[This was also published here.]
"Write a novel," Friedrich says, and I say, "Aren't there enough lies in the world?" Has our willingness to suspend disbelief, as Coleridge defined poetic faith, not been exhausted by monumental works of fiction like the Warren Report and the 9/11 Commission Report, not to mention the daily news?
I'll set my sights a little lower as far as literary ambition is concerned. Kilroy set the precedent.
Fred, as Friedrich likes to be called to remind people that he studied in the States, doesn't answer my question because he still has faith. He knows about JFK (and MLK and RFK) and 9/11, the fantasies about lone gunmen and the 19 box-cutter-wielding Arabs who defeated the most powerful air force in the world, but he doesn't like to dwell on these topics. He knows about Wuhan, too, that the virus may have been – in my view almost certainly was – made there, with American help. (See here and here.)
He doesn't like to hear about this either. When I bring it up, he just shakes his big head of white hair and beard and says, "Tja," which according to the Duden expresses "thoughtfulness, misgivings, a hesitant attitude, embarrassment or resignation" – in other words, just about anything, or nothing. What it does not indicate is a desire to continue talking about the subject at hand. Since we are usually playing golf at such junctures, it is easy enough to segue into the next shot, which of course requires silence.
When I press him he explains that as a psychotherapist – retired now – he had to deal with mental and emotional "garbage" every day and doesn't want to clutter his mind with it anymore, especially since he's not getting paid for it. This is an argument to which I have no rebuttal. It's much easier to agree on the craziness of the anti-vaxxers, which has become the cover term for protesters against all the preventive measures (masks, distancing, quarantine, lockdowns), since these include a sizeable contingent of nut jobs (QAnoners, Querdenker, Reichsbürger) as well as otherwise reasonable people who say, variously, that the "jabs" are more dangerous than the disease, that the disease doesn't necessarily exist because the virus hasn't been "isolated" yet (whatever that means), and/or that the pandemic is a gigantic hoax concocted by Big Pharma and billionaires like Bill Gates to reduce the world population and manipulate and ultimately enslave those who remain.
I am more open to this "Covid hoax" conspiracy theory than I let on. On a scale of one to ten, I give it a one. The lab-leak theory, on the other hand, which I give a nine, is not a conspiracy theory at all. As the word "leak" implies, if the virus escaped unintentionally from the Wuhan lab it was not a conspiracy, by definition. This in itself debunks the media narrative that sprang up immediately to discredit allegations of a man-made origin as "conspiracy theory."
A conspiracy is a plan by two or more people to do something bad. Plan implies intention, and the ostensible intention of "gain-of-function" research, which is a euphemism for making existing viruses more infective and dangerous for humans, is to prevent pandemics, not to cause them. Likewise, research on bioweapons is supposedly justified by the need to develop antidotes to bioweapons that might be used by an enemy. That is why, for example, the US Defense Department requested funding for projects like this:
Within the next 5 to 10 years, it would probably be possible to make a new new infective microorganism which could differ in certain important aspects from any known disease-causing organisms. Most important of these is that it might be refractory [resistant] to the immunological and therapeutic processes upon which we depend to maintain our relative freedom from infectious disease. [Dr. Donald Malcolm MacArthur, Hearings before the House Subcommittee of the Committee on Appropriations, “Department of Defense Appropriations for 1970.”]
That was in 1969. AIDS appeared ten years later. But that's another story. My point is that if the intention of the "research" is construed as defensive and protective, i.e., as something "good," no matter how reckless and dangerous, it doesn't fit the definition of conspiracy. Even if SARS-CoV-2 emerged in the course of biowarfare research (which is not suggested by most lab-leak proponents), it would not fit the definition of conspiracy.
So all the blather about "conspiracy theories" concerning the origin of the virus is nonsense – of course deliberate nonsense, in order to make the lab leak theory sound nutty.
The "Covid hoax" theory, on the other hand, is a true conspiracy theory. I’m talking about the anti-vaxxers, anti-maskers, anti-lockdowners, and COVID-19 deniers, including “Chris Sky” and the “Freedom Convoy,” Robert Malone, etc. They think they’re fighting for “freedom,” but I have a theory about that which is also a true conspiracy theory: a conspiracy theory about a conspiracy theory.
"What if all these ‘Covid hoax’ and anti-vaxxers" and so-called 'freedom' protesters are being played," I tell Fred. "What if they are being manipulated, the same way 'color revolutions' are manipulated, for example?”
"Why would anybody do that?"
"Distraction. To distract attention away from the really dangerous issue, which is where the virus came from. Just think what would happen if it became hard fact that the virus is a laboratory product. There would be hell to pay, to put it mildly. No government, not the Chinese, not the Americans or any other governments would ever admit being responsible for the pandemic. It's impossible. Whoops, sorry folks, millions of lives and trillions of dollars gone just because of a little lab screw-up. We didn't mean to do it! That's what a lab leak would mean. No government in the world can or will ever own up to that."
