Suddenly, the Chinese lab origin theory of COVID-19 becomes more than a baseless right-wing conspiracy myth
You may have noticed that I haven’t written much if at all about COVID-19’s origins, despite having written a ton about the disease. Was it from a wet market? Was it from a lab? My opinion was that it was 50/50 and that we just didn’t know, so I didn’t want to waste much verbiage on it.
But now I’m leaning towards the lab theory.
Here’s Jonathan Turley on the subject:
When the coronavirus first appeared in Wuhan, China, many people immediately raised the concern that it might have been the result of a lab release from a controversial Chinese the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The lab was working on coronavirus and had raised concerns over its containment protocols. Then there was the fact that China hid the outbreak, arrested top doctors, and buried research on its origins. However, a narrative quickly emerged in countering President Donald Trump’s references to the “China virus.” People, including members of Congress, who referred to the lab were ridiculed on CNN and other outlets as conspiracy theorists like Politifact declared the theory to be utterly baseless. For some of us, the overwhelming media narrative seemed odd and artificial. It would seem obvious that a lab working on viruses in this area would be an obvious possible source. Now, after weeks of chastising those who mentioned the lab theory, another cache of documents and information shows that there are ample reasons to be suspicious and that concerns were raised two years ago within the State Department.
The Washington Post reported that embassy officials in January 2018 alerted U.S. officials of serious problems in the lab which was conducting risky research on bats, the very source of COVIT-19. The United Kingdom has issued a statement that they are seriously considering the lab as a possible source.
Apparently the lab was already flagged as being lax about safety, raising obvious concerns. And if you think about it, China has been lax about safety regarding its manufacture of drugs, as the recurrent recalls of blood pressure medications for contaminants indicate. Please note that in that article, datelined September 2019, it quotes Trump as “calling on US industries to manufacture here at home, instead of outsourcing to China.”
Prescient, that.
More from Turley:
The point is not that this proves that the virus originated in the lab. Rather, my interest is the overwhelming media narrative that emerged to deny that this was a credible potential source. That narrative emerged around the time that the media was hammering Trump for his use of “China virus” and “Wuhan virus.” That criticism was enhanced by the argument that the virus developed naturally. That could still be the case but it never seemed rational to me to discount the lab theory.
What is most amazing is that, if the Chinese allowed this virus to escape and then arrested doctors raising the alarm over the spread, it would be one of the greatest stories of our lifetime: a world pandemic caused by human error. Millions have been infected and thousands have died. If the cause was negligence by a totalitarian nation (that ignored warnings and punished doctors), this would be a story of the century. Suddenly magazines care saying that they are now thinking about the “unthinkable.” Yet, it was never truly unthinkable was it?
It was only “unthinkable” when it served their purposes to brand it that, as part of their “Trump and the right are racist xenophobes and crazy people” narrative. The evidence must be getting very strong for them to begin to abandon that stance now.
I agree with Turley that “it would be one of the greatest stories of our lifetime” if the escaped-from-lab theory turns out to be true. And I don’t mean “great” as in “wonderful” – I mean “great” as in “enormous, compelling, transformative.” I use the latter word because I believe this entire COVID-19 episode is going to change the standing of China in the world, and already has begun to do so. No wonder China was so keen to cover it up from the start.
Is it just me, or is there a functional limit to how far TDS will torque MSM coverage and beyond that they have to get paid?
Or would they go that far and further for free?
The behavior of the Chinese government in this affair brings to mind the old cliche about the Watergate scandal: “It’s not the crime, it’s the coverup.”
China lied; people died.
WHO lied; people died.
MSM carries water for China and WHO.
Thus
MSM lied; people died.
But TDS excuses all.
I don’t know whether the virus is from a lab. But judging from their reactions, I am pretty sure that most of the governments of the world don’t rule it out: it’s a pretty good explanation for the scale of the shutdowns, especially given the relatively modest number of deaths (even in the hardest hit countries).
And it explains the reaction of the Chinese government as well. People talk about their culpability in hiding the epidemic at first, without exploring why they did it.
This is a short article on Dr. Ai who had some of the first covid-19 patients in China
A different article I read suggested that it never occurred to Dr. Ai that her efforts to be a good and conscientious doctor would conflict with the CC-Party line. Until she was threatened with arrest.
FIRE ALARM; FIRE ALARM!!!
The only story that will be widely discussed from the Trump briefing today is his threat to adjourn both House and Senate so that he can make appointments of needed personnel in his Administration.
There will be cries of DICTATOR! There will be calls for a new IMPEACHMENT!
But Trump has once again confounded his enemies, calling attention to the democrat “standing in the schoolhouse door” as they did in the early days of the civil rights movement.
There is ample reason to believe the “novel” virus was bio-engineered in a military lab in Wuhan, making it possible to enter human cells and replicate. I refer you to the thorough report in the Epoch Times:
https://www.theepochtimes.com/documentary-tracking-down-the-origin-of-wuhan-coronavirus_3313091.html
The Epoch Times was founded and is run by Chinese Americans, often Falun Gong believers.
