Evidence against the claim that Covid-19 was a US bioweapon targeting China
Newsletter published on May 27, 2020
(1) Evidence against the claim that Covid-19 was a US bioweapon
targeting China
(2) Economist: Has Covid-19 killed Globalisation?
(3) Pat Buchanan: Will the Coronavirus Kill the New World Order?
(4) Pat Buchanan: Coexistence with China or Cold War II?
(5) Pompeo to Israel: avoid further involvement of China in the Israeli
economy
(6) Israel has cozied up to China while ignoring fallout with US -
Jerusalem Post editorial
(7) 2006 Origins of the Lockdown Idea
(8) Director of National Intelligence says COVID-19 not manmade or
genetically modified in a lab
(9) Economist: Covid-19 exposes US Structural Failure
(1) Evidence against the claim that Covid-19 was a US bioweapon
targeting China
by Peter Myers, May 27, 2020.
Further to my article Wrong about Covid: Larry Romanoff, Kevin Barrett,
Veterans Today, Ron Unz & Global Research.
Please correct the date of that article to May 27, 2020.
The items below provide evidence against the claim that Covid-19 was a
US bioweapon targeting China.
They deal with each of the 3 factions of the elite (Globalist, Neocon,
and Paleoconservative), and with the CIA.
Item 2, from The Economist, depicts Covid-19 as threatening
Globalization. This makes it unlikely that the Globalist faction
unleashed Covid-19 as a bioweapon against China; because it would
undermine their pet project.
Items 3 & 4, by Pat Buchanan, the leading Paleoconservative spokesman,
portray China as a more serious rival than the Soviet Union, and
anticipate a Cold War with an uncertain ending. But there is no wartalk.
Items 5 & 6, on Israel's cozy relationship with China, do not fit well
with Kevin Barrett's claim that the Neocon faction of the US elite
unleashed Covid-19 as a bioweapon against China.
Item 7 shows that the Lockdown idea goes back to 2006, and thus long
preceded the Event 201 simulation in 2019. The Globalist faction of the
elite has had contingency plans for dealing with pandemics for some
years, and envisaged mass vaccination, but that does not mean that they
deliberately unleashed Covid-19.
Item 8 is a statement from the Director of National Intelligence saying
COVID-19 was not made in a lab, thus exonerating China. Would they have
done that if they had been trying to frame China?
Item 9, from the Economist, details the US Structural Failure in dealing
with the pandemic, including vacillation and a lack of preparedness -
something that does not fit well with claims that the US itself
developed Covid-19 as a bioweapon and deliberately unleashed it.
(2) Economist: Has Covid-19 killed Globalisation?
Globalisation unwound
Has covid-19 killed globalisation? The flow of people, trade and capital
will be slowed
Leaders
May 14th 2020 edition
Even before the pandemic, globalisation was in trouble. The open system
of trade that had dominated the world economy for decades had been
damaged by the financial crash and the Sino-American trade war. Now it
is reeling from its third body-blow in a dozen years as lockdowns have
sealed borders and disrupted commerce (see Briefing ). The number of
passengers at Heathrow has dropped by 97% year-on-year; Mexican car
exports fell by 90% in April; 21% of transpacific container-sailings in
May have been cancelled. As economies reopen, activity will recover, but
don't expect a quick return to a carefree world of unfettered movement
and free trade. The pandemic will politicise travel and migration and
entrench a bias towards self-reliance. This inward-looking lurch will
enfeeble the recovery, leave the economy vulnerable and spread
geopolitical instability.
The world has had several epochs of integration, but the trading system
that emerged in the 1990s went further than ever before. China became
the world's factory and borders opened to people, goods, capital and
information (see Chaguan ). After Lehman Brothers collapsed in 2008 most
banks and some multinational firms pulled back. Trade and foreign
investment stagnated relative to gdp, a process this newspaper later
called slowbalisation. Then came President Donald Trump's trade wars,
which mixed worries about blue-collar jobs and China's autocratic
capitalism with a broader agenda of chauvinism and contempt for
alliances. At the moment when the virus first started to spread in Wuhan
last year, America's tariff rate on imports was back to its highest
level since 1993 and both America and China had begun to decouple their
technology industries.
Since January a new wave of disruption has spread westward from Asia.
Factory, shop and office closures have caused demand to tumble and
prevented suppliers from reaching customers. The damage is not
universal. Food is still getting through, Apple insists it can still
make iPhones and China's exports have held up so far, buoyed by sales of
medical gear. But the overall effect is savage. World goods trade may
shrink by 10-30% this year. In the first ten days of May exports from
South Korea, a trade powerhouse, fell by 46% year-on-year, probably the
worst decline since records began in 1967.
