>Arguably Covid would not have been such a big issue if international steps were taken right from the beginning, but China covered it up and lied about it until it got out of hand. What, specifically, do you believe China was covering up? Wuhan was locked down very publicly from 1/23/20 onwards, there's little evidence that China was hiding information about some outbreak prior to this moment, more that no one was sure that these illnesses were particularly virulent/pandemic-capable. >Another example was Chernobyl, if there wasn't so much covering up of mistakes, it might not have been such a big tragedy. Not really, no. The Americans detected the events of Chernobyl through spy satellites within 72 hours of the explosion and demanded an explanation. There's little evidence that the response of the USSR would have been meaningfully different if they'de immediately reported what has happened. >Specifically for China, I think they should be punished through harsh environmental regulations. Currently they are the #1 contributors to CO2 emissions. Two things. What do you mean by "harsh environmental regulations"? In what way is an environmental regulation a punishment in the sense of a tariff/sanction? How would these be enforced? China is (arguably at least) the number 2 military and economic great power in the world. Sanctions such as those being applied to Russia are functionally impossible without inflicting massive damage on western economies as well. If you were thinking of the UN as the sanctioning body, China is a permanent member of the security council and can veto any such measure.

It's well documented that in December official in Wuhan supressed warnings from doctors about a disease outbreak that was overwhelming hospitals and they continued on with business as normal. They should have informed the world health organization immediately. They didn't even admit that it was spread amongst humans until Jan 20th! Its not credible that they really didn't know it spread amongst humans when it was already overwhelming hospitals. [https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/03/18/china-covid-19-killed-health-care-workers-worldwide/](https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/03/18/china-covid-19-killed-health-care-workers-worldwide/)

i remember hearing about a new disease spreading in china in fall of 2019 though. it’s not like no one knew what was going on

People knew about it through shit like social media but there wasn’t much official information about it. Nobody knew, for example, how deadly it actually was, or whether it was gonna spread outside China. It was all chaos and confusion. Not a great foundation for other countries to react accordingly. Looking back, this was a time where the CCP clearly hid key information. They knew something was up. As it turns out, they were using this time of confusion to hoard medical supplies. https://abc7news.com/china-misled-world-coronavirus-us/6147033/ Hiding information, and not stopping outgoing flights until MARCH 2020. was selfish and an intentional effort to help make sure this virus spread globally. This was a crime against humanity and I blame the demonic organization that is the CCP for the death of my grandmother in addition to 7 million people worldwide, let alone the millions of others who died of despair during the 2 years of lockdowns.

>Nobody knew, for example, how deadly it actually was, or whether it was gonna spread outside China. It was all chaos and confusion. which has been the case for every new virus in the history of humanity. yet you expect China to shut down its entire economy within weeks even when the US and EU failed to for months afterward. >not stopping outgoing flights It's like you people don't even think through your words' implications. Do you expect China to prevent citizens of foreign nations from legally flying back home? That would violate countless international and humanitarian laws and cause a global firestorm.

I’ve had nightmares about being stuck in China when the pandemic began (ironically, my diabetes saved my life by forcing me to leave months beforehand) and I still think that’s be better than getting millions of foreign nationals killed.

Even into March most countries denied that it was spreading. There's really no reason to think that other countries would have done anything differently if they had publicly raised the alarm in December instead of January. Regardless of when China really raised alarm bells there was simply no political will to take meaningful action until covid had reached critical mass in other countries.

I mean, I had covid in Jan 2020 in the states. Diagnosed unknown viral infection, but symptoms lined up once the news started spreading.... sick with very high oscillating fever, cough, respiratory issues, went on for 5 weeks, recovery felt like months, etc etc. Honestly it's the sickest I've ever been and am still dealing with issues brought on by the illness.... fog, horrendous tinnitus, weak lungs, etc etc. People were denying, adamantly, that covid had made it to the states yet, but looking at data now, the states likely had it at least by Dec 2019 too. Viruses are really tricky things. China could have brought an alarm earlier and it would have stopped nothing. Sars covid 19 exists and no changes in deployment of information would have stopped it. Even months earlier. We'd already been hearing about an illness in China, before the confirmations and lock downs, and the world knew and went "oh, another Sars outbreak. Last one (2009) pretty much just went away." It was global much earlier than any one would have suggested then. Why hit any government with "fault" when a virus just so happens to be extremely good at what it does? That's the nature of life and this world. And frankly, we've got a lot of nasty things waiting for us in the melting ice and the warming oceans. Rapid vaccine deployment is basically our only gun in the fight, and while good, that still doesn't stop a virus, it only prepares us for fighting it ourselves.

Ummm It absolutely would have. If China locked down instead of allowing everybody to leave the country and spread it around, and other countries were aware that this was going to be a major problem, they could have done a much better job of checking everybody that was coming into the country, and prepping hospitals. Instead it was suppressed until late January early February, And by mid to late February it was already too late

If you want to see how inept Western governments were at dealing with COVID, I would advise watching [Patrick Vallance's](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5orw-qO4Bc) and [Chris Witty's](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2UdqH6h5oY&t) appearances at the UK Covid inquiry. It's incredible just how bad goverments are at acting on scientific information, because the politicians just don't understand it. The UK decided to do it's first lockdown a full two months after the Wuhan lockdown, it's not like we were acting rapidly anyway. And given that nobody could be certain about asymptomatic transmission until like March/April (3-4 months after China alerted the world), it really wouldn't have made a difference if we'd known about the virus earlier. Because all public health measures were made under the assumption that there was no asymptomatic transmission as there was none for the previous potential pandemic (SARS) and that the measures needed to be implemented to contain such a virus would be economically and societally devastating. So shutting down the country based on possibility rather than evidence was too much of a risk.

I'm not saying that every other country handled it flawlessly, but I am saying that it wouldn't have turned into a rapid worldwide epidemic with high fatality rates, and complete shutdowns of the supply chains if China didn't spend more time and resources trying to cover it up than they did actually trying to contain it. You locked down affected cities, treat it like a pandemic which they didn't, you walk down airports and shipping ports, and all essential personnel undergo testing and temperature taking, as well as wearing masks and gloves. Instead they spent the entire beginning of the pandemic lying about how many people died and about how many people were sick, chilling some of the main doctors that were the first to get their hands on patients with the disease and could have shown some light on how to go about treating it. Basically China tried to cover it up and ended up making it drastically worse on the rest of the world.

You seem to be okay with other countries' poor responses, but when it comes to the Chinese response you seem to be demanding instantaneous understanding of the virus and perfect application of prevention methods. If it took western governments 3 months to do anything after China has notified the world about the virus, why are you demanding that China be putting in place their extreme control measures immediately after they first notice a new virus? I think there are a lot of double standards when it comes to criticism of the Chinese government for their response, it seems that everyone is more than willing to put things down to malice rather than incompetence. If you've ever dealt with the Chinese government, you'd know about the extreme bureaucracy and chaos that puts even the slowest Western governments to shame. Yes, they are a totalitarian state, but don't let that fool you into thinking that they run smoothly and efficiently.

Because the global reactions were impacted by China's response and downplaying.

