There is no question in our minds that Covid-19 came from a laboratory, and that this laboratory, the Wuhan Institute of Virology, was and by all odds still is involved with “gain-of-function” research, by which viruses found in nature (especially in this case bat caves) are genetically enhanced in potency or made more transmissible or otherwise altered so that scientists can develop inoculations and other defenses in the event such a virus, with the same potency and contagiousness, springs up naturally.
We did a “Special Report” [here] documenting this leak in 2020.
That research was linked to Dr. Ralph Baric in a laboratory at the University of North Carolina which was funded by a private agency called Eco-Health and also by the U.S. military as well, primarily, as the National Institutes of Health (NIH), particularly the division headed by now-somewhat infamous Dr. Anthony Fauci.
Dr. Fauci, the public face of the pandemic during its 2020 outbreak, is under intense attack for covering up the origins of Covid-19, which, following in the footsteps of Chinese authorities, he blamed on a bat cave many hundreds of miles away instead of the Wuhan laboratory where sloppiness or an accident almost certainly led to a leak of the virus in the community.
Dr. Anthony Fauci was raised and baptized a Roman Catholic and still identifies as culturally Catholic, but reportedly he does not actively practice the religion or attend Mass. In 2011–2012, amidst debates surrounding engineered H5N1 avian flu viruses, Fauci had authored commentary arguing that the knowledge gained from manipulating viruses to understand transmissibility outweighed the risk of a potential laboratory incident, stating that the threat of a natural pandemic was far more dangerous.
Critics regularly cite these writings as evidence that he minimized the risks of high-risk scientific research. Embarrassingly, recently released diaries show he was somewhat certainly amused by and perhaps enamored with the fame this situation brought.
Whether COVID-19 also leaked elsewhere is a matter for potential scrutiny. Gain-of-function research, while theoretically understandable, seems ill-advised. Right now, the same is being done with A.I.: The U.S. is developing cyber “bombs”—gain-of-function AI— to test the security of high-tech firms and agencies in the U.S. to see which have vulnerabilities in the event of an actual cyber attack from elsewhere.
Dr. Fauci should have admitted what he knew and is rightly faulted for this. Critics also attack him for the lockdowns, masks, school closings, and other measures that were advised by the federal government and implemented by state and city agencies, many of which took his advice.
How did the measures in the U.S. compare with those implemented in the rest of the world?
We asked ChatGPT to analyze the U.S. COVID-19 restrictions in-depth (and did it ever) in comparison to other nations. The request: “Write an extremely detailed comparison of U.S. Covid restrictions and lockdown versus those in other countries.”
The answer was far too involved to quote but reduced (below, unedited) to a list it produced:
- The United States did not undergo a nationwide lockdown approaching the coercion of China or the uniformity of several European countries.
- Certain American states, cities, schools, hospitals, universities, and employers imposed restrictions that were prolonged, invasive, economically destructive, or socially severe.
- The United States’ defining feature was not maximum national stringency but fragmentation: dozens of governments and thousands of institutions exercising overlapping authority, often changing rules rapidly and applying them inconsistently.
“In global perspective, the United States was neither the world’s freest major country nor one of its most comprehensively locked-down. It was a federal republic in which some citizens experienced relatively brief emergency restrictions, while others lived for many months under extensive limitations on education, commerce, worship, employment, healthcare visitation, travel, and ordinary social contact.
“The United States is often described as having undergone a single national ‘COVID lockdown.’ Strictly speaking, that is inaccurate. The United States never experienced one uniform, centrally administered lockdown comparable to those imposed in China, Italy, New Zealand, Britain, France, Spain, or India. Instead, America experienced a complicated patchwork of federal recommendations, state emergency orders, county and municipal regulations, school-district decisions, private-business rules, employer mandates, and voluntary behavioral changes.
“In some American jurisdictions—particularly New York City, California, New Jersey, Michigan, Massachusetts, Illinois, Hawaii, Oregon, Washington State, and portions of New Mexico—the practical experience could be highly restrictive. In other states, restrictions were comparatively brief, lightly enforced, or never imposed statewide at all.”
“Based on the severity of each country’s strictest major period—including stay-at-home orders, enforcement, school and business closures, travel controls, quarantine, vaccine-pass systems, and surveillance—the approximate order is:
- China
- Australia
- New Zealand
- Spain
- Italy
- France
- India
- United Kingdom
- Canada
- Germany
- United States
- South Korea
- Japan
- Sweden