Good piece. IMO, the Beijing government is only interested is what makes them look good and what they can gain, whilst ignoring what consequences this could produce for the world. This shows in their actions with COVID-19 and their rocket returning to earth uncontrollably.
biden has a duty to release the intel? if this is true? i didnt believe it has escaped from the lab? i thought the chinese would be lying about some aspect of this, but if its as you say..the free world is entitled to know? we have already let hong kong down...i just hope we help taiwan, XI has to be told china must pay a price.
Once again great reporting. I can understand the Chinese's motive/reason for what they did however damaging it was to the world but what I can't understand is why Trump hasn't been charge with...pick a crime...and arrested Why does the MSM keeps tip toeing around this?
Can someone explain why it’s always described as an accidental leak? If China was trying to weaponize it, why not describe the release as intentional?
Criminal behavior is rational. So either it was prematurely released accidentally assuming China would not harm its own people or it was intentionally released regardless of whom it harmed, with Chinas citizens treated as collateral damage for a political goal or it was released for some other reason unrelated to nation state politics.
The latter seems more plausible. Both a vaccine and virus for the weaponized version were being hacked at the same time over 5 yeas ago. Vaccine producers must have known where the threat was... furthermore given the intelligence that the global health community had, there is no indication that their pandemic preparedness had anything to do with the preservation of life. With all the planning Fauci and WHO had time to do... we didn’t even stock pile ppp for nurses and doctors. A 5 year old could have planned that much. The pandemic could have been shut down early when Trump recommended HCQ and a few months later Ivermectin was recommended. Global health leaders continue to obfuscate about anything other than a vaccine. Preservation of life is not the goal. Lastly, the virus was in the US long before 2020 as reports of doctors and families seem to suggest-even as early as 2018. Something else is going on .
Great scoop, Louise. I hate that MSM & GOP are spinning this to look like Biden is weak and that Dr.Fauci/CDC was part of this. It was under Trump’s admin that Bolton slashed the pandemic response team by half.
We know SARS-Cov-2 is a coronavirus found in bats and that it was found in a pangolin in March 2019. We also know it mutates on its own pretty effectively. This means it was only a matter of time before the virus was going to get into the human population, IMO. The fact it escaped from a military lab isn't the scandal. The fact the Chinese government denied what it knew about the virus even while studying it in a lab, is the bad behavior. But the U.S. government response was no better. It also downplayed what it knew, whilst setting up over half a million Americans to die. China's government and the U.S. government both acted to protect their political power, more than to protect their citizens and those of the world. There are no heroes in this sordid tale, but at least America had the ability to oust the government that didn't protect its people.
Personally, I don’t think SARS-CoV-2 would have been a good candidate for ‘weaponization,’ in spite of Australian raw (or other) intel pointing to chatter on this. It is far more likely that if the virus did escape the lab at the WIV, it was a good, old-fashioned screw-up. Don’t underestimate the drive the Chinese would have to cover up such an embarrassing flub at their very first BSL-4 laboratory, and even more so once it started killing people outside China’s borders. Maybe that’s not as sexy an explanation as the bio weaponry gone awry narrative, but Occam’s Razor...
"The Australian newspaper effectively declassified the first bit of intelligence referred to in this article by publishing an exclusive on discussion of Chinese military scientists talking about their intent to weaponize SARS-COVID viruses five years ago."
If this was 5 years ago, they were taking about the first SARS-COV-1 virus that caused the 2002-4 SARS outbreak. SARS-COV-1 was less transmissible than SARS-COV-2 which is why people were able to bring it under control. SARS-COV-1 is thought to have a case fatality rate (CFR) around 10%, although it is lower in younger people. There were less than 10,000 cases of SARS-COV-1 world wide.
SARS-COV-2 has a lower CFR, probably around 1% or less, but higher in older populations. However SARS-COV-2 is much more transmissible than SARS-COV-1. People with SARS-COV-2 can transmit it for several days before showing any symptoms. That was not true with SARS-COV-1. SARS-COV-1 was brought under control by isolating patients that were showing symptoms. This does not work with SARS-COV-2. The transmission occurs before showing symptoms.
