Source: Unz.com
During the last year or more, nearly all our mainstream media outlets have regularly ridiculed and denounced China for its stubborn adherence to a “Zero Covid” policy. Whereas most of the West has chosen to “live with Covid,” China has worked to immediately stamp out any pinprick viral outbreaks through an increasingly burdensome regime of regular testing and swift lockdowns. But a new development now suggests that the Chinese approach may not have been as completely irrational as our media had claimed.
As most people know, the Omicron strain of Covid is extremely contagious but also very mild, and its rapid spread has been one of the major reasons for the sharp decline in Covid deaths worldwide. Even the earlier strains of Covid were only moderately lethal, with most estimates placing the fatality rate at 1% or less.
However, according to a new article in Britain’s Daily Mail, scientific curiosity led academic researchers at Boston University to combine Omicron’s spike protein with the remainder of the original Wuhan virus. The first few sentences tell the story.
US researchers have developed a new lethal Covid strain in a laboratory – echoing the type of experiments many fear started the pandemic.
The mutant variant — which is a hybrid of Omicron and the original Wuhan virus — killed 80 percent of mice infected with it at Boston University.
When a similar group of rodents were exposed to the standard Omicron strain, however, they all survived and only experienced ‘mild’ symptoms.
The scientists also infected human cells with the hybrid variant and found it was five times more infectious than Omicron.
- Boston University CREATES a new Covid strain that has an 80% kill rate — echoing dangerous experiments feared to have started pandemic
Caitlin Tilley • Daily Mail • October 17, 2022 • 1,000 Words
So the result was a new hybrid Covid strain that was both exceptionally contagious and also killed 80% of all the mice infected, whereas none had died from the mild Omicron strain. Whether this sort of fatality-ratio also applied to humans is unclear, but the potential danger is certainly alarming.
And if our civilian university researchers have now casually created a virus that could quite possibly exterminate the bulk of the world’s population, the Chinese must surely be alert to the likelihood that America’s world-leading biowarfare labs may have already been investigating similar possibilities, thereby earning the hundred billion dollars or so of government funding they have absorbed over the decades. So better safe than sorry.
America’s defensive measures have largely relied upon the widespread use of Covid vaccines based upon cutting-edge mRNA technology, but these have proven far less effective than originally promised. Although they apparently much reduce the health consequences of some of the strains, they proved useless against others, while generally failing to prevent infection or transmission. How well would these vaccines perform against this new, very dangerous version of Covid? Hard to say, and I hope we don’t have to find out.
Meanwhile, we seem to be moving dangerously close to an outright state of war with China, with the Biden Administration declaring its intent to totally cripple China’s vital domestic microchip industry. A front-page story in this morning’s Wall Street Journal explained that new regulations banned any American citizens from involvement in those efforts, meaning that many senior executives would be forced to leave their jobs or lose their citizenship, and we have extended that restriction to all other global companies doing business with Chinese microchip manufacturers. Mike Whitney has just published an excellent article summarizing Biden’s sudden “thermonuclear” economic strike against China’s most vital industry.
- Biden’s Tech-War Goes Nuclear
Mike Whitney • The Unz Review • October 17, 2022 • 1,900 Words
To me, this measure seems eerily similar to the complete embargo we had imposed in 1941 against all shipments of oil and other vital resources to Japan, a decision that eventually led to the attack on Pearl Harbor and the outbreak of the Pacific War. Apparently, an undeclared war with Russia is not enough and our political leaders must also have one at the same time with China as well….