Our Covid Response

[Trunkage]

I seem to remember, with regards to the origin or Covid, you talking about how there wasn't much evidence for a lab leak (at the time). There was a possibility of this being true but, withour further evidence, it would be classed as unlikely

There also wasn't much evidence of the origin being a wet market but they were tracing it to a particular few markets. This made it a possibility. This made it more likely than a lab leak, but not definite. I dont even remember yoi calling it likely

Is this a fair summation?

 

[Cheetodust]

You guys have been at this with him for almost three years. I don’t think you’re gonna change his mind and frankly it’s a waste of of your precious minutes to try.

It's wild because he is arguing with multiple people in multiple threads. Like, if he's trolling he is spending SO much time doing it.

I sincerely hope he's just typing something like "write an angry redpilled forum post about long covid" into an AI.

 

[Seanchaidh]

You couldn't talk about the lab leak theory even though now the FBI and DoE both have found that to be the most likely scenario.

the FBI's allegation is just the works cited: bong meme with extra fluff

 

[Ag3ma]

I seem to remember, with regards to the origin or Covid, you talking about how there wasn't much evidence for a lab leak (at the time). There was a possibility of this being true but, withour further evidence, it would be classed as unlikely

There also wasn't much evidence of the origin being a wet market but they were tracing it to a particular few markets. This made it a possibility. This made it more likely than a lab leak, but not definite. I dont even remember yoi calling it likely

Is this a fair summation?

Yes. If we know that a natural transmission is highly plausible, and there's no decent evidence for a lab leak, then Occam's Razor favours natural transmission. However, it's not just that. Initial scientific investigation favoured a natural transmission, which has been substantially reinforced by further investigation, e.g.

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abp8715

In contrast, to the best of my knowledge, there has been no significant scientific advancement in the lab leak theory since the first rumours. That leaves intelligence agencies. We don't know what classified intelligence some US agencies may have. Or even what intelligence they are using at all: by which I mean some US agencies may be taking very specific angles or analyses that are far from holistic.

(Also, why the hell is the Department of Energy releasing assessments on the origins of covid? That's quite some mission drift that must have crept in over the years.)

 

[Trunkage]

Yes. If we know that a natural transmission is highly plausible, and there's no decent evidence for a lab leak, then Occam's Razor favours natural transmission. However, it's not just that. Initial scientific investigation favoured a natural transmission, which has been substantially reinforced by further investigation, e.g.

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abp8715

In contrast, to the best of my knowledge, there has been no significant scientific advancement in the lab leak theory since the first rumours. That leaves intelligence agencies. We don't know what classified intelligence some US agencies may have. Or even what intelligence they are using at all: by which I mean some US agencies may be taking very specific angles or analyses that are far from holistic.

(Also, why the hell is the Department of Energy releasing assessments on the origins of covid? That's quite some mission drift that must have crept in over the years.)

Well, the DoE has the nukes....

Anyway, I was doing this little exercise more for Phoenixmgs benefit so they could actually understand your position rather than make up your opinion. Thanks

I'll put in my own addendum to your opinion. I'm somewhat similar but will always point out that we are getting info from FBI, Homeland Security and Chinese equivalents. Unfortunately, we can trust the US ones about as much as the Chinese so we will probably find out in 50 years what actually happened. But Trump was also president at the time. If he found evidence of China doing something dodgy, he would have been the first one to point it out. On Twitter

 

[Trunkage]

I should point out that the DoE said it had low confidence in the lab leaks theory. Low means that it's highly unlikely, but still possible.... which is where I sit. The FBI said their confidence is moderate which means just unlikely. Only high confidence means likely

(Well, I am assuming its the same for the DoE as the intelligence agencies. The intelligence agencies use similar standards of confidence but, as stated, it is very weird getting a confidence rating from the DoE about this. So I could be wrong about that agency)

 

[Thaluikhain]

It's wild because he is arguing with multiple people in multiple threads. Like, if he's trolling he is spending SO much time doing it.

I sincerely hope he's just typing something like "write an angry redpilled forum post about long covid" into an AI.

Huh, that gives me an idea of how people could save time refuting the same points over and over and being ignored.

 

[SilentPony]

The thing that always amused me about the debate over Covid origins was the backwards knee-jerk reactions from us Western people.
So Covid being from a high-tech covid research lab where Chinese scientists were conducting experiments on new strains of Covid, and an error in their safety procedures allowed a test subject(likely a bat) to escape. That's racist and you're a bad person for even thinking it.
But that the Chinese are a backwards gross peasant people with no health or sanitation knowledge eating whatever raw animals they can catch and then coughing all over their over-cramped apartments caused Covid...that's not racist, that just common sense.
Its just funny how so many people didn't realize how insanely racist the wet-market theory is.

 

[Silvanus]

Its just funny how so many people didn't realize how insanely racist the wet-market theory is.

Nonsense.

