The problem with conspiracy theories is that some of them turn out to be true. And even some that aren't true can seem pretty plausible.
For example, was the COVID-19 virus an accidental release from a Chinese lab? The experts all say no, but it sure is a coincidence that there's a major Chinese virology lab right in Wuhan. And if that's not enough, the real kicker has been China's long and persistent refusal to fully cooperate with international teams investigating the origin of the virus.
What on earth do they have to hide? That maybe local officials were slow to react? That the vector was a mink, not a pangolin? Even for an autocratic state like China, it's hard to imagine what they gain from all this. Everyone already knows the virus originated in China, so what's the value of being so opaque?
You'd think the Chinese leadership would have learned their lesson from the SARS epidemic. After that no one trusted them to provide honest data about viral outbreaks, and now they've redoubled that mistrust. In the end, this is the source of the conspiracy theories, and China has no one to blame but itself.
China has nothing to lose here. The instinct of totalitarian rulers is always to keep everything secret (lying is so much easier that way). So the refusal to cooperate hardly means they are guilty. But as I said why should they cooperate when there is no harm in refusing?
The price meanwhile is being paid by Chinese Americans.
It's not just totalitarian rulers, but just bureaucrats in general, esp. when they are in CYA mode.
The people in the areas where the animals were collected for the live markets, and maybe even for study at the Virus Institute, were shown to have antibodies to different coronaviruses (the generic term, not specifically to Covid-19). It could just have been a delivery person from that area brought the Covid-19 virus or it's precursor to Wuhan, where it took off. Why didn't it take off in that person's home area? Simple, enough cross-reactivity with antibodies to other coronaviruses kept it in check. Of course tracking that down would be very hard, esp since no one wants to be blamed for the outbreak.
It is curious that Indochina (Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand) has been largely spared by the pandemic. Some have hypothesized that a similar coronavirus, spread by bats, has been present in that region for centuries, most of the people who live there have been exposed to it and they have developed antibodies that help them to ward off Covid-19.
Maybe Agent Orange has inoculating properties.
>> The price meanwhile is being paid by Chinese Americans<<
This is the part I really don’t get. Back in 2007 a Chinese company exported wheat gluten to the US and Canada that was deliberately contaminated with melamine. The companies that purchased the wheat gluten specified it was to be human grade. Apparently the test that is used for wheat gluten is fooled by melamine, so the company that sold the gluten used an inferior grade of gluten and added melamine to fool the test. The wheat gluten was sold to a company that made dog and cat food. Melamine causes kidney failure in dogs and cats and many were sickened and died. The full story is here, but the numbers of pets killed or sickened was far higher than is reported because that type of thing wasn’t kept track of at the time:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_pet_food_recalls
My dog was amongst those sickened. We spent thousands of dollars on veterinary care. What I found out is that China was kind of a “Wild West” regulation wise. Ironically, kind of a Capitalist dream. For several years I would see occasional stories of things like adulterated baby food manufactured in China. To this day I will not purchase a food product from China if there is any was of telling.
But....it never once occurred to me to be hateful/angry/distrustful towards any Asian American or even Asian tourist here. I’m sorry, but I just don’t get this type of discrimination. It all seems so weird to me. Do they think that the elderly Chinese American guy they punched somehow has some responsibility for Covid? That “China” as a group is responsible for the virus? It just seems really nuts to me.
Guess you missed Trump calling COVID-19 the "China Flu" and the "Kung Flu." And blaming China for a virus that happened to originate in China but was likely carried to the US by Americans visiting China and Europe.
Yeah, didn’t miss that at all. “China” is doing a lot of things I don’t like. Its government is one of the most ruthless dictatorships in the world. I just don’t see how that translates to me/anyone hating some random Asian person.
Ebola was a very scary disease. I can’t imagine thinking I should take it out on some random black guy.
Asian Americans and Asian tourists have nothing to do with it. But some animosity toward specifically Chinese tourists might be understandable. Not that there are Chinese tourists in tge US these days.
When American tourists visit Vietnam, they rarely encounter any "understandable" animosity, even though we devastated their country and killed millions of Vietnamese. Plenty of Vietnamese who lived through the war are still alive.
There's no real reason to think that Chinese virologists are guilty in any way of releasing Coronavirus on the world, but I don't think China cares too much about what the rest of the world thinks of them. They are aiming to be a dominant power on the world stage, and they don't see "transparency" as important to getting them there. But as long as they hide the data about their internal investigation there will always be a question about what happened and whether they fumbled the early response. That guy Peter Daszak who keeps getting interviewed and keeps giving the Chinese claims the benefit of the doubt is not helping the situation, either.
