One coronavirus, two terrible responses 🧵 a thread

So the news👇🏼of US cables warning years ago that a Wuhan lab did not have strong enough safety protocols while working with bat coronavirus is causing quite the stir.
1/ https://twitter.com/joshrogin/status/1250014680816537601
On one side, those that see the cables as proof China is lying about the source of the outbreak being the Wuhan wet market and not the Wuhan lab.

On the other side, those that see it as little more than political cover for a US response that’s received considerable criticism.
2/
And of course, there are yet others (like me) that wonder...
3/
Now before we get into too many details, I want to point out that the article that started this thread from @joshrogin is getting him flack for Implying something that the article *did not imply at all*
4/ https://twitter.com/joshrogin/status/1250496447017095169
And though I’d like to skip consideration that it’s a state sanctioned bioweapon, but we can’t really because it was US Senator @TomCottonAR who started this *rumor* about China, which quickly morphed into it being purposely engineered.
5/
This of course was countered with a similar *rumor* from the foreign ministry of China that stated coronavirus started in the US.
6/
Claims China is lying or manipulating the story have some a pretty solid examples to pull from.

Besides obvious lies they’ve been caught in (i.e. stealing trade secrets), consider their ability to actively manipulate the citizenry which, imo, is still underreported globally.
7/ https://twitter.com/lojikuljohn/status/1137050802390994944
Of course, if you listened to a *certain high level official* 😉 you might think that China and the WHO (a whole different thread being needed) were doing a fantastic job!
9/
Until they weren’t.
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SIDENOTE: That @nytimes article did *not* claim the virus *started* in Europe, because #science
11/
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/08/science/new-york-coronavirus-cases-europe-genomes.html
Anyway, to me -and it appears some others- if America really wanted to get to the bottom of this, perhaps a lighter touch may have helped?
12/ https://twitter.com/radiofreetom/status/1250128394097999876
Because we are seeing all kinds of weird reports and figures from all sorts of places as people scramble to make sense of this new world.
13/ https://twitter.com/simonjhix/status/1249983432064720902
So besides leaving room for two wrongs not making a right -that both the virus may have accidentally leaked from a lab in Wuhan AND the US didn’t respond properly- maybe what we really need right now is a steady hand at the wheel...
😏
14/
Er, maybe at a slightly lower level...
😏😏
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You know what? Forget it. It’s Aliens 👾
16/END
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