Few people give “fact checkers” the credit they deserve when it comes to undermining perceptions. Once an article comes under their scrutiny, they change the algorithms in Google and slow down the circulation on FaceBook and Instagram, so fewer and fewer people see it.
By way of example, one of my friends on Facebook posted an article entitled, “Bill Gates thinks a coming disease could kill 30 million people within 6 months — and says we should prepare for it as we do for war.” (Article provided below, as the links are disappearing.)
Africa Check, a social media “fact checker,” took exception to the title and labeled the story “potentially false.” (See Below) Apparently, it is now within a “fact checker’s” providence to intuit what someone is thinking and fact check their thoughts. They flagged the article false because Gates didn’t necessarily “think” what he was presenting would actually happen.
“Fact checkers” don’t usually downgrade material attributed to their chief benefactor unless they are told to do so. Bill Gates is Africa Check‘s greatest contributor among their corporate sponsors. So did Bill Gates ask Africa Check to distance him from what he said in 2018?
If you ask Africa Check, they’re likely to tell you that the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) provides an independent assessment of their work, so funders like Bill Gates have no influence over their conclusions. The problem with this scenario is the IFCN is hosted by the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, who ALSO receives funding from (you guessed it) the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
For the sake of argument, let’s assume Bill Gates is behind the distancing. Why would he no longer want to be associated with the idea of a widespread pandemic and the need for a vaccine a full 2 years before it happened?
Perhaps because one could conclude that Gates not only believed the event was possible, he knew it would occur.
Gates said: A pandemic like the 1918 flu was imminent and would take us by surprise. Because it is easier for individual people or small groups to create weaponized diseases, he postulated a small non-state actor could build a deadly form of it in a lab and that it could kill 30 (later upped to 33) million people in 6 months. He shared an animated simulation called the Shattuck Flu Map, which shows what would happen if a highly contagious and lethal airborne pathogen [a flu] were to occur today. He also said antiviral drugs [hydroxychloroquine is an antiviral] could improve survival rates and antibiotics [Zithromax Z–Pak is an example] could be used to treat secondary infections like pneumonia and finally, quarantine would be the first step toward fighting any new disease. In conclusion, he announced the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation would offer $12 million in grants to encourage the development of a universal flu vaccine to thwart such a virus.
If this doesn’t sound like he knew exactly what was going to happen with COVID, a virus that until recently was restricted to a non-human species, I don’t know what would. (If you want to Google the article you better do it soon, as it keeps disappearing. In case it completely goes away, I copied and pasted it below.)
Gates also emphasized that governments were not taking the threat seriously enough. You can’t be talking about a pandemic that is going to kill 30+ million people without pinning it on someone or something. The reality is no response to the virus would have stopped it from killing people after the fact.
Gates knew.
The folks at the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) also knew and this is where is gets really interesting: they not only knew, they were funding it.
Phase II, “gain-of-function” research, was well underway to investigate how to get COVID to jump to a new species, in this case to a human being. And unless you believe in coincidences, evolution would not be doing the exact same thing being tested somewhere in a lab. The virus’ ability to enter human cells through ACE2 receptors was no freak of nature. Though the virus may have been released due to an accident, it’s ability to result in a global pandemic was by design. I suspect the “scheduled” release date, if there was one, was a lot closer to the availability of vaccine, which, of course, would have saved the day and be used to leverage funding for other nefarious projects.
So why would anyone fund something that would likely result in a pandemic and how come a lot more of us didn’t know about it? We didn’t know about it because it was underreported and if by chance someone tripped onto it, the media outlets and our trusty little fact checkers would have quickly shut it down. As to why anyone would fund something like this, it’s hard to say. The higher ups aren’t denying it, though. According to Pompeo, the WIV was funded “to protect American people from labs that aren’t up to standard.” Apparently, it’s normal for countries to solicit and receive outside help with their little science projects.
However, it’s hard to understand why the NIH would fund a program to weaponize something in a substandard lab in a foreign country known to be hostile toward the United States. It’s also hard to understand why 54 of their scientists have either resigned or been fired as a result of an ongoing investigation into the failure of their grantees to disclose their financial ties to foreign governments. For 93% of the 189 scientists whom NIH has investigated to date, China was the source of their undisclosed support.”
