Joint WHO/Chinese government Covid origin report...

[TIDE-HSV]

Is a bloody joke. Listening to the NPR interview with an WHO investigator just about pounding my desk. Basically, when the interviewer asked how the "investigator" reached all his conclusions, the best way to sum it up would be "We asked the Chinese"...

CNBC

 

[B1GTide]

As I understand it the Chinese really refused the WHO the type of access that they would have required to reach any real conclusion on their own -so they release this. And I don't know enough about genetics to make a definitive statement, but the viral geneticists seems to agree with the conclusion that this did not come from a lab.

IMO, the WHO should have just released the genetic analysis and let the world's scientists draw their own conclusions.

 

[TIDE-HSV]

As I understand it the Chinese really refused the WHO the type of access that they would have required to reach any real conclusion on their own -so they release this. And I don't know enough about genetics to make a definitive statement, but the viral geneticists seems to agree with the conclusion that this did not come from a lab.

IMO, the WHO should have just released the genetic analysis and let the world's scientists draw their own conclusions.

Probably. When the investigator was asked about his conclusion that it didn't come from the "wet market," his answer was the same - because the Chinese said so. The only analysis has been backwards from the present form. They received no raw genetic data at all from the Chinese...

 

[Padreruf]

Hey, this is China -- world's largest authoritarian country...what else did we expect? Transparency?

 

[NationalTitles18]

I agree the report is virtually useless and may harm the reputation (what's left) of the WHO.

 

[Bamaro]

60 Minutes did a good segment on this Sunday night.

What happened in Wuhan? Why questions still linger on the origin of the coronavirus - 60 Minutes - CBS News

 

[TIDE-HSV]

60 Minutes did a good segment on this Sunday night.

I watched basketball...

 

[Tidewater]

60 Minutes did a good segment on this Sunday night.

What happened in Wuhan? Why questions still linger on the origin of the coronavirus - 60 Minutes - CBS News

Jamie Metzl -- former NSC official in the Clinton administration and member of a WHO advisory committee on genetic engineering, likened the WHO report to asking the Soviets to investigate Chernobyl.
Soviet press release: "Chernobyl did not happen and if it did, the it was a result of the expansionistic imperialistic policy of the Reagan Administration."
WaPo: "There you have it. Chernobyl did not happen."

Not to parse words too much, but if you listen closely to Pete Daszak, he said, "There was no evidence that the Chinese were studying a coronavirus like Covid-19." Yeah, one year after the biggest and deadliest global pandemic since 1919, maybe since the Black Death, and the Chinese government was keen to do whatever it could to avoid blame for killing millions of people, the Chinese government's facility in Wuhan showed no evidence of any studies of coronavirus in the WIV. Quelle surprise.

 

[NationalTitles18]

Jamie Metzl -- former NSC official in the Clinton administration and member of a WHO advisory committee on genetic engineering, likened the WHO report to asking the Soviets to investigate Chernobyl.
Soviet press release: "Chernobyl did not happen and if it did, the it was a result of the expansionistic imperialistic policy of the Reagan Administration."
WaPo: "There you have it. Chernobyl did not happen."

Not to parse words too much, but if you listen closely to Pete Daszak, he said, "There was no evidence that the Chinese were studying a coronavirus like Covid-19." Yeah, one year after the biggest and deadliest global pandemic since 1919, maybe since the Black Death, and the Chinese government was keen to do whatever it could to avoid blame for killing millions of people, the Chinese government's facility in Wuhan showed no evidence of any studies of coronavirus in the WIV. Quelle surprise.

The burden of proof is on those who wish to... go to war(?) with China over a natural phenomenon. Bring the evidence or go home.

Not that China is blameless is its response early on. Hell, they screwed up their response about as badly as this country did.

 

[DzynKingRTR]

Next we will hire OJ to find the real killers of his ex-wife and a waiter.

 

[Tidewater]

The burden of proof is on those who wish to... go to war(?) with China over a natural phenomenon. Bring the evidence or go home.

Not that China is blameless is its response early on. Hell, they screwed up their response about as badly as this country did.

I dispute the dichotomy.
Getting to an honest conclusion on how this virus came to spread across six continents does not mean going to war. It is a necessary precondition to developing effective policies (nationally and internationally) to prevent the next global pandemic.
According to the Chinese government, it did not escape from the WIV. It did not jump from bats to human via an intermediate animal in the wet market. Maybe it fell to earth from a meteorite. Or, I think their number one theory, it was developed in Ft. Dietrich and brought to Wuhan by the U.S. military participants in the military games in Wuhan.
I'm pretty sure a global pandemic did happen, and I'm also pretty sure it started in Wuhan. The question is, why Wuhan?

 

[NationalTitles18]

I dispute the dichotomy.
Getting to an honest conclusion on how this virus came to spread across six continents does not mean going to war. It is a necessary precondition to developing effective policies (nationally and internationally) to prevent the next global pandemic.
According to the Chinese government, it did not escape from the WIV. It did not jump from bats to human via an intermediate animal in the wet market. Maybe it fell to earth from a meteorite. Or, I think their number one theory, it was developed in Ft. Dietrich and brought to Wuhan by the U.S. military participants in the military games in Wuhan.
I'm pretty sure a global pandemic did happen, and I'm also pretty sure it started in Wuhan. The question is, why Wuhan?

A global pandemic did happen. It was discovered in Wuhan. It is thought to have originated there, but there is some evidence to the contrary and more evidence that the wet market was merely a superspreading site and not the point of origin. There is NO evidence it escaped from any lab anywhere on Earth.