The underlying anarchy of global governance is being exposed. France and
Britain have squabbled over quarantine rules, China is threatening
Australia with punitive tariffs for demanding an investigation into the
virus's origins and the White House remains on the warpath about trade.
Despite some instances of co-operation during the pandemic, such as the
Federal Reserve's loans to other central banks, America has been
reluctant to act as the world's leader. Chaos and division at home have
damaged its prestige. China's secrecy and bullying have confirmed that
it is unwilling—and unfit—to pick up the mantle. Around the world,
public opinion is shifting away from globalisation. People have been
disturbed to find that their health depends on a brawl to import
protective equipment and on the migrant workers who work in care homes
and harvest crops.
This is just the start. Although the flow of information is largely free
outside China, the movement of people, goods and capital is not.
Consider people first. The Trump administration is proposing to curtail
immigration further, arguing that jobs should go to Americans instead.
Other countries are likely to follow. Travel is restricted, limiting the
scope to find work, inspect plants and drum up orders. Some 90% of
people live in countries with largely closed borders. Many governments
will open up only to countries with similar health protocols: one such
'travel bubble' is mooted to include Australia and New Zealand and,
perhaps, Taiwan and Singapore (see article ). The industry is signalling
that the disruption to travel will be lasting. Airbus has cut production
by a third and Emirates, a symbol of globalisation, expects no recovery
until 2022.
Trade will suffer as countries abandon the idea that firms and goods are
treated equally regardless of where they come from. Governments and
central banks are asking taxpayers to underwrite national firms through
their stimulus packages, creating a huge and ongoing incentive to favour
them. And the push to bring supply chains back home in the name of
resilience is accelerating. On May 12th Narendra Modi, India's prime
minister, told the nation that a new era of economic self-reliance has
begun. Japan's covid-19 stimulus includes subsidies for firms that
repatriate factories; European Union officials talk of 'strategic
autonomy' and are creating a fund to buy stakes in firms. America is
urging Intel to build plants at home. Digital trade is thriving but its
scale is still modest. The sales abroad of Amazon, Apple, Facebook and
Microsoft are equivalent to just 1.3% of world exports.
The flow of capital is also suffering, as long-term investment sinks.
Chinese venture-capital investment in America dropped to $400m in the
first quarter of this year, 60% below its level two years ago.
Multinational firms may cut their cross-border investment by a third
this year. America has just instructed its main federal pension fund to
stop buying Chinese shares, and so far this year countries representing
59% of world gdp have tightened their rules on foreign investment. As
governments try to pay down their new debts by taxing firms and
investors, some countries may be tempted to further restrict the flow of
capital across borders.
It's lonely out there
Don't be fooled that a trading system with an unstable web of national
controls will be more humane or safer. Poorer countries will find it
harder to catch up and, in the rich world, life will be more expensive
and less free. The way to make supply chains more resilient is not to
domesticate them, which concentrates risk and forfeits economies of
scale, but to diversify them. Moreover, a fractured world will make
solving global problems harder, including finding a vaccine and securing
an economic recovery.
Tragically, this logic is no longer fashionable. Those three body-blows
have so wounded the open system of trade that the powerful arguments in
its favour are being neglected. Wave goodbye to the greatest era of
globalisation—and worry about what is going to take its place.?
(3) Pat Buchanan: Will the Coronavirus Kill the New World Order?
Will the Coronavirus Kill the New World Order?
March 13, 2020
by Patrick J. Buchanan
[...] What does the future hold?
It may one day be said that the coronavirus delivered the deathblow to
the New World Order, to a half-century of globalization, and to the era
of interdependence of the world’s great nations.
Tourism, air travel, vacation cruises, international gatherings and
festivals are already shutting down. Travel bans between countries and
continents are being imposed. Conventions, concerts and sporting events
are being canceled. Will the Tokyo Olympics go forward? If they do, will
all the anticipated visitors from abroad come to Japan to enjoy the games?
Trump has issued a one-month travel ban on Europe.
As for the "open borders" crowd, do Democrats still believe that
breaking into our country should no longer be a crime, and immigrants
arriving illegally should be given free health care, a proposition to
which all the Democratic debaters raised their hands?