"What on earth do they have to hide?"
I am assuming that, as WHO says, the virus did not originate in the Wuhan lab. But the Chinese authorities did not know that before doing their own investigation. By the time time they could have assured themselves they had a potential epidemic on their hands and had other priorities than convincing a skeptical Trump administration that was openly looking for excuses to blame China for the "Kung-flu." They probably didn't have anything to hide, but they had a bunch of stuff to do - which, by the way, they did quite well.
I don't buy that. Precisely because they are a totalitarian dictatorship, they almost certainly started looking for people to blame as soon as this started. Plus they have everyone (and certainly all their scientists) under surveillance because, again, they are a totalitarian state.
So they almost certainly knew whatever happened almost immediately. Indeed, their reaction was extremely telling- they barred their own subjects from traveling out of Wuhan to other parts of China, while allowing people to leave the country and spread the virus throughout the world. That's not something you do unless you have a very strong understanding of exactly what the dangers of the virus were and what happened. Meanwhile, they withheld information from the world health system from the very start.
And given China made THAT decision, your statement that the dictators did anything "quite well" other than intentionally endanger lives throughout the rest of the world is really wrong. They basically treat all of these outbreaks as if the only thing that is important is that there be no internal threat to the Communist dictatorship. Refusing to cooperate with the rest of the world is perfectly consistent with that strategy, a strategy that was conceived long before any American politicians joked about China's responsibility for the outbreak.
Communist??? More like formerly Leninist. Now crony capitalism. Communism is French you know.
Communist. They call themselves Communist, and still keep pictures of Mao up everywhere.
And I think that's kind of important. They obviously feel the Communist thing is important to the branding of what they are doing. So it's important not to allow them to turn around to the rest of the world and say "well, we aren't really Communist". Really? Then why are you telling your own public you are?
I would argue Mao wasn't "communist" either, but borrowed a fascinating part of Leninism called "Democratic Centralism" which Lenin, Bakurin used to make sure "Russia" had the power in the USSR. Russia workers good, Ukrainian workers only good if they followed Russia. Not quite the pure Christian mother there.
Many conspiracy theorists forget Lenin and Bakurin were quite the Russian "patriots". Mao and his obsession with Daoism and the Hans dynasty made the power seeking attractive. In many respects, not much different than National Socialism.
>> Communist. They call themselves Communist, and still keep pictures of Mao up everywhere.<<<
Then you must think the January 6th insurrectionist’s were patriots. They said they were.
The insurrectionists of January 6 were not a brutal totalitarian dictatorship which has remained in power for over 70 years.
>>The insurrectionists of January 6 were not a brutal totalitarian dictatorship which has remained in power for over 70 years.<<
They just wanted to form one with Trump as their “Mao”.
The Chinese are so communist Americans are infuriated at them because they are allowing to much free markets when it comes to drugs and technology. Americans know prosperity comes from government enforced monopolies. Free markets in these sectors are deadly and will impoverish society.
Frankly I think we need more patents so that billionaires like Bill Gates and the opioid sellers can get richer at everyone else’s expense.
Again, the Chinese CALL THEMSELVES COMMUNIST. Because that is important to their branding towards their subjects.
This brings up a question that we need more information on -- is China really finding a way to be successful at surveillance?
I worried a lot about it back in Nixon's time, and always came to the conclusion that the surveillance would fail, because they would never have enough manpower to watch and keep track of everyone else.
Today, the Chinese are certainly doing their best to use AI and facial recognition to overcome that problem --- yet still I wonder. Maybe the computer can take a photo of a street and spit out a list of nearly every person -- yet there's still going to be a manpower problem in intelligently using that information for effective repression, won't there be ? China's various innovations in totalitarianism -- especially being able to enlist a vigorous Chinese nationalism to support the structure -- are getting very scary.
"China's various innovations in totalitarianism -- especially being able to enlist a vigorous Chinese nationalism to support the structure -- are getting very scary."
This.
Variation on a theme here: I don't think the Chinese response is shaped primarily by external influences and relationships so much as internal ones. This is central-vs-regional-vs-local, and political-vs-scientific/medical and saving leadership "face" and probably another dozen aspects of inside baseball. How it appears to the rest of the world is probably about 9th or 10th on their list.
