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Home > 2021 > Origins of Corona and the Conspiracy Theorists | Kobad Ghandy

Mainstream, VOL LIX No 25, New Delhi, June 5, 2021

Origins of Corona and the Conspiracy Theorists | Kobad Ghandy

Friday 4 June 2021, by Kobad Ghandy

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by Kobad Ghandy

The object of government is not to change men from rational beings into beasts or puppets, but to enable them to develop their minds and bodies in security, and to employ their reason unshackled; neither showing hatred, anger, deceit, nor watched with the eyes of jealousy and injustice. In fact, the true aim of government is liberty.  —Benedict Spinoza

So said the great philosopher 3 ½ centuries back. Today we are heading in just the opposite direction, and not just because of govt controls but also because of social sanction generated by fear of a tiny virus, aggravated ten-fold by the thousands of deaths of the second wave.

We appear to be moving back to the dark ages.

         The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted lives the world over for more than a year. Its death toll will soon reach three million people and more, crores more have been impoverished and the entire world population has been confined to their homes as never before creating psychological and nervous disorders on an unprecedented scale. It is a holocaust of gigantic proportions; yet the origin of pandemic remains uncertain to this day, with no enthusiasm to investigate. Thousands are dying in India inspite of lockdown, masks, social distancing and vaccines. Can governments around the world be so callous as not to determine its source when it has vast resources and top scientists at their service? After all, without knowledge of its origin how can one take measures to prevent its recurrence or, for that matter, even look for a proper means of prevention.

It is not denied that the virus originated from Wuhan in China. But the question is how was this created and how did it spread worldwide. Wuhan houses two important centers — it is the home of the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a leading world centre for research on coronaviruses. It is also a major centre for the so-called ‘wet market’, where animals of all types are sold for their meat. Under these circumstances there were two main possibilities on the origin and spread of the virus from Wuhan to the rest of the world.

The Two Possibilities

As Nicholas Wade said in his May 5 article (First published on Medium): “The virus that caused the pandemic is known officially as SARS-CoV-2, but can be called SARS2 for short. As many people know, there are two main theories about its origin. One is that it jumped naturally from wildlife to people (i.e. zoonotic). The other is that the virus was understudy in a lab, from which it escaped. It matters a great deal which is the case if we hope to prevent a second such occurrence.”

Nicholas Wade is said to be the doyen of science journalism in the world, and when he writes scientists stand up and look. He was the senior-most science writer in the New York Times till 2012 and has worked on the staff of prestigious journals like ‘Nature’ & ‘Science’. He has been given many citations and so well researched is this 27-page paper that many scientists who were earlier sceptical are now changing their mind.

Of the two possibilities, if it is zoonotic, it is yet another virus of which there has been a sudden spurt resulting from the destruction of the ecology — making it easier for viruses to jump from animals to humans - by the existing capitalist system due to the rapacious plunder of our earth. Unfortunately, many a governmental ‘climate change’ enthusiast and their corporate buddies seek to divert the issue from stopping the destruction of the land, forest, water bodies, etc to generation of ‘green energy’. Ironically the two biggest ‘green energy’ corporates, Adani and Elon Musk, were the two fastest growing billionaires last year. Climate change is to be affected by ending corporate greed and destruction of nature not by alternatives that are themselves money-spinners. Afterall, the world’s richest 1% emit double the carbon of the poorest 50%.

If it is the second (modified lab virus escape) it could mean the result of pure callousness of the officials involved, or a conscious leak? This also raises questions as to why countries like the US and China are funding such dangerous Gain-of-Function (GOF) experiments at Wuhan and also the US. Afterall, in the US, for 20 years they have been routinely creating viruses more dangerous than those that exist in nature in their laboratories; which is called Gain-of-Function Research. They argued that they could do so safely, and that by getting ahead of nature they could predict and prevent natural “spillovers,” the cross-over of viruses from an animal host to people. This has never been proved and is probably a cover up for biological warfare research. Besides, with the Sars 2 virus, the results have been catastrophic, if the pandemic involved lab generation.

So, whichever of the two alternatives are taken — natural virus transmitted resulting from ecological destruction or the result of GOF research — the cause is the prevailing system which does not stop at destruction of nature, but also the introduction of GMOs, hormones, pesticides, etc in the food chain, not to mention biological warfare tools. Whatever, let us look at both the possibilities to try and get at the truth so that we may try and get to the root of the problem to take pre-emptive action to prevent a recurrence.

