Moon of Alabama Brecht quote
May 04, 2020

As Death Toll Increases Blame China Campaign Intensifies

The Trump administration will continue its efforts to blame China for the novel Coronavirus because the epidemic situation in U.S. will soon become worse:

As President Trump presses for states to reopen their economies, his administration is privately projecting a steady rise in the number of cases and deaths from coronavirus over the next several weeks, reaching about 3,000 daily deaths on June 1, according to an internal document obtained by The New York Times, nearly double from the current level of about 1,750.

The projections, based on modeling by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and pulled together in chart form by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, forecast about 200,000 new cases each day by the end of the month, up from about 25,000 cases now.


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There continues to be some infighting between the Trump administration and the intelligence services about blaming China. The administration wanted the U.S. intelligence services to claim that the virus was probably manmade or escaped from a laboratory in Wuhan. The intelligence services disagree with the administration on both points.

The administration then penned a paper from open sources that contains those and other allegations and pushed it to friendly media.

Wuhan lab 'most likely' coronavirus source, U.S. government analysis finds - Washington Times, Apr 28

A Wuhan laboratory is the “most likely” source of the COVID-19 outbreak now ravaging the globe, according to a U.S. government analysis that catalogs the evidence and concludes that other explanations for the origin of the coronavirus are less credible.

The document, compiled from open sources and not a finished product, says there is no smoking gun to blame the virus on either the Wuhan Institute of Virology or the Wuhan branch of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, both located in the city where the first outbreaks were reported.

But “there is circumstantial evidence to suggest such may be the case,” the paper says.

“All other possible places of the virus’ origin have been proven to be highly unlikely,” the document concludes. A copy of the report, compiled this month, was obtained by The Washington Times.

A 'U.S. government analysis' based on open sources is not an intelligence product but a writeup on Google searches by some intern. But there was pressure to make it into an official intelligence judgment.

Trump Officials Are Said to Press Spies to Link Virus and Wuhan Labs- NY Times, Apr 30

Senior Trump administration officials have pushed American spy agencies to hunt for evidence to support an unsubstantiated theory that a government laboratory in Wuhan, China, was the origin of the coronavirus outbreak, according to current and former American officials.
...
Most intelligence agencies remain skeptical that conclusive evidence of a link to a lab can be found, and scientists who have studied the genetics of the coronavirus say that the overwhelming probability is that it leapt from animal to human in a nonlaboratory setting, as was the case with H.I.V., Ebola and SARS.

That this leaked at all was the first sign that the intelligence services were resisting the push from their higher ups. More push back followed with an official statement.

Intelligence Community Statement on Origins of COVID-19 - ODNI, Apr 30

“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.”

That was not good enough for the "We lied, we stole, we cheated" Secretary of State Mike Pompeo (vid).

ABCNews 'This Week' Transcript 5-3-20

RADDATZ: And, Mr. Secretary, have you seen anything that gives you high confidence that it originated in that Wuhan lab?

POMPEO: Martha, there's enormous evidence that that's where this began.  ...  I can tell you that there is a significant amount of evidence that this came from that laboratory in Wuhan.

RADDATZ: Do you believe it was manmade or genetically modified?

POMPEO: Look, the best experts so far seem to think it was manmade. I have no reason to disbelieve that at this point.

RADDATZ: Your -- your Office of the DNI says the consensus, the scientific consensus was not manmade or genetically modified.

POMPEO: That's right. I -- I -- I agree with that. Yes. I've -- I've seen their analysis. I've seen the summary that you saw that was released publicly. I have no reason to doubt that that is accurate at this point.

Then the same dodgy paper that was shopped to the Washington Times a week earlier appeared in an Australian broadsheet.

Coronavirus NSW: Dossier lays out case against China bat virus program - Daily Telegraph, May 4

China deliberately suppressed or destroyed evidence of the coronavirus outbreak in an “assault on international transparency’’ that cost tens of thousands of lives, according to a dossier prepared by concerned Western governments on the COVID-19 contagion.

The 15-page research document, obtained by The Saturday Telegraph, lays the foundation for the case of negligence being mounted against China It states that to the “endangerment of other countries” the Chinese government covered-up news of the virus by silencing or “disappearing” doctors who spoke out, destroying evidence of it in laboratories and refusing to provide live samples to international scientists who were working on a vaccine.

A "research document" prepared by "concerned Western governments" is not an intelligence product.

But Foxnews picked up from there and made the paper into one.

Leaked Western intel dossier reveals how China deceived the world about coronavirus - Foxnews, Apr 4

A research dossier compiled by the so-called "Five Eyes" intelligence alliance states that China intentionally hid or destroyed evidence of the coronavirus outbreak, leading to the loss of tens of thousands of lives around the world

The 15-page document from the intelligence agencies of the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Australia and New Zealand, was obtained by Australia's Saturday Telegraph newspaper and states that China's secrecy amounted to an “assault on international transparency."

The Australian Telegraph never claimed that the dossier was a "Five Eyes" product. That is a Foxnews invention. The five eyes countries share intelligence but they do not produce common dossiers or analyses. Each service does that separately for its own government.

Only a few hours after the Telegraph had published the above the Australian intelligence services shot the nonsense down.

Australian intelligence knocks back US government's Wuhan lab virus claim, Sydney Morning Herald, May 4

Senior members of the Australian intelligence community told The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age a research document shared in political circles under the Five Eyes intelligence arrangement was mostly based on news reports and contained no material from intelligence gathering.

A 15-page "dossier" has been widely quoted by local and international media about China's alleged cover-up of the virus. Australian intelligence officials have since identified a research report which was based entirely on open source material. The officials said it was likely the reports were the same.
...
Multiple senior intelligence sources who spoke to The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age in recent days have confirmed that Australia has still not been provided with any evidence that strongly suggests the Wuhan Institute of Virology was the source of the outbreak. Intelligence agencies have not been able to rule out the Wuhan lab, but the more likely cause of the virus is still the city's Huanan Seafood Market where environmental samples of the virus were found.

The WHO also said that it had received no evidence from the U.S. about the 'speculative' Wuhan laboratory claim.

The Trump administration is likely to continue this game and the intelligence services will hopefully continue to resist the pressure they are under.

As the U.S. will soon have as many death per day from covid-19 as it had casualties on 9/11 the risk of a (military?) escalation against China based on false claims will soon become exceptionally high.

Posted by b on May 4, 2020 at 18:20 UTC | Permalink

Comments
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thanks b... this requires ongoing observation... it seems the details can be provided for the right price to the right intel or science people and a story or dossier can be provided in time... that they are having a hard time at this point means they haven't paid a high enough amount of money - yet... give it time... if a war on china is going to happen, the money will be flowing in this direction and it will be made like any hollywood flick to seem more real then real... not a lot separates what hollywood does and what countries determined to sell propaganda do... pompeo is a full on liar.. no wonder trump still has him on in his position...

Posted by: james | May 4 2020 18:38 utc | 1

Personally i do not believe the so call CDC projection exploding 7-8 times higher compared to today because such a thing never happened in any other country in the world. That is - stabilisation at one of the highest rates in the world for 2 months and then exploding even 7 - 8 times higher at 200 000 cases per day. Such a thing did not happen in any other country in the world. I would not bet a cent on this.

So something is reaaaly wrong with those "projections", unless this is a worse case scenario that also did not happen in any other country in the world.

The way things are going, using the other countries as template and comparison, i see 25 k cases per day down to 20 k per day at the end of the month (May) and then around 10k per day in June, with probably 2k per day in July.

Although i do not like Trump and see him as far bigger imperialist than anything the Dems could muster, in this case the NYT is widely exagarating things to make Trump look bad.

Posted by: Passer by | May 4 2020 18:45 utc | 2

Anyone else thinking about how lunatic this whole scenario is.
Iraq was a total fabrication of appallingly poor "intelligence"
This bullshite isn't going to float.
And it's being tried on with the wrong guys.

Posted by: Jpc | May 4 2020 18:50 utc | 3

RADDATZ: Do you believe it was manmade or genetically modified?

POMPEO: Look, the best experts so far seem to think it was manmade. I have no reason to disbelieve that at this point.

RADDATZ: Your -- your Office of the DNI says the consensus, the scientific consensus was not manmade or genetically modified.

POMPEO: That's right. I -- I -- I agree with that. Yes. I've -- I've seen their analysis. I've seen the summary that you saw that was released publicly. I have no reason to doubt that that is accurate at this point.

To summarize: Pompeo does not doubt that the virus has been genetically modified, but he also does not doubt that is has not been genetically modified.

Could there be a more obvious demonstration that the man is FULL OF SHIT??

Posted by: farm ecologist | May 4 2020 18:53 utc | 4

Careful what you wish for, especially considering that the U.S. hasn't achieved total victory in all its wars since 1945. Of course, if you add up all the money wasted on them, then I suppose one might call that a victory, as in looting the U.S. treasury, both in government & blood. The more we read everyday, the more it resembles the inmates in charge of the asylum.

Posted by: Eugene | May 4 2020 19:03 utc | 5

Key U.S. Allies Skeptical of Trump’s Coronavirus Lab Leak Claims

Australia, the United Kingdom, and Canada have pointedly not backed up America’s apparent surety that the novel coronavirus was either deliberately or accidentally leaked from a Chinese lab...Ottawa, Canberra, and London have all said investigations need to continue regarding the source of the virus.

Posted by: farm ecologist | May 4 2020 19:04 utc | 6

By March, it was clear how what was happening and how this would play out:

March 19: The Empire Games Covid-19

March 22: Trumped-up CRISIS! Allows Government-assisted Profiteering: Chloroquine vs Remdesivir

March 26: Flatten the Curve: A Prescription for Failure

March 28: Empire Games: CRISIS! as the New Bloodsport

!!

