Last year, Matt Ridley – along with “everybody sensible” – believed the idea that the pandemic leaked from a lab was “pseudoscientific nonsense almost on a par with UFOs and the Loch Ness monster”. Now, writing in the latest issue of the Spectator, he says that, “if we are to avoid another pandemic”, the theory – which is looking increasingly plausible – should be taken more seriously and be properly investigated.
The turning point, ironically, was the “press conference” on February 9th in Wuhan where a team of western scientists representing the World Health Organisation (WHO) sat meekly through a three-hour propaganda session at the end of a 12-day study tour. Strictly chaperoned throughout, the western scientists (approved by the Chinese Government) had mainly listened to presentations by their Chinese colleagues during their visit and done no research themselves. Yet the result was presented to the world as if it was the WHO’s conclusion.
The press conference was told that the lab leak theory was “extremely unlikely” and would not be investigated further, because the scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology said so during a three-hour visit by the study team. By contrast, the theory favoured by the Chinese Government – that the virus reached Wuhan on frozen meat from a rabbit or ferret-badger farm in southern China or southeast Asia – was said to be plausible, despite a total lack of evidence.
So risible was this little stage play that even WHO’s Director-General, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, had to backtrack a few days later: “All hypotheses remain open and require further study.” Dr Peter Ben Embarek, who led the study team, added wishfully: “I don’t think the press conference was a PR win for China.” The governments of Britain, America and 12 other countries issued a joint statement expressing “shared concerns” over the study…
The problem is partly that journalists confused two different theories last year: that the virus might have escaped from a laboratory openly doing research that was intended to prevent a pandemic, or that a secret project to create a nasty virus for use as a bioweapon had either gone wrong or succeeded all too well. The latter theory remains implausible; the former has never been so…
The lab that has been assiduously and energetically collecting coronaviruses from horseshoe bats for more than a decade, gathering a far larger collection of samples and genetic sequences than any other lab anywhere in the world, just happens to be in Wuhan, as part of the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Run by Dr Shi Zhengli, it boasted in 2019 of having at least 100 different Sars-like viruses in its database.
We cannot check these samples because the database went offline on September 12th, 2019, just before the pandemic began, and Dr Shi persistently refuses to reopen it, arguing that it’s been subject to “hacking attempts”. Right… in September 2019? And there’s no other way to show the data? Dr Daszak says he knows what is in the database and that it is of no relevance, which is why he has not asked his friend Dr Shi to share it. Right. When I raised this lack of transparency with a senior British scientist, he said: ‘They are communists, what do you expect?’ It is not clear why that should be reassuring.
Matt highlights the letter recently published in the academic journal Science, in which 18 scientists from around the world criticise the WHO over its failure to properly investigate the lab leak theory, and say: “Theories of accidental release from a lab and zoonotic spillover [from animals to humans] both remain viable.”
His article is worth reading in full.
Stop Press: Conservative MP Bob Seely has told MailOnline that Facebook’s censoring of posts debating whether Covid could be man-made is “contemptible”.
I think it is absolutely contemptible and it shows their commitment to democracy is an incredibly thin veneer over their commercial interests. So many big tech firms are showing their true and frankly really ugly colours…
This is not a conspiracy theory. There is a genuine debate about where the Wuhan virus came from.
For Facebook to be shutting that conversation down is absolutely appalling.
Also worth reading in full.
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So Toby thinks the 2020 U.S. election was definitely, absolutely NOT fraudulent. Pathetic. The 2020 election was stolen in just 6 swing states. It wasn’t stolen by high tech hacking of voting machines. It wasn’t stolen because of vote harvesting. It was stolen by good old fashioned fraud in the main counting centres in those 6 swing states. To cite just two as examples: In Atlanta, Georgia, Trump was well ahead on election night. Over the next few days the percentage of votes counted never seemed to rise but the number of votes counted did. In other words new ballots were added out of nowhere. Once Biden had overtaken Trump by a few thousand votes the counting miraculously ended. The very same thing happened in Pennsylvania except on a much larger scale. Trump ahead by 700,000 votes on election night, counting suddenly halted…over the next few days the percentage of votes counted hardly changed but the NUMBER of votes did.
A very low tech form of voter fraud but highly effective when you have a compliant and biased Mainstream Media unwilling to properly investigate and report and even more effective when the leader of the Free Speech Union decides to believe the “findings” of a one sided book.
Toby Young, you should take note of Mark Steyn’s take on what happened in 2020. The fraud was very low tech, very traditional, new votes appearing out of nowhere, a relatively low number of votes affected nationally but highly concentrated in just six swing states and enough to steal the election. It’s clear you didn’t follow the events of the 2020 election and the few days following it. Had you done so you would have seen the pattern.
Final nail in the coffin for Toby’s theory that this was a straight election: The Bellweather Counties list. https://www.wsj.com/articles/bellwether-counties-nearly-wiped-out-by-2020-election-11605272400
Toby has probably drunk the establishment press line that Trump lost all his court cases and so assumes there was no evidence supporting him. This is a typical and classic form of reshaping of the truth Toby should be aware by now that the establishment press indulges in on a wholesale basis. He should know by now they LIE ALL THE TIME. Trump didn’t lose his court cases, most of them were thrown out for a “lack of standing.” They were not heard.
To have standing it has to be shown that a plaintiff suffered an actual injury caused by the other party that can actually be addressed by the court. So the lawsuits were never heard and yes it was a technicality. The technicality being the courts didn’t have any power to do anything about it and other than that there is no measurable injury that could be recompensed to Trump. The lesson then is that there is no clear mechanism by which a stolen election can be redressed after the fact – at least not in the form of the legal route taken by Trump. It must not be allowed to happen at the time.
I would say both were used.
The vote fraud was 40 mn. Database votes are easy to flip – as an admin you erase all the logs. They were flipping votes in real time, even the fake news feeds were showing the flips. Mules were used pace DeSouza – 5 million in his movie, just in 5 states. They were used everywhere.
Biden the criminal won 600 out of 3000 counties. Max votes – 40 million or so. Vote fraud – 40 million. Old and New techniques.
The self-satisfied arrogance of Marianna Spring´s smug mugshot is fairly typical of most in education and communications (broadcasting) nowadays: young, without life-experience, ill-educated but opinionated – and a feeling of entitlement.
I’m not sure that’s entirely fair. It might just be an optical effect derived from the bottom half of her face (below the eyes) being from a head proportionately approximately twice the size of the top half of her face.
A 28 year old arseling who is the arbiter of reality?
Who TF is Sping? And Why TF would I care?
Bitter and twisted suits Nick. Hilarious, keep it up.
Toby’s TDS is a tad tedious. Instead of a straw-man like the Dominion voting machine contend with the evidence that 2020 was A/ indisputably RIGGED and B/ almost indisputably STOLEN.
That means to deal with the reasoned critiques in say Mollie Hemingway’s ‘Rigged’ or ‘2000 Mules’ or Navarro’s ‘6 key deceptions‘.
Still no time stamps aaargh
Toby needs to read better books about the US election system. Start with Margo Cleveland’s latest.
Why was US 2000, 2004, and 2016 elections all “rigged”, say the Democrats and their leaders very loudly and continuously, but with voting restrictions in states and counties across the country mostly removed by Democrats “because of the pandemic”, now suddenly “perfect”? How can so many institutions in USA now appear to be corrupt, yet the voting system is pristine?
Given opportunity to cheat, given the stakes, of course there will be cheating.