“It was only “unthinkable” when it served their purposes to brand it that, as part of their “Trump and the right are racist xenophobes and crazy people” narrative.” [Neo]
And right on cue, as reported by Ace of SpadesHQ posted at 3:29 pm:
The link: http://www.ace.mu.nu
Trump is correct; they are the enemy of the people.
Bravo to Edward’s “transitive property” proof of media malfeasance above!
This, in neo’s writeup, was striking: “if the Chinese allowed this virus to escape and then arrested doctors raising the alarm over the spread, it would be one of the greatest stories of our lifetime”
How many AMAZING stories have reporters passed up in the last TEN years in order to support the Dem agenda? All the Obama scandals, spying on Trump, now coronavirus.
Although it would be useful to determine whether or not the virus came from a lab, IMO the real question is what should be our relationship with China post COVID19. Personally, I favor cutting off all economic relations. If corporations want to offshore allow them to switch to Vietnam, Thailand, and India.
Romney circa 2012 was wrong, China is the greatest threat. Now is the time to confront the CCP.
Turley’s link from the Washington Post is from the Global Opinion section. It’s incorrect to say ‘Washington Post reported.’ His link to the United Kingdom statement is from the Daily Mail, which is known for being a tabloid. And the comment says this: One member of Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s emergency committee said…. it did not rule out that the virus first spread to humans after leaking from a Wuhan laboratory.
So two things. Who is the anonymous source? And, sure, nothing rules out that it could have been developed in a lab. But that doesn’t mean it did. I would rate this unproven but interesting and not really hitting the mainstream media.
I think that it is pretty irrefutable that, had the Communist government running China—at its outset–warned the rest of the world about the outbreak of the Coronavirus in Wuhan, had that Chinese Communist government admitted just how dangerous this Coronavirus was–warned that it was lethal, and very communicable person-to-person, shared their true death totals, and had not had its mouthpiece at the head of WHO, Dr. Tedros, dismiss the danger from this Chinese Coronavirus, such a body of critical information—such an early “heads up”–would have enabled nations all over the world to be much better prepared, and enabled them to take/put in place actions—such as immediate travel bans—which very likely would have saved many countries around the world some large portion of each country’s current misery, disease, death, and economic and social disruption. *
But, according to reports, the Chinese government didn’t do this; they suppressed news of this outbreak, ordered samples destroyed, and penalized those who tried to warn of it; they lied, and they covered up the key information about this Chinese Coronavirus and their experience with it–as they apparently continue to do to this day.
The Chinese Communist government’s behavior here can and must never be forgotten.
For the damage caused (and still being caused) by the actions that this Chinese Communist government deliberately took–and refrained from taking—damage to many countries and to a large portion of the people in this world—the Chinese Communist dictatorship needs to pay a very heavy price—needs to be punished and punished hard.
Such punishment needs to be broad-based, and comprehensive.
A few suggestions–
For it’s part, the U.S. Government needs to put into place new laws and policies that will lure/force U.S. companies to “repatriate,” to bring their factories and their money back here to the U.S. from China.
And that is just the beginning.
Our government also needs to see to it that we wean ourselves from reliance on China for anything at all of strategic (and obviously, now, to include medical) value—especially electronics—from transistors and circuit boards, to finished products, software, and whole systems—see Huawei, to precursor pharmaceutical chemicals, medicines, and medical equipment.
Do you know how many Chinese produced products and programs many of us use here in the U.S. feed data to, or have it transit through China?
According to recent reports, among them are some of the apparently hugely popular drones, **and some of the rapidly proliferating “home security cameras” that all of us are buying and installing.
We need to limit, if not eliminate, all Chinese access to data streams collected here in the U.S., and that should include an investigation into and ways to eliminate any “back doors” that the Chinese may have managed to insert into the electronic components, finished products, and systems that they sell to us.
Our government needs to redirect all U.S. supply chains for any and all products—both precursor parts, chemicals, and finished products–away from China as their source, and to source these things from other countries who are our actual allies.
Then, there are the many supposedly “U.S. companies” that have actually been bought and taken over by the Chinese.
Thus, or instance, we find out in the first sentence or two of an article the other day–talking about how Smithfields*** has closed a meat packing plant because hundreds of the workers there have tested positive for the Chinese Coronavirus, and that a shortage of such meat products is only an estimated few weeks away—that iconic company Smithfields was bought several years ago by the Chinese and, in fact, is shipping a lot of it’s pork products, not to customers here in the U.S. but back to China. ****
Of more strategic importance is the fact that the Chinese have become our chief source for the strategically critical “Rare Earth Elements” that are vital for our production of military weapons, weapon systems, and military equipment that we used to mine ourselves in the U.S. This another suicidal development. We need to reopen our own mines. *****
The federal government must take measures to discourage such acquisitions of U.S. companies by the Chinese, and perhaps even find ways to remove Chinese ownership and control over the companies they have already acquired.
These new “decoupling” policies must be put into place regardless of the effect they will pretty obviously have of increasing the prices of the goods these U.S. companies formerly manufactured in their factories in China, and we formerly bought.******
The Chinese government funded and run propaganda outlets, their “Confucius Centers” which have quietly been embedded in over a hundred U.S. universities around our country, need to be closed, and their staffs sent packing back to China.