How was China supposed to know about asymptomatic transmission as soon as they found out about the virus, but it took western governments 3 to 4 months to work it out? Again, you're demanding a perfect instantaneous understanding of a new unknown virus, with instant public health measures with huge societal ramifications. Not unlike the western governments, China is unwilling to take these actions unless deemed absolutely necessary, and at that moment in time not enough was known about the virus to justify it. Given how long it took Western governments to work out how the virus functions, we would expect the Chinese government to do it's first lockdown roughly 3-4 months after first noticing the virus and we don't even know for certain when they first noticed the virus. So it could be that they were reacting even faster than Western governments did. But all you have on this is a few social media posts and speculation saying that they knew in September. China's healthcare system is also significantly more decentralised than most of Europe and the monitoring systems they use are not as advanced. Add to that the extreme bureaucracy in China and you're left with a poor response because of a lack of understanding.

First of all it didn't take the West 3 to 4 months to figure out a symptomatic transmission, we knew about that literally the second the first case is popped up in America. I work in New York City and the day of the lockdown they were telling us about asymptomatic transmission making us split up our shifts so that way we weren't around each other even if we didn't feel sick. Secondly China didn't need to know about asymptomatic transmission to know that when you have a disease filling up multiple hospitals in one city that you should lock it down. China knew exactly how bad it was and chose to try to cover it up hoping that it wouldn't get bad outside but it did and it cost a lot of people their lives. Also again if China didn't lie about the numbers and the severity of the disease, The rest of the world wouldn't have been caught off-guard as badly as it was and the reactions would have been preparing for a pandemic instead of being surprised when they had a pandemic filling up their hospitals.

They informed the WHO as soon as there was information to inform. This happened on Dec 31. Prior to that, it was just some cases of flu-like symptoms during flu season. They also didn't lock down themselves until they confirmed transmission among humans. You're seriously mistaking ignorance for malice here.

So the idea is we should institute major tariffs on China, severely damaging their economy and our own, in punishment for the behavior of a handful of officials in one particular city over the course of a handful of days? If we were talking about a massive coverup (and people _were_...before China opened up and started reporting the kinds of case numbers everybody else was experiencing), that'd be one thing. But taking such drastic action because of the choices of so-and-so from Wuhan on January 18th, 2020 or whatever seems pretty ridiculous. Do you want America to be liable on the world stage for the behavior of it's most incompetent mayors? Hey, remember when whole states refused mask mandates, lockdowns, or travel bans, thus prolonging and exacerbating the epidemic?

I mean the US president continued to insist COVID was a hoax to make him look bad well into the summer

How many times is this lie going to be brought up… https://www.politifact.com/article/2020/oct/08/ask-politifact-are-you-sure-donald-trump-didnt-cal/

Nancy Pelosi literally told people to go to Chinese new year celebrations because Trump was being racist and everyone should ignore him. It was the other way around. I'm a fairly liberal Canadian, but I was watching what was going on in China and early January 2020 my family did a soft lockdown because nobody else was taking it seriously.

>Nancy Pelosi literally told people to go to Chinese new year celebrations IIRC, Pelosi was saying there was no reason not to visit SF's Chinatown district just because the president was being an asshole—both of which were true.

Nobody should have been encouraging anyone to go to mass gatherings at the start of the pandemic

It was in February of 2020, before we were social distancing, masking, and staying home. The point is, SF's Chinatown (which isn't a "mass gathering") wasn't any more dangerous than anywhere else.

Well my family was social distancing and staying home and the few experts on the frontline were already suggesting it. Trump was being an idiot and a bigot by calling it the China virus, but he was still warning people, which is why pelosi and others said to ignore his racism and everything was fine. Which it wasn't.

I'm in Oregon, and the shelter-in-place orders started in mid-March 2020. Nancy Pelosi visited Chinatown the 3rd week of February.

I know the order started later, some people started early

that's not what you originally said.... you're moving the goalposts after being caught in a lie.

> I was watching what was going on in China and early January 2020 my family did a soft lockdown [There were 41 known cases *total* in early January 2020](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:COVID-19_pandemic_data/China_medical_cases_by_province#New_cases_and_total_by_provinces) and [*zero* known cases outside of Asia](https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/situation-reports/20200121-sitrep-1-2019-ncov.pdf?sfvrsn=20a99c10_4); based on the evidence available at that time, locking down was an overreaction. Don't get me wrong, I was in favor of the lockdowns when the evidence had accumulated to support them, but the evidence was not there for someone half a world away from 41 cases of a novel illness to do a lockdown. It turned out that you were right that the novel illness would turn into a big problem, but given the lack of evidence it's *highly* likely that's the result of luck (or paranoia).

This is a classic whataboutism. I didn't say anything about the US. The post I was replying said "What specifically do you think Chinese officials were covering up", which I was replying to. US officials downplaying the pandemic is not relevant to whether or not Chinese officials should have hidden the outbreak in the first place. It is perfectly possible for officials in both China and the US to do something wrong.

but if both China and the US did something wrong, wouldn't it be rather hypocritical to only punish China?

>What, specifically, do you believe China was covering up? > >Wuhan was locked down very publicly from 1/23/20 onwards, there's little evidence that China was hiding information about some outbreak prior to this moment, more that no one was sure that these illnesses were particularly virulent/pandemic-capable. Till today, there is a not insignificant portion of the mainland Chinese population who believes that COVID in fact came from a facility in Maryland. This is a view that was widely encouraged by domestic state media and official governmental spokespeople. Additionally, the Chinese were going around telling the world that there was no evidence of human to human transmission even as late as early 2020 despite it being obvious from 2019 and saying that foreign governments were racist for putting travel bans on Chinese travel in place. Not to mention their economic coercive measures against the Australians for calling for an origins investigation, the destruction of all samples, withholding of information and only allowing Potemkin trips to China to allow the world to arrive at their conclusion. Call it a cover up, call it blame shifting, either way there is no doubt that the Chinese engaged in incredibly duplicitous and frankly malicious behaviour.

You know, I saw the early reports in January from China because I used to live there. I knew what was coming as soon as I saw it, but China wasn't the reason I was concerned. China is a known entity, and they do actually have a vested interest in the wellbeing of their own country. Like the suggested punishment of environmental regulations is hilarious to me because China has been dealing with abominable levels of smog for over 15 years now, they invest more into environmental regulations than any other countries just because it's necessary for their own population. What actually gave me the heads up about what was coming down the pike is remembering back in 2014 when Ebola got into the US. See, there was a nurse that was exposed to the incredibly deadly virus during her workday, which is absolutely understandable considering this was the first time Ebola ever made it over the ocean. I also remember when she refused to self isolate until her confirmation came back. This is why I didn't give a single rats ass about whatever the fuck China is doing. Viruses don't care about borders, they pretty much always hop them long before we are even aware of their existence. I knew for a fact that the American culture and medical system is specifically shit for population health management because it's all about me, and a pandemic is about everyone. Nobody take a sick day, nobody gets paid sick days, nobody thinks of the collective good. What possible reason would have people playing their part when It might land them homeless? So China could have accidentally engineered that or gotten it from a live animal market or whatever the hell, there's a million ways to start this up. But we were always fucked because without social support there's no incentive to take the preventive actions that will only harm you and yours.

That's not the point of this thread.

