An alternative hypothesis regarding the origin of Covid-19

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^I'm not focused on possible individual transgressors whose actions may have prompted the infection of Patient Zero and trying to hold such a person or persons accountable. I'm focused on China's actions and inaction as a country and accountability.

I stand by my hypotheticals: What if a pandemic originated on U.K. or U.S. soil and either country withheld crucial information and barred entry of scientists to study and quell the spread? Would the rest of the world hold either country accountable? Of course they would. There is no reason to coddle China with this.

One idea that has been floated in the US: China holds about $1 trillion in US debt. The US could just declare that debt paid in full by virtue of the costs the US has incurred as a result of China's recklessness.

Well, in that hypothetical there certainly would be a lot of shouting: can’t really see the US government being held effectively accountable externally (too powerful an economy and military to mess with), although internally a successful impeachment of whoever was president would be on the cards I’d expect.
In the case of the UK: I expect we’d wheedle out of international judgement some way or other, whilst setting up an internal judicial investigation that took so long to report back that by the time it did all responsible civil servants and politicians were dead already.

I predict that the CCP will try something on, a re-elected 45th US president will talk tariffs and embargo’s, but China’s integration into the global economy will prove to pervasive for enough other governments to go along with it. Temporary economic glitch, CCP rolls out nationalist agit-prop, life goes on.

I assume if you know that China are negligent “from a legal standpoint”, to the extent that you know them to be financially accountable, then you are an expert on the relevant law.

Personally I don’t talk about international law because (as far as I am aware) I know absolutely nothing about it. Of course, I suppose I could if I wanted to, but I would have to be aware that I was probably wrong in ways I couldn’t even imagine.

I'm trying to imagine a world where only experts on topics were allowed to speak about such things and the "ignorant" who dared to posit any thoughts or ideas on the subjects were roundly castigated for it and squarely put back in their place. A bit too dystopian for my taste.

One is allowed to speak about whatever one wants. Other people do not have to take uninformed ramblings as objective facts.

A world where people’s groundless opinions couldn’t be challenged in case people’s feelings got hurt would surely be horrifying. No longer would we have the rule of law, or innocent until proven guilty - instead, you’re guilty if someone feels like you are, regardless of what the law says or what the facts are.

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/04/inside-the-the-viral-spread-of-a-coronavirus-origin-theory

Last edited by Sahn on 14 Apr 2020, 10:23 am, edited 1 time in total.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/04/how-to-make-china-pay/
How to Make China Pay

The WHO sells out to China, but we don’t have to.

One of the big questions facing the international community today is how to hold China legally and politically accountable for all its dishonesty and harm to people around the world. According to reports, U.S. intelligence agencies have confirmed to the White House that China has deliberately understated the number of its people who have contracted and died from the coronavirus epidemic. Such deceit follows Beijing’s recklessness in suppressing news of the origins, rapid spread, and lethality of COVID-19 in December and January. Chinese officials punished doctors who tried to warn of the outbreak in Wuhan, slowed identification and research on the virus, and allowed thousands to leave the region for the rest of the world.

If China were an individual, a company, or a law-abiding nation, it would be required to provide compensation for the harm it has inflicted globally. The United States alone may well suffer 200,000 or more deaths, billions in health-care costs, trillions in lost economic activity, and trillions more in new government spending. China’s failures render it legally liable under international law, but the COVID-19 crisis has exposed the crisis of ineffectiveness and corruption of international institutions. Instead of focusing on international law, the U.S. should thus protect its national interests by opting for the self-help mechanism.

International institutions provide no meaningful way to force China to remedy the harm it has caused. The United Nations Security Council, allegedly the supreme lawmaking and executive body in international law, cannot hold China to account because China and Russia exercise their permanent right to veto any Security Council resolution. China has rendered the U.N. impotent, even though U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has declared the COVID-19 pandemic the world’s most challenging crisis since World War II, as it has become a threat to international peace and security by shutting down swaths of the global economy and killing thousands, if not millions.

