It’s not good to have animal reservoirs because then we have two species to test-for and treat. And, of course, the animal usually goes on to carry the agent forever….like Hanta in mice.

That was a choice bit, Aesop Fan.

Meemsie – A bit of common-sense analysis that seems to be beyond the capabilities of our journalists and even the government experts.

Herein, a newly discovered reason why China is anxious to deflect the original sin over to the USA.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/03/the_wuhan_virus_escaped_from_a_chinese_lab.html

Worse yet, the virus may have been released by underpaid researchers who sold contaminated lab animals to make a little extra cash on the side:

And then there is this little-known fact: Some Chinese researchers are believed to sell laboratory animals to street vendors after they have finished experimenting on them[.] …

Instead of properly disposing of infected animals by cremation, as the law requires, they sell them on the side to make a little extra cash. Or, in some cases, a lot of extra cash. One Beijing researcher, now in jail, made the equivalent of a million dollars selling monkeys and rats on the live animal market, whence they likely wound up in someone’s stomach.

This isn’t the first made-in-China virus Beijing has sprung on the world. And it won’t be the last unless we stop worrying about political correctness and sanction China for what amounts to economic warfare and negligent homicide on a global scale.

Story linked by AT here – it’s not that new a discovery:
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/dont-buy-chinas-story-the-coronavirus-may-have-leaked-from-a-lab-2020-02-22
The author of this New York Post op-ed, Steven W. Mosher, is the president of the Population Research Institute and the author of “Bully of Asia: Why China’s ‘Dream’ is the New Threat to World Order.”

A lot of the assertions from Mosher’s NYP article have been circulating, but this is the first I’ve seen about the recycled lab animals (wonder why that didn’t get more attention earlier? Maybe I just missed it.) – Mosher doesn’t source that claim, but a jail sentence for it even in China ought to be somewhere on the Web.

Fess up: you’re an elementary school vice principal.

“The lesson modern media takes from the Boy Who Cried Wolf is not that crying wolf is wrong. It’s that the Boy should have cried louder, monetized his crying, demanded more funding for the Department of Wolf Control, and gotten himself on a few Rolodexes as a wolf expert.”

Outstanding!

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1238439930973609984.html

Why do we get so much delusional fearmongering in times of crisis? Because it works. It gets clicks and riles people up against designated hate objects. The dopamine hit is enormous. Money often changes hands. And when the doomsday predictions don’t happen, there is ZERO penalty.
…
If hysteria matches political preconceptions, it doesn’t matter if it fails to come true, or even if it’s 180 degrees wrong. The doomsday prophets get unlimited credit for good intentions. They predicted what SHOULD have happened according to dogma that will never change.
…
Among the many ways the media makes it worse is by keeping the same people on speed dial for analysis and commentary. It doesn’t matter how wrong they are, and always have been, as long as they’re narrative-friendly and good for hot and spicy sound bites.
…
Rest assured that when the coronavirus panic is over (and the actual coronavirus problem is resolved) that the people who made the most hysterical doomsday predictions will suffer zero damage to their credibility. They probably won’t even be asked how they got it so wrong.

The lesson modern media takes from the Boy Who Cried Wolf is not that crying wolf is wrong. It’s that the Boy should have cried louder, monetized his crying, demanded more funding for the Department of Wolf Control, and gotten himself on a few Rolodexes as a wolf expert. /end

The Chinese Knew What They Were Doing in Spreading the Wuhan Virus
Posted at 12:30 pm on March 12, 2020 by Stu Cvrk

Just as the Soviets were incapable of admitting errors of any kind during the 1920s and 1930s, so are their progeny, the Communist Chinese, unable to come clean on the Wuhan virus. The Chinese knew about the virus in November 2019 yet did nothing to stop its spread and indeed did not inform the world of the problem until forced to by the world community as the virus spread to other countries.

The virus originated in Wuhan province. Whether it was engineered or a mutation of an existing virus remains unknown, but surely it is not coincidental that the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which is where China’s only level four biosafety laboratory is located, and which studies some of the world’s deadliest viruses, is located just 20 miles from the center of the original outbreak, according to some sources.

China is a closed society, and the ChiComs tightly control information, particularly anything that may be damaging or embarrassing to the regime. They have also invested millions of dollars in Western media over the past two decades in order to influence and suppress negative information about Communist China. It is relatively easy to spot the pro-Chinese media who are trying to shift the blame to the US for the virus.

Laura Ingraham (Fox News) interviewed Steve Mosher, author of Bully of Asia: Why China’s Dream is the New Threat to World Order, and Victor Davis Hanson, Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, on Tuesday night about this very topic. Here is what they said:

Ingraham: Although the coronavirus started in Wuhan province, China, according to China you can’t call it the Wuhan virus because “that’s racist.” The Left is more obsessed with fact-checking Trump than addressing the lies of the Chinese here. What gives? And is this China’s dividend from sprinkling so much money around the United States and holding these lavish conferences for journalists over the years, etc., etc.

Mosher: First of all, this is the Wuhan virus. I prefer to call it the Chinese coronavirus, and actually the full title is the Chinese Communist Party’s coronavirus because let’s follow the bread crumbs. Back in November, there were the first cases of the coronavirus in the city of Wuhan. By December, the National Health Commission of the government of China had sent a commission down to investigate this new strain of pneumonia. They knew they had problems. On January 1st, they closed down all the military bases in and around Wuhan. They didn’t tell the people of China; they didn’t tell the world, but they closed down the military bases … the police force was protected, the military was protected from the virus. Then several million Chinese left the center of the epidemic, went throughout China, throughout the world, spreading the virus everywhere. Only after the horse had left the barn did they close the barn door. So everybody who is a victim of the coronavirus … everybody who dies as a result of the coronavirus is a victim of the Chinese Communist Party. One more thing as an American that really gets my goat … and this is that the Chinese Communist Party is now whispering that the cause … the original source of the coronavirus was the United States of America. [Supposedly,] we sent it over with the military athletes who participated in the military games from October 17th through 20th in Wuhan. That’s the story that they’re currently spreading.

Ingraham: This is par for the course, is it not? In almost every dealing we’ve had with the CCP.

VDH: It is. And remember that they knew about this virus in December and January, and they allowed 15,000 and more of their own citizens to fly on direct flights to the United States. So we have 60 days of a million people coming in from China, many of whom were probably exposed to the virus until Trump leveled the travel ban. It’s pretty miraculous given what China did that we’ve only had one out of 10 million Americans die, and one out of every 500,000 be infected. It really shows you that this virus is a very strange virus. … if you look at the origins of this whole problem, it’s China. China let people come into this country knowing that they might be exposing Americans and didn’t care.

Ingraham: Now we’re seeing all these articles pop up in Bloomberg and other media outlets saying, “Well, look at the number of infected people every day is lower and lower because of China’s great handling of this virus. So now they created it, and we’re supposed to laud their handling of it. Are you kidding me?

Mosher: The Chinese Communist Party is celebrating its success at quarantining 150 million people, killing many of them and infecting many more with an ineffective approach to containing the virus. And now they’re claiming credit for it. But they always turn truth on its head. They are one-trick ponies.

End of the Q&A. A suspicious soul might wonder whether the Chinese blithely spread the virus around the world, cynically calculating that the deaths of a few million Chinese would be a small price to pay if the virus could lead to severe consequences for the US and President Trump.