Thursday, June 3, 2021
Losers Threaten CDC Chief
Ex-CDC Chief Got Death Threats From Scientists for Lab Leak Theory
Dr. Robert Redfield, former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Patrick Semansky/AP)
Thursday, 03 June 2021 11:19 AM
Former Centers for Disease Control Director Robert Redfield on Thursday told Vanity Fair he received death threats from other scientists for saying he suspected COVID-19 originated in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Redfield told Vanity Fair the death threats came after he told CNN in March, "I am of the point of view that I still think the most likely etiology of this pathogen in Wuhan was from a laboratory, you know, escaped."
"I was threatened and ostracized because I proposed another hypothesis," Redfield, a virologist by trade, told the magazine. "I expected it from politicians. I didn't expect it from science."
Once dismissed as a conspiracy theory, the idea the novel coronavirus escaped from the Wuhan lab is gaining attention. Vanity Fair's report claims the U.S. government stood in the way of even discussing the theory.
Former assistant Secretary of State Thomas DiNanno, a Trump appointee, alleged that staff within the department had warned leaders "not to pursue an investigation into the origin of COVID-19" because it could "open a can of worms."
In another document dated Dec. 9, an official warned colleagues not to ask questions about Wuhan labs' coronavirus research, as it would call attention to U.S. government support for that research.
The warnings "smelled like a cover-up," DiNanno told Vanity Fair, "and I wasn't going to be part of it."
David Asher, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute who ran the State Department's day-to-day COVID-19 origins inquiry told the news outlet it became clear that "there is a huge gain-of-function bureaucracy" inside the federal government.
A former U.S. health official told Vanity Fair it was too coincidental an institute "funded by American dollars is trying to teach a bat virus to infect human cells, then there is a virus" in the same Chinese city.
The official told the magazine it was "not being intellectually honest not to consider the hypothesis" of a lab leak of COVID-19.
Even Vanity Fair's report admitted its bias against views shared by former President Donald Trump or those who were appointed by him, like Redfield.
"With President Trump out of office, it should be possible to reject his xenophobic agenda and still ask why, in all places in the world, did the outbreak begin in the city with a laboratory housing one of the world's most extensive collection of bat viruses, doing some of the most aggressive research?" Vanity Fair wrote.
Rutgers University's Dr. Richard Ebright told Vanity Fair it took him "'a nanosecond or a picosecond" to suspect the link to the WIV, noting bat coronavirus research was done in "three places" – Wuhan, China; Galveston, Texas; and Chapel Hill, North Carolina – and "not a dozen cities."
President Joe Biden last week directed the U.S. intelligence community to redouble their efforts in investigating the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic and report back to him in 90 days.
Trump Understood How Americans Felt.
Condoleezza Rice: Trump 'Touched the Nerve' of Americans Feeling Left Out
Dr. Condoleezza Rice chats with guests at the KPMG Women's Leadership Summit at Olympia Fields Country Club on June 28, 2017, in Olympia Fields, Illinois. (Scott Halleran/Getty Images for KPMG)
Wednesday, 02 June 2021 09:05 AM
Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice says she understands why former President Donald Trump has been a successful populist politician.
"What really struck me, and maybe it's because I'm a political scientist, is that the conditions that produced a populist leader, who had never been in government before, was something I think a lot of us had not paid much attention to, frankly," Rice said, The Hill reported.
"He touched the nerve of people who felt left out by globalization, who felt diminished by elites. That just assumed that the conversation was the conversation they were having, not the conversation that people who’d been left behind were having."
Speaking on "The Carlos Watson Show" this week, Rice said Trump reached voters by telling them "you contribute too, and they’ve forgotten you. They look down on you."
"That’s something that we probably still really need to pay attention to," she said. "As a political scientist, I guess I was more interested in what produced this in our society."
Rice, who served in the George W. Bush administration, previously had been critical of Trump. After George Floyd’s death while in police custody last summer, Rice said the former president should try to understand the plight of all Americans.
Trump was critical of the Black Lives Matter protests after Floyd's death.
"I would ask the president to first and foremost speak in the language of unity, the language of empathy. Not everyone is going to agree with any president, with this president, but you have to speak to every American, not just to those who might agree with you," Rice said then, according to The Hill. "When the president speaks, it needs to be from a place of thoughtfulness, from a place of having really honed the message so that it reaches all Americans."
