https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/interactive/2022/china-researcher-covid-19-coverup/?itid=hp_opinionsIf the paywall kicks in, try this link.THE WASHINGTON POST’S VIEWOpinion: As the pandemic exploded, a researcher saw the danger. China’s leaders kept silent.Her story points to a coverup with tragic consequences of historic proportion. A severe danger was concealed until it was too late. It came about because of a culture that prioritizes political stability at any cost, extraordinary state secrecy, and missteps by public health officials who did not speak out.
The episode serves to underscore once again why a serious investigation is needed to get to the bottom of how the pandemic began. The virus’s origins might have been caused by a zoonotic spillover, a bat coronavirus jumping to humans, possibly with an intermediate host. Or it might have been an inadvertent leak from a laboratory in Wuhan studying bat coronaviruses. Only by learning what really transpired can we reach any conclusions about how to prevent it from happening again. China could go a long way toward finding the answers, but instead it has slammed the door on further inquiry.
Little Mountain Dog wondered how the Wuhan patient got infected. Her first thought, she wrote, was “the history of contact with wild animals,” maybe with bats. But “it was also suspected that some staff working somewhere with man-made viruses may have been infected by accident because of careless handling” — a possibility a colleague had mentioned to her on Dec. 27, recalling a very recent Brucellosis outbreak after an accident at a vaccine plant in China. That colleague also noted at the time that the Wuhan Institute of Virology “is located nearby.”
I do wonder if we'll ever get a smoking gun level of evidence for either origin explanation, but that the Wuhan Accidental Lab Leak is seen just as credible as the filthy unhygienic wet market explanation is an incredible transformation from how it was seen 2 years ago. Even outside of low-trust political systems, accidental lab leaks have happened far more frequently than probably most people would expect, the foot & mouth outbreak in 2007 was caused by a lab leak in Surrey. What I would have considered a "less than once per decade event" is actually much more frequent:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_laboratory_biosecurity_incidents - from 2000 onwards it seems to be more like a yearly event.
Why China is using guard geese to uphold its zero-COVID policyThroughout history, territorial and often aggressive domestic geese have been deployed to keep watch over everything from Scotch whisky to military installations.https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/why-china-is-using-guard-geese-to-uphold-its-zero-covid-policy