The U.S. and its allies also could try to sue China before an international tribunal, such as the International Court of Justice, although countries have never been sued for their violation of infectious-disease treaties. But even if a court were to judge China responsible for the injury caused by its handling of COVID-19, China would just ignore any decision. When the Permanent Court of Arbitration found that China’s construction of artificial islands in the South China Sea violated international law, Beijing simply ignored the ruling. A Chinese official declared that the judgment was “nothing more than a piece of paper.” We should expect nothing different from China in the case of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has only a weak, non-binding dispute-resolution mechanism, but China’s failure to promptly report the coronavirus outbreak to the organization violated the International Health Regulations, which require states to notify the WHO of potential public-health emergencies “of international concern.”

In fact, China has used its financial war chest to manipulate the WHO. China’s annual funding of the organization, which relies on voluntary donations, has increased to $86 million since 2014 (a rise of 52 percent). The WHO’s director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, has praised China’s leadership for its “openness to share information” with the international community and stated that China “has bought the world time” regarding the coronavirus. In January, the WHO parroted China’s line that there was no “clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel coronavirus.” The WHO has also followed the Chinese line on Taiwan, excluding it from membership and barring it from COVID-19 response meetings. While some scholars have suggested that a larger budget would make the WHO more effective, the Trump administration has rightly halved America’s contribution. Not only has the WHO become a Chinese client, but it also spends $200 million a year on luxury travel. The U.S. should investigate the WHO and its director general and expose their ties with China.

Rather than rely on corrupt, conflicted international institutions such as the WHO, the United States and its allies should engage in self-help. To protect against the next virus outbreak, the U.S. should create a new monitoring mechanism that can detect global health threats early, spread information about them reliably, and coordinate national efforts to develop a response. The International Atomic Energy Agency’s inspection regime for illicit nuclear weapons could provide a model. The U.S. and other wealthy nations could establish a similar inspection regime and provide financial assistance to developing nations that agree to participate. “Trust but verify” could become the watchword not just for Ronald Reagan’s nuclear-reduction treaties with the Soviets, but for a truly effective global health system.

The U.S. should also punish China for its coronavirus failings as an incentive for Beijing to mend its ways. Washington could persuade leading nations to join it in excluding Chinese scholars and students from scientific research centers and universities. China has used its Thousand Talents program to recruit scientists to help steal sensitive technology from American laboratories. Confucius Institutes have spread propaganda while masquerading as Chinese cultural centers. Senator Ted Cruz (R., Texas) and Representative Francis Rooney (R., Fla.) have introduced the Stop Higher Education Espionage and Theft Act to help colleges protect against threats by foreign actors.

According to China experts, President Xi Jinping depends on a humming economy and appeals to nationalism for his political legitimacy. The U.S. and its allies could strike at the heart of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) claim to a mandate from heaven by further ratcheting up the pressure on Beijing to adopt a more cooperative, transparent stance on public health by imposing economic sanctions and inflicting serious economic harm on China. The Trump administration could enhance its efforts to exclude China from buying and selling advanced technologies, such as microchips, artificial intelligence, or biotechnology. It took an important step in that direction this week by implementing new measures on chip exports to Huawei. In addition, the U.S. should use targeted sanctions on specific CCP leaders and their supporters by freezing their assets and prohibiting their travel. The administration needs to impose pain on CCP supporters so that they will want to change policy to alleviate their own economic losses.

In addition to halting any further trade cooperation with Beijing, the administration could also seize the assets of Chinese state-owned companies. Under its Belt and Road Initiative, Beijing reportedly has loaned billions to developing nations in Africa, Eastern Europe, and Latin America, and then taken over their strategic ports and facilities once the debts fall due. The U.S. could turn this strategy on its head by supporting the expropriation of these assets by legal process and the cancellation of these debts as compensation for coronavirus losses.

Seizing Chinese property would allow the United States to finally use international law to its advantage. Let China try to go to court and claim that the U.S., its allies, and the developing world have violated international rules. Let Beijing try to show that these nations have no right to compensation for its coverup of the coronavirus outbreak. Let the Chinese Communist Party try to claim, outside its own borders, just as it does within them, that it can deny common sense and blame the very victims of its wrongdoing for the worst public-health catastrophe in a century.

Interesting.

Or, we could just continue to coddle China and think it the "bees knees" as many do.

