I didn’t click the link because I don’t want to give them views. Unlimited WHATABOUTISM replies when you point out the United States is currently dealing with Bird Flu, Listeria, and more covid variants because Americans won’t mask, vaccinate, or quarantine.

  • MF_COOM [he/him]@hexbear.net
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    12
    ·
    3 months ago

    I’m not sure you can blame US racism on reporting about covid origins coming from China pushing further and further into animal habitats for meat resources. Not only is that the consensus theory but it’s the antidote to the “actually evil Chinese scientists cooked this up in their lab and oh actually they’re also incompetent which is why it got loose.”

    • Belly_Beanis [he/him]@hexbear.netOP
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      29
      ·
      3 months ago

      genetic samples from infamous Wuhan market

      This is the type of rhetoric that leads to stuff like “they’re coming to eat your pets!” Reactionaries say the wrong things on purpose to justify their worldview. They know covid wasn’t a Chinese bioweapon. They know Chinese people don’t eat every animal they can get their hands on. And they know the US’s response to covid is why it continues to spread.

      They say these things because they want to depict China as amassing WMDs so the US can amass WMDs. They want to say covid was a bioweapon for ethnic cleansing so Isreal can continue murdering Palestinians. Depicting China as eating diseased wild animals feeds the narrative of “gommunism is when no food so they eat bugs and dogs to survive.”

      The language NPR uses is deliberately inflammatory.

    • aaaaaaadjsf [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      20
      ·
      3 months ago

      Yeah exactly. The factual narrative from the start has been that COVID came from an animal source, with debate being on what animal it was, from pangolins to bats to raccoons. The conspiracy narrative from the media has been the “Chinese lab leak” hypothesis. Alt left conspiracy about Fort Detrick, or “vaping illness” is unconvincing, and just reminds me about Soviet propaganda trying to blame HIV/AIDS on Fort Detrick. It’s not helpful and rather distasteful.