It’s now reported that patient zero for COVIID just happened to have been a scientist at the Wuhan gain-of-function lab
Say “government sources”:
Sources within the US government say that three of the earliest people to become infected with SARS-CoV-2 were Ben Hu, Yu Ping, and Yan Zhu. All were members of the Wuhan lab suspected to have leaked the pandemic virus.
As such, not only do we know there were WIV scientists who had developed COVID-19-like illnesses in November 2019, but also that they were working with the closest relatives of SARS-CoV-2, and inserting gain-of-function features unique to it.
When a source was asked how certain they were that these were the identities of the three WIV scientists who developed symptoms consistent with COVID-19 in the fall of 2019, we were told, “100%”…
On Saturday, The Times of London quoted an anonymous U.S. State Department investigator saying, “It has become increasingly clear that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was involved in the creation, promulgation, and cover-up of the Covid-19 pandemic.”
There seems to be little question that the virus originated in the lab, so it makes perfect sense that the first victims would have been scientists there. It always was plausible, because of the proximity of the lab to the location of the initial Wuhan outbreak. It would have been way too coincidental if the lab had not been involved.
And yet there was an incessant campaign by government, the press, and on social media to block all talk of this, and to label those who tried to even discuss that idea as a possibility as conspiracy theorists and anti-science racists.
The fallout from this catastrophe has been immense, and the destructive power of the coverup has been immense also.
My favorite part was how it WAS racist to say it came from a Chinese lab but it WAS NOT racist to say it came from some nasty unclean Chinese wet market.
Why now? Why should the Chinese government admit this now? (This is all just assuming that the Chinese government aren’t just covering for a deliberate bioweapon attack of course, which is far from outside the realms of possibility…).
Does this mean that I can finally eat the bat soup that I’ve been keeping in my freezer?
it wasn’t a pangolin?
China viewed Trump as their biggest obstacle to achieving their goal of world domination.
Trump was a cinch to win reelection in 2020, until C19 was “leaked”. It wasn’t an accident, it was intentional.
Cornflour and Avi have the drift on this: the report neglects to say the three scientists had a pangolin banquet one afternoon.
There is also this. The IFR continues to be brevised downward by John Ioannidis and others.
This could very likely have just been what we used to call a ‘bad flu season’ (if that) in The Before Times.
https://www.michaelpsenger.com/p/new-study-from-ioannidis-covids-ifr
(This is all just assuming that the Chinese government aren’t just covering for a deliberate bioweapon attack of course, which is far from outside the realms of possibility…).
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A dry run.
Good news is it finally came out.
And more good news is it showed how untrustworthy many institutions are.
Negatives are if the shots have health side effects.
So, a war criminal.
Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Bacteriological (Biological) and Toxin Weapons and on their Destruction
There is ongoing “gain of function” viral research, just like at Wuhan, some or a lot funded by the US. (Government and private.)
IS ANYONE, ANYWHERE IN US GOVERNMENT! ACCOUNTABLE ANYMORE?
TJ:
Hillary and Comey answered this question 7 years ago. NO!
I still see some covid cowards wearing masks
This could very likely have just been what we used to call a ‘bad flu season’ (if that) in The Before Times.
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No. The number of deaths attributable to COVID during the first 12 months of the pandemic in this country was 15x that of an ordinary flu season. The 12 months concluding on 15 May this year saw 4x the death toll of an ordinary flu season. In some countries abroad who had problems with COVID in previous years, the last 12 months have seen a death toll similar to that of an ordinary flu season. This hasn’t yet been the case with the affluent countries, with the Netherlands, Poland, and Switzerland the exceptions.
Yeah, if you believe those numbers of Covid deaths I got a bridge to sell ya.
The counting methodologies were so loosened as compared to the past with the flu that nobody could possibly draw an accurate conclusion to how many people truly died from Covid compared to the flu.
But the link I provided above is of a study by Ioannidis on the IFR for Covid and it has been consistently revised down, down, down.
what was the death toll in sweden where they didn’t lockdown, versus the rest of europe where they did,
they had a strong inkling about what was going on, but they had several cover stories, the stupid wet market one, the shutdown epidemic taskforce, et al,
the script was set in september of 2019 at that wef wargame, where ferguson of imperial college served as croupier, dealing out the outsize models to explain the lockdowns,
AD…
“attributable to COVID ain’t the same as “attributed to COVID.”
The numbers we have from “official” sources are the latter.
