Friday, June 04, 2021

Former CDC Chief: I Didn't Expect Death Threats From Fellow Scientists Over Lab-Leak Theory

When the director of America's formost health agency, The CDC (Centre for Disease Control) gets death threats because he questioned the globalist / Big Pharma propaganda on beating the COVID pandemic it is a sure sign that something is very wrong in the academic community and in society in general.

Authored by Ed Morrissey via Hot Air (emphasis ours),

Alternate headline: No one expects the Woke Scientistic Inquisition! Vanity Fair does an extensive and impressive dive into the strange but pervasive attempts by the scientific, media, and government establishments to quash any discussion of the lab-leak hypothesis for COVID-19’s origin.

AP Photo/Alex Brandon

It got so bad that former CDC director Robert Redfield got death threats for suggesting it publicly — from other scientists:

A months long Vanity Fair investigation, interviews with more than 40 people, and a review of hundreds of pages of U.S. government documents, including internal memos, meeting minutes, and email correspondence, found that conflicts of interest, stemming in part from large government grants supporting controversial virology research, hampered the U.S. investigation into COVID-19’s origin at every step. In one State Department meeting, officials seeking to demand transparency from the Chinese government say they were explicitly told by colleagues not to explore the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s gain-of-function research, because it would bring unwelcome attention to U.S. government funding of it.

In an internal memo obtained by Vanity Fair, Thomas DiNanno, former acting assistant secretary of the State Department’s Bureau of Arms Control, Verification, and Compliance, wrote that staff from two bureaus, his own and the Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation, “warned” leaders within his bureau “not to pursue an investigation into the origin of COVID-19” because it would “‘open a can of worms’ if it continued.” …

But for most of the past year, the lab-leak scenario was treated not simply as unlikely or even inaccurate but as morally out-of-bounds. In late March, former Centers for Disease Control director Robert Redfield received death threats from fellow scientists after telling CNN that he believed COVID-19 had originated in a lab. “I was threatened and ostracized because I proposed another hypothesis,” Redfield told Vanity Fair. “I expected it from politicians. I didn’t expect it from science.”

With President Trump out of office, it should be possible to reject his xenophobic agenda and still ask why, in all places in the world, did the outbreak begin in the city with a laboratory housing one of the world’s most extensive collection of bat viruses, doing some of the most aggressive research?

News flash: It was possible all along to reject Trump’s “xenophobic agenda” and still ask that question. Many did, only to get calumnized by media outlets as conspiracy theorists, racists, or both.

It’s not as if the CNN interview took place in the early days of the pandemic, either. Redfield expressed his skepticism of the zoonotic-transfer hypothesis in March 2021, just over two months ago. Four days later, WHO secretary-general Tedros Ghebreyesus would also suggest that the lab-leak hypothesis needed serious investigation, which no doubt took some of the pressure off Redfield. Those threats and calumny over what should be a basic scientific inquiry speaks volumes about the coordinated effort to impose political correctness or just flat-out pandering to China over science.

Now that the spell has been broken, suddenly everyone seems interested in why China’s blocked that scientific inquiry from taking place in any serious manner. The Washington Post, for instance, informs its readers today that China has balked at allowing independent investigation and open discussion of its viral research and the operations at the Wuhan Institute of Virology:

Nothing is known outside China about the science gleaned from that expedition by the Wuhan CDC — the same agency that oversaw China’s early pandemic response. The team has not disclosed what viruses, if any, it found in the cave, or even when the mission took place. According to a World Health Organization report released in March, the Wuhan CDC denied any storage or laboratory activities involving bat viruses before the coronavirus outbreak — a stance hard to reconcile with Tian’s boasts in the video about having visited dozens of bat caves and studied 300 types of virus vectors.

Tian has not spoken publicly for more than a year.

The silencing of scientists, the blanket denials, the careful guarding of raw data and biological samples — these elements have been emblematic of the approach by Chinese authorities at every stage of the coronavirus outbreak. And they continue to obstruct the world’s ability to get answers.

Those three paragraphs, and especially the last one, could have been written at any time over the last eighteen months. And this certainly could have been written at the time Redfield expressed his interest in the lab-leak theory:

Chinese authorities weren’t much more receptive of the international team commissioned by the WHO. Negotiations over the arrangements delayed the team from getting to Wuhan until more than a year after doctors first raised concerns there. Once on the ground, the international experts were given limited access. They visited the market linked to early coronavirus cases — but it had been shut for a year and its contents long ago removed. Their visit to the Wuhan Institute of Virology lasted three hours. In general, they had to satisfy themselves with data that was in large part collected by Chinese scientists before the trip.

