The stringent restrictions implemented by Edinburgh University posed a substantial obstacle to my research, as they restricted my access to essential resources and reduced the depth of my study. My investigation was less successful because of the university’s lack of cooperation, even though I looked for support in other places. Due to Edinburgh University’s restrictive policies, I had to rely on CIPD Assignment Help to fill in the gaps in my education during these trying times.
If they had nothing to hid they would have disclosed the emails.
As pressure mounts what is the betting that the emails will be accidently deleted in a sever crash. Remember you heard it here first
LA
Leigh A
3 months ago
Yet another example of higher education feathering its own nest instead of the pursuit of knowledge. At this point I wouldn’t be sad to see the entire sector razed to the ground and started over
Absolutely. I hope some of the projects by people like Musk of establishing real universities will succeed. Nothing coming out of today’s “scientific” community can be trusted these days, except maybe Astrophysics and Mathematics. Biology, sociology, anthropology, psychology, hell even medicine, have been completely taken over by the woke left. Others by corporate or personal financial interest. Just let them all die.
Well perhaps because the greatest physicists of all time were white. You know, Newton, Maxwell, Faraday, Einstein, Dirac, Feynman. Perhaps get over it as these were some of the greatest minds that have walked our tiny earth.
I’m more curious as to how physics is different if the physicists are a different sex or colour. If Einstein was black, would C be different? If Schrodinger was a woman, would quantum physics make sense?
Yes, sometimes the “man” behind the science is interesting, but that really isn’t why most people have any interest in science.
Just because it does not make sense does not mean to say it cannot be an enforced ideology and anyone questioning faith will mark themselves out for censure.
As to what you say about Newton, Maxwell, Faraday, Einstein, Dirac (I would not include Feynman) from a progressive view point you have just proved the case against you. There are no blacks or womin or womin of colour so by definition white men have excluded everyone else.
My son’s response was I think you will find that its Jew physics
That is not how the progressive argument works.
It goes that because historically substantially all top of the run physicists are white and male this is irrefutable proof that blacks, womin, and womin of colour have been excluded. If they had not been excluded then the list would include a proper proportion of blacks, womin, and womin of colour.
Hell they probably claim that the laws of physics would actually be different had the ranks of physicists included the right number of lacks, womin, and womin of colour. Newton’s laws of motion would not have been quite so fascist, the laws of physics would not have allowed the creation of the atomic bomb. This last paragraph was only partly in jest
As an insider, I agree. They are broken. The hyper-progressive ideologues and diversity hires are tenured for 40 years. The grip of the progressive bureaucracies is unshakeable. The only leverage point a conservative government might have is research funding.
SG
Susan Grabston
3 months ago
I am increasingly peesuaded that the difference between conspiracy theory and reality is about 2 years and getting shorter. I eetainly no longer automatically dismiss them as “noise”.
Rather longer in the case of the actual jabs, whose safety and effectiveness not even Unherd seems to dare to challenge
PP
Peter Principle
3 months ago
Many thanks to Ian Birrell for this piece. Rambaut, Daszak, Farrar and co. pulled of a master-stroke in the dark arts by asserting that lab-leak was a “conspiracy theory”. A conspiracy is a secret agreement between parties to achieve some goal, but lab-leak implies neither a secret agreement nor a goal. Lab-leak is a c*ck-up theory, not a conspiracy theory.
I used to have respect for the Wellcome Trust (see Farrar) as it seemed to be one of the few remaining world-class British outfits but not any more.
In R F Kennedy’s book ‘The real Anthony Fauci ‘ (if you haven’t read this yet, make it a New Year’s resolution) I discovered that during the AIDS pandemic (a dry run for the latest in many awful respects), Burroughs Wellcome were simultaneously pushing their novel therapeutic AZT (which had no efficacy whatsoever and was so toxic – cancer inducing in fact ; sound familiar ? – it killed you faster than the virus) and party drug amyl nitrate (aka ‘Poppers’ for which it still had a worldwide patent as the treatment for angina, but was suspected by many to be a contributing factor in AIDS and at the very least was known to be damaging to the immune system).
But that didn’t stop them making shed loads of money out of both during the worldwide panic (sound familiar?) and it transformed the fortunes of the company from a small, sleepy UK also-ran to a world leader (tadddah; just don’t mention the collateral damage). Just like Biogen and Moderna (ask dear Jonathan Van-Tam – he knows a good screw when he sees one).
I was always quite cynical about the world but would pinch myself periodically and tell myself it was in fact a glass half-full not empty.
