US Intel Agencies Are Reviewing Genetic Data From Wuhan Lab (cnn.com) 145
ytene writes: CNN is claiming an exclusive scoop, with an article reporting that U.S. intelligence agencies have scored a massive trove of Covid-19 genetic data, which, CNN suggests, comes from the Wuhan research lab. More than the complex challenge of absorbing and understanding the "mountain" of raw data, U.S. researchers are going to have to translate the material from native Mandarin before the real work can begin. Whilst there has obviously been a lot of interest in a clear identification of the source, it isn't clear how such a revelation could have a material impact on the efficacy of vaccines or the take-up of the treatment. It might, however, give useful clues to help understand where or how the next deadly outbreak could develop. "It's unclear exactly how or when U.S. intelligence agencies gained access to the information, but the machines involved in creating and processing this kind of genetic data from viruses are typically connected to external cloud-based servers -- leaving open the possibility they were hacked," notes CNN, citing multiple people familiar with the matter.
The report also notes that senior intelligence officials are "genuinely split between the two prevailing theories on the pandemic's origins." The World Health Organization says wildlife farms in southern China are the most likely source of the COVID-19 pandemic, but the theory that the virus accidentally escaped from a lab in Wuhan is still being investigated. According to a CNN report last month, "[S]enior Biden administration officials overseeing the 90-day review now believe the theory that the virus accidentally escaped from a lab in Wuhan is at least as credible as the possibility that it emerged naturally in the wild -- a dramatic shift from a year ago, when Democrats publicly downplayed the so-called lab leak theory."
The report also notes that senior intelligence officials are "genuinely split between the two prevailing theories on the pandemic's origins." The World Health Organization says wildlife farms in southern China are the most likely source of the COVID-19 pandemic, but the theory that the virus accidentally escaped from a lab in Wuhan is still being investigated. According to a CNN report last month, "[S]enior Biden administration officials overseeing the 90-day review now believe the theory that the virus accidentally escaped from a lab in Wuhan is at least as credible as the possibility that it emerged naturally in the wild -- a dramatic shift from a year ago, when Democrats publicly downplayed the so-called lab leak theory."
Hacked? Maybe not (Score:2)
the machines involved in creating and processing this kind of genetic data from viruses are typically connected to external cloud-based servers -- leaving open the possibility they were hacked
Or... the cloud providers in question were US-based and they were national-security-lettered into spilling their Chinese customers' beans.
Whatever happened, another fine argument for cloud-based computing.
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One phrase.
GREAT FIREWALL OF CHINA!
That's kind of the whole point of it. If there was a cloud involved it wasn't on this side.
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Okay. So the US three-letter agency we all know and love hacked Chinese servers and stole the data then. Or some Chinese whistleblower exfiltrated the data. Whatever the case:
- China will demand an explanation as to the source of the data. That's gonna ease international tensions for sure.
- Cloud computing is untrustworthy, regardless of which side of the Chinese firewall it's on.
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The value of clouding makes sense if you are a relatively small operation doing mundane business but doesn't want to pay for an IT department. The Microsoft warehouse is more likely to be on top of patching etc. than a smallish company. However, if you have highly sensitive info, it's better to run your own servers, but only if you pay for real staff to keep them secure.
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The appeal of cloud computing is laziness. I wouldn't entrust my data to any of the current crop of cloud providers even if I was doing was bookkeeping for a potted plants business, for multiple reasons:
- No internet? No data.
- Cloud provider fuckup
- Cloud provider getting hacked
- Cloud provider being also a retailer (i.e. Amazon) and using my data to undercut my business
- Cloud provider "monetizing" my data
- Vendor lock-in
Even for a small business, it's worth investing in doing your IT locally.
To be clear ... (Score:2)
TFS/A / CNN is stating that the *data* may come from the Wuhan Lab, not necessarily COVID-19. People are reviewing the genetic data to see if they can determine if the virus was transmitted to humans in the wild or transmitted at and leaked from the lab -- either because it was being studied or developed there.
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Following up... From TFA:
No 'smoking gun'
Sources familiar with the effort say filling in that missing genetic link won't be enough to definitively prove whether the virus originated in the lab at Wuhan or first emerged naturally. Officials will still need to piece together other contextual clues to determine the true origins of the pandemic.
