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US Politics Mega-thread - Page 4672

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Now that we have a new thread, in order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a complete and thorough read before posting!

NOTE: When providing a source, please provide a very brief summary on what it's about and what purpose it adds to the discussion. The supporting statement should clearly explain why the subject is relevant and needs to be discussed. Please follow this rule especially for tweets.

Your supporting statement should always come BEFORE you provide the source.


If you have any questions, comments, concern, or feedback regarding the USPMT, then please use this thread: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/website-feedback/510156-us-politics-thread
Billyboy
Profile Joined September 2024
2699 Posts
December 21 2024 21:32 GMT
#93421
On December 22 2024 05:31 Magic Powers wrote:
What irks me is that people compared Fauci to the worst of liars. No, he told one crucial lie and he made mistakes under extreme pressure during an unprecedented crisis with very little useful information to work with. He's a high-profile person who made bad mistakes, not a villain who was scheming against Americans. He cared about people, but he failed to live up to people's expectations. There was nothing nefarious about his intent. He just fucked up in a very normal human way by trying to make a strategically good decision that ended up being strategically bad. He learned an important lesson too late.

Furthermore he made every attempt to correct course. He didn't pretend he's perfect, he learned from mistakes made. That's commendable.

Imagine RFK in Fauci's shoes. What an absolute shit show that would've been. There wouldn't have been any learning whatsoever, just blunder after blunder.

RFK is a great example, here is a guy with pages and pages of lies. The people mad at Fauci tend to love RFK, it is not the lying folks.
blomsterjohn
Profile Joined June 2008
Norway477 Posts
December 21 2024 21:43 GMT
#93422
Wait the Fauci outrage is that he said masks weren’t 100% necessary (to avoid people stockpiling/emptying shops)? And that’s it?

I thought the right was vehemently against and ridiculed masks as an effective deterrent against COVID?

Or was there anything more (of… more serious substance)?
BlackJack
Profile Blog Joined June 2003
United States10574 Posts
Last Edited: 2024-12-21 21:49:24
December 21 2024 21:47 GMT
#93423
On December 22 2024 05:31 Magic Powers wrote:
What irks me is that people compared Fauci to the worst of liars. No, he told one crucial lie and he made mistakes under extreme pressure during an unprecedented crisis with very little useful information to work with. He's a high-profile person who made bad mistakes, not a villain who was scheming against Americans. He cared about people, but he failed to live up to people's expectations. There was nothing nefarious about his intent. He just fucked up in a very normal human way by trying to make a strategically good decision that ended up being strategically bad. He learned an important lesson too late.

Furthermore he made every attempt to correct course. He didn't pretend he's perfect, he learned from mistakes made. That's commendable.

Imagine RFK in Fauci's shoes. What an absolute shit show that would've been. There wouldn't have been any learning whatsoever, just blunder after blunder.


I think the one "crucial lie" is when they deliberately dismissed lab origin despite their private emails showing they thought it was just as likely if not more likely.

professor Robert Garry, said he could see no "plausible natural scenario" for key amino acids and nucleotides to have been inserted into a bat virus


Mike Farzan (dubbed the "discoverer of SARS receptor" and a professor of immunology at Scripps Research) found a key aspect of the virus "highly unlikely" to have developed outside a lab.


But in another email from the same day referenced in the lawmakers' letter, Ron Fouchier, the deputy head of the Erasmus MC Department of Viroscience, seemed to embrace the theory that the virus occurred naturally and warned that lab leak discussions could "do unnecessary harm to science in general and science in China in particular."


Forget the pursuit of truth and the possibility that this pandemic that killed millions was man-made. What's really important is that "discussing lab leak" could harm their ability to keep tinkering with gain-of-function on viruses. It must be in our "best interest" that biolabs in China with shoddy safety measures don't get any scrutiny.
DarkPlasmaBall
Profile Blog Joined March 2010
United States46692 Posts
December 21 2024 22:16 GMT
#93424
On December 22 2024 06:43 blomsterjohn wrote:
Wait the Fauci outrage is that he said masks weren’t 100% necessary (to avoid people stockpiling/emptying shops)? And that’s it?

I thought the right was vehemently against and ridiculed masks as an effective deterrent against COVID?

Or was there anything more (of… more serious substance)?


Republicans had been against scientific and medical expertise long before covid occurred; Fauci is just the Scapegoat Of The Week for conservatives.
"There is nothing more satisfying than looking at a crowd of people and helping them get what I love." ~Day[9] Daily #100
Fleetfeet
Profile Blog Joined May 2014
Canada2851 Posts
Last Edited: 2024-12-21 23:39:03
December 21 2024 22:46 GMT
#93425
On December 22 2024 06:47 BlackJack wrote:
Show nested quote +
On December 22 2024 05:31 Magic Powers wrote:
What irks me is that people compared Fauci to the worst of liars. No, he told one crucial lie and he made mistakes under extreme pressure during an unprecedented crisis with very little useful information to work with. He's a high-profile person who made bad mistakes, not a villain who was scheming against Americans. He cared about people, but he failed to live up to people's expectations. There was nothing nefarious about his intent. He just fucked up in a very normal human way by trying to make a strategically good decision that ended up being strategically bad. He learned an important lesson too late.

Furthermore he made every attempt to correct course. He didn't pretend he's perfect, he learned from mistakes made. That's commendable.

Imagine RFK in Fauci's shoes. What an absolute shit show that would've been. There wouldn't have been any learning whatsoever, just blunder after blunder.


I think the one "crucial lie" is when they deliberately dismissed lab origin despite their private emails showing they thought it was just as likely if not more likely.

Show nested quote +
professor Robert Garry, said he could see no "plausible natural scenario" for key amino acids and nucleotides to have been inserted into a bat virus


Show nested quote +
Mike Farzan (dubbed the "discoverer of SARS receptor" and a professor of immunology at Scripps Research) found a key aspect of the virus "highly unlikely" to have developed outside a lab.


Show nested quote +
But in another email from the same day referenced in the lawmakers' letter, Ron Fouchier, the deputy head of the Erasmus MC Department of Viroscience, seemed to embrace the theory that the virus occurred naturally and warned that lab leak discussions could "do unnecessary harm to science in general and science in China in particular."


Forget the pursuit of truth and the possibility that this pandemic that killed millions was man-made. What's really important is that "discussing lab leak" could harm their ability to keep tinkering with gain-of-function on viruses. It must be in our "best interest" that biolabs in China with shoddy safety measures don't get any scrutiny.