Posted by: Jackrabbit | May 4 2020 19:06 utc | 7

To Farm ecologist.

You are totally on the money.
How or why is he in this job?
It's demented!

Posted by: Jpc | May 4 2020 19:13 utc | 8

Weird, the intelligence agency's telling the truth. I had difficulty getting my head around that.

Posted by: ramon | May 4 2020 19:13 utc | 9

Here in France, I have the impression that the virus is getting 'tired'. The numbers of deaths are falling like a stone, down from 6-700 to 160. The curve corresponds to the prediction of the controversial Pr Raoult of Marseille. He predicts no second wave. He says he doesn't know why the wave is like that, but observes that it is (perhaps for public consumption). I would have thought it obvious. Every time the virus replicates, there is a danger of error in the copy, which renders it less effective for the most part, much as in human cells. It can happen, of course, that eventually a mutation will happen that reignites the power of the virus, but most, no.

I would have thought that the same would be true in the US.

Posted by: Laguerre | May 4 2020 19:15 utc | 10

Those incompetent neo-confederates leading america into oblivion will jumble strategic defeats with winning. So much for accountability, hard work and personal responsability... Seems they can't compete fairly without superior military variable of adjustment and threat of violence against adversaries. Orange springs eternal and their great white hope has now adopted a paralizing rhetoric of victimization - republican lawmakers follow suit and are going so far as invoking a western bid for monetary reparations from Chinese depredations. # the art of winnig for maggots, derp.

Posted by: Sol Invictus | May 4 2020 19:16 utc | 11


Both ZeroHedge and SCMP (South China Morning Post) busy stirrings shits to starts US-China conflicts which no one can win. I've spend many hrs piecing together but poor writing skill unable to write a readable piece here.....

Anyway, here are two links CEO Gary Liu - SCMP. Confirmed an ABC (American Born Chinese) spend time in Taiwan, NZ and raised in NY Taiwanese family a Harvard graduate. Listen carefully 1st YouTube interviewed with TED co-host Whitney Pennington Rodgers, Gary Liu inside info, bias and missing important facts against China or mainlander... Note Jack Ma a CCP member retired. Alibaba Executive Vice Chairman Joe Tsai.. running the show. BTW Joe Tsai another Taiwanese... Please pieces these together you got an American's stool pigeon to bring China down using HK... with SCMP planted in Beijing, Shanghai and etc...

I predict within 1-5 years China will take back HK revert to direct rule if the pro-democracy movement violence protests continue. Pro-democracy activist Joshua Wong etc and other activist emigrate to USA and taste democracy they yearn! I also predict Gary Liu will be expose and kicked out or the veiled warning given last week, "No future for Hong Kong if protest violence returns, Beijing warns"

What the world can learn from China’s response to the coronavirus | Gary Liu

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIh2-S2jXls

South China Morning Post to cut pay of top management and put staff on three weeks unpaid leave as part of cost-cutting measures

https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/hong-kong-economy/article/3080990/south-china-morning-post-cut-pay-top-management


Disclaimer: Below comment from YouTube.... enjoy

"(Scott Hu2 weeks ago) One thing Gary forgot to mention which I think is very important is that the Chinese government announced that all patients related to coronavirus illness will be tested and treated free. All costs for Covid-19 will be 100% covered by the state. That gives people especially the poor the incentive to get the test and treatment which is essential for containment. "

Posted by: JC | May 4 2020 19:32 utc | 12

"No future for Hong Kong if protest violence returns, Beijing warns"

https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/politics/article/3082598/beijings-office-hong-kong-slams-radical-protesters-after

Posted by: JC | May 4 2020 19:36 utc | 13

For those who can understand French, I'd recommend what Raoult has to say.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cj4bGVszZP8

I don't believe all of it.

Posted by: Laguerre | May 4 2020 19:38 utc | 14

Posted by: Hail | May 4 2020 19:14 utc | 10

You do understand that Sweden has performed T5.5 times worse that the rest of scandinavian countries and its neighbours, some with higher population density, right?

It is on track to become number 6 in the world in deaths per population. Sorry, but this is not good performance.

Posted by: Passer by | May 4 2020 19:38 utc | 15

It is increasingly true:
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-12-13/war-china-inevitable

Trump thinks he is bluffing. It's history repeating.

Posted by: jared | May 4 2020 19:42 utc | 16

@Posted by: farm ecologist | May 4 2020 18:53 utc | 4

Full of shit he is to the eyebrows, since just have appeared the signature of Guaido in a contract with SilverCorp to invade Venezuela and assassinate Maduro.

This, we all know from "open source" intelligence and Venezuelan official intelligence.

To think that the US could sue China on invented charges, will give place to others countries suing the US, this time based on obvious evidence.

Venezuela should sue the US on charges for various intends on invasion and regime change, usurping of national sovereignty and assests, sabotage, and intends on genocide by blocking aid against Coronavirus.

Then as there are surging also voices in the UK on blaming China, but, as the things go, the remaining Skripals and the government of the Russian Federation, out of dozens of investigative reports and even overdose of "open source" data, should sue the UK government for the dissapearance of the two Russian nationals and the obvious constructs by the Integrity Initiative to blame Russia, when the bodies dissapear in the UK....

Posted by: H.Schmatz | May 4 2020 19:43 utc | 17

@Posted by: Hail | May 4 2020 19:14 utc | 10

Debunking totally your point, I fear "simple voluntary measures under a Swedish-style Stay Open scenario" were NOT enough:

Comparison of Sweden's open door policy against the Coronavirus with confinement in the rest of Scandinavian countries

https://twitter.com/Amor_y_Rabia/status/1257385513021059072

Posted by: H.Schmatz | May 4 2020 19:53 utc | 18

"To think that the US could sue China on invented charges,"

There's no legal means how the US would pursue China in justice.

Posted by: Laguerre | May 4 2020 19:59 utc | 19

H.Schmatz | May 4 2020 19:53 utc | 19

Sorry, can't you get it? All those measures that intend to slow down the virus simply buy time on the possible expense of future troubles. So without knowing which degree of immunity has been achieved it is not possible to evaluate the success of failure of Sweden. Just wait till data are there.

Posted by: Hausmeister | May 4 2020 20:03 utc | 20

No direct war with China though we will have to go through some hardship moving our manufacturing bases from China to the likes of India and Indochina.

Posted by: Peter AU1 | May 4 2020 20:09 utc | 21

@Posted by: Hausmeister | May 4 2020 20:03 utc | 21

Then how is that you do not advice your peer "Hail" doing the same?

I, at least, offered data.

I am aware that my presence here bothers you way too much, since any time you talk to me you do it in such a gross way, well, cop with it.

Posted by: H.Schmatz | May 4 2020 20:09 utc | 22

Would anyone who believes that the death toll has proven the Swedish approach wrong explain to me why an advanced country like that with practically no reports of hospitals being overwhelmed and a low population density which mitigates some of the worse by-effects would have so many dead if that is NOT the result of the number of infections being much higher than reported, perhaps due to insufficient testing, the test's unrealiability itself, or, well I don't know, but ... Occam's razor? Care homes might be an exacerbating factor but apparently the outbreaks in German care homes, which are probably comparable to their Swedish equivalents, have not been severe enough to account for the difference so far. If the illness had some time critical effects like strokes, I would imagine the low population density and thus low availability of emergency services/hospital closures in the countryside could be an issue like it is with birth care, but apart from sudden rapid deterioration which seems to happen in some of those already hospitalized, that's not the case. What am I missing?

Posted by: Zayna | May 4 2020 20:19 utc | 23

@Laguerre #20:

"To think that the US could sue China on invented charges,"
There's no legal means how the US would pursue China in justice.

Well what I've been reading a lot is how they could default on the money they owe China (US bonds in possession of China to the equivalent of 1 billion dollars)(1 with 15 0's).
Hold China accountable to damages done about the same amount as the bonds.

Everyone called it China's financial Nuke but if they pull this off it will totally turn the tables. Either China accepts that (imho not very likely) or China could act proactively. Either sell it to other countries or dump it on the open market.

Nonetheless, all these options come with their own consequences. Stabilitywise prospects seem very dim.

Posted by: Gehennah | May 4 2020 20:26 utc | 24

So all that global scientific collaboration following the SARS outbreak in 2002 at all those germ warfare laboratories came up with nothing - except the virus plagueing us today. All that collective Australian, China and USA research in 2010 and subsequent research that identified how to weaken and strengthen COVID attachment led to not one simple pharmaceutical.

How many labs throughout the world were working on Covidvirus and they all failed. This is the coverup. Billions wasted on analysis with no remedy. Is everbody in thrall to vaccine to the expense of medicinal remedy?

But, if you exclude other mammals, we humans were the means for its mutation. Where is the trail or is that what the French are reporting?

Posted by: uncle tungsten | May 4 2020 20:28 utc | 25

It's very easy to debunk this "came from a Wuhan lab and China covered it up" story. All it takes is some critical thinking and reading and comprehension capacity.

First, let's get to the part that, alone, gives it away. Then, I'll go with the more circumstantial evidence that requires a little bit more of critical thinking.

Here it is:

The 15-page document [...]

A 15-page dossier?

I know F-grade undergraduates who can do lengthier monographs...