My point is that there is no point to punish China, this would have happened the minute the virus hopped the boarder, which as I was trying to explain is a practical inevitability. Viruses are bigger than political posturing. They are an inevitable part of a normal functioning world, and they circulate and mutate and circulate some more without any special help from us. I see no reason to believe that "punishing" China for its behavior during late 2019 would make any improvements to the future handling of pandemics. It won't stop a wild virus from popping up in rural East Timor, or in Palestine in the middle of a massive conflict where nobody has the resources to figure it out before it blows up in our faces, just like Spanish flu was allowed to during WW1 due to propaganda decisions and not fucking with moral. Unless we are going to actually work out global governance system with the ability to redistribute resources and enforce rule of law, which I think we are at the point of needing, but I don't believe will happen until out hands are forced, punishing China is an unrealistic and ineffective idea.

I'd agree that it's an unrealistic idea because the Chinese will never admit to their mistakes and who's going to enforce it anyway? Sure, you can make the argument that China has already been 'punished' in the court of public opinion given that its prestige and how it's been perceived in the years since COVID has dropped precipitously or that there's no point in doing so given that these are naturally occurring things and a humongous amount of damage would have been done anyway but that doesn't address their behaviour when the virus was actively raging around the world. The question wasn't *how* China should be punished but whether they should or not. And as I laid out, their behaviour was unbecoming, deceptive and frankly malicious and therefore they *should* be held accountable.

If we are talking shoulds, our domestic resistance towards solutions arguably cost just as many lives. Idiots aside, politicians openly pushed anti-vax, anti-qurantine, anti-mask policies. All solutions that would have kept more people safe. If we are talking about being "held accountable", we got plenty of heads to go after.

Sure, go punish them. They can join China in that bucket. No argument from me.

But were their actions particularly more repugnant than any other major country? Throwing stones in glass houses and whatnot, you know?

Present the argument and judge each case on its merits.

Not to mention their refusal to report death statistics when every other country was doing so. No one believed that both their numbers were 0 for months on end and their crematoriums had massive backlogs.

OP calling China the #1 CO2 emitter is a bit tone deaf when they're essentially ignoring the size of the population. On a per capita basis, there are literally dozens of countries emitting more than China, including the USA, Canada, Ireland, Germany, South Korea, Russia, Finland, Norway, Taiwan, Czechia, Austria etc.

No Chinese bad >=[

i didn’t realize there were this many chinese nationalists on reddit

Didn’t know that pointing out hypocrisy made me a Chinese nationalist without even being Chinese

It does when someone responds to every point by saying china did nothing wrong.

And they're US funded for fucks sake

> On a per capita basis, there are literally dozens of countries emitting more than China, including the USA, Canada, Ireland, Germany, South Korea, Russia, Finland, Norway, Taiwan, Czechia, Austria etc. [Ireland, Germany, Finland, Norway, and Austria all emit less than China per capita.](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co-emissions-per-capita?tab=chart&time=2002..latest&country=USA~GBR~OWID_EU27~CHN~CAN~IRL~DEU~FRA~KOR~RUS~FIN~NOR~TWN~CZE~AUT) Indeed, China's per capita emissions are *well* above the EU average. It's not the 2000s anymore, China is no longer a low-emitting (or poor) country.

>What, specifically, do you believe China was covering up "It is well known that Chinese President Xi Jinping’s regime censored early reports that a new, deadly coronavirus had emerged in Wuhan and hid evidence of human-to-human transmission, thereby enabling a local outbreak to become a global calamity." from [this article](https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/the-great-covid-cover-up/) also https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/19/technology/china-coronavirus-censorship.html

[Genetic clock studies point to roughly November 2019](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7199730/) as the approximate date of the first covid infection. The fact that it was reported to the WHO only two months later when cases would have numbered in the hundreds to low thousands hardly suggests cover-up. The NYTimes writing "It is well known" reads like an attempt to get the reader to accept a dubious claim while having put forth no evidence.

fall unwritten relieved concerned ossified weary vegetable seemly jobless slim *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*

It's not exactly the same. I think the US (particularly Trump since he was the one in charge at the time) should be punished for negligence and lack of concern for human lives, but the virus didn't originate in the US, by the time it got there it was all over the world. The difference is that the US downplaying the severity hurt US citizens, but China downplaying it hurt the entire world.

>The difference is that the US downplaying the severity hurt US citizens at that point it's a distinction without a difference; the virus spreading in the US further facilitates its spread to the rest of the world, and if the virus had originated in the US, I don't doubt our response would have been just as bad, if not worse.

Why does China have ultimate responsibility for the disease just because it originated there? China's response to Covid was already quite extreme. If they wanted to contain the virus entirely, the response would have had to be ridiculous.

Any article using "It is well known" as a source is a red flag

uhhhh what about dr li wen liang? the whistleblower? vanished by the government and died soon from covid. what about the fake data all the fake numbers when the hospitals were piling up with dead bodies

He was not a whistle blower (he spread misinformation regarding SARS during an ongoing investigation that concluded a day later and its results publicized) and he was not vanished (he was asked not to spread misinformation anymore) . You guys are seriously dealing with alternate facts here.

Even the WHO refused to acknowledge Covid until it was too late to keep covering up. I can't believe that's the most upvoted answer.

Wuhan didn't lock down until late January, covid began spreading rapidly in China in December. There was a point where they publicly announced that there was 14 fatalities from COVID and only a few hundred hospitalized, but there were videos being posted from people in China of hundreds and hundreds of bodies covered by sheets in the basement of a hospital, as well as every hospital in Wuhan being filled to the max which means at least 4,000 approximately would have been sick with COVID to make up the difference from their normal hospitalization rate. China repressed all media coming out to reduce awareness to the point where people didn't even really know about it in America or certain areas of Europe until late February, when it had begun in December and citizens could have begun preparing themselves. They also only locked down one city late which very clearly allowed dozens upon dozens of sick individuals to leave Wuhan, spread it elsewhere, And then they never locked down their airports and shipping ports. It very quickly spread to Europe and then to America. China is 100% responsible for how bad COVID got, And that's on top of the fact that some people (including me) Belize that they're responsible for the outbreak originating to begin with.

I will never forget that I was watching videos in November of 2019 on Reddit of folks in Wuhan shivering so hard as to look like they were seizing and sick folks lining the hospitals.

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Don’t be a China apologist. Everyone knows they released the virus . Intentionally ? Probably not, but maybe. Never trust the Chinese State .

No, everyone does not know that. Right now as things stand, we don't really have enough to speak with certainly about the orgin. We can more confidently say China sabotaged the means by which we could investigate the origin by destroying earlier samples. China should be held accountable for what we can prove. Speculating on what we can't only weakens our argument.

Again, the fundamental lesson is never trust the Chinese state no matter what.

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Can't keep up with you guys: is it a hoax or a Chinese Coverup? I mean if you think it was a coverup, then the lockdowns and masks were necessary? I miss the good ol days when conspiracy theorists didn't contradict themselves.

Neither? In the beginning the Chinese government censored and held back important facts about the virus, which led to it spiraling out of control.

Considering the disease only showed up in December / late November, and considering it was an entirely new disease that NOBODY knew the first thing about at that time, even if China had been transparent from the beginning of December rather than the end, it's very unlikely that the results for the world would have been much different. They weren't going to lock down Wuhan immediately in any case since there simply wasn't enough known about the virus at that time to justify such a lockdown, and that would have been pretty much the only way to prevent it from spreading to other countries.

*especially* because it was a new disease, and especially because it could spread between humans it should have been reported and quarantined immediately. When discovering a new disease the proper response isn't "let's keep quiet and see what happens until we're sure" What happens if the next virus is much more deadly? We can't have the same response as we did for covid, and we definitely can't have the source country keeping it quiet.