Is there a particular path you wish the US had taken regarding lab leak? If I recall correctly, there were already issues with anger being directed to asians in the US without lableak being given much credibility. It seems sensible to me to downplay its potential given that 1) people will naturally look for something to blame for basically anything (see - 'democrats control the weather' for recent natural disaster in US) and 2) Publicly blaming china will have a massive negative impact on practically all asian americans.
BlackJack
Profile Blog Joined June 2003
United States10574 Posts
December 21 2024 23:47 GMT
#93426
On December 22 2024 07:46 Fleetfeet wrote:
Show nested quote +
On December 22 2024 06:47 BlackJack wrote:
On December 22 2024 05:31 Magic Powers wrote:
What irks me is that people compared Fauci to the worst of liars. No, he told one crucial lie and he made mistakes under extreme pressure during an unprecedented crisis with very little useful information to work with. He's a high-profile person who made bad mistakes, not a villain who was scheming against Americans. He cared about people, but he failed to live up to people's expectations. There was nothing nefarious about his intent. He just fucked up in a very normal human way by trying to make a strategically good decision that ended up being strategically bad. He learned an important lesson too late.

Furthermore he made every attempt to correct course. He didn't pretend he's perfect, he learned from mistakes made. That's commendable.

Imagine RFK in Fauci's shoes. What an absolute shit show that would've been. There wouldn't have been any learning whatsoever, just blunder after blunder.


I think the one "crucial lie" is when they deliberately dismissed lab origin despite their private emails showing they thought it was just as likely if not more likely.

professor Robert Garry, said he could see no "plausible natural scenario" for key amino acids and nucleotides to have been inserted into a bat virus


Mike Farzan (dubbed the "discoverer of SARS receptor" and a professor of immunology at Scripps Research) found a key aspect of the virus "highly unlikely" to have developed outside a lab.


But in another email from the same day referenced in the lawmakers' letter, Ron Fouchier, the deputy head of the Erasmus MC Department of Viroscience, seemed to embrace the theory that the virus occurred naturally and warned that lab leak discussions could "do unnecessary harm to science in general and science in China in particular."


Forget the pursuit of truth and the possibility that this pandemic that killed millions was man-made. What's really important is that "discussing lab leak" could harm their ability to keep tinkering with gain-of-function on viruses. It must be in our "best interest" that biolabs in China with shoddy safety measures don't get any scrutiny.


Is there a particular path you wish the US had taken regarding lab leak? If I recall correctly, there were already issues with anti-asian racism in the US without lableak being given much credibility. It seems sensible to me to downplay its potential given that 1) people will naturally look for something to blame for basically anything (see - 'democrats control the weather' for recent natural disaster in US) and 2) Publicly blaming china will have a massive negative impact on practically all asian americans.


You have to put things in context. This piece from The Intercept does a good job at providing some context. The lead author and co-author of the Proximal Origin paper that dismissed lab leak as implausible were emailing each other about how dangerous gain-of-function research was and how afraid they were of being ostracised for questioning the safety:

Rambaut continued on the theme: “Ron had me clocked as an anti-GOF fanatic already. Although my primary concern is that these experiments are done in Cat 3 labs.”

“Interesting,” Andersen responded. “I’m all for GOF experiments, I think they’re really important* – however performing these in BSL-3 (or less) is just completely nuts!” (Rambaut and Andersen were referencing biosafety level 3 laboratories.)


"Completely nuts" they called it. Then a pandemic breaks out involving a coronavirus near a research lab where they were performing gain of function research on coronaviruses and the first instinct of the experts in this field is that it looks man-made or at least very plausibly escaped from the lab. Then they carefully decide to go with natural origin and dismiss lab leak not because that's what the science tells them to do but because that's what the politics tells them to do:

“Given the shit show that would happen if anyone serious accused the Chinese of even accidental release, my feeling is we should say that given there is no evidence of a specifically engineered virus, we cannot possible distinguish between natural evolution and escape so we are content to with ascribing it to natural processes.”

“Yup, I totally agree that’s a very reasonable conclusion,” Andersen responded. Although I hate when politics is injected into science – but it’s impossible not to, especially given the circumstance. We should be sensitive to that.”





So the context is that a pandemic was very plausibly started by scientists fucking around with a virus that escaped a lab, doing research they knew was incredibly dangerous, which cost millions of lives and trillions of dollars, and who conspired through private messages to publicly dismiss the lab origin theory, and your response is "but what about anti-asian hate crimes?" It's a shiny object to distract your attention. They are taking advantage of your empathy.
BlackJack
Profile Blog Joined June 2003
United States10574 Posts
Last Edited: 2024-12-22 00:03:03
December 22 2024 00:02 GMT
#93427
Also I don't even follow the logic of how lab escape is less anti-asian than the natural origin theory. The lab received millions in funding from the U.S. including $600,000 from Fauci's NIH. So the internationally funded lab is the anti-chinese theory but the weird Chinese people eating exotic animals in their disgusting wet markets is the anti-racist theory we should be pushing? Huh? Run that by me again? It's obvious they were dismissing lab origin not to protect Asians from hate crimes but instead to protect themselves.
Fleetfeet
Profile Blog Joined May 2014
Canada2851 Posts
Last Edited: 2024-12-22 00:58:08
December 22 2024 00:46 GMT
#93428
On December 22 2024 08:47 BlackJack wrote:
Show nested quote +
On December 22 2024 07:46 Fleetfeet wrote:
On December 22 2024 06:47 BlackJack wrote:
On December 22 2024 05:31 Magic Powers wrote:
What irks me is that people compared Fauci to the worst of liars. No, he told one crucial lie and he made mistakes under extreme pressure during an unprecedented crisis with very little useful information to work with. He's a high-profile person who made bad mistakes, not a villain who was scheming against Americans. He cared about people, but he failed to live up to people's expectations. There was nothing nefarious about his intent. He just fucked up in a very normal human way by trying to make a strategically good decision that ended up being strategically bad. He learned an important lesson too late.

Furthermore he made every attempt to correct course. He didn't pretend he's perfect, he learned from mistakes made. That's commendable.

Imagine RFK in Fauci's shoes. What an absolute shit show that would've been. There wouldn't have been any learning whatsoever, just blunder after blunder.


I think the one "crucial lie" is when they deliberately dismissed lab origin despite their private emails showing they thought it was just as likely if not more likely.

professor Robert Garry, said he could see no "plausible natural scenario" for key amino acids and nucleotides to have been inserted into a bat virus


Mike Farzan (dubbed the "discoverer of SARS receptor" and a professor of immunology at Scripps Research) found a key aspect of the virus "highly unlikely" to have developed outside a lab.


But in another email from the same day referenced in the lawmakers' letter, Ron Fouchier, the deputy head of the Erasmus MC Department of Viroscience, seemed to embrace the theory that the virus occurred naturally and warned that lab leak discussions could "do unnecessary harm to science in general and science in China in particular."


Forget the pursuit of truth and the possibility that this pandemic that killed millions was man-made. What's really important is that "discussing lab leak" could harm their ability to keep tinkering with gain-of-function on viruses. It must be in our "best interest" that biolabs in China with shoddy safety measures don't get any scrutiny.


Is there a particular path you wish the US had taken regarding lab leak? If I recall correctly, there were already issues with anti-asian racism in the US without lableak being given much credibility. It seems sensible to me to downplay its potential given that 1) people will naturally look for something to blame for basically anything (see - 'democrats control the weather' for recent natural disaster in US) and 2) Publicly blaming china will have a massive negative impact on practically all asian americans.


