Rants and WTF are you talking about and Coronavirus!

[QUOTE=McAdonis;2453375]China was the first to sacrifice their economy by implementing national lockdown. They had no way of predicting with 100 percent certainty if any other country would follow suit. The only thing that they could have maybe predicted was that countries with a one-party-system would be more efficient at containing the crisis and getting compliance from the populace.

The fundamental problem is almost every country underestimated the threat. Vietnam is the notable exception. I believe their national lockdown only lasted between two and three weeks. On paper, Vietnam should have been one of the worse-hit battlefields for the war against the coronavirus. Brazil, USA, Europe, and Russia all have significantly more financial resources. And being farther from the Wuhan epicenter, all these countries had significantly more time to prepare for the virus. With the exception of masks and the strict controls of the borders, daily life in Vietnam is already back to normal, even in Saigon which has two of the most population dense districts in the world.

So here is the sad lesson: if all of the Western countries had (1) taken action early, and (2) implemented a super-strict lockdown where 97 percent of population did not leave the house, not only would fewer lives have been lost but the economy would have only needed to be closed for 2-3 weeks. As I mentioned before, many Western European countries practically close their economy the entire month of August as is. And countries like France, with the amount of protesting they do, even more.

[URL]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_city_districts_by_population_density[/URL][/QUOTE]Our Secretary of State Pompeo suggested this virus came out of a Wuhan lab. It is possible that they grew the virus, unleashed it on their own population to give appearance of innocence and randomness, and contained it very efficiently and methodically and carefully leaked it to other countries, particularly the key geopolitical rivals. US has clearly been more impacted by this virus than China has been, and most of Europe has been crippled as well. If they wanted to narrow the economic gap between them to the West, this was an ingenious way to do it.

Yeah, Vietnam managed it well and so did Korea, Taiwan, etc. Those nations had past experiences with such viruses, their governments were more alert, their people love their masks, and they shut down in time. Their culture is such that they obediently follow government instructions. Out in the west, we are individualistic, love our freedoms, hate masks, and we had never seen such a pandemic in our lifetimes. I would not chalk this up as if these Asian nations are somehow superior in anyway.

But this is exactly the problem since the end of the soviet union, capitalism is leading the world in a terrible way, our leaders are just incapable to protect us even against a basic virus. The guys who are pushing for more capitalism are the first to ask financial support from the different government which is exactly the opposite of their own values. Most of the rich are stupid and their children even more or they will not spend their time to buy useless and stupid things, like LV, Porsche, BMW. Prada, Channel, Lancome 100,200, 300 years back the rich people were the most educated, today I don t believe it is still the case. They don t want to have educated people they just want to have customers who follow their commands (they control most of the news) don t think but buy and even better with credit.

[QUOTE=Pessimist;2453610]Our Secretary of State Pompeo suggested this virus came out of a Wuhan lab. It is possible that they grew the virus, unleashed it on their own population to give appearance of innocence and randomness, and contained it very efficiently and methodically and carefully leaked it to other countries, particularly the key geopolitical rivals. US has clearly been more impacted by this virus than China has been, and most of Europe has been crippled as well. If they wanted to narrow the economic gap between them to the West, this was an ingenious way to do it.

Yeah, Vietnam managed it well and so did Korea, Taiwan, etc. Those nations had past experiences with such viruses, their governments were more alert, their people love their masks, and they shut down in time. Their culture is such that they obediently follow government instructions. Out in the west, we are individualistic, love our freedoms, hate masks, and we had never seen such a pandemic in our lifetimes. I would not chalk this up as if these Asian nations are somehow superior in anyway.[/QUOTE]I think this stretches credibility to its max and is an illustration of how far fetched conspiracy theories can be on both ends of the political spectrum. I am no fan of China, but is easy to see how they could have contained this. China is first of all far more organized and effective an authoritarian (totalitarian is probably more apt) than other aspiring dictatorial regimes like Russia. China's levers of control over society are also far greater than Russia's, things like their social credit system and the zillions of cameras they have surveying the population and the facial recognition AI they use to identify people in no time in an immense crowd.

1. In the West, we have far greater civil liberties and can not make use of such tools, but the Chinese could, no government in Europe could have imposed a lock down on this scale and with such brutality. I think the Czechs have had one of the most effective ones in Europe, but it pales in comparison.