It hardly seems like a safe place to speculate does it?

Left-wing media yesterday: Only right-wing kooks think this virus came from a Chinese lab.

Left-wing media tomorrow: Trump ignored warnings about viruses escaping from Chinese labs.


U.S. Diplomats Warned about Safety Risks in Wuhan Labs Studying Bats Two Years before Coronavirus Outbreak

A scientist works in a lab researching coronavirus antibodies for in Beijing, China, March 30, 2020. (Thomas Peter/Reuters)
U.S. officials warned in January 2018 that the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s work on “SARS-like coronaviruses in bats,” combined with “a serious shortage” of proper safety procedures, could result in human transmission and the possibility of a “future emerging coronavirus outbreak.”

In a series of diplomatic cables, one of which was obtained by The Washington Post’s Josh Rogin, U.S. Embassy officials warned their superiors that the lab, which they had visited several times, posed a serious health risk that warranted U.S. intervention. The officials were concerned enough about their findings to categorize the communications as “Sensitive But Unclassified,” in order to keep them out of the public eye.

“During interactions with scientists at the WIV laboratory, they noted the new lab has a serious shortage of appropriately trained technicians and investigators needed to safely operate this high-containment laboratory,” the cable reads.

“The cable was a warning shot,” one U.S. official told Rogin. “They were begging people to pay attention to what was going on.”

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/u-s ... -outbreak/

In this matter, as in so many others, the story has become less about substantive questions and more about media cover-ups — the behavior of the media and their attempts at censorship is the story now.

From law professor Jonathan Turley – I highlight the key part at the end:

Red Flags: Chinese Laboratory in Wuhan Cited Two Years Ago For Dangerous Research On Bats and Coronavirus

When the coronavirus first appeared in Wuhan, China, many people immediately raised the concern that it might have been the result of a lab release from a controversial Chinese Lab: the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The lab was working on coronavirus and had raised concerns over its containment protocols. Then there was the fact that China hid the outbreak, arrested top doctors, and buried research on its origins. However, a narrative quickly emerged in countering President Donald Trump’s references to the “China virus.” People, including members of Congress, who referred to the lab were ridiculed on CNN and other outlets as conspiracy theorists like Politifact declared the theory to be utterly baseless. For some of us, the overwhelming media narrative seemed odd and artificial. It would seem obvious that a lab working on viruses in this area would be an obvious possible source. Now, after weeks of chastising those who mentioned the lab theory, another cache of documents and information shows that there are ample reasons to be suspicious and that concerns were raised two years ago within the State Department.

The Washington Post reported that embassy officials in January 2018 alerted U.S. officials of serious problems in the lab which was conducting risky research on bats, the very source of COVIT-19. The United Kingdom has issued a statement that they are seriously considering the lab as a possible source.

The first cable on Jan.19, 2018 flagged serious problems at a lab dealing with the world’s most dangerous viruses: “During interactions with scientists at the WIV laboratory, they noted the new lab has a serious shortage of appropriately trained technicians and investigators needed to safely operate this high-containment laboratory.”

The cables discuss Shi Zhengli, the head of the research project, who in November 2017 published a paper on horseshoe bats collected from a case in Yunnan province. That is the same bat population behind the first SARS coronavirus in 2003. The cable stated

“the researchers also showed that various SARS-like coronaviruses can interact with ACE2, the human receptor identified for SARS-coronavirus. This finding strongly suggests that SARS-like coronaviruses from bats can be transmitted to humans to cause SARS-like diseases. From a public health perspective, this makes the continued surveillance of SARS-like coronaviruses in bats and study of the animal-human interface critical to future emerging coronavirus outbreak prediction and prevention.”

Sound familiar?

The point is not that this proves that the virus originated in the lab. Rather, my interest is the overwhelming media narrative that emerged to deny that this was a credible potential source. That narrative emerged around the time that the media was hammering Trump for his use of “China virus” and “Wuhan virus.” That criticism was enhanced by the argument that the virus developed naturally. That could still be the case but it never seemed rational to me to discount the lab theory.