So, we have an extremely sensible topic, with very powerful institutions involved (CCP, WHO...), dealing with an extremely complex and wide-scale operation (manufacturing a virus entirely in a laboratory, an operation that likely involves thousands of highly-specialized workers, under absolute secrecy) that escapes most Joe Six-Packs imagination. The USG is directly involved, and wants to prosecute the Chinese government for reparations, which presupposes building a case, in order to send it to trial. Are they insinuating fucking CIA managed to condensate the whole thing in 15 pages? Are the USA going to de facto war against China over 15 pages, is that for real?

Well, those 15-pages better be the 21st Century version of the 10 Commandments then, because China is a nuclear superpower.

Now let's go to the circumstantial evidence:

China deliberately suppressed or destroyed evidence of the coronavirus outbreak in an “assault on international transparency’’ that cost tens of thousands of lives, according to a dossier prepared by concerned Western governments on the COVID-19 contagion.

They key here is the utilization of the verb "concern[ed]" in opposition to "cost tens of thousands of lives". The hidden message here is that the Western governments are purely preoccupied with the preservation of lives, not with any other consequences that could be resulted from China's "deliberate suppression". By exclusion, it also insinuates the Chinese government seeks death [of human lives].

So, let's see.

The Chinese government, as soon as the evidence was available, didn't hesitate in locking down a 60 million inhabitant province and sacrificed 6.8% of its own GDP in order to stifle the pandemic. It is, by far, the most successful country in fighting this pandemic so far.

The Western government[s] let the terrorists (which they trained in the past) do 9/11; it invaded Iraq under a bogus WMD accusation (killing more than 1 million Iraqis and some other thousands American soldiers, plus some British ones) and Afghanistan under another bogus accusation (it wasn't sheltering bin Ladin; he was in a resort in Pakistan, under full knowledge of the USG). It killed and starved some more in Syria and Yemen - again, under bogus casi belli. It squashed a popular movement in NY (Occupy Wall Street) and bailed out the banks and other big businesses after the 2008 meltdown. Not satisfied, they let their own infrastructure to degrade to a point where tap water was poisoned with lead in one of their provinces (Michigan). It let an opioid crisis to lay waste on its own people, culminating in the first life expectancy drop since the Spanish Flu. It is refusing to do a proper lockdown because business is more important than (working class) lives. It is starving peoples of countries like Cuba, North Korea and Venezuela by siege just because they don't have the same economic system. It reduced one of their own alleged allies (Greece) to dust just because their two major banks (SG and Deutsche) were knee-deep into rotten papers. It is refusing a basic principle of a union (single financial system) to one of their members (Italy) under a bogus argument of "moral hazard". It is giving shelter to more than 3,000 war criminal from Latin American (in Florida) because, for all their crimes against humanity, they did their biding in the periphery of the empire.

So, again: who's really "concerned" with saving lives?

Posted by: vk | May 4 2020 20:37 utc | 26

No direct war with China

Posted by: Peter AU1 | May 4 2020 20:09 utc | 23

May be not, but, just in case, it seems Xi is advised to go preparing...

DRUMS OF WAR: A confidential report by the Ministry of State Security presented to President Xi warns against the wave of anti-China hostility and recommends "prepare for the worst case scenario, an armed confrontation"

https://twitter.com/Amor_y_Rabia/status/1257379829177102341

For what is worth, at least two people in my job place came in today with the news that "the virus has escaped from a Chinese lab"...

These are people totally uninformed who swallow whatever they hear in TV, radio, or local newspaper who belong all to corporations and banks...

When all this started, and I talked about the possibility of the virus being created on purpose, these people rejected that as unbelievable, to affirm that it had come from the bat or pangolín, which was the "narrative" then, when we have not yet been affected....


Posted by: H.Schmatz | May 4 2020 20:42 utc | 27

H.Schmatz | May 4 2020 20:09 utc | 24

„I am aware that my presence here bothers you way too much, since any time you talk to me you do it in such a gross way, well, cop with it.“

No, I found your argument wrong.

Posted by: Hausmeister | May 4 2020 20:49 utc | 28

Since the other five eyes countries, particularly Australia and Canada, are linked economically with China, they are not going to follow the yankee propaganda initiative. Australia shot it down rather quickly as indicated in the article. Meanwhile,I think the fact that the numbers of new infections and deaths have been dropping slightly in the US lately exposes the New York Times article as more scare-tactic modelling, and people are too fed up with the restrictions and the escalating economic costs for such exaggerations to have as much effect anymore.

Posted by: exiled off mainstree | May 4 2020 20:49 utc | 29

This anti-Chinese effort may be destined for internal US (anti-civil war) needs. To make the US population look in one direction. Obviously the why part is another question - oil, dollar collapse, lack of food etc? But I want to point out that there has been an uptick in aggression in other sensitive areas as well.

Todays examples are; An attack east of Aleppo on a Syrian military research centre by Israeli aircraft. Overflying Jordan and then Iraq.
A second band of mercenary bounty hunters were captured trying to infiltrate venezuela to kill Maduro (A revolt made by 8 at a time hunters could take several years at that rate.
The presence of four Nato Aegis ships in the Baltic which coincides with the arrival of the Russian pipelaying ship in Kalingrad.

One thing I was horrified with, during a "quick look at" the FT Story about Putin, was the level of "Putin did it" hate in the comments section. I had thought that the "Putin did it" tripe was a thing of the past. I could not have been more wrong.

It is interesting that the rubbish Pompeo says is getting some resistance from the "intelligence" agencies themselves. It appears that not everyone wants to be forced into supporting his accusations.

Posted by: Stonebird | May 4 2020 20:51 utc | 30

@Posted by: bevin | May 4 2020 20:40 utc | 31

Yes, this is a theft as was that of Iranian and Venezuelan assets, and before of Soviet ones..

The thing is that this time other vultures are willing to join the pillage, as the UK joined in the case of Venezuela, since what is in the making lays out of any proportion we have known, at economic level...

Posted by: H.Schmatz | May 4 2020 20:51 utc | 31

If Uncle Sam defaults on his debts, that would be the biggest own goal ever. The whole financial system is based on US Treasury bonds, and a default would send their value to zero. The US Social Security Trust Fund is still worth almost three trillion dollars, most of it in US Treasury bonds. Default means Goodbye Social Security Pensions, or at least a huge "haircut".

I think Pompous Ass is bluffing. One reason is that Wall Street parasites have been salivating over the Social Security trust fund for decades, and GW Bush was working on a plan to give it to them. I don't think the bankster parasites will sit on their hands and let the Trump idiots blow up their entire system. I think there would be a palace coup d'etat first.

Posted by: Trailer Trash | May 4 2020 20:55 utc | 32

The bungling, toxic incompetence of this administration is quite something to behold. Wow...

Posted by: Daniel | May 4 2020 20:56 utc | 33

In many Ways, Trump reminds me of a Hitler/Stalin admirer. He demands certain results; if you don't supply them, at least Trump will just fire you instead of having you shot or sent to the Gulag--Evidence of the many IG firings as this article notes. The daily lies and bald-faced propaganda is at the point where many are aware but still all too many remain oblivious or are Brown Shirts in all but outward appearance. Pompeo would be a perfect example of a clone if Hitler had a PR spokesperson spewing lies daily for the press & public to digest without any thinking. Imagine Hitler with Twitter.

None of the above is meant to denigrate; rather, it's to put them into proper perspective. I invite barflies to click here and just look at the headlines of the posted news items--that site's biggest failing was to omit similar criticism of Obama, Clinton, and D-Party pukes in general, although that doesn't render today's headlines false.

Will the coming Great Depression 2.0 be global or confined to NATO nations? As with the first Great Depression, it will be restricted to being Trans-Atlantic for that's where the dollar zone and Neoliberalism overlap. The emerging dollar-free Eurasian trade zone

Posted by: karlof1 | May 4 2020 20:57 utc | 34

@Posted by: A.L. | May 4 2020 20:48 utc | 33

Well, in fact it is the US the only country that has not ceesed international flights for other reasons different from achieving health care supplies.

When the hardest of the pandemic was already almost everywhere, including the US, around the middle of April, a US military helicopter extracted a dual national Lebanese who had been convicted on charges of treason and crimes against the Lebanese nation during the 2006 Israeli-Lebanese War in favor of the Israelis, invading Lebanese territory and underminig not only Lebanese, but also International Law...

One would say that Lebanon should sue the US on grounds of breaking mandatory quaratine too...

Posted by: H.Schmatz | May 4 2020 21:04 utc | 35

To the regular commentators here:

ALL comments by people you have not seen commenting here before must now be considered to be TROLLS.

STOP FEEDING THEM!!!

Posted by: b | May 4 2020 21:14 utc | 36

@H.Schmatz 36

lol

it's also the few countries along with Israel who freely violate the airspace of others, these days they don't even bother with a weak ass UN resolution anymore.

exceptional indeed.

Posted by: A.L. | May 4 2020 21:18 utc | 37

Great theater being foisted upon us by the globalists. Running circles around the peons, while they scam and steal our lives away. Trump and the rest of the cabal are just playing their roles and executing the production laid out for them to do. Truly a dystopian nightmare unfolding in front of our very eyes. And what can we do, well watch the show which leads to our destruction as free human beings created individually by God! These lizards will consume us and then themselves in the end. I pray for mankind as the final hand is being played out. A single coved cell, my ass.

Posted by: Taffyboy | May 4 2020 21:24 utc | 38

@Stonebird

Where (sources) are you getting these updates from?

Thanks!

Posted by: Hafiz | May 4 2020 21:24 utc | 39

What is ahppening here is an "every man for itself" escenario.