Welcome Trust is as broken as the British Museum or the National Trust – and let’s not talk about Girl Guides, or the Anglican Church. I’d like to say the Catholics were immune but…..sadly not.
Oh dear!
The Wellcome Trust was founded in 1936, as a charitable organisation, separate from the drug company. Originally, shares in the drug company gave it some of its income, but they were sold off in 1986. For nearly 40 years the Trust has had nothing to do with the drug company.
The Trust funds a great deal of top class research.
So where does its money come from ? Not out of thin air, I assume ? Being a charity is no guarantee of ethical behaviour any more (see Oxfam scandals etc) and many are set up as influence-laundering entities to generate desired outcomes for big bucks.
In a world where the impact investment of Bill Gates can be termed ‘philanthropy’, charitable status now means nothing in terms of ethical behaviour.
And,as you know from the book,but didn’t write, Anthony Fauci was also instrumental in pushing that.
He has a claim to being the most harmful scientist ever.
KJ
Karl Juhnke
3 months ago
Thank you Ian for your great work.
KS
Katja Sipple
3 months ago
A laboratory leak has always been the most likely explanation. I have been taking this position ever since news of Covid-19 first broke in January of 2020, and I have seen/read/heard nothing to convince me otherwise.
Indeed. A simple application of Occam’s Razor makes the lab leak the most plausible hypothesis. And a lab leak doesn’t rule out a natural origin for the leaked virus either given that they were collected these viruses from bat caves.
Yes, but the trick was to conflate various speculation regarding GoF research with a/the leak.
The reality is GoF research may have occurred without a leak (or a leak specifically leading to the SARS-CoV2 outbreak).
No GoF research (at least related to this outbreak) but a leak did occur.
Both the research and the leak occurred.
Neither; the virus was entirely zoonotic.
Considering we have to deal with the enormous mountain of opaque obfuscation, it’s rather hard to prove anything.
From the various FOIA leaks we have seen, I certainly think plenty of powerful actors fear the possibility this was a leak of GoF research material.
Faucci himself certainly entertains the possibility of a lab leak, although it does depend what the day of the week he’s asked the question.
> statement published in The Lancet early in the pandemic that condemned “conspiracy theories suggesting that Covid-19 does not have a natural origin” and ridiculously ***praised Beijing for “rapid, open and transparent” sharing of data***. It was signed by 27 experts, including Farrar and two Wellcome Trust colleagues.
Yeah these guys definitely have a hidden agenda.
AH
AC Harper
3 months ago
Public perception appears to be swinging behind the ‘lab leak’ theory, whether it is true or not. It seems more likely to me than not.
Now perhaps we are seeing the public beginning to question the wisdom of lockdowns and the imposition of previously untried vaccines. I too poo poohed the Great Barrington Declaration at the time, but it now seems rather sensible – the authors said that, instead of protecting everyone, the focus should instead be on “shielding” those most at risk, with few mandatory restrictions placed on the remainder of the population.
My somewhat cynical take on the Covid-19 Inquiry is that it is intended to delay investigation until the lab-leak theory and criticism of lockdowns become a matter of casual knowledge and therefore unremarkable.
It’s interesting that my initial reaction to the GBD was, on reflection, conditioned by the Pandemic Mindset that was front and centre at the time. I used to consider myself not easily fooled but I now know that an authoritative consensus has great power to convince.
I leave it as an exercise for others to consider what other authoritative consensuses have feet of clay.
The danger for the monied interests (Big Tech, Pharma, and their clients in governments and public authorities) is when it becomes an unspoken but near universally acknowledged fact that the so-called vaccines were certainly not effective, nor were they particularly safe. Pretty much everyone now knows someone, often multiple people, of their acquaintance who were harmed in some way by them. Uptake of “boosters”, that outrageously are still on offer to few remaining unwitting members of the general public, is very low.
At some point, like Post Office scandal, this will all crystallise into a political backlash, the nature of which is difficult to predict. But they have for sure lost control of the narrative, and the “dangerous anti-vaxxer” trope that they trot out to besmirch those with the courage to point out that the Emperor is stark naked has worn so thin that even the most slavish adherent to the “BBC” worldview, including those whose salaries depend on it, can see straight through it and through the “Covid Inquiry” whitewashing. Which is why so many people are looking away.
The problem is that a dying beast is most dangerous when it is cornered and out of options other than to viciously, even if futilely, lash out. There could bad times ahead before the corner is properly turned, but ultimately love triumphs over fear, every time.