If the only evidence we have that China was trying to create a bio-weapon from bat coronaviruses is discussion of weaponizing SARS-COV-1 5 years ago, this is petty weak tea.
We know that Shi Zhengli at WIV was collecting bat coronaviruses and doing some risky tests on them to look for ones that might cross over to infect humans. Her teams that collected the viruses did not always wear protective gear. Shi Zhengli claims that she has check all the viruses sequenced in her lab and none of them is closely related to SARS-COV-2. She says she has some number of samples that have not been sequenced yet, but will not say how many. She also claims that all the people working for her have been checked for SARS-COV-2 antibodies and none of them show any. These claims of course could be part of a coverup, but I don't think Shi was doing bioweapon research. It is possible there was a different group at WIV that were doing bioweapon research using her samples, but that appears to be just speculation at this point.
In Dec 2019 Chinese media released a professionally produced video to promote Chines viral research at the Wuhan CDC by Tian Junhua. The Wuhan CDC is a rival group to WIV. In the video Tian is shown catching bats in caves to study their viruses. The Wuhan CDC and Chinese authorities will not say when the scenes shown in the video were photographed and the Wuhan CDC denies having any samples of bat viruses in its labs. It is unclear what happened to the samples collect by Tian's team. Tian himself has refused to answer questions from the media.
Both Shi Zhengli's work at WIV and Tian Junhua's work at Wuhan CDC seem like they could have accidentally released SARS-COV-2. Both groups are being evasive. To me this means that Chinese officials also think that one of these groups could be responsible for accidentally releasing SARS-COV-2 and are trying to cover that up. I just don't think we need to speculate that it was an accident at some imagined bioweapon research lab, when we have these two research groups in Wuhan that could have accidentally released it.
Good piece. IMO, the Beijing government is only interested is what makes them look good and what they can gain, whilst ignoring what consequences this could produce for the world. This shows in their actions with COVID-19 and their rocket returning to earth uncontrollably.
biden has a duty to release the intel? if this is true? i didnt believe it has escaped from the lab? i thought the chinese would be lying about some aspect of this, but if its as you say..the free world is entitled to know? we have already let hong kong down...i just hope we help taiwan, XI has to be told china must pay a price.
Once again great reporting. I can understand the Chinese's motive/reason for what they did however damaging it was to the world but what I can't understand is why Trump hasn't been charge with...pick a crime...and arrested Why does the MSM keeps tip toeing around this?
Putin Punks America my piece on pipeline shutdown https://dianefrancis.substack.com/p/putin-punks-america
Can someone explain why it’s always described as an accidental leak? If China was trying to weaponize it, why not describe the release as intentional?
Criminal behavior is rational. So either it was prematurely released accidentally assuming China would not harm its own people or it was intentionally released regardless of whom it harmed, with Chinas citizens treated as collateral damage for a political goal or it was released for some other reason unrelated to nation state politics.
The latter seems more plausible. Both a vaccine and virus for the weaponized version were being hacked at the same time over 5 yeas ago. Vaccine producers must have known where the threat was... furthermore given the intelligence that the global health community had, there is no indication that their pandemic preparedness had anything to do with the preservation of life. With all the planning Fauci and WHO had time to do... we didn’t even stock pile ppp for nurses and doctors. A 5 year old could have planned that much. The pandemic could have been shut down early when Trump recommended HCQ and a few months later Ivermectin was recommended. Global health leaders continue to obfuscate about anything other than a vaccine. Preservation of life is not the goal. Lastly, the virus was in the US long before 2020 as reports of doctors and families seem to suggest-even as early as 2018. Something else is going on .
Great scoop, Louise. I hate that MSM & GOP are spinning this to look like Biden is weak and that Dr.Fauci/CDC was part of this. It was under Trump’s admin that Bolton slashed the pandemic response team by half.