First let us look at the possibility of a zoonotic transfer. According to scientists, as the corona viruses are lodged in bats its transmission requires an intermediary animal host from which it is transmitted to the human. Unless the intermediary animal host is traced it is impossible to conclusively state that the transmission was zoonotic. In the past two major corona virus outbreaks — Sars I epidemic in 2002 & MERS in 2012 — after intensive research, they were soon able to trace the intermediary animal hosts. The top Chinese virologist, Shi Cheng Li, or ‘bat lady’ had been doing intensive research into corona viruses by visiting caves in China that housed various types of bats, after it was realised that both the earlier two corona viruses originated from bats. Regarding the Sars I virus Chinese scientists, after a full four months extensive research, were able to trace the intermediary animal to the civet (a type of cat) eaten by Chinese and sold in the Wuhan ‘wet market’. Regarding the MERS outbreak it took much longer - nine months - but that too was finally traced to the camel; that was why it was called Middle East Respiratory Syndrome.

This proliferation of zoonotic diseases is no doubt linked to the destruction of the ecology which brings the contact between animals and humans closer and the lowering of the immunity levels of both. But with Sars2 (Covid -19), though science is far more advanced from those days, it has been over 15 months and they have not yet been able to trace the intermediary animal. Not only that, they have not even been able to trace the bat-type from which it could have originated. As Wade says “some 15 months after the SARS2 pandemic began, Chinese researchers had failed to find either the original bat population, or the intermediate species to which SARS2 might have jumped, or any serological evidence that any Chinese population, including that of Wuhan, had ever been exposed to the virus prior to December 2019.” He adds “No one has found the bat population that was the source of SARS2, if indeed it ever infected bats. No intermediate host has presented itself, despite an intensive search by Chinese authorities that included the testing of 80,000 animals. There is no evidence of the virus making multiple independent jumps from its intermediate host to people, as both the SARS1 and MERS viruses did.”

While Wade goes into extensive scientific details about the molecular biology of viruses, and the corona viruses in particular, (which anyone interested can read online) he concludes that while there is not an iota of evidence as yet to conclude that the Sars 2 was zoonotic, the suspicion arises that it was more likely a lab product given the nature of the virus (again he gives lengthy scientific details) and also the fact that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was specifically funded for Gain-of-Function Research on coronaviruses. And none deny that in the GOF research the genetically engineered corona viruses were used to specifically target human cells grown in cultures and humanized mice. He further clarified that “these laboratory mice, a cheap and ethical stand-in for human subjects, are genetically engineered to carry the human version of a protein called ACE2 that studs the surface of cells that line the airways”.

So, while Wade does not conclude decisively, saying further investigation is necessary, all the indications point to a lab created virus that escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. He says, “the available evidence leans more strongly in one direction than the other. Readers will form their own opinion. But it seems to me that proponents of lab escape can explain all the available facts about SARS2 considerably more easily than can those who favor natural emergence”.

This is exactly opposite to what the magazines ‘Lancet’ and ‘Nature’ have been maintaining and what the WHO has been saying, branding the alternative view as conspiracy theories. But before coming to these varied views presented by scientists there is need to look into this institute and its varied connections.

The Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV)

The Wuhan Institute of Virology is a research institute on virology administered by the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), which reports to the State Council of the People’s Republic of China. Located in Jiangxia District, Wuhan, Hubei, it opened China’s first biosafety level 4 (BSL—4) laboratory — i.e. the highest level of lab safety. The institute has strong ties to the Galveston National Laboratory in the United States, the Centre International de Recherche en Infectiologie in France and the National Microbiology Laboratory in Canada. The institute has been an active research center for the study of coronaviruses.

In 2003, the Chinese academy of Sciences approved the construction of China’s first biosafety level 4 (BSL—4) laboratory at the WIV. The construction of the WIV’s National Bio-safety Laboratory was completed at a cost of 300 million yuan ($44 million) in collaboration with the French government’s CIRI lab at the end of 2014. The scientific community was also reassured that many Wuhan lab scientists were trained in safety procedures at a BSL-4 lab in Lyon, France. The new laboratory building has 3000 m2 of BSL-4 space, and also twenty BSL-2 and two BSL-3 laboratories. The BSL-4 facilities were accredited by the China National Accreditation Service for Conformity Assessment (CNAS) in January 2017, with the BSL-4 level lab put into operation in January 2018.

So, whatever happened at the Wuhan lab was not only the responsibility of the Chinese government but also much of the West which were intricately linked to it, particularly the US, as we shall see.

Researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology was led by China’s leading expert on bat viruses, Shi Zheng-li or “Bat Lady”. Shi had teamed up with Ralph S. Baric, an eminent coronavirus researcher at the University of North Carolina. Their work focused on enhancing the ability of bat viruses to attack humans so as to “examine the emergence potential (that is, the potential to infect humans) of circulating bat CoVs [coronaviruses].” In pursuit of this aim, in November 2015 they created a novel virus by taking the backbone of the SARS1 virus and replacing its spike protein with one from a bat virus (known as SHC014-CoV). This manufactured virus was able to infect the cells of the human airway, at least when tested against a lab culture of such cells.