What is most amazing is that, if the Chinese allowed this virus to escape and then arrested doctors raising the alarm over the spread, it would be one of the greatest stories of our lifetime: a world pandemic caused by human error. Millions have been infected and thousands have died. If the cause was negligence by a totalitarian nation (that ignored warnings and punished doctors), this would be a story of the century.

But the media and their left-wing allies don't even want people asking the questions.

https://jonathanturley.org/2020/04/15/r ... ronavirus/

There are three competing theories:
1. Originated from wet market.
2. Originated from accidental release from nearby Wuhan biological laboratories.
3. Originated from planned release of man-made coronavirus.

When you look at #1, the wet market theory may have been a false flag [A false flag is a covert operation designed to deceive; the deception creates the appearance of a particular party, group, or nation being responsible for some activity, disguising the actual source of responsibility.]
The main problem is that this zoogenic origin theory is related to a specific type of bat called a horseshoe bats.

This type of bat is not located near Wuhan nor is this type of bat sold in the wet market. But it is used in both Chinese virology labs near Wuhan. One of these labs is almost adjacent to the wet market that is blamed for the initial infection.
So if the Chinese scientist and government really believed the zoogenic origin theory, when they took the city out of quarantine would you think that one of the first things they would do would be to ban the wet market? Well it is open.

And then you combine that with the following:

At least 5 people in China have disappeared, gotten arrested, or been silenced after speaking out about the coronavirus. One of those was Wuhan doctor Li Wenliang contracted the coronavirus after being silenced by local police. He died on February 7. Another Chinese doctor (Ai Fen) claimed her bosses tried to silence her early warnings about coronavirus appears to have disappeared — stirring fears that she was detained, according to new reports. Ai Fen had pointed out cases of the illness to colleagues at Wuhan Central Hospital, eight of whom were reprimanded themselves, Radio Free Asia (RFA) reported. The whereabouts of Ai, who is head of the emergency department, are now unknown, 60 Minutes Australia reported Monday.


Chinese laboratories identified a mystery virus as a highly infectious new pathogen by late December last year, but they were ordered to stop tests, destroy samples and suppress the news, a Chinese media outlet has revealed. Source: We Are in This Crisis Because of the Decisions of the Chinese Government

The Chinese government has been censoring research on the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, American weekly news magazine Newsweek reported on Sunday. According to the Newsweek, a cached version of one the pages of Wuhan-based China University of Geosciences' website indicates regulations have been updated so that all studies would require the approval of China's Ministry of Science and Technology before publication. "Academic papers on the traceability of the new coronavirus must be reviewed by the academic committee of the school before publication, focusing on the authenticity of the paper and whether it is suitable for publication," the regulations reportedly stated.
Source: China censoring research on coronavirus origins - report

All of these facts affirm my conviction that the Chinese government is grossly negligent in regard to the pandemic and as such should be held accountable.

On the Origins of the 2019-nCoV Virus, Wuhan, China is a paper by James Lyon-Weiler that analyzes the origin of the coronavirus COVID-19.

[James Lyons Weiler is a Senior Research Scientist at the University of Pittsburgh where he is the Scientific Director of the Bioinformatics Analysis Core. He earned his PhD at University of Nevada Reno in Ecology Evolution and Conservation Biology.]

The Institute for Pure and Applied Knowledge (IPAK) has conducted further, in-depth studies of the genomic an protein sequences of the 2019-ncov coronaviruses and their relatives and have compelling results of a key signature useful for identifying a particularly pathogenic coronaviruses lineage. Given that we have found this signature, a functional motif fingerprint, present in the HK-3 COV from 2005, we believe this exonerates recombination in the lab as a source of the virus. This does not exonerate accidental release, however. we are working to publish our findings.

To add to the intrigue, a Chinese Scientist was released from BSL-4 laboratory in Manitoba, Canada for violating protocols, allegedly sending samples of deadly viruses to mainland China.



In August of last year:

Canada’s National Microbiology Laboratory shipped Ebola and Henipah viruses to Beijing on March 31, raising suspicions from experts in biochemical warfare, who say they think China may use the pathogens to develop offensive biological agents.

