[elpadre]

My thoughts:

1. Chinese new year celebrations are in January and probably millions of Chinese throughout the world return to the homeland going back to their foreign homes later. Did many carry the virus beck with them? You betcha!

2. January 14 - A big celebration (name unrecalled) was held in Wuhan with 40,000 “families” in attendance. No doubt many came from other countries. Did many carry the virus back with them? You betcha!

3. When Wuhan was finally quarantined in late January, it was said several million of the residents had already fled the city. Where did they go? Did many carry the virus with them? You betcha!

Certainly the CCP government knew they were contaminating the world with this caronavirus. The questions are:

1. Did the spread occur by accident and got out of hand.

2. Did the CCP allow it to spread on purpose so as to emerge on the other side as the dominant world power (as well as the other communist countries - Russia and NK who were not affected by the virus)

3. If #2 is true, should caronavirus be classified as a Weapon of Mass Destruction?

Now, allow those questions to peculate in your mind for a while and then respond. Let’s get some of our FR deep thinkers going, and then the movers and shakers. This topic is of maximum importance. So sayeth elpadre!!!

[ncalburt]

The Chinese can not just leave .
The CCP controls all travel.
The CCP intended these bioweapons went back to the west.
I suspect many were infected and intended to infect the West to move up in the CCP. The CCP closed the Two Chinese Wall street markets to
prevent a melt down.
The Chinese quietly got all their student / spies home by chartered flights .
A planned bioweapon hit .

.

[noiseman]

I think you are exactly right. The Chinese government knew exactly what would happen when they allowed people to travel internationally from China, but yet were restricting travel from Wuhan within China. Don’t forget that they also reportedly activated Chinese agents within the U.S. and Europe to buy up protective gear and disinfectants and ship them back to China, as well as hacking many medical institutes and hospitals to interfere with our ability to defend ourselves against the virus.

At the very least, China tried to take advantage of the pandemic to harm us. The only remaining question is whether the initial release of the virus was intentional as well, or just an accident. The answer to that question hardly matters at this point; The rest of their clearly deliberate actions are more than enough evidence of their malicious intent.

We MUST respond by doing everything within our power to crush the Chinese government, while supporting pro-democracy activists within their population. I think an inarguable first step should be to seize all Chinese government assets deposited in the U.S., including all U.S. treasury debt held by them. I have read arguments that rather than defaulting on our debt to them, which could have severe consequences for the U.S.’s credit worthiness, we could simply seize the financial instruments themselves, since those debts exist only electronically and they have no outfield possession of them.

Then, I would explore the possibility, if it exists, of using emergency powers to order companies like Google to stop collaborating with China and to open up their search engines, social media platforms, etc. within China. Free their people to have open access to information and communication. If direct orders are not possible, instead threaten Silicon Valley ChiCom collaborators with a permanent ban on seeking any government contracts if they don’t comply.

Consider a permanent ban on all travel between the U.S. and China unless and until the ChiCom government either comes completely clean and verifiably changes its behavior, or steps down. This would inevitably harm some Silicon Valley companies, but collaborating with the enemy has consequences, and see the previous paragraph.

And these would be the “gentle”, “diplomatic” measures (remember, they have nearly destroyed the rest of the world economically, as well as killing thousands and thousands of our citizens, and have done it deliberately - they’re damned lucky we’re not nuking them right now).

If these measures don’t instill proper behavior in the ChiComs, then go to the next level: Take serious covert action to overthrow them. Serious?...absolutely. Unthinkable?...maybe at one time, but that time is long passed. What they have done is unprecedented. This is the first time one country has essentially attacked every other country on the planet. It must be responded to with equal seriousness.

The ChiCom government will not stop trying to undermine us and ultimately destroy us. That fact should now be crystal clear. If we don’t do something on the order of what I suggest above, we WILL find ourselves at all-out war with them at some point. That’s just an unavoidable conclusion.

[Greenpees]

Not a deep thinker myself, but I see this scenario.

China didn’t want this. Once the bat was out of the bag, they knew it would severely hurt their economy. They intentionally allowed it to propagate so they would just be one of many countries having to deal with a global problem. If it was going to hurt them economically, it HAD to also damage the US and the EU in order to share the pain.

Once it was sufficiently spread, they cracked down locally. There was definitely a CCP blitz to pin the source on anyone but them, but nobody is buying that, except 99% of Chinese citizens.

Meanwhile, they knew they could depend on our Democrats to turn it into a shit show here in the US, and do everything they could to make it Trump’s fault. The Democrats are, in essence, acting as a willing arm of the CCP.