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What's the point?

No, really -- let's say you win. You've convinced the entirety of the western public that COVID-19 was made in a Chinese biolab. Okay, now what?

I have 180°'d on my opinions, thanks.

What's the point?

I don’t want any increase of geopolitical tension between China and the west but I think there are substantial reasons to want this to become the widespread consensus.

Biotech is an existential risk that people and governments are not concerned enough about. I think it would be very good for that to be a more widespread concern.

A practical goal would be banning gain of function research. Or more realistically, banning gain of function research that claims to be being done in pursuit of some kind of medical goal. I don’t really think you’ll be able to stop it from happening in military labs. But research that dangerous shouldn’t have the veil of claiming that it is being done in order to protect against viruses. And, you shouldn't be able to do it in labs with the security levels of the Wuhan labs.

The smallest practical goal would be removing American funding from Chinese gain of function research. It appears to be undisputed that there was at least some money coming from America and funding labs in Wuhan that were researching novel coronaviruses. That should obviously stop.

A practical goal would be banning gain of function research.

We did.

That's not my understanding. I don't think it is illegal under US law and also not universally. Can you point at the exact laws you are referring to?

Seeing your other response in this thread:

We already banned gain-of-function research.

Why do you think Fauci & Co. had to outsource it to China and Ukraine?

I don't think we actually disagree here. I don't think it is as airtightly illegal in the US as you are implying. But regardless, the main point of my post seems to agree with you. No?

Robbery, rape and passing bad checks are banned. These never happen anymore.

Grandpa, what's a bad check?

The difference is that these crimes are committed by top officials in our government. Journalists are supposed to be on top of this, ripping them a new asshole so that they're too scared to even try - but now they have turned their coats and now work for our enemy.

Look, this thing is hard to do oversight on because few understand this, and all who understand this have a similar set of incentives that includes getting money to do research.

Also, journalists ? Journalists understand nothing and are largely ineffective because they're self-selected for compliance and there's even now some amount of evidence that one of Twitter's function is to 'push their buttons' by selectively rewarding journalists with extra likes and views on their articles that are convenient to those who run Twitter bots.

EDIT:

Grandpa, what's a bad check?

Also you seem like an American, so how come you don't know about check fraud ?

Apparenlty a thing in the US, somehow.

I'm confused about both you and stiffly stance here. Are either of you disagreeing with me that having this be more of a public concern would be bad?