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One would think the title would suffice, but many people on this thread seem to have made the jump to "the virus came from the lab", so I thought I'd specifically point out that wasn't what this was about. Probably just pissing into the wind at this point...
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Words matter (Score:2)
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moot question (Score:4, Insightful)
Even if some organization somewhere developed this coronavirus, the failure for every country that failed to defend against it is their own.
In this day and age where viruses can be spliced and built with commercial equipment available for less than a million dollars of investment by many thousands of virologists around the world, it is paramount that we assume that someone somewhere will be making dangerous viruses. At the same time, there are over 7 billion incubators in the world today available for the natural development of dangerous viruses.
There is zero chance of success in a policy of controlling viral development whether it be artificial or natural. We must have a comprehensive plan for defending against a virus when it emerges from whatever source. I had honestly assumed the US had such a plan amongst its many secret defense plans. It is apparent we've had a major failure in preparation for what has been assumed to be the next big event for decades.
We need comprehensive action to create a worldwide early detection system, policies for total shutdown of all international transportation when a detection is made, and a system that can develop and deploy a vaccine in weeks, not months. The key to that system will be a means of comprehensive and trustworthy testing that can be done virtually. That will likely require an investment that makes the Manhattan Project seem like childsplay, but it is absolutely necessary and would advance our general medicine by many decades if we successfully pursue it.
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Of course viruses aren't new. Fast transportation and a population of 7+ billion are though as is the possibility of engineered viruses. Those and other factors change everything.
Just as we had to develop new techniques of providing food for that population to exist, we also need to develop new techniques to control viruses. Otherwise, a world killer that takes us back to sub billion population levels is not unlikely.
Physical separation is part of what I outlined - shutting down transportation. If we develo
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In the meantime, we could do safety audits of labs that work with pathogens. In the US alone, a USA Today investigation found hundreds of accidents severe enough to cause a hospital visit.
Re: moot question (Score:2)
Still now simply means people you disagree with. They said nothing to defend China. They simply said we have no one to blame but ourselves.
That's the problem with America. Instead of addressing internal issues, we love to hyperventilate on external issues.
Here is a good case and point. Let's blame China for the fact that majority of our goods are manufactured there and many cheap products are made sub quality. This is to say let's ignore 40 years of off shoring jobs and manufacturing to China/Japan.
Now I do
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Not clever. Simply a restatement of my original post.
I simply don't care where the virus came from. We've been expecting it (actually we've been expecting worse) since at least the 70s. I've watched for decades as warnings repeatedly arrived, efforts started to figure out how to counter these events when they happened, progress was made, and then funding was trashed as whatever prompted the warning faded from our short memories. The only relevant thing about where it came from to my country is that it came
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that's a lot of words for nothing ... (Score:1)
The World Health Organization says wildlife farms in southern China are the most likely source of the COVID-19 pandemic, but the theory that the virus accidentally escaped from a lab in Wuhan is still being investigated. According to a CNN report last month, "[S]enior Biden administration officials overseeing the 90-day review now believe the theory that the virus accidentally escaped from a lab in Wuhan is at least as credible as the possibility that it emerged naturally in the wild -- a dramatic shift from a year ago, when Democrats publicly downplayed the so-called lab leak theory."
this seems like going into extensive linguistic hassle to hide the fact that your story has no merit whatsoever. let see the "according to" source that feeds this drivel:
Little new evidence has emerged to move the needle in one direction or another, these people said. But the fact that the lab leak theory is being seriously considered by top Biden officials is noteworthy
so, no evidence whatsoever, thank you. just a hunch! okey! :-)
but it is just so convenient to make up stories, right? bluntly said, it would seem that for the american public you don't even have to bother about disguising the bullshit into something remotely credible, you just spew it out and they will swallow it like fish chow in a tank.
th
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interesting. you have any evidence?
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https://www.the-sun.com/news/3376329/france-warned-wuhan-lab-biological-arsenal-chinese-military/
People choose not believe it for political purposes.
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Of course. https://www.infectioncontrolto... [infectionc...ltoday.com]
fair, thanks.
https://www.the-sun.com/news/3376329/france-warned-wuhan-lab-biological-arsenal-chinese-military/
People choose not believe it for political purposes.
this one really reeks of bullshit, i wouldn't believe it either.