We may never know the former because they’ve been cooked at the very least; outright fabrications could easily be suspected.
As the Boss says, “the destructive power of the coverup has been immense.” Indeed, it taints everything including those death tolls.
The entire reporting on Covid was a scam. Go to
https://www.mass.gov/doc/covid-19-dashboard-august-10-2020/download
scroll down to page 16 and study the right hand panel. The only people at risk were the sick elderly. Below age 60 it was just another flu and under age 30 it was totally harmless.
This was the last time MA published this information. They, as everyone else did, then went to cases which were useless for understanding what was happening in the population but great for scaring the bleep out of the unsophisticaeed general public.
There were excess deaths recorded during Covid-19/20/21/22 during the early period in planned parent/hood jurisdictions, later with vaxxxine-attributable adverse events in progress, misadministration of medical treatment, denial of inexpensive and effective medical solutions, and masking requirements that amplified social and pathogenic contagion.
So NOW can we call it the Wuhan Flu?
I’m betting that it’s going to be as hard to get complete and accurate figures on those whose true and primary cause of death was COVID, as it has been to get a complete and accurate total of the number who died during Chairman Mao’s “Great Leap Forward,” and the reign of his fanatical and murderous Red Guards.
If you got into a major automobile accident, tried to commit suicide, got into a really violent bar fight, were shot during a robbery attempt, or had some major health problems, were gravely injured, or your health problems really worsened, requiring hospitalization, and a few days later you died as a result of your injuries or major pre-existing health problem–and you had no actual symptoms of the disease, but coincidentally tested positive for COVID–COVID should not have been listed as your Primary Cause of Death, as apparently happened, who knows how many times.
Top employees working at the WIV lab on gain of function of a specific type of virus coincidentally catch this same type virus at a wet market they shopped at on their way home. What do you want to bet that the media bitter enders will float this as a plausible explanation.
A human engineered virus loosed on the whole world, responsible for worldwide disruption, untold economic harm and who knows how many deaths should be the single most important story in my lifetime but beyond the London Times article and reading about it on conservative websites it is mostly ignored.
Yeah, if you believe those numbers of Covid deaths I got a bridge to sell ya.
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Just make the numbers up if it helps you feel better. The rest of us have to deal with reality.
the failure to apply inexpensive therapeutics, the push to ventilators, any and all of those elements compounded the death toll, like alt verse hippocrates,
“Top employees working at the WIV lab on gain of function of a specific type of virus coincidentally catch this same type virus at a wet market they shopped at on their way home. What do you want to bet that the media bitter enders will float this as a plausible explanation.”
Sounds plausible. Not that the researchers caught the virus there, because that isn’t plausible. But rather that they would float that excuse.
Good news is it finally came out.
And more good news is it showed how untrustworthy many institutions are.
Negatives are if the shots have health side effects.
No no, the bad news is that even though it’s now approaching mainstream received wisdom that the cause of COVID was a lab leak, the same people who threatened dire consequences for anyone who dared to suggest such a thing back in the day will pretend they never took that position. 1984 is now, at least with regard to this event, and we’re all supposed to traipse merrily along anyway. That’s the negative.
Art Deco, doesn’t this give you pause, at least? Check the flu deaths by season as reported by the CDC. 2014-15: 51,000. 2015-16: 23,000. 2016-17: 38,000. 2017-18: 52,000. 2018-19: 28,000. 2019-20: 25,000.
2020-21: 5,000.
Are you going to attribute that massive reduction to people’s staying indoors? Or to a happy coincidence that the 2020-21 flu just happened to be much less deadly than usual?
No one claims that COVID was the same as an ordinary flu season. But – “CDC data indicates there were 385,443 U.S. deaths attributing COVID-19 as an underlying or contributing cause on death certificates in 2020.”
My emphasis, from here.
So, a tenfold increase in the number of deaths is unquestionably true and fully justified the body blows to the economy that we all suffered, but a tenfold decrease is not even noteworthy?
And let’s not forget the enhanced funding hospitals received for COVID related deaths.
Incentives work, remember. And “with” is not the same as “from.” No doubt COVID was deadly to the vulnerable, but to me, at 54 and healthy? Why did I have to stay locked up and masked? What about my daughter who graduated from high school in 2020 – why was her prom cancelled? Why were her classes all online?