Wet markets factually, demonstrably exist, and are very poorly regulated. And it's also factually true that they provide a perfect environment for diseases to transfer from other animals to human. We already know Its happened before.

This is not "racist"-- it doesn't reflect badly on the Chinese people as a whole. It only reflects badly on those who operate such under-the-radar businesses with shoddy standards and hygiene, as well as on the authorities who refuse to regulate them.

 

[Ag3ma]

The thing that always amused me about the debate over Covid origins was the backwards knee-jerk reactions from us Western people.
So Covid being from a high-tech covid research lab where Chinese scientists were conducting experiments on new strains of Covid, and an error in their safety procedures allowed a test subject(likely a bat) to escape. That's racist and you're a bad person for even thinking it.
But that the Chinese are a backwards gross peasant people with no health or sanitation knowledge eating whatever raw animals they can catch and then coughing all over their over-cramped apartments caused Covid...that's not racist, that just common sense.
Its just funny how so many people didn't realize how insanely racist the wet-market theory is.

I don't really get this argument at all.

You can ask how is it that one of the richest countries in the world (USA) has crippling poverty and a lack of healthcare coverage for a significant proportion of its citizens, some of whom live in standards that would embarrass many developing world countries, and which due to a lack of safety regulations lets trains crash and pour pollution into waterways its citizens depend on.

These things just are. Countries can be good at some things, and rubbish at others. They tackle some issues and make some improvements, whilst other issues go largely unaddressed and continue to plague future generations.

 

[SilentPony]

This is not "racist"-- it doesn't reflect badly on the Chinese people as a whole. It only reflects badly on those who operate such under-the-radar businesses with shoddy standards and hygiene, as well as on the authorities who refuse to regulate them.

Thing is...because we're talking about a specific group, specifically the Chinese, and their shoddy standards and hygiene...yeah, that does make it racist.

These things just are. Countries can be good at some things, and rubbish at others. They tackle some issues and make some improvements, whilst other issues go largely unaddressed and continue to plague future generations.

This is literally the definition of jingoism, the idea some countries are better than others at things.

 

[Thaluikhain]

This is literally the definition of jingoism, the idea some countries are better than others at things.

Er, surely jingoism is about aggressive foreign policy?

 

[SilentPony]

Er, surely jingoism is about aggressive foreign policy?

Aggressive foreign policy, extreme nationalism, and the idea that other countries are less than your own and can't handle things as well as your country does.

 

[Ag3ma]

This is literally the definition of jingoism, the idea some countries are better than others at things.

?? Are you really telling me it would be just "jingoism" to opine that the USA has a more advanced nuclear weapons program than Belgium?

 

[SilentPony]

?? Are you really telling me it would be just "jingoism" to opine that the USA has a more advanced nuclear weapons program than Belgium?

"Colloquially, jingoism is excessive bias in judging one's own country as superior to others." So...yeah technically.

 

[Thaluikhain]

"Colloquially, jingoism is excessive bias in judging one's own country as superior to others." So...yeah technically.

Surely that's not "excessive bias", though?

 

[SilentPony]

Surely that's not "excessive bias", though?

Probably not true. It depends. So saying like the US has a great population than Belgium, meaning size, that's not jingoistic. Likewise saying the US is larger than Belgium, or has more roads/bridges or has a larger military, not inherently jingoistic. But North Korea saying they're literally the greatest people in the world, with the greatest bridges, military, population is.
Saying the Chinese are so poorly regulated their wet-markets easily cause world wide pandemics...yeah I'd say that's jingoistic.

Come to think of it, I'm not sure its actually racist, because Chinese isn't a race, its a nationality. So jingoism might be the more accurate term.

 

[Ag3ma]

"Colloquially, jingoism is excessive bias in judging one's own country as superior to others." So...yeah technically.

It surely does not require bias to claim that the USA has a more advanced nuclear weapons program than Belgium, though. And besides, I'm not American or Belgian.

* * *

Wet markets in China are a fact. Are they a sanitation and infection control clusterfuck? Well, yes. Do we have them in the West? Not really, or at least little equivalent and to the same extent.

Bias and xenophobia depend more on how facts are deployed in wider context. To make claims such as "Wet markets exist therefore the Chinese are filthy / incompetent / backward..." or "Wet markets exist in China therefore the USA is better than China" is where it's tending into a problem, because the fact is clearly inadequate to support the wider claim.

 

[Silvanus]

Thing is...because we're talking about a specific group, specifically the Chinese, and their shoddy standards and hygiene...yeah, that does make it racist.

But we're not talking about "the Chinese". Any more than talking about the recent train crash is racist because it concerns "the Americans".

We're talking about the people who do the things at fault. Why on earth would that somehow extrapolate outwards onto everyone who shares a demographic with those people?

 

[SilentPony]

We're talking about the people who do the things at fault. Why on earth would that somehow extrapolate outwards onto everyone who shares a demographic with those people?

Have you ever heard of any-ism before? Extrapolating outwards to everyone of a demographic is literally was doing an -ism is.