COVID and the lab: one of the most consistent things about Trump has been…
…that the vast majority of the things he claimed – and which the press, the left, and the Democrats (but I repeat myself) screamed were preposterous – have turned out to be true.
For example, here’s an interesting tweet to look back on, from over a year ago:
President Trump contradicts the US intel community by claiming he's seen evidence that the coronavirus originated in a Chinese lab https://t.co/mnUSHUyZXf pic.twitter.com/pInZ4Of18X
— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) May 1, 2020
The responses are to the effect of “What a liar!” and “What an idiot.”
Here’s the CNN article from May 1, 2020. An excerpt [emphasis added]:
President Donald Trump contradicted a rare on-the-record statement from his own intelligence community by claiming Thursday that he has seen evidence that gives him a “high degree of confidence” the novel coronavirus originated in a laboratory in Wuhan, China, but declined to provide details to back up his assertion.
The comments undercut a public statement from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence issued just hours earlier which stated no such assessment has been made and continues to “rigorously examine” whether the outbreak “began through contact with infected animals or if it was the result of an accident at a laboratory in Wuhan.”
“Yes, I have,” Trump said when asked whether he’s seen evidence that would suggest the virus originated in the lab. Later, asked why he was confident in that assessment, Trump demurred.
“I can’t tell you that. I’m not allowed to tell you that,” he said…
It is unusual for the intelligence community to comment publicly on its work before a formal assessment is made. Thursday’s statement appears to have come in response to growing questions over the origins of the virus as Trump administration officials have spent weeks repeatedly floating the theory that the virus originated inside a Chinese lab…
While the [intelligence community] statement suggests the intelligence community has not yet developed a clear assessment as to how the outbreak started, it does say that officials have ruled out the possibility that the virus was “man-made or genetically modified,” agreeing with a near consensus among scientists and refuting conspiracy theories.
Not man-made or modified. The science was settled. Anyone who said otherwise was a wild conspiracy theorist.
During a Senate hearing on May 11, Sen. Paul grilled Fauci about NIH/NIAID funding of gain-of-function research (a/k/a “Dual-Use Research of Concern) in coronaviruses at Wuhan Institute of Virology, and Fauci gave provably false answers to the Senator’s questions. When asked whether “the COVID-19 virus could not have occurred by serial passage in a laboratory,” though, Fauci wasn’t quite so adamant. He said:
“I do not have any accounting of what the Chinese may have done, and I’m fully in favor of any further investigation of what went on in China.”
That raised a few eyebrows since Fauci has repeatedly said that all of the scientific evidence pointed to the virus “evolv[ing] in nature and then jumping species.”
A surprising chain of events was somehow set in motion that day, bringing us to a point where PolitiFact had to retract their own fact-checking of Tucker Carlson’s reporting on the origins of COVID-19 – based on Fauci’s comments at a PolitiFact event titled “United Facts of America: A Festival of Fact-Checking.”
Say what?
Yep. At PolitiFact’s event, advertised as “four days of forward-thinking conversation about the role of facts in our lives,” Dr. Anthony Fauci said he’s not convinced that the virus developed naturally and that “we should continue to investigate what went on in China.”…
Fauci’s comments – given just a few hours after his Senate testimony – were in response to a question from PolitiFact’s Katie Sanders, who asked:
“There’s a lot of cloudiness around the origins of COVID-19 still, so I wanted to ask, are you still confident that it developed naturally?”
Displaying a level of intellectual curiosity heretofore unseen in him by the American public, Fauci replied:
“No, actually. I am not convinced about that. I think we should continue to investigate what went on in China until we continue to find out to the best of our ability what happened.”
“Certainly, the people who investigated it say it likely was the emergence from an animal reservoir that then infected individuals, but it could have been something else, and we need to find that out. So, you know, that’s the reason why I said I’m perfectly in favor of any investigation that looks into the origin of the virus,” he continued.
Two days after Fauci’s dust-up with Sen. Paul, a group of 18 prominent virologists – including Dr. Ralph Baric – released an open letter calling for an investigation into a possible lab leak origin of COVID-19. The next week, the GOP members of the House Intelligence Committee released a report stating that there is “significant circumstantial evidence” that the virus was leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and CDC Director Rochelle Wolensky also voiced doubt about the natural development of the virus.
Then there’s also this:
Three researchers from China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology became sick enough in November 2019 that they sought hospital care, according to a previously undisclosed U.S. intelligence report that could add weight to growing calls for a fuller probe of whether the Covid-19 virus may have escaped from the laboratory.