You have to put things in context. This piece from The Intercept does a good job at providing some context. The lead author and co-author of the Proximal Origin paper that dismissed lab leak as implausible were emailing each other about how dangerous gain-of-function research was and how afraid they were of being ostracised for questioning the safety:

Show nested quote +
Rambaut continued on the theme: “Ron had me clocked as an anti-GOF fanatic already. Although my primary concern is that these experiments are done in Cat 3 labs.”

“Interesting,” Andersen responded. “I’m all for GOF experiments, I think they’re really important* – however performing these in BSL-3 (or less) is just completely nuts!” (Rambaut and Andersen were referencing biosafety level 3 laboratories.)


"Completely nuts" they called it. Then a pandemic breaks out involving a coronavirus near a research lab where they were performing gain of function research on coronaviruses and the first instinct of the experts in this field is that it looks man-made or at least very plausibly escaped from the lab. Then they carefully decide to go with natural origin and dismiss lab leak not because that's what the science tells them to do but because that's what the politics tells them to do:

Show nested quote +
“Given the shit show that would happen if anyone serious accused the Chinese of even accidental release, my feeling is we should say that given there is no evidence of a specifically engineered virus, we cannot possible distinguish between natural evolution and escape so we are content to with ascribing it to natural processes.”

“Yup, I totally agree that’s a very reasonable conclusion,” Andersen responded. Although I hate when politics is injected into science – but it’s impossible not to, especially given the circumstance. We should be sensitive to that.”





So the context is that a pandemic was very plausibly started by scientists fucking around with a virus that escaped a lab, doing research they knew was incredibly dangerous, which cost millions of lives and trillions of dollars, and who conspired through private messages to publicly dismiss the lab origin theory, and your response is "but what about anti-asian hate crimes?" It's a shiny object to distract your attention. They are taking advantage of your empathy.


I asked a genuine question, and it wasn't 'what about anti-asian hate crimes?' I provided context for why I was asking the question in the first place, and given your response I suppose I can infer that your answer is "Blame the US ('them?') and also China?"

I'm not approaching in bad faith with a predetermined position - I'm asking you what you wish would have happened differently so I can understand your position better.
BlackJack
Profile Blog Joined June 2003
United States10574 Posts
December 22 2024 05:59 GMT
#93429
On December 22 2024 09:46 Fleetfeet wrote:
Show nested quote +
On December 22 2024 08:47 BlackJack wrote:
On December 22 2024 07:46 Fleetfeet wrote:
On December 22 2024 06:47 BlackJack wrote:
On December 22 2024 05:31 Magic Powers wrote:
What irks me is that people compared Fauci to the worst of liars. No, he told one crucial lie and he made mistakes under extreme pressure during an unprecedented crisis with very little useful information to work with. He's a high-profile person who made bad mistakes, not a villain who was scheming against Americans. He cared about people, but he failed to live up to people's expectations. There was nothing nefarious about his intent. He just fucked up in a very normal human way by trying to make a strategically good decision that ended up being strategically bad. He learned an important lesson too late.

Furthermore he made every attempt to correct course. He didn't pretend he's perfect, he learned from mistakes made. That's commendable.

Imagine RFK in Fauci's shoes. What an absolute shit show that would've been. There wouldn't have been any learning whatsoever, just blunder after blunder.


I think the one "crucial lie" is when they deliberately dismissed lab origin despite their private emails showing they thought it was just as likely if not more likely.

professor Robert Garry, said he could see no "plausible natural scenario" for key amino acids and nucleotides to have been inserted into a bat virus


Mike Farzan (dubbed the "discoverer of SARS receptor" and a professor of immunology at Scripps Research) found a key aspect of the virus "highly unlikely" to have developed outside a lab.


But in another email from the same day referenced in the lawmakers' letter, Ron Fouchier, the deputy head of the Erasmus MC Department of Viroscience, seemed to embrace the theory that the virus occurred naturally and warned that lab leak discussions could "do unnecessary harm to science in general and science in China in particular."


Forget the pursuit of truth and the possibility that this pandemic that killed millions was man-made. What's really important is that "discussing lab leak" could harm their ability to keep tinkering with gain-of-function on viruses. It must be in our "best interest" that biolabs in China with shoddy safety measures don't get any scrutiny.


Is there a particular path you wish the US had taken regarding lab leak? If I recall correctly, there were already issues with anti-asian racism in the US without lableak being given much credibility. It seems sensible to me to downplay its potential given that 1) people will naturally look for something to blame for basically anything (see - 'democrats control the weather' for recent natural disaster in US) and 2) Publicly blaming china will have a massive negative impact on practically all asian americans.


You have to put things in context. This piece from The Intercept does a good job at providing some context. The lead author and co-author of the Proximal Origin paper that dismissed lab leak as implausible were emailing each other about how dangerous gain-of-function research was and how afraid they were of being ostracised for questioning the safety:

Rambaut continued on the theme: “Ron had me clocked as an anti-GOF fanatic already. Although my primary concern is that these experiments are done in Cat 3 labs.”

“Interesting,” Andersen responded. “I’m all for GOF experiments, I think they’re really important* – however performing these in BSL-3 (or less) is just completely nuts!” (Rambaut and Andersen were referencing biosafety level 3 laboratories.)


"Completely nuts" they called it. Then a pandemic breaks out involving a coronavirus near a research lab where they were performing gain of function research on coronaviruses and the first instinct of the experts in this field is that it looks man-made or at least very plausibly escaped from the lab. Then they carefully decide to go with natural origin and dismiss lab leak not because that's what the science tells them to do but because that's what the politics tells them to do:

“Given the shit show that would happen if anyone serious accused the Chinese of even accidental release, my feeling is we should say that given there is no evidence of a specifically engineered virus, we cannot possible distinguish between natural evolution and escape so we are content to with ascribing it to natural processes.”

“Yup, I totally agree that’s a very reasonable conclusion,” Andersen responded. Although I hate when politics is injected into science – but it’s impossible not to, especially given the circumstance. We should be sensitive to that.”





So the context is that a pandemic was very plausibly started by scientists fucking around with a virus that escaped a lab, doing research they knew was incredibly dangerous, which cost millions of lives and trillions of dollars, and who conspired through private messages to publicly dismiss the lab origin theory, and your response is "but what about anti-asian hate crimes?" It's a shiny object to distract your attention. They are taking advantage of your empathy.


I asked a genuine question, and it wasn't 'what about anti-asian hate crimes?' I provided context for why I was asking the question in the first place, and given your response I suppose I can infer that your answer is "Blame the US ('them?') and also China?"

I'm not approaching in bad faith with a predetermined position - I'm asking you what you wish would have happened differently so I can understand your position better.


