[konstmonst]

Looks like China unintentionally found a way to damage the west pretty good. I wounder what will happen with the next Virus for the far east. I wounder if we will we learn from this and what long term changes our society will keep. It amazes me that many people wait for COVID to end, but don't understand, that it will never go away completely.

[pmoriarty]

It's more a case of humans not respecting animals, animal habitat, and the environment, and modern society not taking public health seriously enough.

It's pretty much the whole world that got screwed by this, and China itself hasn't exactly escaped unscathed.

[konstmonst]

I disagree. I think this could only happen in a place where they don't value human life and have a concept of "face" that is more important than people's lives, and where they don't give a flying f. about people in other countries. They also have CCP party members talking officially about how great it is that so many westerners died: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QI2_Qz_kdRY

If CCP handled the Virus at the start of it quickly and not lied to the last minute, then the virus would have been contained. I think China's CCP is very much responsible for a lot of dead people all over the world, but I understand that not everyone shares this opinion. I mean on the other hand the west didn't take this seriously and the good thing is that the virus is not that deadly and we hopefully be ready for the next one. As a foreigner I see: 9/11 in USA -> USA invades Afganistan. Wuhan Virus -> USA doesn't seem to care, even if more people died, some even don't believe it exists(please fix your education system) I mean as a CCP member I would think: ok now lets make another virus with long incubation and more deadly and let it loose somewhere in the western country or in Taiwan and then we invite ourselves there as a peace protectors...

I think we have to make Chinese people care about their government and we can do it buy using Sanctions so that CCP will lose money and chinese people will stop spewing nationalistic bullshit start caring about economy and by extension how the government does things.

[ardy42]

> It's pretty much the whole world that got screwed by this, and China itself hasn't exactly escaped unscathed.

But authoritarian China has done far, far better than most of the rest of the world (and especially better than the US, the supposed standard-bearer of liberty and freedom). If you actually care about liberty, one of your priorities should be making sure it actually performs better than the alternatives. Acting foolishly and using liberty as an excuse just soils the reputation of the latter. If that pattern continues, I expect liberty will end up on the retreat worldwide.

I'm not so sure the cold war would have turned out the way it did, if the USSR, for all its oppression, managed to consistently provide comparable or superior material living standards to its citizens. It certainly wouldn't have had such a problem with defectors.

[emerged]

I don’t mean to pile on China, but these things are a product of statistics. If you have a very large number of people culturally treating animals a certain way, the odds become high you’ll occasionally produce a virus like this.

It isn’t a problem only applicable to China, but the scale of the problem there dwarves most of the rest of the planet and ultimately needs to be addressed one way or another.