Capitalism vs. Science - who'd win?

I think I'll go with Science -

The WHO considered the possibility of a laboratory leak. But it dismissed this possibility as “extremely unlikely,” declaring, “There is no record of viruses closely related to SARS-CoV-2 in any laboratory before December 2019, or genomes that in combination could provide a SARS-CoV-2 genome.”

Instead, the report found that COVID-19 most likely originated in a population of bats – or potentially some other animal – before traveling through a series of animal intermediaries to infect humans. While the report recognized that the first major outbreak took place in Wuhan, China, and most cases were clustered around the Hua'nan wet market, it did not conclude that either Wuhan or the market – or even China for that matter – were the origin of the disease.

The report examines the closest relatives of the SARS-Cov-2 virus that causes COVID-19, most of which are bat viruses but some of which were identified in pangolins, as well as the closest human virus, SARS-Cov, which caused the SARS pandemic of the early 2000s. While these viruses closely resemble the virus that causes COVID-19, the differences between them suggest that another animal may have served as an intermediary.

 

Why is this important to note?

Two inter-related considerations lie behind the “Wuhan lab” lie. First, the ruling elites of the major capitalist powers want to shift blame for the pandemic from their own catastrophic policies, responsible for death on a massive scale, to China.

Last weekend, CNN ran a report on the US response to the pandemic that made clear that virtually the entire US response to the pandemic was dictated by the defense not of human lives, but rather the economic interests of the financial elite. As a result, more people have died from COVID-19 in the United States than in any other country. Desperate to shift the blame and create an external enemy, the US media and Biden administration are repeating Trump’s maxim: “It’s China’s fault!”

Second, the “Wuhan lab” lie is connected to the geopolitical imperatives of American imperialism. The Biden administration is carrying out a massive military escalation against China, seeking to ring the country with offensive missiles and doubling US military spending in the Pacific. Three decades of unending war by the American ruling class in the Middle East and Central Asia are developing into a “great power” conflict, targeting its major competitors, including China.

 

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/03/31/pers-m31.html