That's sad yo.

Trump did care about it ravaging the country. It was an election year. Purely out of self-interest, he had to have cared. Whether his caring amounted to effective policy is obviously a different question.

I don't think that any investigation at the time could've proven the origin of COVID one way or the other. The situation would've likely gone done in much the same manner that it did in reality. Let's be honest, if Obama was still in office, Republicans would've been even more resistant to wearing masks - probably saying dumb **** like "The communist muslim-in-chief is trying to institute Sharia law!".

The point of trying to determine its origin now is to learn what caused it and adjust accordingly to prevent it from occuring in the future. Whether that means changes/regulations to wet markets or changes/stricter regulations to viral research.

Were you, like, not around last year or something?

Yeah, in fact I was. Some policies and initiatives worked, others didn't. A whole lot of people died as a result.

Trump gets credit for Operation Warp Speed and the hastened pace of vaccine development and a small amount of credit for shutting off travel from China early (it should've been earlier, but he got a lot of criticism at the time).

Everything else that went wrong falls on Trump's lap, de facto, as he was the President at the time ("the buck stops here" and all). That's one of the big reasons he lost the election.

Can't revert to something you introduced dawg. My theory is that if it's found to be of lab origin, it was introduced by the u.s. government to destabilize china. donny is also known for projection so him introducing the accusation pretty early on doesn't help.

I still think you're being cynical/contrarian, but if not, you must think the US is completely incompetent.

US introduces virus to China to destabilize the country.

Chinese deaths: ~4,000
US deaths: ~ 600,000

https://media1.tenor.com/images/6afd...dc64/tenor.gif

Personally, I don't think we'll ever know for sure what the origin was, given China's resistance to cooperate in efforts to do so.

As an aside, I think Tom Cotton was the first Republican to make claims of lab origin. Trump used it to embolden his hawkish policy towards China, despite the uncertain truthfulness of the claim. Many were turned off on the idea of lab origin given Trump's support of it.

It's possible for americans to be dumb dumbs yes. *gestures at forum* Their propaganda machine allows them some room for sloppiness though.

If you trust China's statistics, you have a solid gotcha there.

Good point. I don't trust China's statistics, I definitely think they've fudged the numbers. But I don't think they could fudge the numbers so greatly that it makes a difference to the point (I believe US intelligence would be able to tell at some point that they'd fudged the numbers beyond reason, and I don't trust US intelligence for much *cough* WMDs *cough* incubator babies *cough* Gulf of Tonkin). We could assume they've had ten times the amount of deaths (and they very well may have) and the point still stands. Personally, I think more Americans died than Chinese because we have more unhealthy and obese people than China does.

But yeah, propaganda is hard at work in both countries. They did it! Nuh-uh, you did it first!

It's tiring, and like I said, I don't think we'll ever know for sure.

If the CCP actually believed that the US introduced a virus to them for the sole purpose of destabilization, and many more have died than what they claim, don't you think their response is not proportional to the claim? And if they believed the US introduced a virus to them, wouldn't they inflate the numbers of deaths rather than deflating them?

Nah, citizen deaths only matter to the u.s. once it becomes bad pr that they can't rally around. Justifying government expansion, inspiring further anti-Chinese sentiments, and an external factor to use as a scapegoat for the imminent economic downturn could have played a role in planning the bioterrorist attack on top of the classic destabilization move.

Nah, their extreme response tells me that they saw some pretty drastic breakouts.

"Hey world, rising global influence here, just wanted to let you know that we were pretty easily destabilized by another country and this is how."

Does "introduced the virus" mean "used it like a weapon against" in the context of the conversation?

Wanna be clear before I reply further.