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The problem with this thinking is assuming the government of China actually knows the truth and is acting to protect itself from a dangerous reveal. They might not have known then (or now!) and are simply acting based on some probability it could be true, default secrecy, and organizational fear.



It's also possible that there is something unrelated to the coronavirus outbreak that a thorough investigation might stumble upon which they are trying to keep secret. The WIV was china's first biosafety level-4 lab and has close ties to China's military.

from [0]:

> Despite the WIV presenting itself as a civilian institution, the United States has determined that the WIV has collaborated on publications and secret projects with China’s military. The WIV has engaged in classified research, including laboratory animal experiments, on behalf of the Chinese military since at least 2017.

If I had done some work in the past on biological weapons that I didn't want the world to know about, I'd be very concerned about letting a bunch of international investigators examine labs that might be literally right down the hall. Alternatively if I were a government hostile to china who knew damn well what china was doing down the hall but can't find a good way to call them out on it, the opportunity to send investigators in for an unrelated reason would be a godsend.

[0] https://2017-2021.state.gov/fact-sheet-activity-at-the-wuhan...


This seems less plausible. Presumably the PRC knows exactly what kind of research was happening in Wuhan. It should be fairly clear to anyone who worked in that lab if COVID-19 came from there.


The PRC is made up of people, some of whom may or may not tell each other the truth, or may or may not know the truth of what they say. Just like any other organization made up of people.

I don't know if COVID leaked from a lab or not. I think it's possible and very much worth investigating. What I'm against is these kind of "social proof" arguments which can seem convincing but are are often vacuous.

Investigate the evidence. Pressure the PRC to show their records and allow external investigations. Publicly bluster that refusal to open up in the face of legitimate questions should be considered evidence of culpability if they refuse to open up! But don't actually consider a repressive government being repressive by default as actual proof of anything.


(Real)communist countries are notorious for local party representatives falsifying or mis-representing data to their superiors.

Incentives gone wrong - when you risk getting gulag'd for missing your quarterly numbers, you will fudge your numbers.


Yeah, I'm not throwing out the lab leak hypothesis, but the "China is being secret" thing doesn't hold water. They've got some degree of decentralization mixed with always-be-secret where each gov piece doesn't want to accidentally release something from a different gov piece.

The notorious case of the Chinese spy needing spy auth docs to prove that she's a bona fide spy to the Chinese consulate in the US is an example. Surely they could have authed her using her passport, but no, she needed the auth docs and she got caught for having them.


Isn't this basically the default behavior of China and/or other communist/dictator countries? I just rewatched HBO's Chernobyl, and that was the underlying premise about how badly the gov't wanted the thing to be played down until it was just too much to hide. The superiority of those in charge cannot be brought into disrepute in any way. Same thing with COVID-19. I just think that Bejing has a tighter grip on things than Moscow did at the time. Not that I'm equating global nuclear disaster and a viral pandemic on the same level.


Well. The upper estimates for Chernobyl-related deaths is 6000. Legasov's projections in the 80s cited 40000. That's nothing compared to COVID, and COVID is more global for sure (meaning that most people in most coutries experienced the effects of the pandemic on themselves).

Nuclear disaster sound scary, but COVID is actually objectively scarier.

(Not sure which way you meant the comparison goes)


I meant if Moscow kept a lid on the Chernobyl situation and did not allow them to "fix" it as that would have admitted that Soviet engineering was falible. Had the various nightmare scenarios been allowed to happen (meltdown reaching the water table, etc) due to pride, then Chernobyl could have been so much worse. Could COVID had been mitigated from becoming a global pandemic if "pride" had not affected Bejing?




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