2. China is far more organized than even other authoritarian (totalitarian) regimes, ie Russia, and other mildly authoritarian regimes that do not respect human rights as much, ie India. Russia's state control apparatus is not capable of doing what the Chinese could and have done, the virus will spread far more widely in Russia, even though it is far more sparsely populated. Imagine India, I am using India as an example to illustrate the point and make it obvious. Does anyone doubt that the Chinese would be a 100 xs more effective in containing this outbreak than India, I didn't think so?

All that I am willing to believe is that they inadvertently let this loose from a lab by accident, that they would release it and risk such economic and political damage (to their leadership) is quite far fetched. Their economy is doing worse this year than at any point in the past 4 decades or so.

About this being a trick to undermine the western economies, this is truly one of the most far fetched, I would use another adjective, theory I have heard. China is heavily dependent on exports and not domestic consumption, in facts its economy is skewed heavily towards investment and less consumption. Therefore if a lot of its trading partners in the west are in economic despair, China will also suffer enormously and that will have political repercussions at home. China actually needs the west more than the west probably needs it, much more of its GDP depends on trade, and its needs an economically healthy west.

Notable politicians in the US are trying to use China as an excuse to hide their own inaction in the early phases of this pandemic, they are on record numerous times dismissing the threat of this pandemic and telling everyone to calm down. The same person blaming China now does not hold much water. Of course China is not open and forthright about a lot of things and of course they try to put a shiny gloss on things and hide their errors, but willfully inflicting such damage on themselves and their main trading partners would have been highly questionable to say the least.

This is from a web site that is usually a fan of the right, but still balanced in many ways.

[URL]https://nationalinterest.org/blog/skeptics/dont-listen-%E2%80%98china-covered-coronavirus%E2%80%99-narrative-157241[/URL]

This virus is different and has the right mix of lethality and contagiousness to spread so effectively, other viruses have not succeeded as well.

[QUOTE=DeltaIndigo;2453870]I think this stretches credibility to its max and is an illustration of how far fetched conspiracy theories can be on both ends of the political spectrum. I am no fan of China, but is easy to see how they could have contained this. China is first of all far more organized and effective an authoritarian (totalitarian is probably more apt) than other aspiring dictatorial regimes like Russia. China's levers of control over society are also far greater than Russia's, things like their social credit system and the zillions of cameras they have surveying the population and the facial recognition AI they use to identify people in no time in an immense crowd.

1. In the West, we have far greater civil liberties and can not make use of such tools, but the Chinese could, no government in Europe could have imposed a lock down on this scale and with such brutality. I think the Czechs have had one of the most effective ones in Europe, but it pales in comparison.

2. China is far more organized than even other authoritarian (totalitarian) regimes, ie Russia, and other mildly authoritarian regimes that do not respect human rights as much, ie India. Russia's state control apparatus is not capable of doing what the Chinese could and have done, the virus will spread far more widely in Russia, even though it is far more sparsely populated. Imagine India, I am using India as an example to illustrate the point and make it obvious. Does anyone doubt that the Chinese would be a 100 xs more effective in containing this outbreak than India, I didn't think so?.[/QUOTE]Well, no doubt it is a conspiracy theory and no, it is not my personally created concoction. As for how likely it is, who knows?! The suspicion that it did not jump from a bat or some other wild animal to humans by accident is taking hold, especially in GOP circles in US. As I said and as many of us know, Pompeo has openly suggested it was created in a Wuhan lab and China has officially condemned that suggestion. And BTW, Pompeo is probably the closest confidant of Trump in his cabinet and Trump fully subscribes to Pompeo views and feels the same way. However, China has done precious little to truly dispel any such theory because they simply refuse any objective, 3rd party investigation and one of the first things epidemiologists and virologists do in these situations is to track it down to Patient#1, which has been impossible with this virus. I was watching Contagion the other day and pretty much all of the movie played out identically in reality except that Patient#1 is not a stunning blonde Paltrow, and even worse we have no clue who that patient is.