I would have liked to see the mainstream media do its job and hold people accountable. Instead, for example, the NYTimes called lab leak a racist theory. CNN President Jeff Zucker ordered his journalists to not pursue lab leak because it would benefit Trump. Even Jon Stewart says he got shit on for embracing lab leak because the narrative was that it was racist or a Trump talking point. It’s embarrassing. Millions of people died and their bigger concern is not using Trump talking points instead of finding out the truth.
Fleetfeet
Profile Blog Joined May 2014
Canada2851 Posts
December 22 2024 07:25 GMT
#93430
On December 22 2024 14:59 BlackJack wrote:
Show nested quote +
On December 22 2024 09:46 Fleetfeet wrote:
On December 22 2024 08:47 BlackJack wrote:
On December 22 2024 07:46 Fleetfeet wrote:
On December 22 2024 06:47 BlackJack wrote:
On December 22 2024 05:31 Magic Powers wrote:
What irks me is that people compared Fauci to the worst of liars. No, he told one crucial lie and he made mistakes under extreme pressure during an unprecedented crisis with very little useful information to work with. He's a high-profile person who made bad mistakes, not a villain who was scheming against Americans. He cared about people, but he failed to live up to people's expectations. There was nothing nefarious about his intent. He just fucked up in a very normal human way by trying to make a strategically good decision that ended up being strategically bad. He learned an important lesson too late.

Furthermore he made every attempt to correct course. He didn't pretend he's perfect, he learned from mistakes made. That's commendable.

Imagine RFK in Fauci's shoes. What an absolute shit show that would've been. There wouldn't have been any learning whatsoever, just blunder after blunder.


I think the one "crucial lie" is when they deliberately dismissed lab origin despite their private emails showing they thought it was just as likely if not more likely.

professor Robert Garry, said he could see no "plausible natural scenario" for key amino acids and nucleotides to have been inserted into a bat virus


Mike Farzan (dubbed the "discoverer of SARS receptor" and a professor of immunology at Scripps Research) found a key aspect of the virus "highly unlikely" to have developed outside a lab.


But in another email from the same day referenced in the lawmakers' letter, Ron Fouchier, the deputy head of the Erasmus MC Department of Viroscience, seemed to embrace the theory that the virus occurred naturally and warned that lab leak discussions could "do unnecessary harm to science in general and science in China in particular."


Forget the pursuit of truth and the possibility that this pandemic that killed millions was man-made. What's really important is that "discussing lab leak" could harm their ability to keep tinkering with gain-of-function on viruses. It must be in our "best interest" that biolabs in China with shoddy safety measures don't get any scrutiny.


Is there a particular path you wish the US had taken regarding lab leak? If I recall correctly, there were already issues with anti-asian racism in the US without lableak being given much credibility. It seems sensible to me to downplay its potential given that 1) people will naturally look for something to blame for basically anything (see - 'democrats control the weather' for recent natural disaster in US) and 2) Publicly blaming china will have a massive negative impact on practically all asian americans.


You have to put things in context. This piece from The Intercept does a good job at providing some context. The lead author and co-author of the Proximal Origin paper that dismissed lab leak as implausible were emailing each other about how dangerous gain-of-function research was and how afraid they were of being ostracised for questioning the safety:

Rambaut continued on the theme: “Ron had me clocked as an anti-GOF fanatic already. Although my primary concern is that these experiments are done in Cat 3 labs.”

“Interesting,” Andersen responded. “I’m all for GOF experiments, I think they’re really important* – however performing these in BSL-3 (or less) is just completely nuts!” (Rambaut and Andersen were referencing biosafety level 3 laboratories.)


"Completely nuts" they called it. Then a pandemic breaks out involving a coronavirus near a research lab where they were performing gain of function research on coronaviruses and the first instinct of the experts in this field is that it looks man-made or at least very plausibly escaped from the lab. Then they carefully decide to go with natural origin and dismiss lab leak not because that's what the science tells them to do but because that's what the politics tells them to do:

“Given the shit show that would happen if anyone serious accused the Chinese of even accidental release, my feeling is we should say that given there is no evidence of a specifically engineered virus, we cannot possible distinguish between natural evolution and escape so we are content to with ascribing it to natural processes.”

“Yup, I totally agree that’s a very reasonable conclusion,” Andersen responded. Although I hate when politics is injected into science – but it’s impossible not to, especially given the circumstance. We should be sensitive to that.”





So the context is that a pandemic was very plausibly started by scientists fucking around with a virus that escaped a lab, doing research they knew was incredibly dangerous, which cost millions of lives and trillions of dollars, and who conspired through private messages to publicly dismiss the lab origin theory, and your response is "but what about anti-asian hate crimes?" It's a shiny object to distract your attention. They are taking advantage of your empathy.


I asked a genuine question, and it wasn't 'what about anti-asian hate crimes?' I provided context for why I was asking the question in the first place, and given your response I suppose I can infer that your answer is "Blame the US ('them?') and also China?"

I'm not approaching in bad faith with a predetermined position - I'm asking you what you wish would have happened differently so I can understand your position better.


I would have liked to see the mainstream media do its job and hold people accountable. Instead, for example, the NYTimes called lab leak a racist theory. CNN President Jeff Zucker ordered his journalists to not pursue lab leak because it would benefit Trump. Even Jon Stewart says he got shit on for embracing lab leak because the narrative was that it was racist or a Trump talking point. It’s embarrassing. Millions of people died and their bigger concern is not using Trump talking points instead of finding out the truth.


Thanks! It doesn't seem like there's a lot of accountability in current US climes, and I can respect that wish. I don't really see it happening anywhere, and it is a LITTLE awkward that we're relying on journalists (and by proxy their readers) to hold people accountable.
KwarK
Profile Blog Joined July 2006
United States44442 Posts
December 22 2024 09:24 GMT
#93431
On December 22 2024 04:43 BlackJack wrote:
Those frontline workers of course got COVID anyway and I know this because basically everyone has had COVID. So it wasn't even that worthwhile of a lie.

There’s a difference between everyone getting it eventually and all the frontline healthcare workers getting it immediately during the critical exponential spread phase. Everyone dies eventually but if it’s all at the same time and that time is immediately then that’s a very different problem.
ModeratorThe angels have the phone box
CuddlyCuteKitten
Profile Joined January 2004
Sweden2914 Posts
December 22 2024 09:59 GMT
#93432
On December 22 2024 09:02 BlackJack wrote:
Also I don't even follow the logic of how lab escape is less anti-asian than the natural origin theory. The lab received millions in funding from the U.S. including $600,000 from Fauci's NIH. So the internationally funded lab is the anti-chinese theory but the weird Chinese people eating exotic animals in their disgusting wet markets is the anti-racist theory we should be pushing? Huh? Run that by me again? It's obvious they were dismissing lab origin not to protect Asians from hate crimes but instead to protect themselves.


You have expressed the opinion that prosecutors shouldn't charge people for self defence because it might make citizens less likely to defend others.
Another common opinion is that prosecutors should not bring a case to court if they know they can't prove it.

This is just the international political version of exactly that.

