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Comment by kongin | Hacker News Reader

> I’d also add that it’s irrelevant. Let’s hypothesize that we find out tomorrow irrefutable evidence for this theory. What does it change?

Demanding reparations from China for their WMD program going out of control would be a good start.

Then criminal cases against everyone involved in the West who approved something so boneheadedly evil and pointless.

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Research on viruses happens a lot of places, it doesn't mean it's being weaponized.

There is a fundamental difference between developing a biological weapon and a leak of a pathogen being analyzed as part of research program. There is absolutely as far as I know no reason to believe that covid is a biological weapon. Such a virus in fact would be an awful weapon. It acts very slowly relative to any evolving conflict with someone who has ample access to weapons that act of minutes and hours vs months and years. It is near impossible to broadly vaccinate your own population without telegraphing your intent to act and probably leaking your vaccine and may mutate beyond your ability to control it and damage your own population.

It is like being in an armed standoff in a building full of soldiers from each side and "attacking" the enemy by setting fire to the building you are all in.

A virus is a weapon of terror not war. It is unfit for purpose.

There is no reason to suppose that, if Sars-Cov2 originated at WIV that it was NOT part of a bioweapons program simply considering the tight integration of the PLA with all forms of research deemed of national interest in China. It's certainly not evidence AGAINST there being a bioweapons angle to Sars-Cov2 (if it emerged from WIV) that the PLA is involved (as it has been documented it is)[0][1].

[0] https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/feb/16/chinese-maj...

[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02523-x

I don’t want to argue it is a weapon, but just playing devils advocate here … the pandemic has been far more destabilizing to democracies in the west than autocracies. Unilateral, heavy-handed action is effective at combating pandemics. And it’s not inconceivable that some bigwigs in Beijing could see some population culling, especially in the more rural regions, as not a terrible thing. And it’s good cover to argue that it wasn’t an intentional weapon if it affects your own population too. I don’t believe it was an intentional release of a weapon, but if it were it wouldn’t be as self-sabotaging as it may first seem is all.

do you think that live virus research including gain-of-function serves no purpose whatsoever other than for WMD's? It's just "evil and pointless"?

That's a good way to start WWIII.

WWII started like that. To make things simple, countries who lost WWI were destabilized and reparations were a big reason. It promoted the raise of nationalist, revengeful leaders like Hitler and Mussolini. You know the rest.

They carefully avoided making the same mistake after WWII.

Avoiding confrontation with evil will only allow evil to prevail.

The only reason the US hasn’t gotten after china is because of the economic/supply chain ties and the implication of the US gov itself.

This is an oversimplification to the point of being just untrue.

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