The result was a report that didn’t significantly advance the world’s understanding of how the pandemic came about.

This was painfully clear all during this supposed independent probe by WHO. Certainly some media reported on China’s refusal to cooperate properly with the investigators. Until Ghebreyesus admitted as much at the end of March, however, most of the media insisted that all other theories except zoonotic transfer had been “debunked,” to use the WaPo’s term. They continued to attack those who demanded a proper investigation into COVID-19 origins, and never bothered to ask themselves why China was blocking investigations if they didn’t have anything to hide.

Isn’t that the kind of question that usually incentivizes journalists into investigating on their own? Not to mention scientists? ... Read full article>>>

 

RELATED:

Politicians Are Offering A Trade, Safety For Freedom. But What Are We Really Trading Away?
It's the age old confidence trick, politicians and the elites offter a straight choice between security of freedom and all the risks it entails, then amplify those risks with scaremongering propaganda. In the case of the COVID crisis it has worked so far, with enough people accepting the need for masks, lockdowns and killer vaccines to make The Great Reset seem feasible - but time is running out and people are waking up ...

Big Tech tyranny is the biggest threat to democracy in our era
This weeks main story, pushing Coronavirus aside at last, has been the attempt by Twitter to censor U.S. President, classifying his somewhat rabid tweets as misinformation. Whether you love or hate Trump or any other occupant of The White House, their utterings can never be dismissed as ‘misinformation’ because they represent what one of the most powerful people in the world is thinking.

University free speech society told free speech a 'red risk', external speakers must be vetted

Sheffield University’s recently formed Free Speech Society has been warned that free speech is a “red risk” and all external speakers at events it organises will have to be vetted by the University Thought Police squad and the topics they intend to talk about shown to be in line with ideas and opinions the titty - sucking babies who run the Student Union are not frightened by.

Big Tech tyranny is the biggest threat to democracy in our era
This weeks main story, pushing Coronavirus aside at last, has been the attempt by Twitter to censor U.S. President, classifying his somewhat rabid tweets as misinformation. Whether you love or hate Trump or any other occupant of The White House, their utterings can never be dismissed as ‘misinformation’ because they represent what one of the most powerful people in the world is thinking.

French Intellectual Jailed for Calling Mass Immigration an “Invasion”
French intellectual Renaud Camus (above) has been conditionally sentenced to 2 months imprisonment for arguing that mass immigration in Europe represents an “invasion.” Summit.news reports: The writer, who is the author of Le Grand Remplacement (The Great Replacement), was charged with “public incitement to hate or violence on the basis of origin, ethnicity, nationality, race or religion.”

There Is No Freedom Without Transparency

The Democrat / Republican political puppets in the USA would be supported by European leaders including Prime Minister David Cameron in the UK, France's Francois Hollande and Germany's Angela Merkel who, even as I type, are preparing massive interventions in Libya and Iraq, both turned into chaotic and lawless failed states by previous US / European interventions
There Is No Freedom Without Transparency

Facebook Declares War On Free Speech

Facebook has for some time had a policy of removing text that the majority of people would consider racist. Now the social media site is now deleting and blocking comments that only one person at Facebook decides is "racist." The sinister, Orwellian reality of a society in which the expression of majority opinion is being turned into a crime has already been witnessed across Europe. Even more disturbing, social media operators such as Facebook and Twitter appear to be collaborating with governments in the suppression of free speech.
Facebook Declares War On Free Speech

Threats to Free Speech

Threats to free speech and other civil rights us ordinary punters fought and shed blood for are under threat, not from the extreme right but from the liberal left. The intellectually bankrupt lefties have realised their hundred year old arguments are never going to win the battle for hearts and minds and so have moved to the position in the political spectrum once occupied by Hitler and Stalin. Many people would never dream of questioning authority; others see their interests as being served by supporting the abuse of authority, they are the ones who call the questioners 'conspiracy theorists'.
Threats to Free Speech

Is Free Speech Being Murdered By The Media And Politically correct Left Wing Activism