Scientists calling for review (Score:2)
The game is up for virologists, here is the letter
https://scitechdaily.com/accid... [scitechdaily.com]
And here is a good article summarizing the evidence,
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p... [nih.gov]
Not evil, just a mistake.
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so you have no evidence either? bummer ... enjoy your slandering, then.
False choice fallacy. (Score:1)
If they're looking for either conclusive evidence it escaped from the lab or conclusive evidence it occurred naturally in the wild they're never going to find it. What they are going to find is something that can't be traced to any natural or manufactured sources but nonetheless looks almost exactly like a worst-case-scenario type of hybrid that was once studied in the lab at Wuhan, with some weird markers that look like it sorta came from a natural source but not any one of the known possible natural sour
US used to fund more labs (Score:2)
The US Navy runs the Naval Medical Research Units and their goal was to identify and isolate disease before it spread globally. NAMRU-3 is now in Italy (It was in Egypt until late 2019) , NAMRU-6 is in Peru, NAMRU-A is in Singapore, NAMRU-2 is in Cambodia. NAMRU-5 was in Ethiopia.
Many of those programs were cut with the official reasoning that the poor countries they were in weren't paying their fair share of the costs.
US, China, stop fighting, the enemy is the virus (Score:2)
How comes US agencies has to steal data from China in order to do research?
China also stole US data for their research.
Wouldn't it be better to work together instead of hiding stuff and spying on each other when we all have the same goal (stop the virus).
Remember the UFOs (Score:2)
Remember those UFOs? THAT is what caused covid. It surely did not come from the Wuhan lab. That's just a loony conspiracy theory.
funny... (Score:2)
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Also, development (not research since it didn't exist before if it was lab-developed)
Never heard of Anthrax, have you? Hint: it did not come about because some government lab created it.
Also, a multitude of tests and studies have confirmed covid is not man-made.
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Amazing that they miraculously managed to prove a negative.
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It's nothing short of stunning how people are letting politics influence their read on the situation. It was recently reported that severa
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"For fuck's sakes. Connect some dots."
But Trump said some mean things once so we now have to disregard all the circumstantial evidence of a COVID lab-leak...
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"For fuck's sakes. Connect some dots."
But Trump said some mean things once so we now have to disregard all the circumstantial evidence of a COVID lab-leak...
Trump also called COVID a hoax and didn't have any real evidence to backup his self-contradictory claim that China created the virus to hurt him/America. Add in his racism and ability to corrupt just about every agency in the executive branch, and you can understand why some people might dismiss everything he says as bullshit designed to rile his base. Unfortunately, reduced trust in the US Government is the cost of installing a serial liar as POTUS to try to pwn the libs.
I just don't understand how conser
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No, he called leftist news coverage of COVID a hoax. Which it was. Meanwhile, the Angel of Death Cuomo as well as the governors of Jersey, Cali, and Michigan instituted policies that they knew well beforehand were going to kill a shitload of people and were responsible for an additional number of deaths somewhere in the mid 5 figure range.
Re: This isn't the point (Score:3)
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US Funding research is OK (Score:2)
The WIV / Shi zhengli is the world's leading expert on bat coronaviruses, so funding them to do research made sense. They are a respected part of the world's virology community.
However, whether any lab in the world should have been doing Gain of Function research is a bigger question. And it needs to stop, or be extremely closely monitored.
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Isn't it a good thing that the US was contributing funding to research into dangerous viruses that could cause a global pandemic?
I mean at the very least I doubt that the extra money worsened security at the lab, in the unlikely event that turns out to be the source.
Re: This isn't the point (Score:2)
Re: This isn't the point (Score:2)
The US was funding the USSR too in WW2. Didn't stop the cold war, or the threat of MAD.
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CNN don't want to be banned in China, or admit Trump was onto something. But that is the reason this matter.
I agree that they are walking some tight-ropes. I mean, they are a for-profit business owned by people with specific financial interests and political ideologies just like almost all of the mainstream media. And I'm not being a conspiracy theorist in saying so, it's simply an objective fact and there's no way that bias is non-existent.