As one of the U.S. government’s first priorities, our government should also stop the massive influx of Chinese “students” into our colleges and universities–reports say around 350,000 such Chinese “students” are currently “studying” here now—students from China who, since the Chinese government pays their full tuition, often displace American students.
Such a ban would also greatly reduce the reported wide-spread thefts by China of our intellectual property–scientific research and discoveries, commercial technology, processes, and secrets–that many such students reportedly help China gather.
Such a step would also eliminate the obvious loss to the United States when Chinese students–who we train–take their skills and knowledge back to China, there to contribute to that rival country’s progress, and it’s attempt at world dominance.
Strict new rules and scrutiny should also be applied to all U.S. university faculty members, to halt the actions of those faculty members who have clandestine ties to and payments from China, examples of which have just recently come to light.
The “Academic and Educational Communities” and those companies who are used to using these Chinese students to do some of their research for them will scream bloody murder over these steps, which will cost them money and access, but their protests must be ignored.
Moreover, astonishingly, according to reports, both the DOD and VA currently spend a lot of money procuring some things from China,
Thus, as quickly as practicable, the Federal government should eliminate procuring anything from China.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/criminality-and-corruption-reign-in-xi-pings-china/ see also https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/04/stunning-us-gave-wuhan-lab-3-7-million-grant-study-horseshoe-bats-carry-co ro see also https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/04/exclusive-china-coronavirus-linked-former-leader-chinese-communist-party-family-soros-investments-surprise-anyone/navirus/
** https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/20/politics/dhs-chinese-drone-warning/index.html
*** https://dailycaller.com/2020/04/13/pork-meat-shortages-coronavirus-smithfield/ see also https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/04/gop-rep-massie-warns-us-weeks-away-not-months-food-shortages/
**** https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-swinefever-smithfield-foods-foc-idUSKBN1XF0XC
***** https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-05-29/china-gears-up-to-weaponize-rare-earths-dominance-in-trade-war
****** https://www.the-american-interest.com/2020/04/08/the-long-hard-road-to-decoupling-from-china/?utm-access=rcw
Montage:
First of all, that’s Turley’s quote and link, not mine.
Second of all, Turley isn’t saying it did happen. He’s saying it’s a very credible and believable theory that has a good chance of being correct.
This is of interest [emphasis mine]:
Who is Josh Rogin?:
The Wuhan Virus is one of 4,000 viruses stored for research in either the Wuhan Biosafety Laboratory (situated a few hindred meters from the previously-blamed “wet market” subsequently fire-razed by the local authorities) or the Wuhan Institute of Virology parked 7-8 miles away from the market.
Interestingly, aforesaid wet market never sold the Horshoe Bat which is the host species of the Covid-19 virus. That bat’s habitat is over 600 miles away, and hence considered likely another capture by Wuhans famous “Bat Lady” bat virus research scientist.
It is likely then that it was a bat virus subjected to “enhanced function” genetic manipulation for swiftness and severity of contagion.
It is hence worth some trepidation to note the rising reports of tested “recovered” patients who are now testing positive again, but usually presenting as mildly symptomatic to asymptomatic. It begs the question of whether the virus gene was specifically manipulated to reactivate somehow, to be shed once more by innocent re-carriers amongst the balance of previously “saved” populations, each such “relapsee” a single cast pebble of infection sending continuing ripples of contagion in a body of population.
Montage:
Oh, and that tabloid the Daily Mail report quotes some specific Chinese scientists:
The whole thing really does sound like a movie. But this entire COVID-19 phenomenon has been rather like a movie from the start.
“The Wuhan Virus is one of 4,000 viruses stored for research in either the Wuhan Biosafety Laboratory (situated a few hindred meters from the previously-blamed “wet market” subsequently fire-razed by the local authorities) or the Wuhan Institute of Virology parked 7-8 miles away from the market.”
Be a damn shame if something awful & fiery were to happen to those 2 pieces of real estate one day…maybe a meteor or aliens? Jus’ sayin’…
But failing that…China should become an economic & travel no-go-zone for at least 2 years. Nothing in. Nothing out. And they can kiss any debt we owe bye-bye.
John Guilfoyle, refusing to pay the ChiComs for the US debt they bought is an attractive idea; make them pay for the mess they’ve created. It won’t happen, but it’s a nice thought.
The news about the origin was/is going to come out, but the media had to “flatten the curve” of response to protect the “perpetrators” from being overwhelmed.
As most here probably know, the labs and the wet market have been connected by some sources who allege that lab employees were selling test animals to wet market vendoirs in some cases refer than destroying them.
Seems unthinkable. But perhaps no more unthinkable than a virtual tradition of eating vermin does in the first place.
See, Serpentza”s channel on YouTube. He is the fluent Chinese speaking South African married to Chinese doctor. I believe he lived and worked in China for over a decade before decamping recently, as the Communist party began to ramp up social repression and whip up anti foreign sentiment.
I watched the video linked by Cicero at 6:21. My first take away is that the virus was bioengineered to infect people. The original bat virus could not infect people. It was modified with a piece of the HIV(!) virus to enable it to infect people.
My second takeaway is that it was(is?) part of a bioweapon campaign by the Peoples Liberation Army to counter the large advantage that the American military has over them in conventional warfare.
