Jul 27, 2021, 14:10
One of the most intelligent men to ever walk the face of the Earth once said something that was, not surprisingly, really smart: The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.
It is a shame Albert Einstein is not alive today because he could deliver that message to many people in the United States media and political elites who are determined to convince you and me that the "lab leak" theory to explain the origin of the coronavirus pandemic must remain at the forefront of our thoughts.
They keep saying the lab leak theory is credible, and the available evidence continues to refute this. This never-ending cycle does seem to fit Einstein's description of insanity.
Allow me to put my cards on the table: I am no scientist, but I believe the investigation already undertaken by the scientific community has made abundantly clear that it is highly unlikely – if not improbable – that the lab leak theory has any credibility. I am confident in stating that the top notch work already done by scientists refutes any effort by anyone to point a finger of blame at the highly trained professional crew that worked inside the Wuhan Institute of Virology when the coronavirus pandemic began.
Yes, I know by making such a statement I will be accused of being a sellout, someone who is happy to do Beijing's bidding while ignoring reality. My reply is simple. The facts that we have at the moment are quite clear: The lab leak theory lacks any substance. By extension, the only reason I can see to continue pursuing it with such vigor is because there remains a chronic need in the West to undermine the credibility of China on the global stage.
Of course, at the end of the day, neither your opinion nor mine matters. The facts do. And I repeat that the facts we have are rather obvious.
As a result, you cannot blame Chinese officials for being exasperated. Week in and week out they must respond to the latest lab leak pronouncement emanating in the West. But a few days ago, the Chinese decided to fight back. Speaking to a room full of journalists, Vice Minister of the National Health Commission Zeng Yixin basically said enough is enough.
He forcefully told the gathered media that China can't accept the World Health Organization's plan to restart an investigation into the work done by the scientists inside the Wuhan Institute of Virology. He correctly stated that no legitimate scientific effort can follow from an investigation now, roughly 20 months after the beginning of the pandemic. Vice Minister Zeng was joined by the institute's biosafety director Yuan Zhiming, who said, "The Wuhan Institute of Virology has never designed, made or leaked the novel coronavirus."
We know such statements never will be good enough for Western leaders, so none of us should be surprised that the White House was quick to dismiss what the Chinese officials had said. "Deeply disappointed" were the words used to describe how American officials felt after hearing from Zeng and Yuan. The White House spokesperson soon added she believed it was "irresponsible and, frankly, dangerous" for the Chinese to rebuff the World Health Organization.
We cannot forget one important reason the U.S. continues to advance the lab leak idea. A Wall Street Journal report claimed at least three scientists inside the Wuhan lab had become ill in November 2019, mere weeks before the virus began spreading rapidly throughout China and then the world. Official Washington wants us to remember that potentially dubious reporting, while it also appears disinterested in listening to the words of an Australian scientist who was working alongside the Chinese inside the Wuhan lab in late 2019.
Dr. Danielle Anderson gave a lengthy interview to the Bloomberg News agency about one month ago, and she provided some of the most important evidence dismissing the Wall Street Journal's reporting.
Dr. Anderson said, "If people were sick, I assume that I would have been sick – and I wasn't."
She also told Bloomberg that she was tested for coronavirus soon after she left China, and the test came back negative.
Dr. Anderson left China in late 2019 once a grant associated with her work had come to an end. But only weeks later, at an important scientific gathering, she said not one person in attendance had heard of any Chinese scientists being ill. "Scientists are gossipy and excited," Dr. Anderson told Bloomberg. "There was nothing strange from my point of view going on at that point."
What are we left with? A recognition of raw politics. The West must press ahead with the lab leak idea because it aligns well with its longstanding narrative that the Chinese cannot be trusted. Recognizing that the Western media likes controversy, continued calls for another investigation can be packaged by the media to affirm to their audiences that there had to be something fishy going on inside that lab. Why else would American officials keep demanding an investigation?
Yes, Mr. Einstein, this is crazy.
By Anthony Moretti is an associate professor at the Department of Communication and Organizational Leadership of Robert Morris University.
Source: CGTN
They never ever needed to verify nothing while they were they bullied the world.
Suddenly, the Middle Kingdom is putting a rather embarrassing stop to this century old believe: "They're used to it".
The real truth will never emerge, America with little help from EU is not interested in reality. Their simplistic leadership is still figuring they might be able to make China the scapegoat for covid 19 as they succeeded with the 1918 Spanish flu with originated in an US military camp In the United States, some 292,000 deaths were reported ...
Italy recorded its first two foreign Covid-19 cases involving two Chinese tourists arriving from Wuhan in Rome on Jan. 23, 2020. After banning flights from China on Jan. 31, 2020, Italy saw its first local COVID-19 patient detected on Feb. 21, 2020 in Bergamo, a little town near Milan, in the northern region of Lombardy which quickly became the epicenter of the Covid-19 pandemic in Italy, as there had been ZERO local Covid-19 cases prior to this discovery.
