• Nakoichi [they/them]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    This is stupid. There is just as much evidence it came from Fort Detrick.

    For the record I don’t think it came from either.

    • The Octonaut@mander.xyz
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      1 year ago

      I don’t know why anyone is still talking about a lab outbreak in Wuhan because of the wet market nearby being suspected in mid December, when we know for sure that Covid was in Italy in September/October and possibly as early as May. The world just shrugged at this info because faecal treatment samples aren’t as interesting as as bat soup and bioterrorism.

      • Infamousblt [any]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        Racism mostly. Easier to just be racist against the Chinese than to admit COVID is the result of something more nuanced and systemic

          • PosadistInevitablity [he/him]@hexbear.net
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            1 year ago

            “We don’t hate the Chinese just the government that they like and has made their people prosperous.”

            Check what happened to the Russians after the Soviet Union fell and tell me it’s not hate to wish that on the Chinese next.

            • InvertedParallax@lemm.ee
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              1 year ago

              The USSR (Stalin mostly) broke the Russian people, which is why they’re so weak after its fall.

              The CCP broke the Chinese people too. Seems like a common theme.

              • TheGamingLuddite [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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                1 year ago

                What does it mean to “break” a people?

                The Chinese people were certainly already “broken” in 1949. They had undergone a century of collapse, most were illiterate, women were essentially chattel, and every single grain of wheat or rice more than what was required to keep them alive was stolen by unelected landlords.

                The communists took power and every single one of them was taught to read, women were enfranchised, no-fault divorce and abortion were legalized, political rights were expanded, opium and gangs were chased out of the mainland and the feudal lords were held to account.

                30 years after the revolution they had turned a society of feudal peasants into a nuclear power, 30 years after that and it’s the world’s largest economy by PPP.

                The same things can be said about the Bolsheviks, who defeated a nazi army which sought to annihilate them.

              • Thordros [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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                1 year ago

                “I’m not racist, nobody has a problem with Chinese people.”

                “Also, the Chinese are wild animals that were broken and domesticated.”

                Okay there, buckaroo. Keep telling yourself that.

                • GenderIsOpSec [she/her]@hexbear.net
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                  1 year ago

                  stalin-comical-spoon going around people’s houses, knocking on doors and telling them that stroganoff had to be made with pork now to break them mentally. it’s true, my grandma told me cri

              • BelieveRevolt [he/him]@hexbear.net
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                1 year ago

                I’m not racist, but here’s my thoughts generalizing entire populations of millions as “weak people” because of their Asiatic brainpans.

          • Infamousblt [any]@hexbear.net
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            1 year ago

            And by every major polling organizations metrics the Chinese people overwhelmingly approve of the CPC.

            Typical westoid wants to destroy a government that is liked by it’s people. What’s your countries government approval rating? Do you want to overthrow your government too?

            • InvertedParallax@lemm.ee
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              1 year ago

              I worked there for a good while.

              They don’t hate it, they treat it like the weather, something to fear, but nothing you can do anything about.

              The CCP broke them completely, much like the USSR broke the Russian people.

              • Tankiedesantski [he/him]@hexbear.net
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                1 year ago

                I worked there for a good while.

                Tell us of the deep abiding wisdom you gained from teaching English at a barely-regulated “school” for 12 months.

        • Zorque@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          It’s also about laziness. It’s much less effort to just point a finger than to think about the complexities of a situation.

          • PowerCrazy@lemmy.ml
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            1 year ago

            It’s also really easy to dismiss the uncomfortable origin (It came from a Chinese lab) and point to the “complexities of the situation” instead.

          • deft@ttrpg.network
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            1 year ago

            “signaling that it might have spread beyond China earlier than thought.”

            they still suggest Chinese origin

            • The Octonaut@mander.xyz
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              1 year ago

              Well, no, it’s not an “idea”. It just means there’s nothing special about Wuhan that should make us look at everything there as a suspect.

              • alternative_factor@kbin.social
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                1 year ago

                You are wrong, the assumption of people who post this is that there wasn’t COVID-19 in China before the CCP announced it was around.

                • The Octonaut@mander.xyz
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                  1 year ago

                  You’re the one making assumptions I’m afraid.

                  We don’t know where Covid-19 came from. That is the outcome. It quite well could have come from China. We have no idea. What we do know is that it didn’t spread globally from a wet market in Wuhan that happens to be near a virology research centre. Because that idea hangs entirely on it appearing there first in December.

