'Dr. Li-Meng Yan is not a quack' Tucker Carlson

"Carlson's comments came after Facebook slapped a warning label on video of his Tuesday interview with Chinese virologist Dr. Li-Meng Yan, who claimed to have evidence showing China "intentionally" released COVID-19 onto the general population.

"Within a few hours of her interview last night," Carlson said, "a video of the segment reached 1.3 million people on Facebook."

"And why wouldn’t it? The coronavirus pandemic has touched the life of every American. And justifiably, people want to know where it came from. But Facebook still doesn’t want you to know that. So Facebook suppressed the video, presumably on behalf of the Chinese government. Facebook executives made it harder for users to watch our segment. Those who found the video had to navigate a warning that the interview 'repeats information about COVID-19 that independent fact-checkers say is false," he added.

CHINESE VIROLOGIST: CHINA'S GOVERNMENT 'INTENTIONALLY' RELEASED COVID-19

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"Independent fact checkers?"  25 year old Humanities and Social Sciences grads working for Facebook?  Independent of what?  Independent of their mommies  and daddies at long last?

TC points out that what is needed in the censorship struggle is a change in the federal law that protects social media platforms from law suits.  This law was created originally for the purpose of nurturing the growth of these institutions but it now protects them from litigation in arbitrary censorship cases like this one.

BUT!

The main point in this virologists' exposition is her opinion and claimed knowledge that the Chinese Peoples' Liberation Army created the COVID-19 virus as a weapon of war in the Wuhan lab and then at CCP direction deliberately launched it at the world and ultimately at the US in a bioweapons attack.

If this is true, then what we can look forward to is a series of such attacks, with each succeeding virus being engineered to be just enough different to be unaffected by vaccines developed to counter previous viral attacks.

The apologists for the Chinese Communist Party will howl at the thought.  pl

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/tucker-facebook-censor-chinese-virologist

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li-Meng_Yan

Comments

[turcopolier]

james

Why on earth would you favor the Chinese Communists? Why" Racists? Are you mad? Have you not noticed that the lady in question is Chinese? You do not know that I was among the foremost opponents of the Iraq WMD Koolaid?

[Travis]

Months ago, several virologists, geneticist and other biologists like Eric Weinstein identified the fingerprints of what Dr. Yang has revealed. They were ignored and censored, called crockpots. This is further evidence that they were right.

[PRC90 (not the Chinese kind of PRC)]

The PRC was very successful in isolating Wuhan and tracking down carriers. Was this capability spun up before or during the initial outbreak and if the latter was it manned and equipped to a significantly unusual degree ?

To what extent did the PRC allow international flights out of affected areas while simultaneously blocking internal movement ?

If this is true, then what we can look back to the weak signals of a rehearsal, or was there sufficient information available to them to just confidently game their plan to a conclusion ?

And if true, then follow ups would have increased latency, stronger long term effects that we are starting to see as the real issue with Covid19, and develop from a Patient Zero far far away from the PRC.

Please don't call Bellingcat.

[Huntly]

Straight from the wikipedia entry:"The paper was uploaded to the Zenodo website, an open-access repository where anyone can post their research.[28] The paper is affiliated with the Rule of Law Society, founded by Steve Bannon and Guo Wengui.[26][28] The Rule of Law Society had not previously published scientific or medical research.[28] Yan had previously appeared on Bannon's "War Room" podcast.[27][28]"

Wondering Messrs. Bannon and Guo have any ulterior motivations?

[Deap]

MAD by nuclear weapons seems tame in retrospect. Or is it a Final Solution? Sorry to even be asking this question.

[Martin Oline]

All:
I watched her interview but it was hard to follow her English. She appeared to say that the virus had been manipulated and changed and that it was readily apparent that it had been bio-engineered. I would very much appreciate if someone with some knowledge about this virus would share their opinion with us.

[corky]

james

Do you not see the problem with demanding proof while at the same time suppressing every attempt to offer such proof?

[blue peacock]

Col. Lang,

These are serious allegations. The US government and its bio-weapons apparatus should investigate it seriously. Lee-meng Yan says that a bat virus was modified. She's rather specific it would seem.

All the politically correct, the bought & paid for and the reflexively anti-American Chinese Communist Party apologists are providing all sorts of excuses. The world needs to know the true origins of this virus and every possibility should be thoroughly investigated including the possibility of bio-warfare.