Please watch and discuss.
To add–or maybe not–another piece to the puzzle about the origin of the Chinese Coronavirus, there was the little remarked on 2019 story, about how Chinese virus researchers–wife, husband, and an unknown number of Chinese graduate students–all working at Canada’s only level-4 Infectious disease lab, were kicked out of the lab and their access terminated, for a still unspecified “breach of protocol” in a case that was referred to the RCMP for investigation..
See https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/chinese-researcher-escorted-from-infectious-disease-lab-amid-rcmp-investigation-1.5211567 and, later, https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/national-microbiology-lab-scientist-investigation-china-1.5307424
How should we make China pay for this? Actually, I think job #1 is getting rid of Director Tedros A. at W.H.O.
China is gearing up for another propaganda coup with the Beijing Winter Olympics in 2022. Organize multi-nation boycotts and ask the IOC to change the venue.
Here’s another that is less fraught with danger than a partial default on U.S. debt. Have the U.S. State Dept. revoke the visas of the children of CCP bigwigs who are attending Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Berkeley, and Stanford, etc.
There are some fine comments made here and it sure would be nice to have a “like” button so that a comment would not have to be made to give recognition to the cleverness or thoughtfulness, etc, of that comment.
Richard Aubrey on April 15, 2020 at 4:51 pm
Edward on April 15, 2020 at 6:14 pm
neo on April 15, 2020 at 7:34 pm
Tonite Tucker claimed, that Fauci had joined the ChiComs, in dissing folks who spread this theory.
He also asked the NJ governor about his lockdown’s violation of the 1st amend.
The response? “That’s above my pay grade”.
He also showed thousands of MI citizens, demonstrating vs. the MI governor’s lockdown.
Edward R Bonderenka,
Your 8:48 comment was exactly what I was thinking.
It’s just trying to slow roll the truth because once the magnitude is known to all, it will demand the proper responses by various nations. And most nations don’t want to go down that road, especially with China.
Few leaders have the necessary intestinal fortitude. And that’s if they aren’t already bought outright by the ChiComs.
This commie Chinese virus should be treated as if it came from a lab.
The commies arrested doctors trying to tell the truth. If they can’t prove / show by full transparent non-Chinese investigation of their lab, and all results, they should be assumed guilty.
Because they lied, the presumption should be of guilt, not innocence. And most of their current actions, like kicking out US journalists (from NYT! WaPo! WSJournal!) shows more guilt than innocence.
One can hardly ever “prove innocence”, but the Chi commies aren’t even really trying.
Some 10-30% EXTRA tariffs should be placed on Chinese exports until they pay the full costs of all gov’t reactions. Over $2 trillion for the US.
$100-$300 billion a year for 7 – 20 years.
Not war, nor even “trade war”, but civilized reparations cost for the innocent world now suffering because of Chinese guilt.
This is an excellent time to establish good international standards of “reparations” required to pay for gov’t actions that result in pandemics or other disasters. At least a first pass at them.
aNanyMouse: https://youtu.be/hXrOK1kIXjw
New Jersey Governor tells Tucker Carlson that the First Amendment is “above his pay grade”.
Ironic isn’t it, that what is drawing everyone’s attention back inexorably to the Wuhan Virology lab as the origin, is the desperate energy the Chinese are pouring into making the Coronavirus connections disappear: People being vanished, YouTube accounts being purged, professional journal archives being bleached, so forth.
Which is it? Cover-up or Streisand Effect???
Either one will do, so long as China loses all of its face for what it has unleashed on the world after trying to suppress warnings and control the message purely for national vanity.
And the world should mark it well, it won’t be the last time, even if every last lab were to be shuttered there. China seems to be one of the world’s biggest natural repositories of mutating viruses that can jump species and threaten humanity.
I will say that its probably NOT from the research center…
WHY? because way before they do certain things with viruses, they tend to sequence them first. They also dont tend to work with unknowns doing serious things they tend to work with known pushing points. .
working on things in the modern era is a process… you need measurements and to do that you need certain pieces of data first. ALSO, when something is not seen to escape, there is no reason to not sequence and so on.
when people talk about the virus escaping, and its new… you have to first figure out how they would process such.. the biggest question being, how to manufacture more of it so you had enough of it to work with it and a further supply… they arent like bacteria you can grow..
this kind of thing doesnt help… not the title, but the undertitle message
Swiss Scientists Have Recreated the Coronavirus in a Lab
A synthetic virus could help develop drugs, vaccines, and diagnostic tests but could also be used as a bioweapon
https://onezero.medium.com/swiss-scientists-have-recreated-the-coronavirus-in-a-lab-d12816bfdbe3
bioweapons are insane without cures.. so its pretty stupid to unleash a bioweapon and not have the cure for it so you can take advantage of it and not have it come round back at you. and virus are a very bad choice…
instead of quoting the idiocy in the article, here is the link to their paper.
Rapid reconstruction of SARS-CoV-2 using a synthetic genomics platform
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.02.21.959817v1
notice something? its not cov-19… its cov-2
Quoting the paper: arge RNA virus genomes, such as from Coronaviruses, are cumbersome to clone and to manipulate in E. coli hosts due to size and occasional instability
The Atlantic makes interesting claims that dont help..
