Western Standard - July 27, 2023


Wuhan lab leak

Mentioned
Theresa Tam Paul Wells Mendocino Nigel Corey
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Episode Stats


Length

8 minutes

Words per minute

165.53

Word count

1,350

Sentence count

88

Harmful content

Hate speech

3

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In the latest episode of Conspiracy Theories, we take a deep dive into the possibility that China may have released a deadly strain of SARS from an experimental lab in Wuhan, China. We talk about the implications of this, and whether or not the Chinese government is to blame.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 So, everyone who's been paying attention for the last, I don't know, three and a half years, whatever it was since COVID became a thing.
00:00:09.800 It became fairly obvious fairly early that there was at least a very strong chance that COVID came from the experimental COVID lab in Wuhan province in China.
00:00:25.040 Now, there have been conspiracy theories around it.
00:00:27.560 People saying matter of factly, it's proven.
00:00:30.000 Beyond a shadow of a doubt, I'm skeptical of that.
00:00:32.780 I don't think we really know because the Chinese government's been so opaque around this stuff, intentionally opaque, or that it was intentionally released.
00:00:40.700 That is also extremely unlikely.
00:00:43.260 I'm not sure what interest the Chinese would have in releasing that in their own backyard and devastating themselves worse than anyone else got hurt, creating all sorts of unrest. 0.97
00:00:51.080 The Chinese Communist Party now has to more or less tolerate protests because anti-lockdown protests aren't just for Alberta.
00:00:58.780 Even China got them too.
00:01:00.440 And they did not send in the tanks, Tiananmen Square style, to kill them for doing it, which was a bit of a surprise.
00:01:06.900 But it was the idea that COVID came from a Wuhan lab.
00:01:12.960 Ah, we can say this on YouTube now because the government agrees.
00:01:15.820 YouTube, those of you watching on YouTube, this would be censored.
00:01:18.880 What we're saying right now, one week ago, if we said this here, it would be censored by the bureaucrats working for the government at YouTube.
00:01:27.340 Today, we can say it because the Federal Department of Health now admits that it is not a conspiracy theory, that it is the precise origin, while not yet known, is it now recognizes the significant possibility that it came from a, quote, laboratory incident, which is government speak for the Wuhan COVID lab.
00:01:52.340 The health minister at the time during COVID, when this was a thing, a reporter asked her if we can trust the information coming from China.
00:01:59.340 And she says, kind of referring to the area that it came from the lab, she says, you're promoting conspiracy theories and we need to work with China and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, very Chinese. 0.55
00:02:10.340 They didn't want to offend the Chinese.
00:02:13.340 I wonder why the liberals are so hesitant to offend the Chinese Communist Party.
00:02:17.340 No idea why three and a half years ago, they could have been so hesitant to do so.
00:02:22.340 But she called everyone discussing the possibility that the Chinese might not be the Chinese Communist Party might not be totally completely untoward.
00:02:31.340 A conspiracy theory.
00:02:35.340 Well, the Department of Health now says that is one of the leading potential causes of the incident.
00:02:42.340 So start with you, Nigel.
00:02:45.340 Conspiracy theory yesterday.
00:02:47.340 Government policy today.
00:02:50.340 Government hasn't made any fanfare around this, but this was in kind of an internal document obtained by Block Locks reporter.
00:02:58.340 Thoughts?
00:02:59.340 Well, you know, the sad thing is that people have suffered hugely because of a government that would not accept the possibilities.
00:03:15.340 They're told to get vaccinated because the vaccines were safe and effective.
00:03:21.340 Turned out that some were safer than others and none of them were totally effective.
00:03:26.340 We were told that, well, we could possibly be a lab leak in Wuhan.
00:03:31.340 Well, you know, they did what Mr. Mendocino did, didn't they?
00:03:35.340 And because this stuff is admitted now, but it cannot have been unknown three years ago.
00:03:45.340 And in fact, I often go back to the briefing that Dr. Theresa Tam, Canada's chief public health officer,
00:03:53.340 gave to the House of Commons Health Committee two weeks before the pandemic was declared in Canada,
00:04:02.340 the state of public health emergency declared.
00:04:05.340 So much of that information that she gave those people at that time, including the effectiveness or lack of effectiveness of masks,