CS
Charles Stanhope
3 months ago
At formal Oxbridge dinners only members of Oxford, Cambridge, and Trinity Dublin may wear academic gowns.
Members of Sc*tch Universities may NOT despite the fact that two*of their universities predate Trinity Dublin. Reading this essay one can understand why!
We have to rely on freelance journalists and commercial media producers these days as state-funded institutions decline into dogma, careerism and cover-up.
AH
Andrew Horsman
3 months ago
It seems clear that something escaped from the Wuhan lab some time in 2019. It seems highly unlikely to have been a unique freak event given the lax security and it would be extraordinary if other leaks hadn’t happen before or since then.
But, whether it did leak or not, might be to miss the bigger picture? Remember that the deadliness of the SARS-CoV-2 is, and was known to be, similar to seasonal flu. This was aptly demonstrated by the Diamond Princess, a cruise ship containing thousands of mostly elderly, supposedly immuni-naive, people, and only a small handful of deaths. The useless PCR tests, which Drosten had an outrageous conflict of interest in, were ready to roll in January 2020, days after the supposed identification of the virus. The high medical establishment knew all of this. The politicians they advised knew all of this. They knew that lockdowns, social distancing, masks etc etc wouldn’t make any meaningful difference simply because people ALWAYS die in winter of seasonal flu-like viruses. Hence the initial reticence to go along with the whole pantomime in the UK and elsewhere.
Any seasonal flu-like virus would have served the purpose, which was to ramp up fear, prompt an overreaction that cause more death and suffering (intubation of patients who could breath for themselves on “safety” grounds? Diazepam? Fear-laden, anxiety-inducing propaganda? Stay at home and get no Vitamin D? Sudden collapse of familial and social support networks, loneliness and despair? Vulnerable old and young people left with abusers alone at home? Disregard of long established hospital and emergency services protocols? Emptying out of historical wards in to care / death homes? Time wasted in first responders donning “PPE” while patients died at home?). The response was guaranteed to drive more fear, and an even more deadly response and spiral – and desperation for the “way out” in the form of a “vaccine”. The virus itself did not do the most part of the damage, and nor could any respiratory virus – viruses that incapacitate and kill most of their victims tend not to spread very far, for obvious reasons.
Why would the fearful, deluded, clever, selfish, narcissistic, greedy control-freaks behind all of this do it? Because they have a grand plan to save mankind (and the planet) through consolidation of power at the global level, the abolition (or “reimagination”) of the individual as we know it, and personal and societal salvation through transformative extropian technology to extend human lifespans significantly, which needs to be test driven and mass-experimented. An incidental effect of which is of course to make themselves very rich or, more accurately, even richer. Problem, reaction, solution. A simple playbook that been running for a century or more.
Ian Birrell’s investigative journalism on the origins of this particular virus is a fine thing. But I would encourage him and those who follow him to look up and look around.
Yes. It was a bad flu season. Sadly people in old people’s homes do have a high propensity to die.
AL
Alex Lekas
3 months ago
Meanwhile, the WEF – which is meeting this week – lists mis and disinformation as the leading concerns of the day, right along with climate, so you know they’re serious. What they’re serious about is another matter. The group, like this university, is not concerned with accurate information; it’s concerned with controlling narratives and attacking the heretics who do not blindly follow. Unfortunately, the robust press of all has reduced itself to stenographer status, eager to trumpet the next govt-issued press release as gospel to be accepted without question.
The lack of journalistic curiosity over Covid may beat all I’ve seen, even more than the casual dismissal of having what amounts to a husk of a man as the presumed leader of the free world. Then again, much of the media is meekly obliging the censorship industrial complex, when not carrying its water. Because these people are not reporters, they are activists. That became obvious when Obama ran, a man whose resume included a speech and a history of voting present. It’s only gotten worse.
DC
David Colquhoun
3 months ago
The fact of the matter is that it’s impossible to decide where a virus originated by looking at its sequence. That’s why there is no justification for heated rants, like this one. We shall probably never know for certain where it came from. And even if we did that wouldn’t help us to cope with the pandemic.
True enough. But the issue here is who lied and why?
L
Liakoura
3 months ago
“Among these experts was Rambaut, who ran the online site that first published the Sars-CoV-2 genome after it was leaked by a brave Chinese scientist in early 2020 in tandem with their mutual friend Eddie Holmes, a Sydney-based British virologist.”