The details of the reporting go beyond a State Department fact sheet, issued during the final days of the Trump administration, which said that several researchers at the lab, a center for the study of coronaviruses and other pathogens, became sick in autumn 2019 “with symptoms consistent with both Covid-19 and common seasonal illness.”
We don’t know for sure what these lab workers had, but unless this sort of hospitalization of workers is common, it’s certainly a suspicious occurrence in its timing and placement.
These things have been suspected on the right since the beginning of the virus, because of the close geographic juxtaposition of where the outbreak occurred and the location of the lab. And then there’s the question of Fauci’s own involvement in funding the Wuhan lab. It really is complicated, and even though this article is from the quite suspect and often-biased FactCheck site, I think its treatment of the “gain of function” and grant issues seems pretty fair. If you want to read the relevant portions, just scroll down there and take a look at the material under the headings “Gain-of-Function” and then “EcoHealth Grant.”
Nicholas Wade, the very knowledgeable science writer (formerly of the NYT), whose recent essay in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has been attracting some (but not nearly enough) attention in the media, appeared for the full hour on Mark Levin’s show last night (Fox). The entire interview is well worth watching, and it raises some serious questions concerning the undeniable fact that every sensible hypothesis, idea, and opinion from the right, no matter how much evidence lies behind it, will always be dismissed, summarily and irrationally, by the mendacious MSM as a “conspiracy theory.”
How refreshing.
After years of hearing that the president was lying with denials, only to have the lies proven, We have a president accused of lying, only to have him be proven true.
Trump.
For the Left and those in the pay of the CCP they will deny it, even as they walk it back step by step as they are forced by truth slowly revealed.
For myself the question becomes, what is to be done if/when it becomes undeniable that the CCP through its machinations allowed the entire world to become infected, hundreds of thousands to die, rather than admit a mistake and work with the world to contain and stop the outbreak?
geoffb,
“what is to be done if/when it becomes undeniable that the CCP through its machinations allowed the entire world to become infected, hundreds of thousands to die, rather than admit a mistake and work with the world to contain and stop the outbreak?”
As soon as China closed down domestic travel out of Wuhan but allowed international travel from Wuhan it became undeniable that the CCP intentionally committed an act of war upon the entire world, one that resulted in the deaths worldwide, of millions.
But the world will do nothing. And, in doing nothing reap a far worse fate because the CCP is not going to stop a ‘winning’ strategy.
Evidenced by its recent announcement that the CCP has authorized the creation of another 100 biolabs. That and the recent emergence that in 2015, “Chinese scientists discussed weaponising coronavirus in 2015: Media report” https://www.newindianexpress.com/world/2021/may/10/chinese-scientists-discussed-weaponising-coronavirus-in-2015-media-report-2300620.html
It will be fun to show such illuminations to the determined mush heads.
Here’s the Wade article. You’ll need 45 minutes and a beer. It’s that important.
https://nicholaswade.medium.com/origin-of-covid-following-the-clues-6f03564c038
I have believed since April of 2020 that President Trump was right when he said we could safely reopen by that Easter. The howls of the mob (including the GOP and his own appointees IIRC) caused him to back down, but he knew then what we learned shortly afterwards, and which the rest of the country is grudgingly admitting.
Protecting the vulnerable and supporting the hospitals was the primary thing required, and botched by the Democrat States, along with some basic common-sense personal hygiene.
If anything good comes of this entire imbroglio, however, I hope that businesses will continue with some of the cleanliness strictures most of them should have been practicing anyway, because of other transmissible diseases.
It has also become very clear, in comparing states, that President Trump was very correct to decline to make Federal Mandates About Everything that would squelch the successful experiments of the conservative governors.
You guyz really like the Ghetto-kin- Leftist stage show! China, where the wild animals, the farm animals and a billiion plus “Asians” all eat, drink and crap in the same warm rice paddies, has been producing horrible diseases for several centuiries. I am pretty sure that is why the U.S. and France invested a bunch of Gilders in research institutes in the hoipes that they might catch the next one before it killed millions of people. But China is more corrupt than the average Democratic City in the U.S. and their chances of operating a sophisticated virus research laboratory is about as likely as it is for Flint to porovide safe water to its inmates, or it would be for East Saint Louis (pride of llinois) was toi provide a functioning sewer system like every other American city.
