@Vitaliy....child like behavior is denying the truth, not questioning the denial. Never had a child ? That's what all parents learn. And yes...china was obligated to inform the international community in certain way. I believe that was/is international law. I'm sure we'll hear more about the legal aspects as the lawsuits proceed. Why would you think calling out their duty to inform the world is child-like behavior ? It was their responsibility, both legal and moral. US officials , up until this point, haven't been accused of allowing the virus to become pandemic by hiding fundamental truths ...i.e origin and existence. Trump's attempt to deny the viruses capacity was a stupid and frail attempt at saving the economy, not an attempt to cover his guilt. The virus was already pandemic when it arrived...unless of course someone can prove something about the USa being the true source. Of course, incompetence of their response could always be questioned, could throw them from power, or even be prosecuted...but they didn't let the tiger out of the cage. China did that. The question is....why would you protect them ? https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/coronavirus-china-legal-action-donald-trump-sue-beijing-missouri-mississippi-a9488991.html

The Trump administration decided to end a $200m early warning program designed to alert it to potential pandemics just three months before it is believed Covid-19 began infecting people in China.

The project, called Predict, had been run by the US Agency for International Development since 2009. It had identified more than 160 different coronaviruses that had the potential to develop into pandemics, including a virus that is considered the closest known relative to Covid-19.

A decision to wind down the program was made, however, in September, just three months before the first reports of people becoming infected with Covid-19 in Wuhan, China. The end of the program saw the departure of dozens of scientists and analysts working to identify potential pandemics in countries around the world, including China.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/03/trump-scrapped-pandemic-early-warning-program-system-before-coronavirus

( George Webb broke this story weeks ago... now shows up in mainstream news, Newsweek, might be a hangout to still blame China :) )

DR. FAUCI BACKED CONTROVERSIAL WUHAN LAB WITH MILLIONS OF U.S. DOLLARS FOR RISKY CORONAVIRUS RESEARCH

The project proposal states: "We will use S protein sequence data, infectious clone technology, in vitro and in vivo infection experiments and analysis of receptor binding to test the hypothesis that % divergence thresholds in S protein sequences predict spillover potential."

In layman's terms, "spillover potential" refers to the ability of a virus to jump from animals to humans, which requires that the virus be able to attach to receptors in the cells of humans. SARS-CoV-2, for instance, is adept at binding to the ACE2 receptor in human lungs and other organs.

According to Richard Ebright, an infectious disease expert at Rutgers University, the project description refers to experiments that would enhance the ability of bat coronavirus to infect human cells and laboratory animals using techniques of genetic engineering. In the wake of the pandemic, that is a noteworthy detail.

https://www.newsweek.com/dr-fauci-backed-controversial-wuhan-lab-millions-us-dollars-risky-coronavirus-research-1500741?fbclid=IwAR0Jlj7ISIRF1tBYqeQ4Hf_Cuw79ELmxZBKT1QdGlTXG_oJ9b4Ig9Q6IVro

https://www.newsweek.com/dr-fauci-backed-controversial-wuhan-lab-millions-us-dollars-risky-coronavirus-research-1500741?fbclid=IwAR0Jlj7ISIRF1tBYqeQ4Hf_Cuw79ELmxZBKT1QdGlTXG_oJ9b4Ig9Q6IVro

This is the People's Daily. It means the CPC is losing patience with the tsunami of excrement gushing forth from Washington.

Via David Kersten

1. Regarding the restarted avian influenza virus modification experiment last year, why does the US release no more updates?

2. The United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) was previously closed. What is the truth behind that?

3. The US Department of Health and Human Services ran a scenario last year that was similar to the COVID-19 outbreak. Is this just a coincidence?

4. US intelligence officials warned of coronavirus crisis as early as last November. Why was the warning ignored?

5. Among the reported influenza deaths in the US, can the US clarify how many cases are actually infected with COVID-19?

6. When did the novel coronavirus first appear in the US? Did community transmission of the coronavirus start sooner than it was reported?

7. How did the US get the virus strains so soon to start the first human testing of a vaccine against COVID-19?

8. Why did the US government keep downplaying the pandemic while its officials privately dumped stocks?

9. Why are US experts not allowed to discuss COVID-19 in public?

10. What research is being done in the US overseas biological laboratories? Why does the US keep tight-lipped about it?

UPDATE Question No. 11: Why is Trump preventing his own top infectious-diseases expert from testifying to his own Congress?

Covid-19 and US/China Debt: Trump Doing a Haircut or Selective Default on US Debts? by Robert K Tan

There has been wild talk of America demanding a "haircut" on US debts or doing a selective default on US debts held by China. I did this post in another group some 6 months ago. The points made in that post still hold today, now that Trump has been elected POTUS and the US debts are USD 20 Trllion. The post is reproduced in full here.