The same lab is the focus of an ongoing investigation by the RCMP. The inquiry began following the recent dismissal of the head of the National Microbiology Laboratory’s (NML) Vaccine Development and Antiviral Therapies section in the Special Pathogens Program, virologist Xiangguo Qiu. Qiu, her colleague and husband Keding Cheng, and a number of her international students lost security clearance to their lab on July 5.

Ebola and Henipah viruses—classified as Category A and C bioterrorism agents by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, respectively—pose a threat to national security because of their potential to be easily disseminated, cause high morbidity and mortality rates, and deliver lasting blows to public health. They are also categorized as Risk Group 4 pathogens, meaning they can only be handled in a lab with the highest level of biosafety control, according to CBC News.

Source: Questions Surround Canadian Shipment of Deadly Viruses to China

So who is Xingguo Qiu?

In July 2019, a rare event occurred in Canada. Suspected of espionage for China, a group of Chinese virologists was forcibly evicted from the Canadian National Microbiology Laboratory (NML) in Winnipeg, where they had been running parts of the Special Pathogen Program of Canada’s public health agency. One of the procedures conducted by the team was the infection of monkeys with the most lethal viruses found on Earth. Four months prior to the Chinese team’s eviction, a shipment containing two exceptionally virulent viruses—Ebola and Nipah—was sent from the NML to China. When the shipment was traced, it was held to be improper and a “possible policy breach.”

The scope of the 2019 incident involving the discovery of a possibly serious security breach at Canada’s National Microbiology Laboratory (NML) in Winnipeg is much broader than the group of Chinese virologists who were summarily evicted from the lab. The main culprit behind the breach seems to have been Dr. Xiangguo Qiu, an outstanding Chinese scientist born in Tianjin.

Until recently the head of the Vaccine Development and Antiviral Therapies section of the Special Pathogens Program, Qiu received her MD degree from Hebei Medical University in China in 1985 and came to Canada for graduate studies in 1996. She was later affiliated with the Institute of Cell Biology and the Department of Pediatrics and Child Health at the University of Manitoba, Winnipeg. She was not engaged in the study of pathogens while at that institute.

But a shift took place in Qiu’s research work. Ever since 2006, she has been studying powerful viruses—Ebola most of all—at the NML. Both of the viruses that were surreptitiously shipped from the NML to China were studied by Qiu in 2014 (as well as other viruses, including Machupo, Junin, Rift Valley Fever, Crimean-Congo Hemorrhagic Fever, and Hendra). But she paid greatest attention to Ebola for the entirely legitimate aim of developing effective prophylaxis and treatment for the infected.

Inevitably, Qiu’s work included a variety of Ebola wild strains—among them the most virulent, which has an 80% lethality rate—and relied heavily on experimental infection of monkeys, including via the airways. She made remarkable strides, and was granted the Governor General’s Innovation Award in 2018.

Qiu is married to Chinese scientist Keding Cheng, a bacteriologist who shifted to virology and who is also affiliated with the NML. Qiu maintains a close bond with China and visits frequently, and many Chinese students from a notable range of Chinese scientific facilities have joined her at the NML over the past decade.

Of those facilities, four are believed to be involved in Chinese biological weapons development. They are:

Institute of Military Veterinary, Academy of Military Medical Sciences, Changchun
Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Chengdu Military Region
Wuhan Institute of Virology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Hubei
Institute of Microbiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing

All four facilities collaborated with Qiu on her Ebola research. The Institute of Military Veterinary also joined a study on the Rift Valley fever virus, while the Institute of Microbiology joined a study on the Marburg virus. Notably, the drug used in the latter study—Favipiravir—has been successfully tested by the Chinese Academy of Military Medical Sciences against Ebola and other viruses. (The drug has the designation JK-05; it is originally a Japanese patent registered in China in 2006.)

The Chinese interest in Ebola, Nipah, Marburg, and Rift Valley fever might possibly be beyond scientific and medical needs. Significantly, only the Nipah virus is naturally found in China or neighboring countries. That being the case, the interface between Qiu and China is a priori highly suspicious.

The shipment of the two viruses from NML to China is alarming unto itself, but it also raises the question of what other shipments of viruses or other items might have been made to China between 2006 and 2018.

SOURCE: China and Viruses: The Case of Dr. Xiangguo Qiu