2020:
January February March April May June July August September October November December
This is a chronology not invariably based on the date the information was published but sometimes based on the date I received it. It should be clear that I am not in accord with the ideological aspects of the content of many of the articles I link to.
24/7/20:
Monitoring being pitched to fight Covid-19 was tested on refugees
10/7/20:
Questions about disease’s origins
“Experts have ruled out the idea that the pathogen was concocted as a bioweapon. They agree that it began as a bat virus that probably evolved naturally in another mammal to become adept at infecting and killing humans. But so far, after months of concentrated research at sites and laboratories in China and elsewhere around the globe, no clear intermediary has come to light. The first three of Dr. Lucey’s eight questions center on the Wuhan wet market — a sprawling marketplace that sold fresh fish and meat before being shut down. It was initially viewed as the viral point of origin. That idea was quickly thrown into doubt when a study by Chinese scientists reported that roughly a third of the earliest hospitalized victims — including the first — had never visited the market. In a May blog, Dr. Lucey quoted the head of China’s Center for Disease Control as ruling it out as the pandemic’s place of origin. The market, the Chinese health official said, “is just another victim.”…no direct evidence has come to light suggesting that the coronavirus escaped from one of Wuhan’s labs….Finally, Dr. Lucey asks the W.H.O. team to learn more about China’s main influenza research lab, a high-security facility in Harbin, the capital of China’s northernmost province. In May, he notes, a Chinese paper in the journal Science reported that two virus samples from Wuhan were studied there in great detail early this year, including in a variety of animals. It reported that cats and ferrets were highly susceptible to the pathogen; dogs were only mildly susceptible; and pigs, chickens and ducks were not susceptible at all.”
6/7/20:
Just received: “Inside the Invasive, Secretive “Bossware” Tracking Workers”, particularly post-Covid teleworkers
“COVID-19 has pushed millions of people to work from home, and a flock of companies offering software for tracking workers has swooped in to pitch their products to employers across the country. The services often sound relatively innocuous. Some vendors bill their tools as “automatic time tracking” or “workplace analytics” software. Others market to companies concerned about data breaches or intellectual property theft. We’ll call these tools, collectively, “bossware.” While aimed at helping employers, bossware puts workers’ privacy and security at risk by logging every click and keystroke, covertly gathering information for lawsuits, and using other spying features …”
Leading critic of china’s handling of coronavirus crisis taken into state terrorist custody
5/7/20:
A mix of articles on an organic food site; worth looking at “Brazen Lies”
“Peter Daszak is on a mission to deflect attention away from any role EcoHealth Alliance may have had in creating the coronavirus pandemic. But he’s not stopping there. He also wants to paint anyone who questions the mainstream narrative as a “conspiracy theorist.” According to this article in GM Watch, Daszak was project leader on a $3.7-million grant supporting bat coronavirus surveillance, and bat coronavirus gain-of-function research at Wuhan Institute of Virology. (Gain-of-function research is a method of studying viruses to make them more virulent and/or more transmissible). Daszak, who’s been all over the media, is being painted by some as a hero. But many credible scientists aren’t buying it. In fact, he’s even been labeled by one scientist as “Patient Zero for misinformation.” The last thing the world needs right now—if we hope to prevent future pandemics—is more misinformation. Read ‘Why are the lab escape denialists telling such brazen lies?’“
Having pointed out this article though, doesn’t mean I think it matters whether the virus escaped from a lab or not. The main point, as with all “conspiracy theories”, is not the precise origins of this or that catastrophe/atrocity etc., but how capital and the state use such events, and how the rest of us react to it. In the case of the above organisation its reaction to the possiblity of Covid having spread from an apparent “biowarfare” lab is to launch a petition to stop such things in the future, about as useful as whitewashing your windows when a nuclear bomb is 4 minutes away from you.
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