It’s Wednesday, April 19th, 2023…but before we begin, Chicago’s alternative to Lori Lightfoot tells you ALL you have know about the nature of HIS immient administration:
“By 2019 the Wuhan Institute of Virology had collected, at a minimum, approximately 20,000 bat- and other animal-virus samples from field expeditions conducted all across China.
After going into caves and other locations to collect the samples and, in some cases, live bats, researchers would take the samples back to Wuhan, where they “routinely underwent initial evaluation in Biosafety Level 2 settings where they were first evaluated, usually by graduate students, for the presence of SARS-related beta coronaviruses. If viruses were present, researchers then attempted to isolate and sequence the virus.”
The information about the Biosafety Level 2 labs comes from a thesis on the “Geographic Evolution of Bat SARS-related Coronaviruses” submitted to the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences by Yu Ping, a graduate student pursuing a degree of Master of Natural Science in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, supervised by Professor Cui Jie and Professor Shi Zheng-Li, which was published in June 2019. You can read that thesis here. You may recognize the name Shi Zhengli, the Chinese virologist nicknamed “Bat Woman” for her work with that species, the one who told Scientific American early in the pandemic that when she first heard about the virus spreading through Wuhan, she initially wondered, “Could they have come from our lab?”
This is significant because the safety standards at Biosafety Level 2 labs are not as extensive and stringent as those at Biosafety Level 4 labs. Level 2 labs handle bacteria and viruses such as Lyme Disease and the standard flu; Level 3 labs handle more dangerous pathogens such as anthrax and HIV; and Level 4 labs handle the most dangerous viruses, such as Ebola.
Last week, the Washington Postpublished an excellent report examining the safety record of China’s government-run laboratories overall, not just focusing on the Wuhan Institute of Virology or the Wuhan Centers for Disease Control. The opening anecdote is terrifying:
In the summer of 2019, a mysterious accident occurred inside a government-run biomedical complex in north-central China, a facility that handles a pathogen notorious for its ability to pass easily from animals to humans.
There were no alarms or flashing lights to alert workers to the defect in a sanitation system that was supposed to kill germs in the vaccine plant’s waste. When the system failed in late July that year, millions of airborne microbes began seeping invisibly from exhaust vents and drifting into nearby neighborhoods. Nearly a month passed before the problem was discovered and fixed, and four months before the public was informed. By then, at least 10,000 people had been exposed, with hundreds developing symptomatic illnesses, scientific studies later concluded.
The events occurred not in Wuhan, the city where the coronavirus pandemic began, but in another Chinese city, Lanzhou, 800 miles to the northwest. The leaking pathogens were bacteria that cause brucellosis, a common livestock disease that can lead to chronic illness or even death in humans if not treated. As the pandemic enters its fourth year, new details about the little-known Lanzhou incident offer a revealing glimpse into a much larger — and largely hidden — struggle with biosafety across China in late 2019, at the precise moment when both the brucellosis incident and the coronavirus outbreak were coming to light.
Perhaps the most chilling quote in the article comes from biosecurity expert Robert Hawley, “who for years oversaw safety programs at the U.S. Army’s maximum-containment lab at Fort Detrick, Md.” Hawley told the Post he saw “‘imprudent’ lab practices in inspection reports obtained by a congressional oversight committee.” “It is very, very apparent that their biological safety training is minimal,” Hawley said.
The closest thing to a smoking gun in the full Senate report is the evidence that researchers affiliated with the Wuhan Institute of Virology began working on a vaccine against SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, before almost anyone else in the world had heard of the virus:
November 2019 also appears to be the timeframe that PLA researchers began development of at least two SARS-CoV-2 vaccines. People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Professor Zhou Yusen, Director of the 5th Institute at the Academy of Military Medical Sciences (AMMS), worked with the WIV, and possibly at the WIV, episodically, for several years prior to the pandemic. Zhou or AMMS researchers may have been working at the WIV no later than the Fall of 2019 conducting research for a paper that he coauthored with two WIV researchers, Shi Zhengli and Chen Jing, on a known adverse effect of SARS-related vaccines and antibody treatments. There is reason to believe Zhou was engaged in SARS-related coronavirus animal vaccine research with WIV researchers beginning no later than the Summer or early Fall of 2019. Zhou submitted one of the first COVID-19 vaccine patents on February 24, 2020.
