> we don't have a single human case documented before those in Wuhan
The disease spread all over the world before people discovered the first cases, so it's not very surprising if previous cases on a less developed area than Wuhan were ignored.
Well, sure, but my point is that now that people are suspecting it was the lab, we ought to expect China to be digging furiously for evidence of an earlier case. At least so far, I haven't heard of any such evidence.
Willful ignorance is the first posture I would expect from the CCP - that would be the specific avoidance of gathering evidence that would be embarrassing if found to exist.
The second posture I would expect (if the first posture was not takwn) is that if they did seek and find evidence of particularly embarassing variety, they would actively stonewall access to awareness of that evidence and do everything they could to suppress that evidence. The statement,
>we ought to expect China to be digging furiously for evidence of an earlier case
is prima facie either incorrect or irrelevant to whether your ever becoming aware such evidence exists.
China does not possess Western democratic institutions, (however flawed as even those might be), to achieve accountability. To wit, over here on the Western side of things, it’s going to be hard enough getting NIH to examine whether NIH funded this work in contravention of US gov mandates not to (see HHS Potential Pandemic Pathogen Care and Oversight (P3CO) Framework, 2017).
The disease spread all over the world before people discovered the first cases, so it's not very surprising if previous cases on a less developed area than Wuhan were ignored.