I wouldn't trust any of the "experts" who claimed earlier this year that millions would be killed by the Wuhan virus unless we immediately destroyed the global economy. Thank goodness some countries like Sweden didn't fall for the manufactured hysteria so we can have some basis for comparison.

[turcopolier]

james

Not true. You are a communist sympathizer.

[turcopolier]

blue peacock

There will be no investigation when Harris wins the election "with Biden as president." IMO, they are paid agents of China.

[Bernard]

How did the Chinese manage to spread the virus around the whole world almost a year before intentionally activating it on their own people in Wuhan?

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-spain-science-idUSKBN23X2HQ

[blue peacock]

Col. Lang

Would Trump and the Republicans investigate it? They should have already been doing it. They've still got another 4 months.

Reminds me of the suppression of the involvement of the Saudis in 9/11.

[Eric Newhill]

James,
I thought you told us recently that you don't even believe in objective reality. Why so concerned about it all of the sudden?

[Bushwood]

I don't see the WMD angle, but at the same time without producing direct evidence it's hard to take her at her word. A babies thrown out of incubators (1st Iraq war) type PR stunt seems just as plausible as her story. Even Tucker admits there is no way of knowing whether her statements are in fact true. She does have pedigree, but at the same time her first interview was with a fervent anti-china news organization owned by Guo Wengui (per wiki link) so curious if there are other motives.
And yes, Facebook is garbage and should be broken up. Came across this yesterday which goes to show recent grads are being tasked with monitoring:
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/craigsilverman/facebook-ignore-political-manipulation-whistleblower-memo

[Dan]

I obviously can't evaluate any of her claims, but I would just be a bit wary of what she's saying....this woman used to appear on Bannon's War Room show, and she's clearly part of a network of dissidents who regularly and as a matter of course criticize the Chinese govt.

I have no factual reason to doubt her, nor believe the Chinese govt. which I assume knew more than it let on. But I'm not sure she is the most trusted source for this sort of charge.

[Deap]

Hmmmm....from Hong Kong .....trust, but verify. One vivid quote coming through the heavy accent and accentuation - the virus has the head of an ox and the hands of a monkey - which means it had to be biologically engineered and could never come from Nature; only a Lab.

Pretty much like UC Davis putting cells from a salmon into strawberry plants to keep them from freezing out in the growing fields. Frankenstein and Dr Frankenfuters do walk amongst us.

Nano-technology is just one of the newer transport agent for this brave new world. It can make naturally repellent molecules adhere to each other and create new functionality.

Having seen Falong Gong adherants in operation in the West Coast - I did have a bit of a flashback listening to her talk. Hall of mirrors, are those who we call "Chinese". Not a monolith by any means.

[ancientarcher]

At last!

Does no one wonder why and how China is back to normal with the rest of world still going through severe infections and lockdowns. Are they so much better or is there another, more straightforward reason?

About why no one is criticizing CCP... well, the answer is that China has bought the media. I am talking not only about the MSM and the new age media like Facebook and Twitter, but also non-conventional outlets. Facebook and Twitter immediately ban anything that criticizes China. Nothing of that sort will be allowed on the major teevee channels or on NYT, WaPo etc. And to top it off, the CCP has bought and paid for blogs like moonofalabama which publishes a stream of pro-china content on his blog. Any criticism of China is deleted.

And of course, there are id**ts like james who scream racism at any hint of finger pointing at China. We are not all virtue signallers. And is your name really james and not something a bit more Chinese?

The Chinese are praying (and probably doing a lot more than that) for a Biden victory. All this will be pushed under the carpet (red, by then) if he wins.

[Bobo]

I listened to this lady on Tucker and found her quite believable in that she had the CCP by the nuts on this Lab created virus. She is not the only one who has determined this independently. Thus when I see smoke I know there is fire.
With Trump and a few others maintaining their "China Virus" statements it will not surprise me that our military and intelligence apparatus's already know this.
Obviously 2020 has become the Year of the Rat.