A comment on a post "China Endorses Trump " in this group that Trump as POTUS might declare a default on US debts (of which China holds in excess of US$1 trillion), the same way his own business filed for bankruptcy, has prompted me to do a research on the implications of a sovereign default by America. Some may remember a Yankee kid said on a TV programme that America should refuse to honour its debts to China so as to solve America's problem of humongous government debts.

For a quick glimpse of the implications, this is an excerpt from an article in National Interest: "A default on the U.S. debt would cause problems in the domestic economy as financial and asset markets melted down, and U.S. government borrowing costs could potentially make the U.S. deficit and current debt unsustainable much sooner than it would have been otherwise. But the worst outcome for the U.S. would be the acceleration of rise of a bipolar monetary order. At the moment, the global reserve currency is the U.S. Dollar, and the U.S. enjoys great benefits from it. Playing chicken with the debt ceiling and creditor credibility risks sparking a “flight to others” as the safety of U.S. Treasury bills becomes a thing of the past." The key words are "acceleration of a rise of a bipolar monetary order".

Even though America accounts for 22% of world GDP (16% in PPP terms) and was toppled from its position as the top TRADING nation in the world by China in 2013, US$ is used for over 50% of global trade (as high as 80 to 90% for Korea, Australia, Thailand and Malaysia) and over 60% as world reserve currency. All this in spite of the fiat dollar, US$17 trillion (some put it at close to US$100 trillion including undisclosed and unfunded portions) in government debts and a mind boggling amount of money supply created out of thin air by the FED.

What has enabled Uncle Sam to pull off the greatest scam in human history is his firm grip on post-war Bretton Woods institutions IMF and the World Bank as well as control of the international payments system SWIFT. And America is determined to perpetuate this financial hegemony by all means, including wars to destroy any regime that challenges the Prima Donna status of US$ in world finance and trade. The last one who challenged the US$ status was Gaddafi, who planned to sell Libya's oil for EURO, instead of US$, and we know what happened to him.

A sovereign default by America would trigger a loss of confidence in the US$ worldwide. US$ would suffer an immediate and huge devaluation. Most countries would switch their reserve currency out of US$ to EURO, Yuan and Jap Yen. International trade and oil trade would no longer be done in US$. It would not be just a bipolar monetary order, but multipolar with US$ excluded.

America could no longer issue bills and bonds to finance its trade and budget deficits. It could no longer pay for goods and resources with US$. That means the US government would have to close down most of its 1,000 military bases abroad, and unable to buy and develop new weapons. Its many carriers and warships would have to stop patrolling in various oceans and seas as there's no money to pay for them.

If you think insolvency of Lehman Brothers was bad, a sovereign default by America would be an unmitigated nightmare. Banks across America would suffer runs as depositors rushed to withdraw their funds to buy up everything in sight before hyperinflation set in. The banking and financial system would be crippled. A world financial crisis on a Richter scale of 9.9 would explode.

Riots would break out across America as depositors were unable to withdraw money with restrictions imposed on daily withdrawals . Oil pumps would run dry, garbage would remain uncollected for weeks as the municipalities could not pay workers, and public order would deteriorate as policemen were laid off. This is not some wild exaggeration, but what actually happened in Argentina after it defaulted on bonds in 2001.

Now, instead of across the board default, why not America just selectively defaulted on bonds held by China?

This is fraught with legal and political problems (see this link )

http://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2500&context=faculty_scholarship

The findings of that study are worth pondering:

1. A selective default and restructuring is feasible from logistical and informational perspectives, and problematic but possibly feasible from a legal perspective.

2. When the national and global impact of such an approach is considered, it may be that default and restructuring is NOT, on balance, a realistic alternative.

The adverse effect on US$ and world markets in a selective default would be only slightly less severe than a full default . It'd be stupid for America to do that just to reduce its debt by US$1 trillion out of US$17 trillion. The costs would far far outweigh the benefits. Faith of foreign investors in American debt would be badly dented as they would ask whether they would be the next target of selective default.

""Beijing does not want anyone inside it, has banned research institutions from sharing their findings about the virus on their websites, and says anyone who doubts their official view —which is that it either came from a meat market or someone ate food infected by bat saliva — is just being a knuckle-dragging xenophobe."" .... https://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2020/05/01/wuhan-lab-as-coronavirus-source-gains-traction/#74519b746743

""Despite intelligence probes into whether her laboratory may have been responsible for the outbreak, Dr Shi is not hitting pause on her research, which she argues is more important than ever in preventing a pandemic. She plans to head a national project to systemically sample viruses in bat caves, with estimates that there are more than 5000 coronavirus strains “waiting to be discovered in bats globally”."" ..... https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/coronavirus/bombshell-dossier-lays-out-case-against-chinese-bat-virus-program/news-story/55add857058731c9c71c0e96ad17da60

@Vitaliy....I don't understand your point about "inverse situation"....but totally disagree we need to be performing gain-of-function research with whatever viruses. And that's the real point....we don't need to be. And remember I haven't bought into this idea that some superelites are in control of this. That's your idea. I think this was a simple escape, or a 12 monkeys scenario inside china alone. That's not saying there's no connections with bioweapons research in other places. Obviously we funded them 3.? million dollars. But one has to realize in weapons funding 3.something million dollars is small potatoes. French and canada were in deeper.