I dunno. We decided to move our manufacturing to China so as to reduce costs, and thus increase profits to execs and owners back here in the US of A. China is an authoritarian country with no time for labor unions or worker's rights -- and of course that's exactly what our big corporations like about operating there. Seems to me it's on us to be aware of the risks of increasing international business with a regime that doesn't care about niceties like having a fully funded and open public health system. That's why I think the minute we knew there might be a dangerous virus we should have shut down all contact. We can't do much to change the Chinese regime. They're too proud, and the people at the top of their system benefit too much to listen to our carping. But we can mitigate the risks of having a fully international economy where China does the manufacturing. So yeah, what I'm saying is, this is really Apple's fault.
But yeah, I guess, to the point of the post specifically, China shouldn't be surprised if it's the focus of conspiracy theorizing. But what's really driving that is not only their own suspicious behavior. It's also their cooperation with the international business execs who have no interest in making sure China is running a good and open public health operation.
That really started in 1958 and ended in 2005. Manufacturing has been slowly moving from China since.
I've seen data that China has about 28% of world manufacturing. That puts it in position 1. The US is at position 2, with 17%. (2020 figures)
https://www.statista.com/chart/20858/top-10-countries-by-share-of-global-manufacturing-output/
My overall point is that virus-danger is an externality that international businesses are foisting on international taxpayers. The right way to deal with this is have a well-funded public health system like Taiwan's which is ready to take action immediately when there's an outbreak. Total deaths in Taiwan from covid so far is 10.
It was seen in southern Europe last September. We don't know where it originated and likely never will. Europe's cover up is not getting enough attention.
Italy may be Covid's real home country. It is nasty against people with Latin dna. Italy also has quite a bit of bat culture. The fact it was there in September 2019 and they covered up their outbreak, even though they saw it happening in the fall, is pretty damning.
You are pretty much the only person on the face of the planet who thinks it originated in Europe. Even the Chinese government says it originated in China.
Almost all origin sars come from Asia, but mutations of the primordial ooze can happen anywhere. That is what you don't understand.
Your understanding of viral genetics is . . . unusual.
Does not the fact that the Trump Administration reduced the number of health monitors from 47 to 4, just in China and, coincidentally (I am sure) in summer of 2019 mean anything?
Trump did that on orders from the Chinese government.
Why did the WHO bother to go to the nearest wet markets in Wuhan, a full year after China had closed them down to conduct a deep cleaning and shutting down of the wildlife meat trade?
There is nothing to be gained except to maintain the façade of the wet market theory. There is no evidence left, no genetic material to be collected, no people to test, nothing. This charade was a waste of time, except for those pushing the wet market theory.
If the WHO wanted to attempt to disprove the WIV-breakout theory, why not start with accounting for every WIV employee as of Dec 2019, then test all of them for the whole range of antibodies and their levels?
Did WIV eliminate all lines of cave-sampled batCoV? Let's see the records of what they collected. Were they using samples to test on monkeys/mice? Have them collect and test for antigen and antibodies in all test animals.
Going to wet markets had no purpose other than propaganda support. People talk about following the science, but don't bother to push to use science. Don't give me BS about how the wet market theory is the prime theory, when no one has bothered to eliminate the other theories.
China's refusing to support efforts to eliminate the WIV-outbreak theory. That is the bottom line.
Your point is irrelevant. No sign of it in China while southern europe in the fall of 2019. The first signs start in November 2019 after war games. That is the fact. WHO is irrelevant in that regard. Nor would a year ago mattered.
Europe is likely a red herring. There is no established coronavirus that comes anywhere close, genetically, to SARS-CoV-2, in Europe.
Horseshoe bats of southern China are known reservoirs of coronaviruses. See: https://bityl.co/6CPu
One sampled by WIV had a genetic match of 96% to SARS-CoV-2, which is close but not enough to be the direct source of the first known strain of SARS-CoV-2. People in the surrounding areas have, as a matter of fact, previously tested for antibodies in response to bat coronaviruses. See: https://bityl.co/6CPg
That Europe checked blood banks for presence of antibodies only means that China ought to have done the same. So far, they have refused to do so. It could, at least, trace the timing. If Chinese collect deeper personal info, they could use blood bank antibody testing to even identify the earliest persons infected and geolocate the earliest known infections.
For your edification:
"At a mine in Mojiang, in China’s southern Yunnan province in 2013, scientists discovered the closest known relative to the coronavirus, called RaTG13. It shares 96 percent of its genetic identity with SARS-Cov-2.
That’s hardly close enough to mean that RaTG13 itself could have sparked the pandemic. That 4 percent gap would take decades of evolutionary time to bridge.
Still, RaTG13 may be an important clue to the coronavirus’s origins. Yet oddly to some observers, when lab staffers first showed how closely RaTG13 is related to the novel coronavirus, in an article in the journal Nature in early 2020, they did not highlight that it came from the mine. Nor did they note that in 2012, several mine workers who had been tasked with cleaning bat feces there were sickened with a respiratory illness that some have since argued resembles covid-19. Three died.