[Fredw]

I will go back to an approach that served me well with regard to the Iraq WMD story. I have no way of evaluating Yan's claims, but there are a fair number of people and organizations that do have the resources to evaluate. I rejected WMD claims in 2003 simply because none of the other players with relevant competence acted in ways that indicated serious concern. What is Yan Li-meng's evidence that others do not have? This issue of origin has to have been pursued by at least a couple dozen organizations with the necessary competence. None of those has made any such claims. That doesn't mean that the claims are false. But if the claims are true, then there must be very strong motives for keeping silent. So what would be the common interest between, say, the intelligence agencies of Germany and those of India?

Without such evidence this turns into a she-said-he-said story. Now that does not mean that it is wrong. Suppression and intimidation would not be out of character for the Chinese government. But again the world is loaded with very paranoid people who are capable of evaluating that. And who are pretty much immune to Chinese intimidation. They don't have to face off against the Chinese state. There are plenty of more roundabout ways to get the word out if you want to do so and have government-level resources to put into the effort.

The obvious alternative to publication of the logic for detecting human agency is to engage in simple human retaliation. Are the Chinese the only ones capable of such producing such a catastrophe? Pretty unlikely. Would such a counterstroke catch the Chinese by surprise? Again unlikely if they are aware of having stepped over the line. The measures they are taking against virus outbreaks are more extreme than what western countries have imposed, but not (yet) indicating panic. If somebody let some 1918 swine flu loose in Shanghai, would their measures be able to counter it? (Five times as contagious as what we seeing in covid-19.)

[turcopolier]

Bernard

There are these machines called commercial airliners on which infected people were allowed to travel to the wide world. Travel out of Wuhan was closely controlled. We have no idea how many Chinese have died of this.

[Deap]

I am reminded of a local CFR dinner meeting in the very early days of the new "capitalist" China when two speakers we could barely understand came to cheer lead for investments in China, through their giggling, nods and smiles we kept hearing them repeat ...10% ...10%...10% ......earnings. As if they were programmed to makes sure at least that part of their message was understood.

Of course after China started roaring and decrepit Shanghai outstripped Hong Kong in this "new" China, I had moments of regret that I did not lock in 10% on anything Chinese but that is another story.

Now I am glad I did not, since I am lousy about market timing and knowing when to get out. I just have to forgive myself for not knowing when to get in either. The tortoise did win the race with the hare.

In other words, one voice from China is one voice from a county of over one billion. They have 5000 years under their belt; we have 250. They are masters at going long; we remain instant gratification junkies. So she fails test one - she is telling us what we want to hear.

[Deap]

Red State raises additional skepticism about this "scientist's interview", as well as the oddities of the very original days of reporting about the Chinese t "flu" coming out of China. Remembering also one of the very first ways we even started hearing about this "new Chinese virus" in the US were reports about the Great Toilet Paper panic, even though people here did not know why they were supposed to be hoarding it.
https://www.redstate.com/michael_thau/2020/09/17/920958/

Best I could trace was to an earlier Australian toilet paper panic they claimed was hawked by Yahoo News in Australia, and then spread via social media to the US. And our Great Toilet Paper Hoax began in earnest here too. China was allegedly the source for all Australian TP, so it was claimed with so many people sick in China with this "flu" there would be no more toilet paper Down Under for their down unders.

But the US did not rely on China for TP, so the TP panic was not warrented to be set in motion here. But it did capture attention and did trigger panic before we even knew what to be afraid of. Greasing the skids in some manipulative way could be one jaundiced conclusion.

Hope someone with better skills can really trace the origins of the Great Toilet Paper Hoax, because it did wipe us out in the US. No sheet. Was that the covid panic transmission route; and not really on a flight from Wuhan to Seattle?

Who funded the movie Contagion?

[Personanongrata]

'Dr. Li-Meng Yan is not a quack' Tucker Carlson

No - but she may be another in a long line of useful idiots.

"Independent fact checkers?" 25 year old Humanities and Social Sciences grads working for Facebook? Independent of what? Independent of their mommies and daddies at long last?

Countervailing research goes light-years beyond "Independent fact checkers?".

Italicized/bold text was excerpted from nature.com a report titled:

The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2

SARS-CoV-2 is the seventh coronavirus known to infect humans; SARS-CoV, MERS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2 can cause severe disease, whereas HKU1, NL63, OC43 and 229E are associated with mild symptoms6. Here we review what can be deduced about the origin of SARS-CoV-2 from comparative analysis of genomic data. We offer a perspective on the notable features of the SARS-CoV-2 genome and discuss scenarios by which they could have arisen. Our analyses clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus.