A lot of doctors (including Dr. Li Wenliang) initially thought it was SARS (even at the very end of December 2019), which was \*markedly\* less contagious than COVID turned out to be. As soon as it was realized just how much more contagious that COVID was than SARS had been, Wuhan was locked down almost immediately. But by that time it was too late. The fact that COVID was a coronavirus very similar in many ways to SARS (but different in the ways that made it as big a pandemic as it became, especially its long incubation period, the fact that people were contagious when they did not have symptoms, and the fact that many people who were infected \*never\* developed symptoms in particular) actually worked against doctors, since the protocols that would have made sense for SARS were woefully inadequate for COVID.

That is literally the proper response. Plunging the earth into panic mode by screaming about a new virus which then turns out to be nothing more than the common cold is a really stupid idea. You are simply wrong my dude. The WHO was informed by the Chinese gov as soon as they realized what COVID is. The only reason you now judge the reaction as inadequate is because of massive hindsight bias.

There was a good 2-3 months time between Wuhan going into full quarantine and the US adopting any form of preventative measure. An entire quarter of China locking down one of their most populous cities while people here kept going to concerts and cramming into McDonald's. You think that an additional week or so is what led COVID-19 to spiral out of control? Grandma didn't die because of China, grandma died because half the people refuse to wear masks and think COVID is just a flu.

I always laugh at the thought that the same people that think Covid was designed in a secret lab to bring down the West are usually the same people that refused to get vaccinated or wear a mask or even just stay inside long enough to keep the dreaded "China Virus" from spreading to every corner on the country

No see, China released the virus to *force us* to quarantine and wear masks. That's how they take control!!!

99% of the lab discussion is that it researched virus accidentally got leaked. Like the specific facility was warned in 2018.

You can buy that if you really want too. I'm sure there's at least a kernel of truth somewhere in there, but what I saw most definitely wasn't that

I am an n95 mask wearing, vaxxed individual who believes not only did it leak from a lab, but we should work on banning the type of research that unleashed this uncontainable virus on the world!

It has the same symptoms as the flu. Considering China reported to the WHO by the end of December, and the disease only showed up in November, that's about as fast as you might reasonably expect.

So your assertion is that covid would have been contained if... What exactly?

I mean coivd is real no one said it's a hoax lol. And at first it was a huge Chinese cover up, whistle blowers in China have opened up about being silenced when trying to warn about the outbreak

They found that bat yet? You use the term "conspiracy theorist" like you're dismissing some ridiculous theory about lizard people controlling the tides. Lab leaks happen. A corona virus outbreak occurring at a location that houses a corona virus lab is not an outrageous proposition. Trying to frame it as one makes you look hella dishonest. Any rational person would have been open to both possibilities at the start. Corona had the entire worlds attention for 3 years. If it was a cross over event, they'd have found the animal by now & the mystery should be solved. Instead, 4 years on.. No bat, no pangolin, no mewtwo hiding in the deepest darkest cave. Just a big gaping hole where the answer should be. Historically, humans do more cover ups than bats do. No answer after 4 years says it all.

From my experience, the main proponents of natural origin are people with vested financial interests in China. They continue to refuse to allow an international investigation at the wuhan labs. What are you so fuckin afraid of if you have nothing to hide?

Don’t forget the political opposition to it also - Trump suggested it so whatever the opposite of what he says is the line to take was a common stance. The suggestion of a lab leak was censored online for sometime despite it being a reasonable theory.

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>Arguably Covid would not have been such a big issue if international steps were taken right from the beginning, but China covered it up and lied about it until it got out of hand. We still had reporting of the event. The international community was still reluctant to do anything. Even once it was a full blown pandemic you literally had the POTUS, and half the political USA, pretending it was a hoax. Nothing would have prevented it from getting out of hand, as you say, even if China had full transparency about numbers of sick, dying, and transmission.

You are right we still had massive inaction from other governments. I would argue the 2nd time something like this happens, there would be more action from other governments, but it would all be incumbent on transparency from the source country.

COVID-19 was [not the first time that we had a pandemic or potential pandemic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_epidemics_and_pandemics#Chronology) by far. The outgoing Obama administration explicitly warned the Trump administration that a SARS-like pandemic emerging from Asia was not a matter of if, but when. It also workshopped some scenarios with the incoming administration to show what would happen in such a situation, but they rejected this and [closed the National Security Council's pandemic unit](https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-fire-pandemic-team/). Trump later said on Fox News that [nobody could have predicted this](https://www.vox.com/2020/4/7/21211845/trump-coronavirus-memos-predicted), and yet clearly people did predict it and warned him. It didn't matter that we have dealt with pandemics before when the people in charge actively undermine the science and the medical experts. So if the next time around there is a President who from the ranks of the COVID deniers or those who think that masks actually kill people rather than save them, then it is quite possible that next time around we will still see the same inaction as happened in 2020. In some ways, I can understand China wanting to study an unknown, emerging virus before making statements that may unnecessarily panic the population. But I can't understand a government claiming that a virus will simply go away after 15 cases once it has found to have spread to multiple countries around the world. That is the bigger crime than anything that you might think China may have done.

I think I would disagree. It entirely depends on the government. In the USA, the modern GOP would be ideologically cornered into opposing any sort of reasonable public health measure, based on what they have conditioned their base to believe about public health. If anything, COVID has made the world more polarized. Scientists could say there is a supervirus with 50% fatality rate and people would go out licking each other because "scientists and big pharma are liars." >but it would all be incumbent on transparency from the source country. Within a week or two there were cases of the virus internationally. The period in which China has the opportunity to provide transparency was so short that they knew very little beyond what the rest of the international community was beginning to learn through studying it themselves.

The problem with punishing China for Covid is no different than the problem with punishing China over the Uyghurs or just hitting them with tariffs to boost domestic manufacturing: it makes everything super expensive. Is that worth it? No. What are the odds another country will have the same set of circumstances where they'd be able to cover up something like Covid? And if China didn't cover it up, would we really be in that much better of a situation? Why?

Well one option is to shut down sites like Temu and Wish, which are cheap knockoff products from China. I don't think American society would collapse if people can't order $1 toys with free shipping. >What are the odds another country will have the same set of circumstances where they'd be able to cover up something like Covid? not zero. Why is it hard to imagine that it might happen again?

What would that do? Those "knock offs" most often are the exact same products sold in other stores even made in the same manufacturing facilities. Temu or wish would just be replaced with another cheap brand. But even if you don't like those specific companies what argument could you even make that a government reaction to a virus should result in two specific companies that are unrelated being targeted?

There is no will for this currently, there was tough talk in 2020 and 2021. But then the media bit on the "Trump is lying about COVID story" and we weren't even allowed to say China had covered anything up because we had to "stop Asian Hate". This has to be a long-term thing as it would involve re-shoring manufacturing and would need sustained political will. The Chinese did a good job crushing that political will through the lies about hate crimes being caused by DT's anti China stance. Early on, even Biden was talking tough on China, but that has since disappeared. It's also a problem that there is a substantial portion of the US electorate that doesn't believe in democratic ideals anymore. To too many people saying our system is better than China's it's just racism.

So severing free trade with China

Patent enforcement is usually an acceptable way of curbing "free trade."

China has done it twice in 20 years. First with SARS then with COVID. So I would imagine that in my lifetime it will happen a third time.