                  Covid-19 could have started in China. Or Italy. Or anywhere. We don’t know, and as a species we seem to be very reluctant to find out - we’ve just accepted bat soup or bioterrorism and just moved on. Meaning that we’ve learned absolutely nothing to prevent it happening again.

                  • alternative_factor@kbin.social
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                    1 year ago

                    From the genetics of the virus we can tell it originally came from either Pangolins or species of bats which are local to Asia only, which is why the wet market hypothesis is so popular in the first place because the virus is 99% similar to that of one found in Chinese pangolins. The 1% genetic difference could come from a lab on accident, but that would most likely be from the Wuhan lab and not for Detrick because the Wuhan lab was in fact experimenting with Chinese bats.

                    EDIT for sources:
                    https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abh0117

    • TheFriar@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      That’s the thing, the COVID conspiracy people now posting this shirt saying, “SEE!?! IT WAS LAB LEAK!!” as if that justifies every single other insane thing they’ve ever said about COVID. Because there’s a huge difference between “covid CAME FROM a lab” and “lab leak possible origin.” One implies conspiracy, the other implies carelessness. What’s the old saying? ‘Never attribute to malice what can be attributed to greed?’ I very much think the same applies to stupidity—and honestly, in this case, greed probably caused the stupidity. How much funding-slashing has led to calamity in recent times? Plenty.

      • itsonlygeorge@reddthat.com
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        1 year ago

        I think the lab with a long record of carelessness leaking the virus by accident is entirely plausible if not the most reasonable explanation. The issue is not so much about how/when it was leaked, but more along the lines of how poorly they handled the whole situation and subsequent coverup. For all we know, it could have been leaked by accident way earlier.

        • GarbageShoot [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          I think the lab with a long record of carelessness leaking the virus by accident is entirely plausible if not the most reasonable explanation

          I personally don’t think it came from Detrick, but I don’t fault you for thinking so

          • itsonlygeorge@reddthat.com
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            1 year ago

            It came from the lab in Wuhan, not Detrick. We shall never really know since every govt, especially China will deny and cover up the truth.

            • CombatLiberalism [he/him]@hexbear.net
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              1 year ago

              It didn’t come from a lab in Wuhan, it was first discovered in Wuhan but was already going around in Italy for months at that point based on waste samples.

              The point was that we have just as much evidence to say it came from Detrick as we do to say it came from a Chinese lab. It most likely didn’t come from either, but only one of these conspiracies gets pushed. If you provide any pushback that maybe China isn’t responsible for COVID you get met with “well they would lie and cover it up, so I might as well be right”

        • jonne@infosec.pub
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          1 year ago

          Yeah, I don’t really have any issues with accepting a lab leak possibility, but the lab leak people generally add a whole bunch of other conspiracies on top of that (it was designed as a bioweapon, leaked intentionally, etc), and nobody can really explain why this would be any good as a bioweapon if it hurts you as much as your enemies, and if you release it without having a vaccine for it.

          • itsonlygeorge@reddthat.com
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            1 year ago

            I think the bio weapon part is from people who don’t understand what research is going on lab. They hear “gain of function” research and immediately think Resident Evil type bio weapon.

            Not that I agree that type of research is good for us to be doing in the first place. But I do understand the reason we do that type if research is to learn about viruses and how to combat them as they mutate. I think it’s stupid to be doing that type of research anywhere, especially finding China.

            • notacat@mander.xyz
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              1 year ago

              “Gain of function” is an extremely broad category that is an absolutely necessary part of molecular biology research.

        • Neuromancer@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          Exactly The issue is how China handled all of this. America has had leaks before as have other countries. China has several well known leaks.

          China is still trying to hide the origins which to me heavily suggest a lab leak.

    • Silverseren@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      It came from the wild. They, along with Germany and other labs, were researching Sars related wild vectors and the possibility of natural selection causing a new outbreak.

      I find it reasonable to believe a biosafety incident at the Wuhan lab infected several of the lab researchers and that led to the pandemic.

      But that’s the extent of where things go. Conspiracies about bioweapons are idiotic.

      • AfricanExpansionist@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        I remembered reading early on that someone sold a carcass from the lab to a wet market. I think that’s probably Western propaganda and I have no idea whether that’s true.

        However, in China there were posters in every restaurant saying to avoid eating such meats. They started to appear in the first half of 2020. I saw them in Shanghai, Ningbo, and Hangzhou.

        Maybe the government just saw it as a useful opportunity to steer the public toward factory-produced meats that fall under the “safe umbrella” of capitalism. Either one is interesting to think about