‘Wuhan lab leak’ may be the biggest economic shock for decades
telegraph.co.uk
telegraph.co.uk
One thing that's been a bit confusing to me in this is why the "lab leak" hypothesis is discussed so much as the "Chinese lab leak" hypothesis and not as the "US-Chinese experimental virology" hypothesis.
Yes, the lab was in China, and yes, the lab leak hypothesis involves a security failure in that lab. However, if it is true (and I'm not even sure it can be shown to be true beyond a reasonable doubt at this point, which is another reason I don't expect economic retaliation of any form), the broader problems involve a broader funding and scientific community around the Chinese lab, in a sort of circles or levels of closeness to Wuhan. What about the cover up and/or pushback from US scientists, either the Wuhan collaborators in particular, or individuals more broadly? What about US NIH/DHS funding of gain-of-function research? Etc etc etc. Who, in particular, should retaliation be pointed at? China? China and the US? The Wuhan lab and their international collaborators? The academic-industrial complex?
There's plenty of blame to go around (if the lab leak theory is true, which it might not be), and it's pretty diffuse (which is another reason, along with the passage of time, I suspect the origins of the pandemic will probably remain a mystery for a long time if not forever).
>and not as the "US-Chinese experimental virology" hypothesis.
Because the US (the country) is not directly responsible for the 'leak' beyond providing some capital - $600,000 is the number I've seen - which is negligible in a biotech organizations' operating budget. We're a small company and we burn through that in under a month.
>Who, in particular, should retaliation be pointed at? China? China and the US? The Wuhan lab and their international collaborators? The academic-industrial complex?
Well the lab is part of the Chinese Academy of Sciences which is part of the government. So it all depends on where the buck stops in your view.
What's more, even if it's proven to not be a lab leak, it should still absolutely prompt the reassessment of how we work with infectious diseases. The fact that such a large number of prominent scientists even think it's plausible that a cutting edge virology lab could leak a virus this deadly (and that viruses have leaked before) means this is a sector that direly needs regulation.
So the rational conclusion you've drawn is basically valid whether or not there's an investigation.
And since there's never going to be any proof either way, the obvious motivation for the way this has been framed and pushed is about geopolitical tensions between China and the US, which have been rising for a long time, even before COVID.
I remember listening to a presentation, about a book called (pretentiously) Thucylides Trap'[0] where one particularly deranged woman was advocating for a war against China, the kicker being, she was a US military employee, a strategist, and she said multiple times that this was a normal position in the defense establishment.
These morons exist, and they tend to accumulate in foreign policy and defense establishments, and the way they operate is by leaking 'intelligence documents' to the press, who then publish it just like they published the 'leaked intelligence' about Iraq twenty years ago, to awful effect. It's like the human centipede of sourcing, but instead of getting less substantial with each person the material is passed through, it gets more and more believable and concrete as it gets bounced between spooks, hacks, and quacks, even though there are no new facts, and everybody knew the whole idea was a priori irrelevant anyway.
Is that your spelling or hers? I think it's Thucydides.
I actually think the article has it backwards though. The logic in the article is that China is important so sanctions will have a huge impact. In reality it works backwards. We only used sanctions if it's not ipmortant to us. We use sanctions on Iran, on Russia. On countries hwere it really doesn't matter to us that much, on countries where we can do much more harm to them than they to us. We won't put sanctions on China for the same reason we'll sell Saudi arms to be used in Yemen. International politics are largely performative.
There will be some outrage for sure, but governments will surely know the consequences of sanctions. They'll look to do something visible to cater to dentine, but overall effectively harmless, right?
What do you mean? If I am negligent while driving and have an accident, regardless of someone dying, I have to pay the price. At the individual level, there are countless examples of how people are held responsible for negligence... why not in this case?
In theory, you could be grossly and obviously negligent. But just driving a car that has some failure doesn't make for a strong presumption. I've known multiple people who had a significant part of their suspension break/collapse, either due to age and wear or manufacturing defect or a combination.
But thinking about what makes the news, what does seem to be considered a criminal or civil matter is where, say, a major failure happens and then it turns out that for instance, a mechanic who was supposed to service it forged the paperwork and did nothing.
I'm saying by analogy, if a lab had a failure but their procedure was not that different from other labs, then it's not fair to assess them as negligent even if with hindsight we need to set new standards. The contribution of bad luck has to be considered and not just say the probability of all other failures is zero because they didn't happen.