Dear Editors,
You are right to highlight the FBI’s curious early 2023 admission regarding the lab leak theory. A few points, if I may: it is not ‘fringe’ (it was discussed by Matt Ridley – Lord of the Realm – in some detail, in fact he wrote a book about it) nor is it ‘controversial’ – Sir Jeremy Farrar, head of the Wellcome Trust and a key player on SAGE, claimed in 2021 that he “On a spectrum if 0 is nature and 100 is release — I am honestly at 50!”.
I think you are potentially just being led up the garden path in a classic ‘dead cat’ / ‘look, a squirrel’ strategy – you will note that the FBI is in trouble for political meddling with social media – censorship, in other words – in the run-up to the elections, and they are trying to ‘soft-pedal’ the damage.
This lab leak was discussed at length in 2020 and then through 2021. Remember the ridiculous ‘about turn’ orchestrated by the Fauci / Farrar axis when virologist Kristian Andersen approached them with evidence demonstrating “that SARS-CoV-2 could not be natural”. But they called a big conclave of the big hitters around 1 February 2020 and squashed that story – it was inconvenient to them at the time.
Consider the words of US historian Thomas Frank, writing in the Guardian on 1 June 2021: “If it does indeed turn out that the lab-leak hypothesis is the right explanation for how it began — that the common people of the world have been forced into a real-life lab experiment, at tremendous cost — there is a moral earthquake on the way. Because if the [lab leak] hypothesis is right, it will soon start to dawn on people that our mistake was not insufficient reverence for scientists, or inadequate respect for expertise, or not enough censorship on Facebook. It was a failure to think critically about all of the above, to understand that there is no such thing as absolute expertise”.
Frank is absolutely spot on. The experts were off-beam, and as we know from the Oakshott/Hancock files, the politicians were too… though of all of them, it seems that the then Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, was on the right track – he knew that “destroying the economy” was not the route to go down (but somehow, the junior politicians, ‘experts’ and pharmaceutical reps got what they wanted).
Because here is a thing for you to ponder. Whether it is a lab leak or a zoonotic spillover event is, actually, irrelevant. Both of those mainstream theories assume a ‘point release’, an ‘index patient’, a ‘patient zero’ who then infected the world. This is demonstrably not how the disease progressed in 2020 – it was highly prevalent in 2019, and became the dominant seasonal respiratory disease in 2020. It was nastier than usual – but not novel, nor (on a population level) especially deadly… unlike lockdowns, restrictions, the ridiculous spending on testing (to what end?) and the ludicrous overspend on ‘vaccines for all’. Reaction has covered this, and I might even quote a certain Iain Martin:
The entire population was vaccinated or offered the vaccine, which now looks like a terrible idea when there were deaths among young people who really had no need to be vaccinated. They were not at risk from Covid. The mantra was it limited transmission. We hear less about that now. Parliament was shut down. Government colluded with social media giants to suppress legitimate questions about the origin of the virus and all manner of other policy debates.
This, I suspect, is why they want you to talk about a ‘lab leak’. It’s why they want you put your effort into following that oh-what-a-lovely war in Ukraine.
They don’t want you to talk about why Logically.ai, one of the private companies paid by the Cabinet Office to spy on members of the UK public, hired Brian Murphy – a senior Department of Homeland Security and former FBI executive as ‘Vice President of Strategic Operations’ – in 2021. They don’t want you to talk about the fact that the prescribed cure was worse than the disease, on so many levels – corrupt spending, censorship of rational discourse, foisting masks and unnecessary medical interventions on children and young people. And they most certainly don’t want you talking or wondering about ongoing levels of excess mortality that did not materialise in 2020 but have been systemic from 2021 onwards.
Alex Starling, London
History is repeating itself in Northern Ireland
I am relatively recent holder of an Irish passport as Brexit and its implications have caused panic. With relatives on both sides of my parental family I have never the less always taken a keen interest in Irish politics. Historically there was an opportunity for the British government to quash the Irish Unionists at the outset of Independence for the south and, fearing either British troops wouldn’t obey orders to shoot ‘their own’ or there would be a bloodbath, gave in and the border was accepted as a temporary solution. It would seem history is repeating itself possibly. It is unlikely the DUP will accept a treaty even if it has a very British name if the European Court of Justice retains the power to alter things. And it seems just as in 1922 the Prime Minister will back down if the Unionists refuse to agree to it.
Tony Arnold, Bath
Scotland’s ferry fiasco
I absolutely agree about unnecessary provision of crew accommodation, but your article is absolutely wrong about this restricting passenger seating. Both hulls 801 and 802 have huge over-provision of accommodation for 1000 passengers – way over any regular Ardrossan route passenger requirements. The over-provision is routine on CalMac ferries and appears to be based on providing accommodation for the largest number that might possibly ever be carried! This over-provision costs a huge amount in wasted capacity/extra ferry weight and crewing requirements. As the Mull and Iona Ferry Committee pointed out in 2020, any extremely rare, excess demand could easily be met by “more cost-effective or suitable means – such as timetable adjustment, additional vessels or demand management.”
Colin Lambert
Good morning,
I write this email with reference to your recent article which mentions that delays may have also be down to the fact the crew living quarters were inclusive of a gym.
At least if you’re going to suggest and write such dribble please have a look into something first.
The crew on these vessels will work away from families for up to 2 weeks at a time making these ferries their second home. They work 12 hour days with short breaks and most of the time have to put up with things such as customers with poor attitudes and with little or no thanks. So to have somewhere comfortable at the end of a long day or an area which they can switch off shouldn’t be a cause for the media to jump on in a negative form but to take a moment of consideration as to why it has been in the first place.
Also to report that the crew have almost the same amount of area as passengers. They are not animals to be penned in – the crew are humans or have you forgotten that in your report?
Regards, Allan McGuire
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