COVID-19 has the Europeans clamoring for….wait for it….border security. Which is it’s own dark humor, isn’t it? Walls make for good neighbors and there are things that you really don’t want to allow through the front door if you are being honest with yourself. Pelosi doesn’t allow illegal aliens to come and go in her many, walled, and heavily alarmed and guarded mansions, does she? There you have it.
The National Counterproliferation Center of the United States of America is one of those niche agencies that nobody talks much about unless they’re whispering about Iran or North Korea and their continuing ambitions to obtain or expand their inventory of nuclear weapons.
It’s a small, boutique agency, nestled under the Director of National Intelligence, and wedged between the Central Intelligence Agency, the US Army and a smattering of US Air Force. Nobody knows much about them or what they do. Nobody usually cares much about what they do.
Today, they have been receiving tasking more aggressively from the White House than usual because of COVID-19. You see, they are also the agency that tracks the development and proliferation of biological weapons. I don’t know much about NCC or what they do even though I do have the hat. All hat and no intel, you might say.
If I was to speculate, and I can do that because the management at Virtual Mirage allows me to do so, I would suggest that USGOV has been monitoring the Wuhan Virology Institute for a long time. “Long” being identified as since they opened the doors in 1956. That’s 64 years for those of you who were running out of fingers and toes as you counted. There are big trees that aren’t 64 years old.
If you’re going to ask me why the US Government would have an interest in China’s premier bioweapons lab, you need to click here and leave the blog. If you think that the Chinese government doesn’t take a keen interest in all research done in china, you also need to move on to a cat blog.
COVID-19 was created/engineered and I don’t know whether it was a weapon in development, or just a couple scientists who thought that spicing a coronavirus like SARS with HIV RNA might be interesting. I don’t know how it was released, but it didn’t come from some gomer eating a bat or an armadillo (popular in Wuhan).
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| logo of the People’s Liberation Army |
There is a popular notion in the world that all bioweapons are ‘satan bugs’ designed to end mankind completely. As COVID-19’s pandemic spread indicates, those sort of weapons aren’t a good idea because you can not control them. In fact, all bioweapons are ticking time bombs, which is why most nations stopped developing them. But not China.
The People’s Liberation Army is a different sort of beast. It’s largely self-funded in that the Army enjoys a LOT of independence from the Party itself because it owns the means of its funding. Oh, the Politburo overseas the PLA (sort of), but not necessarily everything that it does. It’s like having a tiger by the tail. You don’t want to hold on but you can’t let go. And by that, I mean that the PLA does what it wants to do when it comes to small, sneaky programs such as bioweapons research…. until something goes wrong. A bug walks out the door – maybe a very small, microscopic quantity of something. And the world gasps. Then the oligarchs who run China take a serious interest in what the PLA has been up to. And you have President Xi openly and publicly calling for a revisitation of containment polices and practices at the Wuhan Virology Laboratory.
Good informative update.
Nice hat, too.
"It's a small, boutique agency"…with a cool patch. I want one for my blank Legacy Old Favorite ballcap.
This season the [regular] flu killed 16K here in the USA. So why is the media so fixated on COVID19, like it's the coming plague? Oh yeah, right, almost forgot…because they are the chicken little's in constant world saving mode, and this is their next "the sky is falling" topic. Truth is, behind it all they are just trying to sell Tide Pods and stuff to the unsuspecting by keeping them on edge and tuned in.
COVID19 may have been on purpose to disrupt America's move back to the heap pinnacle under our incredible leader and his team. Who the heck knows? Thinking you are correct…so "all hat with standing".
COVID19 might dissipate by Spring like the regular flu, only taking out those folks who thought going to Wuhan was a great vacation idea.
Thank you, LindaG
Name your scenario. They're all on the table.
It may be about ratings. We'll see.
There’s a pandemic coming. It’s in Italy and Spain now which means some numpty over here will have it. Here we go… having said that, more people die from flu, apparently. Thank God I’ve got a clown nose to keep my nose from germs and a wolf to guard me from “ those who like to share”
I still firmly believe it was intended for Hong Kong but the cat got out of the bag. Hong Kong would have been easy to lock down and contain all the while putting an end to the public demonstrations the government found distasteful.
Oh so many players with their own agendas. Each peddling their version of current events. One story tells of China in paralysis with transportation grinding to a halt and food stock for livestock not getting delivered. Supposedly this is causing a massive death toll of said livestock. If true, is China facing mass starvation of their population? Say that happens, will the PLA invade their neighbors for food?
I hope our intelligence people are not a living oxymoron and can actually provide President Trump real information.
That kind of hope explains my blog name, no?
If it can be proven this was an engineered virus, China effectively just declared war on the entire world.
So a high ranking ROK guy in charge of emergency planning just killed himself, two high ranking Iranian officials, an MP and a Health Dept guy just came down with it, cases are all over western Europe, Northern Italy in lockdown, things continue to escalate. Government reactions worldwide do not back up the calming statement " it's no worse than the flu." They seem to be far more worried than they are willing to let on.
A world wide boycott on Chinese goods would run them back to the stone age. The more I hear about what goes on over there, the more I dislike them.
Facing death with Lucifer at your side may have some interesting consequences. Would the Grim Reaper dare approach? I can't say, but it would be an interesting experiment.
