China: Claims Coronavirus Originated In A Lab ‘Purely Fabricated’

TPM Article Topics
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BEIJING — China says any claims that the coronavirus was released from a laboratory are “unfounded and purely fabricated out of nothing.”

This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1306645
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It’s hard to know who to believe here. On one side there’s a lying autocratic regime and on the other there’s China.

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How about believing a widely respected scientist who made her lab re-examine the gene sequences, sent samples to another lab to do the same, and published the results showing the the virus could not have come from the lab work, knowing that any fakery would get caught by peer review? Jim White at emptywheel has been covering it: Shi Zhengli Provides Proof SARS CoV-2 Was Not An Accidental Release From Wuhan Institute of Virology - emptywheel

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Hmmmmm…wouldn’t it be funny if the Chinese get all pissed off and decide to take some revenge? You know, like retract all of Ivankadonk’s patents to get even? And publish all Donnie’s financials on the massive loan at Bank of China? Or maybe they call the loan in, payable cash-only…

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Facts. Pffft. You can use them to prove anything.

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ODNI says covid-19 not manmade or genetifcally modified. Deep state vs. derp state:

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It would be quite obvious from the DNA sequence if COVID-19 was engineered. It is still possible that it was accidentally released from a Chinese lab but it is most likely it came out of their wild animal market. There are enough labs worldwide working on this that no one is going to be able to concoct a false scenario for its origin and expect it to be accepted.

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Well done! :rofl:

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Here’s the thing about autocratic political theater: it’s theater. Trump and the Chinese share common goals. Sure, they’ll jab at each other while on stage, but off in the wings, they congratulate one another on an excellent performance.

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Yeah. Unless/until the Chinese see him as weak then they’ll turn on him for real. Depends on how much they want to see him get another round or not.

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I think they already see him as weak. His weakness makes him useful to them. And their opaqueness and reputation as the “evil other” in certain sections of the US population make them useful to him.

You’re right that eventually the script could play out and then one will turn on the other. The problem for us is that the Chinese are Broadway veterans while Trump is a barn player. When they turn on him, we will pay the price.

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Well, you’re 100% right that he’s a barn player. No way that idiot could play poker, he’s so dumb and arrogant you can read everything in his face. (Even through the back of his head you could see the “light” go n about the bleach and light story.)

He’s playing tiddlywinks, they’re playing Go.

If/when the Chinese decide he’s more of a pain than a useful idiot, they’ll shiv him so elegantly he won’t even realize he’s bleeding out until it’s too late.

If we’re lucky, they’ll only shiv him and not all of us.

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But facts have never stopped Donnie from acting irrationally.

U.S. stocks midday Thursday took a firm leg lower after the Washington Post reported that U.S. officials were "crafting retaliatory actions against China’ as the Trump administration accuses the world’s second-largest economy for its handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.

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Looks like the shivving may already be in progress:

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/china-says-were-a-joke-and-alas-we-are

And @maximus just posted our Barn Players response:

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Hate to say it, but he’s right.

Regardless of the evil motives that some might impute to its authoritarian leadership, it is beyond implausible that a scientifically sophisticated country like China would proceed to weaponize a lethal virus before it had developed a vaccine or a reliably effective treatment – preferably both.

Coronavirus would be an inherently poor bioweapon. Its lethality is in the single digits (varying by country and possibly by the fact that there are now many different strains of the virus that have been identified), unlike MERS, with a 40% fatality rate. Coronavirus’s relatively short life on a dry surface means it is far less effective than anthrax, which has a persistence that is practically indefinite.

Also, basic virus physiology. Coronavirus is RNA-based, whereas manufactured viruses are recombinants of DNA-based viruses. That’s as big a difference as elephants and jellyfish.

Yet according to polls, a third of Americans (=~Trump’s base) believe the Chinese bioweapon story.

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Or, perhaps China could sue the shitgibbon. After all, he just threatened to sue his own CAMPAIGN MANAGER.

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If so, was not from the Wuhan lab as Shi Zhengli conclusively proved with another lab duplicating her analysis work and coming to the same conclustion. Read the 4/24/2020 update: How China's 'Bat Woman' Hunted Down Viruses from SARS to the New Coronavirus | Scientific American

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That is a great article, it gives a good idea of what we are up against. The choices are to drastically reduce global travel and trade, put billions into research on viruses to include the development of medications and vaccines against strains that have not escaped yet, or just deal with COVID-19 events on a regular basis. I choose door number 2.

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Or we could have a worldwide epidemiology team with experts pre-located in likely hotspots, looking for signs of the problem and ready to sound the alarm early, when the exponential growth curve is easily squished. Oh wait, Obama did stand up that team. It was disbanded in 2017 to liberate funds for Wall™.

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So you’re saying the problem is that the wall is too open, and must have another layer added to stop virus particles from entering - got it. Of course, to do this we’re going to have to divert even more funding from non-essential government spending, like on virus research, social security, Medicare and Medicaid, in fact let’s just ban any spending on Obamacare all together until this whole wall thing is sorted out. Life, as in Volkswagens, one thing at a time…