Some scientists may have suspected that the virus *could* have come from a lab in China. Can they prove it? No (even if it's true the lab is in China and they will *never* cooperate enough to prove it.
Could they be wrong? Yes, absolutely.

Is it going to kick up an absolute political shitstorm of epic proportions in the middle of a crisis, one that at this point no one knows exactly how severe it's going to be. Yes. Holy shit yes, China would *not* take that well for many different reasons. Regardless of if they were right or wrong.
The consequences would likely have been severe. The US needed covid data from China and a lot of basic medical supplies (China basically solved the face mask problems in months for the rest of the world).
It's very likely all cooperation would have ended immediately if either the US politically or scientifically took the stance that this is China's fault.

If you want to accuse a global superpower of something you better be able to prove it. We can be pretty sure the scientists that suspected this knew they would never be able to prove it and therefore made the prudent choice of "not bringing it to trial".
Unity, support, family, and kneecapping bitches.
BlackJack
Profile Blog Joined June 2003
United States10574 Posts
December 22 2024 10:08 GMT
#93433
On December 22 2024 18:59 CuddlyCuteKitten wrote:
Show nested quote +
On December 22 2024 09:02 BlackJack wrote:
Also I don't even follow the logic of how lab escape is less anti-asian than the natural origin theory. The lab received millions in funding from the U.S. including $600,000 from Fauci's NIH. So the internationally funded lab is the anti-chinese theory but the weird Chinese people eating exotic animals in their disgusting wet markets is the anti-racist theory we should be pushing? Huh? Run that by me again? It's obvious they were dismissing lab origin not to protect Asians from hate crimes but instead to protect themselves.


You have expressed the opinion that prosecutors shouldn't charge people for self defence because it might make citizens less likely to defend others.
Another common opinion is that prosecutors should not bring a case to court if they know they can't prove it.

This is just the international political version of exactly that.

Some scientists may have suspected that the virus *could* have come from a lab in China. Can they prove it? No (even if it's true the lab is in China and they will *never* cooperate enough to prove it.
Could they be wrong? Yes, absolutely.

Is it going to kick up an absolute political shitstorm of epic proportions in the middle of a crisis, one that at this point no one knows exactly how severe it's going to be. Yes. Holy shit yes, China would *not* take that well for many different reasons. Regardless of if they were right or wrong.
The consequences would likely have been severe. The US needed covid data from China and a lot of basic medical supplies (China basically solved the face mask problems in months for the rest of the world).
It's very likely all cooperation would have ended immediately if either the US politically or scientifically took the stance that this is China's fault.

If you want to accuse a global superpower of something you better be able to prove it. We can be pretty sure the scientists that suspected this knew they would never be able to prove it and therefore made the prudent choice of "not bringing it to trial".


They didn't "not bring it to trial." They declared it "improbable", labeled it a conspiracy theory, and tried to bury it. You're not defending scientists making a prudent choice. You're defending a cover-up.
BlackJack
Profile Blog Joined June 2003
United States10574 Posts
December 22 2024 10:22 GMT
#93434
On December 22 2024 16:25 Fleetfeet wrote:
Show nested quote +
On December 22 2024 14:59 BlackJack wrote:
On December 22 2024 09:46 Fleetfeet wrote:
On December 22 2024 08:47 BlackJack wrote:
On December 22 2024 07:46 Fleetfeet wrote:
On December 22 2024 06:47 BlackJack wrote:
On December 22 2024 05:31 Magic Powers wrote:
What irks me is that people compared Fauci to the worst of liars. No, he told one crucial lie and he made mistakes under extreme pressure during an unprecedented crisis with very little useful information to work with. He's a high-profile person who made bad mistakes, not a villain who was scheming against Americans. He cared about people, but he failed to live up to people's expectations. There was nothing nefarious about his intent. He just fucked up in a very normal human way by trying to make a strategically good decision that ended up being strategically bad. He learned an important lesson too late.

Furthermore he made every attempt to correct course. He didn't pretend he's perfect, he learned from mistakes made. That's commendable.

Imagine RFK in Fauci's shoes. What an absolute shit show that would've been. There wouldn't have been any learning whatsoever, just blunder after blunder.


I think the one "crucial lie" is when they deliberately dismissed lab origin despite their private emails showing they thought it was just as likely if not more likely.

professor Robert Garry, said he could see no "plausible natural scenario" for key amino acids and nucleotides to have been inserted into a bat virus


Mike Farzan (dubbed the "discoverer of SARS receptor" and a professor of immunology at Scripps Research) found a key aspect of the virus "highly unlikely" to have developed outside a lab.


But in another email from the same day referenced in the lawmakers' letter, Ron Fouchier, the deputy head of the Erasmus MC Department of Viroscience, seemed to embrace the theory that the virus occurred naturally and warned that lab leak discussions could "do unnecessary harm to science in general and science in China in particular."


Forget the pursuit of truth and the possibility that this pandemic that killed millions was man-made. What's really important is that "discussing lab leak" could harm their ability to keep tinkering with gain-of-function on viruses. It must be in our "best interest" that biolabs in China with shoddy safety measures don't get any scrutiny.


Is there a particular path you wish the US had taken regarding lab leak? If I recall correctly, there were already issues with anti-asian racism in the US without lableak being given much credibility. It seems sensible to me to downplay its potential given that 1) people will naturally look for something to blame for basically anything (see - 'democrats control the weather' for recent natural disaster in US) and 2) Publicly blaming china will have a massive negative impact on practically all asian americans.


You have to put things in context. This piece from The Intercept does a good job at providing some context. The lead author and co-author of the Proximal Origin paper that dismissed lab leak as implausible were emailing each other about how dangerous gain-of-function research was and how afraid they were of being ostracised for questioning the safety:

Rambaut continued on the theme: “Ron had me clocked as an anti-GOF fanatic already. Although my primary concern is that these experiments are done in Cat 3 labs.”

“Interesting,” Andersen responded. “I’m all for GOF experiments, I think they’re really important* – however performing these in BSL-3 (or less) is just completely nuts!” (Rambaut and Andersen were referencing biosafety level 3 laboratories.)


"Completely nuts" they called it. Then a pandemic breaks out involving a coronavirus near a research lab where they were performing gain of function research on coronaviruses and the first instinct of the experts in this field is that it looks man-made or at least very plausibly escaped from the lab. Then they carefully decide to go with natural origin and dismiss lab leak not because that's what the science tells them to do but because that's what the politics tells them to do:

“Given the shit show that would happen if anyone serious accused the Chinese of even accidental release, my feeling is we should say that given there is no evidence of a specifically engineered virus, we cannot possible distinguish between natural evolution and escape so we are content to with ascribing it to natural processes.”

“Yup, I totally agree that’s a very reasonable conclusion,” Andersen responded. Although I hate when politics is injected into science – but it’s impossible not to, especially given the circumstance. We should be sensitive to that.”