If it was not accidental but somewhat man made, or man played a part in either the creation or dispersion of this virus, then it begs a second question -- how did it jump out of lab to humans? Was it intentional or accidental?? If it was intentional, what was the intent? Any intent to create it in the first place and "allowing it to leak out of the lab" can hardly be categorized as benign or even innocent. Yes, Trump and Pompeo have stopped at suggesting that the virus originated in Wuhan lab and did not (yet) take the next step and suggest that it was done by the Chinese government with a malicious intent. They may or may not take that next step, but it is being actively debated in GOP's underbelly circles.

BTW, I think you agree that China contained this very effectively (whether they truly had 80,000 infections and 4,500 dead or if those #s are ten times higher), and I had already said the same. The only point you dispute is that whether it was a runaway virus and they contained it; or if they leaked it, allowed it to proliferate and then contained it. That again brings us back to the intent, which I don't think anyone here is in a position to refute with authority, for the simple fact that I don't think anyone posting here is clued into Chinese politburo.

As for the relative economic impact, we can debate it all day long. China has the reputation of playing a long term game. Even the above conspiracy theory acknowledges that China knew aforehand that their own economy will get impacted adversely but they were prepared for it as a necessary price to pay to inflict a greater damage on their key rivals, and so far that calculation (if it was the true intent) has played to plan.

[QUOTE=Pessimist;2453610]Our Secretary of State Pompeo suggested this virus came out of a Wuhan lab. It is possible that they grew the virus, unleashed it on their own population to give appearance of innocence and randomness, and contained it very efficiently and methodically and carefully leaked it to other countries, particularly the key geopolitical rivals. US has clearly been more impacted by this virus than China has been, and most of Europe has been crippled as well. If they wanted to narrow the economic gap between them to the West, this was an ingenious way to do it.[/QUOTE]Right now the Chinese economy is still number two by a far margin, and highly dependent on the Western economies. If this is the year 2030, the BRI is complete, and China has shifted some of that dependency to a rising Africa, then perhaps a "deliberate spread" theory might make more sense. But in 2020, this deliberate spread theory represents a "nuclear option" that would hurt China just as much as the Western economies. If China was hell-bent on self-destruction and going full kamikaze to inflict economic harm on USA, it could sell its US treasury bonds. But they haven't. Even though tensions with Washington DC have increased, Beijing likes those low risk, high yields much more. This is no different than pay sex world. I have seen "tensions" rise in the FKK clubs: (1) WG gets short-changed at money locker, (2) monger gets overcharged at money locker, (3) monger cuts in line in front of another monger. Tempers flare, shouting ensues in Romanian, English, German, but just prior to the point of escalation, all parties cool down. Nobody wants to get banned from the club!

Although China is trying to transition away, it is still the "world's manufacturing plant":

[QUOTE]We should not forget that China, the worlds largest exporter, needs the rest of the world for its own economic recovery.

There are at least two reasons China depends on the global economy for its own recovery: Chinas large amount of exports to other countries and the continuity of its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) Chinas massive infrastructure projects, many of which are located in countries affected by COVID-19.

To ensure its economic recovery, China should assist countries involved in (BRI) initiative and improve its relationship with its biggest export destination, the United States.

https://theconversation.com/chinas-economic-recovery-depends-on-the-rest-of-the-world-135319
[/QUOTE]Deploying a disease as communicable as CV19 introduces political, social, and economic chaos, something which the CCP does not like. The idea of a weapon is that it hits your intended target, not causes collateral damage that could come back to harm you. In other words, you want a gun that can aim. Not a gun that will spray in unpredictable directions including your own. CCP had no way of predicting that other countries would lock down or their ability to contain the virus. Because China silenced the Wuhan doctors in early stages of outbreak, Chinese millennials, who were mostly politically apathetic before, have now had a political awakening and have started to criticise the regime. That is a huge threat to the future stability and existence of the CCP.

At any point in time, there are thousands of Chinese scientists living in the USA. Not that uncommon for a Chinese scientist to work in the West for several decades, then get lured back to China with insane amounts of money and lofty job titles. One of the ones that returned to China in 2019 was a 59-year old cancer researcher, who just developed a CV19 test back in Chinese labs. Would China willingly harm some of its best and brightest by unleashing a virus on them? [URL]https://www.propublica.org/article/the-trump-administration-drove-him-back-to-china-where-he-invented-a-fast-coronavirus-test[/URL].

