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Comment by wahisurf | Hacker News Reader

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Actually, really the blame goes to Nixon on this. Nixon ended 25 years of isolation between the US and China [1], and further played China against Russia.

The deeper reality is that US corporations wanted cheap labor. And the Chinese wanted to increase their standard of living for their people. But also, China turned into a nuclear power while people weren't looking, and trade between the US and China would prevent any wars.

It's easy to look back and say one thing, but back in the 60's/70's the nuclear threat to the US was real, and trade was the most powerful deterrence option that could lead to long lasting peace.

[1] https://www.nixonlibrary.gov/nixons-trip-china

I don't believe blaming 1970s-1980s Presidents for this is reasonable. China was economically tiny, and the alliance was conductive for the Cold War. The error was not pivoting later and going for the 'economic engagement will lead to democracy' 'theory'.

Look at U.S. factories now vs the 1980s - way fewer workers but making more stuff. Yeah, companies moved jobs overseas, but they also went big on automation to boost efficiency. That's a huge reason factory jobs disappeared.

As for COVID origins, let's not perpetuate unproven theories.

I think we are paying too much attention to the political opening of China and not enough to the economic factors affecting the US Dollar at the time. We are right to blame Nixon, not for opening up China, but for closing the doors to Fort Knox with the Nixon Shock in ending US-Dollar gold convertability. This resulted in high inflation and a devaluing of the dollar via a floating exchange rate. This made US exports cheap (easier to export), but for other countries assets in dollars fell in exchange-value, and their exports became more expensive (harder to export). This happened at the same time as the OPEC crisis, so Carter was facing a failing economy with extreme inflation. And by appointing Volcker who hiked interest rates to stop the inflation, caused a recession and a permanent deindustrialization of the US as well as dozens of countries with US assets going bankrupt. We ended up embracing a deficit economy powered by financialization, but since countries like China had didn't have dollar assets, didn't face austerity measures and structural adjustment programs from the IMF, and were industrialized, they could take up all the lost manufacturing that the US was willing to lose in order to maintain global hegemony in other ways.

Nothing unproven about covid coming out of wuhan lab

House panel concludes that COVID-19 pandemic came from a lab leak https://www.science.org/content/article/house-panel-conclude...

Two-thirds of Americans believe that the COVID-19 virus originated from a lab in China https://today.yougov.com/politics/articles/45389-americans-b...

also, Harvard Business Review agreed that "some U.S. regions lost manufacturing jobs as a result of trade with China in the early 2000s" https://hbr.org/2022/11/has-trade-with-china-really-cost-the...

From the article you linked:

> The committee’s 520-page report, released on 2 December, offers no new direct evidence of a lab leak, but summarizes a circumstantial case, including that the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) used NIAID money to conduct “gain-of-function” studies that modified distantly related coronaviruses.

> Democrats on the panel released their own report challenging many of their colleagues’ conclusions about COVID-19 origins. They conclude, for example, that the viruses studied at WIV with EcoHealth funding were too distantly related to SARS-CoV-2 to cause the pandemic.

In other words, it's the same partisan politics we've seen since 2020, with very little science sprinkled on top.

I believe we grossly fumbled investigating the origin of the virus, but unfortunately this report does little to present new, conclusive evidence.

The house panel report is profoundly flawed and used as a political piece more than as a means of real inquiry.

And the fact a lot of people from the US believe it originated from the lab doesn't really make it true. See how many people believe you didn't go on the moon or that 9/11 was an inside job.

It _could_ have originated from the lab, it's a distinct possibility, but there is no concrete proof. We do know it's not created using a gene drive though.

> Nothing unproven about covid coming out of wuhan lab

The burden of proof lies on those making the claim of a lab origin. In scientific investigation, the party proposing a particular explanation must provide evidence to support it, rather than others having to disprove it.

> House panel concludes that COVID-19 pandemic came from a lab leak

The findings of this report are in dispute. There is still no definitive evidence that COVID-19 originated in a lab.

> Two-thirds of Americans believe that the COVID-19 virus originated from a lab in China

The number of people who believe something has no bearing on whether it's factually true. History is full of examples where the majority was wrong. People once widely believed the Earth was flat and the sun revolved around us. Scientific truth is determined by evidence and rigorous research, not popular opinion or consensus.

FTA: "Two-year probe led by Republicans faults agencies for pandemic response, as Democrats on panel challenge final report’s findings on SARS-CoV-2’s origin"

Yeah, the lying-ass republicans repeating the same bullshit Russian-made talking points, meanwhile the Democrats who aren't on the dole disagree.

What gullible Americans "believe" on some random poll site doesn't matter. Belief in something doesn't make it true.

Since you are so blinded by party lines, here's an article in NY times from Dr. Alina Chan, a molecular biologist from MIT

Why the Pandemic Probably Started in a Lab, in 5 Key Points https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/06/03/opinion/covid...

"Given what we now know, investigators should follow their strongest leads and subpoena all exchanges between the Wuhan scientists and their international partners, including unpublished research proposals, manuscripts, data and commercial orders. In particular, exchanges from 2018 and 2019"

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42513063

That House panel report is a joke. They massively cherry pick evidence to praise everything Trump did and condemn everything Biden did.

For example, they praise Trump's travel restrictions for saving lives. To support this they cite a single study, which didn't even study COVID. It was a study that used computer models of the spread of other diseases to see if travel restrictions are useful. That's an interesting and useful type of study, but it isn't anywhere near conclusive.

Compare to masks, which they conclude are worthless. They acknowledge that the CDC provided them a list of over a dozen studies that were specifically of mask use in regard to COVID, but they completely dismiss all of them because they were observational studies, not randomized controlled trials.

Here's an article that gives more details on the deficiencies of that report, including the deficiencies in its claims about COVID origins [1].

[1] https://arstechnica.com/science/2024/12/congressional-republ...

It was Clinton who made the WTO, GATT and NAFTA treaties that made manufacturing be sucked out of the US.

Carter was only following up on Nixon. It was Nixon-Kissinger who had the brilliant idea of splitting the communist bloc (an idea which I’d say likely helped shape the end of the Cold War - without China influencing Asia in cooperation, the Soviet threat was much reduced). Carter was only following up on a winning strategy.

But it was Clinton and his team who did the most work to wipe out the American industrial sector.

Clinton kind of finished the job which killed what remained of US industry, but we cannot ignore the role that Carter played to deregulate many industries (though some of the deregulation was good), as well as Carter's appointment of Paul Volcker, whose interest rate hike shocked the US into embracing trade deficits and empowered China to take up on lost US manufacturing. Nixon's 1973 shock left Carter with the stagflation which put him in the situation to begin with, so his political wins came at a horrific economic cost, and ended up blowing back at us in the end.

Sure. I would say, I just think there is a big difference between implementing a series of treaties (correctly denigrated at the time) like Clinton and trying to solve a catastrophic situation like Carter.

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