"Tja."
"So," I continue, "a relatively small and chaotic protest about masks, lockdowns, and vaccines is far more desirable. This can be dealt with, and is being dealt with. When the pandemic eases, the protests will also fizzle out. Imagine how much bigger the protests would be if they were about the pandemic coming from a laboratory. How much more of a threat that would be – to all governments, not just China and the US, since they are all toeing the line on this. Such innocent-sounding little words, 'lab leak' and 'gain-of-function," but such monstrous implications. Research that made the virus that made the pandemic! That is a thought that has to be controlled, repressed, by all means. And how? One way is just to say they didn't do it, or there is no way to know if they did it. They've already done this. That's the so-called 'intelligence assessment.' We tried and tried, and just couldn't answer the question, but we think it's No. Not a lab leak. Another way is to get people excited about something else. Something related but in fact completely different. Let's talk about vaccines and Bill Gates and The Great Reset. A little fire, easily controlled, to keep away the big fire. Damage control."
Fred seems about to say something but instead addresses the ball and sends it, despite his terrible baseball swing, straight down the fairway.
"Tja." It's me saying it now.
The reader's comment I refer to was on OpEdNews.com, where this piece also appeared. I posted this comment today there, so I might as well post it here too:
The comments here still seem to show that my article is being totally misunderstood. But I don't know how to make it clearer. I am not a "Covid hoax" theorist. My point is that the "Covid hoax" theorists, including the anti-vaxxers and all the people demonstrating against the disease-prevention measures, may be being played, that is, being used by the powers-that-be to distract attention away from the much more important issue of the origin of the virus.
To Blair Gelbond: I remember you because you are the person who put me onto the US Right to Know website (linked in my article), which is an excellent source. But then, as now, you also recommend Dr. Steven Geer, who goes the "Covid Hoax" theorists one better by putting extraterrestrials at the top, even higher than Bill Gates and Klaus Schwab of "The Great Reset"!
Your point in your first post is well taken:
Many of us don't have the stomach for - and don't want to consider - what might be true and simultaneously disturbing.
I certainly agree with that, since it was also part of the main point with regard to Friedrich not wanting to fill up his mind with "garbage," i.e. disturbing thoughts.
But how you or anyone can consider the "Covid Hoax" theories, or Steven Geer's ideas about extraterrestrials, as less "disturbing" than the idea that the coronavirus was a lab leak is in my opinion a big mistake, and counterproductive. I will be frank, and I don't mean to be cruel or insulting, but I suspect this is because such over-the-top "theories," precisely because they are pure fantasy and cannot be supported by real-world evidence, offer mental and emotional solace to precisely those you mention, people who are profoundly disturbed and overburdened with reality. It is a form of escapism.
I am aware that some (or many?) of the anti-vaxxers/anti-restriction-prevention measures protesters do not share the grand "Covid Hoax" conspiracy theory. They would simply rather take their chances with the disease than submit to the restrictions and therefore try to see themselves and present this point of view as a "fight for freedom" (the "Freedom Convoy"). If this was all there was to it, I think the question could be settled scientifically. If the medical and virological "Establishment" consensus (Johns Hopkins, the Mayo Clinic, Robert Koch Institute, etc.) can be successfully (convincingly) challenged, then such focussed protests would have some meaning and might produce beneficial results, such as a more nuanced approach to prevention (if indeed this proves to be advisable).
But the point of my article is that focussed protests against the kind of virological research that most likely created the virus and the pandemic would be much more effective and beneficial because they could lead to the shutting down of this extremely dangerous gain-of-function research, which will otherwise continue unabated (though probably even more secretly) in the same countries that do it now, and farm it out to other countries in Africa, China, Eastern Europe, etc. These labs exist all over the world, and are at least as great a threat to the species as nuclear or environmental holocaust -- as the current pandemic clearly demonstrates. Such focussed protests would be dangerous, but not to those of us who feel overburdened by reality. They would be dangerous to the governments who do not want to admit that they are responsible for the pandemic, and furthermore do not want to stop their biological warfare/defense research.
I could and perhaps should have said in the article that the governments do have a way out. They could do a "partial hangout" and blame the corona pandemic all on individuals like Fauci and Daszak et al. (and their Chinese counterparts), but I suspect they are afraid the fallout from even that would be too much.
Submitted on Friday, Feb 11, 2022 at 4:59:20 AM
A reader has pointed out to me that this line in my article may not be clear to everyone:
""What if all these people are being played," I tell Fred. "What if they are being manipulated, the same way 'color revolutions' are manipulated, for example?"
By "these people" I mean the people who are protesting against the Covid protection/prevention measures, that is, the anti-vaxxers, the anti-maskers, the anti-lockdowners, etc. That includes the Canadian truckers and Robert Malone.
Is it really that unclear? If so, I need to re-write because that's my main point.