A ‘Perfect Storm’ of Bio-War Agents and Climate Change

• A ‘Perfect Storm’ of Bio-War Agents and Climate Change
  by Wayne Madsen, January 29, 2020, https://www.strategic-culture.org/
  There are several military and civilian medical research facilities around the world that either maintain stocks of dangerous pathogenic viruses and bacteria for research, clandestine development of biological warfare weaponry, or both. With early scientific predictions that man-made global climate change would result in the creation of optimum environments for viruses dangerous to both humans and animals, with mutative viruses jumping from species to species, resulting in pandemics, the outbreak of the coronavirus in Wuhan, China has already had dramatic consequences.
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  The outbreak of the deadly microbe novel coronavirus 2019-nCoV, the World Health Organization’s official designation of the Wuhan coronavirus, could not have come at a worse time for Asia. The virus began spreading at the onset of the Buddhist Lunar New Year, a holiday celebrated around Asia and highlighted by a major increase in air, rail, auto, and other transportation related to family visitations and vacations. Major losses in retail, travel, and tourism sectors resulted from the spreading of the coronavirus.
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  Although there are a variety of coronaviruses, the current virus is only the third one known to spread from animals to humans, a process known as zoonosis. In 2003, a coronavirus in civets, badgers, and dogs spread to humans in China, resulting in the rapid worldwide spreading of the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in over 32 countries and resulted in over 800 deaths. SARS, like the present coronavirus, resulted in a massive impact on transportation and a temporary negative economic impact on China and other Asian countries. One alarming note is that the Wuhan coronavirus has spread faster than was the case with SARS.
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  In 2012, the second known species-jumping coronavirus, known as the Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), was traced to Egyptian tomb bats. However, camels served as the actual bridge for the virus to infect humans, the virus having had remained dormant in the camels for some 20 years. The first reported MERS case was in Saudi Arabia and it rapidly spread around the Middle East and beyond.
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  The current novel coronavirus has been linked to the sale of exotic animal meat in a Wuhan food market that specializes in seafood but apparently also sells the meat of dogs, deer, minks, snakes, and bats. Other pathogens, like H5N1 influenza and the Ebola virus, germinated in animal hosts prior to their spread to humans. With world air and sea temperatures increasing, our planet is providing novel viruses and other pathogens with a massive Petri dish that permits unimpeded mutation and virulence. The World Health Organization has cited increased rainfall and high humidity as factors contributing to the appearance of new infectious diseases.
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  Humans and other species not only face the danger of drastic climate change permitting viral “bugs” to flourish, but there is the threat that some of the most dangerous pathogens, including coronaviruses that are stored in Biosafety Level 4 (BSL-4) laboratories around the world, could accidentally be released into nurturing environments. With such unintended releases of such deadly biological warfare agents, climatic and social factors permit such deadly bugs as coronaviruses to infect large numbers of humans and animals.
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  The United States signed, along with the United Kingdom and the USSR, the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Bacteriological (Biological) and Toxin Weapons and on their Destruction or “BWC.” Evidence suggests that the CIA merely transferred its bio-war programs to the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) in Fort Detrick, Maryland where bio-warfare research was being conducted under the cover of “non-proliferation” enforcement and research. Other banned research was conducted at Fort Detrick’s British counterpart at the Defense Evaluation and Research Agency (DERA) in Porton Down in Wiltshire, England.
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  The Chinese Academy of Sciences operates China’s only known BSL-4 research laboratory, coincidentally or not, at the Wuhan National Biosafety Laboratory, in the same city where the new coronavirus first appeared.
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