Muh Muh Muh My Corona (virus)

It's not pointless. *If* (and that New York article was predicated on it being "what if"? despite the way it was being mischaracterized on here) the pandemic had its origins in a lab, it has serious implications for humanity. Just in terms of trying to prevent a similar, or worse, outbreak of some sort in the future, this is important.

Of course we already know that China is not an open or transparent place. It's a dictatorship that is not above lying, perpetrating human rights abuses, etc., and it will cover up a mistake rather than admit to it.

But saying "that's that," like there is nothing we can do about it is akin to saying, "Oh well, Iran is going to keep enriching uranian, and there is nothing we can do about it, so why bother trying?" Or, "The Israelis and Palestinians are going to always hate each other, and there is nothing we can do about it, so why bother trying?"

We may never get China to be transparent. But as long as they are not, the idea that that lab could have been involved -- with all of the circumstancial evidence that makes it as plausible as a zoonatic jump as the origin -- should never have been shouted down so easily. And the Chinese should not be let off the hook.

We are the only country on earth that has the ability to exert consequences for China for not being transparent that will have any teeth. We certainly should be using whatever pressure we can exert, and when they push the WHO around to put out a sham report, because the WHO is afraid of China picking up its ball and going home, we should be out front letting the world know that it was not a truthful or honest investigation.

 

You mischaracterized what he wrote.

You really should read it again, but I can already tell you are refusing do it without your preconceived notions that he had some kind of agenda, or that he was "hocking". ... or that you can't evaluate it without being dismissive of the reason he used because you already decided that what he was suggesting couldn't possibly be the truth.

The reality is that objectively a lab accident was just as plausible as a zoonatic jump. Then, and today. Yet, almost from the get-go, you had people framing the cause rather than trying to be objective to figure out the cause.

That New York magazine follow-up piece from yesterday that I linked to has that unfortunate "liberal media" headline. I don't think it was a liberal vs. conservative (terms that have become meaningless) thing as much as it was what the piece itself alleges. There was a reflexive recoiling to Trump's constant bullshit, and his unproven and irrelevant statements about "China" and the virus. ... and that was met with a push back that was equally false in large measure. I think the reason they attribute it to the "liberal media" is that it followed the partisan pattern of people pushing a narrative or story that they wanted to be true, rather than trying to look for the truth. Therefore rather than meeting lies with truth, they met Trump's idiocy with other lies or they didn't even address the truth (or lack of truth) in what he was saying. They just dismissed anything that didn't fit the narrative that they definitively were pushing back with as a conspiracy theory or they attributed it to racism, etc.

The point of what he wrote was that because that was what was happening, something just as plausible as a zoonatic jump was not even being investigated. That "asking questions" thing you typed is a problem when someone is pulling silly crap out of their ass to try to spread misinformation. Anyone who read that piece with an open mind, and considered the credibility of the people he quoted and what they had to say, should have known that wasn't what it was doing.

 

You gotta love another sweeping Matt Taibi generalization, in which he treats something like a monolithic entity (in this case, "the news business") in order to create one of his narratives.

There's a lot of people who write for publication who do shit work. There are others who do great work. There are some people who write in an evangelical way; whatever it is they are evangelical about and let their predispositions get in the way of honest work. The are others who let whatever they can factually discern drive what they write.