Beijing Must Come Clean About COVID-19 Origins | Newsweek

There have long been reports that the Cov 2 Virus originated not from a chinese wet market but from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Initially dismissed by most mainstream media outlets as baseless conspiracy theory, Newsweek has been one of the few major publications to consider this possibility seriously. A few days ago, they came up with another article in the Opinion section, that lays out more evidence that this may indeed have happened. Constructive feedback welcome.

**
U.S. intelligence reports that suggest the Chinese People's Liberation Army was conducting secret animal research with highly contagious viruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, without notifying the World Health Organization even after the pandemic began, raise new questions about the possible laboratory origins of COVID-19 that must be addressed.

This and other evidence of Chinese obfuscation and malfeasance make abundantly clear that an investigation into the origins of COVID-19 overly relying on Chinese transparency and goodwill, including the current and critically important WHO-led effort, can no longer be considered fully credible unless immediately proven otherwise. For all of our sakes, the time has come for an impartial and thorough investigation into how this terrible crisis began.

Although the failures of many governments and international organizations during the pandemic must all be analyzed and addressed, knowing how this crisis started is the essential foundation for prioritizing next steps.

If sloppy biolab security or reckless military experimentation followed by a coverup were the proximate cause, we need to prioritize developing rules and safeguards to make a global pandemic less likely to happen again. If the origins are revealed to be more innocent—a virus jumping naturally from mammals to humans—we will need to prioritize monitoring and containing future zoonotic outbreaks. Until we know what happened, we all remain unnecessarily at risk.
**

Full article:
https://www.newsweek.com/beijing-must-come-clean-about-covid-19-origins-opinion-1563524

 

http://www.politicalforum.com/index.php?threads/time-to-punish-ccp.584079/

 

I don't agree with the premise of your thread. The Newsweek article says it's -possible-, not that it's a foregone conclusion. The key is that China is impeding an investigation into the virus' origin, which is clearly suspicious.

 

Well that thread's all about CCP impeding investigation, as well as the premise of common sense that it originated in the WIV and not organically emerging at a wet market.

The article you linked doesn't conclude that if Covid-19 was innocently leaked that the CCP whom are covering up the origin are still liable due to gross negligence and incompetence. It just went on to speculate how to make labs safer in the future, without mentioning the culpability of the CCP.
That's what I didn't like about that article, it was useless bringing the perpetrators to justice without even considering the liability of the CCP in the event that it was an accident. The article also says 'opinion' which I didn't like.
This article claims fact through whistle blowing.
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/life-style/health-fitness/health-news/coronavirus-covid-19-engineered-at-wuhan-lab-who-knew-about-it-claims-chinese-whistleblower-on-the-run/articleshow/78276356.cms

So I'd like to point you again to that other thread that works out how to punish the CCP for Covid-19.

 

'
There's nothing suspicious.

It is absurd to think you can pinpoint any virus of any origin and you should know that no one has ever pinpointed the origin of any virus and never will because it cannot be done. You should spend less time watching sci-fi flicks.

There are a group of virologists known as coronavirologists. They have studied corona virus for their entire professional careers to the exclusion of all other virus, so if you aren't getting your info from them, then you're getting it from a wannabe hack.

Corona virus mutate about every 2 years and have done so since corona virus was first identified in Britain in 1965.

Corona virus are part of a group of virus along with influenza, adenovirus and respiratory synctical virus that cause upper respiratory infections.

All patients infected with any one of those all present with the exact same symptoms. There's no point in testing, because testing is costly, time consuming and of no real value, since the treatment is the same, which is to attempt to prevent the patient from progressing to viral pneumonia.

COVID-19 was active in August 2019, but nobody knew it because that's not how it works.

One person with flu-like symptoms that stays in bed for a week is not an epidemic no matter how much you differently twisted and nobody knows that person was in bed except that person and some of the people they know.

Nobody has ESP and knowledge is not imputed.

It takes weeks for the virus to be transmitted and by October it gets buried in Flu Season because China's Flu Season starts in October just like the US and every other country in the northern hemisphere.

Wow, people showing up at hospitals during Flu Seasons with flu-like symptoms. What a shocker.

In the US, if 3,000 people die of Flu in a month during Flu Season it ain't a big deal. Neither is 5,000/month. At 7,000-8,000/month some eyebrows start to raise and at 9.000-10.000/month you're in panic mode trying to figure out what the hell is going on.

That's exactly how it was back in 2009 with H1N1, so stop pretending you're better than everybody else, because you ain't.

It isn't until late December 2019 when 8 patients show up at a hospital on the same day with the same symptoms. That is the definition of an epidemic and that's how it works in the US.

The common denominator was all 8 had recently attended a banquet where fish and shellfish were served. Every single doctor in the US would have concluded that it is a pathogen transmitted through fish and shellfish, which is what Chinese doctors did.

It wasn't until people who hadn't consumed fish/shellfish or been around fish/shellfish started showing up at hospitals that it was determined to be an airborne pathogen.

You do realize there's canine corona virus and canine respiratory corona virus, right?

Your dog gets in your face and gahks and you inhale canine corona or respiratory corona virus. They'll die, because they're not "tuned" to your body, but the possibility they could mutate and adapt to humans is very real. Now you're a carrier spreading it around and it goes around for months until it rises to epidemic levels.