In “The Truth about Dramatic Action” dated 27 January 2020 is the following:
“On January 11, [2020] on the basis of the latest research developments in Beijing and Shanghai, China officially confirmed that this new coronavirus was the pathogen causing the Wuhan pneumonia epidemic, and it shared the new coronavirus gene sequence information with the WHO. https://chinamediaproject.org/2020/01/27/dramatic-actions/
And later in the same article which is still the most comprehensive account of the first few weeks that I have read:
“According to reports from Caixin Media, one of China’s leading professional news outlets, the entire situation began on December 8, with the discovery of the first known case of an infected patient in Wuhan, a stall operator from the Huanan Seafood Market. The Huanan Seafood Market is a large-scale wet market, with an area about the size of seven football pitches and more than 1,000 stalls. The market has a constant flow of customers, making it the ideal place for the spread of infectious disease. A seafood market only in name, it sells a wide array of live animals, including hedgehogs, civet cats, peacocks, bamboo rats and other types of wild animals. At this market, the nearly inexhaustible appetite, and insatiable greed and curiosity of Chinese diners is on full display.
The number of infected people rose rapidly, reaching 27 people within a short period of time. Health professionals in Wuhan began suspecting in early December that this was an unknown infectious disease, not unlike the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) that emerged in southern China in 2003. The ghost of SARS seemed to wander Wuhan in December, and rumors spread farther and farther afield of a new disease on the prowl.”
The writer mentions the “Mojiang miners incident” but fails to mention that this happened in 2012, almost eight years before the outbreak in Wuhan that was to become the Covid-19 pandemic.
MM
Michael Miles
3 months ago
How can there be accountability of anyone if an investigation might “endanger the physical or mental health or safety of an individual”?
AB
Allison Barrows
3 months ago
Should be, should not be, but they are.
DW
David Walters
3 months ago
Their refusal to disclose the information tells us all we need to know really. The sad fact is that scientists in so many fields now are happy to go along with their financial backers and are happy to publish garbage. The obvious example is around climate change. 97% of climate scientists believe the science is irrefutable. No they don’t- they just want funding and a job. I am surprised they didn’t say 100% but I suppose that would be stretching the public’s naivety a little too far
WK
Wayne Kitcat
3 months ago
What is so egregious here is that the gain of function work was regarded as too dangerous to continue in the US so the US effectively financed the work in Wuhan in the only lab in China that supposedly was equipped to take on this sort of work, BUT nobody in the US or even the French who built the lab was ever allowed to inspect it and make sure that the correct protocols and procedures were being used to a avoid viral escape!! So we can thank the US for Covid, but never fear American big pharma has done very nicely thank you, only problem is the damage that the vaccines are doing to our long term health. https://www.youtube.com/live/EoMH2R0vVxM?si=igstu60dVptTTA89
DJ
David Jory
3 months ago
Ironic that Edinburgh University appears to be mildly dyslexic. When they said they wanted to protect Rambaut’s ‘health and safety’ they meant ‘wealth and safety’.
DM
Doug Mccaully
3 months ago
Did you know that covid 19 has been found in lions, tigers, cats, dogs, mink, gorillas, pangolins, civet cats, racoons? Possibly they caught it from us but the point is lots of species can act as go betweens between species. Lots of racoon farms in China, wet market in Wuhan, all sorts of wild animals there. Catch my drift? You’re welcome.
JR
john d rockemella
3 months ago
Academia, is the like the nazi party! Secret experiments, and not caring about human life! Remember the means justify the ends to some of these people. No empathy or human compassion. Scientists and academics need to be held under a tight leash!
NC
Niall Cusack
3 months ago
Is anyone going to protest at the suppression of my comment on
Martin McGuinness and the Queen? I was there
I’ll join you in your protest, its hypocritical to call yourself Unherd and then ban people from being herd for no observable reason. My subscription for Unherd is nearly up, I might try one for Mad Magazine or Beatrix Potter Monthly. At least there’s less pretending to be a beacon of balance and free speech in those titles. I won’t miss Unherd and I doubt they’ll miss me.
WB
William Brand
2 months ago
Money talks and China has the money. In addition, China’s military and spies made it clear that any questioning of China’s germ warfare plans could result in nuclear war.
WB
William Brand
2 months ago
The major question is whether or not China deliberately genetically engineered and released the virus in an attempt to weaken its enemies. The major damage to the Chinese economy tends to indicate that it was an accident. Is there a possibility that China was vaccinating its population with Covid against a planned future virus that will destroy the white race? Smallpox destroyed the American Indian allowing the Spanish conquest of Mexico and Peru. Can China develop a virus that will kill off its enemies while sparing its own population. It must not be an obvious attack lest germs be retaliated against with nuclear weapons.