Baric had developed, and taught Shi, a general method for engineering bat coronaviruses to attack other species. The specific targets were human cells grown in cultures and humanized mice. Shi returned to her lab at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and resumed the work she had started on genetically engineering coronaviruses to attack human cells. Her work was funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), a part of the US National Institutes of Health (NIH). And grant proposals that funded her work, which are a matter of public record, specify exactly what she planned to do with the money.

The grants were assigned to the prime contractor, Daszak, President of the EcoHealth Alliance, who subcontracted them to Shi. It cannot yet be stated that Shi did or did not generate SARS2 in her lab because her records have been sealed, but it seems she was certainly on the right track to have done so. “It is clear that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was systematically constructing novel chimeric coronaviruses and was assessing their ability to infect human cells and human-ACE2-expressing mice,” says Richard H. Ebright, a molecular biologist at Rutgers University and leading expert on biosafety.

. The US has had a major role in funding the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Wade says, “from June 2014 to May 2019, Daszak’s EcoHealth Alliance had a grant from the NIAID to do gain-of-function research with coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Whether or not SARS2 is the product of that research, it seems a questionable policy to farm out high-risk research to unsafe foreign labs using minimal safety precautions.”

In 2014 the National Institute of Health of the US allocated a $3.4 million grant to the EcoHealth Alliance, whose president, Peter Daszak, was the chief person to orchestra the campaign against those suggesting a possible leak from the lab. Ironically, he and his ‘Alliance’ paid the Wuhan lab more than $ 5,00,000 over a period of five years. And this was paid from May 2014, five months after the Obama administration said it would not fund new projects that involved GOF research and put a moratorium on such research. But it was the director of the NIAID, Anthony Fauci, and the director of the NIH, Francis Collins, who used technical grounds to bypass this presidential moratorium to stop gain-of-function research, and allowed the funds to continue to the Wuhan Institute of Virology for this very purpose.

Will The Real Conspirators Please Stand Up?

Even at the time of the outbreak of the Covid-19 virus many senior scientists were sceptical about the zoonotic theory and raised the possibility that it could be a leak, based on their studies of the type of research going on in the Wuhan lab. As such statements would have serious implication, as Daszak, Fauci and Collins would all become culpable for the resulting holocaust — if not directly, it least as collateral damage — a massive campaign was orchestrated against even suggesting such a possibility.

Even before any proof either way was available there was a huge campaign to show that the virus was natural and not a lab-generated leak. It was initiated by a group of 80 top virologists who wrote in the prestigious Lancet Magazine on February 19, 2020, when it was really far too soon for anyone to be sure what had happened, that “we stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin ........ we overwhelmingly conclude that this coronavirus originated in wildlife”.

As it later turned out, the Lancet letter had been organized and drafted by none other than Peter Daszak himself, the main person responsible for funding the GOF research at the WIV.

A second statement that had enormous influence in shaping public attitudes was a letter (in other words an opinion piece, not a scientific article) published on 17 March 2020 in the journal Nature Medicine. Its authors were a group of senior virologists led by Kristian G. Andersen of the Scripps Research Institute. “Our analyses clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus,” the five virologists declared in the second paragraph of their letter. Scripps Research is ranked the most influential institution in the world for its impact on innovation.

Nine months later the WHO sent out its own team to China. According to the WHO report on the origins of the virus, the sentinel hospitals in Hubei province, home of Wuhan, routinely monitor influenza-like illnesses and “no evidence to suggest substantial SARSCoV-2 transmission in the months preceding the outbreak in December was observed.”

Natural emergence was the media’s preferred theory even until around February 2021 and the visit by a World Health Organization (WHO) commission to China. The Commission’s composition and access were heavily controlled by the Chinese authorities. Its members, who included the ubiquitous Daszak, kept asserting before, during, and after their visit that lab escape was extremely unlikely. The WHO also said that lab leak was extremely unlikely cause of the pandemic.

According to Wade “China’s central authorities did not generate SARS2, but they sure did their utmost to conceal the nature of the tragedy and China’s responsibility for it. They suppressed all records at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and closed down its virus databases. They released a trickle of information, much of which may have been outright false or designed to misdirect and mislead. They did their best to manipulate the WHO’s inquiry into the virus’s origins, and led the Commission’s members on a fruitless run-around. So far they have proved far more interested in deflecting blame than in taking the steps necessary to prevent a second pandemic.”