[QUOTE=McAdonis;2453921]Right now the Chinese economy is still number two by a far margin, and highly dependent on the Western economies. If this is the year 2030, the BRI is complete, and China has shifted some of that dependency to a rising Africa, then perhaps a "deliberate spread" theory might make more sense. But in 2020, this deliberate spread theory represents a "nuclear option" that would hurt China just as much as the Western economies. If China was hell-bent on self-destruction and going full kamikaze to inflict economic harm on USA, it could sell its US treasury bonds. But they haven't. Even though tensions with Washington DC have increased, Beijing likes those low risk, high yields much more. This is no different than pay sex world. I have seen "tensions" rise in the FKK clubs: (1) WG gets short-changed at money locker, (2) monger gets overcharged at money locker, (3) monger cuts in line in front of another monger. Tempers flare, shouting ensues in Romanian, English, German, but just prior to the point of escalation, all parties cool down. Nobody wants to get banned from the club!

Although China is trying to transition away, it is still the "world's manufacturing plant":.[/QUOTE]There have been suggestions in right wing media that Trump should just abrogate the bonds held by China as a reparation for the harm inflicted on US. Trump has played that down for now given the current market conditions and the stress such an action would cause in the market. If he will entertain that idea more seriously in the future is tough to know.

BTW, it is not as if China has a trillion dollars sitting in the bank free and clear because that amount has matching liabilities, and reducing its dollar reserves will most certainly put even more stress on CNY which has already lost 4% vs dollar since mid Jan and 12% in roughly 2 years. At a time when its exports are likely to be weak, cutting dollar reserves will not do any favors to itself and yes a weak RMB would normally help with regards to exports except right now every other economy is weak and hence there are many places and things China could export to, and right now most western nations which are the primary export markets for China are super upset with China after the role China played in this virus proliferation, and it is a folly for China to think it can export its way out of trouble. So, no, I reject this theory that China is being judicious and responsible because it did not *trim down dollar reserves. China held its dollar reserves because it had no other choice. Plus, there is no other asset or currency it can replace at that amount, Euro depreciates even faster and there is at least some risk Euro could simply break up if this German court ruling against ECB holds and Italy and southern Europeans decide they had enough and try Italexit or Spainixit. Yen is safe enough but not large enough market to buy a trillion dollars worth in a jiffy. No, China has not much recourse on this.

And with all due respect saying something like "CV19 introduces political, social, and economic chaos, something which the CCP does not like" is naive and presumptuous because you and I both have no clue what they like and don't know what they are prepared to do and not prepared to do. China has been increasingly belligerent, nationalism has been stoked up at home to a fever pitch, Xi Jinping wants a third term and he is not getting it done on the home front on the economy side, and there is no telling what risks he is prepared to take. He sent a whole bunch of people to prison and death cells as part of his anti corruption drive and made a lot of enemies. He cannot hope for a quiet retirement as Jiang Zemin or Hu Jintao achieved. It is either dictator for life or bust. He is probably prepared for risks which normal Chinese leaders might not take.

The simple fact is that they did not allow any 3rd party investigation of this virus origin and we still don't know (a) if it was organic or man made (b) if it was spread globally despite their prevention efforts or if they carefully and surreptitiously leaked it. Only a true investigation can establish the facts, and there is only one party which is blocking the investigation and it is fair to question their motives.

As China asserts itself globally, its diplomats around the world are taking on foes big and small.

The brash new attitude, playing out on social media, in newsprint and across negotiating tables, marks a turn for China's once low-key diplomats. It's part of a deliberate shift within the Foreign Ministry, spurred on by Chinese leaders seeking to claim what they see as their nation's rightful place in the world, in the face of an increasingly inward-looking USA.

China's state media describe it as a "Wolf Warrior" ethos—named for a nationalistic Chinese film franchise about a Rambo-like soldier-turned-security contractor who battles American-led mercenary groups.

In Venezuela, a major recipient of Beijing's aid, the Chinese embassy lashed out at local legislators who described the pathogen that causes Covid-19 as the "China coronavirus. " Those legislators, the embassy said in a March statement on its website, were suffering from a "political virus."