Daniel Estulin is advancing quite many things that then just happened in the palce of days of weeks.
Other things he advanced, that the world will be "regionalized", and that there is a project to reborn that Austro-Hungarian Empire, starts making sense after today, Spanish public TV advanced in its news prime time that Austria, Germany and Croacia are about to create a "tourism bubble" to allow tourism only amongst their nations.
Then Australia also is talking about a similar "tourism buble" amongst its anglophone neighbors which they will call "transtasmanic bubble"...

Starting minute 47:20...

https://twitter.com/EstulinDaniel/status/1257417662164074500

What is going on here? Makes no sense...

Is it that the virus will distinguish amongst germanic and anglos and will not touch them?
Or is it that they have something we do not have?
I recall Germany was about to come with a vaccine Trump wanted for the US "in exclisiveness"...

Who is trying to ruin whom here? The Chinese highly likely not...

Posted by: H.Schmatz | May 4 2020 21:31 utc | 40

karlof1

Many of Goering's quotes are very accurate as to human nature. US took in Nazi and Japanese scientists. It wouldn't have left the propaganda behind. Goering's quote about taking people to war - nazi's were obviously very good at it as the Germans fought until the very end. US peasants will likely do the same.

Posted by: Peter AU1 | May 4 2020 21:32 utc | 41

Outstanding! Canadians stand by to sue the %$#& out of the Trump administration for sitting idle long enough for Americans could spread it to our country.

Posted by: Doc Apoc | May 4 2020 21:32 utc | 42

Numbers go up because the 10x ten-fold rate increases once you start to break quarantine. Current U.S. death rate of around 2,000/day is reasonably linear since spread has been slowed substantially; current 10x rate is only 85 days, mostly dying out and over by mid-June. If we all stayed home. If you want to put your hand back into the woodchipper, 10x rate will go back up, perhaps to two weeks or even New York's 1-week, and we'll be back up to an exponential explosion again. P.S. The only reason why NYTimes says "3,000 deaths a day in June" is because that was the right edge of the graph that was displayed. Oops. At an exponential increase of 10x rate in even one month, unchecked, yes it can easily go up to 30,000 deaths/day the next month if you let it.

Don't put your hand back in the woodchipper.

Posted by: Imagine | May 4 2020 21:32 utc | 43

spread it *to our country.

This site totally needs an edit function.

Posted by: Doc Apoc | May 4 2020 21:33 utc | 44

So Americans could spread it to our country.

Seriously, %$&@ you all.

Posted by: Doc Apoc | May 4 2020 21:33 utc | 45

The bar dislikes me today... sigh..... 41 Cont'd--

The Eurasian portion of BRI will continue to grow from the fuel it provides from its own internal markets, the currency to be used will be something other than dollars. There will be no Depression there. The financial markets will suffer some initial instability but they aren't the dedicated casinos trying to maintain their Ponzi Schemes like those in NATO nations. Hudson in the short Saker Q&A I linked in the previous thread says dollar investments in US Treasury securities will remain safe. However, IMO Yuan and Ruble securities will be much safer. If you can find physical gold and silver versus their fiat counterparts that are currently unredeemable, they'll be safe. Whenever the new global trading currency's announced, I'd load up on it before the dollar loses its purchasing power.

It's hard to say what sort of police state measures Trump might employ; there's already precedent for confiscation of gold. Physical commodities one might trade, like canned or dried goods, will become a good store of value. I'll be very aggressive with my canning this year--remember to can meats and some veggies you'll need a pressure canner, not just the water bath type. Smoking and drying are also great especially if you can freeze a lot.

Since this is an election year, holding back economic calamity is a priority for the incumbent. That's why I expect the bung to pop in 2021, and to use this year to get prepared. There'll be no harm if nothing happens and the sky remains in place. As most of the world learned from the pandemic, it's much better to be prepared and follow the Precautionary Principle than to be caught shorthanded.

Posted by: karlof1 | May 4 2020 21:41 utc | 46

@ramon 9 "Weird, the intelligence agency's telling the truth. I had difficulty getting my head around that."

I feel you, but I wouldn't go quite that far. After all, even while refusing to back Trump (who the intelligence community hates anyway), they continue the subtle untruth, or at least unknown, that the virus "originated in China." The complete truth would be that the virus was first reported, or first detected, by the Chinese, but I think that everyone in the West (Five Eyes included) is eager to gloss over any of the many indicators that the first human case was not, in fact, from Wuhan.

Posted by: J Swift | May 4 2020 21:44 utc | 47

The anti China crap filling the MSM is anglosphere in origin. Five eyes, the anglosphere intel and propaganda warriors will be in it up to their eyeballs.

Posted by: Peter AU1 | May 4 2020 21:51 utc | 48

When the people who made fake claims about Iraq's WMD, about Russiagate, about Iran's danger, are claiming that the thing isn't manmade, then either it's not manmade or it's US-made and the claim is a lie (what we expect from US intelligence agencies) and a cover-up. That said, odds are on the former, as far as I'm concerned. The absolutely sure thing is that it's not the Chinese who crafted it.

Posted by: Clueless Joe | May 4 2020 21:52 utc | 49

@Posted by: Clueless Joe | May 4 2020 21:52 utc | 48

Indeed, this is the pattern, as happened with Skripals and Litvinenko, must be an anglo thing.

"The best defesne is a good attack"

Posted by: H.Schmatz | May 4 2020 22:05 utc | 50

The 15-page research document, obtained by The Saturday Telegraph in Australia may be the online document prepared by the anonymous group that do not call themselves Project E.P.S.T.E.I.N.

Evidence SARS-CoV-2 Emerged From a Biological Laboratory in Wuhan, China

Published April 16, 2020. Updated May 2, 2020.

1 Abstract

The goal of this document is to examine evidence that may prove that (1) the SARS-CoV-2 virus was present at a biolaboratory in Wuhan, China, and (2) the SARS-CoV-2 virus was introduced into the greater Wuhan population by an infected lab worker or animal. These claims from this point on will be referred to as Claim 1 and Claim 2.

2 Authors

We are an anonymous group of researchers. We are not affiliated with any company, nation state, or organization. We are not receiving funding from any sources, public or private. We disavow all racism and violent attacks, including those which are aimed at Asian or Chinese people, and we will continue to disavow them throughout this paper. We are not doing this because we hate China, but because we love the truth.

Posted by: Petri Krohn | May 4 2020 22:09 utc | 51

: H.Schmatz | May 4 2020 22:05 utc | 49

I replied to our conversation of yesterday. See yesterday's "open thread". I gave a related and large body of information, which may be new to you, as Honecker's book was to me. It may put the seedoil/pesticide affair into some perspective.

Thanks...
Later, old man

Posted by: Walter | May 4 2020 22:14 utc | 52

As far as I can anticipate, war is at the end of the road.

People get carried away by narratives and the narrative the USG is pushing will bring
at the very least a desire by the American People to have China pay for their grief.

When that happens, China will retaliate in kind. Eventually, the first shots will be fired.
And all hell will break loose.

Hell is down the road. The narrative leads to that.

Posted by: CarlD | May 4 2020 22:15 utc | 53

@Posted by: Walter | May 4 2020 22:14 utc | 51

Saw it, Walter, old man, thanks, I will read when I have the time.

Posted by: H.Schmatz | May 4 2020 22:17 utc | 54

Wuhan - has the market, the lab, and is a centrally located transport hub. It would hard to think of a better location to kick off a virus. Infect vendors at the market and it will quickly spread across China. the market and Lab are great for propaganda value, the transport hub great for ensuring its spread. All of southeast Asia - Indochina has the same markets, has the same wildlife, eat the same stuff, but who cares about them - its China's markets and labs that are bad.
All this shit is five eyes to the core and we're all aboard the Trump anti China wagon.

Posted by: Peter AU1 | May 4 2020 22:20 utc | 55

Once the borders closed everywhere, the only citizens who continue infiltrating other countries are US citizens and their secuaces...this, in the middle of a pandemic...
Yeah..Venezuela should sue the US for intends of assassination of the whole population...These guys obviously do not have a certificate of antibodies...

https://mundo.sputniknews.com/america-latina/202005041091317159-venezuela-anuncia-la-detencion-de-otro-sujeto-presuntamente-implicado-en-la-incursion-militar/

Posted by: H.Schmatz | May 4 2020 22:25 utc | 56

These models are nothing more than curve fitting tools that have limited predictive value.

Basically the models are derived from Neil Ferguson and his modelling group at Imperial College, in addition to being backed by WHO, receive millions from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Ferguson was the source of the “prediction” that 2.2 million Americans would likely die if immediate lockdown of the US economy did not occur. Based on the Ferguson model, Dr Anthony Fauci of NIAID confronted President Trump and supposedly pressured him to declare a national health emergency. Much as in the UK, once the damage to the economy , Ferguson’s model later drastically lowered the US fatality estimates to between 100,000 to 200,000 deaths which has since been reduced further.

Ferguson and his Imperial College modelers have a notorious track record for predicting dire consequences of diseases. In 2002 Ferguson predicted that up to 50,000 people in UK would die from variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, “mad cow disease”, possibly to 150,000 if the epidemic expanded to include sheep. A total of 178 people were officially registered dead from vCJD. In 2005, Ferguson claimed that up to 200 million (!) people worldwide would be killed by bird-flu or H5N1. By early 2006, the WHO had only linked 78 deaths to the virus. Then in 2009 Ferguson’s group at Imperial College advised the government that swine flu or H1N1 would probably kill 65,000 people in the UK. In the end, swine flu claimed the lives of 457 people.

As for China. They need a Fake Cold War. Have to give people an external enemy so people wont figure out who the real enemy is. To the extent China was involved it was as an equal partner.