The genomic features described here may explain in part the infectiousness and transmissibility of SARS-CoV-2 in humans. Although the evidence shows that SARS-CoV-2 is not a purposefully manipulated virus, it is currently impossible to prove or disprove the other theories of its origin described here. However, since we observed all notable SARS-CoV-2 features, including the optimized RBD and polybasic cleavage site, in related coronaviruses in nature, we do not believe that any type of laboratory-based scenario is plausible.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9

Italicized/bold text was excerpted from The American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene a report titled:

The Origin of COVID-19 and Why It Matters

In 2007, scientists studying coronaviruses warned: “The presence of a large reservoir of SARS-CoV–like viruses in horseshoe bats… is a time bomb. The possibility of the re-emergence of SARS and other novel viruses… should not be ignored.”1

Studying animal viruses that have previously spilled over into humans provides clues about host-switching determinants. A well-understood example is influenza virus emergence into humans and other mammals.2 Human pandemic and seasonal influenza viruses arise from enzootic viruses of wild waterfowl and shore birds. From within this natural reservoir, the 1918 pandemic “founder” virus somehow host-switched into humans. We know this from genetic studies comparing avian viruses, the 1918 virus, and its descendants, which have caused three subsequent pandemics, as well as annual seasonal influenza in each of the 102 years since 1918. Similarly, other avian influenza viruses have host-switched into horses, dogs, pigs, seals, and other vertebrates, with as yet unknown pandemic potential.2,10,11 Although some molecular host-switching events remain unobserved, phylogenetic analyses of influenza viruses allow us to readily characterize evolution and host-switching as it occurs in nature.2

It should be clarified that theories about a hypothetical man-made origin of SARS-CoV-2 have been thoroughly discredited by multiple coronavirus experts.21,28,29 SARS-CoV-2 contains neither the genetic fingerprints of any of the reverse genetics systems that have been used to engineer coronaviruses nor does it contain genetic sequences that would have been “forward engineered” from preexisting viruses, including the genetically closest sarbecoviruses. That is, SARS-CoV-2 is unlike any previously identified coronavirus from which it could have been engineered. Moreover, the SARS-CoV-2 receptor-binding domain, which has affinity for cells of various mammals, binds to human ACE2 receptors via a novel mechanism.

Engineering such a virus would have required 1) published or otherwise available scientific knowledge that did not exist until after COVID-19 recognition; 2) a failure to follow obvious engineering pathways, resulting in an imperfectly constructed virus; and 3) an ability to genetically engineer a new virus without leaving fingerprints of the engineering. Furthermore, the 12 amino acid furin-cleavage site insertion between the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein’s S1 and S2 domains, which some have alleged to be a sign of genetic engineering, is found in other bat and human coronaviruses in nature, probably arising via naturally occurring recombination.24

It is also highly unlikely that SARS-CoV-2 was released from a laboratory by accident because no laboratory had the virus nor did its genetic sequence exist in any sequence database before its initial GenBank deposition (early January 2020). China’s laboratory safety practices, policies, training, and engineering are equivalent to those of the United States and other developed countries,32 making viral “escape” extremely unlikely, and of course impossible without a viral isolate present. SARS-CoV-2 shares genetic properties with many other sarbecoviruses, lies fully within their genetic cluster, and is thus a virus that emerged naturally.

http://www.ajtmh.org/content/journals/10.4269/ajtmh.20-0849

Italicized/bold text was excerpted from nature.com a report titled:

Evolutionary origins of the SARS-CoV-2 sarbecovirus lineage responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic