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CNN allows a guy who masturbated in front of his female coworkers, and another guy who helped his brother sexually harass 11 women to appear on their channel daily. I doubt at this point CNN is exactly a place you should be getting information from. The real question is why does BeauHD post CNN links? CNN is not reputable.
Fox let a guy like that -- *cough* Roger Ailes *cough* -- run its entire company for years, so ...
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Unlike Ailes who was shitcanned, sorry, "resigned", Toobin and Cuomo are still employed by CNN.
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Unlike Ailes who was shitcanned, sorry, "resigned", Toobin and Cuomo are still employed by CNN.
Your point revolves around timing. Ailes was employed right up to the moment he wasn't...
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Correct, after things went majorly public, he was shitcanned. Toobin and Cuomo's shitfuckery has been blatantly obvious, and they are still employed.
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Correct, after things went majorly public, he was shitcanned. Toobin and Cuomo's shitfuckery has been blatantly obvious, and they are still employed.
So... Alies long-time behavior was acceptable while it was still private and only punishable when it became public, but the other's should be punished immediately for something that just happened because it was public? Got it.
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Violently by who? All those people in Tiananmen Square? A bunch of Tibetans? Some people in Henan [cnn.com] province? Apparently living in the US has warped your perception about the world beyond your borders.
Re: This isn't the point (Score:3)
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The size of the US military is irrelevant. China has nukes and other advanced weapons. Even if the US is likely to win in the end, the cost will be too high to contemplate an attack. That's the whole point of MAD and having ICBMs pointed at people who might want to overthrow your government.
The Chinese themselves won't rise up and overthrow the government because most of them think things are going very well. Their quality of life is rapidly improving, their children have opportunities they couldn't even im
Re: This isn't the point (Score:3)
Gain of function is not biological weapon research, it's supposedly to find likely mutations of common viruses to improve precautionary measures.
The expected loss of life due to risk of escape is almost certainly larger than any lives saved, but every virologist's academic career is now built on gain of function now so let the bodies hit the floor. They are the scientific consensus in this area, so they get to define absolute truth even when it's a self serving lie.
Re: This isn't the point (Score:2)
I am happy in China. Good luck with your purge mate.
Re: Three KVEO anchors with COVID. (Score:3)
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...the wuhan virus won't infect chinese people.
C'mon, that's a bit unfair. The country holding 18% of the human population, has had 4,848 deaths.
Don't be disrespectful of their statistics now...one might get the idea they're inaccurate.
Re:1984 (Score:4, Informative)
Don't be disrespectful of their statistics now...one might get the idea they're inaccurate.
The nice thing about vague sarcastic aspersions is that you don't need to offer any evidence, and can say any old bullshit without having to defend it.
Numbers are only as accurate as the thing they are counting, which in this case is only diagnosed cases.
For a more accurate picture of deaths, where numbers were high, you look at excess mortality.
Overall, in Wuhan city, there were about 6000 additional deaths (4573 caused by pneumonia) in January-March 2020 ... ... due to fewer deaths from non-COVID-19 related pneumonia (47% reduction), chronic respiratory diseases (18% reduction), and road traffic incidents (23% reduction), all of which coincided closely with the lockdown.
Outside of Wuhan city, the overall death rate did not increase, and was in fact slightly lower
https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2021... [ox.ac.uk]
Some other countries which imposed travel restrictions, quarantine, lockdowns and mask-wearing had similar success to China (outside Wuhan) at containing outbreaks, e.g. Australia, NZ, Singapore.
No nutty conspiracy theories needed.
Re:1984 (Score:4, Insightful)
Some other countries which imposed travel restrictions, quarantine, lockdowns and mask-wearing had similar success to China (outside Wuhan) at containing outbreaks, e.g. Australia, NZ, Singapore.
Australia contains 0.33% of the human population, and reported near 1,000 deaths. China has more than 18% of the human population, and yet reported less than 5,000 deaths?
No nutty conspiracy theories needed.
You're right. No conspiracy needed at all when every statistic you cited stopped in March 2020. Rather easy for statistics to look impressive when you basically stop counting before a global pandemic even starts.
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Australia contains 0.33% of the human population, and reported near 1,000 deaths. China has more than 18% of the human population, and yet reported less than 5,000 deaths?