Once again on March 30 2021 WHO’s 120 page report was inconclusive about the origins of the virus. But of the four scenarios, it said it is “likely to be very likely” that the virus spread from an anima to an intermediate host to humans. The report said that a lab leak was “extremely unlikely” although it did not study this possibility enough. Although the team concluded that a lab leak is the least likely hypothesis, the Director General said “as far as WHO is concerned, al hypothesis remain on the table”.

With such respected science journals and even the WHO stating that the virus was natural and the disease zoonotic, the entire media worldwide took up this campaign branding any doubts as the product of ‘conspiracy theorists’. Senior journalists and doctors too would repeat this ad nauseum. So, something unproven become an established fact!

Who then are the real conspirators? Those who spread this Gobbelian lie, or those who raised questions about its veracity?

 Poignantly the very Daszaks and Faucis who spoke so confidently that the virus was natural and not a lab construct were those most responsible for promoting and funding the GOF research and a genetically modified virus. The method adopted by these gentlemen has become the norm to brand anything that could be embarrassing to the establishment as a conspiracy, instead of using logical arguments to counter what they believe are conspiracies. They then widely propagate against these so-called conspiracies, branding them as though they emanate from the lunatic fringe of society. This is then taken up by the mainstream media in gobbelian style, and can be so aggressive that even academics and researchers are fearful to counter it, worried about their grants. 

A similar method has been adopted by mainstream media on the origin of the virus theory. So much so that much of the left also fell into the trap. But most people are unaware that the very term, ‘conspiracy theory’ was first manufactured by the CIA to counter those who said the assassination of JFK in the 1960s - and the cover up by the Warren Commission’s Report with ten witnesses dying ‘natural’ deaths - was an ‘inside job’. Since then, the term ‘conspiracy theorists’ has routinely been used to dismiss counter opinions, particularly if they are damaging to the establishment’s important agenda.

Though not directly linked to the issue of ‘origin of the virus’ a major player on the entire covid issue behind the Daszaks and Faucis is none other than Bill Gates and his Bill & Malinda Gates Foundation (BMGF). Without a mention of his dubious ‘philanthropic’ role this section would not be complete.

Gates, a proponent of eugenics and depopulation, as early as 2018 publicly announced that a global pandemic was on its way and could wipe out 30 million people. Then again in Oct. 2019 Bill Gates organised Event 201 in New York City entitled “coronavirus pandemic exercise’. On large display at this Event, you see the text printed “We need to prepare for the event that becomes a pandemic”. From where did Gates get this knowledge?

Besides, in the name of philanthropy, he is aggressively promoting patents in not only vaccines (he ‘persuaded’ Oxford to tie up with Astra Zeneca so that it could have a patent) but also in plant seeds and GMOs. Most importantly he is the vaccine king of the world with heavy investments in pharmas, the WHO and has floated the vaccine alliance GAVI, formed in 2000 to vaccinate children in the poor countries of the world. After he took over the polio vaccine programme in India, for which India paid $2.5 bn and more, he increased the number of drops for children upto the age of five, from 5 to 50, resulting in the partial paralysis of 4,96,000 children, mostly in UP and Bihar. This was reported in a 2018 study released in the International Journal of Environment Research and Public Health, which said that they were paralysed due to the polio vaccine administered between 2000 and 2017. Due to Gates clout this report has seen little light. He played a similar sinister role in Africa with the AIDs vaccine. No wonder the G-20 recently rejected the backward country’s demand for waving of covid-19 vaccine patents so that the pharma companies can make windfall profits on peoples’ suffering. When he was asked on Jan.21, 2021 by CNN as to when would the world return to normalcy, he replies “when we’ve largely vaccinated the entire global population”.

But Gates, with his closely held Foundation, is not acting alone. The May 2014 issue of Aspects of India’s Economy No 57, reported that: In 2009 the self-designated “Good Club” — a gathering of the world’s wealthiest people whose collective net worth then totalled some $125 billion — met behind closed doors in New York City to discuss a coordinated response to threats posed by the global financial crisis. Led by Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, and David Rockefeller, the group resolved to find new ways of addressing sources of discontent in the developing world, in particular overpopulation and infectious diseases. The billionaires in attendance committed to massive spending in areas of interest to themselves, heedless of the priorities of national governments and existing aid organizations. Details of the secret summit were leaked to the press and hailed as a turning point for Big Philanthropy. Traditional bureaucratic foundations like Ford, Rockefeller, and Carnegie were said to be giving way to “philanthrocapitalism,” a muscular new approach to charity in which the presumed entrepreneurial skills of billionaires would be applied directly to the world’s most pressing challenges.

