Since you
a) admit you don’t trust China
b) don’t like what you call “kook websites”
Care to look into the following since you are not a flat-earther hick, even though everyone else on FR is?
This is from a story elsewhere on FR today. Not that you do anything but troll COVID threads.
Note the principals: former director of the CDC saying COVID likely escaped from a lab
The US State Deparment Says the Wuhan institute has engaged in classified military research including laboratory animal experiments since at least 2017
When former Director of the U.S. Center for Disease Control (CDC) Robert Redfield said in March that “the most likely etiology of this pathogen in Wuhan was from a laboratory, you know, escaped,” people should have taken him seriously. Now The Epoch Times’ Nicole Hao has reported that the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), the military arm of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), “collaborated” with the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). However, Hao noted, the Chinese Foreign Affairs Ministry and Shi Zhengli, “the WIV virologist nicknamed ‘Bat Woman’ for her research on coronaviruses of bat origin,” have denied that there was a connection between the PLA and WIV: “’I don’t know any military work at the WIV. That information is incorrect,’ said Shi at a public webinar on March 23, 2020.”
The U.S. State Department disagrees. One of its fact sheets states, “The WIV has engaged in classified research, including laboratory animal experiments, on behalf of the Chinese military since at least 2017.”
I certainly don’t trust China and I definitely don’t like conspiracy theory websites pushing nonsense. It just muddies the waters. I’ve never called anyone on FR a “flat-earther hick”. I mock ridiculous theories and nonsense information. I really do try to avoid mocking individuals. An otherwise decent person can sometimes be led to believe silly things.
As to whether the lab in China engaged in military research, or gain of function research on SARS, or whether the SARS-CoV-2 virus came from the lab (either purposely or accidentally) or from an animal? I don’t know, but I’d love to find out. The WHO “investigation” was clearly useless from the start, but I’m sympathetic to the fact that if I were an investigator working in China on something that could badly damage China on the world stage, I’d be pretty cautious too. China has no qualms about disappearing people.
But at the end of the day, we do know one thing: once COVID-19 was out - however it started - the Chinese lied to the world about it. They claimed it was minor. They claimed it was contained. They claimed all kinds of things to prevent the world from gearing up to combat it. If we had been prepared for it, the death toll would have been vastly lower. All those deaths are 100% on China’s hands, regardless of whether it came from a lab or an animal, because their lies made it harder for the world to prepare. It wasn’t until we watched people in Italy dying in hospital hallways that we understood how serious it was, and by that point, it was too late. It was here and spreading rapidly, killing people before we even knew it had arrived or was a threat.
So regardless of whether it came from a Chinese lab, the whole situation still merits a massive response. For years I’ve called for a shift of all US manufacturing and other business away from China. Even if it doesn’t come back here, spread it across other countries who are more friendly to US interests. Starve China economically, isolate China diplomatically, and when conditions deteriorate, their people will join with the PLA in revolution. What comes next for China, I don’t know or care. But as it stands, they’re a threat to the US and the world and that threat needs to be taken seriously.