Swine flu, or H1N1, had been dead for 20 years when it suddenly re-emerged in 1977 with a curious twist. The new strain was genetically similar to one from the 1950s, almost as though it had been sitting frozen in a lab since then. Indeed, it eventually became clear that the late-70s flu outbreak was likely the result of a lowly lab worker’s snafu.
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/05/when-viruses-escape-the-lab/371202/
they are not easy things to work with, and to work with them you need to be able to create a supply… also, just finding a new virus in an animal doesnt mean its transmissable to humans… there are lots of things that animals have that people dont get, and visa versa…
So i dont think it came from the lab… at least not the way people are thinking
not to mention that bat as a meal is cooked… (unlike frogs that are often eaten almost alive and baby birds, etc)…
bats can fly 50 miles in a night.. they also can hide in transport, finding themselves in a new place when they come out of torpor
RaTG13 is the name, rank and serial number of an individual horseshoe bat of the species Rhinolophus affinis, or rather of a sample of its feces collected in 2013 in a cave in Yunnan, China.
the virus was collected by wuhan… and from feces… not a live bat..
The intermediate horseshoe bat is a bat species of the family Rhinolophidae that is very widespread throughout much of the Indian subcontinent, southern and central China and Southeast Asia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermediate_horseshoe_bat
here is the problem with them being used for food.
http://www.bio.bris.ac.uk/research/bats/China%20bats/rhinolophusaffinis.htm
Over its range, forearm length varies between 46.0-55.5mm (Csorba et al., 2003). Body masses 13.5 – 14.6 g from bats in Yunnan. Forearm lengths of Chinese bats 50.2-54.9 mm
13.5 – 14.6 g – the weight of a AAA battery..
In other words, 12 grams is 0.570 times the weight of a Mouse, and the weight of a Mouse is 1.80 times that amount.
It’s about two times as heavy as a sheet of Paper
how much money do you think a guy would make in a wet market selling that bat? its like serving hummingbird for thanksgiving..
Conditions in the Wuhan lab sound like an accident just waiting to happen:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/how-did-covid-19-begin-its-initial-origin-story-is-shaky/2020/04/02/1475d488-7521-11ea-87da-77a8136c1a6d_story.html
You can’t spell “UNsatisfactory” without the “UN,” “WHOre” without the “WHO” and “TeDroS” without “TDS.” 😛
Neo
Trump attacted by every one?
I think Trump doing what should be done, if whoever talk
Trump attacked, those who talk about Trump were are they from whats happened in Italy or France or Spain
What about Sweden?
Neo
I put this for you and reader let listen carfully and judge by yourself:
Danielle DiMartino Booth of Quill Intelligence with Patrick Bet-David of Valuetainment
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bWobMCzu1wg
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fMUh5hSb1cc
I wish to defend the Daily Mail. Whether reporting on international politics or celebrity wardrobe malfunctions, they do so in depth and with gusto.
The media only allowed themselves to report on this to “prove” that Trump should have know about this earlier.
I wish to defend the Daily Mail. Whether reporting on international politics or celebrity wardrobe malfunctions, they do so in depth and with gusto.
Don’t know. It has seemed to me in the past you could turn to the British press for straight reporting that our domestic media would handle pravda-style. The British media works in the matrix of British libel law and British civil procedure, which allows more accountability for malefactors. Also, the racial hang-ups of the British media seem less pronounced than those of their American counterparts.
Here is an interesting take on what might have motivated the Chinese leader to take the course of action he took on the Chinese Caronovirus at
https://thediplomat.com/2020/04/did-xi-jinping-deliberately-sicken-the-world/
Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue made an appearance at the WH Coronavirus TF briefing yesterday, and he made some rather oblique and puzzling remarks about food distribution.
Why these oblique remarks?
Well, according to this very interesting analysis below by Sundance, he was referring to what is going to be an increasing problem with food shortages that we will shortly be facing, because of the two branched food production, storage, packaging and distribution system we have, and the laws, regulations, and practices governing them; one for food consumed outside the home–a surprising 55% of all food–another distinct one for food consumed inside the home.
Read this interesting analysis at–
See https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2020/04/15/ag-secretary-sonny-perdue-discusses-challenges-shifting-food-supply-chains/
Morning update: a remarkable set of changes yesterday. Active minus assumed recovered seemed to reach a peak at around 360,000. If trend continues I will have to switch from a sigmoid fit to a Gaussian, as the data will start down. Even more noteworthy there were only 10(!) serious cases added.
On the state side, (just a reminder, I live in CT, and tracking NC and NH for friends) NC actually saw a decrease in active cases. Not sure how that happened, or if the reporting agency is actually accounting for recoveries. Same for NH. CT continues to add and may reach plateau in 3 days. Looks like NH and NC reached peak two days ago in active minus recovered.
Laura Ingraham, last night cited a study ( I wish I had a reference) which stated the mortality rate may be close to 0.1%; same as the flu. There was also an Israeli study cited yesterday on Townhall which showed that the virus follows the same trajectory no matter the mitigation practices a country observes reaching peak in about 5 weeks. This is backed up by the data Willis is putting up on WUWT in his graph where he starts all countries at the same low fatality point and then lets it advance in time. They ALL follow the same curve, including Sweden. This lockdown needs to end, and not in baby steps.