The ideological roots of our free trade era can be traced to the
mid-19th century when its great evangelist, Richard Cobden, rose at Free
Trade Hall in Manchester on Jan. 15, 1846, and rhapsodized:
"I see in the Free Trade principle that which shall act on the moral
world as the principle of gravitation in the universe — drawing men
together, thrusting aside the antagonism of race, and creed, and
language, and uniting us in the bonds of eternal peace."
In the pre-Trump era, Republicans held hands with liberal Democrats in
embracing NAFTA, GATT, the WTO and most-favored-nation trade privileges
for China.
In retrospect, was it wise to have relied on China to produce essential
parts for the supply chains of goods vital to our national security?
Does it appear wise to have moved the production of pharmaceuticals and
lifesaving drugs for heart disease, strokes and diabetes to China? Does
it appear wise to have allowed China to develop a virtual monopoly on
rare earth minerals crucial to the development of weapons for our defense?
In this coronavirus pandemic, people now seem to be looking for
authoritative leaders and nations seem to be looking out for their own
peoples first. Would Merkel, today, invite a million Syrian refugees
into Germany no matter the conditions under which they were living in
Syria and Turkey?
Is not the case now conclusive that we made a historic mistake when we
outsourced our economic independence to rely for vital necessities upon
nations that have never had America’s best interests at heart?
Which rings truer today? We are all part of mankind, all citizens of the
world. Or that it’s time to put America and Americans first!
(4) Pat Buchanan: Coexistence with China or Cold War II?
Coexistence with China or Cold War II?
May 12, 2020
by Patrick J. Buchanan
On China, Trump is the first realist we have had in the Oval Office in
decades. But both parties colluded in the buildup of China… The mighty
malevolent China we face today was made in the USA.
Under fire for his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, President
Donald Trump, his campaign and his party are moving to lay blame for the
80,000 U.S. dead at the feet of the Communist Party of China and, by
extension, its longtime General Secretary, President Xi Jinping.
"There is a significant amount of evidence" that the virus originated in
a Wuhan lab, said Secretary of State Mike Pompeo last week.
Trump himself seemed to subscribe to the charge:
"This is worse than Pearl Harbor. This is worse than the World Trade
Center. There’s never been an attack like this… It could have been
stopped in China. It should have been stopped right at the source."
There is talk on Capitol Hill of suspending sovereign immunity so China
may be sued for the damages done by the virus that produced a U.S.
shutdown and a second Great Depression where unemployment is projected
to reach near the 25% of 1933.
The Trump campaign has begun to target the Democratic nominee as
"Beijing Biden" for his past collusion with China and his attack on
Trump for "hysterical xenophobia" when Trump ended flights from China.
What is the historical truth?
On China, Trump is the first realist we have had in the Oval Office in
decades. But both parties colluded in the buildup of China as she
vaulted over Italy, France, Britain, Germany and Japan to become the
world’s second power in the 21st century.
Both parties also dismissed Chinese trade surpluses with the U.S., which
began at a few billion dollars a year in the early 1990s and have grown
to almost $500 billion a year. Neither party took notice until lately of
our growing dependency on Beijing for products critical to our defense
and for drugs and medicines crucial to the health and survival of Americans.
The mighty malevolent China we face today was made in the USA.
But what do we do now? Can we coexist with this rising and expansionist
power? Or must we conduct a new decades-long Cold War like the one we
waged to defeat the Soviet Empire and Soviet Union?
The U.S. prevailed in that Cold War because of advantages we do not
possess with the China of 2020.
From 1949-1989, a NATO alliance backed by 300,000 U.S. troops in Europe
"contained" the Soviet Union. No Soviet ruler attempted to cross the
dividing line laid down at Yalta in 1945. Nor did we cross it.
East of the Elbe, the Soviet bloc visibly failed to offer the freedoms
and prosperity the U.S., Western Europe and Japan had on offer after
World War II. America won the battle for hearts and minds.
Moreover, ethnic nationalism, the idea that separate and unique peoples
have a right to determine their own political and cultural identity and
destiny, never died in the captive nations of Europe and the USSR.
China today does not suffer from these deficiencies to the same degree.
Unlike the USSR, China has four times our population. Where the USSR
could not compete economically and technologically, China is a capable
and dynamic rival of the U.S.
Moreover, if we begin a Cold War II with China, we would not be starting
with the advantages Truman’s America, undamaged at home in World War II,
had over Stalin’s pillaged and plundered land in 1945.
Where ethnic nationalism tore the USSR apart into 15 nations, today’s
China is more of an ethno-nationalist state with Han Chinese
constituting 1 billion of China’s 1.4 billion people.