The patent includes mouse-derived serological data from vaccine-related experiments which experts, consulted with during this investigation, assess could not have been completed unless Zhou’s team began work on vaccine development before the known outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in late December 2019. The research required both access to the sequence of and the live SARS-CoV-2 virus. Several experts assessed that Zhou likely would have had to start this vaccine development research no later than November 2019 to achieve the February patent submission date. Zhou later published transgenic mouse infection and vaccine challenge studies in mice, including humanized mice and non-human primates. The location(s) where Zhou’s animal vaccine challenge studies were performed was not disclosed. There is reason to believe that these vaccine experiments were performed at the original WIV’s downtown Wuhan campus and possibly at the Wuhan University Institute of Animal Models located approximately a mile from the WIV.
PLA AMMS Major General Wei Chen led a second, separate, effort to develop another candidate COVID-19 vaccine. Chen collaborated with the China state-owned biopharmaceutical company SinoPharm. Chen’s vaccine experiments with humanized mice, ferrets and non-human primates occurred at the Harbin veterinary research facility BSL-4 laboratory in northern China.124 Human clinical trials began in mid- March 2020. Chen submitted a patent for her vaccine March 18, 2020 Based on this timeline, experts believe Chen would have had to begin her vaccine efforts no later than early December 2019. Chen’s vaccine candidate was also dependent on the availability of SARS-CoV-2’s genetic sequence that would not be published until January 11, 2020. However, unlike Zhou, there is no evidence that Chen’s vaccine efforts were associated geographically or temporally with the initial COVID-19 outbreak in Wuhan.
This is one of the many maddening aspects of this matter. Even if this all traces back to a natural transmission of someone ordering bat soup or grilled pangolin in a seafood market, or as Jon Stewart memorably characterized it, “Maybe a bat flew into the cloaca of a turkey and then it sneezed into my chili,” the Chinese government was still lying when the world needed the truth and lives were at stake. We all had years of our lives taken away from us because the Chinese government refused to acknowledge that there was a contagious virus spreading around their country and the world. In the month of January 2020, more than 1,300 flights from China arrived at 17 U.S. airports, carrying roughly 381,000 passengers.
When did the Covid-19 pandemic start? The Senate HELP committee report indicates that people in Wuhan were starting to notice an abnormal rate of viral infections in October and November:
Eyewitness accounts, media reports, epidemiological modeling and additional academic studies further support October 28 to November 10as the window of emergence. Diplomats stationed at the U.S. Consulate General in Wuhan have attested to observations of what they believed at the time to be the early onset of a ‘bad flu’ season. The Deputy Consular Chief recalled: “By mid-October 2019, the dedicated team at the U.S. Consulate General in Wuhan knew that the city had been struck by what was thought to be an unusually vicious flu season. The disease worsened in November.” These observations were reported to the U.S. Embassy in Beijing during this period.
By one measure, the argument about the lab-leak theory, which has gone on for about three years, is effectively over. Those of us who suspect human error is the cause of one of the world’s greatest modern calamities have persuaded an overwhelming majority of the American public of that.
A Quinnipiac University poll conducted in March showed 64 percent of Americans think the pandemic was “caused by a laboratory leak” and just 22 percent believe it was “caused by a natural transmission from animals to humans.” Another poll taken a week earlier by Economist/YouGov showed an even stronger split in favor of a lab leak: 66 percent to 16 percent. If I were a meaner person, I would characterize the zoonotic origin as a fringe theory.
That Senate report also acknowledges the potential for a “zoonotic spillover” — after all, either this virus or its evolutionary precursor had to be in a bat at some point — but points out the frustrating lack of conclusive evidence:
To date, China has not acknowledged the infection or positive serological sample(s) of any susceptible animal prior to the recognized outbreak. Genetic analysis of published SARS-CoV-2 sequences from the early outbreak does not show evidence of genetic adaptation reflecting passage through a susceptible animal species such as a palm civet, raccoon dog or mink. To this end, no intermediate host has been identified.