It’s worth noting that the Chinese started out insisting that the virus did not transmit directly from human to human. Perhaps they were just trying to minimize what was going on, but it is also possible they knew something about the research program they suspected it had escaped from.
Suppose you found an animal virus that infected humans, had symptoms like flu, but did not exhibit human-to-human transmission. Useless? No, because you could give a massive air-bourne dose of this virus — enough of a viral load to kill — to someone you wanted dead and it would not look like an assassination but rather just a bad case of the flu. No transmission to others, so it wouldn’t start a pandemic (possibly coming back to infect you!). I can see a Chinese bioweapons program being interested in this sort of thing, especially with growing incidents of domestic unrest organized around charismatic individuals.
Knowing this virus came from a weapons program would also explain China’s extreme lockdown response. They may have reason to suspect something very bad can happen after the initial infection and — temporary — recovery. There are lots of viral diseases that the body cannot and does not eliminate on its own — HIV, some varieties of hepatitis — even chicken pox can come back decades later to cause shingles.
many people immediately raised the concern that it might have been the result of a lab release
Yes. It emerged immediately. As in “within a week of the ‘wet market’ claim.” Lots of folks speculating a worker there dragged it along with him to the wet market where it blossomed.
Then, suddenly, that idea just seemed to disappear. Nobody cared anymore. It was all “‘wet market’ this” and “‘wet market’ that.”
I’m beginning to think a lot of people in this country just really aren’t that bright.
Agreed, physicsguy, about NC peak having been reached. Further, checking regional and local news sites, we think the problem is now heavily in nursing homes and assisted living facilities. Since all those places were using extra care, with fever checks and sanitation, we have to assume that asymptomatic workers are carrying the virus into facilities unbeknownst to themselves.
Meanwhile, we have half a million unemployed in NC.
Re: “the peak having been reached”:
This is an unknown, I think, until we’re confident that either…
(a.) the virus has already spread pretty widely in the general population, producing widespread immunity among the recovered/asymptomatic; or,
(b.) the slowdown is not entirely due to the draconian, economically disastrous social-distancing/shelter-in-place steps we’ve taken.
If the social-distancing is halted, and it turns out to be the one thing keeping the infection curve out of exponential growth, then we’ll either have to return to social-distancing or experience, eventually, a higher peak than we’ve yet seen.
On the other hand, if the large numbers of untested persons (including my whole family) who suspect they’ve already had the virus and recovered turn out to be correct, then we might have seen 50%+ of the population turn immune already…and when that happens, it’s impossible for a virus to maintain an exponential growth rate, because no matter how crowded the subway is, half the persons it tries to infect are uninfectable.
The big thing lacking in this whole episode has been randomized testing of the general population, using statistically-valid sample sets, selecting subjects without regard to whether they’re already showing symptoms or not. If we had THOSE test-results we’d know how widespread immunity is; and we’d know what the real lethality of the virus is. (If the only people you test are folk who show up at the ER unable to breathe, no wonder that your test-positives yield an exaggerated death-rate!)
Anyway, I’m concerned for the political dimension. Everyone knows that the conservatives, broadly speaking, are mostly lined-up in favor of reopening the businesses. Staying closed-down is a bad move. Opening up again now (as opposed to, say, a month later) is an unknown move. If it turns out to be a worse move than the shutdown, we’ll see the usual pile-on about how conservatives are willing to let people die for money, yadda, yadda.
I think we need another 12 years of Trump/Pence policy emphases and judicial nominations. That’s a necessary component in undoing the last 100 years of creeping left-wing advances. So I don’t want to see the reopening — which HAS to happen, I agree — put our political recovery at risk.
Paul in Boston: I watched the video linked by Cicero at 6:21. My first take away is that the virus was bioengineered to infect people. The original bat virus could not infect people. It was modified with a piece of the HIV(!) virus to enable it to infect people.
That has been discredited and the paper which was aweful was withdrawn… it was one of the most cited papers in years
but there were loads of problems with it.. like it was completely untrue…
Paul in Boston: My second takeaway is that it was(is?) part of a bioweapon campaign by the Peoples Liberation Army to counter the large advantage that the American military has over them in conventional warfare.
the advantage in conventional warfare is irrelevant between two nuclear superpowers… this was the whole point of reading unrestricted warfare and the questions i been asking for about 6 years… would americans know war if war itself changed from the overt thing we expect for hundreds of years, to death by a thousand cuts of ambiguous negative action? if you dont read unrestricted warefare or the articles from army.mil etc… then you dont know what is going on… they have been waging war the whole time, and their move to manufacture, buy stuff here, and more is warfare… its just not the kind you can convince the US of, and convince the US that their politics of ladies first to exclusion men, race and all that is fomented higher by two groups with the end result being an inability to have children and compete on the world stage going forwards… they are so convinced that replacement immigration the open policy of the governments is a good thing… as their replacements attack them
now none of this discuses the population advantage china has, the education advantage that china has, the trust advantage china has, the technology advantage it has… it can field drones for war and robots.. who do you think makes this stuff? americans who are too busy trying to put offices of feminist equality in every building and firing people for diversity balances? china has none of that… they have 30 million men of war age… that means you cant even field enough bullets to shoot them!!! one bullet per person perfect aim would be 30 million… if it took 1000 bullets on average thats 30 billion bullets… now… lets say they decide to train 10 million of them to be remote drone pilots…. they then make 500 million drones each with 50ounces of RDX explosive… they put them in shipping containers… voila… what could THAT do? how could our military of 2 million or so go up against their 30 plus million? how could we survive drone pilots who are using swarm tech to field 100 drones EACH? like the fireworks displays?
