COVID-19: Two Dueling Origin Stories & Overtones

23 Thursday Apr 2020

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, COVID-19

Tags

C19 Origin Stories, COVID-19, Sino-American Relations

Bhadrakumar, M. K. “Covid-19 Has a Grandma, Grandpa and Great Grandpa. Where Are They?” Oriental Review, April 22, 2020.

Lopez, Clare. “Made in China.” Citizens Commission on National Security (CCNS), April 20, 2020.

Above the two stories, one representing the research of American conservatives gathered beneath the umbrella of the Citizens Commission on National Security and authored by former CIA operations officer Clare M. Lopez, the other by a shadowy anti-western publication founded in 2010 and once self-described as “an independent Moscow-based Internet journal” — which mention has since been removed (as reported by Kevin Paulsen, “Alleged Russian Operatives Spreading Fake News Sneak Back Onto Facebook”, Daily Beast, September 5, 2018). The author of the piece, M. K. Bhadrakumar, is a former diplomat of the Indian Foreign Service and has described himself as the son of a father “who was a prolific writer, author, and Marxist intellectual and thinker who introduced me at a young age to dialectics as a matchless intellectual tool to analyse the material world and decode politics” — “About Me (M. K. BHADRAKUMAR)”, Indian Punchline, n.d.

As tens of millions of Americans now struggle to make ends meet — the government’s “stimulus checks” are hardly reimbursements for car, credit, insurance, mortgage, rent costs, not to mention groceries and utility bills — the business of blame may heat at this juncture. At the core of all: ambiguous and mysterious “black labs” and “dual use” scientific research programs. While BackChannels favors the hypothesis that COVID-19 escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, it remains in deliberation. America’s Centers for Disease Control (CDC) note four “patient zero” without a known locus of transmission:

Differences in the timing of introduction and early transmission of SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19) across jurisdictions might explain some of the observed geographic variation. The first documented U.S. cases of COVID-19 were among travelers returning from China and their immediate household contacts (4). During the third week of February, California, Oregon, and Washington reported the first U.S. cases with no known travel to China or exposure to a person with confirmed COVID-19. Case investigations indicated community transmission in these jurisdictions. Although one case of COVID-19 with an unknown exposure was reported during the fourth week of February in Florida, other cases with unknown exposure (i.e., community transmission) were not widely reported elsewhere until early March.
Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR). “Geographic Differences in COVID-19 Cases, Deaths, and Incidence — United States, February 12–April 7, 2020.” Weekly / April 17, 2020 / 69(15);465–471

Curious?

American conservatives, the GOP, and President Trump have pointed the cocked finger at China, and China has obliged in its reflexive totalitarian manner by silencing its internal critics and whistle blowers. Then again, and in the cooperative ways of international science and its funding, Washington itself has put money — $3.7 million — into Wuhan’s Level-4 Lab research in the same intellectual region.