Despite these facts, three data points do present themselves to support the zoonotic origin theory. First, approximately 33 percent of the earliest known human COVID-19 cases (with symptom onset dates in mid- to late-December 2019) were associated with the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan. Second, several animal species susceptible to SARS-CoV-2 were sold live and in poor animal welfare conditions at the market. Finally, the identification of genetic sequences of raccoon dogs in samples taken from the market in early 2020 confirm that this susceptible intermediate host was at the market at the time of the outbreak. As noted, “there is no data . . . associating SARS-CoV-2 with the presence of any of these animals.” These data themselves, however, do not explain the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic.
This Senate committee report was overseen by the now-retired North Carolina GOP senator Richard Burr. Back in November, the Charlotte Observer editorial board thundered that “Richard Burr, who typically keeps a relatively low profile, seems to be playing games on his way out of office.” The board referred to the lab-leak theory as “a Covid conspiracy,” contending that the interim report “fueled the fire of disinformation that has been blazing since the pandemic began. It also gives the COVID conspiracy theorists a new bone to chew on.”
Because Burr is usually “low profile” and isn’t a bomb-thrower, a frothing-at-the-mouth demagogue, or an unhinged conspiracy theorist, shouldn’t the editorial board sit up and take notice when he is putting his name behind a contention like this?
In the face of the biggest and most consequential mystery in modern history, some of us looked at the remarkable coincidence of a novel coronavirus most like those found in bats emerging near not one but two laboratories doing gain-of-function research on novel coronaviruses found in bats — going back to April 3, 2020, I remind you. And in response, we’ve gotten name-calling, sneers, and smears.
Here’s the juice:
And all those lying, pernicious public health bureaucrats led by Dr. Faux Chi can kiss our conspiracy theorist backside…along with a ticket on the…
Next, as promised, more on the breakdown of the rule of law in the Windy City, as NRO‘s Jeffrey Blehar advises Chicagoans to…
“I have a prickly relationship with people whose go-to commentary on Chicago involves some variation of the term “urban street crime.” Many times, this is harmlessly intended as an awkward conversation-starter. (Imagine an elegantly dressed woman tippling a cocktail at an East Coast party saying, “Oh, Chicago, yes, I’ve heard about the crime. It sounds dreadful.” That one has actually happened to me . . . twice.) More frustrating, the idea gets rotely parroted back to you by fellow conservatives who are using the city as a punching bag that epitomizes all the failures of blue-city governance and life.
I object not so much to the critique of the city’s governance as to the critique of Chicago living. Chicago is the best big city in America(Which is akin to saying it’s the best leper colony on the planet!), and we have such wonderful sights to show you(One of which is showcased in the video above!). So, my typical response when I’m confronted with Chicago-bashing socially is to (1) point out that corruption, financial mismanagement, and warring special-interest groups are even bigger problems than crime and (2) demur and pull a Marty Feldman from Young Frankenstein: “Could be worse; could be San Francisco.”
It’s getting much harder to do that in recent months.
You may have heard, via social media or your personal grapevine (but less likely via national media), about the chaos that spontaneously descended upon Chicago this weekend: An enormous crowd of kids from the South Side, coordinating via social media, flash-mobbed the city’s downtown, the beating heart of the Magnificent Mile, and scenes of frank barbarism followed. The videos — which circulated on TikTok, because people who are amoral enough to participate in such crimes are often also stupid enough to record and publicize them — are traumatizing and will be suppressed by the mainstream press. If you wish to gaze into the maw of insensate mob horror, you can watch as one unarmed woman is swarmed outside her place on Wabash Street and — there is unfortunately no other way to phrase this — brutally gang-stomped into the ground by a throng of cheering (Truth be told, BLACK!!!) teenagers. (Stalking through the crowd prominently after getting a few whacks in on the shrieking woman, one kid flashes a hoodie emblazoned “ANTISOCIAL SOCIAL CLUB.” Dispatches from my urban dystopia.)
The events coincided with unusually nice weather. Chicago last week experienced an unseasonable warm snap (temperatures in the mid 80s, sunny, breezy), which residents understand is a recipe for weekend crime spikes(So…what? We should only visit your fair city in winter?!?). But it felt apropos regardless because it confronted mayor-elect Brandon Johnson (a progressive Chicago Teachers Union activist who, two weeks ago, won the closest mayoral election in the city’s history) with a moment when the rubber truly met the road: Would he move on from his “defund the police” rhetoric of 2020 (in the immediate post–George Floyd era) and the “defund-lite” position he adopted during his mayoral campaign? What would his response be to this sort of wanton — a word whose meaning is underappreciated and entirely appropriate here — violence?
