It's a little hard for me to parse what you're going for here? Is it that Tom Cotton's intention weren't as clearcut as Yglesias makes it out to be? I think that's true.
Or is it that Yglesias and others should ignore media failures on this subject, because to do otherwise provides ammunition for our political enemies? This seems like a bad path to me; a big difference between the left (well, the center-left) and right is that the center-left still attempts to build their beliefs based on reality. This in contrast to the right and its tribal epistemology.
It seems you're edging toward to advocating for a tribal epistemology on the left. IS that the case? Or am I missing something?
With regards to the statement: "Lab leak theory is still unproven" zoonotic origin is *also* still unproven. In fact there is more evidence (albeit circumstantial) for lab leak than their is for zoonotic; the case for the latter is--in summary--"That's how the last bat coronavirus crossed over."
so if no one knows for sure, why the harsh criticism now of various people proposing origin theories, when, I should remind you, those stories were sometimes censored by social media or pilloried by MSM? I get that you don’t like Cotton, Trump et. al. but what if they are at least partially correct? Is it not important to fully understand the origin of this pandemic?
I’m generally a big fan of Yglesias, but a lot of his takes about China feel opportunistic; After all, the premise of his most recent book is “China is Bad”, which, I don’t know, seems like an oversimplification.
Also, as you’ve noted here, there is a bipartisan consensus about taking on the China Threat. It gets framed constantly, particularly by conservatives, as republicans will protect you and tell you the truth while democrats won’t, when, in fact, many Democrats are ridiculous China hawks. Most alarmingly, as again you’ve noted, this feels similar to the Iraq War dynamic.
I’m just so confused by this article. Do you disagree that the media did a terrible job distinguishing between various hypotheses and assigning reasonable probabilities to each? I find Tom Cotton’s politics despicable, but the tweet he wrote was largely accurate. The hypothesis that the WIV was doing gain-of-function research and accidentally released this virus is not so far fetched. In fact there are many respectable virologists who suggest that there is scientific evidence pointing in this direction. The whack-job theory that the CCP intentionally released this virus as a bio-weapon was appropriately described by Cotton as being “very unlikely”. You can argue he kept the door open too much, but it seems disingenuous to compare that rhetoric to the WMD discourse in the run up to the Iraq war. I don’t understand what the real complaint is here. The media has clearly done an about-face on this issue. Are you saying they shouldn’t have? Is there nothing to learn from this whole debacle?
You leave out other “logical” possibilities: for example, (1) the virus did not originate in China but rather China is the first place where we had a major outbreak, or (2) there were outbreaks in other parts of the world that were not understood to be covid but diagnosed as flu or (3) more nefariously, the virus was engineered but not in China but somewhere else, say the US and delivered to China to disrupt life there not understanding that this would spread around the world, or (4) covid was percolating in many places and erupted simultaneously in many places the Chinese being the first to take it seriously. Of course “logically” there are many many many more options. Bit we are not really investigating these. But why not? Well some will say, they are unrealistic options. Why is that. There is some evidence for (1) and we can look into the question if viruses in non Chinese bats might more closely covid than the viruses found in Chinese bats. After all, it is possible to get infected in place A and then go toplace B where the infection spreads. Think “Spanish” flu which should have been named the US flu. And there is evidence for (2) as well. There is lots of circumstantial evidence that covid was circulating in Spain, US, Italy in early December and before. Of course it could have come from China, but it could have been sent to China via “tourists” or workers or it could have arisen in many places at once. This last is less likely but not logically impossible. As for (3), we know the US has used bio weapons before, Korea, Cuba and even tested some in the US it seems. So is the US above doing something like this? Nope. It has done it and could do it again. So this one should also be investigated. (4) is also possible as the Chinese were the first to take covid seriously and sequence it, rather quickly. There is also circumstantial evidence that some early cases not in China were diagnosed as severe flu. Not a crazy diagnosis. So, if you really want a serious investigation of all the alternatives then there are lots more options to put on the table, logically speaking.
But of course we dont want this. The US wants to concentrate on China and the reasons are obvious. Nor is it only Cotton that wants o do this. Recall, Biden is the one who has revived the possibility despite there being zero new evidence in its favor. He has also revived UFOs so maybe this is not that surprising! But, and this is key, the story is clearly part of the process of demonizing China. Cotton is the nut wing of this process, but the dems are also keen to keep China on its back foot so as to continue the policy of putting China in its place.
Given this there is no, zero, nada, zilch possibility that we will ever be able to conduct a good faith investigation of covid’s origins. It has just become too politicized and the US wants it that way. China knows this and wont play along. Imagine if China were to ask to investigate the US labs. Any chance?
Last point: discovering the evolutionary origins of covid will be hard even id there is no politics. It took 15 years to untangle Sars and 20 to detail the origins of HIV. So we are still in bery early stages even if an honest investigation were possible. But it is not. All such talk is just cold war fodder. Given this, these speculations are at best useless and at worst very very dangerous. It would be nice to know the truth, but given that we cannot given the current ideological state of play, we should simply drop the topic as intellectually serious.