It is for the reader to themselves decide who are the real conspirators? Today mainstream media is strongly corporate/govt controlled and is itself difficult to believe. Of course, the falsehoods promoted wholesale by them is no ‘conspiracy’, yet invariably one has to read between the lines to get at the truth. Not to say that every alternative viewpoint is always factual, there too we will see much fake content and also exaggerations; so, one has to discern for ourselves fact from fiction and not get carried away by either. Today, particularly mainstream media — newspapers, channels and now even internet - has perfected the Gobbelian methods of convincing the public, utilising the latest in psychological research. This is used not only to convince the gullible public of an agenda they seek to promote, but also by TNCs to induce people to buy their product.

But on May 14 2021 a group of 18 scientists writing in Science, call for an enquiry to establish “greater clarity about the origins of the pandemic”, and demand that both possibilities, “natural and laboratory spillover”, be considered seriously.

While I leave it to the reader to sift fact from fiction let us now look at some mindboggling facts related to the origins of the virus, much of which has been kept low key by the media, but is in the public domain.

Some Intriguing Questions Needing Thorough Investigation

We have already seen Bill Gates talking of a pandemic well before it occurred. But he was not alone; there were many others in the same boat making predictions on the pandemic well before it occurred. If these are true, one needs an explanation as to what basis, scientific or otherwise, they were able to make such predictions. Let’s take a look:
In 2008 the author of the book Coronacrisis, an investigator, Robin de Ruiter, predicted that there would come a global lockdown. Because much of what he wrote back in 2008 is now happening right in front of our eyes, this book has been republished.

Next, in 2010, Harry Vox, a renowned investigative researcher, refers to a famous document by the Rockefeller Foundation in which everything we see happening now is literally predicted in great detail: the global pandemic, the lock-downs, the collapse of the economy and the imposing of authoritarian control. This document was brought out in 2010 in the midst of the Great Recession.

The document is titled ‘Scenario for the Future of Technology and International Development’. That says it all: a scenario for the future. It has a chapter called ‘LockStep’ in which a global pandemic is reported as if it happened in the past, but which is clearly intended as a rehearsal for the future.

According to their ‘Scenario of the future’ the entire world population should get a digital ID that indicates who has received all the vaccines. Without sufficient vaccinations, access to schools, concerts, churches, public transport etc. will be denied.

Now that the announced pandemic is indeed here, the same Rockefeller Foundation came forward with step two: a handbook on how to implement new control systems during this pandemic. Only when all the required control networks are in place, can the world open up again. It is entitled “National Covid -19 Testing Action Plan : Pragmatic Steps to Reopen our workplaces and our communities” brought out immediately after the first lockdown on April 20, 2020. The Foundation has one Dr.Rajiv Shah as the president who was earlier on senior posts of the Gates Foundation and also USAID.

Simultaneously in that very year, in April 2010 the film The Dead Plague came out, detailing the devastation of the SARS epidemic and the media frenzy as the global population plummets. It is a horror film with "actual" video camera footage of infected citizens coming together to suffer and die. The film ‘Dead Plague’ depicts a global pandemic with a coronavirus and even mentions hydroxychloroquine as the cure.

In the very next year the best-selling film ‘Contagion’ was premiered at the 68th Venice International Film Festival in Venice, Italy on September 3,2011, and was theatrically released by Warner Bros on September 9,2011. Commercially, the film made $136.5 million against its $60 million production budget. Critics praised the film for its narrative and the performances, as did scientists for its apparent ‘accuracy’.
Contagion has top stars like Gwyneth Paltrow and Kate Winslet. It concerns a deadly virus with the potential to destroy the global population. MEV-1 is the name of Contagion’s fictional virus. As with SARS-CoV-2, it’s a novel virus, meaning it has never been in the human population before, so no one has immunity to it. It also has much the same origin as SARS-CoV-2, initially appearing in China and traveling from animals to humans by way of exposure to infected animal products. The same zoonotic theory that they sought to portray about the Covid-19 virus. Its fatality rate, however, is at least 10 times that of SARS-CoV-2. And unlike SARS-CoV-2, which is mostly limited to the respiratory system, MEV-1 attacks both the lungs and the brain, causing headaches and seizures in addition to coughing and fever.

It is inexplicable how nine years before this pandemic a top film was made that so closely resembles contemporary experience. Current public discourse is filled with talk of physical distancing, the need to avoid crowds and the importance of thorough handwashing and not touching our faces. Characters in Contagion talk in the same manner and use the same buzzwords we’re using now. Other similarities to our present situation include scenes of borders closing, schools and businesses shuttering, panic buying at supermarkets, eerily deserted public spaces, gymnasiums turned into temporary hospitals and leaders doing their best to halt the disease’s spread without inciting panic. Contagion also effectively captures the loneliness that comes of self-isolation, as Mitch’s teenage daughter Jory (Anna Jacoby-Heron) struggles to cope with prolonged home confinement, unable to go to school or see her boyfriend—just as many people are having to do right now.