"Since you are already very sick from this, hurry up to ask for proper treatment," the statement said. "The first step might be to wear the masks and shut up."

Read the rest of the article below. There have been many such articles in media. I understand China also attacked India recently from another WSJ article (or perhaps FT). Xi Jinping is feeling that he needs to deliver and his lieutenants are stepping up attacks. Obviously, there is the huge hostility to Australia now. The question is, what is China hiding and why is there such alarm on their part to any objective investigation if they are innocent?

[URL]https://www.wsj.com/articles/chinas-wolf-warrior-diplomats-are-ready-to-fight-11589896722?mod=searchresults&page=1&pos=1[/URL]

[QUOTE=DeltaIndigo;2453870]I think this stretches credibility to its max and is an illustration of how far fetched conspiracy theories can be on both ends of the political spectrum. I am no fan of China, but is easy to see how they could have contained this. China is first of all far more organized and effective an authoritarian (totalitarian is probably more apt) than other aspiring dictatorial regimes like Russia. China's levers of control over society are also far greater than Russia's, things like their social credit system and the zillions of cameras they have surveying the population and the facial recognition AI they use to identify people in no time in an immense crowd.

1. In the West, we have far greater civil liberties and can not make use of such tools, but the Chinese could, no government in Europe could have imposed a lock down on this scale and with such brutality. I think the Czechs have had one of the most effective ones in Europe, but it pales in comparison.[/QUOTE]Do you know real figures for deaths in Wuhan and whole huge China? Do you think only 1 person can know the truth? I think nobody knows. In Western Europe, we just know they lied for figures and Chinese people confirmed even they are afraid of their government, and about when it started, not on international market on December as the whole world thought at this time because not many deaths at this time, but before October. But as I m not paranoiac like US, I think it was just accident through safety and not a virus weapon, and at least US know more about Trump taking chloroquine bonbons, telling confined is useless, let s go to the beach and play golf, 100 000 deaths talk and they will get much more, from more than 30 millions unemployed, Texas falling down under, and more than 10 millions illegals, much more than 50 millions with no health insurance who can t afford healthcare, Obama please run back, for sure I would prefer him, rather than a crazy ready for anything, when his model, from ex communist wife seems more clever. When San Francisco is a beautiful town for me, but NYC is just a magic town, when Vegas didn't impressed me much because so fake when I walked the whole strip and back from Circus and even to downtown where I found a WG I could see, when I was given papers for escorts on the strip, but I can t forget fridge trucks and not only one in streets and Hart Island putting people they didn't know about all together. About CIA, I remember when I was a child, hearing about watergate and Nixon who had to leave, about lies and paranoia under cold war, they can compete with communist China for lies. Both are dangerous for me, and Western Europe have to protect for a better safety, for more independent, when we are a 300 millions people market and we have the highest standards for quality and way of life. France is number 1, Spain number 3 and Italy should be 4 or 5, for tourism for attractive countries, Paris being number 1 for towns, before NYC, LA, Rio or Tokyo which are much bigger.

[QUOTE=Arnold15;2453136]The only accurate way to compare countries is to count "excess deaths".
How many died this year compared to previous years.[/QUOTE]You're partly right so I suggest you take a look at those figures:

[URL]https://euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps#excess-mortality[/URL]

You go all the way down the webpage, you select Denmark, Norway, Finland and Sweden and for the week range you select all the weeks from 2020. It looks like Sweden is not doing so well compared to other northern countries.

You can also use this source:

[URL]https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-data-explorer?zoomToSelection=true&time=2020-03-19..&deathsMetric=true&dailyFreq=true&perCapita=true&smoothing=7&country=BEL~SWE~NOR~FIN~DNK[/URL]

Guess who is now way above Belgium which counts every unexplained death as related to coronavirus?

[QUOTE=Pessimist;2453965]There have been suggestions in right wing media that Trump should just abrogate the bonds held by China as a reparation for the harm inflicted on US. Trump has played that down for now given the current market conditions and the stress such an action would cause in the market. If he will entertain that idea more seriously in the future is tough to know.
[/QUOTE]Knowing what is in the Politburo's head as you state is impossible but we do have a reasonable idea of the rational calculus that would be in their interest. With this rational calculus this would be quite a risky move. I have only quoted a small part of your previous report because the main source of these theories are actually politically motivated.