Correct. We know the numbers for Wuhan are much lower than total actual deaths, same for Italy, US, UK. But since then numbers have been low in China.
Do you have an actual question?
Let me anticipate - you want to know why more deaths per-capita in Australia? Almost all were from an outbreak in the city of Melbourne in the winter of 2020, and most deaths in nursing homes. Trying to compare national data between China and Australia when both countries had most cases and deaths in a single city is
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Australia contains 0.33% of the human population, and reported near 1,000 deaths. China has more than 18% of the human population, and yet reported less than 5,000 deaths?
Correct. We know the numbers for Wuhan are much lower than total actual deaths, same for Italy, US, UK. But since then numbers have been low in China. Do you have an actual question?
Yeah, do you utterly fail to recognize the fact that deaths didn't merely register "much lower", but fucking flatlined? Outside of North Korea, no other country has infection models like that, especially any heavily populated ones. They stopped reporting. Not sure why you want to deny this.
And China, doesn't mean only "Wuhan". Nice of you to leave out this little statistic:
Coinciding with the January 2020 festivities for the Chinese Lunar New Year, the virus spread rapidly across China.
It's delusional to assume 99% of China's infections came from, or stopped in, one city. China has nine cities larger than Wuhan(7.9
Re:1984 (Score:4, Interesting)
It's delusional to assume ... Give me a break.
First, I'm not assuming anything, but the claims, allowing for errors, look totally plausible.
deaths didn't merely register "much lower", but fucking flatlined?
Correct. They stopped it. Daily new cases remain in the double-digits due to cases among arrivals from outside. That's what happens when you have effective lockdows, contact tracing and testing.
I live in a city of 2 million with zero community cases. Today I went for lunch in a crowded restaurant. Nobody wore a mask, most are not vaccinated, and it's perfectly safe. (Australia has screwed up our vaccine rollout)
The only concession to the pandemic is to scan a QR code at the door. So if there is a new outbreak, and the restaurant is listed as a contact site, I can be rapidly contacted and tested. A small price to pay for freedom.
So you will have to forgive me for believing the Chinese, not because I trust the CCP, but because I have witnesses such results myself in Australia. And China is able to be far more effective, as they are authoritarian, and population supports it. If a democracy can do it, China certainly can.
I do sympathise how you hard it is for you to believe, sitting where you are in a country with hundreds of thousands of needless deaths.
But lucky for me, I have a very different perspective.
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deaths didn't merely register "much lower", but fucking flatlined?
Correct. They stopped it. Daily new cases remain in the double-digits due to cases among arrivals from outside. That's what happens when you have effective lockdows, contact tracing and testing.
I live in a city of 2 million with zero community cases. Today I went for lunch in a crowded restaurant. Nobody wore a mask, most are not vaccinated, and it's perfectly safe. (Australia has screwed up our vaccine rollout)
If your statistics are that perfectly safe, then why are you saying your vaccine rollout is "screwed up"? Seems to me the screw-up, is rolling out the vaccine at all. That's literally a needless vaccine. Not sure why are you even rolling out a brand-new vaccine that has been granted emergency use only that comes with it's own inherent risks, with numbers and lack of business impact like that.
So you will have to forgive me for believing the Chinese, not because I trust the CCP, but because I have witnesses such results myself in Australia. And China is able to be far more effective, as they are authoritarian, and population supports it. If a democracy can do it, China certainly can.
That "authoritarian" allowed 150 million citizens (6 times more than your entire population) to travel and gather
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I live in a city of 2 million with zero community cases.
If your statistics are that perfectly safe,
Zero is not exactly a statistic. 8761 tests yesterday, 8761 negative.
https://ww2.health.wa.gov.au/M... [wa.gov.au]
then why are you saying your vaccine rollout is "screwed up"? ... That's literally a needless vaccine.
