The Mystery of Ephraim

The Covid BioWeapon: Made in the USA? Aimed at China and Iran?

The Unz Review, by MIKE WHITNEY AND RON UNZ • JUNE 15, 2021

“…..we are left with the strong likelihood that Covid came from a laboratory (and) was designed as a bioweapon… China was the intended target (and) America seems the likely source of the attack… The most likely suspects would be rogue elements of our national security establishment… The virus and its dispersal devices might have been obtained from Ft. Detrick and CIA operatives… would have been sent to Wuhan to release it.” Ron Unz, Editor of The Unz Review; from the text

Question 1– What makes your theory about the origins of SARS-CoV-2 so controversial, is not that it suggests that the pathogen was created in a lab, but that it is, in fact, a bioweapon that was deliberately released by US agents prosecuting a secret war on presumed enemies of the United States. Here’s the “money quote” from your article titled, “American Pravda: George Orwell’s Virus Lab-Leak”:

“…..we are left with the strong likelihood that Covid came from a laboratory along with a good possibility that it was designed as a bioweapon, yet we lack serious indications that any lab-leak occurred. So if the original Wuhan outbreak was due to the deployment of a powerful bioweapon but not one that had accidentally leaked from any lab, then surely China was the intended target, the victim rather than the perpetrator….

Given our ongoing military and geopolitical confrontation with China, America seems the likely source of the attack… The most likely suspects would be rogue elements of our national security establishment, probably some of the Deep State Neocons whom Trump had placed near the top of his administration.

This small handful of high-level plotters would have then drawn upon the resources of the American national security apparatus to actually carry out the operation. The virus and its dispersal devices might have been obtained from Ft. Detrick and CIA operatives or members of special forces would have been sent to Wuhan to release it…. In effect, what happened was a Dr. Strangelove-type scenario, but brought to real life.” (“American Pravda: George Orwell’s Virus Lab-Leak”, Ron Unz, The Unz Review)

So, here’s the question: Do you think recent developments lend credibility to your explosive theory or do you now believe that Covid-19 was merely “accidentally” leaked through human error?

Ron Unz– As everyone knows, over the last month the entire “mainstream narrative” of the Covid outbreak has been completely overturned. Just a few weeks ago, anyone suggesting the virus was artificial was denounced and ridiculed as a “conspiracy theorist” and any such statements were automatically banned by Facebook.

But exactly these same prohibited ideas are now widely accepted and promoted by leading figures in the media and political establishments. The 45-year veteran of the New York Times who spearheaded its Covid coverage has now admitted that he was completely mistaken, and that the virus probably came from a lab. The three billion Facebook users can now openly discuss this possibility.

The total collapse of this “natural virus” propaganda-bubble was produced by a self-published 11,000 word article by longtime science journalist Nicholas Wade. Yet the astonishing thing is that almost none of the crucial facts he cited in his article were new. Nearly all of Wade’s important evidence had been publicly available for a full year, but was simply ignored by our entire political and media establishment, partly because Trump took that position and they all hated Trump.

So the virus probably came from a lab. But the question now becomes “which lab?” Just as the MSM had promoted the totally unsubstantiated belief that Covid was natural, the MSM has now begun promoting the equally unsubstantiated belief that Covid accidentally leaked from China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology. However, the evidence of any such Wuhan lab-leak is so thin as to be almost invisible.

It’s true that Chinese researchers at that lab were experimenting with related bat viruses, but many American researchers were doing very similar experiments, and for decades bat viruses have also been the central focus of America’s huge biowarfare program.

Wuhan is an enormously large metropolis of 11 million, much larger than New York City, and the Wuhan lab is located 20 miles(!) from the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, which was the earliest epicenter of the Wuhan outbreak. A distance of 20 miles seems pretty far for an accidental lab-leak.

Immediately after the initial Wuhan outbreak, the virus began infecting Iran’s top political elites, and killing a number of them. Isn’t it implausible that a random lab-leak in Wuhan would so quickly jump to the Holy City of Qom on the other side of the world?

There are many other aspects of the timing of the outbreak that seem very inconsistent with a random, accidental lab-leak.

Until a few weeks ago, the MSM and Facebook shut down anyone who disagreed with the “natural virus” theory, even though the evidence for an artificial virus had always been much stronger. They’ve now said “Oops! We were wrong. The virus probably came from a lab.” So I think they’ll now have a much harder time shutting down any debate about which lab.

Once people became aware of the basic facts of the virus, belief that it was artificial natural quickly collapsed. And once people become aware of the basic facts of the initial Covid outbreak, I think that belief in an accidental lab-leak will also begin to collapse.

Question 2–You seem to have anticipated my next question, but I’ll go ahead and ask it anyway. In another one of your articles, you say this:

“As the coronavirus gradually began to spread beyond China’s own borders, another development occurred that greatly multiplied my suspicions. Most of these early cases had occurred exactly where one might expect, among the East Asian countries bordering China. But by late February Iran had become the second epicenter of the global outbreak. Even more surprisingly, its political elites had been especially hard-hit, with a full 10% of the entire Iranian parliament soon infected and at least a dozen of its officials and politicians dying of the disease, including some who were quite senior. Indeed, Neocon activists on Twitter began gleefully noting that their hatred Iranian enemies were now dropping like flies.