how could we compete given our men dont manufacture, dont learn from dad, and dont have the knowlege of things like the old days men tha won WWII? that problem was solved by feminism, for the other side… same with lots of stuff
there is no american advantage any more
we lost that… by believing things that are untrue
and thinkint they are real
and not paying attention to the real things
(refusing to believe them and getting angry like a lady being told something we dont like!)
lord knows i have tried and tried to get this uncomfortable thing discussed, but its like watching people drive off a cliff and the driver and passengers are having too much fun with the radio and the sites to be bothered with downer information they dont want to hear and dont want to believe!!!!!!
so i gave up…
aNanyMouse: Tonite Tucker claimed, that Fauci had joined the ChiComs, in dissing folks who spread this theory.
a college just closed down a chinese organization.. other colleges refused to believe that many of the students were spying (without knowing it – ie. being able to talk about personal information on researchers not stealing information… this is ALSO a form of spying)..
but stuff is now coming out how Fauci career was partly made by the help of the chinese… i put it bare bones… you will see the stuff come out and when you add it up, thats what it leads to as a one sentence conclusion.
but let me give you an idea of what your up against..
no maps in china are accurate… did you know that? like the soviet union, its illegal to make accurate maps.
they are all randomly skewed so that there isnt any… the soviet union did the same thing…
the chinese are still like the old soviet union and the old soviet union is a leopard that died its hair.
this is how they think about war being a constant.. they NEVER let their war time advantage down, or relax it
they just hide it from their enemies who are, in their eyes, simpletons.. (and sadly they are in this subject!)
GCJ-02 is a geodetic datum formulated by the Chinese State Bureau of Surveying and Mapping and based on WGS-84 (for 1984) – It uses an obfuscation algorithm which adds apparently random offsets to both the latitude and longitude, with the alleged goal of improving national security. and BD-09 is a geographic coordinate system used by Baidu Maps, adding further obfuscation to GCJ-02 “to better protect users’ privacy”.
Conventional smart bombs would not work against china… they would be off… except we mapped things by our own sattelites
again.. i recommend unrestricted warfar… not that anyone will listen… they prefer to be attacked by a frenemy than see it as a frenemy…
oh… and if you ever notice… i never use tin hat stuff..
its often wrong and hiding the real deal that is easy to read about..
ie. hiding in plain site they use tin hat as camouflage and ambiguity
Laura Ingraham, last night cited a study ( I wish I had a reference) which stated the mortality rate may be close to 0.1%; same as the flu.
which is what i said a long time ago…
Something out of the blue just occurred to me. Have or has Nancy Pelosi taken the medicines to prevent covid after her tour of SF Chinatown????
Regarding the “wet market”. Whether or not this virus hails from one, it’s still a monumentally bad idea. Putting live multiple species of animals in close contact, consisting of farmed species (likely maintained in deplorable conditions) and wild-caught species (of unknown health). Add mobs of people. Presto, you have an exotic virus lab and a perfect scenario for occasional cross-species transmission.
The commentators above who referred to the cover-up are correct.
The only proof you need on this is the cover-up.
The nature of the cover-up.
The extraordinary extent of the cover-up.
The Chinese regime’s need to censor, muzzle and ultimately to “disappear” whistleblower scientists (i.e., real whistleblowers, not Democratic Party-variety “whistleblowers”).
The Chinese regime’s decision to embark on an extensive, global disinformation campaign exploiting its control over its wholly-owned subsidiary (aka the World Heath Organization) to broadcast and transmit, spread and disseminate false—murderously false—information (information that the Chinese government KNEW was false) about this virus throughout the globe.
And in parallel with this huge, global disinformation effort, The Chinese regime’s subsequent need to launch a huge propaganda campaign to blame the outbreak on the U.S and then to work tirelessly in order to wipe any Chinese scientific and medical research on and warnings about this virus from the Web.
Followed by the Chinese government’s subsequent need to launch a huge propaganda campaign of sending “assistance” much of it useless to a stricken world. (“But we’re really the good guys, unlike those Americans who couldn’t care less about you!!”)
Interestingly, it’s precisely the kind of all-encompassing, all-embracing, sophisticated, no-holds-barred cover-up that the Democratic Party has been trying to pull off on (and pollute) the American Republic and the American people (though to be fair, not a few of them are in avid support of it) since towards the end of the Obama administration (or should that be, “regime”?) so as to hide their utter and brutal criminality.
