"BWAAHHAAHHAAAA! I know them Chinese used special bats to make that virus and let it loose! They wanna make me look bad! WAHAHAHA! Gimme my bottle and rattle, Melania!"
When the WSJ article 'Bat Woman In China Draws Scrutiny' (April 21, p. A5) appeared I told Janice that conspiracy "theories" would now be revived and rife among Trumpies and red staters. They would be generated on learning about how the dedicated Chinese virologist (Shi Zhengli) had conducted investigations of coronavirus- bearing bats over 15 years. Never mind she warned the world—in English, Chinese and French—that bats harbor coronaviruses that pose serious risks to human health. She would make a perfect target for the lowbrows at FOX and other conspiracy mongers eager to shift blame from Trump to...."Bat Woman"!
Reinforcing this drive (fishing expedition?) one read in the WSJ today (p. A3) that "the Education Department has asked the University of Texas system to provide documentation of its dealings with the Chinese laboratory U.S. officials are investigating", i.e. the Wuhan Institute of Virology and its researcher Shi Zhenghi. The eminent scientist dubbed "Bat Woman" because of her work on bats. All this despite the fact (ibid.): "There is no concrete public evidence to confirm the theory the outbreak resulted from an accident at the lab." And so "the current dominant theory remains that the bats passed the virus to humans either directly or indirectly."
So now the 'seeds' for conspiracy have been sown, and you can be certain the nation's foremost conspiracy monger will be moving heaven and earth to get "evidence" to crucify Dr. Shi and the Chinese. Even if it means confabulating it, or rendering obscure drivel to create enough doubt. This is who he is, and one must never forget it, or his yen right now to find a convenient scapegoat for his own disaster leading to 65,000 + dead Americans.
Any success, such as what the orange fungal rot has done with the CDC (turning it into a Trump lapdog) will further feed what Janice calls an "epidemic" of American right wing insanity and lies. The bombastic man- baby Dotard now claiming a conspiracy by the Chinese to spawn the COVID-19 pandemic. Flailing as his approval numbers nosedive Trump has had to find some entity other than his sorry administration to blame for the pandemic response debacle. So he's sicced his lackeys on U.S. Intelligence agencies to push them to find evidence to support an unsubstantiated theory that a gov't lab in Wuhan, China was the source of the outbreak. As reported in yesterday's Denver Post (p. 6A):
"Some intelligence analysts are concerned that the pressure from administration officials will distort assessments about the virus and they could be used as a political weapon in an intensifying battle with China."
Of course, this intel concern is a genuine risk given the potential blowback. Also, the CIA, DIA etc. have to know this is yet more balderdash from the most criminal and incompetent president in the nation's history , to try and find a scapegoat for his mega-failures. The brat also managed to find a dubious ally in Sen. Tom Cotton (AR) who confirmed that he is also a Coronavirus Truther, never mind he sits on the Senate Intelligence Committee. For months, without a scintilla of hard evidence, Cotton has pushed the notion that a "lab leak" led to the pandemic. He blurted this blarney out in a recent WSJ Op-ed:
Coronavirus and the Laboratories in Wuhan - WSJ
https://www.wsj.com/articles/coronavirus-and-the-laboratories-in-wuhan-11587486996
Cotton claims there is evidence the COVID-19 virus was manufactured in a Chinese lab, as he writes:
"While the Chinese government denies the possibility of a lab leak, its actions tell a different story. The Chinese military posted its top epidemiologist to the Institute of Virology in January. In February Chairman Xi Jinping urged swift implementation of new biosafety rules to govern pathogens in laboratory settings. Academic papers about the virus's origins are now subject to prior restraint by the government.
In early January, enforcers threatened doctors who warned their colleagues about the virus. Among them was Li Wenliang, who died of Covid-19 in February. Laboratories working to sequence the virus's genetic code were ordered to destroy their samples. The laboratory that first published the virus's genome was shut down, Hong Kong's South China Morning Post reported in February.
This evidence is circumstantial, to be sure, but it all points toward the Wuhan labs. Thanks to the Chinese coverup, we may never have direct, conclusive evidence-intelligence rarely works that way-but Americans justifiably can use common sense to follow the inherent logic of events to their likely conclusion."
Cheeze Louise, Cotton, I am glad you at least had the decency to refer to the evidence as "circumstantial". But it's worse than that, because it's utter coronavirus turther bollocks conspiracy gibberish. Fortunately, as Dr. Jeffrey Sachs has aptly pointed out, all WSJ op-eds are not created the same - because some writers actually are critical thinkers. Matt Ridley is one example, and I cite here his article: The Bats Behind The Pandemic', WSJ, April 11-12, p. C5.
Therein he writes:
"A closer look at the genome in an analysis by Macei Boni at Penn State and David Robertson at Glasgow University found that human versions of the virus were more closely related to the RaTG13 horseshoe bat sample found in a cave. But stunningly, the same analysis showed that the most recent common ancestor of the human virus and the BaTG13 virus lived at least 40 years ago."
