QUESTION: Do you think there is any validity that this was a leak from their biolab in China?
HDF
COMMENT: I saw the claims that they spliced AIDS into the Coronavirus claiming this was somehow proof of a lab experiment. You correctly stated that was false. But these conspirators do not know anything about these diseases. The HIV-1 virus actually results in a decrease in influenza virus replication. I appreciate your restraint in all this craziness.
PF
ANSWER: This does not appear to be a biological weapon. It is unlikely that it was a leak of that nature. Both SARS and MERS appeared with no remote connection to biological labs. However, there are labs that are looking at viruses for potential cures for all viruses. They are not engaged in biological weapon production. If this was a mistake and was some sort of leak, it is not likely a biological weapon. The only possibility is that it was a leak from a gene investigation lab. However, I really do not see the point of insisting this originated in a bio-lab. It is already mutating, which shows that even if it came from a lab, it is naturally evolving anyhow.
China’s crackdown is because of the criticism they had when SARS was discovered and they did not take measures to quarantine it. Those claiming this is proof it is far more dangerous is just not the case.
So I fail to see the argument that this is somehow engineered unless they are using that to claim it will not subside because it was manufactured. We will see if this peaks out in the April/May or July time period. That is the normal cyclical duration for any virus that can spread without physical contact as was the case with AIDS.
The HIV/AIDS epidemic comparison to other infectious diseases presents a different class of viruses. Normally, influenza and coronaviruses are self-limiting, as has been the case with the outbreaks of Ebola in Africa, Nipah in Malaysia, H5N1 influenza in Hong Kong, variant Creutzfeldt–Jakob (vCJD) diseases in the UK, and Legionnaire’s disease in the USA. However, it should be noted that four of these five examples are zoonoses, meaning that they have crossed from animals to humans. The fifth, Legionnaire’s disease, was helped by our creation of large artificial lungs, cooling units, and jacuzzis, which all provided an ideal environment for the propagation of a microbe that likes warm, humid, aerated conditions. HIV has a long, infectious, but unnoticed period of incubation which is not self-limiting. HIV also started as a zoonosis from primates yet it means of transmission was through sexual activity and needle-injecting drug use. It was also passed from a mother to a child at birth.
The US Surgeon General declared soon after the eradication of smallpox in 1977 that infectious diseases had been conquered, just as economists had believed that Keynesian Economics eradicated recessions and depressions. However, the cyclical nature of viruses has proven that they evolve and bounce back cyclically. We now see multi-drug resistant bacteria, the resurgence of tuberculosis, and the recurrence of typhus in places of war, such as Bosnia.
Back in 1546, De Contagione (treatise on syphilis) was written more than 300 years before the germ theory of disease emerged. In that work, Girolamo Fracastoro wrote: “There will come yet other new and unusual ailments in the course of time. And this disease will pass away, but later it will be born again and be seen by our descendants.”
To me, this entire conspiracy about a biological weapon leak presents the very same danger as Keynesian Economics and climate change. It has served as a distraction from our understanding that there is a cyclical nature to viruses and we are not paying attention to the fact that this is also a natural process of the existence of viruses to thin the herd. We need not create one, nature will do that without our help as is the case with economics and climate change. Cycles are the nature to everything. Yet, we never seem to learn from the past. The SARS & MERS were 8.6 years apart.
I have provided the percent of the population being affected has not even reached 1/10th of one percent. When we look at this Coronavirus scare, it does not even compare to all the deaths taking place every single day from a host of other diseases nobody bothers to ever mention. This really makes me wonder just who is orchestrating this panic and is the purpose really to expand government powers?
The World Health Organization (WHO) made the announcement on Wednesday, March 11, 2020, that the Coronavirus is a “pandemic” which is actually not as bad as an Epidemic which is a term that describes any problem that has grown out of control. An epidemic is therefore defined as “an outbreak of a disease that occurs over a wide geographic area and affects an exceptionally high proportion of the population.” Consequently, an epidemic requires a high proportion of society to be infected and is an event in which a disease is actively spreading. That is clearly not the case with the coronavirus. since the proportion of society infected has not even reached 1/10th of one percent of the population.
In contrast, the term pandemic relates to geographic spread and is used to describe a disease that affects a whole country or the entire world. This has nothing to do with the proportion of the population that is infected.
The WHO has a financial incentive in declaring this a pandemic. It issued Pandemic Bonds paying 7% interest which now the WHO does not have to repay.