Hindsight is 20/20, I suppose, but who constituted “the vulnerable” was already pretty dang clear by about April or May if I recall. Texas was already opening up on that account – so thank goodness, my youngest was able to choose to attend school in person beginning in fall 2020 for his very important junior year. (My daughter, as a college freshman, was forced into isolation because UT is patently not Texas.)
“There seems to be little question that the virus originated in the lab, so it makes perfect sense that the first victims would have been scientists there. It always was plausible, because of the proximity of the lab to the location of the initial Wuhan outbreak. It would have been way too coincidental if the lab had not been involved.”
My theory has for well over a year now been that the big problem was always the weird interaction between Chinese and their Communism. NE Asians are probable the most communitarian racially. This can be seen in their greater sexual dimorphism and monogamism. So, you would expect that communism would be a natural fit. But ethnic (esp Han) Chinese have been the traders and merchants of the entire region for millennia. Throw in that shame is a powerful emotion with NE Asians.
They cut corners. They very often do sloppy work. That is likely a result of the communist organization, than anything – the Taiwanese do make highly complex semiconductors – they are some of the best at it in the world. The Red Chines, despite throwing huge amounts of money at it, cannot. One basic problem with socialism in general, and communism in particular, is that allocation of resources is top down. In government and government owned organizations, quotas are set and resources are allocated from above. Such an organization has its inputs and outputs set from above. They should be able to make Y widgets with X resources. But what happens if they don’t get X resources? If some, maybe many, of the X inputs are faulty, lower grade, or just plain missing? If their bosses know this, the consequences range from firing, to death. So they lie. They may produce their allotted Y widgets, but they will often be of substandard quality. And the problem is pushed down the line. At each step, the slop, and the lies, increases.
So, what happens when they built their BSL 4 virology lab? The US, with the most BSL 4 labs in the world has continuous problems maintaining that sort of lab security, and we have more experience at it than anyone else in the world. So, their military is already doing a lot of bat virus work at the BSL 4 WIV, and Fauci’s contractor comes to them and offers grant money to do more Gain of Function research, because it can’t be done in the US, but Fauci, et Al, want it done. The Chinese jump at the money. What they are doing with that research is probably trying to develop a methodology for rapidly developing viral bio weapons, along with their antidotes. Yes, the USG appears to have been helping fund PRC military bio weapons research. But remember the sloppy part? Cutting corners? They likely did it in their ultra secure BSL 4 virology lab, someone there was sloppy, and several of their researchers caught the experimental virus as a result.
What’s supposed to happen at that point is to track the contagion down and quarantine it. But that would require admitting that the researchers and their bosses at the lab screwed up. Which could easily result in their firing, exile, or even death. They can maybe fix it. Contain the problem. Everyone will be happy, if no one higher up finds out. Then, when the lab can’t contain the problem, they inform the city, which goes through the same thing – trying to contain the problem, so their higher ups don’t find out. Then, the province. Then Beijing, which didn’t think that they could afford to let the rest of the world know that their BSL 4 virology lab had being doing bioweapons research, one of their experiments had escaped and was on its way to killing millions around the world. So, while frantically trying to contain the problem internally, they lied. Everyone involved, up and down then system lied, because that is what communists do whenever they might get caught cheating. It’s a system that runs on lies.
I had thought earlier that the WIV might have farmed out their BSL 4 research to a BSL 2 virology lab, located right next to their wet market. After all, it costs more to do research in a BSL 4 lab. But this looks to have been WIV researchers who carried the virus out of the lab, and spread it into the community, and the wet market story was probably state (at some level) sponsored disinformation. Even more implausible was the pangolin story – since the virus was uniquely adapted to attach to human, and not pangolin, ACE2 receptors, plus species jumps require mutations that leave tracks. There weren’t any, which said that it was lab created or modified.
Are you going to attribute that massive reduction to people’s staying indoors? Or to a happy coincidence that the 2020-21 flu just happened to be much less deadly than usual?
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They caught COVID instead. And that may continue in the future.
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You all fancy that somehow doctors are suddenly unable to determine cause of death and contributing factors and that everyone is lying through their teeth all over the world. Your problem, not mine.
You all fancy that somehow doctors are suddenly unable to determine cause of death and contributing factors and that everyone is lying through their teeth all over the world. Your problem, not mine.
Not at all! When an elderly patient with a heart condition is admitted for pneumonia, tests positive for COVID-19, and dies, and the hospital gets a bump in funding for dealing with COVID cases and the medical community is focused strongly on COVID as a cause of respiratory illness and death, what would you expect to see on the death certificate?