The Wuhan institute scientists later acknowledged that the cases of the sickened miners initially drew them to conduct extensive research, since they 'suspected that the patients had been infected by an unknown virus.'" -- https://bityl.co/6CXf
The indirect evidence of SARS-CoV-2 coming from an intermediary host, specifically Pangolins, is the Pangolin SARS spike has a higher affinity to bind with human ACE2 receptors, than that of RaTG13. See: https://bityl.co/6CYD
But Pangolin coronaviruses, taken from animals seized in southern China, had only 85.5% to 92.4% similarity to SARS-CoV-2. If Pangolin SARS is less similar to SARS-CoV-2 than RaTG13, then, the focus on evolutionary timescale for RaTG13 to match SARS-COV-2 is possibly a red herring. See: https://bityl.co/6CYp
Take these three things together and you can see that, there could very well be several other bat coronaviruses in southern China that have strains with spike proteins with higher affinity to binding to human ACE2 receptors, just not RaTG13. Did the Chinese collect genetic samples at the time? If so, what happened to them? If not, why not?
You might be satisfied with whatever explanation the talking heads on teevee tell you, but I'm certainly not. I think people pushing Pangolins at a wet market need to step back and focus on eliminating alternative theories. Isn't that how it's supposed to work, or did we decide we're not going to use science to solve mysteries?
The origin origin is china, but the mutation occurred in southern Europe, explaining the timeline. This is what you don't get.
Shooter, the phylogeny shows Wuhan as the source. See: https://nextstrain.org/ncov/global
Pointing to antibody presence in dated blood donations from Europe does not deductively point to Europe as the source of SARS-CoV-2. All it shows is that the virus was in circulation a lot earlier than people first thought.
The phylogenic mapping of mutations, however, can deductively point to the origin of SARS-CoV-2.
Uh, seems Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus trusted China implicitly. And still does.
Is it not relevant to the conspiracy theory that the head of the US CDC when the pandemic began also believes that it was an accidental release from the Wuhan lab? He would have way more investigation related information than would almost anyone else.
Nobody has ever identified the origin of the 'Spanish' flu, or the Ebola virus, or HIV. The obsession with locating the precise source of SARS-CoV-2 is a bit odd. I can well understand why the Chinese government is suspicious of Americans and their allies wanting to poke around in Wuhan. They've seen the conspiracy narratives Americans peddle about their OWN governments. They know countless influential people in America are already convinced China is their mortal enemy. They know an army of American political and media heavyweights will seize on the slightest evidence the virus came from a Wuhan lab, and use it to transfer the story that it was a deliberately-released bio-weapon from the fringe lunatic web to the mainstream.
I'm surprised Xi didn't tell the W.H.O. to bugger off, China didn't need any help investigating the source. Given Trump pulled the US out of the organization, it's not hard to imagine what access it would have been given if the virus had first appeared in Texas.
But, it's not because people aren't trying to, or that they don't care to.
Over 20 years ago, they were able to piece together the genetic sequence of the Spanish flu, and thought that the evidence pointed to a back and forth between humans and swine.
Just in the last decade, they've ascertained that it likely came from genetic shift in America between wild birds and humans.
Why does it matter? Well, uncovering hidden reservoirs of viruses that are immediately capable of jumping to humans should be kind of important, don't you think?
The Wikipedia entry for HIV is great reading.
From what I recall, likely infection has been tracked back to the 1910s, though I think the earliest known was a Norwegian merchant seaman & his family in the 1950s.
Still will be interesting to find out how the 15 year old gay prostitute in St. Louis got it in 1966. Somebody brought it to him, from parts unknown. But definitely shreds the original classification of HIV/AIDS as 4H (Homosexuals, Haitians, Hemophiliacs, Heroin Addicts).
"they barred their own subjects from traveling out of Wuhan to other parts of China, while allowing people to leave the country and spread the virus throughout the world."
And what would have been your reaction in China had refused to allow Americans and others to leave China while a virus was spreading?
The current Chinese government has made a series of own goals- the crackdown in Hong Kong, the camps in Xinjiang, the Covid-19 investigation, even crackdowns in Inner Mongolia- that were totally unnecessary for the security of the Chinese state, or even the present rulers.
Big Milosevic energy.
One of my friends has suggested that in China it is all about the narrative. Anything which might contradict the narrative is therefore bad and to be precluded. So, anything which might show the narrative the Chinese have out out there is flawed is a non-starter.