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Comment by dane-pgp | Hacker News Reader

> warned it could damage “international harmony”.

I've never understood the argument that people would want to suppress the (accidental) lab-leak hypothesis out of a desire to protect the image of China. If the lab-leak hypothesis is incorrect, that doesn't change the fact that the virus originated in that country, it just means that the virus emerged from a wet market.

I'm not Chinese, but I'd imagine that a country's image is more harmed by accusations of having backwards cultural and food habits (and insufficient government regulation of dangerous markets) rather than potentially just one lone scientist making a mistake while working on advanced genetic research, which is a risk at any such lab in the world.

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>> I'm not Chinese, but I'd imagine that a country's image is more harmed by accusations of having backwards cultural and food habits

You forget the politics. CCP can never be wrong or do wrong. That would risk their rule. I'm pretty sure they would rather see the country burning than admitting guilt and incompetence. You can see that kind of selfish behaviour at most of the leaders(I would dare to say even in recent US history) but in an authoritan system this is made worse/more dramatic b/c there is no alternative(i.e opposition to replace leaders in a peaceful way)

Yes, any evidence of a lab leak theory could decimate Chinese society and further oppression.

No, but it could hurt the feelings of the Chinese people.

> CCP can never be wrong or do wrong. That would risk their rule.

But by failing to regulate wet markets properly, aren't they equally at fault?

Perhaps the supposed logic is that a scientist at a lab doing this sort of research probably counts as a government employee, whereas someone storing animals unhygienically would more likely be self-employed, so that makes the government less directly responsible.

I'm not sure if that distinction really matters to people who want to blame China's government, though.

>> But by failing to regulate wet markets properly, aren't they equally at fault?

Not really. It's just "bad luck" and "nature's fault". I never heard anyone angry on the Chinese government for not adding more red tape /regulation to the wet market. If that would be the case we should have seen people protesting all over the world against public markets where sanitary conditions are not the primary concern of the merchants. I believe it'a well known that more viruses are expected to jump from animals to humans. It's just a matter of time/luck. Simply put, failing to regulate wet markets does not equal to developing and releasing a deadly virus.

You may not be able to replace the people at the top, but if a city in China is failing to to take active steps to contain an outbreak, you can bet that those local leaders will be replaced by the CCP.

I agree. Should Galileo have suppressed his observations to protect the Catholic Church? If he had, would it have been in the name of science or something else?

An amusing factoid is that the Vatican astronomers bought one or more telescopes from Galileo and confirmed his observational data.

Animal to human transmission is understandable though and forgivable as it happens all the time.

Human error would generate blame though and cost China tons of political capital with countries eager to calculate just how much damage this mistake cost them.

>I'm not Chinese, but I'd imagine that a country's image is more harmed by accusations of having backwards cultural and food habits (and insufficient government regulation of dangerous markets)

Yeah, there could never be a virus transmitted between Westerners and their food. Some kind of "swine flu" is a ridiculous notion.

I would guess it benefits the US too since they had been providing business to the Wuhan lab and failed to vet them effectively. Here is a fun conspiracy theory: what if the US put high risk projects in China hoping that they could obfuscate blame from themselves in case it caused a public health crisis?

It's actually a serious path of investigation that took place last year. And documents actually show some US institution financing at least one lab in China. The motive wasn't to obfuscate blame but more likely to practice the research on a territory having less stringent regulation on this field.

In all likelihood, the local government conveniently blamed the wet market while the propaganda machine at the national level started blaming Americans visiting Wuhan for a military comp. I seriously doubt bats from faraway caves were being sold in a wet market in Wuhan. I personally haven't seen anything as disgusting as a bat being sold in a wet market, but I suppose the possibility is nonzero.

As I understand, bats are believed to be the reservoir for SARS-CoV, but the virus was spread to humans via an intermediate host. It would be the same with SARS-CoV-2, with an intermediate host acting as an amplifier.

In a democratic country the "ruling party" and "love towards their country" can be independent. But in an authoritarian country this feeling is supressed.

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