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Extremely doubtful there are no wild bats in Wuhan. If you have trees and forests and lots of insects, which Wuhan does, you have bats.
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- Thread starter blastula
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What is this need to run cover for the ChiComs?
Jimmy Higgins
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It took the CT'ers 30 months to dig that claim out?
Jimmy Higgins
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Because the Chinese should be held accountable for their actual actions, not fantastical / unsupported alt-right fan-fiction. The Chinese didn't get everyone else on board quick enough and were stubborn, in large part due to internal politics and the fear of appearance of failure.
The Lab leak theory is an odd insistence of the alt-right because they both want to blame the Chinese for the awful pandemic... while at the same time, minimizing the actual pandemic itself. It is a bizarre obfuscated duality running the minds of people that were quick to politicize a disease, instead of treat it like a medical emergency.
lpetrich
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Yes, I find that disconnect very odd. Why should China be especially villainous for creating a disease only as bad as the common cold?
One might expect them to say
"China's leaders have ordered the creation of a disease that has killed millions of us and given millions more lots of long-term trouble. I think that we should wear lower-face masks and get vaxxed so we can live normal lives with that virus on the loose."
or
"China wanted to do biological warfare, but if that disease is anything typical, then their efforts are a joke."
One might expect them to say
"China's leaders have ordered the creation of a disease that has killed millions of us and given millions more lots of long-term trouble. I think that we should wear lower-face masks and get vaxxed so we can live normal lives with that virus on the loose."
or
"China wanted to do biological warfare, but if that disease is anything typical, then their efforts are a joke."
If it was a lab leak, then that's the truth. Shouldn't that matter? Why are you afraid of offending the ChiComs? Lab leaks happen. And in this instance it appears to be a multinational screwup, as IIRC the US funded these SARs gain-of-function mutations. Yet if it offends Xi it cannot be said.
Jimmy Higgins
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...
So we went from 'we need to seek the truth' to 'it could have happened' to 'it happened and the West paid for it', all in one post by you.
What on earth is a ChiCom ????
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I was responding to the extremely stupid notion that there are no wild bats near Wuhan. Nothing more. You're seeing things that aren't there.
lpetrich
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Some people have an aversion to making unsupported assertions. Especially assertions of misbehavior.
ChiComs = Chinese Communists
Jimmy Higgins
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A sign that the person has ingested nothing but right-wing media for the last 20 years of their lives.
bilby
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Remember Captain Black, the CIA agent from M*A*S*H? He neatly parodied the military insanity complex, which since the 1950s has been dominated by highly conservative men who spend so much time reading military documents that they start speaking in abbreviations and acronyms. He would certainly not have wasted American Taxpayers' valuable time saying "Chinese Communists", when he could instead say "ChiComs". It's SOP. so wise up ASAP, or risk becoming a POW, PDQ, OK?
1) I don't think anything China did mattered in the big picture--it almost certainly had already escaped the country before anyone realized there was a new bug going around.
2) China was reporting only established facts, not speculation. Nothing wrong with this, nor was anything more even needed. Anyone paying attention would have learned everything they needed to know from the Wuhan lockdown. That clearly showed they considered it a very serious threat--China normally isn't too concerned with a few people dying.
Yeah, they're being very two-faced about it.
1) "ChiComs"--you realize that China isn't communist anymore? They call it the "Communist" party--but every member of it I know behaves in a very capitalist fashion.
2) There's simply no reason to think lab leak. To me it's pretty obvious that there's something in China (and probably elsewhere) that produces SARS-type symptoms but has an R0 well below 1. Our experience with Covid says it mutates pretty rapidly. Humans sometimes get infected--and once in a while it mutates into something more transmissible. The first documented example was SARS--moderately infectious but fortunately you got a fever before you were infectious. This enabled authorities to pounce on it and it went extinct. Closely related was MERS (not in China)--very deadly but with a low R0, it shows up now and then but doesn't take fire. Now we get Covid--not as lethal as SARS but with a higher R0 and the truly deadly property of spreading before showing symptoms. It's also apparently jumped from human to mouse and then back to human (Omicron)--since it's done two clearly natural jumps to humans why should we figure the other example was a lab leak?
Covid doesn't hurt kids?
7.5 million orphans (worldwide estimate) due to Covid doesn't hurt them?
jamanetwork.com
7.5 million orphans (worldwide estimate) due to Covid doesn't hurt them?
Orphanhood and Caregiver Loss Based on Global Excess COVID-19 Death Estimates
This study assesses estimates of new orphanhood based on excess deaths to provide a comprehensive measure of the COVID-19 pandemic’s long-term impact on orphanhood and caregiver loss.
jamanetwork.com
blastula
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Biden: "The pandemic is over"
WHO's chief said last week the end of the pandemic "is in sight," but "we are not there yet."
www.axios.com
How trumpy of him.
Jimmy Higgins
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Well, he does have a point, the disease became endemic a while ago. 
Biden is in full on election campaign mode for the mid-terms. So be prepared for truths to be stretched and BS to be spread.
Biden is in full on election campaign mode for the mid-terms. So be prepared for truths to be stretched and BS to be spread.
Jimmy Higgins
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I was looking at the stats, it does appear that we are nearing the lowest daily deaths (7-day average) for the pandemic... and we've been under 500 deaths a day for the longest period of time during the pandemic by a long shot. With the virus where it is, while it is endemic, the pandemic and the risks to our health care system are becoming much smaller. The risk it presents to the elderly, however, still notable.
blastula
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According to what definition, and when did it happen?
Biden Said the Pandemic Is Over? Is It?
BU epidemiologist Eleanor Murray says the president’s statement is premature: “A pandemic cannot be declared over by a single country, since pandemics involve all countries”
www.bu.edu
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