It's a little hard for me to parse what you're going for here? Is it that Tom Cotton's intention weren't as clearcut as Yglesias makes it out to be? I think that's true.
Or is it that Yglesias and others should ignore media failures on this subject, because to do otherwise provides ammunition for our political enemies? This seems like a bad path to me; a big difference between the left (well, the center-left) and right is that the center-left still attempts to build their beliefs based on reality. This in contrast to the right and its tribal epistemology.
It seems you're edging toward to advocating for a tribal epistemology on the left. IS that the case? Or am I missing something?
With regards to the statement: "Lab leak theory is still unproven" zoonotic origin is *also* still unproven. In fact there is more evidence (albeit circumstantial) for lab leak than their is for zoonotic; the case for the latter is--in summary--"That's how the last bat coronavirus crossed over."
so if no one knows for sure, why the harsh criticism now of various people proposing origin theories, when, I should remind you, those stories were sometimes censored by social media or pilloried by MSM? I get that you don’t like Cotton, Trump et. al. but what if they are at least partially correct? Is it not important to fully understand the origin of this pandemic?
I’m generally a big fan of Yglesias, but a lot of his takes about China feel opportunistic; After all, the premise of his most recent book is “China is Bad”, which, I don’t know, seems like an oversimplification.
Also, as you’ve noted here, there is a bipartisan consensus about taking on the China Threat. It gets framed constantly, particularly by conservatives, as republicans will protect you and tell you the truth while democrats won’t, when, in fact, many Democrats are ridiculous China hawks. Most alarmingly, as again you’ve noted, this feels similar to the Iraq War dynamic.
I’m just so confused by this article. Do you disagree that the media did a terrible job distinguishing between various hypotheses and assigning reasonable probabilities to each? I find Tom Cotton’s politics despicable, but the tweet he wrote was largely accurate. The hypothesis that the WIV was doing gain-of-function research and accidentally released this virus is not so far fetched. In fact there are many respectable virologists who suggest that there is scientific evidence pointing in this direction. The whack-job theory that the CCP intentionally released this virus as a bio-weapon was appropriately described by Cotton as being “very unlikely”. You can argue he kept the door open too much, but it seems disingenuous to compare that rhetoric to the WMD discourse in the run up to the Iraq war. I don’t understand what the real complaint is here. The media has clearly done an about-face on this issue. Are you saying they shouldn’t have? Is there nothing to learn from this whole debacle?
You leave out other “logical” possibilities: for example, (1) the virus did not originate in China but rather China is the first place where we had a major outbreak, or (2) there were outbreaks in other parts of the world that were not understood to be covid but diagnosed as flu or (3) more nefariously, the virus was engineered but not in China but somewhere else, say the US and delivered to China to disrupt life there not understanding that this would spread around the world, or (4) covid was percolating in many places and erupted simultaneously in many places the Chinese being the first to take it seriously. Of course “logically” there are many many many more options. Bit we are not really investigating these. But why not? Well some will say, they are unrealistic options. Why is that. There is some evidence for (1) and we can look into the question if viruses in non Chinese bats might more closely covid than the viruses found in Chinese bats. After all, it is possible to get infected in place A and then go toplace B where the infection spreads. Think “Spanish” flu which should have been named the US flu. And there is evidence for (2) as well. There is lots of circumstantial evidence that covid was circulating in Spain, US, Italy in early December and before. Of course it could have come from China, but it could have been sent to China via “tourists” or workers or it could have arisen in many places at once. This last is less likely but not logically impossible. As for (3), we know the US has used bio weapons before, Korea, Cuba and even tested some in the US it seems. So is the US above doing something like this? Nope. It has done it and could do it again. So this one should also be investigated. (4) is also possible as the Chinese were the first to take covid seriously and sequence it, rather quickly. There is also circumstantial evidence that some early cases not in China were diagnosed as severe flu. Not a crazy diagnosis. So, if you really want a serious investigation of all the alternatives then there are lots more options to put on the table, logically speaking.
But of course we dont want this. The US wants to concentrate on China and the reasons are obvious. Nor is it only Cotton that wants o do this. Recall, Biden is the one who has revived the possibility despite there being zero new evidence in its favor. He has also revived UFOs so maybe this is not that surprising! But, and this is key, the story is clearly part of the process of demonizing China. Cotton is the nut wing of this process, but the dems are also keen to keep China on its back foot so as to continue the policy of putting China in its place.
Given this there is no, zero, nada, zilch possibility that we will ever be able to conduct a good faith investigation of covid’s origins. It has just become too politicized and the US wants it that way. China knows this and wont play along. Imagine if China were to ask to investigate the US labs. Any chance?
Last point: discovering the evolutionary origins of covid will be hard even id there is no politics. It took 15 years to untangle Sars and 20 to detail the origins of HIV. So we are still in bery early stages even if an honest investigation were possible. But it is not. All such talk is just cold war fodder. Given this, these speculations are at best useless and at worst very very dangerous. It would be nice to know the truth, but given that we cannot given the current ideological state of play, we should simply drop the topic as intellectually serious.