The Debatable Land #3: Whose Truth Is It Anyway?

Old China vs New China in the search for the origins of Covid

Old China vs New China

Question: if Covid had emerged in, say, Brazil rather than in China would more or less effort and attention been devoted to discovering where and how it had actually begun? To ask the question is to sense the answer: of course tracking the virus’s origins would have been considered a more pressing matter, a quest to be pursued unto the ends of the earth with neither fear nor favour. The Truth would have been all.

Because it is China, matters are arranged differently. The World Health Organisation’s decision to avoid labelling a variant ‘Xi’ is grimly amusing - having determined that naming versions of the virus after the places they were discovered risking “stigmatising”, er, Kent the WHO’s decision to swap to letters of the Greek alphabet opened the door to a much greater embarrassment - but also revealing. China cannot afford to be embarrassed, so China must be treated gently.

So be it, you may think. I certainly have no means of properly evaluating the compet…