There are millions of Tibetans, Uighurs, Kazakhs in southwest and west
China, and tens of millions of Buddhists, Christians, Muslims, Falun
Gong and other religious minorities. But China is unlike the
multiracial, multiethnic, multicultural, multilingual Moscow-centered
and Russian-controlled Soviet Empire and USSR that shattered after 1989.
China’s weaknesses?
She is feared and distrusted by her neighbors. She sits on India’s lands
from the war of the early 1960s. She claims the whole South China Sea,
whose waters and resources are also claimed by Vietnam, Malaysia,
Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines and Taiwan.
The peoples of Hong Kong and Taiwan fear that Beijing intends to overrun
and rule them.
Even Vladimir Putin has reason to be suspicious as Beijing looks at the
barren but resource-rich lands of Siberia and the Russian Far East, some
of which once belonged to China.
China is thus a greater rival than the USSR of Stalin and Khrushchev and
Brezhnev, but the U.S. is not today the nation of Ronald Reagan, with
its surging economy and ideological conviction we would one day see the
ideology of Marx and Lenin buried.
Three decades of post-Cold War foolish and failed democracy-crusading
have left this generation not with the conviction and certitude of Cold
War America, but with ashes in their mouths and no stomach to spend
blood and treasure converting China to our way of life.
(5) Pompeo to Israel: avoid further involvement of China in the Israeli
economy
US To Israel: No More Chinese Deals; Pompeo’s Flying Visit
Israeli officials said the message relayed during Secretary of State
Mike Pompeo's hours-long visit included a very specific political
warning – Israel must stop any action that strengthens the Chinese
Communist Party, even if that means canceling projects already planned.
By ARIE EGOZI
May 13, 2020 at 3:05 PM
TEL AVIV: The United States delivered a clear message to Jerusalem today
– avoid further involvement of China in the Israeli economy. The message
was one of the main reasons for the very short visit of American
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to Jerusalem — one day before the new
cabinet is sworn in.
"The fact that the visit takes place in these problematic times proves
its urgency " an Israeli source said. Pompeo came to Israel with a very
strict message – stop all Chinese investment in Israel, either in high
tech companies or infrastructure.
Israeli officials said the message relayed during Secretary of State
Mike Pompeo’s hours-long visit included a very specific political
warning – Israel must stop any action that strengthens the Chinese
Communist Party, even if that means canceling projects already planned.
Israeli sources said that the strict demand also stems from the
suspicion in Washington that China is responsible for the effects of the
coronavirus.
Good relations between Israel and China have caused heartache in the
relationship between Washington and Jerusalem. For example, Israel was
forced to cancel the sale of the Phalcon Airborne Early Warning System
to China during the Camp David summit after money had changed hands.
Israel was forced to compensate China for the cancellation.
As Breaking D readers know, Israel’s National Authority for Data
Protection barred China from building communications infrastructures of
any kind in the country, and Israeli communications companies are not
using Chinese components in their communications equipment. The new
directive will force big companies and organizations with national
security implications to refrain from using Chinese made systems and
components in their different installations.
But sources familiar with the issue say the steps that have been taken
are not enough. "The Chinese use their resources to try and integrate
into many Israeli infrastructure projects, especially on the
communications and security aspects and that causes big worries" one
expert here told me.
A document prepared by the intelligence community shows that there has
been an increase of more than 1,700% in Chinese investment across the
Middle East from 2012 to 2018.
Government officials and private sector experts estimate that Chinese
investment in Israel has reached 40 billion shekels ($11.4 billion) over
the years. Chinese companies bought one of Israel’s largest dairy
products companies, and have won tenders and operating franchises to
build the Carmel tunnels in Haifa, the Ashdod and Haifa ports and the
Tel Aviv Light Train.
The Israeli security organizations are very concerned about Chinese
involvement, especially at two strategic sites where the sensitivity is
particularly high. One is control of the light train now being built
here that passes close to Kirya, the site that includes the Ministry of
Defense, IDF headquarters and the air force’s high command.
(6) Israel has cozied up to China while ignoring fallout with US -
Jerusalem Post editorial
Israel’s relations with China are creating a storm
For too long, Israel has cozied up to China while ignoring potential
ramifications or fallout with its greatest ally, the United States.
By JPOST EDITORIAL
MAY 23, 2020 23:07
On Wednesday, The Jerusalem Post’s Lahav Harkov revealed that the United
States has asked Israel to sever ties with China in areas with security
risks.