Let us consider the implications of these facts. Across the entire world the only political elites that have yet suffered any significant human losses have been those of Iran, and they died at a very early stage, before significant outbreaks had even occurred almost anywhere else in the world outside China. Thus, we have America assassinating Iran’s top military commander on Jan. 2nd and then just a few weeks later large portions of the Iranian ruling elites became infected by a mysterious and deadly new virus, with many of them soon dying as a consequence. Could any rational individual possibly regard this as a mere coincidence?”

My question is this: Is this the smoking gun? In other words, do these two “attacks” on enemies of the United States strongly suggest Washington’s involvement?

Ron Unz– Well, it’s certainly an *extremely* odd coincidence for those who claim the global Covid outbreak was caused by an accidental, random lab-leak of a virus in Wuhan, China.

Iran is on the other side of the world from China, and very few Chinese visit the Holy City of Qom. So it’s extremely strange that the Covid virus would have jumped so extremely quickly from a Wuhan lab-leak to Iran’s top political leadership, which suffered the next major outbreak.

A few weeks afterward, the third major world outbreak began in Northern Italy, but 200,000 Chinese live and work in that region, and many had just returned from their Lunar New Year holiday in China. The Chinese population in Qom is absolutely negligible by comparison. The Italian outbreak makes perfectly logical sense while the one in Qom does not.

None of this constitutes proof, but it raises huge doubts about the likelihood of the random lab-leak hypothesis. By contrast, the deliberate release of a viral bioweapon seems a much more plausible explanation of both these outbreaks.

America has the world’s largest and most comprehensive biowarfare program, and America’s two leading international adversaries—China and Iran—were almost simultaneously hit by a mysterious, deadly virus. Suspicion seems to point in a pretty obvious direction.

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For about a year, most experts had agreed that the Covid outbreak in Wuhan probably began in late October or early November of 2019. By a remarkable coincidence, there were 300 American military servicemen visiting Wuhan for the World Military Games, which ended in late October. That visit would have provided perfect cover for America to slip a couple of operatives into the group, and have them release the virus in the city. With thousands of foreign military personnel traveling around and doing sightseeing, any risk of detection would have been minimal. That seems much more plausible than the risk of finding and using local Chinese operatives.

What would Americans think if 300 Chinese military officers paid an extended visit to Chicago, and immediately afterwards a mysterious, deadly viral epidemic suddenly broke out in that city?

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In any event, our biological warfare capability certainly does exist, with the Ft. Detrick facility being our leading lab. Trump’s lackadaisical response once Covid began leaking back into the U.S. hardly suggests that he initially realized it might be a dangerous bioweapon, so he seems to have been entirely ignorant of the facts. Therefore, the attack against China (and Iran) would have been a rogue operation, probably carried out by elements of the national security apparatus associated with the Deep State Neocons at the top of his administration.

If someone sufficiently senior had been behind the plot, I think it would have been easy for the conspirators to have drawn upon America’s military resources to carry out the operation, with all those lower-level participants believing that they were part of a fully-authorized strike against America’s leading geopolitical adversaries, just as our government soon afterward assassinated Iran’s top military commander. Probably someone such as such as Secretary of State (and former CIA Director) Mike Pompeo or National Security Advisor John Bolton would have had been able to orchestrate the attack.

Such individuals had the means, motive, and opportunity, so it seems absurd for the media to so totally ignore this possibility.

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Most experts believe that the Covid outbreak in Wuhan probably began in late October or early November, but since infections took some time to spread and the virus was initially undetectable, no one in the Chinese government was aware of the outbreak until the end of December. However, several American government sources later revealed to ABC News that as early as November 2019, our Defense Intelligence Agency had distributed a secret report to government officials warning that a “cataclysmic” disease outbreak was taking place in Wuhan. The Pentagon afterwards denied the story, but Israeli TV independently confirmed that the report indeed existed and had been distributed to our NATO allies and Israel. The secret DIA report was prepared in “the second week of November,” at a time when probably only a couple of dozen people were starting to feel a little sick in Wuhan, a city of 11 million, and more than a month before anyone in the Chinese government discovered the outbreak. These facts seem almost impossible to explain if the virus was either natural or was accidentally leaked from the Wuhan lab.

Audio: https://www.unz.com/CONTENTS/AUDIO/kbarrett/KB-TJ_2021_0520-unz.mp3?_=2

FORT DETRICK – SOURCE of COVID-19?

“I know Ephraim, and Israel is not hid from Me; for now, O Ephraim, thou committest whoredom, and Israel is defiled” Hosea 5:3 

“Ephraim shall be desolate in the day of rebuke; among the tribes of Israel have I made known that which shall surely be” Hosea 5:9

~ by Joel Huan on June 21, 2021.

Posted in China, Covid-19, US