First of all there is a certain prominent right wing politician who is fearing for his re-election and is trying to cover up his initial missteps. He is on record saying numerous times that this would be a minor thing and is totally under control, now he is looking for a scapegoat to deflect attention away from these missteps. And accuracy and factual arguments are not his strong point to say the least. Furthermore a demographic that he relies on disproportionately, ie older voters, are not happy with this record as regarding the pandemic.

A lot of these theories have come out of this political discourse, not everyone who believes it has this motive, but it is spread by many people who have questionable motives, which in my view makes them more suspect. Trump has gotten rid of many non sycophantic cabinet members and many of those that survive do so by being totally subservient and sycophantic. In my opinion Pompeo fits this description, he is one of the biggest sycophants around and will always support his bosses' wild theories. For some reason Mike Pence avoids getting trapped into supporting these theories, he manages to avoid the worst of the spot light some how. I do not think it is Trump listening to Pompeo, rather the reverse.

Anyhow, that is really all I have to say on this matter. Also the Chinese could not be sure that they would be able to contain this had they released it deliberately, in fact it still remains a danger to them, albeit on a far reduced scale.

The news doesn't spell out if travel from those 26 countries into Germany also will be allowed. The statement from Bavarian premier seems to indicate otherwise.

In any case, there is no indication that they will open travel to people from outside EU. Such as US, for example.

And if and when they do, will they quarantine for x days? Any quarantine is a total no no for a sex tourist coming to DE for a week of sex.

And of course, none of this says when the sex clubs will actually be open.

Continue to think the likelihood of large FKKs opening up as they operated pre Covid is very small. My bet was that there is less than 5% chance by Sept, less than 25% chances by December.

——————————————.

A government source said the cabinet may also decide to lift a warning against travel to 26 fellow EU countries plus Britain, Iceland, Norway, Switzerland and Liechtenstein from June 15, opening the way to separate advice for specific regions.

Markus Soeder, premier of Bavaria, the hardest-hit state, voiced opposition to moving too fast in reopening tourism.

"We have in Italy, Spain and France completely different infection numbers compared to Germany so I ask the federal government to think very carefully about this," he said.

"Nobody should be fooled. Corona remains deadly," Soeder said, describing Thuringia state's shift towards adopting voluntary, localised measures as a "fatal signal".

In a nod to Bavaria's objections, the cabinet might postpone its decision by a week, but still lift the blanket travel warning from mid-June, media group RND reported.

[QUOTE=DeltaIndigo;2454100]Anyhow, that is really all I have to say on this matter. Also the Chinese could not be sure that they would be able to contain this had they released it deliberately, in fact it still remains a danger to them, albeit on a far reduced scale.[/QUOTE]That China would have intentionally released a deadly virus upon the world is one of the silliest conspiracy theories I have ever heard. With world commerce being so interlinked, and China having the second largest economy in the world, that would be like shooting themselves in the head. No way they acted intentionally in that way, but they did try to cover it up, and then were slow to tell the world what was happening. We may never know the full truth.

[QUOTE=DeltaIndigo;2454100]Knowing what is in the Politburo's head as you state is impossible but we do have a reasonable idea of the rational calculus that would be in their interest. With this rational calculus this would be quite a risky move. I have only quoted a small part of your previous report because the main source of these theories are actually politically motivated.

First of all there is a certain prominent right wing politician who is fearing for his re-election and is trying to cover up his initial missteps. He is on record saying numerous times that this would be a minor thing and is totally under control, now he is looking for a scapegoat to deflect attention away from these missteps. And accuracy and factual arguments are not his strong point to say the least. Furthermore a demographic that he relies on disproportionately, ie older voters, are not happy with this record as regarding the pandemic..[/QUOTE]In February when Gino was continually advocating that clubs should selectively deny admission to Asian looking people, I questioned his motive. I said "if any admission denial is to be implemented, it should be done at the borders. It is discriminatory to be denying admission to people based solely on their ethnicity look at the club doors".