The demand, which came just days after US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo
visited Jerusalem and asked Israel to reconsider some of its joint
projects with China, marked an escalation. In previous public
statements, Ambassador David Friedman and other State Department
officials had focused on the establishment of a more robust review
process for foreign investments that could pose risks, and a reduction
of reliance on China for emergency equipment in light of the coronavirus
pandemic.
But now, the Trump administration seems to be asking Israel to take
concrete steps that could jeopardize ties between Jerusalem and Beijing.
For those following the Israel-US-China triangle in recent years, this
should come as no surprise. For too long, Israel has cozied up to China
while ignoring potential ramifications or fallout with its greatest
ally, the United States.
All in all – together with additional tenders that are still ongoing –
Chinese companies are operating in Israel today in deals reaching more
than $20 billion and more is on the way. Jerusalem has gone so far as to
even allow Chinese companies that do business in Iran to compete for
major infrastructure projects in the State of Israel.
The US request is based on two motivations. The first seems to be a
desire to punish China for hiding news of the original outbreak of the
novel coronavirus from the world and then not doing enough to stop it
from reaching US shores. [...]
The second motivation is the fear from Chinese espionage. Back in 2000,
after the cancellation of the planned sale of the Phalcon AWACS China,
Israel made a decision not to sell Beijing any military equipment. It
was a decision based on an ultimatum that if Israel continued selling
weaponry to China it would lose American support. That same ultimatum is
coming back, although for the time being, the message is being conveyed
in diplomatic terms. The US and Israel share some of the most sensitive
intelligence with one another. In addition, American defense contractors
sell Israel some of the most classified military hardware and weapons in
the US like the F-35 fifth-generation stealth fighter jet.
The US is concerned that with China building most of Israel’s
infrastructure – roads, trains, tunnels, ports and more – it will
eventually gain access to the lines of communication through which
Israel and the US communicate intelligence with one another. That is
something that Washington will not tolerate.
It is time for Israel to begin to take this more seriously.
Last year, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet approved the
establishment of an oversight mechanism that was supposed to finally
synergize between different agencies and ensure that any deal with China
is first vetted and verified.
The US though is not happy with this mechanism. A senior State
Department official told Harkov that Israel needs a mechanism with
greater enforcement and teeth.
"I don’t think polite deflection will cut it anymore," he stated.
"This is a high priority for the US."
Israel’s government now includes two former chiefs of staff – Gabi
Ashkenazi and Benny Gantz – who more than others, understand the
importance of Israel-US ties. China is an important trade partner for
Israel and we hope it will remain that way but clearer lines need to be
drawn and there is no better time to do so than the present.
(7) 2006 Origins of the Lockdown Idea
From: leo schmit <leoschmit@yahoo.com>
The 2006 Origins of the Lockdown Idea
Jeffrey A. Tucker
May 15, 2020
Now begins the grand effort, on display in thousands of articles and
news broadcasts daily, somehow to normalize the lockdown and all its
destruction of the last two months. We didn’t lock down almost the
entire country in 1968/69, 1957, or 1949-1952, or even during 1918. But
in a terrifying few days in March 2020, it happened to all of us,
causing an avalanche of social, cultural, and economic destruction that
will ring through the ages.
There was nothing normal about it all. We’ll be trying to figure out
what happened to us for decades hence. [...]
Let’s start with the phrase social distancing, which has mutated into
forced human separation. The first I had heard it was in the 2009 movie
Contagion. The first time it appeared in the New York Times was February
12, 2006:
If the avian flu goes pandemic while Tamiflu and vaccines are still in
short supply, experts say, the only protection most Americans will have
is "social distancing," which is the new politically correct way of
saying "quarantine."
But distancing also encompasses less drastic measures, like wearing face
masks, staying out of elevators — and the [elbow] bump. Such stratagems,
those experts say, will rewrite the ways we interact, at least during
the weeks when the waves of influenza are washing over us.
Maybe you don’t remember that the avian flu of 2006 didn’t amount to
much. It’s true, despite all the extreme warnings about its lethality,
H5N1 didn’t turn into much at all. What it did do, however, was send the
existing president, George W. Bush, to the library to read about the
1918 flu and its catastrophic results. He asked for some experts to
submit some plans to him about what to do when the real thing comes along.
The New York Times (April 22, 2020) tells the story from there:
Fourteen years ago, two federal government doctors, Richard Hatchett and
Carter Mecher, met with a colleague at a burger joint in suburban
Washington for a final review of a proposal they knew would be treated
like a piñata: telling Americans to stay home from work and school the
next time the country was hit by a deadly pandemic.