Which likely accounts for the sheer admiration that Hillary Clinton et al.—with its running-dog MSM cohort—hold for the Communist regime even as people continue to die because of decisions made by that regime. (One might add that people are also dying because of the ridicule and scorn heaped on certain treatments for the virus—by the Democratic Party and the MSM—treatments that HAD TO BE RIDICULED AND SCORNED because they emerged from the mouth of Donald Trump.)
Yep, it’s the cover-up.
And as the Chinese regime might say (along with Hillary et al.): “So whaddaya gonna do about it, big boy??”
File under: The Dragon Lady—make that Ladies—hath been protesting far, far too much, methinks….
artfl: ” they have 30 million men of war age… that means you cant even field enough bullets to shoot them!!! ”
I think it’s worse – they have some 230 million marriage age men with only 200 million women of that age, so they have 30 million prime age men without women.
China needs women. They could easily field a 60 million man army, and expect 50% casualties, and still have men for all women. Their one-child policy very often meant one boy. Only.
They now know this was a mistake, but for the next 30 years there will be a sex balance of too many men never before seen. There are many “too many women” episodes in history – “murder the men, rape the women!” (and get it right this time!). No society’s ever had too many men by 5-10-20%.
Well , if the virus did NOT escape from that lab in Wuhan, it’s an amazing coincidence that the lab is located near the origin of the virus outbreak.
If a deadly virus outbreak had occurred near a US Army bio-weapons lab here in the USA, almost everybody- rightfully so – would think the virus leaked out from the lab.
It is becoming more obvious that this virus:
1) escaped from a lab due to sloppy and careless procedures
2) was “enhanced” to make it more infectious to humans
3) and thus is a bioweapon
and we also know that China:
1) locked down Wuhan, and all DOMESTIC travel in/out of that region
2) did not stop INTERNATIONAL travel to/from that region
3) suppressed all information, including the destruction of samples and muzzling of MDs
My conclusion is that the CCP has effectively carried out a biological attack on the rest of the world.
Tom G: I think it’s worse – they have some 230 million marriage age men with only 200 million women of that age, so they have 30 million prime age men without women.
thats what i was referring to… you said it better than i did… (embarrassed)
JohnTyler: Well , if the virus did NOT escape from that lab in Wuhan, it’s an amazing coincidence that the lab is located near the origin of the virus outbreak.
From the information I have seen on FOX this evening, the Chinese Coronavirus is far more deadly that I had understood it to be.
The information I had previously seen—and particularly the frantic calls for ventilators–focused my attention on the damage this virus does to the lungs.
But, in a couple of appearances on FOX TV today their medical consultant, Dr Marc Siegel, revealed that if you have a severe case, not only does it damage the lungs, but it also can damage the heart, it can damage the kidneys, damage the liver, cause strokes, and it can result in blood clots, in pulmonary embolism; it sounds as if the Chinese Coronavirus can attack/damage practically any vital organ.
Said Dr. Siegel, most people who have symptoms have mild cases, but the experience so far in New York seems to indicate that if you have a bad case, and end up in the hospital, there is a 25% chance that you will end up in the ICU and on a ventilator—and if you survive that (Gov. Cuomo said the other day that 80% of those put on a ventilator never get off)–its looking like you might end up with some form of long term, perhaps permanent disability.
See https://news.yahoo.com/dr-marc-siegel-concerns-over-013140330.html
Snow on Pine:
All of that is true of flu, pneumonia, and particularly sepsis (which I wrote about here almost 5 years ago) through the mechanism of septic shock. It’s also true of H1N1, which is a form of flu. They can cause a cascade of events that damage almost every organ system in the body, and if a person survives he or she can have grave permanent damage in any number of ways.
The thing is that most people are not aware of the dangers of such things, because fortunately most cases don’t get that far. But plenty of cases do, unfortunately, and some people survive but have permanent consequences.
As far as I know, coronavirus has that potential too, which is unsurprising. The real question is whether it happens to a higher percentage of coronavirus victims. I have no idea whether it does.
See this:
Permanent lung and/or kidney damage is a possibility.
Artfldgr – I knew the Twain story, and have one “strange coincidence” stories of my own.
When our eldest son came home from his mission in Argentina, he brought as a souvenir a short “silver” sword in a leather sheath (all the kids learned to fence because we did in college, and all of us are RenFeste fans).
A couple of years later, while in college, his apartment was burgled and the sword was among the stolen items.
A few years after that, one of the other brothers going to the same college was looking at some items in a pawn shop — and found the sword.
Made a nice birthday gift for the older brother.
The oddity of coincidence thus acknowledge, it is still true that
Once is happenstance; twice is coincidence; third time is enemy action.
China is up to around incident number 10 or 12 by now.
AesoopFan,
That’s a great story about the sword!
Related:
https://www.zerohedge.com/health/covid-19-man-made-virus-hiv-discoverer-says-could-only-have-been-created-lab
When considering what is conceivable–when evaluating what the range might be of China’s possible motives and actions throughout this Pandemic, it is wise to keep in mind the fact that the Chinese Communist Party runs a system in which, according to reports, prisoners–including political prisoners–are executed, and their organs are harvested for sale.*
See, for instance https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/china-forcefully-harvests-organs-detainees-tribunal-concludes-n1018646