An Interesting Column on the Virus

Here. The author’s theory is that it was planned, and he bases it on statistics about how quickly things spread in so many countries at once, among other things. I have no expertise about how viruses spread, so I can’t comment on that one way or another. But there are a couple points I find interesting. One is his claim that in Shanghai there was a lockdown of a couple months, after which things have been completely open. The second is that the first two countries hit were China and Iran, two countries that we are at odds with. Iran in particular is an odd instance. The numbers seemed to be huge right at the beginning, but then we heard nothing more about it.

I have a feeling we will never really know. If the author is right, liberals and leftists will never accept it because it doesn’t fit with “the science.” It wasn’t that long ago that a liberal friend was assuring us that the omicron variant was going to be much worse than we imagined, a prediction that didn’t pan out at all, but which I assume she still believes. What is very discouraging is how many people rely on just a couple news sources for their information on something so important and dismiss everything not coming from such sources as "conspiracy theories."

Comments

[Kevin Kim]

We live in an age of self-curated news feeds, meaning we can choose to see and read only what we want to. This has the effect of putting us into our own little bubbles, making it extra difficult to reach out and see what "the other side" might be saying. Okay, granted, it's not THAT difficult to find out what the other side is saying, but once we're in our bubbles, many of us get lazy. And if something is outside our particular bubble, well, it must be a conspiracy theory.

Various studies show that conservatives normally tend to be better at reading around than liberals/leftists are. For whatever that's worth.

[Charles N. Steele]

In addition to Kevin’s comment (extending it, really), I’d add that our experiences and observations are almost never random samples, and this goes beyond the problem of echo chambers. We err whenever we treat them as if they are. We should pay attention to evidence, of course, but always remember the selection problem.

Regarding countries hit with coronavirus, Italy was one of the very earliest to report many cases and deaths, prior to Iran I believe. Iran and Italy both had large numbers of Chinese workers for the Belt and Road Initiative, and a lot of them returning from China after Lunar New Year. I’m not sure that author found something that can’t be explained by the standard account of Chinese origin.