Fort Detrick mystery resurrects
The Covid-19 pandemic, until now, continues to be a baffler as to its actual roots, and mankind, to this day, is not quite sure how to really get rid of it. Certainly, a number of vaccines have been developed, but people can hardly be comfortable with this fact. Which of these vaccines are well-meaning, that is, for defeating the pathogen for the pure purpose of saving humanity, and which are commercial-meaning, that is, for making money out of man's tragedy?
Of the number of vaccines that have come the way of the Philippines, only one, China's Sinovac, has reached the country's shores as pure donation, programmed to reach a total of 2.5 million doses. And it is comforting to note that such donation is true also in other parts of the world, for instance, the Middle East, Africa and certain sections of Europe. Still in all, man gets no assurance that vaccines have grown to be a cure-all for the coronavirus attack.
Just recently, the morning dailies reported a so-called slipping into the country of a new variant of the pathogen. One shudders in remembering that months ago, such a similar variant hit India and instantly made it the top country for coronavirus infection and morbidity; for a moment, social and mainstream media were replete with scenes of cadavers burned on firewood right on the streets.
When is this ever going to end?
It's been more than a year since the first coronavirus fatality was reported in the Philippines, and well toward the end of the second year of the lockdown enforced as a result, no end to the contagion is in sight.
A retrospect in this discussion is prompted by a surprising shift in focus by President Joe Biden in addressing the pandemic. To date, accounts bear out that the United States stands as the number one country with the most number of infections and fatalities. Under such circumstances, the normal thing to do is hastening the cure for the disease, yet Biden now sings the same tune Trump sang during the US presidential campaign: that coronavirus originated in Wuhan, China. Expert analysts see this as a ploy to divert attention of the Americans from the fact that their leaders until then failed to correctly address the situation. That Biden is mouthing Trump's "Wuhan virus line" now must betray his own utter incapacity to stop the virus where it could have actually originated. What Biden, like Trump, cannot solve on the ground, he politicizes by shifting to China for the umpteenth time the blame for the coronavirus pandemic.
Here is an account from the Beijing Youth Daily:
"According to media reports, 41 US states and Washington, D.C., all registered spikes in Covid-19 infection during the past two weeks, with the number of confirmed cases more than doubling in 9 states. American media reported that more than 20 states had stopped daily updates on epidemic data. The lack of timely monitoring data may lead to blind spots in prevention efforts, experts worry. However, amid the severe situation at home, some US politicians are still pushing for an origin-tracing investigation targeting China."
A respectable source opines, "With regard to Covid-19, the US is a terrible bookkeeper. It turns a blind eye to domestic earlier cases that have been reported, sidesteps questions about the large-scale Evali (e-cigarette, or vaping, product use–associated lung injury) outbreak in Wisconsin in July 2019 and remains evasive about the mystery-shrouded Fort Detrick biological base. If they truly care about the truth, why not invite WHO experts to the US to investigate? Why clam up whenever Fort Detrick is mentioned?"
Yes, I stick to what I have written in this column early on at the start of the pandemic that a visit by the US War Secretary to Fort Detrick in 2019 revealed leaks of coronavirus from the United States Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases laboratory inside Fort Detrick in Maryland. During that visit, the War Secretary was informed that coronavirus developed elsewhere was being regularly supplied to the laboratory for "multiplication." The virus was confirmed to have been developed by Dr. Ralph Baric, who is identified by Wikipedia as "William R. Kenan Jr., Distinguished Professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill."
Quite significantly, in October 2019, the World Military Games got underway in Wuhan. To those games came the participating US soldiers, all, according to a source, coming from Fort Detrick. And quite significantly as well, not only did the more than 100 US soldiers perform quite poorly in the games, winning not a single medal (something uncharacteristic of US athletes), but 14 days, or so the source avers, after the US soldiers left Wuhan after the games, the coronavirus epidemic broke out in Wuhan.
I got the flak from various quarters for that story, some even ridiculing me for speaking on something I am not an expert on. Reporting facts, I would say, is the element of journalism that requires no expertise; it is interpreting facts that does. I got that information about the Fort Detrick coronavirus leak from a regular informant, and the information does make for a fact that needs to be reported; it is for experts to verify that fact. Why, instead of pillorying me for that report, didn't my detractors proceed to prove their expertise by proving me wrong?
So now here I am again, prompted to recollect facts that the US should have investigated early on such that this unending pandemic should have been stopped where it all began - but didn't.
Am I back to just asking one more time: Why?
Nessun commento:
Posta un commento