Needless? Unfortunately no. The lack of community cases comes at a cost. We live in a gilded cage. No overseas holidays, and I'm afraid to plan even an interstate holiday as I could be trapped on the wrong side of a border closure. We have had 3 lockdowns this year, restricted movements while contacts are traced and isolated. With the Delta strain, the next outbreak may not be so easily stopped. Vaccin
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Ha, someone else from Perth! :)
Hi! Maybe I'll see you at Kalamunda markets later today? :)
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Here is a BBC article on China now. They too are struggling with Delta.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world... [bbc.com]
Re: 1984 (Score:3)
Also, China virtually has no nursing homes. I live here and I think I have only heard of one in the whole country where an outbreak occurred. Most the elderly life with their family, reducing these high mortality outbreaks.
China obviously created and then beat Covid (Score:2)
Interesting point about nursing homes.
But two things are obvious. Firstly, China did a much, much better job of containing Covid-19 than the USA. Maybe their books are a bit cooked, but not to the extent that there has been raging Covid-19 in the country and nobody noticed. It started in China, and, like Australla and NZ, they got it under control quickly because they did not have an idiot in the white house. (Xi might be evil, but nobody has ever doubted his intelligence.)
The second point is that Covid
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It was always suspicious, that the bat virus would suddenly appear in a city that housed the world's leading bat coronavirus research center (which proudly published its Gain of Function research) and is a thousand miles from the relevant bats, with no intermediate source found.
It is certainly something to keep in mind, but far from damning. The virus may have been simmering for months before mutating and a super-spreader event in Wuhan. Remember it took years to identify the civet cat as the intermediary for the SARS-1 virus.
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I agree with your first points except I don't think Xi is evil. I think managing a country like China is a completely different level of difficulty than other countries. There are cities bigger than some countries, provinces bigger than most countries. With this many people democracy almost certainly wouldn't work and I commonly discuss this with my western friends here. "Ruling" with a heavy hand, is never without a certain cruelty... I can accept there are leaders that have to make these "cruel" conclusio
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Have a read of Segretto's much maligned paper.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p... [nih.gov]
It is fairly easy to follow. It also has (I think) links to papers published by WIV about GoF research. None of this was secret, and if you read those you will know. (No need to trust Segretto, just listen to her arguments.) And yes, it was completely reasonable that they were studying these viruses, and further they probably studied the virus that those six miners got.
America did not fund a rival to make weapons, they funde
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Australia contains 0.33% of the human population, and reported near 1,000 deaths. China has more than 18% of the human population, and yet reported less than 5,000 deaths?
While I'd put a question mark at the 5000 number China also has some of the most extreme lockdown measures on record whereas in other countries such as, oh, say the USA, a large portion of the population is still in denial about the Corona virus even being a threat. Theoretically, If the entire human race just stocked up on food, stayed at home for 4-6 weeks and didn't leave their houses for any reason except for extreme cases in an ambulance to go to a hospital, this pandemic would be over. That is literal
Re: 1984 (Score:2)
FYI, the delta variant is currently spreading across China and they are indeed locking down again, requiring health kit scanning and temperature taking at every entrance to buildings and communities. ... all this with only double digits cases, iinm.
They're certainly not as diligent as they were last year, but it's ramping up again.
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In other news, in recent floods, only six people died. Please ignore the video footage from site, because you can count far more corpses than that just from the footage leaked.
Only six people died. The rest is of course a nutty conspiracy theory.
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Only six people died. The rest is of course a nutty conspiracy theory.
Sounds like you are just sore that your country is losing. Where are you from?
China (belatedly) did the right thing, and succeeded.
We can never be sure exactly what is really happening in China, but other countries have shown that it is quite possible to control the pandemic, even with less draconian methods than used in China.
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You're a moron, we know they release BS data, so we have no idea how bad it was there. We have no idea if they had success. They welded the metal doors into apartment blocks closed. They had large fires burning in places that don't normally have fires that are consistent with cremations. They were visible in satellite images. No viable explanation has been put forwards.
So on the one hand, more Chinese people died that their statistics include. Obviously. On the other hand, the virus appears to have escaped
Re:1984 (Score:4, Insightful)
They welded the metal doors into apartment blocks closed.
So you are aware that they were ruthless at efforts to contain the outbreak, but cannot believe they succeeded? How odd.
If even one democratic country can do it, China certainly can. Why is that so hard to believe? The trains probably run on time too.
China is secretive, so I'm not here to prove their data accurate. What I dispute is your claim that containing Covid outbreaks is impossible.