When they presented their plan not long after, it was met with
skepticism and a degree of ridicule by senior officials, who like others
in the United States had grown accustomed to relying on the
pharmaceutical industry, with its ever-growing array of new treatments,
to confront evolving health challenges.
Drs. Hatchett and Mecher were proposing instead that Americans in some
places might have to turn back to an approach, self-isolation, first
widely employed in the Middle Ages.
How that idea — born out of a request by President George W. Bush to
ensure the nation was better prepared for the next contagious disease
outbreak — became the heart of the national playbook for responding to a
pandemic is one of the untold stories of the coronavirus crisis.
It required the key proponents — Dr. Mecher, a Department of Veterans
Affairs physician, and Dr. Hatchett, an oncologist turned White House
adviser — to overcome intense initial opposition.
It brought their work together with that of a Defense Department team
assigned to a similar task.
And it had some unexpected detours, including a deep dive into the
history of the 1918 Spanish flu and an important discovery kicked off by
a high school research project pursued by the daughter of a scientist at
the Sandia National Laboratories.
The concept of social distancing is now intimately familiar to almost
everyone. But as it first made its way through the federal bureaucracy
in 2006 and 2007, it was viewed as impractical, unnecessary and
politically infeasible.
Notice that in the course of this planning, neither legal nor economic
experts were brought in to consult and advise. Instead it fell to Mecher
(formerly of Chicago and an intensive care doctor with no previous
expertise in pandemics) and the oncologist Hatchett.
But what is this mention of the high-school daughter of 14? Her name is
Laura M. Glass, and she recently declined to be interviewed when the
Albuquerque Journal did a deep dive of this history.
Laura, with some guidance from her dad, devised a computer simulation
that showed how people – family members, co-workers, students in
schools, people in social situations – interact. What she discovered was
that school kids come in contact with about 140 people a day, more than
any other group. Based on that finding, her program showed that in a
hypothetical town of 10,000 people, 5,000 would be infected during a
pandemic if no measures were taken, but only 500 would be infected if
the schools were closed.
Laura’s name appears on the foundational paper arguing for lockdowns and
forced human separation. That paper is Targeted Social Distancing
Designs for Pandemic Influenza (2006). It set out a model for forced
separation and applied it with good results backwards in time to 1957.
They conclude with a chilling call for what amounts to a totalitarian
lockdown, all stated very matter-of-factly.
Implementation of social distancing strategies is challenging. They
likely must be imposed for the duration of the local epidemic and
possibly until a strain-specific vaccine is developed and distributed.
If compliance with the strategy is high over this period, an epidemic
within a community can be averted. However, if neighboring communities
do not also use these interventions, infected neighbors will continue to
introduce influenza and prolong the local epidemic, albeit at a
depressed level more easily accommodated by healthcare systems.
In other words, it was a high-school science experiment that eventually
became law of the land, and through a circuitous route propelled not by
science but politics.
The primary author of this paper was Robert J. Glass, a complex-systems
analyst with Sandia National Laboratories. He had no medical training,
much less an expertise in immunology or epidemiology.
That explains why Dr. D.A. Henderson, "who had been the leader of the
international effort to eradicate smallpox," completely rejected the
whole scheme.
Says the NYT:
Dr. Henderson was convinced that it made no sense to force schools to
close or public gatherings to stop. Teenagers would escape their homes
to hang out at the mall. School lunch programs would close, and
impoverished children would not have enough to eat. Hospital staffs
would have a hard time going to work if their children were at home.
The measures embraced by Drs. Mecher and Hatchett would "result in
significant disruption of the social functioning of communities and
result in possibly serious economic problems," Dr. Henderson wrote in
his own academic paper responding to their ideas.
The answer, he insisted, was to tough it out: Let the pandemic spread,
treat people who get sick and work quickly to develop a vaccine to
prevent it from coming back. [...]
Thus did some of the most highly trained and experienced experts on
epidemics warn with biting rhetoric against everything that the
advocates of lockdown proposed. It was not even a real-world idea in the
first place and showed no actual knowledge of viruses and disease
mitigation. Again, the idea was born of a high-school science experiment
using agent-based modelling techniques having nothing at all to do with
real life, real science, or real medicine.
So the question becomes: how did the extreme view prevail?
The New York Times has the answer:
The [Bush] administration ultimately sided with the proponents of social
distancing and shutdowns — though their victory was little noticed
outside of public health circles. Their policy would become the basis
for government planning and would be used extensively in simulations
used to prepare for pandemics, and in a limited way in 2009 during an
outbreak of the influenza called H1N1. Then the coronavirus came, and
the plan was put to work across the country for the first time.
