{"id":257192,"date":"2021-07-30T00:13:19","date_gmt":"2021-07-30T00:13:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dissidentvoice.org\/?p=119317"},"modified":"2021-07-30T00:13:19","modified_gmt":"2021-07-30T00:13:19","slug":"whos-afraid-of-fort-detrick-probe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2021\/07\/30\/whos-afraid-of-fort-detrick-probe\/","title":{"rendered":"Who\u2019s Afraid of Fort Detrick Probe?"},"content":{"rendered":"
An international online petition calling for an investigation into a US military laboratory and the possible origin of Covid-19 was hacked at the weekend. The hackers were reportedly based in the US.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Fort Detrick in Maryland is the center of American biowarfare research. It is just one of the hundreds of such infectious disease laboratories located across the United States. During the Cold War, Fort Detrick was the main site for experimenting with lethal pathogens, including viruses causing deadly influenza.<\/p>\n
In 2001, when a disgruntled researcher is believed to have killed five people by mailing deadly\u00a0anthrax<\/a>\u00a0spores it was Fort Detrick that was the origin of the lethal material.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n However, the network of secretive US biowarfare laboratories is also\u00a0infamous<\/a>\u00a0for safety violations and accidents. In August 2019, Fort Detrick was\u00a0shut down\u00a0<\/a>abruptly for several months when its wastewater decontamination process failed.It is not unreasonable to call for an investigation into the practices and records at the Maryland center to ascertain if it had any connection to the Covid-19 pandemic which has so far killed over four million people worldwide and more than 600,000 in the United States alone.<\/p>\n Of course, American politicians and media dismiss the appeal as \u201cdisinformation\u201d put out by Russia and China. Americans have accused China of being the origin of the pandemic after the first cases of Covid-19 were detected in the city of Wuhan at the end of 2019. More sinisterly, the Wuhan virology institute has been fingered as the source of the virus even though an international survey by the World Health Organization\u00a0concluded<\/a>\u00a0such a release was \u201cextremely unlikely\u201d.<\/p>\n Scientific consensus contends that the virus evolved naturally and was most likely transmitted to humans from animals.<\/p>\n US President Joe Biden has given credibility to the conspiracy theory unleashed by his predecessor Donald Trump that the Wuhan laboratory was the origin of the Covid-19 virus. Biden has\u00a0tasked<\/a>\u00a0his intelligence agencies to look into the claims. They are due to report back on their findings next month. Washington berates China for not being transparent about its laboratory and is demanding that Beijing open up its facility for inspection. The Americans claim China was not fully open with WHO investigators who cleared the lab as not being the origin of the virus.<\/p>\n But two can play that game. If the Americans accuse China and demand an investigation into secret laboratories then why can\u2019t China level the same at the US?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n It is still not known where the Covid-19 pandemic originated. It may take years to determine that. But what is certainly hindering an answer is the politicization of the disease. Washington is using it to smear China while hypocritically suppressing any questions about its own conduct.<\/p>\n