So the context is that a pandemic was very plausibly started by scientists fucking around with a virus that escaped a lab, doing research they knew was incredibly dangerous, which cost millions of lives and trillions of dollars, and who conspired through private messages to publicly dismiss the lab origin theory, and your response is "but what about anti-asian hate crimes?" It's a shiny object to distract your attention. They are taking advantage of your empathy.


I asked a genuine question, and it wasn't 'what about anti-asian hate crimes?' I provided context for why I was asking the question in the first place, and given your response I suppose I can infer that your answer is "Blame the US ('them?') and also China?"

I'm not approaching in bad faith with a predetermined position - I'm asking you what you wish would have happened differently so I can understand your position better.


I would have liked to see the mainstream media do its job and hold people accountable. Instead, for example, the NYTimes called lab leak a racist theory. CNN President Jeff Zucker ordered his journalists to not pursue lab leak because it would benefit Trump. Even Jon Stewart says he got shit on for embracing lab leak because the narrative was that it was racist or a Trump talking point. It’s embarrassing. Millions of people died and their bigger concern is not using Trump talking points instead of finding out the truth.


Thanks! It doesn't seem like there's a lot of accountability in current US climes, and I can respect that wish. I don't really see it happening anywhere, and it is a LITTLE awkward that we're relying on journalists (and by proxy their readers) to hold people accountable.


I'm okay with the court of public opinion trying this. Deception / lying / cover-up in itself is often not strictly illegal so there's little recourse outside of journalists trying to shed light onto it.

One of Fauci's most brazen lies is when he repeatedly testified to Congress, while under oath, that Gain-Of-Function was not being done at the Wuhan lab. He said many experts up and down the chain have all declared what they did does not qualify as gain-of-function. Well there is one expert that did believe it to be gain-of-function. Anthony Fauci himself. In a since unredacted email from Feb 2020 this is what he said at the start of the pandemic.

They were concerned about the fact that upon viewing the sequences of several isolates of the nCoV, there were mutations in the virus that would be most unusual to have evolved naturally in the bats and that there was a suspicion that this mutation was intentionally inserted. The suspicion was heightened by the fact that scientists in Wuhan University are known to have been working on gain-of-function experiments to determine the molecular mechanisms associated with bat viruses adapting to human infection, and the outbreak originated in Wuhan


So in private emails he stated it was a fact that gain-of-function was being done at Wuhan university and then publicly he states the opposite. A fairly brazen lie. While under oath. You know... like a crime. Of course we all know the real crime is parents lying to their children about Santa Claus.
DarkPlasmaBall
Profile Blog Joined March 2010
United States46692 Posts
December 22 2024 10:41 GMT
#93435
On December 22 2024 19:22 BlackJack wrote:
Show nested quote +
On December 22 2024 16:25 Fleetfeet wrote:
On December 22 2024 14:59 BlackJack wrote:
On December 22 2024 09:46 Fleetfeet wrote:
On December 22 2024 08:47 BlackJack wrote:
On December 22 2024 07:46 Fleetfeet wrote:
On December 22 2024 06:47 BlackJack wrote:
On December 22 2024 05:31 Magic Powers wrote:
What irks me is that people compared Fauci to the worst of liars. No, he told one crucial lie and he made mistakes under extreme pressure during an unprecedented crisis with very little useful information to work with. He's a high-profile person who made bad mistakes, not a villain who was scheming against Americans. He cared about people, but he failed to live up to people's expectations. There was nothing nefarious about his intent. He just fucked up in a very normal human way by trying to make a strategically good decision that ended up being strategically bad. He learned an important lesson too late.

Furthermore he made every attempt to correct course. He didn't pretend he's perfect, he learned from mistakes made. That's commendable.

Imagine RFK in Fauci's shoes. What an absolute shit show that would've been. There wouldn't have been any learning whatsoever, just blunder after blunder.


I think the one "crucial lie" is when they deliberately dismissed lab origin despite their private emails showing they thought it was just as likely if not more likely.

professor Robert Garry, said he could see no "plausible natural scenario" for key amino acids and nucleotides to have been inserted into a bat virus


Mike Farzan (dubbed the "discoverer of SARS receptor" and a professor of immunology at Scripps Research) found a key aspect of the virus "highly unlikely" to have developed outside a lab.


But in another email from the same day referenced in the lawmakers' letter, Ron Fouchier, the deputy head of the Erasmus MC Department of Viroscience, seemed to embrace the theory that the virus occurred naturally and warned that lab leak discussions could "do unnecessary harm to science in general and science in China in particular."


Forget the pursuit of truth and the possibility that this pandemic that killed millions was man-made. What's really important is that "discussing lab leak" could harm their ability to keep tinkering with gain-of-function on viruses. It must be in our "best interest" that biolabs in China with shoddy safety measures don't get any scrutiny.


Is there a particular path you wish the US had taken regarding lab leak? If I recall correctly, there were already issues with anti-asian racism in the US without lableak being given much credibility. It seems sensible to me to downplay its potential given that 1) people will naturally look for something to blame for basically anything (see - 'democrats control the weather' for recent natural disaster in US) and 2) Publicly blaming china will have a massive negative impact on practically all asian americans.


You have to put things in context. This piece from The Intercept does a good job at providing some context. The lead author and co-author of the Proximal Origin paper that dismissed lab leak as implausible were emailing each other about how dangerous gain-of-function research was and how afraid they were of being ostracised for questioning the safety:

Rambaut continued on the theme: “Ron had me clocked as an anti-GOF fanatic already. Although my primary concern is that these experiments are done in Cat 3 labs.”

“Interesting,” Andersen responded. “I’m all for GOF experiments, I think they’re really important* – however performing these in BSL-3 (or less) is just completely nuts!” (Rambaut and Andersen were referencing biosafety level 3 laboratories.)


"Completely nuts" they called it. Then a pandemic breaks out involving a coronavirus near a research lab where they were performing gain of function research on coronaviruses and the first instinct of the experts in this field is that it looks man-made or at least very plausibly escaped from the lab. Then they carefully decide to go with natural origin and dismiss lab leak not because that's what the science tells them to do but because that's what the politics tells them to do:

“Given the shit show that would happen if anyone serious accused the Chinese of even accidental release, my feeling is we should say that given there is no evidence of a specifically engineered virus, we cannot possible distinguish between natural evolution and escape so we are content to with ascribing it to natural processes.”

“Yup, I totally agree that’s a very reasonable conclusion,” Andersen responded. Although I hate when politics is injected into science – but it’s impossible not to, especially given the circumstance. We should be sensitive to that.”





So the context is that a pandemic was very plausibly started by scientists fucking around with a virus that escaped a lab, doing research they knew was incredibly dangerous, which cost millions of lives and trillions of dollars, and who conspired through private messages to publicly dismiss the lab origin theory, and your response is "but what about anti-asian hate crimes?" It's a shiny object to distract your attention. They are taking advantage of your empathy.


I asked a genuine question, and it wasn't 'what about anti-asian hate crimes?' I provided context for why I was asking the question in the first place, and given your response I suppose I can infer that your answer is "Blame the US ('them?') and also China?"