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Dear Ian,
Keep going and don’t let the ba£tards grind you down.
Don’t give up!
The stringent restrictions implemented by Edinburgh University posed a substantial obstacle to my research, as they restricted my access to essential resources and reduced the depth of my study. My investigation was less successful because of the university’s lack of cooperation, even though I looked for support in other places. Due to Edinburgh University’s restrictive policies, I had to rely on CIPD Assignment Help to fill in the gaps in my education during these trying times.
Drift Hunters – Lively drift racing, beautiful images, unique driving feeling.
Well done Mr Birrell on your work here, and to UnHerd for publishing it.
If they had nothing to hid they would have disclosed the emails.
As pressure mounts what is the betting that the emails will be accidently deleted in a sever crash. Remember you heard it here first
Yet another example of higher education feathering its own nest instead of the pursuit of knowledge. At this point I wouldn’t be sad to see the entire sector razed to the ground and started over
Absolutely. I hope some of the projects by people like Musk of establishing real universities will succeed. Nothing coming out of today’s “scientific” community can be trusted these days, except maybe Astrophysics and Mathematics. Biology, sociology, anthropology, psychology, hell even medicine, have been completely taken over by the woke left. Others by corporate or personal financial interest. Just let them all die.
So I am afraid has STEM.
My son had to be lectured on white male physics
Well perhaps because the greatest physicists of all time were white. You know, Newton, Maxwell, Faraday, Einstein, Dirac, Feynman. Perhaps get over it as these were some of the greatest minds that have walked our tiny earth.
I’m more curious as to how physics is different if the physicists are a different sex or colour. If Einstein was black, would C be different? If Schrodinger was a woman, would quantum physics make sense?
Yes, sometimes the “man” behind the science is interesting, but that really isn’t why most people have any interest in science.
Just because it does not make sense does not mean to say it cannot be an enforced ideology and anyone questioning faith will mark themselves out for censure.
As to what you say about Newton, Maxwell, Faraday, Einstein, Dirac (I would not include Feynman) from a progressive view point you have just proved the case against you. There are no blacks or womin or womin of colour so by definition white men have excluded everyone else.
My son’s response was I think you will find that its Jew physics
So, how do white male physics differ from any other kind?
That is not how the progressive argument works.
It goes that because historically substantially all top of the run physicists are white and male this is irrefutable proof that blacks, womin, and womin of colour have been excluded. If they had not been excluded then the list would include a proper proportion of blacks, womin, and womin of colour.
Hell they probably claim that the laws of physics would actually be different had the ranks of physicists included the right number of lacks, womin, and womin of colour. Newton’s laws of motion would not have been quite so fascist, the laws of physics would not have allowed the creation of the atomic bomb. This last paragraph was only partly in jest
Hitler referred to it as Jewish physics.
As an insider, I agree. They are broken. The hyper-progressive ideologues and diversity hires are tenured for 40 years. The grip of the progressive bureaucracies is unshakeable. The only leverage point a conservative government might have is research funding.
I am increasingly peesuaded that the difference between conspiracy theory and reality is about 2 years and getting shorter. I eetainly no longer automatically dismiss them as “noise”.
Rather longer in the case of the actual jabs, whose safety and effectiveness not even Unherd seems to dare to challenge
Many thanks to Ian Birrell for this piece. Rambaut, Daszak, Farrar and co. pulled of a master-stroke in the dark arts by asserting that lab-leak was a “conspiracy theory”. A conspiracy is a secret agreement between parties to achieve some goal, but lab-leak implies neither a secret agreement nor a goal. Lab-leak is a c*ck-up theory, not a conspiracy theory.
I used to have respect for the Wellcome Trust (see Farrar) as it seemed to be one of the few remaining world-class British outfits but not any more.
In R F Kennedy’s book ‘The real Anthony Fauci ‘ (if you haven’t read this yet, make it a New Year’s resolution) I discovered that during the AIDS pandemic (a dry run for the latest in many awful respects), Burroughs Wellcome were simultaneously pushing their novel therapeutic AZT (which had no efficacy whatsoever and was so toxic – cancer inducing in fact ; sound familiar ? – it killed you faster than the virus) and party drug amyl nitrate (aka ‘Poppers’ for which it still had a worldwide patent as the treatment for angina, but was suspected by many to be a contributing factor in AIDS and at the very least was known to be damaging to the immune system).