00:04:14.340 the priority of protecting vulnerable populations, principally older people,
00:04:19.340 that the thing was known to have a greater impact on older people and on younger people.
00:04:25.340 All of this was known, and yet they went and did what they did anyway.
00:04:30.340 Now, a conspiracy theory might be why they did that, but they were wrong and they wouldn't admit it.
00:04:36.340 And those people who are now calling for a public inquiry into the whole COVID incident are on the right track.
00:04:43.340 It's great that we have the, you know, the private enterprise one, but nobody's paying any attention.
00:04:48.340 This time, it's time for a proper Royal Commission on how the government handled that whole issue.
00:04:56.340 Corey, Paul Wells had an interesting column on his sub stack yesterday about the need for a public inquiry here.
00:05:05.340 The thing was the British Medical Journal, as their main editorial, demanding the need for it.
00:05:13.340 Most countries have had some kind of public inquiry around their response to COVID.
00:05:18.340 Now, I imagine these things would be fairly sanitized and would probably not deal very much with any violations of people's liberties and freedoms,
00:05:29.340 but probably deal more on just a technical, more bureaucratic level.
00:05:33.340 But so far, the Liberals have refused to have a public inquiry.
00:05:37.340 They generally just don't like public inquiries, regardless of the evidence.
00:05:40.340 But, you know, they said they've committed, we're going to review it.
00:05:45.340 They've never said, and they just keep on stating every six months or so, they get asked by reporters,
00:05:50.340 are we going to have an inquiry?
00:05:51.340 Well, we're going to review it.
00:05:52.340 Have you even begun to review it?
00:05:54.340 No, they haven't done anything.
00:05:56.340 What hesitancy do you think the Liberals would have in a public inquiry in this?
00:05:59.340 Because they would get to frame the terms of reference and would probably pretty strictly,
00:06:03.340 I would imagine if the Liberals did this, probably pretty strictly exclude any issues around the authoritarian tendencies of the government politically,
00:06:12.340 around freedoms, probably just deal with this from a purely bureaucratic public health perspective.
00:06:18.340 Why do you think they're so hesitant to do this?
00:06:20.340 I think some of these threads tie together and, you know, into another inquiry that they really want to avoid.
00:06:26.340 I mean, there were a lot of conspiracy theories all over the place.
00:06:30.340 There really were some of where this virus came from, when it was emerging, when it was happening.
00:06:35.340 Ironically, the one that was the theory that was most plausible evidence based was the one they wanted to shut down and call a conspiracy theory.
00:06:42.340 I mean, my theory at the time was that it was actually from an undercooked bat sandwich in the lunchroom of the Wuhan lab.
00:06:47.340 I was close, but not quite there.
00:06:50.340 But you're mixing your theories.
00:06:53.340 Well, I was getting in the right direction.
00:06:55.340 But I mean, the reticence in entertaining that particular one, as you kind of mentioned before.
00:07:03.340 Well, that starts getting a little close to insulting the Chinese Communist Party or its competency.
00:07:08.340 And they shy away from that.
00:07:11.340 We know darn well that there's some ties and some influence.
00:07:14.340 But the degree of which and where and how something might come out in an inquiry, as he said,
00:07:19.340 they typically tend to manage to mask everything coming out anyways.
00:07:22.340 But you might get somebody who finally says, you know what, it's time to spill some beans.
00:07:25.340 You know, this is the correspondence I got saying why we don't entertain this potential scenario.
00:07:31.340 And this was why.
00:07:33.340 And they really there's some why going on out there that they do not want us to see.
00:07:37.340 And they're fighting every kind of inquiry with all their might.
00:07:40.340 And I suspect there's a thread here that leads over to the Chinese thread that is just turning into that big mess they want to keep a lid on. 1.00
00:07:47.340 Britain's letter Joy.
00:07:48.340 Britain's letter of peace.
00:07:49.340 Who knows the whole line is.
00:07:50.340 Britain's letter.
00:07:51.340 Britain's letter of peace.
00:07:53.340 They will even leave to that his who has a cry of truth.
00:07:54.340 That required to the peopleейств.
00:07:59.340 Have a long while through the years.
00:08:04.340 I'm starting to do it right now.
00:08:05.340 And the type of thing that comes out during Fanator.
00:08:07.840 It's a very interesting time.