There are outstanding evolutionary questions on the recent emergence of human coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 including the role of reservoir species, the role of recombination and its time of divergence from animal viruses. We find that the sarbecoviruses—the viral subgenus containing SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2—undergo frequent recombination and exhibit spatially structured genetic diversity on a regional scale in China. SARS-CoV-2 itself is not a recombinant of any sarbecoviruses detected to date, and its receptor-binding motif, important for specificity to human ACE2 receptors, appears to be an ancestral trait shared with bat viruses and not one acquired recently via recombination. To employ phylogenetic dating methods, recombinant regions of a 68-genome sarbecovirus alignment were removed with three independent methods. Bayesian evolutionary rate and divergence date estimates were shown to be consistent for these three approaches and for two different prior specifications of evolutionary rates based on HCoV-OC43 and MERS-CoV. Divergence dates between SARS-CoV-2 and the bat sarbecovirus reservoir were estimated as 1948 (95% highest posterior density (HPD): 1879–1999), 1969 (95% HPD: 1930–2000) and 1982 (95% HPD: 1948–2009), indicating that the lineage giving rise to SARS-CoV-2 has been circulating unnoticed in bats for decades.

With horseshoe bats currently the most plausible origin of SARS-CoV-2, it is important to consider that sarbecoviruses circulate in a variety of horseshoe bat species with widely overlapping species ranges57. Nevertheless, the viral population is largely spatially structured according to provinces in the south and southeast on one lineage, and provinces in the centre, east and northeast on another (Fig. 3). This boundary appears to be rarely crossed. Two exceptions can be seen in the relatively close relationship of Hong Kong viruses to those from Zhejiang Province (with two of the latter, CoVZC45 and CoVZXC21, identified as recombinants) and a recombinant virus from Sichuan for which part of the genome (region B of SC2018 in Fig. 3) clusters with viruses from provinces in the centre, east and northeast of China. SARS-CoV-2 and RaTG13 are also exceptions because they were sampled from Hubei and Yunnan, respectively.

It is clear from our analysis that viruses closely related to SARS-CoV-2 have been circulating in horseshoe bats for many decades. The unsampled diversity descended from the SARS-CoV-2/RaTG13 common ancestor forms a clade of bat sarbecoviruses with generalist properties—with respect to their ability to infect a range of mammalian cells—that facilitated its jump to humans and may do so again. Although the human ACE2-compatible RBD was very likely to have been present in a bat sarbecovirus lineage that ultimately led to SARS-CoV-2, this RBD sequence has hitherto been found in only a few pangolin viruses. Furthermore, the other key feature thought to be instrumental in the ability of SARS-CoV-2 to infect humans—a polybasic cleavage site insertion in the S protein—has not yet been seen in another close bat relative of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41564-020-0771-4

As if on cue Li-Meng Yan appears like manna from heaven aiding/abetting in foisting forth the current dominant Western government/media narrative that China is bad.

How convenient.

[turcopolier]

personanongrata

How long did your group have to work on finding these quotes? Your side will probably win because people like you are too full of themselves to see the truth. Enjoy!

[Diana Croissant]

I felt this woman was completely credible. She was from Taiwan, I believe. Her account mirrored the early accounts that were found on the Internet regarding the lab in Wuhan. She discounted the wet market theory that had originally been put out by the media--and which was also soon discredited by the media. She talked about the lab in Wuhan, which had been mentioned early in the news about this virus. And she mentioned bats, another piece of information mentioned early.

To overcome one's need to seem objective and circumspect, a person could first study the long, long, long history of biological warfare in various periods of human history. Why should this time period be different? I like that Trump calls it the "China virus."

Then a person could actually easily review the timeline of the virus's damage to our country. Trump has lined it out on many occasions. And let's not forget the Chinese connection to the WHO through, perhaps, its influence in Ethiopia.

China's government had lost a less skeptical leadership in the U.S. when we voted in Trump instead of Hilary and her Obama/Biden and other deep-state friends.

Trump had already begun to change the trade dynamics with China. There was no longer a "one-world government" dreamer in the White House. This was a U.S. First President, breaking a long-time trend toward a George Soros style one-world government, in which China would be treated as not the thieves of technology and the thought police in regard to Hollywood film plots.

I believe this woman. I believe the stories about what the Chinese government did to its own citizens who were infected. I believe also because of my own ancestors' experiences dealing with communists and of their "illegal" escape from Russia when the Bolsheviks were running amuck.

I've had the pleasure of watching a young girl grow up who was given away by her parents during the one-child rule in China. If the first baby was a girl, they gave it away so they could try for a boy as their "one child."

I enjoy the idea that this young girl I know is now at only 17 through her first year on college. She is studying microbiology. Who know if she might be able to help defeat this or the next attempt at biological warfare against our country.