All I’m saying is, how much coverup and walkback does there need to be to get you to question the bits that haven’t explicitly been shown to have been covered up and haven’t explicitly been walked back? It’s (barely) possible that every COVID death stat is accurate – I guess. But what would be enough to trigger your curiosity about it?
And do you see the implications of your unquestioning acceptance? If a faceless “they” can get you to accept these stats in the face of everything that has been shown to be false (through mistakes or intention – it hardly matters), what else are you, are we, being told that ain’t necessarily so?
It’s not doctors who are tabulating the deaths it’s bureaucrats doing it using criteria they set up and that criteria varies from county to county, state to state, country to country so there is no standard to make comparisons.
Very early on the feds set it up that anybody with Covid listed anywhere on their death certificate was to be recorded as a Covid death no matter what minor or major role it played in the death and that is not how any other disease is counted and that is why the totals are likely greatly inflated.
I personally know of two people who were in their eighties and had late stage cancer and likely had weeks to live but tested positive for Covid and it appeared on their death certificate as a contributing cause of death therefore they went down as Covid death for counting purposes.
As others have mentioned the financial incentives on many levels were strong to identify a patient as Covid positive and it still continues to this day. The feds are still paying out for funeral expenses for Covid deaths and apparently are going to continue doing so until sometime in 2025. Having Covid listed somewhere on your death certificate is a financial winner for a wide variety of people it’s just a fact and those perverse incentives have totally corrupted the data and you can be as arrogant and dismissive as you want but that doesn’t change that.
Believe me, I do not want to be a conspiracy theorist! I hate it. But circumstances are pushing me darn close in this instance.
I have some relations who insisted, with jut-jawed determination, that this was not a lab issue. Nope.
Not exactly related, not exactly not related: Early on, China prohibited travel within China to and from Wuhan. But encouraged it from Wuhan direct to other countries.
So, accidental or not, once loose it was used exactly as a bioweapon would be in those circumstances. That being the case, the actual origin is perhaps less important than the travel scheme.
Jamie–RE: “Conspiracy theories”
An old professor of mine talked about what he called “thought stoppers,” words or phrases that someone can use to immediately stop the discussion of some particular thing or point and to, instead, instantly divert the discussion to an accusatory discussion of the other person, his acumen, or even of his or her sanity, and how he could possibly hold his ridiculous and mistaken views (often said to be already “debunked” or “discredited,” as if uttering these other magic thought stopper words takes the place of actual thought and investigation).
Thought stoppers are such words and phrases as “Communist,” “Nazi,” and, more recently, the various “phobes,” the accusation of being a“racist,” or, in this case, believing in a “conspiracy theory.”
Call something a “conspiracy theory” and you are immediately saying that it is untrue, meanwhile calling into question the discernment and the sanity of the person supposedly believing in that particular idea.
However, a major problem with this particular “thought stopper” is that the government has lied to us so many times, and, in recent days, is now not even trying to disguise it’s lies, but is just throwing them out there, making it very hard to believe any government spokesman’s cries of “conspiracy theory.”
The other problem being the fact that many of things formerly supposed to be “conspiracy theories” have turned out to be true.
Take, for instance, COVID and the supposed “conspiracy theory” that it originated in a Chinese government lab in Wuhan (you get a double whammy here, because of the implication that by holding this idea you are also a “racist”)–see the news analyses/reports out about Wuhan and the origin of COVID these last couple of days.
How about the “conspiracy theory” that, somehow, funds from the U.S. government have been (are are apparently still being) used used to support the “Gain of Function” research on bat viruses at that very lab in Wuhan which led to COVID?
How about the “conspiracy theory” that Jeffrey Epstein did not commit suicide, but that someone was able to arrange for his assassination. From people’s comments online and elsewhere, most people have apparently come around to the idea that this was a hit.
This is the same thought process which was also apparently operative as most people eventually, and many people pretty quickly, came around to the realization that O.J. was not innocent.
The most recent “conspiracy theory” is probably that–for almost 80 years, now–some rogue elements within our government have been keeping as the deepest of secrets the existence of Aliens, and of these rogue element’s crash retrieval and reverse engineering programs; keeping their existence from Congress, from the President, and from the American people.
