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Notes -
COVID: released on purpose?
This is the most disruptive (and deadly, according to the government) of our lifetimes and I haven't seen any leaders talk about COVID as a tragedy or natural disaster. The lack of any blood, or even any question of blame in response an event of this magnitude is very weird. A large fraction of people believe COVID was a lab leak from some combination of China and the US, but there is no discussion about it. It would have been easy enough to throw Fauci and Daszak or some Chinese guys under the bus without any other damage, but we don't even get a sacrificial lamb. Furthermore, the policies they did in response are policies they wanted to do anyway and are happy about.
Governments either believe they owe their people nothing (believable!), or this was such an enormous crime that pulling the thread is too dangerous to attempt.
China has another reason to play up the lab leak theory: the leading scientific theory (spillover resulting from improper handling of market animals) implies that COVID-19 is their fault. After SARS they clamped down on live animal markets, but over time, while they remained illegal, the government didn't seriously enforce the laws against them. In other words, they knew what they had to do to stop a pandemic, tried, and failed (or gave up). That makes them look culpable and/or incompetent, so they don't want too high a confidence assigned to that theory.
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