When Commie China locked down its own population while allowing air travel to ‘Murica and the European Disney World of historic fantasy, it was clear that they were at war with the West. Don’t , waste your time, and mine, about some lab release of some “Super Bug”. The damage to ‘Murica was from our own Commi-crats who murdered thousands of the elderly dependents in New York and Michigan while shutting down a very successful economy. Go play with your Lab-this and Lab-that body parts, if you still have them, and open your eyes to the American Bolshevik Conquest of a distracted America. What’cha gunna do about that? They will eventually knock on your door.
You are an embarassment to the dreams of the Founders. ~”It is a Republic if you can keep it”. Apparently not.
But please stop your whining. You are disturbing the vermin in my kitchen and basement.
Mike-SMO:
It’s one thing to dislike the PRC Government. I sure do.
It is another thing to be stupid and ignorant about the current state of play:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RuiXfwsI80s
How about some High Speed Rail?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXo7wi488Eo
You can’t have it because your country is now more corrupt and inefficient than these goddam Chinks. And even if you could build it, the Blacks would make it unrideable. One of the unspoken reasons public transport doesn’t work in the USA is the awfulness of Other People.
Or a bit of Shenzhen:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45X0Q1d6Jwk
You. Have. No. Idea.
Yes… Chinese QC can be a bit of a joke. But they are a god awful scary peer level competitor. No amount of name-calling or ass planting on pile of laurels will change this. Only hard work will.
As for their cynically allowing Covid out into the rest of the world. You should hope that you had a government more dedicated to the attrition of foreigners than its own native stock.
The Trump presidency feels like a reverie. Or are we now in a daydream. For a thin-skinned man who never let a slight pass without a nasty tweet, he sure had a firm grip on reality.
Edit?
I know that my typing is worse than my “creative” spelling and occasional punctuation. If I “fix it”, it will just be different, and never “correct”.
So what’cha gunna do, Bunky? The FEMA camp fantasies were nothing compared rto what they have in store for you.
I am an “old man”. I have grown attached to the movie line, “Dead Man Walking!”.
C’Mon, Ghettocrat! They ain’t gunna give you the Big House for just standing out there. You got my Father’s family back in the “Old Country”, and Grand Dad said to expect you. I always do what the “Old Fart” says.
Deal! (And try to duck, I’d like the challenge.)
Yep! This is all irrational as Hell. That is what we are left with.
Easy to have a grip on reality when your opponents subscribe to a cult which requires Actively Not Seeing Base Reality as the prime attribute for its Priesthood. In the Land of the Blind…
Trump is a thin-skinned narcissist with the attention span of a goldfish who did very well out of running a branding operation in a very tough business. In no way qualified to be or capable of being a transformative (erk, not a nice word) President. Still, at least he ripped back the Green Curtain and showed us the Beast Within. He’s done his bit, shot his bolt. History.
Be interesting to see who pops up next though.
Zaphod:
You don’t seem to really know a lot about the US if you think high-speed rail would have a chance of working here, with a country this big and sprawling, and a population used to point-to-point driving or air travel. And what is this “blacks would make it unrideable” business? In my lifetime, I’ve been on plenty of “rideable” forms of public transport in the US that have high numbers of black people with minimal problems. All those public transport systems have been in densely populated cities where they work much more efficiently than cars.
Do you get your idea of America from dystopic movies?
Zaphood:
Save your smoke for your Hong Kong masters. You can’t vote here so put it where you will. Bemoan your own lost country.
Z:
The ditty about “The City of New Orleans” was a lament about a long gone bit of America. “High Speed Rail” works, barely, in the Accela Corridor between the corrupt hives, and in Japan which provides no alternatives. Rail movces containers at a profit. The “capitol cost” of High Speed is an inescapable block.and the rest is a fascade for grift. No one wth a job/mission/objective will sit for hours watching the corn go by. They will fly. No one who doesn’t have the cash for an airline ticket can afford passenger rail. People are expensive to ship.
There is profit in a consist of 100+ cars of coal or grain. “City of New Orleans” is a once a day tourist ride for those who have cash and nothing better to do.
Do you realize how much “nothing” is between Kansas City and Denver? Have you every driven I-70 or I-64 across the miles of “pretty” nothing? A guy with something to accomplish isn’t going to sit and lick the windows for days and days. “High Speed Rail” is just a fast line to Democratic grift.
European rail works as welfare to keep people “employed” in a tiny plot of land.
