It was inevitable, and understandable: Nations — United States and Australia, so far — want China to pay restitution for the coronavirus crisis in their countries. You know more countries will join that chorus.
The U.S. is accusing China of a coverup in the coronvirus crisis. They claim China knew in early February that they had a potential pandemic on their hands after the coronavirus allegedly escaped from a Wuhan lab and began to spread in that country. The U.S. is claiming China failed to alert the world about human-to-human transmission of the virus, and instead covered up the fact while they stocked up on medical supplies for their own people — all this according to an ABC News report tonight. The U.S. also feels China could have contained the virus and stopped it from spreading around the world.
If the allegations are correct, it would certainly seem to be gross negligence on the part of some authorities in China. An international court might consider it to be criminal negligence resulting in crimes again humanity, and convictions might end with life sentences.
But should all of China have to pay for the acts of a few people there who allegedly made some serious errors in judgment?
It is a bit of a moot point: China couldn’t pay, anyway. They could only make symbolic payments, and they might very well have to do so before all is said and done.
We’re still in the early days of the coronavirus crisis. There’s a second, more serious wave predicted, as nations start trying to reboot their economies now and more people are out and about again. A third wave next year is also possible, reports say.
Quebec and other places are looking to “herd immunity” as a solution, along with social distancing and other measures. It’s a gamble with an unknown quantity. We don’t know the long-term effects of COVID-19, especially on children who may be asymptomatic. We don’t know the long-term effects on the whole herd, young and older.
So, we will probably see many more deaths from COVID-19 around the world for another year or more, with incalculable costs to humanity.
Nevertheless, the world economies will start rolling again, and COVID-19 deaths will become commonplace — much like mass shootings in the U.S. are commonplace and don’t always make it to Top Stories status in news feeds.
We’re stuck with it. We’ll live our lives around invisible coronavirus bullets, and no amount of restitution from anyone is going to change that.
Meanwhile, I’m not totally convinced that there isn’t a deeper plot behind the emergence of the novel coronavirus. Its rapid spread around the world is highly suspect. Could it have been deliberately spread? By whom?
But that’s another story, and no doubt will be the plotline for novels and movies to come.
— Jillian
Jillian Page 
This hinges on a report to the State Department from inspectors of about two years earlier. The report described ill-trained technicians and inadequate security protocols. The Wuhan facility was tasked with studying the coronavirus from bats originating a thousand miles away from Wuhan. It isn’t a smoking gun by any means but it is possible the virus accidentally leaked.
The first identified casualties from COVID-19 happened in Wuhan in early December. (The doctor who originally identified it eventually died from it.) The disease itself was probably floating around several weeks before that, maybe longer. (The earliest known case is Nov 17 but wasn’t recognized as such until March. They still do not have a patient zero and probably never will due to asymptomatic spread and being misdiagnosed as influenza.) It is pretty well established that the doctor (and later doctors) who tried to sound the warning were vigorously suppressed.
New influenza (and other) viruses emerge from China all the time and nobody suppresses that information. Early detection of flu viruses gives us a chance to try to make an influenza vaccine for the coming fall. The act of suppressing the information is not itself evidence of intentional malfeasance but it does make me wonder about motive. None of the reasons they’d want to keep a local epidemic quiet puts the government of China in a good light.
On Jan 12st the province held its Lunar New Year Celebrations and the disease exploded. Feb 1st was the first locally infected death due to COVID-19 in California, meaning it was probably here 2 weeks earlier. WHO didn’t declare it a pandemic until March 11.
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Could it have been deliberately spread? By whom?
No.
(Remember that my wife is a biologist, and she worked with Dr. Fauci in the ’80s on a candidate vaccine for HIV.)
It’s impossible to engineer a virus without leaving “fingerprints” of the DNA manipulation. (DNA engineering is her specialty). Someone on Fauci’s team would have noticed it a long time ago.
The virus made an animal to human jump last year, just like SIV mutated into HIV 35 years ago. Animal viruses have been mutating into human pathogen as long as there have been humans. C-19 is just another in a very long line of viruses that made the leap.
What is likely is that China tried to keep the knowledge of the virus secret for the same reason that trump downplayed it- it would be a financial disaster. When it was obvious to Chinese officials that this virus was new and very virulent, they decided, “Oh shit, we better alert the WHO”.
Trump dismissed the warnings from the WHO and the US Intelligence reports of the coming pandemic. Nah, that’s too generous, Trump ignored the warnings. He didn’t care.
Trump will brag that he closed travel from China, but by then the virus was already loose on our West Coast and in Europe. Meanwhile U.S. citizens were still allowed free travel to and from China and Europe. Because commerce. It was just another excuse for his xenophobia. Trump is too stupid to realize that the virus doesn’t look at passports before infecting another host.
The US levels of infection and death were entirely predictable and mostly preventable if not for trump’s too slow (and still inadequate today) response to the pandemic.
In november and December, trump will wreak havoc ad do as much damage as possible in an attempt to make Biden fail.
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I agree with this one. But most scary is that America does vote him back in. Are they that gullible? 0.50 idiots? Really big $ behind him? %O%%@
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I find it hard to believe that the american public can be stupid enough to re-elect him. But I can believe that they are too lazy to get off their butts and go vote this November.
If voting in the U.S. reached 50% participation, the Republicans would never win. This is why they have to cheat, suppress and intimidate people from voting.
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Good grief. Yes, that’s right. So much for “with freedom comes great responsibility”, except maybe if you pack. Of course, that’s no guarantee of safety either. ah yes, “democracy” indeed has a price %|
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Bingo!
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