By Michael Reagan
Facebook decided this week it’s no longer “misinformation” to wonder whether COVID-19 was manmade by Chinese scientists in a biolab in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
But it’s not just Facebook. The national media and President Biden have just done a similar 180.
On Wednesday, the same guy who had ordered the shutting down of the Trump administration’s investigation into the origins of COVID-19 told the U.S. intelligence community to redouble its efforts to find out how the coronavirus got started.
So, faster than you can say “dishonest mainstream media,” the idea that a deadly manmade virus came from a biolab in Communist China flipped from being a racist Trump conspiracy theory to a credible and probable possibility.
All last year the liberal media and our top scientists told us over and over that we had to believe the Communist Chinese fairy tale that COVID-19 jumped from animals to humans.
But that story has recently fallen apart after reports that several researchers working on coronaviruses at the biolab in Wuhan got so sick in November 2019 they were hospitalized.
Everyone in the national media is now talking about the plausibility of an escaped coronavirus as if it’s something new.
That’s great.
But if you go back a year, and if you know how to connect some dots, you would have known that there’s been something sloppy and rotten in China’s biolabs for almost 20 years.
In 2004 China’s health officials reported that four suspected cases of SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) – which sickened 8,000 in 29 countries and killed nearly 800 in 2003-2004 – were the result of a safety breach at a Beijing biolab studying the SARS coronavirus.
In 2017, after years of searching in caves, a team of scientists from the Wuhan Institute of Virology found the source of SARS in the bodies of horseshoe bats.
They began studying – and manipulating — the deadly and risky bat coronavirus in their high-containment laboratory, which in 2015 had become China’s first biolab to achieve the highest level of international bioresearch safety (known as BSL-4).
The trouble was, the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s biolab was a pandemic waiting to get started.
In 2018 a group of U.S. diplomats and scientists who visited the lab told the Trump administration that its staff was not properly trained and was not following the protocols to safely operate a level 4 biolab.
The White House was actually warned that the Wuhan lab’s “work on bat coronaviruses and their potential human transmission represented a risk of a new SARS-like pandemic.”
Biden appears to be catching up to the reality of China’s third-rate biolabs now, but he’s always known better.
It was the Obama administration that in 2015 helped China get the international OK it needed to raise the Wuhan lab’s rating from level 3 to 4.
By getting a higher accreditation, the biolab was allowed to handle the deadliest, riskiest viruses from anywhere in the world.
It also gave it the ability to do the testing and manipulation of coronaviruses that gave it the potential to become a biological weapons facility.
But don’t blame Obama, Biden or Dr. Fauci for endorsing the Wuhan biolab’s upgrade. The whole world signed off on it.
Maybe that’s why no other governments are coming down hard on China.
Maybe they don’t want to jeopardize their zillion-dollar financial arrangements with China or risk their domestic companies’ access to China’s 1.4 billion potential customers.
It’s not just the NBA, Apple or Hollywood that have sold their souls to China’s Communist government for profit.
That’s actually the big story, I think. Money. If you follow the money, you usually get to the bottom of things.
In this case, when you get to the bottom of things the world population will find out that their governments approved a level 4 biolab that can produce biological weapons for China—the world’s number one enemy of freedom.
And so far, 3.4 million human beings have died because of it.
Michael Reagan, the son of President Ronald Reagan, is an author, speaker and president of the Reagan Legacy Foundation. Send comments to reagan@caglecartoons.com and follow @reaganworld on Twitter. © 2021 Michael Reagan, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.
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tom dooley says
Waking up to the truth? Now that’s a funny title I don’t care who you are. lol. I am really surprised that this is on this website? I guess the “woke crowd” must have been sleeping? The real “woke crowd” have known this for over a year now. The lib’s and dem’s just don’t won’t to acknowledge this because orange man bad. Right Steve? Please don’t let me down since you know all. I’m sure your right? lol. Please run for office so i can vote for you.
Dennis C Rathsam says
TRUMP was right, he called the China flu early on…He told us China was behind this. And he,s right as rain. Folks this is how China will take over the world, no bombs, no fighting…ZIP China will make us all sick, and die. The process has already begun. This was no accident!
Paul says
Whoa Nellie, has FlaglerLive been hacked by the Russians?
What a strange, slightly dystopian opinion piece, though I recognize the tendency for right wing commentators to grossly distort facts to suit their narrative.
I’m one of those liberal wonks who subscribes to the New York Times and Washington Post, who regularly check the BBC news, and Al Jazeera and yes, horrors, who gravitates towards PBS, CNN and MSNBC.
Yet with all that liberal media saturation during 2020, I don’t remember anyone indoctrinating me into the belief that, the Wuhan lab as the source of Covid was ‘ a racist Trump conspiracy theory’. I simply got the impression there was no evidence. Then Trump, after repeatedly denying that Covid was a problem, started to call it the China Virus which was followed by reports of an increas in racist attacks on Asian Americans.
But hey, what do I know. I’m a ‘Woke Lib’, I’ve had a social conscience and been obsessed with history, science and current affairss since I was a teenager.
