At 5/7/21 11:06 AM, Gimmick wrote:
No matter how much you hate China, giving into this sets a dangerous precedent. Good luck trying to make DR Congo pay for financial reparations when Ebola 2.0 arrives, or India when Nipah goes H2H. It would likely turn their authoritarian governments even more hypernationalistic due to the us-vs-them scenario this creates, and would worsen international relations, if not outright set the stage for a baseless war.
Just to clear this up; I don't hate China - just hate it's government. In fact, if it wasn't for some of the bravest Chinese people, who risked their lives to get this information out, the whole world have been in the dark about the pandemic until shit went completely out of control while the WHO had their collective heads buried in the sand. Now those people, they're real-world heroes.
Agree with you on the first point, but it goes even deeper.
The chinese government has murdered and punished doctors and medical experts who were trying to get the word out on this since late last year. Information was leaking out somewhere in late november (if I recall) and the dispersed information was eventually collated transferred to the WHO by concerned individuals. However, pressure from the communist party of china pushed this critical decision to cover the situation up, and other countries into keeping their borders open. To reiterate - the citizenry are not at fault and should never be punished/discriminated for the crimes of the corrupt party officials.
The DRC might be a bad place, but I don't think they ever engaged in a coverup even when the ebola R type showed up. Nor does the DRC have the sort of push to actually pressure the WHO into misleading everyone. And if India does engage in intentional coverups that result in the pandemic causing waves in the region, they should - in my opinion - pay up for damages. It would put a sort of 'check and balance' against lazy bureaucrats who downplay everything.
It's tempting to say that it is the liability of the nation of origin, but 1) the international community knew about COVID since January, and many did nothing until March so the responsibility also falls on them
Agreed. That's why I said 'and the enablers' are also responsible to a similar extent because they were willing to ignore the mounting evidence starting from january to play 'everything's fine t. CCP' line. While information was leaking out, the international community should have cooperated, even underhandedly to come up with unified quarantine and testing by scale. But I guess they were too worried about offending the paper tiger and didn't want to put travel bans.
2) it's all fun and games until your country is the source of the pandemic.
I'm not saying that being the source of a pandemic should be punished. I'm saying that willful coverups, misleading information, murder and disappearances of doctors who point out the existence of an emergent disease, and ultimately enabling the pandemic should be punished. It would ultimately serve as a deterrent for the bureaucrats when the price is taken out of their hide.
In closing, if that were the case in my country, I'm actually for making them pay out of their own pockets should the officials engage in such a coverup and pressure the WHO to keep their mouths shut about it - but that's just my opinion.