Adding:
"So it is unlikely the cave in Yunnan (1,000 miles from Wuhan) is where the first Covid-19 infection happened. Somewhere much closer to Wuhan there is another colony of bats carrying the same kind of virus" so that "it looks like a horrible coincidence that China's Institute of Virology - where human cells were being experimentally infected with bat viruses- happens to be in Wuhan, the origin of today's pandemic"
Trump's claim that the Covid-19 pandemic was "created" in a Chinese lab is even more audacious conspiracy mongering with no solid basis. Indeed, the nonsense that the virus was genetically engineered in a lab is an absurd conspiracy ideation that's already been debunked, e.g.
Was coronavirus bioengineered in a lab? Tulane scientist debunks this conspiracy theory
Robert Garry, the Tulane university researcher and senior author of the paper which appeared in Nature Medicine, spelled it out:
"There’s no way that any human could put this together. It’s similar to other viruses that do a pretty efficient job at spreading to people.” The adaptations that the virus has made to affect humans are “very different than what you would expect if you were designing it using computational models in biological engineering,"
Robert Garry, the Tulane university researcher and senior author of the paper which appeared in Nature Medicine, spelled it out:
"There’s no way that any human could put this together. It’s similar to other viruses that do a pretty efficient job at spreading to people.” The adaptations that the virus has made to affect humans are “very different than what you would expect if you were designing it using computational models in biological engineering,"
In addition, I note - as reported in the WSJ yesterday (p. A5):
"In an unusual public statement, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, said U.S. intelligence agencies concur with a wide scientific consensus that 'the Covid-19 virus was not man-made or genetically modified'."
Will this stop the tin foil hat wearing MAGA morons and Trump from spinning their "Chinese bats created it" bunkum? I doubt it, given their tied at the brain stem with the QAnon kooks.
Despite all the conspiracy codswallop, the most likely scenario for the origin of the pandemic appears to be similar to what was depicted in the final five minutes of the movie 'Contagion'. It shows a flock of bats (originally perched on trees) which then fly over a pig farm in Guangdong province and drop bat guano over the pig feeding area. The guano is already infected with the unknown virus. The pigs then consume the guano, and become infected themselves.
In the film the Chinese hog butcher slaughters one of these pigs, gets pig blood all over his hands - wipes it off. He then greets Gweneth Paltrow's character (on a visit on behalf of her corporation) and she shakes the butcher's hand. She then becomes "Patient zero" - which we learn only at the end- though we suspect it earlier.
In a Covid update to the film, an Australian virologist working in Singapore- in the MSNBC special "Covid-19 Pandemic" - tells reporter Richard Engel a bat used in soup likely sparked the current contagion. Her theory was that sufficient hygiene was not used in handling the bat, or followup hand washing. The soup chef then put his hands onto something else, perhaps a vegetable, which was then ingested by "Patient zero" somewhere in Wuhan.
As for the Chinese making this bat virus in a special lab to attack the U.S and world, no way in hell. The evidence, as the Tulane study shows, doesn't support t. I put this conspiracy ideation in the same psychotic bag as Trump's 2017 brain fart that Obama had put electronic bugs in Trump tower.
"In an unusual public statement, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, said U.S. intelligence agencies concur with a wide scientific consensus that 'the Covid-19 virus was not man-made or genetically modified'."
Will this stop the tin foil hat wearing MAGA morons and Trump from spinning their "Chinese bats created it" bunkum? I doubt it, given their tied at the brain stem with the QAnon kooks.
Despite all the conspiracy codswallop, the most likely scenario for the origin of the pandemic appears to be similar to what was depicted in the final five minutes of the movie 'Contagion'. It shows a flock of bats (originally perched on trees) which then fly over a pig farm in Guangdong province and drop bat guano over the pig feeding area. The guano is already infected with the unknown virus. The pigs then consume the guano, and become infected themselves.
In the film the Chinese hog butcher slaughters one of these pigs, gets pig blood all over his hands - wipes it off. He then greets Gweneth Paltrow's character (on a visit on behalf of her corporation) and she shakes the butcher's hand. She then becomes "Patient zero" - which we learn only at the end- though we suspect it earlier.
In a Covid update to the film, an Australian virologist working in Singapore- in the MSNBC special "Covid-19 Pandemic" - tells reporter Richard Engel a bat used in soup likely sparked the current contagion. Her theory was that sufficient hygiene was not used in handling the bat, or followup hand washing. The soup chef then put his hands onto something else, perhaps a vegetable, which was then ingested by "Patient zero" somewhere in Wuhan.
As for the Chinese making this bat virus in a special lab to attack the U.S and world, no way in hell. The evidence, as the Tulane study shows, doesn't support t. I put this conspiracy ideation in the same psychotic bag as Trump's 2017 brain fart that Obama had put electronic bugs in Trump tower.
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