Yesterday was a busy day for me. I was scheduled to pick up the truck in the afternoon and I had to go to the bank in the morning to get the cash. My bank is not in my town, I had to go down the road, and since I was there anyway I did a bit of 'essential' shopping on the way.
Picking up the truck involved getting a ride with J to the truck owner's house and then hanging out for an hour or so just yakking. It was a nice sunny day so hanging out was not so bad except that I really had to go to the bathroom and was thirsty as all get out. J is diabetic and was overdue for his pills so we both had 'personal problems' being there, but I guess it was part of the deal. The truck owner loves the truck and is very reluctant to see it leave, but he needs the money. J told me that the only reason he sold it to me was because J assured him I would take care of it the same way he did. That could be just a line but I believe J, I felt the same way about my old S10.
When I got home J came by after taking care of his own issues and installed the radio in the truck. It never did get an oil change so I scheduled one for next week. I called around about insurance, I was thinking of going with CAA because they offer a cheaper price than my current insurance company, but I spent so much time on hold just trying to get a quote that I thought better of it. The extra cost is worth it to have a local broker who answers the phone without resorting to a complicated menu of options, not to mention lengthy on hold times.
So now I have two vehicles in the driveway and am thinking of keeping both, one for summer and one for winter. The underside of the truck is in pristine condition, it would be a shame to expose it to Nova Scotia road salt.
It stays light so late now that after supper there were still hours of daylight left in the day and I hadn't gotten much exercise so I went for a walk. I visited my Bubble buddies about a 20 minute walk away and sat in their backyard watching their new puppy at play. The puppy is much bolder now and her teeth are needle sharp. She definitely needs puppy training but nothing is open at the moment. The vet also recommends waiting until all her vaccinations are in effect before she socializes with other dogs. Same as people.
Then my friend said something surprising. He mentioned reading an article about how the SARS-Cov2 virus (aka Covid-19 virus) is more than likely to be lab-generated. Among all us anti-Trump types that is a positively heretical thing to say, and I asked him what the evidence was. He said he was not science-oriented so he couldn't really say but he thought if I looked it up I might be able to understand the argument since I have a science background. He couldn't remember off hand what the article was and I didn't want to go in his house to see his computer since I have spent the last few days hanging out with non-Bubble friends. So I went home to look it up.
Well, the jury is still out, but when Trump said the virus might have originated in a Chinese lab, he definitely had access to suggestive information. He just kind of shot his mouth off about that without naming sources or verifiable facts. Because, if true, then American military and scientific organizations are also implicated, not just Chinese. Also, the PCR test used to identify Covid infections came so fast after the pandemic started (like, about a month) and is so specific and was so quickly peer-reviewed and published, that the origins of the test are also in question.
Anyway, I found a couple of articles in two different places that have describe such a scenario. The sources are not rock-solid virtuous tellers of the truth, but they are interesting and suggestive. I provide links below, look them up, look up the authors and the websites and make your own decisions. These days that's about all you can do.
We are all mostly aware that 'the military-scientific complexes' of several (if not many) countries engage in biological terrorism research. With the ability to not only sequence genomes of many different organisms including viruses and the technology to modify such genomes, scientists now can and do create genetically modified organisms (GMO). All over the world there are labs for doing so, some benign and some not so benign. Depending on how dangerous the research is considered to be, biological labs have different levels of lab safety protocols in place, ranging from BSL1 to BSL4. BSL4 is the most restrictive and therefore the most protective; the chances of an accident happening in a lab certified at BSL4 are very small.
However.
Scientists are human, every last one of them. One of the things we humans do is cut corners. BSL4 is uncomfortable and slows your work down by a lot. It involves wearing spacesuit type coverings and going through elaborate cleaning rituals and being tethered by air tubes and wearing gloves that make handling things difficult and headgear that make seeing things difficult. Not to mention hot and sweaty and awkward. There have been accidental releases of pathogenic viruses from BSL4 labs ever since that kind of research started, including a smallpox release that resulted in a number of illnesses and deaths. For the most part these accidental releases have been covered up and the resulting damage contained.
There is a type of research called Gain of Function, which involves adding a pathogenic function to an otherwise relatively benign organism. This means that, say, a coronavirus that is incapable of infecting humans, or causes only mild illness, is genetically modified to be lethally infectious and contagious in humans. The virus is weaponized. Once the deadly virus has been created the scientists then work on a vaccine for it. President Obama banned such research in the US, however there is an escape clause in the ban that allows some research to continue to be funded, particularly by the Pentagon.
So, what if such Gain of Function research was being done in a lab far far away but partially funded by an American organization interested in such things, but due to the BSL4 protocols being so onerous, there were lapses. What if that lab was, as many of these labs are, located in a densely populated city at the centre of a highly active air transportation network?
On the other hand, what would it take to get a virus from a bat cave hundreds of kilometers away to the city where the illness first occurred in humans? Especially since so far no one has yet to isolate SARS-Cov2 in the wild? Yes, SARS-Cov2 is very similar to coronaviruses that infect those bats but are not infectious or contagious in humans. But the necessary evolution from a bat virus to a human virus is complicated, at least as complicated as creating a pathogenic virus in a lab and allowing it to escape into the local human population.
SARS-Cov2 contains a small structure called a furin cleavage site in the spike on its outer coat that is the means of breaking through human cell membranes. Without the furin cleavage site the virus would be harmless to humans. The furin cleavage site on the SARS-Cov2 virus is fairly unique in its genomic structure, it is not seen in any coronaviruses related to SARS-Cov2. However other forms of furin cleavage sites are seen in viruses that are contagious and infectious in humans. Scientists have the ability with CRISPR technology to create and insert a furin cleavage site into a coronavirus. It could have evolved naturally, but so far there is no evidence of that.
