Tag: Wuhan

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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 

Lab Rats

March 31, 2021

Lab Rats II: The Conspiracy

April 6, 2021

Lab Rats II: The Conspiracy

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international affairs media and media people

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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ideological culture political economy

The “Failure” of Capitalism?

bully, economy, Covid, corona virus, Wuhan, epidemic, pandemic,

“As the lock-​downs come to an end,” writes economist Daniel Kian Mc Kiernan, “it will be expected by many — including many not on the political left — that the economy will pick-​up at about where it was before the lock-downs.”

Mc Kiernan thinks a popular misconception will get in the way. 

Those who see the economy as “a kernel of processes that take inputs and produce outputs based upon purely technologic considerations” will let this techocratic model cloud their thinking. Viewing this “kernel” as producing not only “everything necessary to maintain itself” but also, and more importantly, a surplus that they treat as a zero sum affair — requiring the State to redistribute — they will regard the re-​start as if a mere flipping on of a switch.

But the economy is not something to be un-​plugged and plugged back in, and the lock-​down super-​quarantine was not a mere interruption of service. It was a huge blow that will demand uncountable adjustments. Those quite necessary adjustments may seem random, even wild, and because of this those on the “political left” will, Mc Kiernan predicts, do what they always do: “diagnose the failure to restore the economy quickly as ‘a failure of capitalism.’”

In other words, the bully knocks the victim down, stomps on him, and then taunts him for not getting up right away. 

Still worse: those taunts will become excuses for more kicking and stomping. And the flailing economy will be seen as all the more justification for more of the bully-​boy Big Government policies that caused the “failure.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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bully, economy, Covid, corona virus, Wuhan, epidemic, pandemic,

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