At that time, almost no one came to defend my stance. A few took Gino's side. There were multiple messages in those threads, can be easily verified by clicking on my history.

So, I am pretty sure I can be spared all these spurious charges in my direction.

I appreciate the political discourse and insightful lessons from you Delta. The point still remains (a) the origin of the virus is not established because China is blocking any investigation (b) consequently we also have zero clarity on how it spread and how much of the spread and leak was intentional and unintentional (c) yes, many countries are adversely impacted w. R. T. Their economies, including China BUT some are impacted much worse than others, and so far the trends are that China is less impacted than its key geopolitical rivals. If you have proof to refute these points, please do present them. Whether China foresaw how the impact would work out and was prepared to sacrifice a few pawns to capture the Queen of its opponent, that I do not know but there is no proof to say such a thing didn't happen. I will let you put probabilities.

[QUOTE=Pessimist;2454106]In February when Gino was continually advocating that clubs should selectively deny admission to Asian looking people, I questioned his motive. I said "if any admission denial is to be implemented, it should be done at the borders. It is discriminatory to be denying admission to people based solely on their ethnicity look at the club doors".

At that time, almost no one came to defend my stance. A few took Gino's side. There were multiple messages in those threads, can be easily verified by clicking on my history.

So, I am pretty sure I can be spared all these spurious charges in my direction.

I appreciate the political discourse and insightful lessons from you Delta. The point still remains (a) the origin of the virus is not established because China is blocking any investigation (b) consequently we also have zero clarity on how it spread and how much of the spread and leak was intentional and unintentional (c) yes, many countries are adversely impacted w. R. T. Their economies, including China BUT some are impacted much worse than others, and so far the trends are that China is less impacted than its key geopolitical rivals. If you have proof to refute these points, please do present them. Whether China foresaw how the impact would work out and was prepared to sacrifice a few pawns to capture the Queen of its opponent, that I do not know but there is no proof to say such a thing didn't happen. I will let you put probabilities.[/QUOTE]My argument wasn't about probabilities or the hypothetical chess game, I still think it is an extremely far fetched theory, but about the origin of these theories. You can see that Mr. T and his cohorts have played an enormous role in propagating these theories. A few points that should be obvious to anyone whether you support him or not, honesty is not his strong point and I do differ with you on one point, Pompeo is a total ass kissing sycophant who will say anything to please Mr T not an independent source of information.

The allegations you describe have been spurred in large part by the political face saving theories pushed by this group, that was the gist of my argument. I still think the theory is very far fetched on its merits but I choose to not even go into that this time since you know my arguments in that respect about how futile a strategy I think that would be, but you differ and disagree, that is fine and your opinion. This does boil down to a matter of conviction as well, yes the Chinese can be totally ruthless, but I believe not this ruthless and they would not take risks like this, you believe otherwise. Fine.

All I wanted to point out that a lot of the ammunition for these theories is highly questionable and with obvious political motives.

Yes, we are all aware that world commerce is interlinked, not exactly breaking news. The question is who is hurt more, and if the relative pain is less, is it plausible that a desperate, rogue regime act irresponsibly and take such a horrible step -- the very nature of it being such that even the people living in countries which are being targeted by such action would exclaim "No, they could not do such a thing, could they? No, I don't believe they did. I mean, they could and't, nobody would".

I am looking at Bloomberg screen right now. The expected real GDP in US in 2020 is -5.7% from +2.3% in 2019. Investment is expected to be -9.8% yoy, unemployment is expected to be 11% at year end, exports are expected to -7.1% yoy. Debt as of GDP is expected to surge to 99% from 79% in 2019. In contrast, China's GDP is expected to be +1.8% in 2020 from 6. 1% in 2019, unemployment is expected to move to 4.3% at year end from 3. 6% at the end of 2019, industrial production is expected to be at 1.6% compared to 5.5% for 2019. Germany's GDP is expected to be -6.2% for 2020 from +0. 6% in 2019, Industrial production is expected to be -8.1% yoy, exports -10.9% yoy; France is expected to have GDP -9.1%, Japan real GDP of -4.7%, and so on.

While these are consensus economist expectations and not the actual #s, global economy works on expectations and they do show China is still growing this year and coming out relatively unscathed, especially compared to key global rivals.