Tag: Covid 19

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international affairs media and media people

The Man the Media Missed

Wuhan, Covid

Searching for the world’s most compromised scientist? Look past über-bureaucrat Anthony Fauci. Get a load of Peter Daszak of EcoHealth Alliance. He’s in the thick of it.

The “it” being the lies peddled by China’s totalitarian state, the World Health Organization (WHO), important parts of the government-funded American science establishment and — last but not least! — the vast majority of U.S. media. 

The Lancet printed and the media reported the infamous open letter from scientists declaring a lab-leak origin of the virus to be unlikely, either without saying or without knowing that the scientist leading the effort to gather the 27 scientists’ signatures was the bag-man taking U.S. taxpayer money and re-gifting it to the actual Wuhan lab in question. 

Yes, Dr. Peter Daszak.

The good doctor also managed to secure a spot on the WHO’s much-ballyhooed on-site China probe — as the sole American investigator — to look (fecklessly) for COVID’s origin. Still, Daszak and company enthusiastically declared a lab-leak “unlikely,” which the media mindlessly echoed . . . until even the WHO’s director-general backed away from it.

The problem is not confined merely to one or two rogue papers or cable channels: it’s also endemic to social media. Facebook, which blocked coverage and silenced those of us trying to speak and learn about the origin of COVID-19, turns out to have actually used — you guessed it! — Daszak as its go-to expert to advise them on what info to block.

How did our news hounds miss this trifecta?

Even now — after Dr. Fauci and others agree we need an investigation into the origins of the CCP virus, and as several major articles present additional evidence that the virus may have come from Wuhan gain-of-function “research” — the news-media response to its own obvious failures is to continue to blame . . . Trump.

The idea seems to be that the Sheer Awfulness of Trump somehow provides valid excuse to ignore China’s horrible behavior around the origin of COVID — silencing doctors, destroying important evidence and lying to the world — enabling its subsequent spread to pandemic level. 

Is this really all the result of mere incompetence?

If you believe that, I’ve a wet market to sell you.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability media and media people national politics & policies

The Worshipful and the Incurious

Fauci, Covid, Facebook, ban

Did the recent pandemic begin as a leak from a lab in Wuhan, China?

Who knows?

But in these United States there suddenly appears serious — even bipartisan — interest in finding out.

I’ve been curious for some time, but why wasn’t more of the media interested from the beginning? Why were questions about the Wuhan Institute of Virology as well as the questioners often attacked?  

“[T]he newspapers I read and the TV shows I watched had assured me on many occasions that the lab-leak theory wasn’t true,” Thomas Frank, the progressive historian and author, explains in The Guardian, “that it was a racist conspiracy theory, that only deluded Trumpists believed it, that it got infinite pants-on-fire ratings from the fact-checkers,” adding that he “always trusted the mainstream news media.”

Thank goodness Senator Rand Paul confronted Dr. Fauci, again, leading to Fauci acknowledging the need for further investigation into the Wuhan lab that performed research on bat coronaviruses, arguably including gain-of-function research, with indirect U.S. funding. 

“Renewed focus on Wuhan lab scrambles the politics of the pandemic,” was one of several recent explanatory Washington Post articles.

Politics? 

You don’t say!

“The shifting terrain highlights how much of the early debate on the virus’s origins was colored by America’s tribal politics,” the paper reported, “as Trump and his supporters insisted on China’s responsibility and many Democrats dismissed the idea out of hand . . .”

The Post should include itself when referring to Trump-blaming “Democrats.” 

Another article The Post dangled before readers captures the moment — “Facebook: Posts saying virus man-made no longer banned.” 

In addition to the media and social media failure on this lab-leak story, let’s not forget the “expert fail.” Mr. Frank fears that if Big Science is found to be the cause of the pandemic, it “could obliterate the faith of millions” in “the expert-worshiping values of modern liberalism.”

We should be so lucky. 

What’s next: a release of Fauci’s emails?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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incumbents initiative, referendum, and recall

Christmas in California?

California, Covid, corruption

“Gray Davis was never in a position to play Santa Claus,” said Steve Maviglio, press flack for the former California governor who was recalled by voters in 2003.

Maviglio was comparing Davis’ relative misfortune, back then — in not having a pandemic and the resulting economic stimulus — to today’s prospects for current Governor Gavin Newsom, who likewise faces a citizen-initiated recall. Yet, while 18 years ago Davis both cut budgets and raised taxes, Newsom has now discovered an extra $100 billion of spendable funds to let him off that hook. 

California’s whopping budget surplus of $75.7 billion? Just the beginning. Democrats in Congress wanted to help with even more tax dollars, voting to drop-ship Golden State pols another $26 billion as part of the stimulus bill . . . which every Republican opposed, calling it at the time a move to “supply the Governor of California with a special slush fund.”

“Newsom wants to hand out cash before California recall election,” Politico headlined its story on Monday, informing that the embattled governor was quick to “tell Californians he wants to give them cash and pay some of their utility bills and back rent,” and noting specifically: “Checks would arrive in voters’ mailboxes not long before ballots do this fall.”

One key part of Newsom’s $100 billion “California Comeback Plan” is to give $600 “to some two-thirds of state residents in households making up to $75,000, along with $500 to families with dependents.”*

“It’s very significant,” offered former Gov. Davis, arguing “the future looks brighter as evidenced by the checks the public will soon receive.” 