@Vitaliy....no...I don't understand because " but they had been forced to release virus exactly due to information they obtained about present coronaviruses research" . ? ....Yes the usa had the virus at fort detrick , but what information did "they" obtain " ? that forced them to supposedly release the virus ? They closed down the research at detrick. The canadian provided china with the virus. China had it's tentacles in alot of places. The harvard prof. And what's the difference between "ruling class" and superelites ? I assume they are the they you're talking about. Name me some people you consider the ruling class. The 6000 or so permanent guests at davos ? That's a large class to make such decisions.

@jleo...long before any intel writeups began appearing, coincidentally or not, planted disinfo or not, or just plain bad writing skills....the facts of china denying contagiousness and allowing flights out of lockdowned wuhan were duly noted by most, except maybe those who themselves want to throw shxt upon the burning fire in order to hide their own odor.

The source of the rumour that China allowed international flights out of Wuhan was Niall Ferguson writing in The Sunday Times, but further investigation by Professor Daniel Bell shows that it was not true. It would only matter if Covid-19 was only in Wuhan at the time, but check other news about multiple strains of Covid-19 unrelated to China and early pneumonia reports in US and Italy.

But he asks a question that stood out from the rest: “after it became clear that there was a full-blown epidemic spreading from Wuhan to the rest of Hubei province, why did you cut off travel from Hubei to the rest of China — on January 23 — but not from Hubei to the rest of the world?”

The force of his question rests on the factual assumption that China allowed flights from Wuhan to the rest of the world but not to the rest of China after January 23rd. But is it a fact?

To support the allegation, Ferguson added: “January is always a peak month for travel from China to Europe and America because of the lunar new year holiday. As far as I can tell from the available records, however, regular direct flights from Wuhan continued to run to London, Paris, Rome, New York and San Francisco throughout January and in some cases into February.”

I was surprised by the allegation that China allowed regular direct flights from Wuhan to cities in the United States and Europe after it cut flights from Wuhan to the rest of China.

So I did a search on a Chinese language application called Umetrip (http://www.umetrip.com/mskyweb/main/index.html), provided by CAACNEWS (中国民航网; the website for the Civil Aviation Administration of China). I checked all the flights listed on the spreadsheet Professor Ferguson sent me. It turns out that none of the flights that supposedly left from Wuhan after 11:26 am on Jan. 23rd actually left from Wuhan. The flights listed as red on Ferguson’s spreadsheet were cancelled. The six listed as black left from Guangzhou and in normal times would do a stopover in Wuhan on the way to SFO but the stopover was cancelled. The app shows the actual flight paths of those flights as direct from Guangzhou, bypassing Wuhan.

In short, the “available records” provided by Professor Ferguson do not show that “regular direct flights from Wuhan continued to run to London, Paris, Rome, New York and San Francisco throughout January and in some cases into February.” The records show that flights out of Wuhan to the rest of the world stopped around mid-day on the 23rd, , the same day China stopped flights from Wuhan to the rest of China.

Update (April 22, 2020):

In his response, Ferguson concedes that he was wrong to allege that regular flights left from Wuhan to the rest of the world after Jan. 23rd, which is what I had asked him about since it would suggest a deliberate effort by the Chinese government to allow, if not encourage, the spread of the virus to the rest of the world.

https://danielabell.com/2020/04/21/did-the-chinese-government-deliberately-export-covid-19-to-the-rest-of-the-world/

https://financemarkethouse.com/2020/04/24/update-on-flights-from-china/

@jleo .... ""Among the flights were 50 direct from Wuhan, the Chinese metropolis where the outbreak is believed to have started. Twenty-seven of those flights went to San Francisco and 23 to New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport. The last flights from Wuhan came in early February, when the Trump Administration imposed restrictions on flights from China to the U.S."".... https://abcnews.go.com/Health/disaster-motion-flights-coronavirus-ravaged-countries-landed-us/story?id=70025470 ...and from your own link .... ""China did not issue an order suspending group travel to foreign countries until three days later, on Jan. 27 [my emphasis]......and ""while 200 of the 600-odd flights scheduled at Wuhan's international airport were canceled"" ..... https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/nine-dead-as-chinese-coronavirus-spreads-despite-efforts-to-contain-it/2020/01/22/1eaade72-3c6d-11ea-afe2-090eb37b60b1_story.html