Posted by: Pft | May 4 2020 22:29 utc | 57

I highly suggest watching this Renegade Inc episode as it provides fundamental information on the likely direction the attempted Cold War 2.0 will take. Retooling the global economy must omit the Fiat Money Freeloaders, and as I said in my other comment that the Cloud ate, that looks to be the Eurasianist's plan.

Posted by: karlof1 | May 4 2020 22:29 utc | 58

Well, we take into account that new cases can and are undernotified to almost any extent desired, but daily deaths cannot be hidden to the same extent -even if desired by the Health authorities...
On this reasoning line, and looking at the US figurres as applied to Brazil, the south americans will suffer a death toll of 1800 to 2000 per day in early or mid June very easily.
But the corresponding new daily cases will never be known for sure, because of the already apparent cover up from Bolsonaro's criminal troupe will only rise to the clouds.
Calculations modestly point to twenty thousand.
Now sad to say:
and don t expect that the local state governors and city mayors
on clash with the bolsogenocide can fix it up. They can t and won't for two reasons: the centralized statistics in Brasilia Ministry and their own choice: not to stir up too much opposition to them in next elections.

Posted by: augusto | May 4 2020 22:29 utc | 59

Sorry, but the post wnet through without shaping the HTML thing.
You can delete it so as it does not ruin the margins.

I am tired. Off to bed.

Posted by: H.Schmatz | May 4 2020 22:29 utc | 60

Here's a good first-hand story of the difference between China and the US in handling nCOV:
SCMP story on ex-pat American family

I was on the ground in the US for less than 36 hours, but saw enough to be alarmed. If I hadn’t forcefully volunteered that I had just come from living in China, I don’t think anyone would have checked me for fever before entering the US.

Once I declared myself, I was escorted to a “CDC line” for a cursory temperature check (with a large group of Mormon missionaries returning from Europe), given a Centres for Disease Control and Prevention flier about Covid-19 symptoms and asked to stay home and minimise my trips outside for 14 days.

...

Finally, after we promised not to leave our flat, our passports were returned to us, and at 4.03am, some 16 hours after landing, we were home. That morning, a young woman in a hazmat suit knocked on our door and took our temperatures at 10am. She returned at 3pm to take our temperatures again.

This routine was repeated for 14 days before we would be permitted to circulate in the general Shanghai population. We chatted occasionally with our temperature takers (they were a rotating cast of 20-something women). Initially, a man would accompany them to film the temperature reading, but by the final few days the women came alone.

A few days after our return, we discovered that authorities had placed a sensor on our door. And more than a week after the start of our quarantine, we received a note informing us we were not to open our door more than five times a day.

There's a lot more on the epic journey to pass through Chinese airport/immigration/nCOV control procedures, but just this last bit makes it clear what the difference is.

Has anyone out there seen or heard of any nCOV quarantined people in the US even being checked on once to see if they are maintaining quarantine? Much less twice a day for 14 days by a live person, plus a sensor on the door?

Note that this is a much easier setup than contact tracing.

Posted by: c1ue | May 4 2020 22:30 utc | 61

I highly suggest watching this Renegade Inc episode as it provides fundamental information on the likely direction the attempted Cold War 2.0 will take. Retooling the global economy must omit the Fiat Money Freeloaders, and as I said in my other comment that the Cloud ate, that looks to be the Eurasianist's plan.

Posted by: karlof1 | May 4 2020 22:31 utc | 62

Peter AU1 | May 4 2020 22:20 utc | 54 Yup.

You may recall that I mooted weeks (?) ago that "Agent Sam went to Wuhan and opened a mayonnaise jar." - that it was a classic con in which the mark is intended to blame himself... Evidently Brother Comrade Mr Chine did not fall for the gaff. Those fellas are not amateurs, but I could name a few (so can you).

Yes all roads lead to, well, the abyss of war. I have not found any credible evidence that the bioweapon Policy of 1952 ended, though of course matters have evolved...

Anyway, the desperate attempt to get out of one zuswang has landed the clown and the rest of us in a bigger zuswang...and the classic outcome is as everybody sees. Recall I posted a sketch of a story of a card game at the Dewdrop Inn...

Now I shall put in the VHS tape of Ripper at Burpelson AFB and have a shot of vodka...

Posted by: Walter | May 4 2020 22:31 utc | 63

@Posted by: Peter AU1 | May 4 2020 22:20 utc | 54

Re: "All this shit is five eyes to the core and we're all aboard the Trump anti China wagon."

I doubt very much Trump would ever knowingly do this in the election year. Too much risk, and whatever else he's a germaphobe.

As to the outfits (inside and out of his admin) that have have been trying to shoot him down for the past 4+ years--now that's another story...

Posted by: gm | May 4 2020 22:32 utc | 64

What's to come after lockdowns end. No V-shaped recovery if Wuhan is any guide CNN source

The province's GDP shrank almost 40% year-on-year in the first quarter of 2020, according to state news agency Xinhua, with retail sales dropping more than 15% in March alone.
The government has announced it will be letting businesses leasing from state-owned enterprises go rent-free for three months, but for those with private landlords, the weight of rent and no profit is pushing them out of business.
"I opened for two days. No costumers come in to eat, as it was forbidden, and I got only two or three orders from the online delivery platform. The cost of opening was much more than I earn each day, so I closed it again," one restaurant owner told the government-controlled Global Times.

Posted by: c1ue | May 4 2020 22:34 utc | 65

Petri Krohn 50 " We are not doing this because we hate China, but because we love the truth."

Reminds me of the Abbott slush fund "Australians for Honest Politics"

One of the Howard Government's most senior ministers last night revealed he raised nearly $100,000 to lay the groundwork for Pauline Hanson's prosecution for electoral fraud.

The Minister for Workplace Relations, Tony Abbott, admitted setting up a trust, Australians for Honest Politics, from donations to pay for legal actions against Hanson and her party, One Nation.

He had also organised a separate "donor" to support a One Nation dissident, Terry Sharples, in seeking an injunction to block One Nation from receiving public electoral funds....

....Mr Abbott also acknowledged that he had at one time instructed his lawyers to offer Mr Sharples $10,000 of his own money if he would stop pursuing him for money to cover his huge court costs.

He said he had set up Australians for Honest Politics in 1998 because he believed One Nation was fraudulently registered.


https://www.smh.com.au/national/abbott-set-up-slush-fund-to-ruin-hanson-20030826-gdhafs.html

Posted by: Peter AU1 | May 4 2020 22:37 utc | 66

Hafiz | May 4 2020 21:24 utc | 40

Re Stonebird's items

The first, there are several Syrians saying that three IAF aircraft overflew Jordan, Iraq and US controlled eastern Syria to attack a Syrian Scientific (Military) Research site (also with an IRGC presence) SE of Aleppo with several munitions. This is not the kind of event that the Syrian Government has commentated on in the past, especially with the IRGC connection.

The second, was all over the place at the weekend.

The third he might have wrong. Four USN ships plus nuke submarine and a RN ship have just gone into the Barents Sea, not the Baltic Sea, for the first time in decades. The Russian pipelayer is however safely at anchor just outside Baltiysk at the entrance to the ports of Kaliningrad.

Posted by: JohninMK | May 4 2020 22:40 utc | 67

Pompeo said he will ensure everyone knows that COVID-19 came from China and compensation is due. And on Sunday Pompous claimed :he had enormous evidence."

Onward the stenos got their marching orders and every Western media in U.S., Canada, UK has been China bashing.

It is the pillar of the Trump administration pushing to rip global supply chains from China:


[“There is a whole of government push on this,” said one. Agencies are probing which manufacturing should be deemed “essential” and how to produce these goods outside of China."]

President Donald Trump, who has stepped up recent attacks on China ahead of the Nov. 3 U.S. presidential election, has long pledged to bring manufacturing back from overseas.

Now, economic destruction and the massive U.S. coronavirus death toll are driving a government-wide push to move U.S. production and supply chain dependency away from China, even if it goes to other more friendly nations instead, current and former senior U.S. administration officials said.[.]

“This moment is a perfect storm; the pandemic has crystallized all the worries that people have had about doing business with China,” said another senior U.S. official.[.]

The U.S. government is working with Australia, India, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea and Vietnam to “move the global economy forward,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said April 29.

These discussions include “how we restructure ... supply chains to prevent something like this from ever happening again,” Pompeo said.[.]

HARD SELL FOR COMPANIES

Many U.S. companies have invested heavily in Chinese manufacturing and rely on China’s 1.4 billion people for a big chunk of their sales.

“Diversification and some redundancy in supply chains will make sense given the level of risk that the pandemic has uncovered,” said Doug Barry, spokesman for the U.S.-China Business Council. “But we don’t see a wholesale rush for the exits by companies doing business in China.”[.]

Unlikely to be successful unless American workers are willingly to accept a lower standard of living and a 90% cut in pay.
The U.S. financial collapse began end August 2019. Now we read, after Trillions printed to avoid a depression, Treasury will borrow $4.4 Trillion to finance government to September 2020, more than the previous 5 years. Added to the already printed Trillions? what a trillion?
A very important read at LINK here.

Time to worry; cloaked "essential" "national security" China is being set up as scapegoat for the Greatest Depression V.2. - a hyper-inflationary depression. End of the U.S. dollar reserve currency status. Beat the war drums. China and Russia are prepared.