It is as though the present lockdown has already been detailedly chalked out by the script writer of the film, Scott Z. Burns, and its director, Steven Soderbergh.

Next, in 2017 Anthony Fauci made a very strange prediction, with an even stranger certainty. With complete confidence Fauci announced that during the first term of President Trump a surprise outbreak of an infectious disease would surely happen. Here’s what he said:

There is NO QUESTION there is going to be a challenge for the coming administration in the arena of infectious diseases. There will be a SURPRISE OUTBREAK. There’s NO DOUBT in anyone’s mind about this.”

In 2018 The Institute for Disease Modelling made a video in which they show a flu virus originating in China, from the area of Wuhan, and spreading all over the world, killing millions. They called it ‘A Simulation For A Global Flu Pandemic.’ That is exactly what happened, two years later. How could they know there would be a flu virus coming from China and even show Wuhan as the originating area, that would infect the whole world?

In September 2019 — right before the outbreak — the Global Preparedness Monitoring Board released a report titled ‘A World At Risk’. It stressed the need to be prepared for... a coronavirus outbreak! On the cover of the report is the picture of a coronavirus and people wearing face masks. In the report we read the following interesting paragraph: “The United Nations (including WHO) conducts at least two system-wide training and simulation exercises, including one for covering the deliberate release of a lethal respiratory pathogen.”

Finally, it was Bill Gates who made it clear that only people who have been vaccinated against Covid-19 should be allowed to travel, go to school, attend meetings and work. Digital vaccine ID’s are already being developed and Gates has a patent on the technology that makes it possible to trace an individual’s body anywhere. This technology is called WO2020-060606. In addition, Gates wants to set up a global monitoring network, which will track everyone who came into contact with Covid-19.
The foundation’s $40 million-worth stake in CureVac alone has delivered profits to the tune of tens of millions of dollars. In response to a question about the returns on his foundation’s $10 billion investment in vaccines, Gates says, “Over a twenty-to-one return, so if you just looked at the economic benefits that’s a pretty strong number compared to anything else.

Gates is no doubt merely echoing what the Rockefeller Report said over ten years back and repeated now. Such vaccine controls are already defacto coming in place. But, all such knowledgeables should inform the world people as to “how did the covid-19 virus originate”. If they could predict so much in advance every detail linked to what is now happening, surely, they would be easily able to discover the origins of the virus?

But one thing to note is that all these predictions and accounts began to emanate after the Great Recession began — the worst economic crisis the world has faced after the 1930s Great Depression. The emergence of sub-prime loan losses in 2007 began the crisis and exposed other risky loans and over-inflated asset prices. With loan losses mounting and the fall of Lehman Brothers on September 15, 2008, a major panic broke out on the inter-bank loan market. The global recession that followed resulted in a sharp drop in international trade, rising unemployment and slumping commodity prices. Economist Paul Krugman once commented on this as seemingly the beginning of "a second Great Depression".

It was in this atmosphere of gloom that all such talk of a pandemic, lockdown etc. began taking place! Is this a mere coincidence or is it some raw thinking of a possible new future — The GREAT RESET, say, as World Economic Forum Chief, Klaus Schwab, has recently put it.

This may become clearer, and we may get more insight into the issue if one looks at who have been the losers from the pandemic/lockdown and who the main gainers.

Gainers and Losers from Covid/Lockdown 

In an article in the April 16, 2021issue of the New York Times Karan Deep Singh and Hari Kumar shows that last year’s draconian lockdown, left more than 100 million Indians jobless and even now stations in Mumbai are overflowing with migrants trying to go home. In the earlier lockdown trains too were not available to them.

Now a second wave of Covid-19 has struck India, and the dreams of tens of millions of middle-class people face an even greater peril. Already, about 32 million middle class people in India were driven into poverty by the pandemic last year, according to the Pew Research Center, accounting for a majority of the 54 million who slipped out of the middle class worldwide. The devastation of this second wave may be even worse, with death all around and thousands of bodies floating in the rivers of India. Estimates of covid deaths are already over a million.

While definitions vary, Pew Research defines middle-class and upper-middle-class households as living on about $10 to $50 a day. Roughly 66 million people in India meet that definition, compared with about 99 million just before the pandemic last year, according to Pew Research estimates. This would have dropped further as a result of the second wave and lockdown. And as far as migrant labour goes the sudden lockdown was so drastic that as per the findings of Oxfam, 1,70,000 people lost their jobs every hour in April 2020.

On the other hand, the big gainers in our country and abroad have been the big corporates with Adani in the lead. Business Insights Report, published by UBS and PwC says that during the peak lockdown period last year — April to July — the net worth of Indian billionaires increased by 35% to $423 billion.

