I think the motivation to suppress the lab leak theory was to avoid compounding the crisis at the time with anti-Chinese sentiment, including racist attacks on Chinese Americans. Emotions were running really high.
I think we’ll now see little energy for continuing that bias, and more energy for correctly identifying the source to prevent future pandemics from similar origins.
TBF, I predict that the public debate will still resemble a dumpster fire, as do most complex human affairs. Humans are cute, not smart.
Was “avoiding anti-Chinese sentiment” really a motivation? The official explanation is that some Chinese person ate like a barbecued bat or got bit by a pangolin or something. I don’t see how a lab leak would make people any more racist or hateful towards the Chinese than the official explanation did.
I suppose that it probably was a motivation even though it did not make much rational sense to me. I just wonder if that concern was more of a matter of political identity rather than a considered response.
IIRC research at WIV was done in collaboration with EcoHealth Alliance and/or other similar US-based orgs. Granting WIV BSL4 necessary for this kind of gain-of-function research was in part based on their assessments. US establishment had a reason to cover it up because it was in part their own fuckup.
I think the motivation to suppress the lab leak theory was to avoid compounding the crisis at the time with anti-Chinese sentiment, including racist attacks on Chinese Americans. Emotions were running really high.
I think we’ll now see little energy for continuing that bias, and more energy for correctly identifying the source to prevent future pandemics from similar origins.
TBF, I predict that the public debate will still resemble a dumpster fire, as do most complex human affairs. Humans are cute, not smart.
Was “avoiding anti-Chinese sentiment” really a motivation? The official explanation is that some Chinese person ate like a barbecued bat or got bit by a pangolin or something. I don’t see how a lab leak would make people any more racist or hateful towards the Chinese than the official explanation did.
I suppose that it probably was a motivation even though it did not make much rational sense to me. I just wonder if that concern was more of a matter of political identity rather than a considered response.
This was probably a factor but also:
IIRC research at WIV was done in collaboration with EcoHealth Alliance and/or other similar US-based orgs. Granting WIV BSL4 necessary for this kind of gain-of-function research was in part based on their assessments. US establishment had a reason to cover it up because it was in part their own fuckup.
The WIV did not do any work on Coronaviruses under BSL4. They did gain-of-function experiments under BSL2 and BSL3.