Do you have the faintest idea of how much ‘Murica is out there? I think that in America, “High Speed Rail” is an oxymoron. Mass-Ground transport maxes out at about 125 Miles. Beyond that, those who can afford to travel, will not waste the time sitting in a train car, and others can’t afford the cost. Rail Passenger Transport is a transport-ghetto. Business will meet via Internet and others will send picture post-cards or peek at their cell phones.
Due to the city traffic and remote airports, you might keep rail between Washington and NYC or Saint Louis and ChiKongo functional. Maybe.
Hey! I grew up watching the 10:05PM Erie RR “milk-post office” express blow past my house.My Father and I really enjoyed Lionel. Look out the window! People railroads are gone, except for obsolete “light rail” which can’t survive witrhout tax payer support. The railroads make profit on the long hauls of coal, grain, containers, and crude oil. People trains don’t pay their way and just get in the way of profit.
The Biden Klan seemed ammenable to destroying I-10 into New Orleans, because “cities” are the relic of 19th Century transportation (railroads) and early 20th Century communications (telegraph, telephone). Most traffic by-passes those relics. Thus “High Speed Rail” to where? No “concentration” means lots of stops which means no “High Speed”.
“High Speedd Rail” in California showed the concept for the looser that it is. The politicians and their friends stole the loot spent on fragments of a system that no body could afford to ride. Boeing and Airbus got that market all sewed up from the point of efficiency and profit.
You really need to get out more.
Expanding the net – but the eels will still slither through the holes.
Corrupts bureaucratic rule will not end until the bureaucracies are whittled down to size and the Congress quits creating more of them.
What, and lose the lobbying and union “campaign contributions” that most of them seem to treat as their assigned portion in life?
So, not gonna happen.
https://redstate.com/brandon_morse/2021/05/24/tom-cotton-hasnt-just-had-it-with-fauci-hes-hinting-at-going-after-public-health-bureaucrats-in-general-n385517?utm_source=piano&utm_medium=onsite&utm_campaign=-1
Should, but won’t.
Substitute the agency name of your choice in this sentence – “it seems the public health sector of our federal government doesn’t seem to respect the rules no matter who is in charge and feels they can do as they please in direct disobedience to officials elected by the people.” – and count up how many department heads and functionaries heads have rolled, just in the high-profile cases we know about.
I count zero.
Neo
What will be your answer Dr, Li Wenliang, A Chinese doctor who tried to issue the first warning about the deadly coronavirus outbreak who died at the hospital,that he was working at Wuhan Central Hospital?
He was one of eight people who police said were being investigated for “spreading rumours” Local authorities later apologised to Dr Li.
who was ten chines contracted the virus while
Z:
Sorry about the rant.
The only function for “High Speed Rail” is grift for the politicians. No one with a job is going to sit in a sterile can watching the miles go by. That guy can have dinner with his lady and chilluns and fly for the next morning’s meeting and then be home for cuddles. The “poor” can’t afford trains or airlines, but the airports already exist. The bus lines couldn’t even find a way to survive.
The Washington to NYC trains use existing right of way and are still barely feasible. High Speedd involves a HUGE investment in roadbed, power distribution, bridges and overpasses. And all to say nothing of the grift “overhead” that will be involved. The Inter-State highways are mostly free, and buses couldn’t survive.
I don’t think that you realize how big “flyover country” is and how few people are willing to ride the wagon trains through it. Air travel was a luxury pre-WWII. Now, air travel has replaced the trains, and buses. Airtravel has become sort of a mass cargo operation. You don’t get a smile and a steak specially prepared to your taste, but they run with good safety on a reasonable schedule. To say nothing of the “Red Eye” runs for us cheap bastids. Most airports have tolerable food and are relatively comfortable. Why give the politicians the billions in grift for a 19th Century utility that no one will use?
@Mike-SMO:
Point taken and no offence taken.
I don’t know that I was suggesting that High Speed Rail is of much use in much of the USA, although I was having my own little rant too, at the time, for which my apologies too.
Still, clearly there is something wrong when the West has lost the ability to do stuff quickly and do it well, let alone do it at all in some cases.
Americans still haven’t gotten that Admiral Yamamoto dash of realism about just what they are up against in terms of Chinese energy and technological might today. Chinese ‘Can Do’ is a visible daily fact. American ‘Can Do’ is something you read about in books. History books. Recent history sure. But History.
The only big thing China doesn’t have that it needs are the Taiwan Chip Fabs which have the 4-5nm process bugs ironed out. Taiwan’s next on the to-do list.