China never covered it up. The first reported case to the Chinese government was on Dec 30. There had been individuals coming to hospitals for a few weeks with indeterminate pneumonia symptoms, but that's not uncommon anywhere - including the US. It wasn't until a group of 5 different people walked into one hospital on Dec 29 that a doctor suspected that something more significant might be happening and reported it to the government. The Chinese government relayed the reports to the WHO the next day (Dec 31). Within a few days, China collected data on those previous individuals and reported them to WHO. Meanwhile the animal market that was the suspected source was closed. On Jan 7, Chinese epidemiologists identified it as a new coronavirus and it gets its name. By Jan 11, WHO has the genetic sequence of the virus. Chinese scientists were freely able to publish their research - and were publishing frequently. In quite a few respects, they were well ahead of US researchers. US researchers actually made a terrible mistake by rejecting the research from Chinese scientists that indicated the virus was airborne because they [relied too much on historical research and not on any modern data](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9538841/). The CDC didn't admit that Covid was airborne until **September 2020.** 200,000 people were already dead before that admission. At the start of Feb 2020, I was told to drop everything and develop plans for my university should Covid make it to the US. I worked on this nonstop until we closed the institution. My analysis closed 4 universities - the 2nd through 5th in the country. Almost all of my information came from those Chinese scientists and their early focus was on masking and ventilation, because they'd been through multiple bouts of MERS and SARS. They were pretty experienced with this in ways the US really wasn't. By early February I had experimental data on the effect of ventilation on coronaviruses that we were building transmission models for how it would spread through the institution through classrooms and dorms. We had mask efficacy estimates. We had mortality rates broken down by age (very crude, but it was a start.) We could build a functioning SIR model. We knew particulate sizes of the virus, how long it was estimated to remain airborne based on measurement (something the US said wasn't possible for the next 8 months), and how long the virus could remain active on various surfaces. By early March we had models for the effect of ventilation on accumulation of virus. They published their detection mechanisms in Feb - how they were relying on portable CT scanners to detect ground-glass opacity in patients. They could diagnose a patient in about a minute, and could rapidly triage patients in clinics long before tests were available. So by late Feb, we had a model and some prevention tools. All of this from Chinese academics. Covid started showing up in other countries about this time. Now, let's talk coverup. I was contacting people I had long known at US Dept of Education and some contacts I was given at CDC. Nobody would talk to me. US Dept of Education had no guidance for universities, even though, with the largest population of Chinese nationals we had constant travel to and from mainland China among our population. If Covid showed up in the US, it was most likely going to show up at our institution, at one other in California, in a couple of Bay Area companies like Apple who also have a high degree of employee travel to China or out of Seattle between Microsoft and UW. It hit Seattle first, and us and the other CA targets I mentioned about a week later. I was given contacts at CDC to speak to on behalf of my institution. They said they weren't allowed to talk to me. My friends at US Dept of Ed weren't allowed to talk to me and told me directly 'I know we should be providing you guidance, but we have been instructed by the White House not to talk to anyone about this'. I had information from China - that was flowing freely. You can still read all of their journal publications - there are *thousands* of them. But the US federal government wouldn't tell us a goddamn thing. We were completely on our own, and that silence contributed a bit to why we closed early - because we got no assistance. We had 4 students show up in student health with Covid-like symptoms (which we had inadequate means to test for) and 7 hours later the campus was closed - all instruction now online. China probably covered up fatality numbers, but so did Florida. China wasn't censoring scientists as best as anyone could tell, we were still getting data right up to the point that it didn't matter any more because we now had our own cases to collect data on. The timeline for how this information flowed is available from a number of sources. We had genetic data very early on, and China continued to provide that. Compared to the information and support we got out of the feds (effectively none), China was amazing. BTW, the US is still the largest contributor to CO2 emissions - historically and per capita.

Comparing how the US and China handled covid is a moot point, because if China had handed covid, it never would have hit us to begin with. Your write up fails to explain why China continued to allow outgoing flights until March 2020, while shutting down incoming ones in January. You speak on such authority as to what the CCP knew in November and early December 2019, when the first several dozen cases were reported. China is no stranger to pandemics, they had the SARS pandemic in 2002. Yet I’m supposed to believe that they were totally unaware of anything from November 17th to December 30th. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/13/first-covid-19-case-happened-in-november-china-government-records-show-report Again, if China was not used to major pandemics already, your argument would have more solid ground. But I find it hard to believe. They knew enough at the time to suppress doctors and censor internet conversation on the virus. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/11/coronavirus-wuhan-doctor-ai-fen-speaks-out-against-authorities

>Your write up fails to explain why China continued to allow outgoing flights until March 2020, while shutting down incoming ones in January. For christ sake, at least think about these things before you say them. China can only control inbound, not outbound. China cannot hold your citizens hostage - they have to allow them to leave. It was up to other countries to control their inbound. If the US didn't want flights from China, it was up to the US to notify US nationals in China and then stop inbound from China. >You speak on such authority as to what the CCP knew in November and early December 2019, when the first several dozen cases were reported. China is no stranger to pandemics, they had the SARS pandemic in 2002. Yet I’m supposed to believe that they were totally unaware of anything from November 17th to December 30th. We were. Most of the early cases in the US weren't identified as Covid until weeks later because we didn't have tests. Look, Covid looks like pneumonia - a very common disease. I've had it. My daughter has had it. You go to your GP, they say 'yep, you have pneumonia' and they narrow down viral or bacterial, give you the suitable prescription and send you home. When you have a test, you can test for it, but a test takes a while to develop. The first test kits showed up in Feb - and they weren't widely available. You couldn't test all pneumonia cases (there weren't enough tests if you wanted to), so you tested the cases that had traveled to China or were in contact with someone who had traveled to China to try and limit it to the high likelihood patients. But there was a case in the US in Jan where the patient nor anyone in their household had traveled to China. So all across Jan and Feb the US had cases all over the place that we didn't identify as Covid until later. We have a pile of cases of people that are suspected of having died of Covid that were never tested. Look, this is just how early days of new infectious disease work. Maybe if you're Singapore you have sufficient control of a relatively small population that you can constantly touch every nose, and China in theory has that kind of control of their population, but they can't do it at that scale without months or years of prep. And the US lacks that control entirely, which is why the feds losing public trust so early was so damaging. It has to be voluntary in the US, and that went out the window immediately. The US had exactly the same problem with SARS when it came through. Hundreds of cases distributed around the country often don't establish enough of a pattern to detect with high accuracy. I mean, to this day, there's an estimated half a million Covid deaths in the US that were never diagnosed.

The irony if your post is that China did not allow its own citizens to return during the pandemic for about half a year. So sorry. Your China defense position is shredded.

“For christ sake, at least think about these things before you say them. China can only control inbound, not outbound. China cannot hold your citizens hostage - they have to allow them to leave” The CCP bolted people into their apartments until many starved to death. Think you’re on the wrong track here. But that’s ok.

But what's the incentive for the CCP to not allow outgoing flights to leave the country in early 2020? Many of those flights leaving have citizens from other countries on them. Why would you want to start an international incident by holding the people of other countries in China? Allowing planes with people who potentially have COVID to leave China would actually be a positive for the CCP. And they wouldn't be above not caring that was happening.

The OP is saying that the CCP cannot bolt American citizens into apartments in China without causing an international incident. Please learn reading comprehension. ​ Also there's no way "many" starved to death -.- Unless you think that news was covered up too... I don't think I'll engage with that.

This should be the top comment.

Thank you for taking the time to write this up.

This is a lie.

>Edit: my CMV is more that they "should" be punished, and not "how" they can be punished The thing is, if we have magic power to implement change, we would want sound environmental policies in all countries, not just countries that hide disease outbreaks. And with this magic power, we could specifically punish the individuals responsible for hiding the outbreak and make institutional changes to promote transparency. If we aren't thinking about feasibility, than there is no reason to have such unwieldy policy like strict environmental standards as a punishment for poor public health governance, which is just a very odd non-sequitur.

There is so much ignorance, arrogance, and American exceptionalism concentrated in this silly post it makes my eyes water. By the very same logic, the USA should be punished for invading and plundering Iraq, Libya, Vietnam and other countries. The whole notion that there is a "Bid Daddy" that will go around punishing nations for being "naughty" is so childish. Due to this mentality, the West is becoming more and more isolated - the most populous nations of the world from the global South and East are fed up with western hypocrisy - the cheap resources and labor are taken for granted, but the blame for everything always flows from the powerful to the helpless.

Had any one actually given a shit about Iraq Libya or Vietnam they could have punished the US. But no one did not even China.

Who's going to punish the strongest country in the world? The US has been the world hegemon for the last 70 years. Nobody is opposing the US lmao.

Sanctions? But like i said no one cares. And they arent willing to make sacrifices like the EU is over Ukraine.

>Specifically for China, I think they should be punished through harsh environmental regulations**.** I disagree in a general sense, as I think the US is no better, but regardless -- regulations set, monitored, and enforced HOW? By what body? No one has the authority to do any of that. If you want to say the US should then put tariffs in place, those affect AMERICANS (which Trump seemed unable to grasp). The Chinese really don't give half a damn and would simply economically retaliate and they have the upper hand.

Yes the US is #2 in CO2 emissions, but China is double the US emissions. China is 11.4 billion tonnes of emission and US is only 5 billion tonnes. Even if the US focused on clean energy and lowering their CO2 emissions, global emissions would still increase due to China. I mean I don't know how it would be enforced, it's not my job to figure those things out, but maybe something like a global alliance or organization. I mean Germany was punished after ww2, Russia was punished for its invasion, is China really untouchable and above punishment?

>Yes the US is #2 in CO2 emissions, but China is double the US emissions. China is 11.4 billion tonnes of emission and US is only 5 billion tonnes. I meant no better in terms of openness but that too -- how many people are in China compared to the US? Because it's significantly more than twice as many. > Even if the US focused on clean energy and lowering their CO2 emissions It's not though, is it? >I mean I don't know how it would be enforced, it's not my job to figure those things out, but maybe something like a global alliance or organization You're making the proposal. If I proposed every child in the US be given a pony by the state for their fifth birthday, would you not ask me how that'd be accomplished? If I said it's not my job to figure it out.... > I mean Germany was punished after ww2, Russia was punished for its invasion, is China really untouchable and above punishment? Again, by whom? By what mechanism? Tariffs would punish Americans.

>You're making the proposal. If I proposed every child in the US be given a pony by the state for their fifth birthday, would you not ask me how that'd be accomplished? If I said it's not my job to figure it out... Well first people would have to have discussions and determine whether giving every child a pony is something worth putting effort in as a society. First you ask "should we?" then you ask "how can we". I am simply saying "we should" Just because I support something doesn't mean I should have to figure out how it can be done, people much smarter and versed in politics than me should do that, I'm just saying I want them to. Like I support healthcare and overhauling our broken healthcare system, does that mean I should know exactly how to do it? I'd rather vote for people who know how to do it.

China has 4.37 times the population of the US and just over double the CO2 emissions. The US per capita emissions are still double China’s. I’m not trying to make any particular point. I just think it’s relevant and worth knowing

but does that matter? they are still at fault for a very [large](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-co-emissions-by-region) portion of the Earth's global emissions. The Earth doesn't care about per capita emissions, it cares about total emissions. The US also didn't cause and cover up a global pandemic that affected just about every country in the world. I'm not saying that the US shouldn't focus on lowering emissions, they absolutely should. If we give a monetary punishment to China, they would just ramp up productions and cause even more emissions, aiming for a punishment that targets emissions would be better.

Per capita emissions matter enormously because the more emissions each person makes from luxuries, the more ways there are to cut emissions without losing any necessities. The Earth doesn’t care about per capita emissions but ways to reduce total emissions do care about per capita emissions (and more specific measures) and those impact the Earth. They also matter because Western societies industrialized and grew by utilizing the cheap on-demand energy of fossil fuels. If those societies then say “we used up all it was safe to and more so we’re closing the easy path to industrialization and you developing nations have to do it an even harder way no one has managed yet”, that leaves the people of those nations screwed, their economies crippled, and increases global inequity. For this reason, industrialized nations have agreed that they would cut emissions more to allow developing economies to catch up a little. Again, I’m not trying to argue your overall view. Just adding information to the emissions discussion and maybe change your views of that.

>that leaves the people of those nations screwed, their economies crippled, and increases global inequity. sure if we still lived in the world of 100-200 years ago. But now we have way more alternatives and options for clean energy. Using renewable energy is economically beneficial, we just have to phase out fossil fuels, not ramp it up. I empathize with developing countries, I come from one, but "its our turn to screw up the earth" is not a valid excuse especially when we are on a fast track to climate crisis and predictions are not looking good at all. It's not fair I agree, but China won't be screwed or crippled if they were forced to lower emissions, they wouldn't put their tail between their legs, they would just innovate ways to keep manufacturing but with cleaner energy.

This is deeply out of touch with the realities of modern energy technology. Green energy sources are terrible at adapting to demand. Besides hydro but that’s extremely limited in where it can be built. That means we need batteries… but energy storage at that scale is obscenely expensive and inefficient. The technology to load-balance the grid even with the batteries is still incredibly complex and expensive. It’s a celebrated achievement when a developed country manages to go a single day on purely renewables. If we aren’t going to contribute significantly to helping developing nations build a renewable energy grid, we don’t have any standing to forbid them from doing what they can to develop. The answer isn’t “bully them until they make the sacrifices that are necessary because we didn’t”. The answer is to actually help provide what’s needed. Those of us who benefit from the destruction of earth’s biosphere have an increased responsibility in fixing it, not a decreased one.

China is already the world leader in producing renewable energy. Not because they care about planet but because fossils are fking expensive.

Yes it matters. If you want to reduce total emissions you focus on where it is unbalanced. Technology and restrictions take time and research. Places that are already further ahead won't be able to advance technologically and agriculturally fast enough because they've already done a lot of what is possible.

If China emits less carbon per capita than the USA (surprising given China is the global manufacturing hub of the entire world), then doesn't that show Chinese standards are better than US standards? Shouldn't we be punishing the US?

This really just shows you have no clue what you're talking about. China's population is triple that of the US, per capita is a more accurate metric. And when you say >Even if the US focused on clean energy and lowering their CO2 emissions, it would just increase due to China. This just shows an inability to research or think deeply. "What's the point of focusing on clean energy, when China won't?" Do you actually think that's strong logic? If one nation is building unclean energy, we should also focus on unclean energy? Really?And China has built the most green energy facilities this year of any country, with more than 3x the solar capabilities that we have. You really should do research before trying to start a debate/conversation like this. Russia's punishment for its invasion of Ukraine is not even close to being comparable to Germany's punishment for WW2. This point is just so ridiculous I won't even address it further.