Or maybe our politics means we are immune from the requirement of robust evidence prior to making dangerous accusations with far reaching geopolitical impacts and we can just fill in the blanks to suit our political ideology while conveniently leaving out the intentional mismanagement in our own country.

 

[Tidewater]

A global pandemic did happen. It was discovered in Wuhan. It is thought to have originated there, but there is some evidence to the contrary and more evidence that the wet market was merely a superspreading site and not the point of origin. There is NO evidence it escaped from any lab anywhere on Earth.

Or maybe our politics means we are immune from the requirement of robust evidence prior to making dangerous accusations with far reaching geopolitical impacts and we can just fill in the blanks to suit our political ideology while conveniently leaving out the intentional mismanagement in our own country.

I think 60 Minutes' Leslie Stall brought up the obvious question that neither bats, nor pangolins are from Wuhan, but came from farms 1000 km away. Since wild animals are not transported in mobile Biosafety Level 4 trucks, but probably (since it is China) in the crudest trucks available with no attempt to block the spread of contagions at all, why did the virus's breakout not happen where the animals came from? It is possible that bats' and pangolins' natural habitats do not overlap at all, and the jump from bats to humans only happened because bats and pangolins were brought together in a Wuhan wet market, but even that is an indictment of the Chinese government's policy in allowing exotic animal meat markets to exist in the first place.
Fixing responsibility with the Chinese government does not mean going to war as a result. It would help the world (and even help China) prevent the next outbreak.

 

[NationalTitles18]

I think 60 Minutes' Leslie Stall brought up the obvious question that neither bats, nor pangolins are from Wuhan, but came from farms 1000 km away. Since wild animals are not transported in mobile Biosafety Level 4 trucks, but probably (since it is China) in the crudest trucks available with no attempt to block the spread of contagions at all, why did the virus's breakout not happen where the animals came from? It is possible that bats' and pangolins' natural habitats do not overlap at all, and the jump from bats to humans only happened because bats and pangolins were brought together in a Wuhan wet market, but even that is an indictment of the Chinese government's policy in allowing exotic animal meat markets to exist in the first place.
Fixing responsibility with the Chinese government does not mean going to war as a result. It would help the world (and even help China) prevent the next outbreak.

The "Spanish Flu" likely began in Kansas.

Just as correlation does not equal causation (though it could), point of discovery does not equal point of origin (though it could).

I cannot emphasize this enough: We can't "fix" the government of China. Sure, we can apply pressure when/if appropriate.

Thankfully, we began the work of fixing our own government on November 3. That's something over which we actually have some modicum of control.

There's a reason we have 4% of the world's population and 20% of confirmed COVID-19 deaths. It would help greatly if we fixed that in a way that prevented the same level of intentional misconduct that caused the majority of those deaths. That's something we have the power to accomplish.

 

[B1GTide]

Blaming the country of origin for a global pandemic is just childish.

 

[Bamaro]

Blaming the country of origin for a global pandemic is just childish.

True, unless it escaped from a lab, which still remains to be proven.

 

[B1GTide]

True, unless it escaped from a lab, which still remains to be proven.

What if we - the US government - released it in China? How is that for an unproven conspiracy theory that is believed by millions? I mean, if we are just going to throw crap on the wall, that is as likely to the Chinese as the lab theory is to us.

 

[Bamabuzzard]

I agree that our country has a responsibility for how we handle the pandemic within our own country, regardless of how or where it originated. But that internal responsibility doesn't minimize the responsibility of the global medical community and global leaders of finding out how, when, and where the virus originated, no matter how uncomfortable or embarrassing the findings may be. I think the global medical community has a responsibility to find out all the information they can to better serve the well being and safety of those of us who depend on them.

 

[NationalTitles18]

which still remains to be proven.

And no one has even come close. There's not even the least bit of evidence for it. None. Nada. Zilch. There's really not even a shred of evidence that the true origin of the virus was Wuhan or even China.

DEFINE_ME

www.thelancet.com

The origin and underlying driving forces of the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak - Journal of Biomedical Science

Background SARS-CoV-2 began spreading in December 2019 and has since become a pandemic that has impacted many aspects of human society. Several issues concerning the origin, time of introduction to humans, evolutionary patterns, and underlying force driving the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak remain...

jbiomedsci.biomedcentral.com

On the origins of SARS-CoV-2 - Nature Medicine

Stakeholders in public health must lobby policy makers to make decisions based on evidence, not political expediency, particularly when the studies that hang in the balance are critical to understanding the origins of epidemics.

www.nature.com

The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2 - Nature Medicine

www.nature.com

Science | AAAS

www.sciencemag.org

 

[NationalTitles18]

I agree that our country has a responsibility for how we handle the pandemic within our own country, regardless of how or where it originated. But that internal responsibility doesn't minimize the responsibility of the global medical community and global leaders of finding out how, when, and where the virus originated, no matter how uncomfortable or embarrassing the findings may be. I think the global medical community has a responsibility to find out all the information they can to better serve the well being and safety of those of us who depend on them.

No one disagrees with this (well, maybe someone somewhere has something to hide or just loves being ignorant).

What I do disagree with is the insinuation that China is responsible for the emergence of the virus and possibly let it escape a lab in Wuhan when we have zero evidence for that being the case.

It is clear to me that there is a concerted effort in this country by a few to distract from their own mismanagement by deflecting blame for what happened here to China.

We should all want to know the true origin of the virus so that we can prevent and mitigate future outbreaks of new CoVs. Imagining what is politically expedient for a few to be the truth without any supporting evidence actually hampers that effort and so is much worse than saying the simple truth: We don't know, but here is the evidence we have to date...