There are many theories on the origin of Covid-19 and how it was spread. China is blaming the Americans and the US and most of the rest of the world are blaming China.
I am not here going into the "how" of it's transmission, but looking at discussion around its origin or invention, if you like. This is important for pundits opining on the matter because the wrong attribution can see opiners wiped off social media, de-monetized, or have previous research burned.
Some posters have been claiming that the virus originated in the US. Such posters and bloggers have been sanctioned in one way or another. A fact check was recently carried out by USA TODAY which ascertained that the virus originated in China and that it was transmitted by animals to humans in the wet markets in Wuhan - possibly by bats and/or pagolin [scaly ant eater]. DON'T DARE POST ANY OTHER THEORY. Not even the suggestion that it was released from the virology labs in Wuhan either deliberately or accidentally. [The most reasonable cause, excluding nefarious intent which may be likely, is that infected lab animals were sold to traders since it is apparently common knowledge that this occurs for big money]. I am well aware of the many other theories that are considered CT's, and personally I think they ought be free to air and to let people decide, but the tech platforms won't allow it. Here is the [rather flimsy] fact checking article, but my punch-line comes at the end.....
Fact check: Coronavirus originated in China, not elsewhere, researchers and studies say
Matthew Brown
The claim: The coronavirus originated outside China
A piece published by the Centre for Research on Globalization and circulated on social media claims the virus known as COVID-19 originated outside China.
That March 11 posting makes references to a March 4 post on the same site by the same author that claims the virus "may have originated in the U.S." Titled “A Shocking Update. Did The Virus Originate in the U.S.?” the earlier post makes several questionable claims about the origins of COVID-19 while misrepresenting cited research and media reports.
The central claim of both the March 4 and 11 posts — that COVID-19 may have been brought to China by the U.S. Army — was recently echoed by a Chinese government official on Twitter. The Chinese official's claims were presented without evidence.
Several of the central statements in the March 4 article misrepresent cited research or make unclear assertions. USA TODAY reached out to Larry Romanoff, author of both posts, for clarification on several of the claims made, but was unable to reach him for comment.
What researchers say: COVID-19 originated in China
The consensus among researchers studying the spread of the virus pinpoints COVID-19’s likely origin to a “wet market,” or live animal market, in Wuhan, China. Though experts have not ruled out the possibility that the pathogen could have been brought to the market by an already infected person, there is no evidence to suggest COVID-19 originated outside the country.
The origin theory for the virus is supplemented by preliminary research into the disease’s genome, as well as the origins of similar diseases. Researchers at the Shanghai Public Health Clinical Centre published the genome of COVID-19 two weeks after cases were reported in late December 2019. Gene sequencing analysis strongly suggests the virus originated in bats and was transferred to humans through a yet-unidentified intermediary species. In early February, Chinese researchers published work suggesting the intermediary species may have been the pangolin (also called a scaly anteater), though this work has not yet undergone a peer-reviewed study.
The conditions for such interspecies pathogen transfer are ripe in wet markets, which are common in parts of Asia, Africa and Latin America. Severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, resulted from a virus transferring from bats to civet cats and then humans. SARS, discovered in 2003, originated at a wet market similar to the one now suspected to be the origin of COVID-19.
Other claims and theories about the origins of COVID-19, including that the virus was brought to by the U.S. Army during the Military World Games in October in Wuhan, are unsubstantiated and not supported by research into the virus.
An article circulating on social media claims COVID-19 did not originate in China. We rate this claim FALSE because it is not supported by research. The consensus among experts researching the virus places the beginning of its spread at the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan, China.
WHAT I DON'T KNOW IS WHETHER THE ABOVE PATENT IS FOR THIS STRAIN OF VIRUS, IF IT IS THE BASE MODEL FOR THE "NOVEL" CORONA VIRUS, OR IF WHAT WAS PATENTED BEARS NO RELATION TO THE PRESENT VIRUS IN QUESTION. BUT, INTERESTING NO LESS.
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EDIT: ADDITIONAL PURPORTED EVIDENCE [19.3.20] From a web site which the Patriot Right claims is an anti-Western agitprop site. [At the end of this article, I will post this claim from The National Pulse]. Readers can make their own judgement.
