I think the headline is self-explanatory. A new US report delivers what looks like a devastating verdict. (It was from a Republican committee; I am unclear what the Democrats might have said.) For me, the refusal of the Beijing regime to allow independent inspections and its bullying of anyone who raised questions, triggers my suspicions. Science writer Matt Ridley has come to the same conclusion, although he is far more qualified to write about it than someone like me. He co-authored a book on the topic.
It is not clear what, if anything, the West can now do other than the following:
Cease all funding of gain-of-function or similar experiments carried out in China. No Western individuals or organisations should be allowed to fund experiments of this nature in China. So it means people such as Dr Fauci would, under my rule, be treated as criminals for having any financial or other involvement with such research.
Where such experiments are conducted in places such as the US, they must be disclosed from the start, and subject to regular review and full reports given to the authorities, including media. There was a recent report that such work was being done in Boston, where the virus has a high fatality rate, although there has been pushback on this story here. Can someone explain to me what is the possible purpose of this? (If it is to defend against viruses, this should be made clear from the start.)
Restrict Chinese government/business (usually front organisations anyway) access to Western medical and scientific research as much as possible (I realise that in an online world, there are limits), particularly around technologies that can be weaponised.
Continue to demand answers about the sources of the pandemic, and make a willingness to be open about this a condition of more open relations going forward. Make it clear that unleashing a virus, even by accident, and doing nothing much to warn neighbours in good time or be open about investigating it, is a hostile act. I would like to hear the likes of Sunak, Biden, Macron, Scholz and the rest make these points, regularly. If not, they need to be asked why they aren’t raising it. And for good measure, the World Economic Forum head honcho Klaus Schwab needs to be regularly asked about this, and about whether any WEF members are funding such research. Let’s at least use the whole ESG agenda for some good and demand that no ESG-linked finance should touch gain-of-function research unless for a clearly-stated and checkable benefit, in full public view.
I don’t think sanctions are of much use here. Ironically, China’s zero-covid policy, which appears without end, is a form of self-harm that is more damaging than any amount of sanctions activity. President Xi has been re-elected by the Chinese Communist Party, and presumably hopes to be in post until he dies, or is too infirm to do the job. That is punishment enough for those who want to prop up this regime. It is, alas, miserable for the hundreds of millions of Chinese people who, through little fault of their own, live under this tyranny.
What, China just does what it wants and tells the rest of the world to kick rocks when it complains?
The Devil yes you say!
We must never forget that between February 8th and May 26th 2021, Facebook removed any posts that said Covid-19 was man-made.
If the censors had had their way, the truth would never have come out.
Did the report give the USA a pass? There is good reason to be suspicious that the USA, at least in part, underwrote some of this research. At the very least, they had a collegial relationship with the researchers at Wuhan, that could easily include sharing data and offering guidance. If the CDC etal knew that the virus was a frankenvirus, a lot of their overreaction makes a kind of sense. But this leaves me with the question, I ask often, then why did other countries go along, why weren’t they outraged and why aren’t they demanding reparations?
I don’t know how I feel about banning all related research, what about counter measures? Who is going to do that? Remember, mother nature can evolve such a virus too. That said, I don’t know how to identify the good guys?Another thing to keep in mind as that the bad guys don’t have to be state actors, but could be a third independent party.
The US paid for the research. At whose behest, however…?
I suspect that the reality is that the US government is penetrated, thoroughly, through-and-through, by Chinese and other non-US actors. It’s been brutally apparent since the days of Jimmy Carter that much of the US government is up for grabs; much like the ancient Romans, all you need to do is bribe a few compliant American government elected or appointed officials, and bang, Bob’s your uncle.
The American people were not up for this BS “gain of function” research. There was legislation performed by the left hand of government banning such work in the US. Yet, the right hand, in the personage of the NIH and “Dr.” Fauci blew right past that, and funded that work in China. For whose benefit, I might ask? What exactly did “gain of function” get us, with Corona virus? What did it gain the Chinese?
There needs to be a reckoning, and a justice-taking. There won’t be any “justice-giving” here, because the parties responsible are the ones who’re supposed to be doing that, in our name.
Winkling out just what the hell went on is something we all need to be concerned with, because I have this sneaking, deeply suspicious line of thought that all this was a part of Dr. Fauci’s retirement plan, meant to monetize his long march of incompetence and malfeasance through the public health system.
I honestly believed his career was long over, after the disastrous work he did during the AIDS epidemic. Imagine my shock to see the sorry bastard still playing Dr. Mengele, at the beginning of all this.
Fauci and his running buddies need to be in a dock, then once the facts are established, up against the wall somewhere. I can’t help but think this whole thing was a set-up, meant to enrich themselves and the pharmaceutical industry while at the same time, getting all that failed mRNA technology monetized. Something that likely wasn’t going to happen until there was some contrived crisis; none of that crap was passing the tests, which have been going on since the 1990s.