Posted by: Likklemore | May 4 2020 22:43 utc | 68

gm 61

I think pays to take Trump seriously when he says "everything is on the table"

Early on after Trump's election MSM were printing stories about Trump wanting to know why US couldn't use nukes. I though it was just more of the anti Trump bullshit until Trump put out his Nuke posture review and equipped a couple of subs with Trident mounted 'usable' nukes.

Everything is on the table - nuclear, biological and chemical.

Posted by: Peter AU1 | May 4 2020 22:44 utc | 69

Any doubt that the United States's ruling 'elites' have gone completely crazy is banished by examining this proposal to attack China by issuing letters of marque to privateers.
https://sputniknews.com/asia/202005041079196739-act-of-piracy-china-blasts-us-navy-proposal-for-south-china-sea-privateers/

There is an interewsting article at the History News network today on the use of anti-malarials in previous epidemics https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/175182

"Will hydroxychloroquine save us from this pandemic? Probably not. Big pharmaceutical companies have long over-promised the efficacy of their antimalarial drugs. This started a century ago, when European antimalarial producers began aggressively touting the curative effects of quinine on all manner of disease. Yes, antimalarials work wonders against malaria, but not against much else. This history suggests that political and economic reasons for pushing these antimalarials upon a global disease are again at work. ..."

Posted by: bevin | May 4 2020 22:45 utc | 70

@ fort russ dot com "Crossfire Hurricane" essay seems to support with evidence the thesis that Obama himself bossed the conspiracy to do a coup against T Man. They propose a trial and so forth...now than, if you were a member of such a gang, just how desperate might you be? Inter alia, war would keep you out of jail, I bet they think so... What does T Man do when he watches a carrier capsize or sink, or even on fire? "Bluff" might go "poof!" really fast.

What did the fellas say about it? "We'll be home by Christmas"?

Posted by: Walter | May 4 2020 22:49 utc | 71

I pointed out at SST that the report from OZ is likely the same document as the "open-sourced" nonsense peddled by the Washington Times, and therefore isn't going to be an "intelligence report" at all.

And I also questioned how unusual it would be for a document to be "joint Five Eyes" product.

Neither point, apparently, had occurred to any of the multitude of ex-spooks who comment there, even though they claim many decades of experience in spotting exactly those sorts of implausibilities.

Posted by: Yeah, Right | May 4 2020 22:55 utc | 72

Separately Russia/China/Iran could be kept in check.
Carrot is to some extent dangled in front of each of them separately and then the stick.
They each allow history to keep them apart, untrusted.
It certainly worked a charm in the middle east.
Working together they would be more formidable.
China needs to let go of globalism and work on regionalism.

Posted by: jared | May 4 2020 22:56 utc | 73

@9 Ramon "Weird, the intelligence agency's telling the truth. I had difficulty getting my head around that."

Not so much "telling the truth" as refusing to be set up as the fall-guy.
The Administration is attempting to railroad them and, naturally enough, they are resisting.

If the spooks are going to lie then it'll be because they want to mislead the politicians above them.
They aren't interested in reversing that arrangement, certainly not since the Iraqi WMD fiasco.

Posted by: Yeah, Right | May 4 2020 23:02 utc | 74

Walter

The Iranian strike on the US base did not take Trump to war with Iran. I believe he intends military strikes against Iran, but not China though a sunk aircraft carrier woud be good for the anti China propaganda and decoupling.

About the only use aircraft carriers have in a war these days is their value as sacrificial goats for propaganda purposes. All aboard nobly giving their lives for the cause...

Posted by: Peter AU1 | May 4 2020 23:02 utc | 75

Our media are valiantly attempting to hide the fact that the virus originated outside China. Last week, our media roundly ignored a public statement by Francis Collins, director of the US National Institutes of Health, who said the virus might have been spreading quietly in humans for years, or even decades, without causing a detectable outbreak.

This week, French authorities have announced that the first coronavirus case in France could have occurred a month earlier than official figures suggest, according to a professor from Avicenne Hospital, following the retesting of 24 patient blood samples. Professor Yves Cohen from the Avicenne Hospital in Bobigny said in an interview with local media that it appears that Covid-19 was already in France at the end of 2019 – rather than in January-February 2020 – as had previously been thought. A decision was made to retest 24 samples of blood from patients who were admitted in December with respiratory infections but had tested negative for the flu. Out of the 24 samples retested, one male patient came back positive for Covid-19. “We’ve reanalyzed all negative tests on people who were diagnosed with pneumonia. Of the 24 patients, we found one who resulted positive to Covid-19 on December 27 when he was taken to our Avicenne Hospital,” said Cohen. He confirmed that the patient in question has fully recovered and “is well.”https://www.rt.com/news/487707-first-covid19-france-december/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=RSS

The virus probably originated in the USA, like its predecessors, Spanish Flu and H1N1.

Posted by: Godfree Roberts | May 4 2020 23:07 utc | 76

@ 48 clueless joe... bang on, and to the point.. thank you...

@ yeah, right... i was following your comments... pl even acknowledged you had it right in one of your comments... those spooks couldn't make it off caspers comic book in real life.. i don't get that..

here is what is made in america... sue, suing and sue yer ass off... all a byproduct of a skewed ration of lawyers to engineers... all of them writing the laws and breeding the insanity on display regularly from the usa... they tried exporting this shit to canada and you do see it here more over the past number of years.. i remember it ramping up 20 or more years ago.. everything was about suing someone or another for some trivial type thing...if you don't like something then just threaten to sue.. it ain't going to make america great again.. it is going to make it go broke and insane... when you get the sharks writing laws and running the political scene, this is what you get... sue, sue and more sue.. no offence if your name is sue... johnny cash wrote a good song called a boy named sue, but that was way before this stupidity started ramping up.. its a lose, lose lawyers game that bankrupts peoples minds.... the americans excel at it... they would have been better served with lsd, or marijuana.. instead they get this!

Posted by: james | May 4 2020 23:12 utc | 77

I came across an elaborate article that lays out the argument for ncov-19 being accidentally leaked from one of the two Wuhan bio labs. They posit that it could be a natural virus that was taken from bats and mutated in the lab with other variants of the corona virus.
If a bat is infected with multiple corona viruses they can easily/quickly form new variants of the virus combining characteristics from different variants into a new variant.They create the circumstances that stimulate this natural process so they can study different aspects of these viruses. To see what these viruses are capable of.
I'll quote a small segment that IMO contains the strongest arguments for this Wuhan lab escape hypothesis. And that is that an official at the Hubei Provincial Health Commission ordered the Wuhan labs to stop testing corona/sars virus samples and to destroy existing samples. So with the samples they possessed earlier all destroyed nobody can ever proof that the virus came from one of the two Wuhan bio labs.
source: https://project-evidence.github.io/


"12/27/2019
Wuhan health officials are told that a new corona virus is causing the illness.

12/31/2019
China tells the World Health Organization’s China office about the cases of an unknown illness. [4 days after Wuhan officials were told.]

1/1/2020
Wuhan Public Security Bureau brings in for questioning eight doctors who had posted information about the illness on WeChat.

An official at the Hubei Provincial Health Commission orders labs, which had already determined that the novel virus was similar to SARS, to stop testing samples and to destroy existing samples.

1/7/2020
Xi Jinping becomes involved in the response.

1/14/2020
WHO announces Chinese authorities have seen "no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel corona virus."

1/19/2020
Beijing sends epidemiologists to Wuhan.

1/20/2020
Zhong Nanshan, a top Chinese doctor who is helping to coordinate the corona virus response, announces the virus can be passed between people. [1 day after epidemiologists are sent from Beijing.]

To summarize, Wuhan officials:
Censored local medical professionals who attempted to sound the alarm on a new outbreak.
Ordered local labs to destroy samples of the virus.
Withheld the SARS-CoV-2 genome until Xi’s involvement.
Continually insisted on no human-to-human transmission. Experts sent from Beijing confirmed it in one day.

The political fallout from the outbreak escalated with the firing of party chief of Hubei province, the party chief of Wuhan and the head of China’s Hong Kong and Macau Affairs office.

The Chinese Communist Party admits the coverup was unjust:
China declared whistle blower doctor Li Wenliang a ’martyr’ following a local campaign to silence him for speaking out about the coronavirus (April 3, 2020). Martyr is the highest honor the CCP can bestow on a citizen killed working to serve the country.

Posted by: Govern the Mente | May 4 2020 23:13 utc | 78

@ c1ue

You are posting nothing but hysterical american anti-chinese propaganda.

Posted by: dimitrov | May 4 2020 23:18 utc | 79

Pimpeo's attempt to blame China might fall apart under closer examination:

Belleville Mayor Michael Melham said he has tested positive for coronavirus antibodies, adding that he believes he was sick with the virus in November — more than a month before doctors in China first reported cases of the new disease.

Melham said he was sick toward the end of November and suffered from chills, hallucinations and a "skyrocketing temperature" after he left the League of Municipalities Conference in Atlantic City.


If this turn's out to be true, I'm sure no country would sue the United States for it failure to identify COVID-19 and for covering it up.

Posted by: Ghost Ship | May 4 2020 23:18 utc | 80

@Posted by: Peter AU1 | May 4 2020 22:44 utc | 67

Remember that Trump is a blowhard who always talks tough in these situations. Recall how he threatened N. Korea? Its a negotiating tactic.

I don't think it will ever come to a large scale shooting war with China as long as Trump has firm control of the US govmt and his administration, as war with China would be unwinnable.

I can't lay my hands on it now, but I do recall reading the war-gaming scenarios by US strategists a number of years ago, that projected if a major devastating fight, short of nuclear use, with China were ever to to break out, there would be high likelihood that both Japan and S. Korea would flip sides, or at very least expel US bases and forces from their territories, to avoid getting their countries creamed by Chinese military attacks.

