Rising fascism in the US

Please show me where you think I said that.

For a while it was considered disinformation to say the virus originated in Wuhan.

Meaning that the epidemic originated in Wuhan or that the virus escaped from or was purposely grown in a lab in Wuhan?

The virus originated in Wuhan.
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The virus could’ve been man-made.

You're saying that, unequivocally, there was no transmission from live animals to humans in the "wet" market in Wuhan?

I'm not going to criticize you for saying that the pandemic began in Wuhan but I would challenge you to provide evidence that it was the result of a lab leak, if that's what you mean.

And that the particular virus we call COVID-19 escaped from the research lab in Wuhan where it was developed – either during routine research or intentionally as a bioweapon?

It seems like it’s a big fuss because everyone is poised to fight down any suggestion that the virus may have been created or accidentally released after isolation and experimentation in a Wuhan lab.

We don’t know more than that.

It’s bizarre.

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From what I can tell, a story that appeared more than a month ago in a London newspaper is the mother of all omissions when it comes to U.S. press coverage of the pandemic story. The London paper reported that the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, headed by virus expert Dr. Anthony Fauci, the President’s point man for the virus task force, gave a $3.7-million grant for the study of gain-of-function research at the now-infamous viral experimental lab in Wuhan, China! Indeed, reportedly Dr. Fauci, as head of the institute, approved the grant.

What is gain-of-function research? It is not as dull or benign as it sounds. Here is a definition found on Google: “Gain-of-function research (GOF) studies, or research that improves the ability of a pathogen to cause disease, help define the fundamental nature of human-pathogen interactions, thereby enabling assessment of the pandemic potential of emerging infectious agents, informing public health and preparedness efforts.”

That is a nice, nonjudgmental way of putting it. Put simply, as I understand it, GOF is a way for mankind to take an already nasty natural virus and make it much more potent or lethal in the lab. The supposed overarching goal is to use the mutated pathogen as a way to invent an effective vaccine. Some have called these “monster germs.”
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Now that the election is over, I'd like to direct some attention to a letter submitted by the paper's "Outdoors" reporter, back on the 4th of June. [2020] He suggested that a story originally published in an English newspaper was being suppressed for reporting that Dr. Fauci, as head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, gave a "$3.7-million grant for the study of gain-of-function research at the now-infamous viral experimental lab in Wuhan, China!" — his exclamation point. He goes on to suggest that Dr. Fauci did an end-run around the rules and outsourced dangerous research to China on our tax dollars. He ends his letter by questioning whether the COVID19 pandemic was triggered by a "horrendous scientific miscalculation" and that Dr. Fauci may be unwittingly complicit in the spread of the virus. He closes by saying, "Sooner or later the story will be told in the United States. It is just too astonishing and far reaching to be suppressed or ignored."

Doing a bit of my own research I noticed that the story was primarily covered by conservative and anti-vaccination websites, the "English newspaper" was a tabloid not known for in-depth reporting, and that conspiracy purveyor Rudy Giuliani raised the issue in a tweet on Apr. 26 suggesting that Pres. Obama may have granted an exception to this prohibited grant. Interestingly, in his letter, he complains that "the COVID-19 news reportage seems to be hoving to partisan lines" — and then gets into the act himself!

This story was neither suppressed nor ignored. Basically it was simply misreported. The United States did not give $3.7 million to a lab in Wuhan, China. The actual amount was just under $600,000 and it was permitted. The grant did not fund "gain-of-function" research. Within days of Giuliani's tweet, the story had been checked out and found to be false. There's still no evidence that the virus had anything other than a natural zoonotic (non-human to human) origin. But in the current politicized atmosphere where common sense measures to protect public health are being questioned and medical experts are suspected of promoting policies specifically to hurt our economy, it's not surprising that specious claims and groundless doubts continue to be kept alive by partisans and those with a political axe to grind.

You are impossible to have a reasonable discussion with. You have all these innuendos, and it doesn't matter who worked there or had a connection, (distraction anyone?) what matters is that it is a serious accusation to hint that a lab in China (or anywhere) are experimenting with man-made viruses and that is what caused the COVID-19 pandemic.

We should all be fighting for government transparency rather than fighting to suppress important information.

But it was reported the Biden administration had shut down a US state department investigation, set up by President Trump, into the lab-leak theory.

President Joe Biden’s administration shut down a clandestine State Department operation intended to prove the lab-based origins of Covid-19 over concerns about the work’s poor quality and its politicized, premature and selective use by Trump and his allies to blame the pandemic on China, according to CNN.

The only thing that bothers me about your opinion about this is you forwarding that questions are designed to foment doubt and distrust.

I’m sort of dumbfounded by your question.

Since I was a teenager, whenever something goes wrong in my life, when I find myself in situation I don’t like, the first thing I do is trace the origin of the error—to learn from it and avoid its recurrence.

Is this not a universal practice?

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I’m sort of dumbfounded by your question.

Since I was a teenager, whenever something goes wrong in my life, when I find myself in situation I don’t like, the first thing I do is trace the origin of the error—to learn from it and avoid its recurrence.

Is this not a universal practice?

I'm not sure why you are dumbfounded. Problem solving to prevent something from occurring again needs to look at the contributing circumstances, and the decision making processes (if humans are involved).


Regarding the 'source' - I find this vague. Is the source:
- the person responsible? (do you then ignore each of the contributing factors?)
- the start of the sequence? (do you then ignore each other step in the sequence? And what if the start of the sequence involved 3, 4 or 5 or more interacting factors?)

In the source 'method', you achieve nothing when applying it to Covid19
- did you actually managed to find 'the source' (dubious in these sorts of matters)
- then managed to a solution to the source problem (highly dubious)
- how then, if you found a solution, do you enforce it not happening anywhere in the entire world? (impossible)
At each stage, the answer is dubious to highly dubious, until you get to the impossible (preventing it happening anywhere in the world)

In the contributing factors method, you face almost the exact same issues.

There is a fact of life that many people won't admit - we cannot yet understand everything, and we cannot utterly control everything and everyone. All of this would be essential to 'the source' having any meaning in preventing something like Covid19 from ever arising again.

I'm wondering why is it important where it started?

I'm not for censorship at all of these sorts of things, bnt where it started is essentially meaningless, and what is achieved by talking about it like it has some meaning?