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0 pointsm0llusk5y ago0 comments

You should look up some of the leaked videos on the Internet. There was in fact a huge spike in cases early on and people were dropping dead in the street. That was the freak out that led to the Communist Party not being able to keep a lid on the whole mess. It wasn't just sick people showing up in hospitals in huge numbers, it was dead bodies lying in the streets.

The thing is that whether this came from a lab or not is of limited relevance. Viruses have been hopping from animal hosts from humans for a while and if anything this one was late and long expected. Either way the kind of preparations we need to make for future events are the same.

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IAmGraydon5y ago

>You should look up some of the leaked videos on the Internet. There was in fact a huge spike in cases early on and people were dropping dead in the street.

Which is also weird because we all know Covid doesn't make people suddenly drop dead in the street.

TremendousJudge5y ago

>Covid doesn't make people suddenly drop dead in the street

They do if they don't get treatment. Usual course for deadly covid is, high fevers, feeling terrible, then there's an improvement in symptoms for a couple of days, then blood oxygen levels drop and the person drops dead

mardifoufs5y ago

Any source on that? Genuinely curious as I seem to have completely forgotten about the early videos from china until now and what they pictured was very at odds with what we now know the virus can do.

Wouldn't everything you described happen gradually? as in people wouldn't be able to walk normally before reaching the point where they drop dead from oxygen levels low enough to be immediately lethal? From my own experience and based on what I've read, covid can cause a quick deterioration in respiratory function but across at least hours or days.

The videos also pictured people that weren't really showing any trouble breathing, it felt more like the plague than any respiratory illness. But maybe the videos were meant as "PSA's" for local consumption to get people to treat the disease more seriously? Because they were really over the top

kube-system5y ago

I haven't seen any videos, but you wouldn't necessarily have to have people "walking" in the streets to have people dying in the streets. Major cities often have plenty of people who are sitting or standing in the street all day long.

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refenestrator5y ago

People anthropomorphize the CCP far too much. It's 100 million people.

What happened politically should be straightforward to anyone who's worked in a corporation: Wuhan mayor and Hubei governor tried to keep a lid on it, counterproductively, so their reports upstairs wouldn't look bad. They couldn't, higher authorities noticed, blew up the visibility on it, instituted nationwide programs to counter it, and fired the afore-mentioned mayor and governor.

themacguffinman5y ago

> The thing is that whether this came from a lab or not is of limited relevance.

It has plenty of relevance. If lab leaks are the source of the virus, any serious solution will need to include improvements to lab containment and practices. Knowing what happened in a hypothetical lab leak could also help identify the original animal to study. Understanding how viruses hop & adapt from animal hosts to humans begins by studying specific cases of it.

For example, past US lab virus leaks including SARS have led the Obama administration to temporarily suspend and investigate the risks of Gain of Function research in 2014. At least one of the Wuhan labs were conducting Gain of Function research at the time of the outbreak.

ryanSrich5y ago

> There was in fact a huge spike in cases early on and people were dropping dead in the street

Wasn't this happening well after they knew the virus existed? From my understanding, they knew the virus existed very early on. Much early than when people were dropping dead in the streets or getting dragged out of their apartments.

aluminussoma5y ago

> it was dead bodies lying in the streets

I remember seeing these videos in January 2020 at the beginning of the pandemic. Young, healthy-looking people, too. I'm very surprised that there were not similar instances outside of China.

foxhop5y ago

It matters a real lot if it came from a lab.

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