I'm not approaching in bad faith with a predetermined position - I'm asking you what you wish would have happened differently so I can understand your position better.


I would have liked to see the mainstream media do its job and hold people accountable. Instead, for example, the NYTimes called lab leak a racist theory. CNN President Jeff Zucker ordered his journalists to not pursue lab leak because it would benefit Trump. Even Jon Stewart says he got shit on for embracing lab leak because the narrative was that it was racist or a Trump talking point. It’s embarrassing. Millions of people died and their bigger concern is not using Trump talking points instead of finding out the truth.


Thanks! It doesn't seem like there's a lot of accountability in current US climes, and I can respect that wish. I don't really see it happening anywhere, and it is a LITTLE awkward that we're relying on journalists (and by proxy their readers) to hold people accountable.


I'm okay with the court of public opinion trying this. Deception / lying / cover-up in itself is often not strictly illegal so there's little recourse outside of journalists trying to shed light onto it.

One of Fauci's most brazen lies is when he repeatedly testified to Congress, while under oath, that Gain-Of-Function was not being done at the Wuhan lab. He said many experts up and down the chain have all declared what they did does not qualify as gain-of-function. Well there is one expert that did believe it to be gain-of-function. Anthony Fauci himself. In a since unredacted email from Feb 2020 this is what he said at the start of the pandemic.

Show nested quote +
They were concerned about the fact that upon viewing the sequences of several isolates of the nCoV, there were mutations in the virus that would be most unusual to have evolved naturally in the bats and that there was a suspicion that this mutation was intentionally inserted. The suspicion was heightened by the fact that scientists in Wuhan University are known to have been working on gain-of-function experiments to determine the molecular mechanisms associated with bat viruses adapting to human infection, and the outbreak originated in Wuhan


So in private emails he stated it was a fact that gain-of-function was being done at Wuhan university and then publicly he states the opposite. A fairly brazen lie. While under oath. You know... like a crime. Of course we all know the real crime is parents lying to their children about Santa Claus.


What's the endgame here, with this back and forth of Fauci vs. Santa Claus? Because it seems a lot of people are taking the nuanced approach to both situations: "I don't entirely agree with everything Fauci has said and done / I don't entirely agree with every approach to the Santa Claus story, but I understand Fauci's reasoning / parents' reasoning, and on a broader level I can recognize the broader justifications."
"There is nothing more satisfying than looking at a crowd of people and helping them get what I love." ~Day[9] Daily #100
BlackJack
Profile Blog Joined June 2003
United States10574 Posts
Last Edited: 2024-12-22 11:12:19
December 22 2024 11:11 GMT
#93436
On December 22 2024 19:41 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:
Show nested quote +
On December 22 2024 19:22 BlackJack wrote:
On December 22 2024 16:25 Fleetfeet wrote:
On December 22 2024 14:59 BlackJack wrote:
On December 22 2024 09:46 Fleetfeet wrote:
On December 22 2024 08:47 BlackJack wrote:
On December 22 2024 07:46 Fleetfeet wrote:
On December 22 2024 06:47 BlackJack wrote:
On December 22 2024 05:31 Magic Powers wrote:
What irks me is that people compared Fauci to the worst of liars. No, he told one crucial lie and he made mistakes under extreme pressure during an unprecedented crisis with very little useful information to work with. He's a high-profile person who made bad mistakes, not a villain who was scheming against Americans. He cared about people, but he failed to live up to people's expectations. There was nothing nefarious about his intent. He just fucked up in a very normal human way by trying to make a strategically good decision that ended up being strategically bad. He learned an important lesson too late.

Furthermore he made every attempt to correct course. He didn't pretend he's perfect, he learned from mistakes made. That's commendable.

Imagine RFK in Fauci's shoes. What an absolute shit show that would've been. There wouldn't have been any learning whatsoever, just blunder after blunder.


I think the one "crucial lie" is when they deliberately dismissed lab origin despite their private emails showing they thought it was just as likely if not more likely.

professor Robert Garry, said he could see no "plausible natural scenario" for key amino acids and nucleotides to have been inserted into a bat virus


Mike Farzan (dubbed the "discoverer of SARS receptor" and a professor of immunology at Scripps Research) found a key aspect of the virus "highly unlikely" to have developed outside a lab.


But in another email from the same day referenced in the lawmakers' letter, Ron Fouchier, the deputy head of the Erasmus MC Department of Viroscience, seemed to embrace the theory that the virus occurred naturally and warned that lab leak discussions could "do unnecessary harm to science in general and science in China in particular."


Forget the pursuit of truth and the possibility that this pandemic that killed millions was man-made. What's really important is that "discussing lab leak" could harm their ability to keep tinkering with gain-of-function on viruses. It must be in our "best interest" that biolabs in China with shoddy safety measures don't get any scrutiny.


Is there a particular path you wish the US had taken regarding lab leak? If I recall correctly, there were already issues with anti-asian racism in the US without lableak being given much credibility. It seems sensible to me to downplay its potential given that 1) people will naturally look for something to blame for basically anything (see - 'democrats control the weather' for recent natural disaster in US) and 2) Publicly blaming china will have a massive negative impact on practically all asian americans.


You have to put things in context. This piece from The Intercept does a good job at providing some context. The lead author and co-author of the Proximal Origin paper that dismissed lab leak as implausible were emailing each other about how dangerous gain-of-function research was and how afraid they were of being ostracised for questioning the safety:

Rambaut continued on the theme: “Ron had me clocked as an anti-GOF fanatic already. Although my primary concern is that these experiments are done in Cat 3 labs.”

“Interesting,” Andersen responded. “I’m all for GOF experiments, I think they’re really important* – however performing these in BSL-3 (or less) is just completely nuts!” (Rambaut and Andersen were referencing biosafety level 3 laboratories.)


"Completely nuts" they called it. Then a pandemic breaks out involving a coronavirus near a research lab where they were performing gain of function research on coronaviruses and the first instinct of the experts in this field is that it looks man-made or at least very plausibly escaped from the lab. Then they carefully decide to go with natural origin and dismiss lab leak not because that's what the science tells them to do but because that's what the politics tells them to do:

“Given the shit show that would happen if anyone serious accused the Chinese of even accidental release, my feeling is we should say that given there is no evidence of a specifically engineered virus, we cannot possible distinguish between natural evolution and escape so we are content to with ascribing it to natural processes.”

“Yup, I totally agree that’s a very reasonable conclusion,” Andersen responded. Although I hate when politics is injected into science – but it’s impossible not to, especially given the circumstance. We should be sensitive to that.”





So the context is that a pandemic was very plausibly started by scientists fucking around with a virus that escaped a lab, doing research they knew was incredibly dangerous, which cost millions of lives and trillions of dollars, and who conspired through private messages to publicly dismiss the lab origin theory, and your response is "but what about anti-asian hate crimes?" It's a shiny object to distract your attention. They are taking advantage of your empathy.


