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Covid: The China aspect bad and worse

The BAD NEWS:  The CIA and the FBI said last week that they had "low confidence" that Covid originated from a lab leak.  That means that they don't know that the Wuhan lab was involved but they either feel strongly or have some form of "secret" intelligence that leads them to that conclusion.  The bottom line information is weak.  If Covid emerged out of the virology lab based in Wuhan that would have been better news!  If this was man-made, then you can say it's some evil design that created the virus.  There are plenty of labs all over the world, and if it was carelessness on the part of the lab workers.  If this was the truth, it would be positive news, since you can create protocols for this not to occur again.  

If it's from the wet markets then the news is bad!   It means it will happen again (Maybe not in Wuhan but in other wet markets -- which still exist in China everywhere).  Lab escape would have been preferable to a wet market outbreak, because of the implication for new variants to appear out of other wet markets

A few weeks ago the idea that Covid was created in nature also got a boost.  Several labs have confirmed that, in the early outbreaks, there were at least two strains of the virus and that there had been small precursor events of some form of Covid in the region before.  First, it's unlikely that two strains were developed in a lab -- that's not how lab work or that two different strains were released by error (or negligence).  

The WORSE NEWS which has also just emerged is that two weeks after China had realized that they had a serious problem in Wuyan, the Chinese government shut down all domestic flights out of Wuhan airport but allowed all international flights to continue operating.  In effect, China's government proactively encouraged the international dissemination of the virus.  

There are rumors that the Chinese government is not functioning very well.  For more than six months the Chinese government did nothing about electricity problems, seemingly because they didn't know about them (as I mentioned before it was Biden who told Xi about these serious grid issues in Eastern China). It is entirely possible that the authorities were told to shut down all domestic flights, but do not have the power/will to do the same for international flights. 

Finally, one thing should be mentioned, the reason the Wuhan Virology lab was created in Wuhan is that there have been SARS outbreaks there in the past.  It makes a certain amount of sense to set up a research center near the epicenter of the disease.

Still, none of this bodes well for the China/America relationship.  


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