Hong Kong wasn't really touched. Serendipity? Maybe. In any event, it's one of the least touched parts of China.
The intelligence community missed the Fall of the Berlin Wall, the Fall of the USSR, the 911 attack. One may ask what use they are. The FBI (with an assist from CIA) tried a coup against a sitting president and they botched that one as well.
There is not much to love with the CHICOMs.
If it's just a mild case of the flu, who cares? But that's not how everyone has been behaving.
A Chinese fire drill?
Maybe. Let's see what the death toll is in Iran. The Chinese could have done us a big favor.
Xi is in as full blown a damage control mode as ever likely to occur. It makes one wonder just how firmly the ruling cabal's grip on the military really is. This outbreak so far is kicking Chinese ass far harder than anyone else's….that makes the ruling class there vulnerable. Some of the response is aimed at controlling the problem. Much of it including things we aren't aware of is aimed at defending those in power from loss of power.
Xi is one of eleven people who run China in sort of an oligarchical roundtable. Xi is their mouthpiece, but he doesn't wield power alone. This is rarely reported in the West, but that's how things work.
COVID-19 is indeed kicking their ass.
Camperfixer, influenza last year also had a mortality rate of 0.1%. COVID-19 has a mortality rate of at least 0.5% up to a high-end estimate of 2.5%. So if it's "only" as contagious as the flu, we could be looking at 80,000 deaths on up to over 400,000 deaths in this country. We've not seen much at yet in this country and I hope we won't (but honestly don't see how we wouldn't). The reaction of the Chinese government speaks volumes. They're not scuttling their own economy for ratings!
Curious about your thoughts on the infection rate in PLA units?
Any word on that?
Are they fairing better than the civilian populace?
There have been some reports of PLA personnel being infected and dying.
My sense is that if they are true to form, PLA personnel showing symptoms would be removed to a rear area (wherever that is considering the plague) for treatment. The treatment is likely hot tea. They'd be out of public view and any reporting on it would likely result in the reporter being removed to a mental health facility (and placed with COVID-19 patients).
In a nut shell, there's nothing reliable available and I doubt that you'd even find those numbers in classified sources unless PLA is keeping records in such a way that we can evesdrop on them. That wouldn't be true to form for PLA or people's armed police.
East is east and West is west, and the way that the PLA operates doesn't lend itself to accurate casualty counts.
Rates in Wuhan were "reliably" placed by some sources at 20%. i think that's high. Among some populations (the elderly, the chronically ill, etc) maybe.
The Chinese mindset is that you don't go to the hospital unless you're ready to die. Chinese medicine (outside of Hong Kong and possibly Shanghai) is very rudimentary an often they give you herbs and chant over you. Even setting broken bones is often seriously botched. So those very ill people who showed up at Wuhan hospitals would not reflect the entire infected population. But the stats, given that THOSE people would be counted, would be shocking to the conscience, and the Chinese would cover them up.
Then that answers the direction I was wondering about.
If it was an intentional release, they would have covered frontline units with a potential vaccine.
But if they are hiding the numbers, we are not going to know until this whole thing runs it's course.
If we ever know the true numbers. I responded to a friend on facebook the other day with the same thing that the CDC said today. It's likely that most Americans will become infected with COVID-19 over the next year or two. Some will die, most will live, but it will continue to spread and that there's not much that can be done to stop it. That spiced strand of HIV RNA will mean that over the 7-30 day incubation period will wear down the infected person so that the basic coronavirus – very much like SARS will be more effective when the virus multiplies sufficiently to attack the respiratory and renal systems. The body will develop a resistance to it.
What the world will do with China remains to be seen. Likely nothing. But China's place in the supply chain will be diluted forever. It was a multi-trillion dollar mistake for China. A .02 mortality rate, presuming the entire population of China is infected, means that they will suffer deaths of around 26 million. 152 million worldwide. If it mutates, or if morbidity is worse, the numbers will be higher. That presumes that everyone on the planet will be infected. Even if you cut those numbers in half, they're significant.
I don't believe that it was an intentional release. I think that China has been shocked. I think that the world is trying to react. But biowarfare of this sort of thing has been war gamed for a long time and the wildfire spread of a contagen like COVID-19 is predictable. Every nation with much of a military knows this. The calculus and formulas may be different here and there but the trends are well known. The dismal projections today by CDC are valid in my opinion and the sooner that the stock market comes to terms with the new rules and with the need to diversify supply chains, the better. There should be a vaccine available in 12-18 months.
From my small perspective, I agree, it was not intentional.
Although I wonder is HK may have been a potential target.
Regardless, It is now loose.
Maybe some small or large entrepenuers will take advantage and begin to begin manufacturing products in country, but most likely shift to central and south America
As for finding out someday, try and get good information on the details of the Sino-Soviet wars, back in the '60s and '70s. Hell, try getting good info on the Chinese Revolution.
We'll never really know.
-Kle.
Not much to add but the open borders cult will doubtless be the last to go. Great consternation in Sweden and everywhere else when their beloved rapefugees vector in the loose bioweapon.
Sweden does love it's military age, male, Mohammedans blending into its gene pool. It would be a shame if the Chinese plague took a few of them out.
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