The Chinese government froze meaningful efforts to trace COVID-19's origins, despite publicly declaring support for an open scientific inquiry, an AP investigation finds.

The hunt for the origins of COVID-19 has gone dark in China, the victim of political infighting after a series of stalled and thwarted attempts to find the source of the virus that killed millions and paralyzed the world for months.

The Chinese government froze meaningful domestic and international efforts to trace the virus from the first weeks of the outbreak, despite statements supporting open scientific inquiry, an Associated Press investigation found. That pattern continues to this day, with labs closed, collaborations shattered, foreign scientists forced out and Chinese researchers barred from leaving the country.

The investigation drew on thousands of pages of undisclosed emails and documents and dozens of interviews that showed the freeze began far earlier than previously known and involved political and scientific infighting in China as much as international finger-pointing.

  • @Kedly@lemm.eeEnglish
    2•7 months ago

    I think you are waaaaayyyy too focussed on what the conspiracy nuts think. I cant tell you when the conspiracy theorists were right because I dont listen to them. Once again, I saw China being insanely tight lipped against what happened at/with the start of Covid, and saw two theories, from no specific source, point to either wet markets and bats/pengolins, or a high level biohazard lab that was near ground zero, which on further read seemed to be specifically studying Coronavirus’s, and those two theories got marked a plausible, based solely on their merit

    Edit: Y’know what tho? I reread the start of this conversation and it was specifically about Conspiracy Theorists, so I guess I’m the one in the wrong here. You’re right in that the only time they end up being right is in the broken clock sense