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COVID, China and America

America's right continues to do battle about covid, less now since they are not getting much traction, and there is still a real effort to blame Biden because "Teflon Trump" was clearly not involved in the covid crisis.  Seriously, the one thing that Trump did right, to push for a vaccine approval was made into a non-issue.  But you have to stick to the right's narrative.  

Part of the narrative is that Covid was developed in a Lab, which is actually doing research about SARS infections.  The lab was there because over the years the region has seen many versions of SARS emerge (COVID is a form of SARS for those who don't know).  The ultimate narrative is that if it was created in a lab and that it was done for military purposes...pushing the idea that we are "at war with China" a narrative the Neocons love.

Today, there is still a 50/50 chance that the virus emerged from the lab, no one knows (maybe the Chinese communist party), one thing we know for sure, is that early on the Chinese government stopped all domestic flights to the city airport but allowed international fights to continue -- was this an orchestrated maneuver or was this just incompetence --- the jury is out on that one.

The country that was the most hurt by covid is China, first endless lockdowns, and then exposure to the most virulent version of covid with no vaccine protection whatsoever.  Virtual home arrest for the entire population, the creation of a vaccine that did not work, and a refusal by the government to do anything about the virus nor did they explore new vaccines.  Economically, China was and remains the biggest loser here, and just gave up.  However, for the CCP there was one "good" thing that emerged, the party was able to dramatically increase the size and depth of the surveillance state.  The CCP is not about the wealth of the citizens it's about the primacy of the party...

The rest of the world was incredibly lucky, normally developing a new vaccine is a time-consuming process, and there are not only safety issues but it just takes time, Luckily for the world, in the early 2000s two Dutch scientists developed a new process that could accelerate vaccine development.

The unspoken loser is the CDC.  Via audit, it is clear that the CDC purposefully created hurdles to the development of a vaccine because of bureaucratic reasons of control and responsibility.   This is not the first time the CDC did this, with a number of own goals that would make the Russian army proud.  Saying that masks were ineffective, and then saying the opposite was short-sighted and stupid, and demonstrated the shortfall of the CDC in a crisis (again).  This is one aspect of the CDC that should be reviewed, but of course, we get back to our Right-wingers, nuts, and neocons -- that was not their agenda! 

Anyway, the guy who alerted the world to the Covid risk, Fang Bin, was just released from jail a few days ago!

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