02-27-2023, 12:50 AM
I don’t get the fascination with COVID’s origin story. Whatever the truth, it was a diabolical screw up. It either originated in the wet market which is like a Petri dish for zoonotic transfer or leaked from a lab which would be a major screw up. But the latter seems to be a mere jumping off point for the idea that the Chinese deliberately unleashed a bio weapon on the world. Yet the way the Covid story unfolded suggests the Chinese were totally unprepared for the pandemic.
You’d think that a country that was about to release an infectious disease would do a little bit of prep work. Maybe isolating a vaccine or treatment before doing so would be nice. Having some sort of plan to ensure the pandemic won’t disrupt your own economy would be fine and dandy too. But the Chinese were caught with their pants down on both accounts. The vaccine they pushed, Sinovac, was second rate and pride prevented them from accepting vaccines from the West. Presumably, other countries that the Chinese “helped” by providing Sinovac for free wouldn’t be as grateful as the Chinese had hoped. They then tried to limit the damage at home by pretending it didn’t exist. They also relied on lockdowns well after effective mRNA vaccines were available and it was clear that Omicron was too infectious to be contained in that fashion. That has created an economic slowdown. If the Chinese had released Covid deliberately, it was one of the biggest own goals in history. Baldrick would have been happy to claim it as his own cunning plan.
No doubt there would be value in determining the origin of Covid from a scientific point of view. Maybe the US could benefit politically by establishing that the Chinese screwed up although the way the US handled the pandemic was hardly a study in good governance. But the Chinese won’t pay any compensation or accept any blame. What’s the point?
You’d think that a country that was about to release an infectious disease would do a little bit of prep work. Maybe isolating a vaccine or treatment before doing so would be nice. Having some sort of plan to ensure the pandemic won’t disrupt your own economy would be fine and dandy too. But the Chinese were caught with their pants down on both accounts. The vaccine they pushed, Sinovac, was second rate and pride prevented them from accepting vaccines from the West. Presumably, other countries that the Chinese “helped” by providing Sinovac for free wouldn’t be as grateful as the Chinese had hoped. They then tried to limit the damage at home by pretending it didn’t exist. They also relied on lockdowns well after effective mRNA vaccines were available and it was clear that Omicron was too infectious to be contained in that fashion. That has created an economic slowdown. If the Chinese had released Covid deliberately, it was one of the biggest own goals in history. Baldrick would have been happy to claim it as his own cunning plan.
No doubt there would be value in determining the origin of Covid from a scientific point of view. Maybe the US could benefit politically by establishing that the Chinese screwed up although the way the US handled the pandemic was hardly a study in good governance. But the Chinese won’t pay any compensation or accept any blame. What’s the point?