I asked a genuine question, and it wasn't 'what about anti-asian hate crimes?' I provided context for why I was asking the question in the first place, and given your response I suppose I can infer that your answer is "Blame the US ('them?') and also China?"

I'm not approaching in bad faith with a predetermined position - I'm asking you what you wish would have happened differently so I can understand your position better.


I would have liked to see the mainstream media do its job and hold people accountable. Instead, for example, the NYTimes called lab leak a racist theory. CNN President Jeff Zucker ordered his journalists to not pursue lab leak because it would benefit Trump. Even Jon Stewart says he got shit on for embracing lab leak because the narrative was that it was racist or a Trump talking point. It’s embarrassing. Millions of people died and their bigger concern is not using Trump talking points instead of finding out the truth.


Thanks! It doesn't seem like there's a lot of accountability in current US climes, and I can respect that wish. I don't really see it happening anywhere, and it is a LITTLE awkward that we're relying on journalists (and by proxy their readers) to hold people accountable.


I'm okay with the court of public opinion trying this. Deception / lying / cover-up in itself is often not strictly illegal so there's little recourse outside of journalists trying to shed light onto it.

One of Fauci's most brazen lies is when he repeatedly testified to Congress, while under oath, that Gain-Of-Function was not being done at the Wuhan lab. He said many experts up and down the chain have all declared what they did does not qualify as gain-of-function. Well there is one expert that did believe it to be gain-of-function. Anthony Fauci himself. In a since unredacted email from Feb 2020 this is what he said at the start of the pandemic.

They were concerned about the fact that upon viewing the sequences of several isolates of the nCoV, there were mutations in the virus that would be most unusual to have evolved naturally in the bats and that there was a suspicion that this mutation was intentionally inserted. The suspicion was heightened by the fact that scientists in Wuhan University are known to have been working on gain-of-function experiments to determine the molecular mechanisms associated with bat viruses adapting to human infection, and the outbreak originated in Wuhan


So in private emails he stated it was a fact that gain-of-function was being done at Wuhan university and then publicly he states the opposite. A fairly brazen lie. While under oath. You know... like a crime. Of course we all know the real crime is parents lying to their children about Santa Claus.


What's the endgame here, with this back and forth of Fauci vs. Santa Claus? Because it seems a lot of people are taking the nuanced approach to both situations: "I don't entirely agree with everything Fauci has said and done / I don't entirely agree with every approach to the Santa Claus story, but I understand Fauci's reasoning / parents' reasoning, and on a broader level I can recognize the broader justifications."


The Santa Claus reference in that last post was a tongue-in-cheek joke to the preposterousness of comparing the two things. If dangerous gain-of-function research was being done in a lab without proper safety protocols and it led to a lab escape that caused a global pandemic then few things are more important than finding that out and how to prevent it from happening again. It's absurd that people want to shrug their shoulders and be like "meh.. some people lie about Santa Claus and some people lie about gain-of-function research... po-tay-to, po-tah-to."
Magic Powers
Profile Joined April 2012
Austria4478 Posts
December 22 2024 12:10 GMT
#93437
@BJ
Just to understand this, do you believe Daniel Penny should've in fact never been charged and prosecuted to begin with?
If you want to do the right thing, 80% of your job is done if you don't do the wrong thing.
CuddlyCuteKitten
Profile Joined January 2004
Sweden2914 Posts
December 22 2024 12:38 GMT
#93438
On December 22 2024 19:08 BlackJack wrote:
Show nested quote +
On December 22 2024 18:59 CuddlyCuteKitten wrote:
On December 22 2024 09:02 BlackJack wrote:
Also I don't even follow the logic of how lab escape is less anti-asian than the natural origin theory. The lab received millions in funding from the U.S. including $600,000 from Fauci's NIH. So the internationally funded lab is the anti-chinese theory but the weird Chinese people eating exotic animals in their disgusting wet markets is the anti-racist theory we should be pushing? Huh? Run that by me again? It's obvious they were dismissing lab origin not to protect Asians from hate crimes but instead to protect themselves.


You have expressed the opinion that prosecutors shouldn't charge people for self defence because it might make citizens less likely to defend others.
Another common opinion is that prosecutors should not bring a case to court if they know they can't prove it.

This is just the international political version of exactly that.

Some scientists may have suspected that the virus *could* have come from a lab in China. Can they prove it? No (even if it's true the lab is in China and they will *never* cooperate enough to prove it.
Could they be wrong? Yes, absolutely.

Is it going to kick up an absolute political shitstorm of epic proportions in the middle of a crisis, one that at this point no one knows exactly how severe it's going to be. Yes. Holy shit yes, China would *not* take that well for many different reasons. Regardless of if they were right or wrong.
The consequences would likely have been severe. The US needed covid data from China and a lot of basic medical supplies (China basically solved the face mask problems in months for the rest of the world).
It's very likely all cooperation would have ended immediately if either the US politically or scientifically took the stance that this is China's fault.

If you want to accuse a global superpower of something you better be able to prove it. We can be pretty sure the scientists that suspected this knew they would never be able to prove it and therefore made the prudent choice of "not bringing it to trial".


They didn't "not bring it to trial." They declared it "improbable", labeled it a conspiracy theory, and tried to bury it. You're not defending scientists making a prudent choice. You're defending a cover-up.


The facts are.

1) There is no way to prove it came from the lab in Wuhan so it's always going to be somewhere on the line from improbable to probable.
2) Saying it's probable means blaming China officially. It also means saying they straight up lied about things.
For example; it's highly probable Fauci got documents from China clearly stating there was no gain of function research when he testified. Saying anything else would be saying China lied.
3) There are no benefits to blaming China but massive consequences.

Your opinion is that Fauci should have caused massive consequences for a "maybe".

Also there are other theories that were burried. I remember something about US military personal in Wuhan in relation to the outbreak...
Maybe that was true hmmm? Who can know for sure? 🤔
Unity, support, family, and kneecapping bitches.
Sadist
Profile Blog Joined October 2002
United States7328 Posts
December 22 2024 12:48 GMT
#93439
I just dont understand what the end game is. Say it was a lab leak from China. What then? Pull funding? Try to hold them financually responsible globally? Go to war?

I just dont see how it really changes anything.
How do you go from where you are to where you want to be? I think you have to have an enthusiasm for life. You have to have a dream, a goal and you have to be willing to work for it. Jim Valvano
Magic Powers
Profile Joined April 2012
Austria4478 Posts
December 22 2024 13:00 GMT
#93440
On December 22 2024 21:48 Sadist wrote:
I just dont understand what the end game is. Say it was a lab leak from China. What then? Pull funding? Try to hold them financually responsible globally? Go to war?

I just dont see how it really changes anything.


I think it's pretty obvious how it would change things. If, hypothetically, a lab leak was officially confirmed, then safety measures could be taken. As long as China denies it nothing will be done regardless of what's true. They have a policy of covering up disasters like bridges collapsing and preventing the public from seeing it. They never fix the real problem.
If you want to do the right thing, 80% of your job is done if you don't do the wrong thing.
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