There can be no doubt, the right of citizens in the developed world to free speech, free access of information and freedom to express ideas is increasingly under threat as the power elites feel their grip being loosened by increasingly well informed and articulate working and midddle classes. Without any apparent sense of irony the advocates of big government and controlled media call themselves 'the left' as though their opponents are not bright enough to know that free speech is one of the foundations of classical liberalism and the suppression of free speech is a hallmark of tyrants.
Is Free Speech Being Murdered By The Media And Politically correct Left Wing Activism

The Self Righteous Minority That Threaten Free Speech

Until recently Universities were places where any ideas were welcome and any economic, social, or scientific theory, no matter how extreme would be given a fair hearing and debated openly. So where did it all start to go wrong? How did the idea that there is only one set of acceptable answers to society's problems (the 'pensée unique' to use a French phrase I am fond of, redolent of The Borg in Star Trek and much more demeaning than "Social Justice Warriors") and that those who challenge the orthodoxy should be silenced and prevented from broadcasting their ideas in print or verbally.

The Self Righteous Minority That Threaten Free Speech

The Imporantance Of Free Speech And The Right To Offend

Our right to free speech is under threat from intolerant, authoritarian left wingers or 'progressives liberals' as these illiberal reactonaries like to style themselves. The 'Politically Correct Thought Police' as I have somtimes called them in acknowledgement of Geoge Orwell's novel '1984', are determined that in they egalitarian dystopia they dream of (but that fortunately could never be) nobody will be able to say or do anything that may offend s member of any racial, sexual or social minority. This kind of fascistic tyranny is justified by invoking politically correct ideals, but it is having a deeply damaging effect on human society and could eventually result in civil conflict in the developed nations.
The Imporantance Of Free speech And The Right To Offend

Free Speech being superseded by Sharia Law in Germany?

In Germany, where the open doors immigration policy insisted upon by Chancellor Merkel has flooded the country with Islamic fundamentalists, Christian activist Heidi Mund was recently charged with “agitation against the people” for speaking our on aspects of Muslim Sharia Law that are unacceptable in western societies (e.g. permitted wife beating, rape, forced marriage.Germany is sliding towards fascism as Hausfrau - Volksfuhrer Merkel outlaws free speech for Christians. All criticism of Islam and discussion of Muslim crimes is hate speech it seems, but the ranting of Islamic hate preachers as they call on Muslims to kill all infidels is acceptable rhetoric.
3Free Speech being superseded by Sharia Law in Germany?

Why Are Governments Scared Of Truth? France Begins

Crackdown on Conspiracy Theories

We reported several weeks ago that the French government was planning a clampdown on conspiray theories by shutting down certain dissident websites. Since then we have learned the French government have shown they are prepared to go even further in attacking citizens right of free speech, they are now shutting down sites that question the government's ability to deal with the immigration crisis, the problem of Islamic extremism, the country's dire economic situation or burgeoning unemployment.
Why Are Governments Scared Of Truth? France Begins Crackdown on Conspiracy Theories

Reporters Without Borders unblocks access to censored websites

It is surprising in view of what we now know about the collaboration between internet technology corporations and government security agencies that many people still think og the internet as a bastion of freedom. This page shows how easy it is for governments and corporations to censor web content. Fortunately there are plenty of libertarians out there (we classical liberals have to call ourselves libertarian since the new, politically correct Stalinists hijacked the word liberal) who will help you find the stuff governments don't want you to see. It is surprising in view of what we now know about the collaboration between internet technology corporations and government security agencies that many people still think of the internet as a bastion of freedom. This page shows how easy it is for governments and corporations to censor web content (and helps you get around the censorship).

Reporters Without Borders unblocks access to censored websites

Google, Facebook and Twitter Yield to German Govt Demand to Censor Anti-Migrant ‘Hate Speech’ (aka Free Speech)

Anyone in Germany appalled by the scenes we in New Media described however, will find it difficult to express their disgust online because it will be branded as hate speech by the Berlin political class. Major social media sites have said they would work to delete any German anti-migrant sentiments distributed on their networks within 24 hours after a removal request has been made. In fact the Jewish Quisling Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facistbook, has committed his organisation to working with governments to suppress all discussion that does not comply with the dictum of political correctness.

Google, Facebook and Twitter Yield to German Govt Demand to Censor Anti-Migrant ‘Hate Speech’ (aka Free Speech)

No comments: