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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region Forums*If* the WaPo reporting about the lab in Wuhan (WIV) is correct,
Last edited Wed Apr 15, 2020, 11:50 PM - Edit history (2)
then there are some mighty damning implications for the Trump administration.
The story goes that US officials in China were making regular visits and inspections to the WIV in early 2018 (as the US had helped fund and build the lab, and was helping to train the staff) and were very disturbed by what they witnessed, in terms of biosafety. They reported their findings back home to the Trump administration.
There is no evidence (to my knowledge) that the Trump administration properly or thoroughly responded to that concern, or even *if they responded at all*. It's difficult to overstate how irresponsible that is.
Whether this particular virus had escaped from that lab or not, that Trump did NOTHING about a situation that very easily *could* have caused this pandemic, is quite likely one of the causes of him trying so very hard to make sure China gets all of the blame (China is to blame, no doubt. Their behavior was/is despicable.)
(Also note: a wild-type virus escaping from a lab *is not* the same as saying it was bioengineered (which it clearly isn't) or that there's some biowarfare conspiracy theory. Learning that a lab such as this, in that location, working on bat coronaviruses, were being observed to have serious safety deficiencies, it is very natural to wonder whether an accidental release happened.)
Trump's excessive use of projection just magnifies this issue. He knew, in 2018, of the risk and did nothing.
I hope we eventually get the whole truth of this story.
ETA: Link to a SciAm story
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-chinas-bat-woman-hunted-down-viruses-from-sars-to-the-new-coronavirus1/
Wuhan-based virologist Shi Zhengli has identified dozens of deadly SARS-like viruses in bat caves, and she warns there are more out there
By Jane Qiu on March 11, 2020
BEIJINGThe mysterious patient samples arrived at Wuhan Institute of Virology at 7 P.M. on December 30, 2019. Moments later, Shi Zhenglis cell phone rang. It was her boss, the institutes director. The Wuhan Center for Disease Control and Prevention had detected a novel coronavirus in two hospital patients with atypical pneumonia, and it wanted Shis renowned laboratory to investigate. If the finding was confirmed, the new pathogen could pose a serious public health threatbecause it belonged to the same family of bat-borne viruses as the one that caused severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), a disease that plagued 8,100 people and killed nearly 800 of them between 2002 and 2003. Drop whatever you are doing and deal with it now, she recalls the director saying.
Shia virologist who is often called Chinas bat woman by her colleagues because of her virus-hunting expeditions in bat caves over the past 16 yearswalked out of the conference she was attending in Shanghai and hopped on the next train back to Wuhan. I wondered if [the municipal health authority] got it wrong, she says. I had never expected this kind of thing to happen in Wuhan, in central China. Her studies had shown that the southern, subtropical areas of Guangdong, Guangxi and Yunnan have the greatest risk of coronaviruses jumping to humans from animalsparticularly bats, a known reservoir for many viruses. If coronaviruses were the culprits, she remembers thinking, could they have come from our lab?
uponit7771
(90,336 posts)cos dem
(903 posts)that seems to be pretty clear culpability on China's part. Their attempts to obscure the facts also indicates a desire to obstruct the truth.
This is not to let orange idiot off the hook for what happened in this country. There's plenty of blame to go around on this mess.
Roy Rolling
(6,917 posts)If a virus got loose from laboratory carelessness, its Chinas responsibility to keep it contained.
If a president of the United States relies on the Communist Chinese government, or any adversarial country for America security, he made a big mistake.
Our security is never dependent on another country for anything. Only Trump would say he takes no responsibility if China wasnt truthful with its medical statistics. Everybody else would suspect their numbers, because China refused any third-party verification.
Eliot Rosewater
(31,111 posts)GOP could remove him before dinner...they wont and they wont because liberals and democrats are dying and they fucking love that.
They wont because as it is going now we probably wont be able to vote, at all...
50 Shades Of Blue
(9,993 posts)And what did whoever received these findings then do about it? How far up the chain did they go?
This is not the whole story by a long shot. Name names!
live love laugh
(13,105 posts)mtngirl47
(989 posts)Short synopsis: Two official State Department Cables sent from U.S. investigators in Wuhan to Washington. One cable that Wapo is quoting suggested problems at the Wuhan lab could cause a Sars-like pandemic.
Tillerson was Sec of State in Jan 2018 when these cables were sent....but he was gone by 3/31/18. Trump's lousy management style caused this shit.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/04/14/state-department-cables-warned-safety-issues-wuhan-lab-studying-bat-coronaviruses/
intrepidity
(7,296 posts)Rstrstx
(1,399 posts)Forbes did a decent writeup about what the Post found:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2020/04/14/the-washington-post-goes-rogue-china-lab-in-focus-of-coronavirus-outbreak/#dccde8e1ee1f
And this is one of the most comprehensive writeups I've seen on past and current thinking about the origins of the virus
https://www.businessinsider.com/theory-coronavirus-accidentally-leaked-chinese-lab-2020-4
Laura PourMeADrink
(42,770 posts)transition briefings on pandemics. You know who she met with? Michael fucking Flynn. How'd that dribble down?
Bernardo de La Paz
(49,001 posts)But his actions in total indicate he was just stupid and incompetent.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-china-cdc-exclusiv/exclusive-u-s-axed-cdc-expert-job-in-china-months-before-virus-outbreak-idUSKBN21910S
mgardener
(1,816 posts)I have read several articles about this being a naturally occurring mutation.
intrepidity
(7,296 posts)The idea is that the lab, which studies coronavirus in bats, may have brought the virus into the lab from the field (because that's what they do--they go into caves and look for bats and bring specimens back to the lab to study) and *inadvertently* allowed it to escape. Perhaps a lab worker became infected by the bat, and then that worker circulated around Wuhan spreading it.
I will update the OP with a Scientific American article about the scientist at the WIV who works on this.
thenelm1
(854 posts)There was a team in China working with China's medical system to monitor for this type of thing. Guess which team was recently slashed by Dump? That team was cut from about 47 people to 14 in 2017-18. He can bray at the moon about how he isn't responsible for anything, but guess who's directly responsible for this? Dump, and only Dump. All of his blather doesn't change this one iota.
We hear about the pandemic team on the NSC being fired and other dumbass things he did, but we seldom hear about the fact that we already had a team in China that he also cut by over 2/3rds. Everything this SOB touches turns to krap.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-china-cdc-exclusiv/exclusive-u-s-slashed-cdc-staff-inside-china-prior-to-coronavirus-outbreak-idUSKBN21C3N5
ucrdem
(15,512 posts)If we make it to January with all 50 states intact it will be a miracle.