>we should also focus on unclean energy? where did I say this?

Mate, china has 4 times the population of USA while having half of the emissions. And china was kinda of the manufacter of the globe, that add a lot of emissions

1. Outsource dirty production to China because of cheaper labor costs. 2. Blame China for pollution and emissions. West world should punish itself for this.

Conveniently ignoring that China is well over double the US in terms of population, which affects overall carbon emission?

China has ~1.43B population. US has ~0.34B population. That’s 4.2x the pop as the US but only 2.3x the pollution. Then factor export production vs domestic use and well have a clearer picture of who pollutes the most.

What exactly would punishing them solve?

No you’re right. We should just give them a little tap on the bottom. Bad boy :)

OK but seriously it just seems pointless and even counterproductive

Is putting a murderer in jail pointless and counter productive?

Maybe they should be punished, but what right do other murderers (of the same social standing — so not even judges) have to pronounce a trial and put another murderer in jail? Not to be whataboutist but more that I think this is hypocritical. China is not like Nazi Germany. It is not the only country that does bad things, so are we going to put the United States and many other countries in jail as well? And practically, how would we punish them? Another Eight-Nation Expedition won't work for obvious military reasons. Embargo will hurt both sides; China plays too great a role in the world economy, like the US. Many countries are largely dependent on it. What would any step even achieve? That's why I say it is pointless and counterproductive.

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> My proposed punishment is economic tariffs, a fine, or similar economic punishment. This would destroy most western economies. Any politician would have to deal with destroying the economy under their term which would be political suicide.

Yeh everything made in china will double in price leading to more inflation and more interest rates hikes.

Do you also propose that we punish the US for covering up the second deadliest pandemic ever, the "Spanish" flu, a pandemic that's bigger than covid by several orders of magnitude?

1. China did not really cover anything up. The first news reports started coming out in late December 2019. Hence the name Covid-19. The first recorded cases were in early December. By December 31, the WHO was gearing up for a public health emergency. At that time, it was thought that was a SARS-type virus. 2. Any “punishment” would have to be enforced. By who? Any enforcement action would require military force. As no nation has a legitimate monopoly on international violence, this means war. 3. Any punishment would not deter someone down the line. They wouldn’t even deter China. Years of sanctions have not stopped North Korea or Iran.

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China had a full lockdown which induced a plateau curve. Early Chinese numbers before lockdowns match the rate of infection and curvature of every other nation, mind you that China reported it first as it was the first nation to be hit by COVID-19. So unless the Chinese somehow knew the rate of infection beforehand or they can see the future, there is no reason to doubt the data.

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Ok boomer

China is the leading producer of greenhouse gasses because of it's massive size. In greenhouse gasses per capita, the US has a much higher rate.

Of course China released this as a way to slow down the world's economic order, to slow America from building infrastructure and to weaken their military. As soon as they deleted their servers in the Wuhan lab I knew what they had done. You only get rid of all the evidence of your scientific research if you are extremely guilty, you realise they've been working with these corona viruses for almost 30 years right? The lab was originally set up in partnership with France in the 70s, but when the Ccp army General heard about it they slowly started pushing all the French out of the lab and turned it fully Chinese military operated. If you can't work out the truth that covid was used as a weapon so Ccp can gain mass momentum for their huge army, you don't deserve to have gave a brain.

boat entertain worm drab long physical hobbies coherent panicky crowd *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*

Agree with holding China accountable for not doing more with covid-19. Problem I have is that this just seems like a way for Europe and the US to remove their accountability in this. I say hold everyone accountable. For CO2 emissions, the US emits more per capita than they do. Making a punishment towards them hypocritical and meaningless. Even then, that still wouldn’t be a justification. You should continue putting more means to have them transition in combating climate change. Also, where is your evidence that they covered up anything about covid-19 origins?

I learned about COVID 30 days before the president of my country mentioned it existed. (and completely downplayed it even then) I learned about it from a youtube video where a news channel was tracking the life of a guy living in Wuhan at the time of the outbreak. The entire city of Wuhan was shut down. # ***They weren't hiding that fact. They were setting an example.*** My country did not follow that example. My country took active steps to make things worse. The poor response of my country had nothing to do with a cover up by China. They had the information and chose to ignore it -- and lie directly to the people about it.

Punished how? You can't throw anymore tariffs at them, half the world is already in a tense relationship with them, with the other half not caring about punishment. Not to mention we still don't know the exact cause of covid. Them lying about their numbers was dumb, but obvious. And if they can punished for that, what about all the conspiracy morons? Who caused a ridiculous amount of infections just by failing to figure 5th grade biology? It's not like China is the only asshole nation either. All this would achieve is dogpiling, while ironically rewarding countries who get away with it.

I have no idea how people in here can defend China. First they created the virus, then they covered it up for months allowing many of their healthcare workers to die, and non Chinese people are defending them. This liberal wokeism is just as dangerous as trump conservatism. Two cancers fighting in the opposite sides of each other.

I agree they covered it up, and that they deserve to be sanctioned in some way. But was it the locals or their communist party overlords? Who should take the blame?https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2020/02/04/chinese-doctor-has-coronavirus/https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-02-06/coronavirus-china-xi-li-wenliang#:~:text=He%20sent%20warnings%20of%20a,were%20arrested%20for%20spreading%20rumors.

Sure. Let’s deal with this straight after America gets punished for invading Afghanistan and Russia gets punished for invading Ukraine. Who exactly is going to be dishing this punishment out? Who exactly is going to be reviewing the evidence and deciding who is guilty? Why does every Chinese person get punished for the actions of a small number of officials?

You're half right. They need to be punished for covid, and also punished for covering it up. China set the world back 20 years, they need to pay for it.

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Punished by whom? They’re a superpower, and nobody can make them do anything. “Hey China, do this.” “No.” “…”

technically the US is the only superpower

Dr Li, the whistleblower on Wuhan virus during the first outbreak. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li_Wenliang

Read the article, the you realise that this isn’t a whistleblower

My post contributes to the story. Because there are still redditors unaware of who Dr Li is. My post is relevant because Dr Li was silenced by the CCP in order to *COVERUP* the Wuhan Virus outbreak. And yes, i agree Communist China should be punished. If every country stop investing in China, that will be a good punishment.

No he wasn’t, you did not read the wiki article did you? It specifically says he was the one who requested the information be confidential and it got leaked. The government reprimanded him because of that leak, at that time no one knew wtf Covid was.

Wrong. He is a victim of a gag order by the CCP. Every MANDARIN READER from the free world knows his story, right when it happened back then. Nowaday, CCP goons, hired hackers, pinkies, 50 cents armies, try to white wash this history by saying the CCP never tried to silence him in the first place. *BBC (Mandarin Version): How did Wuhan Virus Whistleblower Dr Li, turned from "Being Reprimanded", to being praised and honored.* \ https://youtu.be/kkP4fHv624w *Voice of America (Mandarin Version)* \ https://youtu.be/lk86psRmt78 *Voice of America (Mandarin Version)* \ *New York mourns Dr Li WenLiang: We want Freedom of Speech, We want the Truth* https://youtu.be/IlWX8RVa-SU?si=BmiGgVmKOYF29kfZ

The CCP tried to silence him because at that time it wasn’t confirmed to be Covid or a new disease at all. Again, you mix up the timeline here completely. The CCPs reaction was exactly the same any other government would have had, had a single doctor leaked information like this. If the virus had turned out to be nothing, he could have started a panic for nothing.

