This 2015 article from the Journal Nature (see links at the bottom of this post) could proves that the current virus escaped from a research lab in Whuan. Over there they’ve been doing research on the mechanisms that could enable viruses from animals to cross over to humans. The research is intended to gain knowledge, not for nefarious purposes. But the methods used require turning of something harmless to something potentially dangerous. It was certainly dangerous for the mice used in the study. Yes, there is a disclaimer now at the start of article if you search for it online, but the disclaimer does not change the fact that the methods used in such studies weaponise harmless viruses and that the precursor to the current virus could have escaped. It’s not that fantastical to think that. No human facility or organisation is perfect and the story of the killer bee is another case in point. When we deal with something potentially dangerous we cannot assume that we can always contain it successfully.
I was never particularly interested in where the current virus came from, only in the way the pandemic was handled and the comprehensive damage our governments’ policies and measures are doing to all of us. But the obvious lesson here is that often, we create our own problems in the first place, then apply ‘solutions’ that create bigger problems.
It is a typical pattern that humans are prone to and that is described quite well in an approach to therapy called ‘Brief Therapy’. It is not an approach I ever use, but I have studied it and it does have wise things to say about how we, humans, tend to approach problem-solving and our frequent tendency to apply ‘solutions’ that generate even bigger problems.
But there is also the question of the ethics of this type of research. In an attempt to head off a possible enemy that hasn’t yet, and might never materialise, we end up creating it ourselves. It’s like a bad ‘B’ grade movie…
No wonder the Chinese have been blocking all attempts to figure out if there was a containment breach in a lab there. But the West is just as culpable because while we don’t allow certain types of research on our soils, we certainly help finance and support research in countries where the rules are more lax…
My incredibly educated conclusion? We’re total ijits. A not-very-charitable part of my limbic brain thinks we deserve what we get. But it is not what I really believe. Too many innocent people are harmed and millions of animals suffer horrendous torture and terrible lives and deaths supposedly for our benefit. There are millions of innocent children all over the world who deserve safety and love and the opportunity to develop, not the crappy existence and questionable future we’re condemning them to.
Those of us from more educated and privileged societies need to stand up and clean our political systems and power structures once and for all from all the wrong, unethical, self-serving people that currently populate so many of them and who would like us to believe they’re destruction of the world and the suffering they cause is somehow for our benefit.