China has sealed the lab records of the scientist at the head of such research in the BSL4 lab located in Wuhan, so we will never know for sure. Chinese scientists and officials have been cooperative to a certain extent, but vigourously deny culpability. Many other scientists and public figures have denied categorically that this happened, or could have happened. Because, if it were known to have happened, then public outrage would be pretty darn, well, outrageous.
Trump may not have understood the scientific or political details, let alone the need for secrecy, but he would have had access to this kind of information. He was inclined to say publicly whatever he thought played to his electoral base, and conspiracy theories definitely play to his base.
My sources are linked below. The author of the first link has a checkered past but is not altogether unreliable. I have not found any critical reviews of this particular article, but since it is relatively recent that may come. It is long and technical and far more specific and detailed than I have been, so read at your own risk:
https://nicholaswade.medium.com/origin-of-covid-following-the-clues-6f03564c038
The following link gets a middling review as reliable. Again, read at your own risk:
https://www.independentsciencenews.org/news/peter-daszaks-ecohealth-alliance-has-hidden-almost-40-million-in-pentagon-funding/
5 comments:
i look forward to the day we can discuss any issue without he who shall not be named in it. I think they know it was lab generated but the reasons would be harder to prove-- to develop a vaccine or as a new kind of war? There are some good books out there on China and it's 100 year plan. We btw don't even seem to have a good 5 year plan. What does our military know for instance about flying objects that seem beyond our technology. They do not have to come from other planets but is some nation way ahead of us on war technology? I read that China has rocket systems way superior to what we have. True or not true? About the virus, whether they deliberately released it can't be proven but they did lie to begin with saying it didn't spread between humans when they knew different. They also blocked travel from Wuhan to much of China but sent people around the world, who may have had no idea why. People need to separate a government from the people in a country-- including our own whatever it might be. What worries me about China is my fear we won't try to stop them if they try to take Taiwan as they did Hong Kong. Remember they broke their word there too... That government wants to run things and is definitely setting out to do it.
Yes China is an interesting place and you are absolutely right that we meed to separate the government from the people, which I think applies to many places. The media likes to use short form, "the USA did this" or "China did that" and we all tend to follow that custom. The history of China and its neighbouring countries is very long and ongoing. I read somewhere that for security reasons the Chinese government wants to control the South China Sea, and that creates a lot of tension among the countries surrounding that body of water. Taiwan is a democracy and it would be a shame to see it subsumed in an autocracy? Non-democratic country? But I feel that is a problem for those countries to resolve, it would also be a shame for the US to get dragged into another Vietnam.
The 'Chinese problem' keeps changing with each change in leadership, and while the current leader seems to have secured some permanency, he is as mortal as the rest of us. My impression of Chinese history is that they tend toward isolationism but having been forced (more or less) to participate in the rest of the world, they want to maintain their autonomy, and they do that by attempting to dominate all their international relations. I am pretty sure they have no plans for invading any non-adjacent independent countries, but for historical reasons they do not see Tibet, Hong Kong or Taiwan as independent. Japan once invaded China and a lot of Chinese people suffered under Japanese occupation, so they don't have warm fuzzy feelings in that direction. Canada is having a lot of difficulty dealing with China over the Meng Wanzhou affair and the two Michaels, feeling here has turned against China by a lot. Unfortunately Trump had a lot to do with creating those problems, Canada is caught between two superpowers. We hope Biden will be able to help negotiate those issues but I am not holding my breath.
As for flying objects, I haven't really read up on that so I have no opinion.
Hi, Farm Boss here; I sense you have a "balanced view" of China and World History.
The Michael Pillsbury book "The Hundred Year Marathon" has a good over-view of Chinese strategy. I have long followed Chinese medicine and Sun Pin's "Art of War". The principles are simple and to the point!
Western civilization appears to be very self centered and unwilling to see the see the goals and logic of 'other civilizations' ..Greeks destroying the library of Alexandria and Spanish the 'native' teachings for their own power. China is not different in action. They and India have 5000 years of conflicting ideas.
Chinese leadership appears to understand that autocratic government is more 'efficient' than Democracy.. not that either of us really have Democracy. Thus, they can do what they want ...up..to their actions turning world economies against them. However, they now control a lot of essential materials and products. Are WE, willing to go without to get "Independence? I doubt it. I and Rain, see the world very different than 'modern urban' folks. We are back country folks in a fast moving society that has lost it's roots. Both of us went to primary schools with very few students. I had 6 students in my 8th grade class. When we moved from the farm ..there were 220 students in the freshman class at high school. Shock !.
The need for basic understanding has not changed
. Very few today seem to care.
FB
Thanks Farm Boss, I found that book in a local library and have a 'hold' on it. Look forward to reading it. World history is definitely an interest of mine. Democracy has its flaws, we all struggle to make it work with varying degrees of success. For most of us democratic government has pretty much devolved to intermittent voting, and the choosing of the lesser of two or more evils. Many young people don't even bother anymore. Autocracy can be pretty efficient, but it has its flaws as well. Hitler and Stalin come to mind.
Interesting dialogue here about the world situation, China, autocracy vs democracy or our capitalistic democratic republic version. Have been intrigued with the origins of this pandemic for some time so appreciate your discussion, links, etc.
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