From Jan. 31st to Feb. 21, 2020, foreign Covid-19 cases involving the Wuhan strain had died out in Italy. Three weeks later, Italy recorded its first local Covid-19 case involving the new Italian strain which carried the D614G mutation absent from the Wuhan strain. Research studies have shown that the D614G mutation somehow made the Italian strain and its later European variants 10x more infectious, thus spreading rapidly throughout Europe, the USA and reaching Asia, accounting for all the Covid-19 cases worldwide by the end of May 2020. By this time, Covid-19 cases involving the Wuhan strain had died out in China.
Phylogenetic analysis has shown that the Italian strain is too different to have descended from the Wuhan strain, as both strains are in fact siblings which evolved independently of each other from a common ancestor. Remember the two Chinese tourists from Wuhan diagnosed with Covid-19 involving the Wuhan strain in Rome on Jan. 23, 2020? No other local Covid-19 cases were found after flights were banned from China on Jan. 31st, 2020. That being the case, there was not enough time nor enough cases for the Wuhan strain in Rome to have mutated to become the Italian strain in Bergamo. In other words, BOTH strains had appeared almost simultaneously with the Wuhan strain being reported first while the Italian strain being discovered thereafter. That means they must have evolved independently of each other for some months prior to their discovery as attested to by research studies showing the presence of Covid-19 antibodies in hospital patients as well as wastewater samples in Italy and Spain respectively as early as March 2019!
As the Italian strain was never found in Wuhan, how could Italian strain have come out of Wuhan, China but ended up in Bergamo, Italy? The so-called 'Wuhan lab leak theory' implies that both strains must have come out of Wuhan which is utter nonsense because the Italian strain is NOT descended from the Wuhan strain, based on phylogenetic analysis.
US had Trump, whose mind is actively focused on seizing any opportunity over the horizon as money making. That helped drove and is still driving the number of deaths due to COVID-19. Unfortunately, US citizens have to bear with it. No guilt of any US president!
GREAT JOB! WELL DONE!
"Since Italy banned flights from China on Jan. 31, 2020" The virus has been labelled Covid 19 for the reason that's the year when the first outbreak began in Wuhan. That's why Italian authorities stopped direct flights from Europe to northern Italy early in 2020, but that was a case of shutting the gate after the horse had bolted. That's why WHO investigated the virus outbreak in Wuhan. Period.
Trump did in fact ban flights from China on Feb. 1, 2020 which caused Covid-19 cases involving the Wuhan strain to drop dramatically thereafter. Yet when the Covid-19 cases involving the Italian strain exploded in the USA, Trump suddenly changed his tune from praising Xi for China's handling of the Covid-19 pandemic to one accusing China of spreading the 'Wuhan Virus'.
That is 'fake news' because the Wuhan strain had died out by the time the Italian strain spread all over Europe and the USA, and eventually reached Asia. That's why Asia including China experienced a resurgence of the Covid-19 pandemic in May 2020, all caused by the Italian strain which had mutated into the various variants, as documented by hundreds if not thousands of research studies.
Since Italy banned flights from China on Jan. 31, 2020, the Italian strain which appeared three weeks later in Bergamo could not have evolved from the Wuhan strain, as indicated by phylogenetic analysis of their RNA. This being the case, all talk of the 'Wuhan Lab leak theory' is non-sequitur as the Italian strain could not have come from Wuhan. Both the Wuhan and Italian strains must have evolved independently of each other, after descending from a common ancestral strain of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus.
You can't have two different strains appearing almost simultaneously in two distant locations and then claim that one of those locations is the common origin of both strains. That is nonsense, PERIOD.
The so-called 'Wuhan lab leak theory' is yet another example of 'Fake News' by the Western MSM which is being driven by its anti-Chinese agenda. The fact that multiple strains of SARS-CoV-2 arose independently of each other in various places as distant from each other as Wuhan, China and Bergamo, Italy during the same period which has been thoroughly studied by scientific researchers all over the world is completley ignored by this latest US-instigated 'witch-hunt'. In fact, the Covid-19 pandemic was not caused by the Wuhan strain but by the Italian strain which arose in Bergamo in late Feb. 2020 which then spread throughout Europe in early March 2020 and reached North America in late March 2020. Due to Trump's intransigence, the US government did not take any preventative measures until the Covid-19 pandemic reached alarming levels in the USA. Because Trump did in fact ban all flights from China as early as Feb. 1, that means the Covid-19 cases which multiplied like wildfire in the USA came from Europe, not from China.
Since the Italian strain could not have originated in Wuhan, that implies a natural rather than a man-made origin.
"He correctly stated that no legitimate scientific effort can follow from an investigation now, roughly 20 months after the beginning of the pandemic." That clearly means that there is no point investigating any labs in USA or of ever finding a scientifically verifiable identification of the origins of this virus.
I believe it is more like conditioning a behaviour across the world according to Pavlov's discovery of behaviourial pattern from a dog. The US government believes that by applying this theory, through its media and constant accusations against China, will condition the world to react negatively and aggressively towards anything Chinese or related to China.
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