The Times called one of the pro-lockdown researchers, Dr. Howard Markel,
and asked what he thought of the lockdowns. His answer: he is glad that
his work was used to "save lives" but added, "It is also horrifying."
"We always knew this would be applied in worst-case scenarios," he said.
"Even when you are working on dystopian concepts, you always hope it
will never be used."
Ideas have consequences, as they say. Dream up an idea for a
virus-controlling totalitarian society, one without an endgame and
eschewing any experienced-based evidence that it would achieve the goal,
and you might see it implemented someday. Lockdown might be the new
orthodoxy but that doesn’t make it medically sound or morally correct.
At least now we know that many great doctors and scholars in 2006 did
their best to stop this nightmare from unfolding. Their mighty paper
should serve as a blueprint for dealing with the next pandemic.
(8) Director of National Intelligence says COVID-19 not manmade or
genetically modified in a lab
The MSM has not published contrary evidence, eg by Francis Boyle, Luc
Montagnier, or Nikoliai Petrovsky; so it is not surprising that the DNI
takes this line. - Peter M.
Intelligence Community Statement on Origins of COVID-19
Thursday, 30 April 2020 09:16
NEWS RELEASE
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
ODNI News Release No. 11-20
April 30, 2020
Intelligence Community Statement on Origins of COVID-19
WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Office of the Director of National Intelligence
today issued the following Intelligence Community (IC) statement:
"The entire Intelligence Community has been consistently providing
critical support to U.S. policymakers and those responding to the
COVID-19 virus, which originated in China. The Intelligence Community
also concurs with the wide scientific consensus that the COVID-19 virus
was not manmade or genetically modified.
"As we do in all crises, the Community’s experts respond by surging
resources and producing critical intelligence on issues vital to U.S.
national security. The IC will continue to rigorously examine emerging
information and intelligence to determine whether the outbreak began
through contact with infected animals or if it was the result of an
accident at a laboratory in Wuhan."
### Published in Press Releases 2020 Tagged under odni
(9) Economist: Covid-19 exposes US Structural Failure
Uncle Sam v the coronavirus
Covid-19 is spreading rapidly in America. The country does not look
ready There are structural reasons why America finds a response to the
pandemic hard
Mar 12th 2020 edition
Covid-19 is rapidly spreading in America. The country does not look ready
March 11, 2020
WHEN A NEW disease first took hold in Wuhan, the Chinese authorities did
not have the luxury of advanced notice. Their initial strategy, in the
crucial early weeks of what would become the global pandemic covid-19,
was obfuscation and censorship, which did nothing to halt the spread of
the virus that causes the disease. Only now, months after the first
cases were reported, have new transmissions slowed to close to zero—and
only after an unprecedented, draconian lockdown for hundreds of millions
of citizens.
America, by contrast, had the luxury of several weeks’ notice. Yet the
crucial early weeks when it could have prepared for the spread of the
disease were squandered, in a country with some of the world’s best
epidemiologists and physicians. As of March 11th, almost 1,300 Americans
had been diagnosed with covid-19. Several times more probably have the
disease undetected and are transmitting it within communities. And still
the country looks behind in its preparations for what now threatens to
be a bruising pandemic.
America’s decentralised authority, expensive health care and skimpy
safety-net will all make the pandemic response harder to deal with. The
uncertainty is high, but a plausible scenario—one-fifth of the
population falling ill, and a 0.5% fatality rate—would lead to 327,000
deaths, or nine times that of a typical flu season.
How America got here was the result of two significant failures—one
technical, the other of messaging. A country of America’s size could
probably not have avoided a serious outbreak of covid-19. But with
enough information, the early spread of the disease could have been
slowed. That lowers the peak of the outbreak, lightening the load on
hospitals when they are most overstretched, thereby saving lives. It
also gives the health service and the government time to prepare, and
the population a chance to learn how to respond.
However, in America the testing regime has worked badly, because of
faulty test-kits manufactured by the Centres for Disease Control and
Prevention (CDC) and tangles in administrative red tape between the CDC
and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), another government agency.
"The debacle with the tests probably reflects underlying budget cuts.
You can’t have surge capacity if you’ve already been cut to the bone,"
says Scott Burris, director of the Centre of Public Health Law Research
at Temple University. In 2010 the CDC budget was $12.7bn in current
dollars; today it is $8bn. Whether skimpy budgeting, bureaucratic
blockages or both were to blame is as yet unclear and sure to be the
subject of a future investigation. [...]
