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From a Lab or a Wet Market?
Sen. Tom Cotton has been beating the drum for months, stating that much information is known that suggests COVID-19 was leaked from a Chinese lab. Media outlets, such as CNN, the Washington Post, and the New York Times have attacked him for claiming that the Chinese were working on a bioweapon. He didn’t. Here are parts of what he actually said in an interview with Martha McCallum on “The Story”:
He also brought up the ‘questions’ surrounding the biosafety level 4 ‘super laboratory’ in Wuhan, the city where the virus is believed to have originated.
‘We know it didn’t originate in the Wuhan food market based on the study of Chinese scientists … I’m not saying where it started, I don’t know. We don’t know because the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) won’t open up to international experts,’ Cotton said. ‘That’s what we need to do so they can get to the bottom of where the virus originated and hopefully can effect a diagnostic test and vaccine for it.’
One biology professor also disagreed with Sen. Cotton:
Cotton also pushed back against critics, specifically Rutgers University chemical biology professor Richard Ebright, who said he found no indication in the genome sequence of the virus to indicate it was engineered.
‘Let’s take the professor,’ Cotton said. ‘He was …in fact today cited in the Asia Times saying that it was quite possible that it was a laboratory incident.’
I’m sick and tired of the political left not only defaming people they don’t like, but discrediting and misrepresenting their statements and intentions. Literally, when lives all over the world are being threatened by COVID-19, it is immoral and an act against humanity when people attack those who are fighting for the truth.
Sen. Cotton also had an impressive op-ed piece in the WSJ on the Chinese deceptions:
Beijing has claimed that the virus originated in a Wuhan ‘wet market,’ where wild animals were sold. But evidence to counter this theory emerged in January. Chinese researchers reported in the Lancet Jan. 24 that the first known cases had no contact with the market, and Chinese state media acknowledged the finding. There’s no evidence the market sold bats or pangolins, the animals from which the virus is thought to have jumped to humans. And the bat species that carries it isn’t found within 100 miles of Wuhan.
Finally, observe how balanced yet forceful Sen. Cotton has been in pressing this issue. He doesn’t claim to have the truth, but he believes no one has that. He doesn’t use hyperbole or attack individuals. His tone is firm and intense. He suggests many different ways the virus may have leaked but doesn’t profess to know the truth. He is calling for an investigation that many powerful people with their many agendas including industry, Congress, and other organizations intertwined with and benefiting from a relationship with China may prefer to ignore.
Of course, the Chinese continue to deny outsiders access to their facilities and to their data. They also deny several other facts about their role in this pandemic.
We must discover the Chinese role for a number of reasons. We already know they have lied to us in the past, but this time they put millions of lives at risk. The Chinese claim that they have detained “only” 1 million Uighurs in “education” camps but the estimate is likely closer to 3 million. That’s Three. Million. People. So the welfare of humanity is clearly not a priority to them.
We know that they are working to become the most powerful country in the world; they have said this publicly. We must have access to valid information.
We must stop doing deals with the Chinese.
We must do it for ourselves and for the world.
Published in Foreign Policy
To do this we have to find places that companies can make more money else where. Companies are amoral. They will do business with anybody or anyplace that will make them more money. Nothing else matters. To a company and those that run them lives, decency, the future only mater in relations to how much money they can make in the short term future.
Thanks, @susanquinn, that’s a great idea. I’ve done a few Coursera classes offered for Penn alums and they limited class sizes and had discussions among participants at certain points in the course which added a lot to the experience.
American holdings in China have been rendered worthless on their face barring a regime change in China.
This is a symposium, not a class, so it may be conducted differently, but The Land of Hope class I recently completed did provide a Discussion link for each session. It was similar to R> comments section in that you typed your thoughts and if someone responded to your comment, you received a notification. Otherwise you were just able to read what people were saying.
I suspect this will just be videos posted without much interaction from the audience, but we’ll find out. I didn’t participate much in the discussion anyway. The class was rigorous enough to keep me busy without chatting up my classmates.
Or we need to stop paying them money for products produced under an enemy totalitarian government, and barring their goods from the marketplace if they persist in doing business there. This is not rocket science. This was status quo in the 1960s.
The market is not a god, and it makes a pretty poor idol. It can facilitate great good if allowed to, and it can destroy recklessly if allowed to. Xi loves it when we sell him the rope he intends to hang us with. There are externalities that must be considered in every transaction.
Thanks, @westernchauvinist. I have an unfortunate tendency to start independent online classes like this and not finish them because of frequent interruptions as a caregiver, so just want to figure out how best to carve out time to actually finish this one!
Yes this is true, I’ve read that and also that it was out of bat season, as bats were hibernating. On the other hand, the laboratory researchers have to go quite far afield to collect bats in caves in remote parts of China. The process is risky if they develop an infection, they could contract any number of zoonotic viruses. Chinese researchers have been very active identifying new viruses. They have recently been able to add over 1000 new bat viruses to the 1000 or so that were previously known. Zero Hedge is a site that has copious articles on this subject going back to the tail end of January.
I don’t think it will be necessary at all to do any of these extravagant things. The Chinese have yet to know the power of free market economics. Free economies create wealth by the sum total of all of the individual entities exercising free choice in the free market. The Chinese Communist Party have attempted to draw wealth and prosperity to China but are fundamentally unable psychologically to do this without coercion. That demonstrates to me their low level of confidence. They can only get by by somehow rigging the game to reduce their customers’ choices.
Really informative and insightful on both your comments, @raykujawa. Thanks for filling in the picture.