[burger]

As soon as anyone can demonstrate why the origin of the outbreak matters even a little bit, to solve the problem we have on our hands now, I’ll listen to this pure speculation.

But the reality is everyone, including media outlets of all stripes are doing the world a massive disservice publishing anything but 100% truth. Even publishing preliminary research about what has been observed in small sample sizes is more beneficial than this pointless, divisive speculation.

None of it does a thing to help the current situation at all and in fact makes it worse. This is a global problem that won’t be solved without total cooperation between all entities on the planet. Blame and scapegoating diminishes the ability to cooperate and solve problems.

This x1000.  And conspiracy theories have no place on this board.  When actual evidence of a lab origin comes through, please share.  Otherwise, can we stop with this already?

It matters quite a bit in terms of getting beyond the Blame Game and getting to a national unity that will be quite useful in dealing with a crisis that is the moral equivalent of war. 

Being as political as I will get, Trump does not have my vote, and never will, for reasons related to his nativism and his deliberately divisive style. However, he does not in fact have 'blood on his hands' (to quote a CNN commentator) in this instance. Just about every one in the world took a relatively sanguine view of C-19  - and this includes all of the political opponents of Trump - until it was much, much too late to stop it effectively. The reason for this was mis- and disinformation coming out of the CCP.

I'm not a big proponent of blame fixing, at least until historians do it - certainly not journalists or politicians. But if you are determined to have a villain, look off shore to Beijing.

As for villainy: 1) you can have more than one villain, and 2) if the virus came from a wet market, China is still one of the (many) bad actors here for not shutting down those markets after SARS (or not making shutdowns permanent--I think they did close them temporarily).  As an authoritarian state, maybe they should use their power to do some good for once.

After the crisis part of this is over, I would be in favor of international action against China to both close the wet markets and to ensure that they up the security at their disease labs.  Those things would both be good regardless of where this virus came from.

[burger]

As soon as anyone can demonstrate why the origin of the outbreak matters even a little bit, to solve the problem we have on our hands now, I’ll listen to this pure speculation.

But the reality is everyone, including media outlets of all stripes are doing the world a massive disservice publishing anything but 100% truth. Even publishing preliminary research about what has been observed in small sample sizes is more beneficial than this pointless, divisive speculation.

None of it does a thing to help the current situation at all and in fact makes it worse. This is a global problem that won’t be solved without total cooperation between all entities on the planet. Blame and scapegoating diminishes the ability to cooperate and solve problems.

This x1000.  And conspiracy theories have no place on this board.  When actual evidence of a lab origin comes through, please share.  Otherwise, can we stop with this already?

It matters quite a bit in terms of getting beyond the Blame Game and getting to a national unity that will be quite useful in dealing with a crisis that is the moral equivalent of war. 

Being as political as I will get, Trump does not have my vote, and never will, for reasons related to his nativism and his deliberately divisive style. However, he does not in fact have 'blood on his hands' (to quote a CNN commentator) in this instance. Just about every one in the world took a relatively sanguine view of C-19  - and this includes all of the political opponents of Trump - until it was much, much too late to stop it effectively. The reason for this was mis- and disinformation coming out of the CCP.

I'm not a big proponent of blame fixing, at least until historians do it - certainly not journalists or politicians. But if you are determined to have a villain, look off shore to Beijing.

As for villainy: 1) you can have more than one villain, and 2) if the virus came from a wet market, China is still one of the (many) bad actors here for not shutting down those markets after SARS (or not making shutdowns permanent--I think they did close them temporarily).  As an authoritarian state, maybe they should use their power to do some good for once.

After the crisis part of this is over, I would be in favor of international action against China to both close the wet markets and to ensure that they up the security at their disease labs.  Those things would both be good regardless of where this virus came from.