COVID-19: Further Evidence that the Virus Originated in the US
It would be useful to read this prior article for background: China’s Coronavirus: A Shocking Update. Did The Virus Originate in the US? By Larry Romanoff, March 04, 2020 *** As readers will recall from the earlier article (above), Japanese and Taiwanese epidemiologists and pharmacologists have determined that the new coronavirus could have originated in the US since that country is the only one known to have all five types – from which all others must have descended. Wuhan in China has only one of those types, rendering it in analogy as a kind of “branch” which cannot exist by itself but must have grown from a “tree”. The Taiwanese physician noted that in August of 2019 the US had a flurry of lung pneumonias or similar, which the Americans blamed on ‘vaping’ from e-cigarettes, but which, according to the scientist, the symptoms and conditions could not be explained by e-cigarettes. He said he wrote to the US officials telling them he suspected those deaths were likely due to the coronavirus. He claims his warnings were ignored. Immediately prior to that, the CDC totally shut down the US Military’s main bio-lab at Fort Detrick, Maryland, due to an absence of safeguards against pathogen leakages, issuing a complete “cease and desist” order to the military. It was immediately after this event that the ‘e-cigarette’ epidemic arose.
We also had the Japanese citizens infected in September of 2019, in Hawaii, people who had never been to China, these infections occurring on US soil long before the outbreak in Wuhan but only shortly after the locking down of Fort Detrick. Then, on Chinese social media, another article appeared, aware of the above but presenting further details. It stated in part that five “foreign” athletes or other personnel visiting Wuhan for the World Military Games (October 18-27, 2019) were hospitalised in Wuhan for an undetermined infection. The article explains more clearly that the Wuhan version of the virus could have come only from the US because it is what they call a “branch” which could not have been created first because it would have no ‘seed’. It would have to have been a new variety spun off the original ‘trunk’, and that trunk exists only in the US. (1) There has been much public speculation that the coronavirus had been deliberately transmitted to China but, according to the Chinese article, a less sinister alternative is possible. If some members of the US team at the World Military Games (18-27 October) had become infected by the virus from an accidental outbreak at Fort Detrick it is possible that, with a long initial incubation period, their symptoms might have been minor, and those individuals could easily have ‘toured’ the city of Wuhan during their stay, infecting potentially thousands of local residents in various locations, many of whom would later travel to the seafood market from which the virus would spread like wildfire (as it did). That would account also for the practical impossibility of locating the legendary “patient zero” – which in this case has never been found since there would have been many of them. Next, Daniel Lucey, an infectious disease expert at Georgetown University in Washington, said in an article in Science magazine that the first human infection has been confirmed as occurring in November 2019, (not in Wuhan), suggesting the virus originated elsewhere and then spread to the seafood markets. “One group put the origin of the outbreak as early as 18 September 2019.” (2) (3)
Wuhan seafood market may not be source of novel virus spreading globally. Description of earliest cases suggests the outbreak began elsewhere. The article states:
“As confirmed cases of a novel virus surge around the world with worrisome speed, all eyes have so far focused on a seafood market in Wuhan, China, as the origin of the outbreak. But a description of the first clinical cases published in The Lancet on Friday challenges that hypothesis.” (4) (5)
The paper, written by a group of Chinese researchers from several institutions, offers details about the first 41 hospitalized patients who had confirmed infections with what has been dubbed 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV). In the earliest case, the patient became ill on 1 December 2019 and had no reported link to the seafood market, the authors report. “No epidemiological link was found between the first patient and later cases”, they state. Their data also show that, in total, 13 of the 41 cases had no link to the marketplace. “That’s a big number, 13, with no link”, says Daniel Lucey . . . (6) Earlier reports from Chinese health authorities and the World Health Organization had said the first patient had onset of symptoms on 8 December 2019 – and those reports simply said “most” cases had links to the seafood market, which was closed on 1 January. (7) “Lucey says if the new data are accurate, the first human infections must have occurred in November 2019 – if not earlier – because there is an incubation time between infection and symptoms surfacing. If so, the virus possibly spread silently between people in Wuhan – and perhaps elsewhere – before the cluster of cases from the city’s now-infamous Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market was discovered in late December. “The virus came into that marketplace before it came out of that marketplace”, Lucey asserts. “China must have realized the epidemic did not originate in that Wuhan Huanan seafood market”, Lucey told Science Insider. (8) Kristian Andersen is an evolutionary biologist at the Scripps Research Institute who has analyzed sequences of 2019-nCoV to try to clarify its origin. He said the scenario was “entirely plausible” of infected persons bringing the virus into the seafood market from somewhere outside. According to the Science article,