A subsidiary “conspiracy theory” would be that in order to maintain that deep secrecy, and to conceal this knowledge and these programs, these same rogue elements have staged a decade’s long disinformation campaign, one designed to spread great confusion and doubt and all sorts of wild theories and ideas, to release bits and pieces of the truth, “sandwiched between two lies,” to paint those coming forward with genuine information as “tin foil hat” nutjobs, to make Aliens and UFOs discountable “entertainment,” and to use all the tools of cultural, psychological (and sometimes physical) intimidation to keep their knowledge and secrets from leaking out, being accepted as real, and becoming general knowledge to be acted upon.
Re: Conspiracy theories
Snow on Pine:
Yep. Sure, there are people predisposed to seize upon overarching explanations to Explain Everything Bad. It’s a trap one must watch for.
But I do wonder about those who reflexively use “conspiracy theory” as an epithet which must necessarily halt any further discussion.
Have such people not been attending to the news for the past century? Were they never in high school or the workplace, where people routinely conspire together against others, albeit without resorting to criminal activity? What in the world do they suppose the world’s intelligence agencies are doing Right Now but conspiring?
Here’s Kari Lake, who I think slipped a bit over the line about 2020 election fraud, but I agree with her basic complaint, going country-rap. The song hit #1 on iTunes:
_____________________________
If you would have told me two years ago, three years ago, that I would be in the middle of a political movement I’d have said ‘put down Hunter’s crackpipe.’
I just want you all to know that I am in perfect health, we’ve had our cars serviced and the tires are good and I am not suicidal.
–Kari Lake, the Truth Bombers, “81 Million Votes, My Ass”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4XWiKZNMOU
I agree about the “thought stoppers” and with the particular examples, such as “racist” and “whatever-phobe” – they choke out debate without allowing an argument to reach a natural stopping point (which, one hopes, would be when something approaching truth is reached).
All I’m saying here is that we have been repeatedly subjected to both ideas that beggar belief and “thought stoppers” that attempt to prevent anyone from examining those ideas. Shouldn’t we be skeptical, just because of the juxtaposition of those two things?
If you are walking down the street and you see a person breaking a window of a house, and you stop to see what’s going on and the person says, “Stop looking at me! You’re evil for noticing me!” – shouldn’t that give us pause? Maybe the person lives in that house and is just disturbed in some way – but in a prosocial environment, shouldn’t we notice?
The thing the left refuses to acknowledge about the right is that the right is vigorously prosocial. When we see antisocial things happening, we tend to notice and often even speak up about it, even when to do so seems counter to our default position of “individual rights as long as they don’t infringe on others’ individual rights.” So – new virus arises in an area where there’s a lab researching similar viruses. What does Occam’s Razor say? Should we stop paying attention to Occam’s Razor simply because someone calls us racist for doing so?
Best read I’ve seen is Viral, by Chan & Ridley. Their research and analysis is strong and what was previously a ‘conspiracy theory’ of the virus (a) being manmade or (b) being released from a lab, is now almost certainly true:
https://www.amazon.com/Viral-Search-Covid-19-Alina-Chan/dp/0008487499/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1687203048&sr=8-1
Bruce, excellent points on the convergence of cultural background/constraints AND the constraints of Communism.
Perhaps the “short version” is that the CHICOMS have NO OODA loop in the accepted sense of the term.
More precisely, they DO have an OODA loop; but its goal is NOT to learn from mistakes in order to IMPROVE the product/outcome/system/policy.
No. The CPC OODA loop is meant NOT to acknowledge, let alone publicize, mistakes; to the contrary, the CDC OODA loop IS intended to PROTECT those who made the mistakes, to hide, to cover up those mistakes, if possible—especially if the person who made them is in the higher ranks, i.e., the goal, if the mistake CANNOT be covered up, is to pin those mistakes on those lower down in the pecking order or, preferably, on others OUTSIDE the group/organization/company.
(Kinda reminds one of the Democratic Party.)
With an OODA loop like this, how DO things improve in China? Well, slowly. (Though this is probably why it is IMPERATIVE that the Chinese STEAL stuff that works from other countries.)
UNLESS there’s happens to be a CHINESE technocrat who does “get it”; who understands what’s at stake and is ABLE to ruthlessly instill a genuine OODA loop. (Such a technocrat is ALSO exposing himself to potential dangers and therefore must have tremendous courage.)
BTW, “COVID” is spelled incorrectly in the title of this post.
(Which may cause problems in potential searches, I suppose…)