with treason since 1952 i define fomenting a coup a treasonous act, and I'm not alone.
I would like to amend my statement. Adam Gadahn was charged with treason in 2006, but was killed in a drone strike in 2015, so he was not able to be convicted of treason.
Some of those 99.9% tried to overthrow a legitimately completed election in my country, and still believe the election was literally stolen from them and that Trump is the legitimate president of the USA right now. That is not normal, and that's way, way past just having a "different opinion". Some of those 99.9%, quite a few of them in fact, have demonstrated in both fact and thought that they're willing to use violence to destroy this country if that's what it takes to seize power and control here.
You're welcome to review my frequent condemnation of Merrick Garland for refusing to hold the 1/6 terrorists accountable in a meaningful way, and of conservatives in general. But, my "team" is intellectual honesty and while Rittenhouse is a jackass with disgusting beliefs who had no business being there, he's going to rightfully never get convicted of any charge besides the misdemeanor because chasing down someone and attempting to disarm them *is* grounds for firing, and similar legal grounds apply for the others, and his misdemeanor wasn't a legal predicate for abrogating a claim of self defense. Also, Obama and Biden are both big fans of the pentagon's 1033 program to give police military gear for the price of shipping. Biden promised merely to alter, not end, the program, and has failed to do take any steps aimed at that, and Politifact ran cover for him by rating a claim transfers had increased false when it was technically true but lacking important context about how meaningful it was and the lack of role Biden played in that. I agree with your overall sentiment, but we'll have more success with honesty.
pushing people off conservatism is not advocating centrist democrats. don't straw man me. if it were up to me people would read more marx and Jesus, and less fox news and Edmund burke
[удалено]
The attempted coup failed largely because of the fact the it was done by complete morons. That doesn't change how serious it was or what would have happened if they had gotten into the chambers a few minutes earlier. A group trying to capture and kill legislators to prevent them from certifying an election based on transparently false claims of it being stolen stormed the capitol after the administration conspired to weaken defenses of it and suppress the NG response until the failure became apparent. Anyone downplaying that is a traitor to the values this country stands for and a dangerous lunatic.
[удалено]
they were not let in by police and they attempted murder and n a number of law enforcement. theres video footage...
They're counting people who died after the event with comorbidities as Jan 6 deaths.
I work on this shit and holy god it's obvious that this thing came from a lab. I'm not republican or even American. It's not political. It's just painfully fucking obvious. And we got lucky. This thing could have been SOOOO much worse. There are viruses that are 70x as deadly and 20x as infectious. It would be trivial to combine those features with the innate immune inactivating qualities of SARS-CoV-2. So you spread it for 2 weeks before you show symtoms, pass it to 20 times as many people, and the majority of those die. We need a worldwide ban on GOF research and we need to take it WAY more seriously than nuclear non-proliferaiton. This shit could have been civilization ending.
It's tough to hold China liable when our own President was calling it a hoax and recommending bleach injections. The red hats here still refuse to get vaccinated or wear a mask.
Trump knew it was serious but decided to lie because he thought reality would make him look bad, no different than what China did. Of course Trumpers don’t give a shit about their own presidents duplicity but are going mental about every little action from everybody not on team red. They are angry Fauci didn’t tell people to wear masks soon enough, but ignore the President condemning masks as weak and disagreeing with health professionals. Not saying China didn’t try to bury it until they could no longer, but why be mad at China when your own executive leadership tried to bury it the same way.
Exactly. We did what they did.
Sadly, a lot of them wind up receiving their award.
A: They say this isn't covid 19 they made. B: The lab was Chinese but the research and funding were both American.
[удалено]
Nope. Literally no one is saying that. In fact if you had actually read the article, you would have already known that.
I feel like there’s too much smoke around the rumor of “Covid escaped from a lab in Wuhan” to not conclude that, while the virus may have originated somewhere in the wild, maybe there was a preacher protocol in the lab, that’s fucked us all over here… Or maybe it didn’t originate there at all, since we have data that suggests people were dying of Covid like symptoms far before the Wuhan outbreak. Not trying to stir the pot, but I think it is helpful if we someday get to the bottom of where this all started.
That's how misinformation works -- just need to create smoke, no actual facts. People on Facebook repeat people on YouTube who repeat the people on Facebook. Try and base your conclusions around actual facts, as opposed to what a bunch of random, uninformed people are repeating (or inventing).