If you were expecting Johnson, being a new mayor, to suddenly get serious about the undesirableness of pop-up mobs that spread violence and hooliganry in Chicago’s downtown, well, then, my friends, you don’t appreciate what kind of pre-programmed progressive true believer Chicago has managed to vote into office. Johnson’s response this weekend was, practically speaking, “The kids are all right.”
And yet it’s an improvement on Johnson’s rhetoric from August 2020, when — as the city was being ransacked during the George Floyd riots — he placed the real blame on “corporate looting.” (Fair enough: I still remember when Target came to my place, smashed all my windows, fractured my skull, and emptied my closets.) He has evolved since then: Instead of squirming and refusing to condemn rioters and looters, he’s now willing to say, as a concession, that “in no way do I condone the destructive activity we saw in the Loop and the lakefront this weekend.” That’s mighty generous of you, mayor-elect (Or, perhaps more appropriately, might WHITE of you!). Then again, it’s understood that nothing before the “but” really matters, and with a throat-clearing “however,” Johnson instantly supplies us with his real view: “It is not constructive to demonize youth who have otherwise been starved of opportunities in their own communities.”
I have little difficulty “demonizing” — apparently a new dysphemism for what normal folks call “accurately assessing” — people who hurt others for kicks while asking friends to film their best and most pain-inflicting blows so that they may gloat about them later. Johnson continues in his statement: “Our city must work together to create spaces for youth to gather safely and responsibly, under adult guidance and supervision, to ensure that every part of our city remains welcome for both residents and visitors.” I also have little difficulty saying that it’s more important to create a cultural, civic, and legal incentive structure that discourages this behavior instead.
Unfortunately, this would involve police and vigorous prosecutors, as opposed to “community approaches.” Johnson’s cow-eyed inability to pivot even the slightest bit from memorized progressive cant in the face of obvious looming disaster (remember: A ruling on Illinois’s hastily passed and instantly regretted cashless-bail law awaits) is a terrible omen for the city. I understand that no politician can simply walk out to a podium and calmly explain to a panicked public that Chicago’s descent into random spates of frequently horrific lawlessness is the result of a combination of years of societal breakdown, the near-complete (and often self-inflicted) collapse of policing in Chicago, and the chaos-agent catalyst of social media. I don’t need a sociology lecture. But how pathetic is it when Lori Lightfoot, of all people, who squarely denounced(Maybe NOT so squarely!) this weekend’s events, comes across as a serious person compared with Johnson?
In the face of all this, the rhetoric of Chicago’s incoming mayor — and of its new ultra-progressive city council, its media outlets, and its activists — bespeaks an entire ruling class that has simply given up on the city and on the idea of its being anything but a broken sandbox to test academic ideas in. If you cannot call crime by its name, identify antisocial behavior for what it is, and hold those who engage in it properly accountable, then that’s the ball game for urban cohesion. And if even Brandon Johnson doesn’t believe in Chicago as a city, why should the city believe in itself?
I no longer think I know the answer.”
Sorry, Jeff, but there’s nothing you can show me in Chicago that’s worth our life. And you’re missing the point that this is what Progressives intended for Chicago and the rest of the country all along.
Meanwhile…
And in today’s installment of the EnvironMental Moment, energy correspondent Jeff Foutch forwarded the following from David Blackmon, from whence we sourced our Quote of the Day at the top of the page, featuring…
“Daniel Yergin, Vice Chairman of S&P Global and author of great energy-focused books like “The Prize,” “The Quest,” and “The New Map,” published an op/ed in the Wall Street Journal recently in which he lays out the reasons why hard rock mining will become the ultimate roadblock to all the net-zero dreams of the global elites.
It’s a terrific piece that everyone should read. Yergin’s piece begins with this paragraph:
California made a stunning decision last year—that by 2035 all new cars sold in the state must have at least 2½ times as much copper as conventional cars today. That’s not literally what the mandate said, of course, but it’s the practical effect of ordering all cars to be electric in the next 12 years. “Big Shovel” will compete with “Big Oil” as mining ramps up to supply the vast increase in a wide range of minerals that energy transition requires. But getting everything that will be needed will be tough.
