> I mean, to be fair -- they said we needed to conserve all the masks we had for medical staff because they had no idea what was coming.

Its also worth noting that this was the direct result of off-shoring manufacturing to China, who could then threaten to withhold delivery of new PPE if they continued to pursuit the lab leak theory at the same time they were curtailing protests in Hong Kong and disspearing physicians who were speaking out about the severity of COVID and implementing their zero COVID policy and physically barricading people in their homes or comically netting them on the street.

I think HN has a this terrible need to play 'but my guy/source is more trust worthy because of X' the truth is all sides have an agenda, what I think is not in question is how revealing it was how little they respect the intelligence of the general public in what was thought to be a dire health crisis.

That's the ONLY real take away, sitting here and trying to distract from this fact, is the stark realization that there is a direct funding source for GoF viral studies provided by the NIH [0] shows that no party is innocent here.

In addition to that the CCP didn't allow investigations to take place effectively from the international community, and the subsequent floods that happened in Wuhan in 2020 ensured that the truth will likely never be known which is the best resolution to what is likely a complete debacle of epic proportions as plausible deniability and saber rattling in the Taiwan straight and the Russian invasion of Ukraine were enough to sweep things under the rug.

I unlike e rest of my friends worked in the health sciences, and to be honest I was the first to mention in my circle of friends that this was likely an unitentional lab leak situation I got the stink eye; it was because I saw what was happening in November in Hong Kong in '19 during the aftermath of the protests in the Summer that had escalated in intensity and were leading what was outright revolution as momentum increased. The Bird flu epidemic overwhelmed and devastated the medical system in HK and the CCP knew that (it was overrun by ill mainlanders) used that very real trauma and weaponized it in order force people to stop te protests in order to pass the NSL, jail dissidents and then weaponized zero COVID as a policy to illegally annex Hong Kong in direct violation of the hand-over and international law.

What was worse is the CCP forced the borders open during covid fir and used mainlanders as vectors for Chinese nationals into HK (and blatantly ignored or outright purposely spread infection) further prolonging and increasing infection rates needed to justify these measures in what was an unprecedented and alarming show of display as Lam and the police followed a more PLA playbook to handling the domestic situation.

Furthermore, the exiled virologist (Dr. Li-Meng Yan) who worked on at the WIV but was scrubbed fled the mainland and came out about the GoF work she had done there, but sadly because she was platformed by Trump affiliates her claims and work were disregarded showing how divisive and polarizing people were on this matter, despite the fact that the physician who spoke out about COVID early on died a terrible and painful death because the CCP wanted to make an example of him. This was wen clubhouse let mainlanders use a more open platform to communicate online mind you and riots were breaking out.

Again, if you think that health sciences isn't at it's core an immensely corrupt system and enterprise it's only because you neither worked in it or are benefiting from it being so. On need only look at the reputations pharma has, people like the Sacklers are only exploiting a very clear flaw in the medial system and know they can ultimately get a way with it due to the well understood conflicts of interests. It's the path of least resistance, and to think that nation states aren't looking out for their own interests an will lie and manipulate the population is the height of willful ignorance, especially since it's so very clearly effective: as seen here.

> Some of them said that. Many of them explicitly told the public that masks wouldn't help. However impeccable your motives for doing so, lying to the public should destroy your credibility.

As an Anarchist, if that were true than the entire enterprise of politics should collapse over night, but it doesn't because it is perhpas the most wide and willfully held form of ignorance and denial: we are too fixated on a chieftain based social order as a Species. Until we overcome this immense defect in the Human condition, you can rest assured that the most unscrupulous amongst us will continue to benefit and profit from this flawed system.

0: https://theintercept.com/2021/09/09/covid-origins-gain-of-fu...