We know SARS-Cov-2 is a coronavirus found in bats and that it was found in a pangolin in March 2019. We also know it mutates on its own pretty effectively. This means it was only a matter of time before the virus was going to get into the human population, IMO. The fact it escaped from a military lab isn't the scandal. The fact the Chinese government denied what it knew about the virus even while studying it in a lab, is the bad behavior. But the U.S. government response was no better. It also downplayed what it knew, whilst setting up over half a million Americans to die. China's government and the U.S. government both acted to protect their political power, more than to protect their citizens and those of the world. There are no heroes in this sordid tale, but at least America had the ability to oust the government that didn't protect its people.
Personally, I don’t think SARS-CoV-2 would have been a good candidate for ‘weaponization,’ in spite of Australian raw (or other) intel pointing to chatter on this. It is far more likely that if the virus did escape the lab at the WIV, it was a good, old-fashioned screw-up. Don’t underestimate the drive the Chinese would have to cover up such an embarrassing flub at their very first BSL-4 laboratory, and even more so once it started killing people outside China’s borders. Maybe that’s not as sexy an explanation as the bio weaponry gone awry narrative, but Occam’s Razor...
I seem to recall that tRUmp & Putin has a phone call on Dec. 31rst, 2019. The contents of which we’ll never know...
"The Australian newspaper effectively declassified the first bit of intelligence referred to in this article by publishing an exclusive on discussion of Chinese military scientists talking about their intent to weaponize SARS-COVID viruses five years ago."
If this was 5 years ago, they were taking about the first SARS-COV-1 virus that caused the 2002-4 SARS outbreak. SARS-COV-1 was less transmissible than SARS-COV-2 which is why people were able to bring it under control. SARS-COV-1 is thought to have a case fatality rate (CFR) around 10%, although it is lower in younger people. There were less than 10,000 cases of SARS-COV-1 world wide.
SARS-COV-2 has a lower CFR, probably around 1% or less, but higher in older populations. However SARS-COV-2 is much more transmissible than SARS-COV-1. People with SARS-COV-2 can transmit it for several days before showing any symptoms. That was not true with SARS-COV-1. SARS-COV-1 was brought under control by isolating patients that were showing symptoms. This does not work with SARS-COV-2. The transmission occurs before showing symptoms.
If the only evidence we have that China was trying to create a bio-weapon from bat coronaviruses is discussion of weaponizing SARS-COV-1 5 years ago, this is petty weak tea.
We know that Shi Zhengli at WIV was collecting bat coronaviruses and doing some risky tests on them to look for ones that might cross over to infect humans. Her teams that collected the viruses did not always wear protective gear. Shi Zhengli claims that she has check all the viruses sequenced in her lab and none of them is closely related to SARS-COV-2. She says she has some number of samples that have not been sequenced yet, but will not say how many. She also claims that all the people working for her have been checked for SARS-COV-2 antibodies and none of them show any. These claims of course could be part of a coverup, but I don't think Shi was doing bioweapon research. It is possible there was a different group at WIV that were doing bioweapon research using her samples, but that appears to be just speculation at this point.
In Dec 2019 Chinese media released a professionally produced video to promote Chines viral research at the Wuhan CDC by Tian Junhua. The Wuhan CDC is a rival group to WIV. In the video Tian is shown catching bats in caves to study their viruses. The Wuhan CDC and Chinese authorities will not say when the scenes shown in the video were photographed and the Wuhan CDC denies having any samples of bat viruses in its labs. It is unclear what happened to the samples collect by Tian's team. Tian himself has refused to answer questions from the media.
Both Shi Zhengli's work at WIV and Tian Junhua's work at Wuhan CDC seem like they could have accidentally released SARS-COV-2. Both groups are being evasive. To me this means that Chinese officials also think that one of these groups could be responsible for accidentally releasing SARS-COV-2 and are trying to cover that up. I just don't think we need to speculate that it was an accident at some imagined bioweapon research lab, when we have these two research groups in Wuhan that could have accidentally released it.