Strange how this keeps coming up but is always framed in a manner constrained to advance this argument. Satellite photography of local area parking lots show an extremely large surge in illness in the winter of 2019. If remarkable numbers of people all over the city were suddenly becoming sick then is it odd that researches also fell sick at this time? Abandoning virology in order to pursue the matter as an exciting who did it mystery may not reach correct conclusions.
> Two newly published studies take totally different approaches but arrive at the same conclusion: The Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan, China, was most likely the epicenter for the coronavirus.
> “All eight COVID-19 cases detected prior to 20 December were from the western side of the market, where mammal species were also sold,” the study says. The proximity to five stalls that sold live or recently butchered animals was predictive of human cases.
> The researchers suggest that the first animal-to-human transmission probably happened around November 18, 2019, and it came from lineage B. They found the lineage B type only in people who had a direct connection to the Huanan market.
> “These findings indicate that it is unlikely that SARS-CoV-2 circulated widely in humans prior to November 2019 and define the narrow window between when SARS-CoV-2 first jumped into humans and when the first cases of COVID-19 were reported,” the study says. “As with other coronaviruses, SARS-CoV-2 emergence likely resulted from multiple zoonotic events.”
If what you say is true, and COVID was spreading widely as early as August, then these previous papers in Science that claimed zoonotic spread specifically around Nov 18, 2019 must have been wildly off the mark. But Wikipedia cites these two studies as the primary evidence in favor of zoonotic origin.
It is important to be specific with qualifiers in this. The scientists "fell ill". Local hospitals became unusually busy. This is not all that unusual and relates to the common practice of wearing masks which has been well established for many years. It is quite possible that was a bad flu event that preceded the COVID-19 outbreak.
I flew through Hong Kong airport in November 2019 and they had a permanent temperature screening station set up. I even took a photo thinking, how strange is this. Like a massive desk and camera equipment in the middle of the major arrival walkway, it was clearly new
I lived in Macau for 7 years (2009 to 2016) and traveled to Hong Kong frequently from the US. There were always temperature scanners at the airport along with cameras. Travelers had to remove hats when approaching them.
I'm not grandparent commenter, but someone wrote a paper comparing satellite photos of the parking lot of a hospital in Wuhan, as well as Baidu search queries:
News that was suspected a long time ago, and due to the delay, being stigmatized, and memory-holing of it, the public's attention span and interest will make it a lot softer on getting to the bottom of it and prosecuting the guilty.
Maybe you're right and it is my sense of wanting some form of justice for the Amercian public being hoodwinked by the likes of Fauci, Big Pharma, the NIH, the CDC, and others in withholding information, ignoring or stifling important information, and creating an environment of censorship in the guise of "following the science" to further stigmatize dissenters to their narrative. The Biden administration still hasn't released the COVID origins documentation per the law passed by both Democrats and Republicans that was signed by Joe Biden into law a while ago. The deadline was 18 June, and not a peep. Let's see if it has any hint of the three infected lab workers being known for the past couple of years, yet allowing speculation and doubt to grow in the public and media's mind in the following years.
Given the law allows for “only such redactions as the Director determines necessary to protect sources and methods.” I am sure they will redact all the juicy stuff under the guise of protecting sources and methods...
I think this is more of a civil case, perhaps the world's largest class-action lawsuit against the US and Chinese governments for damages in the area of >$10 trillion in economic damages, as well as unspecified other damages for emotional distress for relatives of the deceased.
Accepting the blame is not something either the US or Chinese government is interested in, and it's unclear what court could hear such a case. Regardless, the body of evidence points clearly to a Wuhan Institute of Virology lab leak caused by sloppy lab protocols and which involved gain of function research funded by US government agencies, i.e. NIH / NIAID, channeled through Ecohealth Alliance.
As much as I'd like to see justice, the first priority should be making sure this doesn't happen again. And yet, one of Fauci's last acts before he retired was to renew the grant to EcoHealth alliance.
What kind of gain-of-function research is happening today?
Justice and prevention are not mutually exclusive priorities. Punishing bad people deters others from thinking they can get away with it. But the punishment needs to include elitists.
There has to be a change of policy at the WHO where if there is a theoretical possibility that a virus or disease can cause a global pandemic then a recommendation is made to take precautions, including halting international travel. The current strategy of “there is no confirmed human to human transmission so let’s wait until it spreads” does not protect the human life form on this planet.
He conducted 'gain of function' research when it was not permitted per the funding he was given, so he did violate that contract. And if it is proven that the lab leak occurred, and the subsequent deaths are the cause of that violation, couldn't he and others be held for some form of homicide? Negligent homicide? I mean a DUI resulting in a death of someone is treated as a homicide, no?
I sympathize with the idea that someone should be punished for the systemic failures leading to the pandemic, and additional failures that exacerbated it. Ultimately the problem is way bigger than one guy, though.
My impression is that hindsight is 20:20, and even though we now know the damage that was caused, I don’t think any of the actions that led up to the disaster were criminal. It’s not illegal to have systems so precarious and yet so dangerous. Many such systems still exist (see: 2007 financial crisis).
My hope is that this will serve as a correction and that virology can continue while avoiding the riskiest scenarios.
You might be surprised to find that the first amendment isn’t blanket protection for lying. You can’t, for instance, lie to the government. You also can’t lie to cover up a crime. You also can’t lie to defraud others. In addition to criminal consequences, you can also be found civilly liable when your actions, including public disclosures, cause damage to others.
In none of those cases was the crime “misleading the public”. Misleading the public may or may not be a side effect of the specific circumstances where speech is not protected by the First Amendment. In other cases, misleading the public is a perfectly legal and protected activity.