Yes, the U.S. paid for a good bit of it, and I suspect that we did so because the U.S. has laws that made such research illegal within our borders and our grant-writing research community decided that such redneck ignorant quashing of Science must not stand. If they couldn’t spend that sweet grant money here, they would spend it where a strong government wouldn’t stand for such meddling in our betters’ affairs.
So it strikes me that we brought it there, we allowed an insecure set-up, and now that it has all gone to hell, we’re casting the sole blame at China. We really do need the names of the people involved, and I don’t mean so that we can glorify them.
Yes indeed – Covid 19 was created in the Wuhan Institute by research funded by Tony Fauci and Peter Daszak (Eco-Health Alliance).
However, we do NOT know that it was released deliberately – it may have been an accident.
But the lies after the release (even if it was accident) were terrible.
The lies from the People’s Republic of China and its pet the “World Health Organisation” (with its Marxist Doctor of Philosophy, not medicine, leader) and the failure to close Wuhan international airport – so the disease was spread round the world (travel from Wuhan to other parts of China was restricted – but not from travel from Wuhan to the rest of the world in late 2019), and the lies from the Western establishment as well.
It is not a threat to America, said Tony Fauci (trying to cover his own backside – scared that his role in funding its creation would be uncovered). When the World Health Organisation finally got round to investigating the matter – it put Peter Daszak (yes, the man who helped fund the research creating the plague) in charge of the investigation – that was the same as urinating on the graves of the dead.
Then there were the lies about Early Treatment – the “mainstream media” told lie after lie, and vast numbers of people died because of these lies.
These lies can be traced back to the international “public health” bureaucrats and to the pharma corporations – you see if there was effective Early Treatment (which there was – and is) there would be no excuse for LOCKDOWNS and for the “Emergency Authorisation” for their toxic “vaccines”.
A vast amount of money was at sake – and there was also the desire to establish the precedent for lockdowns and so on (to establish the principle of control).
“It was not really about the money – we are building a better world!”.
You utter and complete bastards, may your “better world” turn to ashes in your mouth and choke you.
As for Klaus Schwab and the rest – they seem very much like “chancers” to me.
People who do not really create plagues (or anything else), but are ready to jump on anything and use it as an excuse for want they want to do anyway.
For example, Dr Schwab was pushing for “Stakeholder Capitalism” (Corporate State – “Stakeholder Capitalism” sounds so much better than FASCISM which is what Mussolini called the same idea) long before the Global Warming theory really got under way – but as soon as it did. the WEF crowd (government and corporate) were out there “yeah right – this CO2 thing means we need worldwide control, control by us here in this room”.
Chancers – conmen. But also with a vastly exaggerated sense of their own importance.
Ironically if they get the world they want it will be controlled by the People’s Republic of China Communist Party Dicatortship.
And the CCP would use their “good friends” for dog food.
“We guide China” say Dr Schwab and his son – they are so full of it, the rulers of China must find it hard not to laugh.
One more thing we can do: send the CCP the bill.
I haven’t looked in a while but I think the economic cost of the pandemic is on the order of $10 trillion.
The more important costs, lives lost and lives distorted/destroyed, are harder to calculate. So let’s focus on the money.
Some say we can send them a bill but there is no way to make them pay it. Sure there is: seize whatever assets we can. They’ve been busy buying the West in recent decades, so very convenient that the assets we need to pay for these costs are right here! Add in inflation and the cost of running a fire sale probably means we should go after a bit more ($20 trillion?)
There is also this bit of science.
Some clever people thought how they would create a coronavirus in the lab and what the tell tales of such creation would be. They then looked at the SARS2 genome and found such tell tales.
GregWA – the allies of the CCP regime in the West will not allow us to “send them the bill”.
After all the CCP regime has a vast amount of blackmail material on Mr Joseph Biden, K. Harris, and the rest.
“The mainstream media would never publish the material” – they would not have to, the CCP regime would flood the internet with the material.
It would be everywhere – hard for even the FBI and the “Justice” Department to ignore.
Covid was an extremely convenient excuse to fortify the last election as Time magazine so eloquently put it.
Whether that was merely Rahm “never let a crisis go to waste” Emmanuel style improvisation or something more insidious will never be known.
I doubt there is a need for one of the two governments to blackmail the other.
Given the amount of U.S. funding that went to Wuhan, I think this is more a matter of two co-defendants recognizing that protecting the other protects themselves.
I’m with bobby b (October 29, 2022 at 5:05 pm) on this one. Because they knew what research they’d funded at the Wuhan Lab, Fauci and Daszak would have needed no reminder from a Chinese agent-of-influence to spot, very early, both that the Lab was the overwhelmingly likely origin, and that it would be inconvenient for them to let that be discussed.