Are you going to slaughter every dog in the US to keep that from happening? You haven't slaughtered all pigs or birds, and virus often jump from pigs and birds to humans, so demanding that Chinese stop eating bats or whatever they do with them is very hypocritical.

There's also feline and bovine corona virus. And there's a corona virus for birds, too.

Virus mutate. That's what the do (and what everything else does, too) so if you're going to live on this Earth, you need to learn how to deal with it.

Your government failed by not immediately closing the borders to the 9.5 Million arrivals that land in the US every month on average.

Those are arrivals, not people, and many people travel weekly to foreign countries for business. Keeping Chinese out while letting Americans with corona virus into the US is stupid.

 

Did you even read the newsweek article?

 

Alright, but I feel leary because of the fact that you don't actually have a news article in the first post. I think the fact that it's still even in this forum is that a moderator just hasn't noticed it yet.

 

I wonder how many man hours and how many millions of dollars are being spent on trying to determine where it started. Finding the answer and 5 bucks will get you a Starbucks.

 

We've known the virus came from the Institute of Virology for quite a while. Where have you been?

 

Wikipedia still considers the notion that the virus may have been genetically engineered to be a "conspiracy theory":
**
All available evidence suggests that SARS-CoV-2 has a natural animal origin and is not genetically engineered.[97] Nevertheless, early in the pandemic, conspiracy theories spread on social media claiming that the virus was bio-engineered by China at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.[98]

**
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Severe_acute_respiratory_syndrome_coronavirus_2#Epidemiology

As a matter of fact, until recently, any threads mentioning this possibility here were transferred over to the conspiracy theory section of this site.

 

If it was discovered near the institute of virology. That is enough for me. Those who say it is a conspiracy theory are either guessing or believing what China says. That makes my guess as good as theirs.

 

Agreed. The fact that even Newsweek believes it's a serious possibility means that even the mainstream media is now acknowledging that it's possible that it originated in the institute.

 

Like all rational virologists, they have been dismissed the nutcase conspiracy theories that the virus came from the "Institute of Virology" because the all rational science from across the world shows it was not from a lab.

 

It is a fraudulent claim that "Newsweek believes it's a serious possibility".

This claim is from a nutcase conspiratory theorist with a utterly fraudulent list of his self-richment schemes.

Its a blog-post! Of course people who think Mercola is a serious site would think opinion-posts would try to claim authority from Newsweek's unsupportable blogs.

 

There is currently an international dlegation in Wuhan

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-01...gation-to-wuhan-held-back-over-tests/13059106

 

Nonsense.

 

Indeed. The Newsweek article brings up some interesting information concerning that team:
**
The Chinese government may have its reasons for wanting to avoid a full investigation into the origins of the pandemic, but foreign governments have no reason to play along. Yet that is exactly what ended up happening after 130 countries, including the United States and China, voted in the World Health Assembly to authorize a WHO-coordinated international investigation. Although investigations like these must always navigate big power politics, the weak terms of reference later negotiated between the WHO and China severely compromised the credibility of the process.

According to these terms, China was able to get veto power over any scientists included in the international investigation team, push the focus of the investigation on the response to the crisis rather than its origins, and place excessive limits requiring international investigators only review the work of their Chinese counterparts, not undertake an impartial investigation. The new revelations of secret Chinese People's Liberation Army research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology make these already flawed provisions untenable.

If the Chinese government feels the current WHO-led investigation has the potential to clear the necessary bar of scope and credibility, it now has a perfect opportunity to prove it. As a first step, it can immediately provide the WHO investigators presently in Wuhan a full account of all research carried out at the Wuhan Institute of Virology over the past five years, all laboratory notes and records, and a full list of all viruses currently or previously held along with their available sequenced genomes.

If the Chinese government fails to immediately change course, however, the Biden administration should bring allies and partners around the world together to demand an impartial and unrestricted international forensic investigation into the origins of COVID-19, with full access to all necessary records, databases, biological samples and key personnel.

Updating the terms of reference for the WHO investigation to make this type of process possible is clearly the best way forward, particularly because Chinese participation in the investigation is essential for gaining access to the most relevant information. The Chinese government should be invited to play a central role in the investigation and given every opportunity to present evidence, but only in support of a credible international forensic investigation with the unrestricted ability to do its job.

Should China fail to agree to update the terms of the WHO-led investigation, the Biden administration should work with partners across the globe to establish a parallel investigation relying on the collaboration of specialists around the world, the work of national intelligence services, transparent public hearings, generous whistleblower provisions and other means.

This type of international investigation would be far from perfect, particularly because so much of the essential evidence remains hidden in China, but it would be preferable to a structurally compromised investigation.

Getting to the bottom of how the pandemic began will be extremely difficult, but it is essential to address China's failures, as well as our own, at every level.
**

 

Excellent point @phoenyx raising the question
Do we want to investigate the virus or kowtow to the CCP?

It's like ignoring all the fall out from Chernobyl when investigating radiation in the air and the burning crater of the nuclear reactor in the Ukraine under USSR control; it's crazy.

There is no visible ground zero at the Wuhan lab outsiders can observe, but to ignore it would be just as crazy as ignoring that reactor in the hunt for radiation contamination in the air back in 1986.