Deep down, I think most higher ups in the US military/political leadership (except for the neocon jihadis and unhinged deep-staters perhaps) understand this.

Posted by: gm | May 4 2020 23:27 utc | 81

Pompeo should simply tell his interns to stop bothering Mr Google alone for a while. He is never going to come up with convincing evidence that the virus was released from that Wuhan lab if "open source" is his only source of information.

This is very, very simple: The Chinese scientist in charge of that lab is on record as saying that when the DNA of this covid-19 virus was sequenced she ordered her staff to compare it against every sample they possessed.

And their conclusion? There was no match, ergo, that virus could not have escaped from this lab.

Now, that declaration stands until such time as the US Intelligence Community can disprove it.
They are NOT going to disprove it via "open sourced" innuendo.

Every "But what about....?" will be countered with "It was never in the lab, dude".
Every "But isn't is suspicious that...." will be countered with "It was never in the lab, dude".
Every "Isn't it reasonable to conclude that..." will be countered with "It was never in the lab, dude".

The task for the US Intelligence Community will be to prove that this virus *was* in that lab, because that's the first - and necessary - step in "proving" that it had escaped from their.

Precisely because - du'oh! - if it was never stored there then it could not have escaped from there, and the Chinese are adamant that their records prove that it was never stored there. Unless that can be disproved then Pompeo isn't going to get anywhere.

I wouldn't want to be the IT guy in charge of network security at that lab because he's going to be a very busy man.


Posted by: Yeah, Right | May 4 2020 23:27 utc | 82

Posted by: Peter AU1 | May 4 2020 22:44 utc | 67

"I think pays to take Trump seriously when he says "everything is on the table"

Peter, Are you serious?

My opinion Trump is nothing but a big fat blabbing mouth... Watch Xi Jinping he's all preparing for a long drawn out confrontation and maybe even a war. He's touring around the country.... getting views on the ground using the Covid-19 as a pretext. On the other hand, his aircraft carrier "The Liaoning aircraft carrier returned to port in eastern China April 30 after passing through western Pacific waters near Taiwan and Japan..."

It's only matter of time, when, where, and how China will strike back. Truly, Trump is really stoopid keep poking, jabbing China and there are limits. Have you read Sun Tzu's "The Art of War,” I did not read the book but the summary.... One thing I learned from my lifelong journey.... watch the quiet one, silently when it strikes it's deathly...

Have you watch Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping meet?

Posted by: JC | May 4 2020 23:37 utc | 83

'Open source' worked for MH17. Public have generally swallowed the belling crap put forward by the JIT.
No reason it won't work for China Dunnit.
Most people I know already believe the US MSM shit on China and cronavirus.

Posted by: Peter AU1 | May 4 2020 23:42 utc | 84

Three things worth noting about newspapers in Sydney (from a lifelong Sydneysider):

1. The Daily Telegraph is not a 'broadsheet'. It is a local Sydney tabloid of the worst kind from the worst media organisation in the world, which also owns Fox, etc, i.e. Murdoch's Newscorp. It is the chief information/propaganda vector of the conservative Right on the east coast and has a deal with the two retail giants (Woolworths and Coles) to make it the only available print newspaper at the end of the checkout aisle where it is usually half-price. It has a circulation of about 800,000 in Sydney (pop. ~5M). It is the without a doubt an appalling affront to the English language, democracy, intelligence, and just about any other human virtue. Nobody with a pretence of education would touch it. To call it a working-class newspaper is an insult to the working-class. It is the last bastion of a violent, racist, misogynist, jingoist, colonial Australia that makes a supreme virtue of its readers' ignorance. We joked that it would serve well as a toilet paper substitute if it weren't already covered in s***. The 'Tele' champions Murdoch's political favourites. The 'Tele' has its sister papers in different cities (the Courier-Mail in Brisbane, The Advertiser in Adelaide and the Herald-Sun in Melbourne, all Newscorp owned).

2. Murdoch's broadsheet companion to the 'Tele' is The Australian which is much more pernicious in that it masquerades as reflective editorial commentary. It attempts to offer the Right an intellectual veneer but really just brays hollow fascist talking-points in slight better English. It circulates nationwide and allows the bourgeoisie to feel good about their mendacious and corrupt neoliberal dystopia by bashing the poor, women, indigenous Australians, refugees, etc, i.e. the usual right MSM. The Australian backs the Liberal-National Coalition and loathes both the ALP and the Union movement (surprise, surprise). Print circulation ~50,000, paywall online subscription.

3. The Sydney Morning Herald (Sydney—one of the oldest continuously published newspapers in the world, from 1831) and The Age (Melbourne) were both once the broadsheet flagships of Fairfax media, along with its national broadsheet, The Australian Financial Review. These three constitute essentially centrist MSM, with rare commentary leaning to the progressive Left (although not to the extent of the full embrace of identity politics, etc of the Guardian Australia, which is aimed at a faux-intelligent young progressive audience). The SMH and the Age are now owned by The Nine Network (Sydney's dominant free-to-air TV broadcaster), but both used to stand for professional journalism in Australia, especially the 80s and 90s, but they championed Australia's equivalent to the Blairite New Left, and are very pro-US alliance, anti-China, etc. Print circulation around 100,000. Limited online access.

There is no dissenting media in print. All properly Left critique and analysis is online, although on University campuses one can get the Red Flag which is good for solid Marxist critique. I no longer bother with the Guardian Australia because it never gets it right.

At my local shopping complex the newsagency typically has 10 copies of the SMH, 25 copies of the Australian and ~500 copies of the 'Tele'. That should give you an idea of how Murdoch has public opinion locked up in Australia.

Posted by: Patroklos | May 4 2020 23:47 utc | 85

@ laguerre.. thanks for your comments.. i too noticed the death numbers going down for the usa yesterday and commented on it here at moa.. looks like the same for today.. overall numbers seem down..

@ 82 peter au... that is sad commentary on the general public!! i fear you are probably correct.. people seem incapable of thinking independently or working out why they are being given information as such..

Posted by: james | May 4 2020 23:48 utc | 86

@ 25

Realistic version of this plan is to inflate the debt away instead of defaulting on it. Remember that the US can create as many dollars as it wishes...

Treasuries are like cash bills or stock shares in that they can be traded with anyone else. You can't trace them easily.

Posted by: bear gang | May 4 2020 23:53 utc | 87

Posted by: Yeah, Right | May 4 2020 23:27 utc | 80

"The Chinese scientist in charge of that lab is on record as saying that when the DNA of this covid-19 virus was sequenced she ordered her staff to compare it against every sample they possessed.

And their conclusion? There was no match, ergo, that virus could not have escaped from this lab."

Do you happen to have a date when the comparison started?
Because on januari 1st an official at the Hubei Provincial Health Commission ordered labs to stop testing samples of bat corona/sars viruses and to destroy existing samples.
So they moved in pretty quickly to destroy evidence. They also seemed to have tried to hide the entire outbreak until CCP Beijing noticed there was something going on. They send in their expert and the next day he announced human to human transmission and within days the lockdown was mandated.
source: https://project-evidence.github.io/

Posted by: Govern the Mente | May 4 2020 23:55 utc | 88

@76 Govern the Mente the only possible "gotcha!" claim are these two:

1/1/2020
"Wuhan Public Security Bureau brings in for questioning eight doctors who had posted information about the illness on WeChat."

"An official at the Hubei Provincial Health Commission orders labs, which had already determined that the novel virus was similar to SARS, to stop testing samples and to destroy existing samples."

Neither does anything to prove a lab escape.

Those eight doctors were not associated with the treatment of covid-19 patients. Not one of them.
(The most oft-reported was an ENT specialists working at an In Patient ward in one of the Wuhan hospitals).

What had happened is that they had gotten wind of the lab results that the hospital had requested and then rushed onto social media and warned each other - and everyone else - that there was a SARS outbreak in Wuhan.

Well, that's incredibly irresponsible: it wasn't SARS, for one thing.

Regardless, none of them had any authority to be blabbing about lab results, and certainly not when it relates to something outside their area of responsibility.

They were reprimanded because their behaviour was deserving of censure (though the Chinese have subsequently (and correctly) admitted that this was an internal hospital issue, the police should never have been involved).

As for the "stop testing and destroy the samples" claim, that is a lie-by-omission and therefore deliberately misleading.

The actual order was to stop testing immediately and send the samples to a secure testing facility. The samples were only to be destroyed if that wasn't possible.

Now, that's very sensible. Hospital authorities did not know what they were dealing with, which is why they send numerous samples out to be tested. When the results came back they knew that what they were dealing with something that was Very Likely Exceptionally Dangerous.

The prudent step would be to secure those samples, because each one represents a ticking time bomb, and if that wasn't possible then the samples need to be sterilized because, you know, they are ticking-time-bombs.

There is nothing sinister in that. It is just commonsense.

Posted by: Yeah, Right | May 5 2020 0:01 utc | 89

Petri Krohn @ 50:

"The Daily Telegraph" which is published in Sydney is part of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation stable of news and entertainment media outlets that embraces not only news media outlets but also film (through 20th Century Fox), publishing including book and magazine publishing (HarperCollins in particular) and even for a time, The South China Morning Post (highlighted for MoA commenter JC's benefit), Ansett Australia (a former airline that operated domestic flights in Australia before being put out of business when Virgin arrived) and music publishing labels (Australian record label Mushroom Records and NZ-based former alt-music Flying Nun Records, to take two examples) as tax shelters.

