| >PRC already entertained WHO investigation. That's enough. Entertained? Hardly. But if there is one thing China does well it's manipulating others to partake in or at least not dispute their highly effective propaganda machine. The WHO is at the mercy of the PRC for access, and PRC knows that and has exploited it to their advantage from the very beginning, from changing long held naming conventions, to delaying access, to altering messaging so it falls in line with PRC's narrative. >Now go validate PRC conspiracy theory that it was a leak from Fort Detrick, which is just as valid, knowing full well there's about zero chance US would open Fort Detrick to international scrutiny. How is it just a valid? The virus was discovered in Wuhan, not near Fort Detrick. China denied the outbreak was occurring and suppressed info on it for weeks and months, but now we're supposed to recognize their superb ability in identifying novel viruses? What good is early detection if it's a secret and only benefits locals? Why would they do that and keep international flights open if they suspected foreign origin and weren't taking actions consistent with containing an outbreak at its source? That's either incompetence or suppression/censorship or both, but it in no way evidence of ability to identify early or respond quickly and effectively. |
>How is it just a valid? The virus was discovered in Wuhan, not near Fort Detrick.
The virus was _identified_ in Wuhan, does not mean originate there. PRC lab leak conspiracy is Fort Detrick leak + Wuhan military game spread. Again, it's PRC conspiracy but holds equivalent validity in terms of discourse power if CCP wants to exploit to it counter pressure WHO to access Detrick for investigation.
>China denied the outbreak
No PRC notified WHO of novel corona virus a few weeks after first cluster was discovered. It was praised as extremely expedient at the time.
> keep international flights open
Because it's expatriation flights. PRC is not going to lock foreign nationals in China, countries have right to recall their citizens. And inbound flights had actual competent quarantine setup, ergo PRC could maintain covid0 whereas most places that did security theatre temperature checks could not.
> That's either incompetence or suppression/censorship or both, but it in no way evidence of ability to identify early or respond quickly and effectively.
Identifying within weeks and responding with some incompetence/censorship/corruption is still overwhelmingly better than what most developed countries did with multi months heads up after Hubei lockdown. Despite how they topped the pandemic response index. Incompetence is relative and the fact is, places with high interconnectivity with PRC like Korea, Japan, TW, Singapore, Australia etc all managed to suppress covid pre omicron based on info provided by PRC and competent epidemiological interventions. And their import case statistics show PRC never exported that much covid cases post Hubei lockdown. It was completely manageable, whereas most of their import cases came from EU/NA.
Point is, lab leak could very well be true, but there's plenty of datapoints for history to be rewritten in PRC favor once/if geopolitics cool down, ergo it's in PRC interests to wait. At then end of the day, covid origin is going to be determined more by propaganda, less science.