Rice, a Stanford University professor, was asked by Watson if she had known Trump before he ran for president.
"I had met him a couple of times, but never in the context of politics," she said. "I remember thinking at the time, 'Well, this is going to be an interesting experiment.' We’re about to elect somebody whose first job in government is going to be president of the United States, and that was new."
Rice said Trump’s populism was not "anti-democratic."
"[British Prime Minister] Boris Johnson is a little bit this way, and it's not anti-democratic. People are wrong to say it’s anti-democratic," she said. "These are people who believe that the institutions are not really the way you reach people.
"If you think about the use of Twitter by populists, it goes around the media, it goes around the institutions. It’s a direct appeal to the people, and we’ve seen that before in history."
Rice, who has said she didn’t vote for Trump in 2016, also said she supported Trump’s right to question the election results, to a point.
"It was completely appropriate for President Trump to go to the courts about the election and all of that. We did have Bush v. Gore, which ended up in the Supreme Court," she said.
"But it was not appropriate to question, past a certain point, the legitimacy of those elections."
Trump has said he's mulling another run for president in 2024. In April, he said he thought a campaign would be "very successful."
"The polls show it and everybody wants me to do it," Trump said. "One hundred percent, I'm thinking about running and we will I think be very successful. We were very successful."
Wednesday, June 2, 2021
Tuesday, June 1, 2021
Maybe We Should Be Glad That Biden Is President!
Ric Grenell to Newsmax: Idea VP Harris Is Ready to Lead 'Is a Joke'
(Newsmax/"Cortes & Pellegrino")
Monday, 31 May 2021 09:52 PM
The criticism Vice President Kamala Harris faced for her "enjoy the long weekend" tweet is new to her, because she has been covered by California liberalism that fawns all over her every move, no matter how inappropriate, according to former acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell on Newsmax.
"What we're seeing now is Kamala Harris really stumble on the national stage," Grenell told Monday's "Cortes & Pellegrino." "Whether it's her inability to go down and communicate on the border why she's in charge or what the problems are, or articulate why she's not going to physically be there.
"Or now what we see is her stumbles where she's not quite able to articulate patriotism the way the others are."
Grenell, a California conservative, said liberals from his state just skate by on favorable media coverage that leave them "untested" and unprepared for scrutiny.
"The idea that she's prepared to lead the country is a joke," Grenell told co-hosts Steve Cortes and Jenn Pellegrino. "She's never been put through the wringer. She's really unaccustomed to tough questions.
"You'll notice she's not meeting the press. She's not going out, because she's just really used to having the comfortable Sacramento or California press cover her, which means she gets glowing reviews for anything she does.
"Now that's she's in Washington, she still has the progressive D.C. reporter-type glow all around her, but she's now having to face conservative media, or real journalism, and she's unaccustomed to that."
California's "one-party system" is the root of the former senator's ineptitude, according to Grenell.
"We have a one-[party] system here in California," he said. "Kamala Harris has not been put forward in any way to the media to be scrutinized. She's not unique in that. It's most Democrats in California because we have a one-party system.
"They just go through their career and they actually never get push back or tough questions."
Most Democrats from California lack "patriotism," Grenell concluded, because there are consequences in doing that in a party that gets votes from groups that see America as systemically racist and built on bad morals.
"In Sacramento, when you become someone that articulates patriotism, you are at risk of being called a nationalist or a racist," he added. "So what happens is politicians like Kamala Harris, they avoid it.
"They don't wear their patriotism up front like many other politicians do. Now, look, we could have a debate on whether that's good or bad: I think it's very bad.
"When you're a leader you need to articulate your love for our country constantly. And the values of sacrifice those before us – freedom isn't free as the saying goes – needs to be articulated for sure on Memorial weekend."
Here We Go Again?
A volunteer wearing personal protective equipment as a precaution against the spread of bird flu observes an injured rescued bird at a temporary shelter in Ahmedabad, India, on Jan. 13. (Sam Panthaky - AFP / Getty Images)
A volunteer wearing personal protective equipment as a precaution against the spread of bird flu observes an injured rescued bird at a temporary shelter in Ahmedabad, India, on Jan. 13. (Sam Panthaky - AFP / Getty Images)
China Confirms a New Disease Strain Has Jumped from Animals to Humans
A man in eastern China has been confirmed as the first human case of the H10N3 bird flu, China’s National Health Commission reported on Tuesday.