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but cannot believe they succeeded?
Well, golly, you can't read so you'll never know what I believe, will you?
How odd.
No, it is typical.
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Maybe you should RTFA and stop spouting fringe conspiracy theories about weaponised race-targeted viruses.
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See? You can't read. You can't tell the difference between what I said, and what wandered through your addled little mind.
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Another news article on how China is attempting to control the Delta strain:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/20... [abc.net.au]
Several cities, including Zhangjiajie, Zhengzhou and Beijing have restricted movements such as limiting public transport, locking down specific neighbourhoods and banning residents from travelling, but most have yet to impose a city-wide lockdown.
Entertainment venues have been closed in several cities including Nanjing, where pharmacies were ordered to stop selling cough, antiviral and antibiotic drugs to encourage people to go to the hospital if they present with any symptoms. ...
The provincial capital of Wuhan is one of the latest hotspots to undergo city-wide testing as it recorded 15 positive cases on Thursday.
It is the first outbreak in the city of 11 million since COVID-19 cases were cleared in June last year.
That is how you do it guys!
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...but other countries have shown that it is quite possible to control the pandemic, even with less draconian methods than used in China.
Citations please. Oh, and don't forget the deaths created by draconian lockdowns, shutdowns, supply chain cutoffs, and mass unemployment.
A virus may be the cause of a global pandemic, but it is certainly not the only thing that kills.
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...but other countries have shown that it is quite possible to control the pandemic, even with less draconian methods than used in China.
Citations please.
Huh? What do you think we've been talking about? I gave examples including my own country, but if you have paid attention to what is happening in the world you already know which countries are doing well.
Oh, and don't forget the deaths created by draconian lockdowns, shutdowns, supply chain cutoffs, and mass unemployment.
Is that dramatic subject change a concession? You now understand how China's success is possible?
Our economy is doing fine thankyou. Short, sharp lockdowns until the virus is eliminated, then back to work. Repeat as needed.
China is still buying our resources. (NSW has fucked up, but that
I believe their stats because of dictature (Score:2)
Australia and New Zealand also did it (Score:2)
Contained Covid-19 in about the same time that China did. And I don't think China locked up too many people over Covie-19 -- they do that if you complain about the Party.
Not having Trump in the white house helped a lot.
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TFA actually says:
"For now, senior intelligence officials still say that they are genuinely split between the two prevailing theories on the pandemic's origins, or some combination of both scenarios."
This does not equate to "The virus came from a lab in China". Which, even if true, isn't proof that "The WHO is in Chinas pocket", and even less that "Trump was right about everything" (even assuming if he was right about that particular bit).
But by all means, don't let the facts get in the way of your self-validating fiction.
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A stopped clock is right twice a day (Score:2)
Yes, Covid-19 almost certainly came from the WIV as an accidental release, probably as a result of gain of function research. And the entire virology community should take a hit on that, and such research shut down or monitored extremely closely.
But Trump is an idiot, who was just shouting is mouth off and wanted to use this to attack China and divert attention for his own gross incompetence in handling Covid-19 at home. Not helpful at all.
Re:Trump was right (Score:4, Insightful)
That's inertia. A few months ago, if you dared to state out loud that there's even a small chance that virus came from the lab, your reputation and career were ended within a week by a mob of powerful people with vested interest to keep troublesome information swept under the rug. It only broke out as "we won't destroy you for saying it" hypothesis a few months ago, and if in this time "half" of senior intelligence officials already changed their mind in spite of massive institutional inertia... connect the dots.
Re: Trump was right (Score:2)
Today's new phrase "connect the dots". It's great to say at your next game night while playing Jump To Conclusions.
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Is that the new variant of the "covid coming from the lab is conspiracy theory, and everyone who says it is anti-scientific pro Trump fascist who hates Chinese people" now that you can't use the old one?
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Turns out that trump was right about everything.
He lied tens of thousands of times to the US people.
The virus came from a lab in China.
That has yet to be determined. In fact, determining if that happened is precisely why this information was retrieved in the first place.
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The US involvement in the Wuhan lab very likely was NOT to help them, but rather to get in on knowing what results they were getting in research that the US was not able to do in the US either due to legal or ethical constraints.