But that didn’t stop them making shed loads of money out of both during the worldwide panic (sound familiar?) and it transformed the fortunes of the company from a small, sleepy UK also-ran to a world leader (tadddah; just don’t mention the collateral damage). Just like Biogen and Moderna (ask dear Jonathan Van-Tam – he knows a good screw when he sees one).
I was always quite cynical about the world but would pinch myself periodically and tell myself it was in fact a glass half-full not empty.
How foolish I was.
Welcome Trust is as broken as the British Museum or the National Trust – and let’s not talk about Girl Guides, or the Anglican Church. I’d like to say the Catholics were immune but…..sadly not.
Oh dear!
The Wellcome Trust was founded in 1936, as a charitable organisation, separate from the drug company. Originally, shares in the drug company gave it some of its income, but they were sold off in 1986. For nearly 40 years the Trust has had nothing to do with the drug company.
The Trust funds a great deal of top class research.
So where does its money come from ? Not out of thin air, I assume ? Being a charity is no guarantee of ethical behaviour any more (see Oxfam scandals etc) and many are set up as influence-laundering entities to generate desired outcomes for big bucks.
In a world where the impact investment of Bill Gates can be termed ‘philanthropy’, charitable status now means nothing in terms of ethical behaviour.
And,as you know from the book,but didn’t write, Anthony Fauci was also instrumental in pushing that.
He has a claim to being the most harmful scientist ever.
Thank you Ian for your great work.
A laboratory leak has always been the most likely explanation. I have been taking this position ever since news of Covid-19 first broke in January of 2020, and I have seen/read/heard nothing to convince me otherwise.
Indeed. A simple application of Occam’s Razor makes the lab leak the most plausible hypothesis. And a lab leak doesn’t rule out a natural origin for the leaked virus either given that they were collected these viruses from bat caves.
Yes, but the trick was to conflate various speculation regarding GoF research with a/the leak.
The reality is GoF research may have occurred without a leak (or a leak specifically leading to the SARS-CoV2 outbreak).
No GoF research (at least related to this outbreak) but a leak did occur.
Both the research and the leak occurred.
Neither; the virus was entirely zoonotic.
Considering we have to deal with the enormous mountain of opaque obfuscation, it’s rather hard to prove anything.
From the various FOIA leaks we have seen, I certainly think plenty of powerful actors fear the possibility this was a leak of GoF research material.
Faucci himself certainly entertains the possibility of a lab leak, although it does depend what the day of the week he’s asked the question.
Same.
> statement published in The Lancet early in the pandemic that condemned “conspiracy theories suggesting that Covid-19 does not have a natural origin” and ridiculously ***praised Beijing for “rapid, open and transparent” sharing of data***. It was signed by 27 experts, including Farrar and two Wellcome Trust colleagues.
Yeah these guys definitely have a hidden agenda.
Public perception appears to be swinging behind the ‘lab leak’ theory, whether it is true or not. It seems more likely to me than not.
Now perhaps we are seeing the public beginning to question the wisdom of lockdowns and the imposition of previously untried vaccines. I too poo poohed the Great Barrington Declaration at the time, but it now seems rather sensible – the authors said that, instead of protecting everyone, the focus should instead be on “shielding” those most at risk, with few mandatory restrictions placed on the remainder of the population.
My somewhat cynical take on the Covid-19 Inquiry is that it is intended to delay investigation until the lab-leak theory and criticism of lockdowns become a matter of casual knowledge and therefore unremarkable.
HOLE IN ONE SIR!
Not that it mattered to anyone but I signed the GBD as soon as it was published. I am pleased that you have come round.
It’s interesting that my initial reaction to the GBD was, on reflection, conditioned by the Pandemic Mindset that was front and centre at the time. I used to consider myself not easily fooled but I now know that an authoritative consensus has great power to convince.
I leave it as an exercise for others to consider what other authoritative consensuses have feet of clay.
I did too.
The danger for the monied interests (Big Tech, Pharma, and their clients in governments and public authorities) is when it becomes an unspoken but near universally acknowledged fact that the so-called vaccines were certainly not effective, nor were they particularly safe. Pretty much everyone now knows someone, often multiple people, of their acquaintance who were harmed in some way by them. Uptake of “boosters”, that outrageously are still on offer to few remaining unwitting members of the general public, is very low.
At some point, like Post Office scandal, this will all crystallise into a political backlash, the nature of which is difficult to predict. But they have for sure lost control of the narrative, and the “dangerous anti-vaxxer” trope that they trot out to besmirch those with the courage to point out that the Emperor is stark naked has worn so thin that even the most slavish adherent to the “BBC” worldview, including those whose salaries depend on it, can see straight through it and through the “Covid Inquiry” whitewashing. Which is why so many people are looking away.