Bloomberg Index of Feb 2021 reported that Adani’s net worth has surged by $ 32.7 bn during this covid year and now stands at $66.5 bn; i.e an increase by approximately 100% in just one year during covid/lockdown. To put this in perspective this comes to an earning of roughly Rs.600 crores per day, at a time when crores were starving to death having lost their source of livelihood with the country in lockdown.

Ambani is 13th on the billionaire index while Adani is 14th. Sunday Standard in Oct 2020 reported that Mukesh Ambani who added $ 37 bn to his fortune and stood at the top of the Indian list with $ 88.7 bn. RIL net profit for the covid year was a gigantic Rs.53,739 crores or roughly Rs.150 crore per day.

The Mint of May 20, 2021 reported that the salary of the TCS CEO, the Tata’s IT giant, more than doubled in the last financial year to Rs.20 crore -the covid/lockdown period.

Another main gainer from the covid crisis has been Poonawalla, the prime manufacturer of vaccine in Indian and the world at his Serum Institute of India, whose wealth has gone up 26% from $ 9.1 bn in the previous year to $11.5 bn at end 2020 as per Forbes Magazine Report in March 2021. This must be just the tip of the iceberg. As per a Business Standard report just as the second wave started Adar Poonawalla and entire family fled to the UK and took on rent a property in London costing Rs.50 lakh per week. It is in the most expensive locality of Mayfair and is one of the largest mansions in the area measuring 25,000 sq ft. A few days back the father too fled to the UK leaving no responsible person to look after production. This, at the peak of the second wave when the demand was highest. And all this after getting a Rs.2,200 donation from the Gates Foundation and over Rs.8,000 crore in credit and grants from the Central government.

Overall Big business in India has gained enormously from the covid/lockdown crisis. According to Outlook Dec 21in the July-Sept Quarter (Q), at the peak of the lockdown, the combined profits of 4,076 cos. which are listed on the stock exchange were the highest made by all listed companies in any Quarter ever. According to the CMIE the total PAT (profit after tax) of the firms in the Q was 31% higher than the previous best record which was witnessed in Q4 2013-14. According to the CMIE in the July-Sept Q this year their combined profits were a massive 171% higher than the same Q of 2019. In the Q under scrutiny the GDP contracted by 7.5%, after a contraction of 24% in the previous Q of Apr — Jun.

If one now turns to the international scenario, we see a similar picture.

According to a CBS News article on 25 Jan 2021 in the nine months of lockdown the number of people living in poverty has doubled to more than 500 million. It said that the world’s poorest could take a decade to regain their financial footing. [Meanwhile,] America’s richest people have seen their wealth soar during the pandemic by more than $1 trillion. Oxfam describes the pandemic’s impact as ’the greatest rise in inequality since records began’.

According to the Dec 31st issue of the New York Post during the year the top 10 billionaires added $347 billion to their wealth — i.e. at peak lockdown period. Of these the top 5 — Musk, Bezos, Gates, Zuckerberg and Arnaut — added $ 270 bn. An article in Indian Express. Nov 26, 2020, quoted a report by Accenture saying that due to the Covid impact $ 856.6 billion worth of transactions will move to the digital mode by 2023 in India; and 420 billion global transactions worth $ 7 trillion, that are expected to shift from cash to digital payments by 2023 and increase to $ 48 trillion by 2030. This is what they are promoting as the ‘new normal’ where even kids will be forced to study online. No wonder the main US digital moguls are keen that lockdown continue so that more and more are pushed to digital transactions, digital study, digital meetings, digital games, etc, giving them earnings and profits, they could never dream of in normal times.

Meanwhile, not surprisingly, heads of pharma companies have also made billions. Covid vaccine companies have created at least nine new billionaires after shares in companies producing the shots soared. Topping the list of new billionaires are Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel and Ugur Sahin, the CEO of BioNTech, which has produced a vaccine with Pfizer. Both CEOs are now worth around $4 billion, according to an analysis by the People’s Vaccine Alliance. Senior executives from China’s CanSino Biologics have also become billionaires. Albert Bourla, the CEO of Pfizer, said during the health summit in May 2021 that the company will provide 2 billion doses of its vaccine to low-and middle-income countries over the next 18 months. Pfizer expects its sales of the vaccine to total about $26 billion by the end of this year, with a profit margin approaching 30%. Pfizer and Moderna could score $32 billion in Covid-19 vaccine sales — in 2021 alone.

So, while the big corporates have been making windfall profits from covid/lockdown the bulk of the middle and working class are facing a bleak future. In fact, the future for most in India and the world has never been so pathetic since the 1930s great depression — and this is not just economically, but also socially, culturally, and psychologically with even the minimum of freedoms curbed beyond recognition.

