As we rapidly approach the holiday season, we simultaneously advance upon the second wave of COVID. Although cases continue to increase in many parts of the world (like in Japan, India, and South Korea) in other countries, the worst of the Second Wave has passed. France, though initially filled with a lot of anger and violence over what many French considered an inadequate lockdown by Macron, may have already passed its peak of cases in this second wave. Despite continuous efforts by some Americans to practice precautions, many others continue to book flights despite discouragement, are making shopping plans for Black Friday, and somehow continue to disregard the severity of the virus. Apparently, Fox News (before being blacklisted by Trump and the Trumpsters of course) had a researcher from Hong Kong, Li-Meng Yan, come on the show to tell “the truth” alleging China’s malicious plans to spread the virus throughout the globe. The video from July shows the virologist speak out against China as a whistleblower, saying her life was in danger for speaking out about the origins and intentions of the virus. She also mentioned just “how dangerous” it really is. Despite many people on social media hailing her a hero and calling for asylum to allow her to remain protected in the U.S., many other scientists spoke out against the allegations.
After having watched the video, and seeing how both Fox and the virologist speak out against China and the danger the country presents, I can see how it is SO easy to fall in agreement with the virologist. After all, the initial whistleblower of COVID died trying to spread the news about the novel virus. And with China being very secretive about their findings, it is easy to see how people may be swayed into believing this. However, a NYTimes article recently came out highlighting the agenda behind the claims of a lab-created Coronavirus.
The article explains that though a lab-leak has technically not been ruled out by U.S. intelligence, there is an enormous amount of research proven to support that the virus originated in an animal before moving its way to humans. The article explains that Dr. Yan and American conservatives worked united to speak on this based on their shared anti-Chinese sentiments. Whereas Dr. Yan worked with other anti-Beijing spokespeople while in Hong Kong to denounce the government’s alleged practices, conservative America appeared to follow Trump’s anti-China rhetoric. They fell so uniformly into this baseless idea, that it allowed some of the responsibility of the handling of the outbreak off of Trump and instead onto China. Apparently, Stephen Bannon and fugitive Chinese billionaire Guo Wengui coached Dr. Yan and told her to not mention either one of them, with Bannon pushing the theory of a leak, though he claimed not believing the leak to not be intentional. Dr. Yan eventually met with experts from Georgetown to explain her beliefs, but they could not seem to come to an explanation as to the weaponization of the virus. Trump tweeted a clip of her claiming China intentionally spread the virus, with Tucker later on announcing on his show that he could not endorse Dr. Yan’s theories despite inviting her once more on the show.
This entire whirlwind of events is as fascinating as it is terrifying. At this time, Dr. Yan’s mother says she is worried for her daughter’s safety as they have not spoken in months. Despite much controversy regarding the origins or “agenda” of the novel virus, the greatest threat remains the same for now: people disregarding its gravity.
Victoria,
This is an interesting and provocative subject for a blog post! There seems little doubt at this point that those alleging that the Chinese purposely designed and released the COVID virus had malicious, political motivations for doing so. If the Chinese really wanted to unleash COVID on the world, why did so many IN China get sick initially–i.e., why wouldn’t they have released it elsewhere? More plausible is some sort of unintentional leak from their virology lab in Wuhan. But scientists from the West have visited there, and they claim that the containment procedures are world class. So, as you indicted, the most likely conclusion is animal-to -human transmission, which the Chinese were initially slow to recognize and then tried to cover up for some period of time. There are MANY lessons to be learned from all of this for the next novel virus that affects the human population–and you can be sure that there will be one.
–Professor Wallerstein