The problem is that a dying beast is most dangerous when it is cornered and out of options other than to viciously, even if futilely, lash out. There could bad times ahead before the corner is properly turned, but ultimately love triumphs over fear, every time.
At formal Oxbridge dinners only members of Oxford, Cambridge, and Trinity Dublin may wear academic gowns.
Members of Sc*tch Universities may NOT despite the fact that two*of their universities predate Trinity Dublin. Reading this essay one can understand why!
(* St Andrews and Glasgow.)
Idiot!
QED!
We have to rely on freelance journalists and commercial media producers these days as state-funded institutions decline into dogma, careerism and cover-up.
It seems clear that something escaped from the Wuhan lab some time in 2019. It seems highly unlikely to have been a unique freak event given the lax security and it would be extraordinary if other leaks hadn’t happen before or since then.
But, whether it did leak or not, might be to miss the bigger picture? Remember that the deadliness of the SARS-CoV-2 is, and was known to be, similar to seasonal flu. This was aptly demonstrated by the Diamond Princess, a cruise ship containing thousands of mostly elderly, supposedly immuni-naive, people, and only a small handful of deaths. The useless PCR tests, which Drosten had an outrageous conflict of interest in, were ready to roll in January 2020, days after the supposed identification of the virus. The high medical establishment knew all of this. The politicians they advised knew all of this. They knew that lockdowns, social distancing, masks etc etc wouldn’t make any meaningful difference simply because people ALWAYS die in winter of seasonal flu-like viruses. Hence the initial reticence to go along with the whole pantomime in the UK and elsewhere.
Any seasonal flu-like virus would have served the purpose, which was to ramp up fear, prompt an overreaction that cause more death and suffering (intubation of patients who could breath for themselves on “safety” grounds? Diazepam? Fear-laden, anxiety-inducing propaganda? Stay at home and get no Vitamin D? Sudden collapse of familial and social support networks, loneliness and despair? Vulnerable old and young people left with abusers alone at home? Disregard of long established hospital and emergency services protocols? Emptying out of historical wards in to care / death homes? Time wasted in first responders donning “PPE” while patients died at home?). The response was guaranteed to drive more fear, and an even more deadly response and spiral – and desperation for the “way out” in the form of a “vaccine”. The virus itself did not do the most part of the damage, and nor could any respiratory virus – viruses that incapacitate and kill most of their victims tend not to spread very far, for obvious reasons.
Why would the fearful, deluded, clever, selfish, narcissistic, greedy control-freaks behind all of this do it? Because they have a grand plan to save mankind (and the planet) through consolidation of power at the global level, the abolition (or “reimagination”) of the individual as we know it, and personal and societal salvation through transformative extropian technology to extend human lifespans significantly, which needs to be test driven and mass-experimented. An incidental effect of which is of course to make themselves very rich or, more accurately, even richer. Problem, reaction, solution. A simple playbook that been running for a century or more.
Ian Birrell’s investigative journalism on the origins of this particular virus is a fine thing. But I would encourage him and those who follow him to look up and look around.
You cite the Diamond Princess evidence but was there not a high incidence of deaths in some old people’s homes?
Yes. It was a bad flu season. Sadly people in old people’s homes do have a high propensity to die.
Meanwhile, the WEF – which is meeting this week – lists mis and disinformation as the leading concerns of the day, right along with climate, so you know they’re serious. What they’re serious about is another matter. The group, like this university, is not concerned with accurate information; it’s concerned with controlling narratives and attacking the heretics who do not blindly follow. Unfortunately, the robust press of all has reduced itself to stenographer status, eager to trumpet the next govt-issued press release as gospel to be accepted without question.
The lack of journalistic curiosity over Covid may beat all I’ve seen, even more than the casual dismissal of having what amounts to a husk of a man as the presumed leader of the free world. Then again, much of the media is meekly obliging the censorship industrial complex, when not carrying its water. Because these people are not reporters, they are activists. That became obvious when Obama ran, a man whose resume included a speech and a history of voting present. It’s only gotten worse.
The fact of the matter is that it’s impossible to decide where a virus originated by looking at its sequence. That’s why there is no justification for heated rants, like this one. We shall probably never know for certain where it came from. And even if we did that wouldn’t help us to cope with the pandemic.
True enough. But the issue here is who lied and why?