(@ James: Flying Nun Records was later bought by Warner Group as part of a group of labels from News Corp and then it was bought by NZ musician Neil Finn, his wife and the label's original founder in a consortium in 2009 to bring the label back to New Zealand.)

The Daily Telegraph is not related to the London-based British newspaper The Daily Telegraph or its Sunday edition, in case non-Australian MoA readers are wondering.

What is interesting is that the 15-page dossier seems to have been given low coverage by The Australian, another Murdoch / News Corporation propaganda rag that is losing money and has to be cross-subsidised by other News Corporation outlets. One wonders why The Australian is not talking up the 15-page dossier as well. Columnist Greg Sheridan there must be itching to spew Sinophobic drivel.

Posted by: Jen | May 5 2020 0:02 utc | 90

Laguerre@11

"Every time the virus replicates, there is a danger of error in the copy, which renders it less effective for the most part, much as in human cells."

The issue is that the SARS-CoV-2 spike (S) protein that binds to ACE2 and CD147 receptors is what allows the virus to replicate more efficiently. In a given population of viral particles a less efficient particle would result in fewer replicates leading its mutation to be less prevalent in a population of the coronavirus.

Thus, I would expect the virus to retain its virulence over time which leads us back to Dr Talab's conclusion on how to stop the transmission of a virus that needs a host. A subset of the availability of a host is what happens if the host can also be a non-human such as the Chinese raccoon dog, ferrets or even pigs?

In discussing viral mutations it is important to also note that articles that claim to calculate viral mutation rates fail to understand that statistics is about populations, and not individuals. The mutation rates of a population are not well represented by the PCR test if the mutation is not frequent enough to be seen in the amplification process (38-39 times).

I would not bet against the persistence of the SARS-CoV-2 virus S-protein and thus its continued virulence given the probability of mutations and the loss of function by a less virulent strain.

There may be hope in an engineered antibody that targets the viral spike protein:
https://www.zerohedge.com/health/coronavirus-defeated-experimental-antibody-targets-spike-protein

As for a vaccine, I would not hold my breath and if partially successful might result in more deaths due the the vaccine of the cytokine storm that the virus itself.

Posted by: Krollchem | May 5 2020 0:05 utc | 91

Here are some recommendations about dealing with trolls from the Peak Prosperity site that may be helpful:

"Dear community - the trolls desperately need your help.

Here's how they work. They are tasked with muddying the waters of content that their employers don't like.
They might work for a corporation, a three letter agency, or a foreign government. They might be prisoners in China, or they might be in a cubicle at Facebook. That doesn't really matter, but it's interesting to note.

Job #1 one is to cast a variety of shade, or aspersions, against the content. It's very rare that they do this by using actual countervailing facts or arguments. More often it's by one of several tactics such as (a) claiming that the public will somehow be harmed by the material (but not *they* themselves, of course, just 'the public') or (b) making an ad hominem or personal attack of some sort ("Chris, liked your work 'till now, but you really lost me here!") or (c) just tossing in links meant to drag you away form the content or (d) pulling out the old 'show stopper' of calling something "a conspiracy theory."

Job #2 is to create conversation around their diversions and deflections. I think this is how they are measured by their controllers. It's how I'd do it. You get a penny for every time you force someone to respond to you distractive nonsense.

Job #3 is to create traction around their point of view. Voting really helps because that creates the appearance of traction.

Stilted language, complete lack of data or logical arguments, and very odd 'bios' combine to give that appearance. Of course, they could be bots too. Hard to say anymore in the deep-fake world.

At any rate, just something to which I am pretty much immune these days. The big world of trolling needs a convention so they can discuss best practices and find a way to up their game. Too obvious these days."

Posted by: Krollchem | May 5 2020 0:11 utc | 92

@86 Govern the Mente: "Do you happen to have a date when the comparison started?"

It has to be after January 10, which is when the Chinese finished sequencing the virus DNA.

"Because on januari 1st an official at the Hubei Provincial Health Commission ordered labs to stop testing samples of bat corona/sars viruses and to destroy existing samples."

Yeah, annnnnnnd? The Chinese had other samples because, obviously, they need samples to sequence the DNA.

By January 1 the Chinese authorities knew they were faced with a NEW coronavirus, similar to but different from SARS.

It was likely very, very dangerous, so it makes perfect sense to secure all the samples that had already been sent out to all those test labs (you know, back when they didn't know what they were dealing with) or, if they couldn't be secured, destroyed, pronto.

It would be utterly irresponsible to do anything else, if for no other reason that everyone working in those test labs were in danger. Why do you find that in any way sinister?

Posted by: Yeah, Right | May 5 2020 0:12 utc | 93

I've always been fascinated by bicycle gear shifters based on deceptively simple 'chain derailleurs'. The action is so smooth. I say the coronavirus crisis will not go to waste. The 'First World' will be smoothly 'down-shifted' to a 'Second World' (but not the communist version). We will find ourselves eating small bowls of rice, with maybe a small fish. Doggy bagging will not be cool anymore -- we will not be bringing the cultural left-overs from our now-finished First World Feast back home 'for the doggy'. The hypercrafted implements of the technosphere will be a stripped-down a bit, and some level of primitivism will cease to be be held in contempt. Some of us will freak out, however.

Posted by: blues | May 5 2020 0:17 utc | 94

@ Posted by: Govern the Mente | May 4 2020 23:55 utc | 86

That would be a plausible hypothesis, if it wasn't for the fact that all the scientists around the world that were able to independently recreate the virus in their respective laboratory (because China mapped it and uploaded it in the competent international database) came, again independently, to the conclusion the SARS-CoV-2 likely came from natural selection.

There were labs from Brazil, Scotland, Continental Europe etc. that did this recreation, so you would be implicitly stating many countries with very different and even opposite geopolitical agendas lied at the same time.

Besides, the fact that the Trumpian administration is resorting to this China-blaming narrative at this specific point in time can easily be explained by the proximity of the 2020 elections. We have a vast history of presidential candidates changing their narratives and becoming more bellicose in the USA during election years, there's no reason not to believe this pattern isn't valid now.

Posted by: vk | May 5 2020 0:21 utc | 95

Post covid considerations from Zero Antropology

I also posted this at week in review but for those that have moved on it is worthy reading.

Posted by: uncle tungsten | May 5 2020 0:23 utc | 96

Has anyone followed up on the status of USAn tourists evacuated by USG to N. California from that cruise ship quarantined in Japanese harbor? Not only were those people flown for hours by jet without adequate precautionary measures taken, but upon landing they were handled by USG employees who did not take precautionary measures against novel virus => they were not wearing PPE. So both repatriated tourists and gov employees processing them potentially took nvirus “surprises” home to their families and friends in California and other home places.

The USG broke the quarantine and it did not use adequate precautionary measures to prevent nvirus contagion spread. Once the formerly quarantined cruise-ship tourists were repatriated to the usa, the nvirus was free to roam but for sending the few already known positives to a special-care quarantine hospital in Nebraska — after traveling for hours on same plane with other USAn tourists, potentially everybody onboard becoming a carrier.

Did the USG test, trace and isolate those whom were infected from this miscalculated stupid breaking of quarantine? We’ve yet to read about it afaik.

LOL blaming China when disregard for USAn public heath, notorious, making us sick and/or more untrusting, is well documented.

Had some heavy work done here last spring. The father of the guy who did the work, whom I talked with after the job was finished, told me he took vet medicine for a recent injury since he couldn't afford to see a doctor. He was a retired 40-year union man from a major agri manufacturer.
Local people don't trust the government. Period. I don't think they'll fall for scapegoating again but perhaps wishful thinking on my part.

Posted by: suzan | May 5 2020 0:28 utc | 97

Govern the Mente @ 76 (and those who have replied: Yeah, Right and VK):

The article you link to is the 15-page dossier that was given to The Daily Telegraph in Sydney.

Dr Li Wenliang was not a "whistle-blower" doctor. He had jumped to an incorrect conclusion about the nature of the coronavirus - he had apparently thought it was the SARS 2002 virus again - and had mentioned it to some people who then jumped onto social media and spread what he said. He later was admonished by police for supposedly spreading a false rumour and had to sign a statement at his local police station. Yes, he probably had been treated in a very heavy-handed fashion and could have been set up by people on social media who blamed him for their own exaggerations. After his death his family did receive an apology from government authorities in Beijing. Beyond this, we cannot say he was a "whistle-blower" hero.

That the dossier refers to Dr Li as a "whistle-blower" should be a sign that it is not what it claims to be: an objective piece of research.

Posted by: Jen | May 5 2020 0:39 utc | 98

So, suddenly the "inelegance services" are telling the truth because they don't like Trump and neither does MoA.
I say that whatever the position of the "inelegance agencies" (dictated to them from the oligarchy) it is in no way friendly or helpful to the cause of ordinary people.
The "inelegance community" serves the interests of the empire, it is a secret army operated by and for the oligarchy and paid for by society in blood and money.

Posted by: Babyl-on | May 5 2020 0:40 utc | 99

c1ue #59
Note that this is a much easier setup than contact tracing.

Yes that Chinese quarantine and daily trace is a fantastic public health routine. It makes the eradication of the virus a simple and rapidly diminishing threat.

Note though that it was rigorously accompanied with wearing face masks across the whole society.

People were obliged to take precaution and minimise their personal exposure to Covid-19 PLUS their additional burden on a stretched health system by minimising their chance of catching the flu which is always circulating regardless of vaccines.

Face masks are convenient, simple to use and far more sustaining of a health system of limited capacity - as in all countries.

Posted by: uncle tungsten | May 5 2020 0:47 utc | 100

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