Comment by Gareth321
15 hours ago
For about two years the vitriol people received for daring to suggest the virus might have leaked from a poorly secured lab near the origination site was unbelievable. I would like to believe everyone involved would take a long, hard look at themselves but I highly doubt they will. My favourite bit from the time was from [Jon Stewart on Colbert.](https://youtu.be/sSfejgwbDQ8?si=qypQLgxKq2IbagfN) I've never seen Colbert so uncomfortable.
To a certain extent I can understand why no country wanted to point fingers at China because they didn't want to piss off their biggest trading partner. Especially by Germany, given how much they relied on China to buy their cars back then.
But the lack of transparency and the coverup to this day has immensely weaken the public trust in the scientific institution and government bodies for public health and safety.
I think the desire to protect trading relations was a component, but there were plenty of politicians willing to call for proper investigation in China. My perception was that the larger suppression was cultural. I myself was called racist on many occasions because I thought the risk was quite high that it came from a lab. For some reason it was less racist to suggest the virus came from a web market.
I agree with your comment re trust. I'm not sure institutional trust (at least in healthcare) will be regained in our lifetimes. I love vaccines, and I had all of them prior to and during the outbreak. Since then I have become profoundly wary of taking any medication without extensive longitudinal research.
I think a lot of people associate the lab leak theory with racism because it was most loudly championed by racists who were 100% sure it was a Chinese lab leak and they were not shy about sharing that opinion, well before there was enough evidence to support either claim (lab or wet market).
It seems people who actually looked at the evidence and came to the lab leak conclusion independent of racism got caught up in a 'racist by association' event.
I never understood the racist or xenophobic accusations, like since when was it wrong to question the authority demanding truth and facts.
But then again 2020 was the start of woke culture and everything and everyone has to be politically correct even though whatever you said ended up offending some group.
The vaccines work, however there will always be side effects to significant portion of people when it’s administered to billions of people. Although I find it dumb that young healthy people still get covid booster shots like you have the immunity already and your immune system now knows how to handle the virus
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