Finally, it’s hard to understand how an entrepreneur like Gates could have advance knowledge of a pandemic and capitalize on it through the creation of a vaccine. No wonder he would want to distance himself from his earlier predictions. He had something to gain from the eventual outbreak.
I would highly encourage you to read this excellent article by Justin Fendos, a professor at Dongseo University in South Korea. But you’d better read it now before some “fact checker” decides he really doesn’t “think” what he wrote and pulls the story. https://thediplomat.com/2020/05/why-would-the-us-have-funded-the-controversial-wuhan-lab/
Just for giggles, go ahead and read the following. It’s all just conspiracy crap, right?
http://www.gilmermirror.com/view/full_story/27725107/article-U-S–government-gave-%243-7million-grant-to-Wuhan-lab-at-center-of-coronavirus-leak-scrutiny
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Africa Check (“Fact Checker”)
An alarming April 2018 Business Insider South Africa article claims US billionaire Bill Gates “thinks a coming disease could kill 30 million people within 6 months”.
It’s been shared over 21,000 times on Facebook – and flagged as potentially false. (Disclosure: The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is one of Africa Check’s funders, providing 18% of our income in 2018.)
But Gates doesn’t necessarily “think” this. Instead, he was discussing a computer simulation that projected a pandemic like the 1918 flu outbreak could today kill about 33 million people in six months.
Gates was presenting at the Epidemics Going Viral: Innovation vs Nature seminar hosted by the Massachusetts Medical Society and New England Journal of Medicine on 27 April 2018.
He warned that although the world had made progress in fighting child mortality and infectious diseases, “there is one area where the world isn’t making much progress: pandemic preparedness”.
“The world needs to prepare for pandemics in the same serious way it prepares for war,” he said.
Simulation projects 30 million deaths in flu pandemic
The simulation was by the Institute for Disease Modeling.
It “shows what would happen if a highly contagious and lethal airborne pathogen, like the 1918 influenza, were to appear today”, Gates said. “Nearly 33 million people world-wide would die in just 6 months.”
He directed the audience to maps titled “Simulation of a modern-day global influenza pandemic”. It projects there would be 28,600 deaths in the first month, 10,120,300 deaths after three months and, after six months, 32,918,500 deaths worldwide.
An animation of the simulation can be viewed on the New England Journal of Medicine website and on YouTube. – Africa Check
https://africacheck.org/…/bill-gates-discussed-computer-s…/…
Of course he knew. Everyone with a few brain cells to scrape together knew that a pandemic was inevitable. They happened when the fastest mean of transmission was limited to how fast a horse could travel and now we have airplanes. The thing that strikes me is how fortunate the world was that the breakout virus was something as mild as this corona virus. We have not had to deal with pneumonic plague which could easily spread fast enough to overwhelm our ability to treat victims. Bubonic plague we can deal with. Corona virus we can deal with. There are known viruses that we know we could not deal with if they break out. Scientists have been sounding the alarm bells for decades and what did our governments prepare for? The flu. They prepared for the cheapest and most likely pandemic but kicked the can down the road as far as preparing for anything else was concerned. Yes, Bill Gates knew. Everyone who cared to pay attention knew that a pandemic was an inevitability. All you really needed to know that was to pick up a history book and realize that the black death was airborne and killed so fast that we likely could not stop it today either.
Gates is correct: We should prepare.
What will The Church do when this happens again?
re: synthetic smallpox and polio, article written in 2019
https://www.wired.com/story/synthetic-biology-vaccines-viruses-horsepox/
“So two years ago, in a Hail Mary attempt to defend against potential bioengineered viruses, Evans and his research associate did something unthinkable: They revived an extinct cousin of smallpox called horsepox, using mail-order DNA.”
“The following year, however, an experiment by scientists at the State University of New York at Stony Brook suggested that simply destroying the samples might not be enough. On July 11, 2002, the researchers revealed that they had synthesized the polio virus, which had been wiped out in the US in 1979. It was the first time a virus had been created from scratch with synthetic DNA. The work was funded by the Pentagon in part to establish whether terrorists could pull off such a feat.”