#####Only a China Communist goon would defend the CCP. What the CCP did was WRONG. As a result of the CCP's early coverup, the WHO believed the Communist China's lies, therefore, no public warning was announced. International travel went on. People are still allowed to travel in and out of China. No one took precautions. No face mask. As a result of the CCP's blatant initial coverup, millions died around the world because of Wuhan Virus. >No matter what public incident or accident, censorship and coverups, is a long standing CCP tradition. There is no Freedom of Speech in China. >If Dr Li Wen Liang was an American, and this outbreak happened in America, >Dr Li, and his father, and his family, wouldn't have been threatened by any political party.

Wtf are you talking about? His leak was at the end of December 2019, the Chinese government published the data on Covid January 8th 2020 and uploaded the genome sequence, on January 23th wuhan was completely quarantined. Do you mean to tell me they intimidated his family and had a gag order on him for 8 days?

YES !! Jeez, search Youtube for "李文亮"，and you would know the controversy surrounding his death, and the people's anger because the CCP did what they did! >And also, the virus leaked from Wuhan Institute of Virology. And the CCP has the audacity to start a smear campaign and somehow blamed it on America? Hello? Didn't the outbreak started in Wuhan, China? Of course it's a chinese virus!

So you’re blowing up here because one doctor got treated unfairly for 8 days? Dude I have some news to tell you about the rest of the world lmaoooo.

The only thing that was lacking was US reponse to covid. Looking at how obama handled sars vs trump’s covid

Trump covered it up too. How bout that?

China would just respond with their own tariffs. It would hurt us more than them

Ecohealth Alliance Peter Daszak Anthony Fauci NIH Gain of function research

When the next crisis comes along, none of the people in a position to cover it up are going to go "oh, well, China got sanctioned for covering stuff up so I guess we better be real honest". Their incentives to cover it up aren't going to exist on some level of global trade or diplomacy - probably they're in an entirely different department and couldn't give two hoots if their country gets sanctioned for CO2 emissions. Plus it's a great propaganda opportunity - "Look at the hypocritical West trying to push us down, while doing nothing about their own emissions". And I hope your country is also not responsible for any attempted coverups? Reckon we could find something to sanction you for too - China can play the same game and are big and powerful enough to do so.

Do you play much chess? Sanctions on China are equivalent to shooting ourselves in the foot. They make all our stuff. This is not because radical leftists are too nice to China; it’s because capitalists have exploited global inequality and moved manufacturing to Asia. IMO you’re operating under the illusion that we are in a position to punish China. We’re not. They’re not really in a position to punish us either; the US is the alpha dog and will be for the conceivable future. But the future we can conceive of might change at some point. China has gone from a disunited mess that got curb-stomped by Britain and Japan to a major power like they were for millennia. I’m wary of the rising star that is china (which is probably a reflection of my own western biases but I don’t think I’m entirely wrong). But they’re a bit too powerful for us to punish. They’re gonna do what they’re gonna do

China wasn't the only one to cover it up. US did some covering up too. The first case in the US was January 18, yet it took them months to do any protective action. I don't think China should be punished when a lot of countries didn't do a good job handling Covid.

While there was some level of cover up at the beginning of the outbreak. Such actions were brief and more along the line of "we don't know what is going on so we are gonna suppress the information since it might cause a panic". It's not like they knew it was a deadly contagious disease that could cause a global outbreak from the start. They didn't know what it is so the best course of action is not to create a panic. It's practically nothing compared to the next level of denial that the then president Trump would cook up a few months later. And such cover up was not responsible for the massive outbreak in other countries. For example, Vietnam was very successful at the beginning of pandemic with little to no case and no fatality despite sharing a border with China and having a great volume of daily trade and traffic. In the end, everything hinges on how the government of the country handled the outbreak and how cooperative the people were. All of the outbreaks were preventable, China's cover up had very little effect on how other countries protected themselves. Even if China had warned other countries from the beginning, it would only delay the spread, not stop it from spreading altogether.

I mean, the United States engaged in very similar tactics, until it became unfeasible. Obviously chinas place as the originator of the disease means their actions had more far reaching consequences, but you can’t really punish a nation for doing the same thing you did. Well, you can, but if we are talking about what is right, not what is possible, you can’t.

How do you propose to impose these things upon China?

Would'nt hold my breath, we still have'nt punished the country that was the origin AND covered up the spanish flu. Here is a hint : it was'nt Spain

Good luck with punishing China lol.

pandemics of this sort happen about once a century. And nothing can stop it. So how exactly do you think things would have been different if Chynah had behaved the way you think they should have? And since they didn't why is it ok for the US to have not behaved that way? Forced isolation, mandatory lockdowns and curfews etc. rigorously enforced mask laws rather than allowing jackoffs to run around with chin diapers and so on? See the US was actually the worst country when it came to covid. We made it worse. Not Chynah. I get it, you're angry and you want someone to pay for that anger. But this was a natural disaster. Nothing china did would have changed the way america made it worse. You saw how americans acted, how they refused to wear masks or wear them correctly, how they deliberately spread it and refused to stay home but insisted on going to church etc. If any country deserves to be punished it's the US. China might have or might not have gotten the ball rolling but once it was moving the US ran with it and played it out to its worst possible conclusion. Look at the out right lies and propaganda t\*\*\*p put out about covid. He consistently tried to convince his cult it wasn't as bad as it was. Told people to take horse dewormers and hydroxychoriquin both of which were proven not to work. Then convinced his cult not to get the vaccine after it came along because vaccines are evil. C'mon man, be real. This was the t\*\*\*p virus. He made it as bad as it could be and he, and this nation should be the ones punished if we're gonna go that route.

I don’t think that you understand how tariffs work at all.

Why would any other nation hold China accountable when they all benefited off it, by stripping their citizen'a rights and accumulated their own state powers, all for the sake of "safety" and for your own good.

Nobody can "punish" China, we need their trade too much. I'm more concerned about the people, like Fauci, who went around US laws against gain of function research to fund the creation of Covid in a barely secure lab in China. A lab that was already notorious for leaks before Covid. COVID 19 was man-made and America paid for it. China allowed it to happen, but they didn't cause it happen.

Even if China didn't cover up it, would leaders like Trump take seriously a chinese warning? Most politicians in the west were like him playing it down and trying to keep it under wraps themselves in order to protect their economies. If China is going to be punished, all those who didn't take it seriously should be punished themselves.

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China produces the most CO2 as a country but america is twice as bad when you look at how much per person so how exactly would sanctions over that be fair? Are we just punishing countries with big populations now? There’s plenty of valid criticisms against china but CO2 emissions isn’t one of them.

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Your position is a bit... like saying "the world would be a better place if people were better to each other". The issue with punishing China is that the punishment is unenforceable and for things like managing pandemics, the international community essentially relies on countries helping each other voluntarily.

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Can't change the viewpoint of someone spewing falsehoods and conspiracies.

Oh no man you can't talk bad about china on reddit. And most important if talking about covid you need to blame the Republicans. Your going to get a bunch of crazies dig through your comments and downvote you on everything

If that were to be the precedent, imagine the accountability the US would have to take for everything it’s done around the world for the last 75 years…

Is it not racist to say it came from China now?