Conclusion

Never before has the world faced such a frightening scenario. The entire world being under defacto house arrest and panic-stricken as to when they will get hit by an unknow disease. Besides at every nook-and-corner we have the police breathing down one’s neck. And a crisis of such dimensions; that too on a world scale!!! There is fear and panic written on all faces, if at all we can see them through their masks.

Yet till yet we do not know the reasons for the origin of the virus and even the cures suggested are controversial and often contradictory; all that is being reported in India is the mismanagement of the entire situation by governments at both the centre and states and the profiting of the vaccine producers demanding their pound of flesh.

But still today there are so many unknowns, making the situation all the more scary. We still don’t know the effectivity of the vaccines on the mutations. We still don’t know why after even two jabs one has to be restricted like before. One cannot understand some of the lockdown rules which only facilitate crowding at shops due to restricted timings.

One cannot understand why open spaces are banned when that is the only source of fresh air in cities like Mumbai, particularly when Corona primarily hits the lungs. One cannot understand why the government, media and pharma companies are not promoting immunity boosters which should have been the first line of attack against the virus. One cannot understand why even top doctors and even those of the govt’s Covid task force, are promoting Remdesivir (an extremely expensive drug), patented by the US company Gilead Sciences, when the WHO has said it is ineffective (the US CDC has allowed it). Why are these same doctors promoting steroids (indiscriminate use of which leads to drop in immunity as do the other unhygienic conditions in hospitals and lack of fresh air) which is leading to the horrifying black fungus infection, Mucomycosis, which destroys tissues, and thousands in India are losing their eyes, part of their face and jaw and facing even slow lung infections. Why did the 10 lakh ASHA workers have to give a call for a nationwide strike on May 24 2021 because of poor wages and working conditions. Why has the Bombay High Court to repeatedly order govt. hospitals to fill vacancies of doctors and other medical staff when the shortage is so acute.

All such questions, and many more, are baffling as no clear answers are given. In fact, much of the research findings are not being disclosed to the public. In India top scientists have time and again asked for transparency and the information to be made public — unsuccessfully. So, much so that top virologists and scientists like Shahid Jameel, chair of the scientific advisory group of the Forum INSACOG, has resigned from it.

And most important of all we still don’t know how the virus originated though we know from where it came. Besides, both the governments of China and the US, who are primarily culpable are showing little interest to find out. In fact though there is increasing demand from over the world and particularly top scientists and virologist of the US, the US Select Committee on the Corona Virus till recently, was not even looking into how the Corona virus was started.

In fact they rewarded those primarily responsible for promoting the cover up. As Wade says, “And if you thought that Andersen and Daszak might have blotted their reputation for scientific objectivity after their partisan attacks on the lab escape scenario, look at the second and third names on this list of recipients of an $82 million grant announced by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in August 2020”.

It is only now when there is an outcry worldwide and that the natural virus theory looks fake, the Biden administration and the WHO have called for an investigation into the origins of the virus. But the responsibility for investigation has been given to those very bodies that have peen responsible for the cover up till now. If at all we are interested in getting at the truth the investigation should be given to an independent body of scientists and virologists, who are in no way linked to the US/Chinese/WHO structures and, more particularly, independent of the vast funding by the likes of the Gates Foundation. And the investigation needs to be extended to include the entire gamut of biological warfare research, euphemistically called Gain-of-Function Research. In India we are quite familiar with how commissions are set up to ‘investigate’, as a method to bury controversial facts. Hope this is not going to be repeated here; and for that the Commission of Inquiry, must be more concrete, names mentioned, a framework given and a fixed time-frame given in advance. At present it is mere vague statements being made. It does not give a sense of seriousness to the issue.

It is about time for the US and Chinese governments come clean on their joint research and conclude in no uncertain terms whether the SARS 2 virus was zoonotic or lab engineered. If neither the bats nor the intermediary host animals can be traced even after 15 months of extensive research, it would be best to conclude that it was not a natural virus, or, at least, say clearly where their research is heading. Either way, immediately, all GOF research should be stopped and those responsible for the mutated virus, need to be investigated and charged — both for the millions of deaths due to the disease and also due to loss of livelihood, not to mention psychological disorders.

Let not the future be bleak for our new generations, who face an abyss of darkness with no light at the end of the tunnel. Let us counter the pandemic rationally, not in the horrific World Economic Forum style of the GREAT RESET; but one where people are freer, at liberty to live as they like, and where the 2000-odd billionaires (and their cronies) of the world are not allowed to dictate the economic, political, ecological, social, medical, etc agenda. Yes, a ‘new normal’ not couped up and masked up in splendid isolation without a source of income, living in perpetual fear; but a ‘new normal’ bringing new life and new hope to our future.

May 29, 2021

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