[zpeti]

If there aren’t ever any consequences to making huge mistakes that kill millions of people, what are the incentives in the future to not do it again?

The CCP knowingly hid information about infections. This whole thing could have been contained in China with the right information at the right time. If it was a lab accident that could be avoided in the future too with better protocols.

I’m baffled that after millions have died some people just think we should let this go. Would you let it go if the us government accidentally killed millions of people in a nuke test or a chemical spill or any other accident of the same magnitude?

[notacoward]

The problem is that even with an investigation there will be no consequences. For one thing, too much evidence has already been lost. Whether that is deliberate or due to mere passage of time doesn't matter; either way, we'll barely be more certain after an investigation than before. For another, even if we were absolutely certain, geopolitical concerns would preclude any real repercussions. Again, whether that's realpolitik or corruption/collusion doesn't matter; either way, anyone who does get punished will surely be a scapegoat while the real culprits walk free.

The only thing an investigation at this point will do is waste time and money and divert experts from more useful tasks (like finding the next potentially catastrophic pathogen). I believe that demands for one should be considered purely performative. The only thing they achieve is to declare allegiance to one group and drum up discrimination against another.

[copperx]

Let go of what? It's pretty much impossible to prove COVID was an accidental lab leak, unless there's a huge smoking gun. Even if there was a proof, what would be the point of revenge? Did any country take revenge for Chernobyl?

[epicureanideal]

It seems like COVID has caused much more global damage than Chernobyl. The USSR also suffered a high percentage of the total damage, whereas China has suffered somewhat proportionally but not say 80-90% of the total damage.

[eurasiantiger]

You are right; in light of available circumstantial evidence such as the instatement of an army bioweapons commander in WIV and the deletion of their sample database, it would seem much more likely that it was an intentional lab leak.

[pedalpete]

> The CCP knowingly hid information about infections. This whole thing could have been contained in China with the right information at the right time.

This can and should be investigated and dealt with on it's own, irrelevant to if the source was a lab or natural causes.

My theory has always been that if you look at what was happening with China on a world stage at the time of the outbreak, HK protests, building military bases on atolls, Uyghur Camps, perhaps more. China was in a pretty bad place.

Then along comes this virus, and I'm sure they were like "oh crap, lets not bring any more attention to ourselves, maybe this will all just go away". Of course, it didn't. It was 100x worse than they probably imagined.

CCP screwed up massively. Was the screw up in a lab or not is secondary. They had the opportunity to stop it, but they didn't. That's the breakdown that needs to be discussed. I don't think that is a breakdown that is as politically charged or questionable.

[yorwba]

> The CCP knowingly hid information about infections. This whole thing could have been contained in China with the right information at the right time.

Plenty of CCP members have already been punished for their failure to contain the virus. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/11/china-fires-tw...

Maybe they weren't really the ones responsible. But if someone is powerful enough to avoid the CCP-internal punishment and have others take the blame, they're not going to let themselves be inconvenienced by foreign investigators.