Whose future, precisely? Not Californians, really. Newsom’s.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* “Unlike the federal stimulus aid, undocumented immigrants and their families will be eligible to receive a state tax rebate,” The Sacramento Bee explained. “In fact, undocumented immigrants with dependent children will be eligible for $1,000 for family checks, double what other California families will receive, in order to make up for the lack of support at the federal level, according to Finance Director Keely Bosler.” [Emphasis added.] Must they document that they are undocumented?

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Photo by Rob Growler / Photo by Gage Skidmore

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responsibility too much government

Vaccines Without Passports

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, Texas Governor Greg Abbott

The coronavirus vaccination passport idea, in place in New York, attempted elsewhere, in development in Britain, and all the rage among policy pushers like Bill Gates, has been nipped in the bud in Florida and Texas. 

On Monday, Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed an executive order prohibiting “government-issued vaccine ‘passports’ statewide.” The order prevents state agencies from establishing any requirement for vaccination on the populace. “The ban also extends to any organizations that receive public funds,” according to The Daily Signal, “forbidding those organizations from requiring Texans to prove they received the vaccine.”

After giving a pro-vaccine statement, Abbott went on to reiterate his basic position, that “these vaccines are always [to be] voluntary and never forced. Government should not require any Texan to show proof of vaccination and reveal private health information just to go about their daily lives.”

He also stated that the state will continue to supply vaccines to citizens that want the shot(s).

Abbott followed a similar decree by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis by just a few days. At the beginning of the month, Abbott had lifted statewide mask mandates. Florida, as you have no doubt heard, has been a free state (as opposed to a quarantine state) for several months, to a major media pile-on (and a lot of inaccurate reporting, including from 60 Minutes).

The World Health Organization does not support vaccination passports. Now. But WHO is a feather in the wind, like the Vichy-blown government in the movie Casablanca, so strong opposition to the practice by public officers in the United States is most welcome.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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media and media people national politics & policies responsibility

Lab Rats III: Doubling Down on Danger

Covid, China, Wuhan, virus

Ten months ago, I commented on a Newsweek article informing that “the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the organization led by Dr. [Anthony] Fauci, funded scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and other institutions for work on gain-of-function research on bat coronaviruses.”

A deadly worldwide pandemic along with possibly explosive implications as to its origin, notwithstanding, the story went nowhere. 

Last week, I highlighted new evidence that aligns with the lab transmission theory pooh-poohed in the World Health Organization report, which was quickly discredited — including by the WHO Director-General.

Yesterday, I went further into the cover-up, and how the “conspiracy theorist” charge has been used by the confreres of the Wuhan scientists to dissuade anyone from looking in the direction of the dangerous research that had been conducted there. 

Josh Rogin’s Washington Post column gives greater context to the need to investigate the theory, expressed by Robert Redfield, former director of the Centers for Disease Control under President Trump, that SARS-CoV-2 was transmitted to humans accidentally through a Wuhan lab:

“Richard H. Ebright, a Rutgers University microbiologist and biosafety expert . . . said the entire genre of research Redfield was referring to, known as gain-of-function research (in which viruses are captured from the wild and developed in lab settings to make them more dangerous), needs to be thoroughly reexamined.” 

Worse? “The world’s current plan to respond to the pandemic entails a huge expansion of precisely this type of research,” Rogin explains. “The $200 million program meant to ‘predict’ virus outbreaks is set to grow into a $1.2 billion Global Virome Project . . .”

“The plan is,” Ebright told Rogin, “having failed to predict and preempt and having possibly triggered the current pandemic, to increase the scale six times.”

Emphasis added because, well, can it be emphasized enough?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Earlier in this Series:

12 Monkeys in Charge

June 18, 2020 

Twelve Monkeys in Charge?

Lab Rats

March 31, 2021

Lab Rats

Lab Rats II: The Conspiracy

April 6, 2021

Lab Rats II: The Conspiracy

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Lab Rats II: The Conspiracy

“What if Robert Redfield is right about the Wuhan labs?” inquires Washington Post columnist Josh Rogin.

Redfield is the former director of the Centers for Disease Control under President Trump and a virologist at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, where he co-founded the Institute of Human Virology. He told CNN he thought “the most likely etiology of this pathogen [SARS-CoV-2] in Wuhan was from a laboratory.” 

The doctor was clear: this is his educated conjecture, lacking incontrovertible evidence — which all of the other operating theories also lack. 

“Before Redfield,” Rogin writes, “the mere discussion of the still-unproven theory that the covid-19 outbreak might have been connected to human error at a research laboratory in the Chinese city of Wuhan was considered taboo.”

Which is not to suggest that Dr. Redfield was not attacked and marginalized for mentioning the quite viable “lab theory” for human transmission of the contagion. “Redfield tosses viral kindling,” The Baltimore Sun’s editorial ridiculously accused, “on anti-Asian fires.”

Last week, I lamented our incurious media and the Chinese cover-up. But Rogin takes the charge much further: “The Chinese government and U.S. scientists who are close associates of the Wuhan scientists doing bat coronavirus research have tarred anyone who uttered it as conspiracy theorists, or worse (in their eyes), as pro-Trump.”

Yet, “the Biden administration has confirmed some of the Trump team’s factual claims about suspicious and still-undisclosed work at the Wuhan Institute of Virology,” added the columnist.

“Conspiracy theorist” is a handy way to deflect attention from bad acts. Conspirators love the term, as do all cover-up artists.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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