“Andersen posted his analysis of 27 available genomes of 2019-nCoV on 25 January on a virology research website. It suggests they had a “most recent common ancestor” – meaning a common source – as early as 1 October 2019.” (9)
It was interesting that Lucey also noted that MERS was originally believed to have come from a patient in Saudi Arabia in June of 2012, but later and more thorough studies traced it back to an earlier hospital outbreak of unexplained pneumonia in Jordan in April of that year. Lucey said that from stored samples from people who died in Jordan, medical authorities confirmed they had been infected with the MERS virus. (10) This would provide impetus for caution among the public in accepting the “official standard narrative” that the Western media are always so eager to provide – as they did with SARS, MERS, and ZIKA, all of which ‘official narratives’ were later proven to have been wrong. In this case, the Western media flooded their pages for months about the COVID-19 virus originating in the Wuhan seafood market, caused by people eating bats and wild animals. All of this has been proven wrong. Not only did the virus not originate at the seafood market, it did not originate in Wuhan at all, and it has now been proven that it did not originate in China but was brought to China from another country. Part of the proof of this assertion is that the genome varieties of the virus in Iran and Italy have been sequenced and declared to have no part of the variety that infected China and must, by definition, have originated elsewhere. It would seem the only possibility for origination would be the US because only that country has the “tree trunk” of all the varieties. And it may therefore be true that the original source of the COVID-19 virus was the US military bio-warfare lab at Fort Detrick. This would not be a surprise, given that the CDC completely shut down Fort Detrick, but also because, as I related in an earlier article, between 2005 and 2012 the US had experienced 1,059 events where pathogens had been either stolen or escaped from American bio-labs during the prior ten years. *
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Larry Romanoff is a retired management consultant and businessman. He has held senior executive positions in international consulting firms, and owned an international import-export business. He has been a visiting professor at Shanghai’s Fudan University, presenting case studies in international affairs to senior EMBA classes. Mr. Romanoff lives in Shanghai and is currently writing a series of ten books generally related to China and the West. He can be contacted at: 2186604556@qq.com. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
HERE IS THE OBJECTION TO THE ABOVE "EVIDENCE" FROM THE NATIONAL PULSE..
Chinese bots have flocked to Twitter since the beginning of the coronavirus public relations effort emanating from Beijing.
In the past few days especially, brand new “bot”-like accounts following zero people, and being followed back by no one, have flooded Twitter threads attacking the United States of America, President Trump, and many who believe the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) should have to answer tough questions about the COVID-19 coronavirus.
Just a few of the bots made in recent months promoting Chinese propaganda (Raheem Kassam/The National Pulse)The accounts appear to be flocking to defend Chinese Communist Party state actors such as Lijian Zhao – China’s “Information Department” Deputy Director General, and Lin Songtian, China’s Ambassador to South Africa. Thousands of new accounts – many the same attacking the President and the United States – were created in March 2020 and have taken to “liking” and “retweeting” CCP propagandists such as Zhao and Songtian, including on stories such as: “COVID-19: Further Evidence that the Virus Originated in the US”.
The article links to a conspiracy theory published in an outlet called GlobalResearch.ca, a Canadian-based site which often disseminates anti-Western propaganda. The Chinese bots also promote the website separately. Other recent articles on ‘Global Research’ include:
Western Anti-Chinese Propaganda Exaggerates Coronavirus Danger, Creates Panic;
Coronavirus Is Becoming a Western Excuse for Sinophobia and “China-Bashing”;
America’s “Hybrid War” against China has Entered a New Phase;
COVID-19 Coronavirus: A Fake Pandemic? Who’s Behind It?;
Coronavirus COVID-19: “Made in China” or “Made in America”?
The accounts have not been suspended and/or limited by Twitter, and neither CNN, the New York Times, the Washington Post, nor the rest of the political or media establishments in the Western have commented upon the surge in social media agitprop pushed by the CCP. One can’t help but wonder if this would be the same if Russia were behind the disinformation campaign.
Raheem Kassam is the Editor-in-Chief of the National Pulse, and former senior advisor to Brexit leader Nigel Farage. Kassam is the best-selling author of 'No Go Zones' and 'Enoch Was Right', a co-host at the War Room: Impeachment podcast, a Lincoln fellow at the Claremont Institute, and a fellow at the Bow Group think tank. Kassam is an academic advisory board member at the Institut des Sciences Sociales, Economiques et Politiques in Lyon, France. He resides in Washington, D.C
It would be useful to read this prior article for background:
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