Here we go again
Updated: Jun 5, 2021
Here we go again, Victoria in a ‘one week’ (ha!) lockdown.
No school, no community sport, no fans for AFL games in Victoria (except on the TV), no restaurants, no pubs, only two hours of exercise, no pals in one’s home, more mental distress. Gor Blimey, readers, why is Victoria so much worse at protecting its people than other states?
Finally, the mighty ABC has conceded in suggesting that the Covid might be due to an escape by the relevant bug from a virology business in Wuhan. The mighty ABC has ridiculed this idea since smart commentators raised it 18 months ago. (I must mention that Mrs Thornton was one of the smart cookies who said such an outcome was likely very early in the arrival of the virus.)
Peter Jennings, The Australian and Australian Strategic Policy Institute
Today The Australian has a nice paper by Peter Jennings, called ‘Eight reasons I think Covid escaped from the lab’. I commend the full article and will include details below. In the interests of reading time I shall simply list Mr Jennings’ eight reasons.
First, we know China has long had an interest in developing biological and chemical weapons. The US State department made that assessment public years ago.
Second, we know Chinese military personnel and scientists have written studies on how to fight wars with biological agents. The Australian’s Sharri Markson has reported extensively on this.
Third, we know the Wuhan Institute of Virology is designed to be a secure bio-research facility and before 2019 was working on coronaviruses, including so-called gain-of-function research on how to make viruses more virulent.
Fourth, we know serious concerns existed about security at the institute. In late 2017 the US embassy in Beijing flagged these worries in a cable reporting there was “a serious shortage of appropriately trained technicians and investigators needed to safely operate this high-containment laboratory”.
Fifth, we know the Wuhan institute was presenting itself as a civilian institution, but a US intelligence judgment reported by Donald Trump’s secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, in January was that “the WIV has engaged in classified research, including laboratory animal experiments, on behalf of the Chinese military since at least 2017”.
Six, a point highlighted in the WHO-China Study, the WIV-linked Chinese Centre for Disease Control laboratory moved on December 2, 2019, to a new location near the Huanan wet market. The study dryly states, “Such moves can be disruptive for the operations of any laboratory.”
The seventh point is that it seems at least three workers at the WIV fell ill with Covid-19-like symptoms some time before the first publicly known cases emerged in December 2019. This was mentioned by Pompeo in January and is being bolstered, according to The New York Times, with corroborating information from non-US sources.
Finally, there is the remarkable CCP cover-up of the whole issue: the fatuous claims that Covid-19 was planted by US military personnel visiting Wuhan, or arrived on frozen salmon; the refusal to hand over samples of the original virus as opposed to the genomic sequence; the refusal to grant access to the WIV until the tightly stage-managed WHO-China Study visit on February 3; the over-the-top attempts to prevent international access to research the virus; and the hysterical denunciation of Scott Morrison’s request for a credible international examination.
Peter Jennings sums up: ‘It is almost as though Xi has something to hide.’
Do check Peter Jennings' full article in on P 11 (May 28 2021) of The Australian.
Peter Jennings is well qualified to offer these hypotheses. He is executive director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute and a former deputy secretary for strategy in the Department of Defence.
KULTURE
Fiona Prior delights in the wickedly well-dressed 'Cruella'. More here.