A successful testing regime also buys time for the right messaging. But
from the start, President Donald Trump has downplayed the chance of big
disruption to ordinary lives and the economy. His insistence that virus
hysteria was being amped up by his political enemies has distracted from
the crucial message, which is to get ready. His announcement on March
11th of a ban on most travel from Europe was confused (he initially
appeared to suggest it would apply to cargo), arbitrary (it excludes
Britain) and accomplishes little now that the virus is spreading from
within.
These mistakes cannot be undone. But what matters now is giving people
the right information and reinforcing hospitals ahead of the inevitable
deluge of cases. Unfortunately, the difficulties in testing and honest
messaging look set to persist.
Even after the error in the test kits was detected, the increase in
testing has been slow. Andrew Cuomo, the governor of New York, and Bill
de Blasio, the mayor of New York City, have been begging the FDA to
speed up approval for automated testing, to boost capacity from around
100 tests a day to the several thousand that are needed. A doctor at a
Chicago clinic says that she has received no kits, nor guidance on when
they will come. When she sees patients with covid-19-like symptoms she
has to send them to be tested at a nearby hospital.
Now that kits are being delivered, researchers are reporting another
problem—a shortage of the components needed to extract genetic material
from samples. The White House promised capacity of 1m tests by March
6th. The CDC has stopped publishing data on the number of tests
performed. But the latest cobbled-together estimates, as of March 11th,
are of 7,000 tests in total, well behind almost every developed country
with an outbreak.
Mr Trump has minimised the threat all the same. On March 9th he blamed
the "Fake News Media" and Democrats for conspiring "to inflame the
Coronavirus situation" and wrongly suggested that the common flu was
more dangerous. The same day, Nancy Messonnier, an official at the CDC,
was warning, correctly, that "as the trajectory of the outbreak
continues, many people in the United States will at some point in time
this year or next be exposed to this virus."
Correcting the course of the outbreak is vital because America’s health
infrastructure, like that of most countries, is not equipped to deal
with an enormous surge in serious cases. A recent study of covid-19 in
China found that 5% of patients needed to be admitted to an intensive
care unit (ICU), with many needing intensive ventilation or use of a
more sophisticated machine that oxygenates blood externally. America has
95,000 ICU beds and 62,000 mechanical ventilators, while only 290
hospitals out of 6,000 offer the most intensive treatment. Much of this
equipment is already being used for current patients, including those
with seasonal flu. Human capacity, such as the number of pulmonologists
and specially trained nurses, is also a limiting factor—although in
Italy, where the epidemic is raging, specialisms have begun to matter
less. Mortality in overwhelmed hospitals will certainly be higher.
To reduce the chances of this happening, rates of transmission must be
slowed by encouraging social distancing and telework, and cancelling
large gatherings. (Sports events are already being called off: the
National Basketball Association season was suspended on March 11th.) But
in America authority over public health is largely delegated to the
states and some cities. It is for each locality to declare a state of
emergency; 13 had done so as of March 11th. The decentralised system
means that containment regimes will differ.
Mr Cuomo has ordered a series of measures: a one-mile containment area
in New Rochelle, site of a cluster, serviced by the National Guard; and
a state-produced line of hand-sanitiser made by prisoners to ameliorate
a shortage. At the same time, New York City and Chicago have so far
resisted closing their public schools, noting that many poor households
rely on them for meals and child care. Many private universities are
cancelling classes and switching to tele-instruction (causing much
difficulty for some septuagenarian professors). Harvard gave its
undergraduates five days’ notice to pack their things and leave.
Maintaining a healthy population requires people not to spread the
disease, but also to seek treatment without worrying about crippling
debt. America is one of the few countries in the developed world that
does not mandate paid sick leave. A mere 20% of low-paid, service-sector
workers can count on it. Those without cannot stay at home, because a
retail worker cannot just fire up Slack and Zoom as a white-collar
office worker might.
Health care is also extraordinarily costly. People who are uninsured,
underinsured (ie, liable for a high share of their treatment costs) or
fearful of surcharges for using out-of-network hospitals and physicians
may keep away—particularly if their pay has recently fallen or stopped
altogether. "The idea that people should have skin in the game kind of
doesn’t work when you’re also playing with your neighbour’s skin," says
Wendy Parmet, a professor of public-health law at Northeastern
University. Some insurers, as in Illinois or in California, insist that
patients will not be made to pay for testing. But as yet there is no
such policy at national level. [...]
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