The 41-year-old Zhenjiang resident visited a local hospital on April 28, according to the NHC report, Reuters said. The man was diagnosed with bird flu on May 28. He has since been discharged but remains monitored.
“This infection is an accidental cross-species transmission,” the NHC statement said, according to ABC News. “The risk of large-scale transmission is low.”
Advertisement - story continues below“There have been no significant numbers of human infections with bird flu since the H7N9 strain killed around 300 people during 2016-2017,” according to the Reuters report.
Are you concerned about the spread of a possible bird flu virus?Fox News reported, “The most well-known avian flu strain, H5N1, has a 60% mortality rate, but the U.S. has yet to report any infections among people, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.”
CBS News said, “Following recent avian flu outbreaks in Africa and Eurasia, the head of China’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention last week urged stricter surveillance in poultry farms, markets and wild birds.”
Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul told Fox News’ Jeanine Pirro on Saturday that he was concerned the U.S. government was continuing to fund Chinese research that could be used to develop biological weapons.
Advertisement - story continues below“I’m very worried that this stuff still goes on and that the U.S. government’s been funding it,” Paul told Pirro.
“We’re creating Frankenstein super-viruses that, if they leak out of the lab, accidentally or on purpose, could devastate the world. The SARS virus is 15 times more deadly,” Paul said.
“If that one gets out, and we enhance its ability to be transmitted, that could kill 50, 100 million people.
Advertisement - story continues below“This shouldn’t be a partisan issue. This should be debated.”
Texas Republican Rep. Mike McCaul, the ranking Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, appeared on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday to discuss the origins of the COVID-19 coronavirus.
Advertisement - story continues below“You know, I do think it’s more likely than not it emerged out of the lab, most likely accidentally, for several reasons,” McCaul told host Jake Tapper.
“And, first of all, Jake, let me say, this is the worst cover-up in human history that we have seen, resulting in 3.5 million deaths, creating economic devastation around the globe,” he said.
The COVID-19 virus has led many American lawamers to hold additional concerns regarding biological pathogens, particularly related to viruses from China.
A man in eastern China has been confirmed as the first human case of the H10N3 bird flu, China’s National Health Commission reported on Tuesday.
The 41-year-old Zhenjiang resident visited a local hospital on April 28, according to the NHC report, Reuters said. The man was diagnosed with bird flu on May 28. He has since been discharged but remains monitored.
“This infection is an accidental cross-species transmission,” the NHC statement said, according to ABC News. “The risk of large-scale transmission is low.”
Advertisement - story continues below
“There have been no significant numbers of human infections with bird flu since the H7N9 strain killed around 300 people during 2016-2017,” according to the Reuters report.
Are you concerned about the spread of a possible bird flu virus?
Fox News reported, “The most well-known avian flu strain, H5N1, has a 60% mortality rate, but the U.S. has yet to report any infections among people, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.”
CBS News said, “Following recent avian flu outbreaks in Africa and Eurasia, the head of China’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention last week urged stricter surveillance in poultry farms, markets and wild birds.”
Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul told Fox News’ Jeanine Pirro on Saturday that he was concerned the U.S. government was continuing to fund Chinese research that could be used to develop biological weapons.
Advertisement - story continues below
“I’m very worried that this stuff still goes on and that the U.S. government’s been funding it,” Paul told Pirro.
“We’re creating Frankenstein super-viruses that, if they leak out of the lab, accidentally or on purpose, could devastate the world. The SARS virus is 15 times more deadly,” Paul said.
“If that one gets out, and we enhance its ability to be transmitted, that could kill 50, 100 million people.
Advertisement - story continues below
“This shouldn’t be a partisan issue. This should be debated.”
Texas Republican Rep. Mike McCaul, the ranking Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, appeared on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday to discuss the origins of the COVID-19 coronavirus.
Advertisement - story continues below
“You know, I do think it’s more likely than not it emerged out of the lab, most likely accidentally, for several reasons,” McCaul told host Jake Tapper.
“And, first of all, Jake, let me say, this is the worst cover-up in human history that we have seen, resulting in 3.5 million deaths, creating economic devastation around the globe,” he said.
The COVID-19 virus has led many American lawamers to hold additional concerns regarding biological pathogens, particularly related to viruses from China.