And now, apparently, my view that truth isn’t negotiable is outdated.
Deirdre Rutledge says
When I researched Covid origin theories many months ago, I came to the same conclusion, because it happens in every bio lab worldwide that sometimes a deadly virus escapes, but not intentionally. When I watered plants for the CDC in Atlanta decades ago, I was able to walk right into the back door with no one noticing, and although I’m sure things have changed, they clearly didn’t have good security. I understand the bats lived nowhere near the wet market, and none were being sold, so this made the most sense to me. I don’t think it’s right to call it the China virus, these accusations imply average Chinese people had something to do with it, and having met many they’re wonderful people in my experience). No group of people should be blamed for sloppy government practices, this terminology is what has accelerated the hate and violence against Asian Americans from any country. The Chinese people can’t control what their government does any more than we can, (the Trump administration proved that!) but I still think this was an accident that no one would want to admit to anywhere. Even the Spanish flu did not originate in Spain, we have plenty of evidence at this point to know that.
Something like this was bound to happen, it was only a matter of time, and it could’ve happened anywhere. The good news is we have a vaccine now, which MANY Trump supporters refuse to take, any more than they would wear masks. With that in mind, it’s going to be very hard to control this now or in the future. We will have Covid 19 forever, with new mutations every year just like the flu. Sooner or later we will have other deadly viruses escape from labs that will kill millions of people. Hopefully these won’t be weapons of mass destruction but either way people will die. It’s heartbreaking but that’s the reality of it in my opinion. We’ll probably never know the actual origins so everything is speculation at this point regardless, and no business anywhere wants to upset the Chinese government for political and financial reasons anyway. So, that’s my two cents worth, I’ve said this for a long time but people really believed the bat story, it’s interesting to consider the more likely truth. I also don’t think it’s appropriate say that theories of American politicians have anything to do with the conclusion of the situation, this is some thing that scientists deal with. I hate that politics and racism are the focus, this is obviously a worldwide problem, it’s got nothing to do with American politicians and it’s certainly not the beginning of racism against Asian Americans (although it’s certainly given many racists the opportunity to propel their hateful ideologies). Knowing the origins may help us control this virus though, it’s important to continue research on this matter.
Wary of China says
Pretty Stand up of you to post this given your political affiliation, but it is certainly something that needs to be addressed on a Global scale, If China Regime is proven responsible. I’m personally thinking (And I am no Macro-Economist) China should be so heavily sanctioned, their Container Ships full of plastic walmart/dollar store crap be turned away and denied entry, and One American Life is worth, times how many had to die is what US owes China. Trillions. Since Clinton loosened up economic ties with China in the mid nineties they have kicked this gift horse in the mouth and prepare for Global domination, not too different from the Japanese in the mid 20th century.
Ray W. says
If I am reading Reagan’s points in the manner he intends to make them, he describes a 2018 investigation, after which a team of U.S. diplomats and scientists warned members of the Trump administration that workers in China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology were engaging in practices inconsistent with the standards necessary to maintain a Level 4 biolab certification. This fact, of course, does not prove that such practices were occurring when the original certificate was approved in 2015 or that the certification should never have been issued in the first place; it only proves that during the term of the Trump administration, investigators noted that practices occurring in 2018 were not consistent with maintaining certification and then warned the government of that fact. Reagan does not list the efforts taken by the Trump administration to revoke certification or even challenge it. Lacking such specificity for most of his other claims, much of the rest of Reagan’s article appears to be based on innuendo and speculation, perhaps written for political effect, but that doesn’t prove that Reagan is wrong for raising red flags. His final point, that China is bent on supporting a military capable of developing a biological threat for use against the rest of the world, seems beyond dispute. Of course, to some, Biden is the president who is at fault. This raises an interesting question: Can China develop biological weapons capability without certification? I cannot help but think that China could support a lab that failed to receive a Level 4 certification and still manipulate deadly bat viruses found in Chinese caves for use as a biological threat against the rest of the world. After all, Pakistan developed nuclear weapons capability without certification. North Korea developed nuclear weapons capability without certification. Certification may allow access to worldwide information and research, but it does not stop governments from developing their own expertise and hiding it from the rest of the world.
I am reminded of a problem encountered in one of FDLE’s DNA labs. A curious defense attorney took pictures of the DNA lab when he or she was admitted back into the work area. One picture depicted a sign over a doorway into the lab warning that no food or drink was allowed in the lab (for obvious contamination reasons). In the same picture, a fast food bag with open wrappers lay on an analyst’s desk, complete with drink. Other pictures were used by defense experts to show that analysts, despite proper training, simply disregarded scientific protocols necessary to run a DNA lab at the level required for certification. Eventually, the lab had to undergo a recertification process. The testimony did not prove that FDLE should never have obtained certification for the lab; it only proved that the lab no longer deserved certification Of course, defense attorneys are no longer allowed back into lab areas; they wait in interview rooms for the analysts to appear for their depositions, often walking in with the prosecutor, suggesting that prosecutors are still allowed back in the lab areas.
Steve says
Orange man not bad Hes Delusional