“Among these experts was Rambaut, who ran the online site that first published the Sars-CoV-2 genome after it was leaked by a brave Chinese scientist in early 2020 in tandem with their mutual friend Eddie Holmes, a Sydney-based British virologist.”
In “The Truth about Dramatic Action” dated 27 January 2020 is the following:
“On January 11, [2020] on the basis of the latest research developments in Beijing and Shanghai, China officially confirmed that this new coronavirus was the pathogen causing the Wuhan pneumonia epidemic, and it shared the new coronavirus gene sequence information with the WHO.
https://chinamediaproject.org/2020/01/27/dramatic-actions/
And later in the same article which is still the most comprehensive account of the first few weeks that I have read:
“According to reports from Caixin Media, one of China’s leading professional news outlets, the entire situation began on December 8, with the discovery of the first known case of an infected patient in Wuhan, a stall operator from the Huanan Seafood Market. The Huanan Seafood Market is a large-scale wet market, with an area about the size of seven football pitches and more than 1,000 stalls. The market has a constant flow of customers, making it the ideal place for the spread of infectious disease. A seafood market only in name, it sells a wide array of live animals, including hedgehogs, civet cats, peacocks, bamboo rats and other types of wild animals. At this market, the nearly inexhaustible appetite, and insatiable greed and curiosity of Chinese diners is on full display.
The number of infected people rose rapidly, reaching 27 people within a short period of time. Health professionals in Wuhan began suspecting in early December that this was an unknown infectious disease, not unlike the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) that emerged in southern China in 2003. The ghost of SARS seemed to wander Wuhan in December, and rumors spread farther and farther afield of a new disease on the prowl.”
The writer mentions the “Mojiang miners incident” but fails to mention that this happened in 2012, almost eight years before the outbreak in Wuhan that was to become the Covid-19 pandemic.
How can there be accountability of anyone if an investigation might “endanger the physical or mental health or safety of an individual”?
Should be, should not be, but they are.
Their refusal to disclose the information tells us all we need to know really. The sad fact is that scientists in so many fields now are happy to go along with their financial backers and are happy to publish garbage. The obvious example is around climate change. 97% of climate scientists believe the science is irrefutable. No they don’t- they just want funding and a job. I am surprised they didn’t say 100% but I suppose that would be stretching the public’s naivety a little too far
What is so egregious here is that the gain of function work was regarded as too dangerous to continue in the US so the US effectively financed the work in Wuhan in the only lab in China that supposedly was equipped to take on this sort of work, BUT nobody in the US or even the French who built the lab was ever allowed to inspect it and make sure that the correct protocols and procedures were being used to a avoid viral escape!! So we can thank the US for Covid, but never fear American big pharma has done very nicely thank you, only problem is the damage that the vaccines are doing to our long term health. https://www.youtube.com/live/EoMH2R0vVxM?si=igstu60dVptTTA89
Ironic that Edinburgh University appears to be mildly dyslexic. When they said they wanted to protect Rambaut’s ‘health and safety’ they meant ‘wealth and safety’.
Did you know that covid 19 has been found in lions, tigers, cats, dogs, mink, gorillas, pangolins, civet cats, racoons? Possibly they caught it from us but the point is lots of species can act as go betweens between species. Lots of racoon farms in China, wet market in Wuhan, all sorts of wild animals there. Catch my drift? You’re welcome.
Academia, is the like the nazi party! Secret experiments, and not caring about human life! Remember the means justify the ends to some of these people. No empathy or human compassion. Scientists and academics need to be held under a tight leash!
Is anyone going to protest at the suppression of my comment on
Martin McGuinness and the Queen? I was there
I’ll join you in your protest, its hypocritical to call yourself Unherd and then ban people from being herd for no observable reason. My subscription for Unherd is nearly up, I might try one for Mad Magazine or Beatrix Potter Monthly. At least there’s less pretending to be a beacon of balance and free speech in those titles. I won’t miss Unherd and I doubt they’ll miss me.
Money talks and China has the money. In addition, China’s military and spies made it clear that any questioning of China’s germ warfare plans could result in nuclear war.
The major question is whether or not China deliberately genetically engineered and released the virus in an attempt to weaken its enemies. The major damage to the Chinese economy tends to indicate that it was an accident. Is there a possibility that China was vaccinating its population with Covid against a planned future virus that will destroy the white race? Smallpox destroyed the American Indian allowing the Spanish conquest of Mexico and Peru. Can China develop a virus that will kill off its enemies while sparing its own population. It must not be an obvious attack lest germs be retaliated against with nuclear weapons.