Cue Om. But it’s just the facts. Until you see it up close and personal it’s hard to get head around. Scares the crap out of me.
dh,
Thanks so much for posting that link regarding Dr. Wenliang. I remember seeing footage of him on television back in December, I think, then nothing. There are some news reports tracing back to the December time frame in an attempt to show the virus lab theory was always feasible, but I haven’t seen any of them reference Dr. Wenliang. I honestly was starting to think I had dreamt it.
Should have been understood from the get-go.
IOW as soon as the Chinese denied it.
Things being what they are.
(And the more they denied it, the more true—as it were—it became.)
One can say the same for the Democrats and the current “Biden” administration who are doing “their” darnedest to emulate “their” great Chinese “ally”. (Not that “they” always succeed—i.e., on occasion, if usually by accident, “they” speak truth.)
And this is no doubt the reason why “Biden” and “Giggles” (i.e., “his” immaculately dressed “VPOTUS”) just don’t do press conferences, NO THEY DO NOT (as the good doctor might say—i.e., Seuss, not Fauci):
No one would believe ’em anyway.
And they know this.
And we know this.
So why bother….?
The result? They—reasonably, it must be said—just let True Jen Psaki do the lying, knowing full well that the squish media won’t challenge her except maybe to ask her how often she dyes her hair and whether it’s an organic rinse. Maybe. (Kinda like that old Greyhound Bus commercial… “Go Psaki! And leave the lying to her”…)
And so here we are…with a yawning credibility gap. (Actually, since this administration doesn’t even approach “credibility”, I’m not even sure the word can be used….)
Zaphod likes his trains to run on time. Can Do. One Child Policy. South China Sea. Tibet. Xuigar concentration camps. Strip mining the oceans of marine life. You can get a lot done with Can Do especially if you have the guns and don’t care who you Can Do to. Tiananmen Square and Great Leap Forward.
Blow some more smoke for your Hong Kong masters.
Oh, I forgot, it’s western civilization we’re worried about.
Trump did not make himself into a billionaire by being bad at understanding the world around him.
Concerning trains; The nearest stationi is twenty minutes away., So, cutting down the airlines’ requirements of early arrival to, say, half an hour, I need to leave an hour early to get to the station and haul my, more than likely limited, luggage inside. How fast is high speed for these purposes? I spent about two hours earlier today at 77mph. Had I been going in another direction, I’d have done the same for more hours less a stop for gas.
When I arrive, it’s not to the station but to the actual place I want to go. I have my stuff with me and don’t require some ground transport be provided–host picks me up, I rent, Uber, etc–and I have my vehicle for whatever business I wish to manage.
Then, when I feel like it, I get in my car and go home.
Seats are more comfortable, food is better, rest rooms less crowded, and I pick my company and entertainment. I can chat by phone with friends, or encourage a relation going through a hard time.
How far do I have to go to make the train, or the plane, superior modes?
Population Density and that seemingly unfashionable thing, National Willpower to Actually do Meaningful Stuff seem to play a larger part than Distance. China is a Big Country.
Being able to jump in a train in Shanghai and hop off in Nanjing or Beijing not long after is no small thing. Waking up in Tokyo and deciding on the spur of the moment to go for lunch in Kyoto and then go take a few selfies at Himeji-jo before coming heading home isn’t something you really think you need. Until you have it.
But it depends, too, on the People. Everyone seems to get riled up when I point this out.
I’ll admit that one big dirty secret advantage the Chinese HSR has is that everyone knows that airspace gets shut down whenever any of the politburo fly. I mean totally shut down. They always claim it’s military maneuvers, but that ain’t it. So you can book HSR from Beijing to Wuhan knowing that it will depart and arrive on time. No need to worry about random 6 hour delay because Winnie the Pooh flew off to dally with Concubine No. 388.
Regardless of whether or not your country *has* High Speed Rail, if your country no longer has the ability to plan, design, and manufacture said HSR and all its bits and pieces without drowning in a sea of Big Dig Featherbedding and Incompetence, it’s really game over. You’re just waiting for the Barbarians.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/51294/waiting-for-the-barbarians
Rufus,
let not forget Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director General of the World Health Organisation and his role in all of this.
@dh:
The Organ Grinder’s Monkey is worth a passing glance. But it’s the Inscrutable Organ Grinder who picks the tune.
dh,
I have not forgotten Tedros’ role.
That clip of the journalist from Taiwan interviewing the WHO guy and his non response to her questions was INCREDIBLE!!
!!! TILT !!!
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/biden-shut-down-wuhan-lab-investigation-probing-covid-19-origins-report
(Are there any eyebrows out there left to raise?)