That’s right: the typical EV requires 2.5 times the copper in the typical gas-powered car. Multiplied by the estimated 1.446 billion autos on the road in 2022, and that comes to a whole bunch of copper. And that mined metal requirement doesn’t begin to tell the tale: EVs also require copious amounts of lithium, cobalt, antimony and an array of other critical and rare earth minerals to become a reality.
But it’s not just EVs. Yergin notes in his very next paragraph that “An offshore wind project uses nine times the minerals of a natural-gas-fired power plant of the same generating capacity.”
Oh.
The same principle applies to solar arrays, too. The presence of all those critical and rare earth minerals, some of which are highly toxic, is why, like EV lithium-ion batteries, they can’t just be tossed into the local landfill when their useful life expires.
As Yergin points out, another big looming problem is the reality that these minerals aren’t evenly distributed across the globe. Two South American countries with highly unstable governments, Peru and Chile, currently produce 40% of the world’s copper. Even worse,…
…fully 70% of the world’s cobalt is produced in the Republic of the Congo, where it is often produced in small, hand-dug mines that feature extremely dangerous conditions and use of child labor.
Supply chains for these minerals are also a key issue. Yergin writes that 60% of the world’s lithium is currently processed in China, and that 47% of the world’s copper is smelted there. China and Mongolia are also home to large deposits of a variety of rare earth minerals, where their mining operations use slave labor and have been widely documented to cause enormous environmental damage.
The governments in the U.S. and the rest of the western world have implemented plans to establish supply chains outside of China for their mineral needs, but have yet to show any substantial progress in that regard. One area the Biden administration is known to covet is the rich Lithium Triangle region in South America, by far the largest known lithium deposit on earth. But in late January, Bolivia awarded contracts to produce and process its share of that Triangle’s lithium wealth to two companies based in – you guessed it – China, whose own renewable energy needs will dwarf the rest of the world’s if it continues down this energy transition road.
The central issue that neither the Biden administration nor any other western government seems inclined to address is the one of timing as it relates to the permitting and building of new mining operations. Yergin points to the reality that it currently takes 15 to 20 years for a typical hard rock mining operation to progress from concept to first production in the western world.
But Biden’s EPA issued new CAFE standards last week that would essentially render the production of 2/3rds of gas vehicles currently produced in the U.S. illegal by 2032, thus mandating the placement of tens of millions of additional EVs on the roads in just the next 9 years. Contrast that conceit to the reality that, in recent months, the Biden government has actually gone backwards on domestic mining, revoking existing permits for the Twin Metals mine in Minnesota and refusing to issue permits for various proposed new mining operations for the very metals these EVs, windfarms and solar arrays will consume with great gusto.
Yergin sums the issue up this way:
One of the leading wind and solar developers in the U.S. summed up the issue recently: “The single biggest challenge for renewables going forward is how supply chains evolve.” It’s becoming clear that there is a very big gap, not easily closed, between aspirations for energy transition and the availability of the minerals needed to implement those goals.
He is, as always, an eloquent master of understatement.
I will put it more bluntly: The energy policies being adopted in the U.S., Canada and Europe are placing the western world on a collision course with inevitable disaster. Voters had better wake up soonest, or they will be the ones paying the price for all this energy insanity.
That is all.”
Here’s a second shot of the juice: That’s no only all, but that’s more than enough, as the inconvenient truth is, and will always be…
Which brings us, appropriately enough, to The Lighter Side:
Then there’s these from Balls Cotton…
…Ed Harvey…
…The Patriot Post…
…and the lovely Shannon…
…along with this cartoon from The Rabbit Hole via Nick which was inspired by the sobering graph which follows it:
Finally, we’ll call it a wrap with two tragic tales torn from the pages of The Crime Blotter which prompted this question: Read the two headlines, check out those involved, then tell us…
…which family did Biden call to offer prayers for the victim’s recovery and justice? Thankfully, 16-year-old Ralph Yarl is back home recovering; 20-year-old Kaylin Gillis wasn’t so lucky.
Magoo
Video of the Day
For once, we actually agree with Piers Morgan.
Tales of The Darkside
You have to love the reaction of a multi-millionaire who never had to work for a penny of his wealth when Jen Psaki doesn’t match his hypocritically self-righteous outrage over income equality.
On the Lighter Side
All we can say is lower, faster, LOUDER and more of ’em!!!
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