“In 20 years, Boyle predicts, it will be possible to synthesize smallpox from home. He likens this moment to the early days of computing…”
Gates funded the creation of the virus so he could profit from the solution, i.e. the vaccine. He is currently doing human clinical trials in Africa. Those poor people have no idea they’ve become human guinea pigs. https://www.cfr.org/blog/trials-covid-19-vaccine-candidate-begin-south-africa
Blame the harbinger and shoot the messenger seems to be a common theme.
Y’all aren’t getting it: it’s not the fact that pandemics happen every now and then or that we shouldn’t make preparations for them, it’s that this particular virus was bio-engineered.
That’s the point. Which leads us to this conclusion: this is nothing less than a war crime.
The claims of “bio-engineered” which I have seen have fallen apart under scrutiny. For example, I see a reference in these comments to a vaccine paper used in claims that elements of SARS-CoV-2 didn’t exist in nature when in fact the relevant elements are not so unique and are found in other viruses out in the wild.
There is going to be a certain crowd for which “China made the virus” is going to be the new “Saddam Hussein has WMDs”.
I can’t remember who it was, whether Fauci or Birx at one of the early press conferences, or someone else, but someone with authority said that covid-19 was essentially as virulent as this kind of virus can get. (They were happy about this, because it meant that any mutation was almost certain to weaken it.)
Doesn’t it seem unlikely that something could become that virulent in nature? It is almost certain it escaped from the lab in Wuhan—not saying it was intentionally released; that would mean the difference between negligent culpability and an act of war—but it strains credibility that this was a random natural occurrence.
There are viruses more lethal than SARS-CoV-2 and viruses more transmissible. At some point in the 21st century we can probably expect a pandemic from a virus that matches both those categories. Like SARS-CoV-2 it will be natural, and virologists will not be surprised, and it will have been anticipated.
Distinction:
The Wuhan lab had samples of SARS-CoV-2 taken from nature and they accidentally got out: unlikely, but possible, but also very difficult to prove
The Wuhan lab, or some other lab bio-engineered SARS-CoV-2: utter nonsense crackpottery. The claims do not hold up to scrutiny. But you can’t stop people from believing what they want to believe.
At least we managed to wipe out smallpox before the collective memory started fading of the Before Vaccines times and the whackadoos started gathering mass.
More evidence that the plandemic was synthesized in a Fauci-NIAID-funded Wuhan lab: COVID-19 virus has properties that have never been found in nature before | 08 June 2020 | Norwegian and British vaccine scientists have published unequivocal evidence that SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic, is man-made. The authors state two conclusions: (1) the mutations that would normally be seen in the course of animal to human transmission have not occurred in SARS-CoV-2, indicating that it was fully “pre-adapted” for human infection and (2) SARS-CoV-2 has insertions in its protein sequence that have never been detected in nature and contribute to its infectivity and pathogenicity. That is, SARS-CoV-2 has a receptor binding domain specifically designed for the human angiotensin converting enzyme-2 receptor (ACE2) found in lungs, kidneys, intestines and blood vessels. In addition, SARS-CoV-2 has a furin polybasic cleavage site not found in any closely-related bat coronaviruses as well as other artificially inserted charged amino acids that enhance the virus’s ability to bind to and enter human cells by forming “salt bridges” between the virus and the cell surface. Those modifications are key to understanding the unique transmissibility and potency of SARS-CoV-2.
Gail,
Have you actually read the manuscript on the Cambridge website that is linked on the Wion website? It’s meaning and purpose is completely different to what the authors of the article on Wion make it out to be. I can only conclude that the Indian journalist responsible is some kind of propagandist, or an idiot. It would be good if you removed the link above lest other readers be misled.
For what it’s worth – something that’s “unlike anything found in nature before”, is not really anything unusual. I sense a bit of a double standard here. It seems like 90% of the time scientists and other experts for the authors of this blog are suspect hacks, but then when it comes to proving something that fits your worldview they suddenly become infallible, or rather the accumulated scientific record does. In matter of fact, every hour scientists discover something that has never been seen in nature before.
I posted something that further substantiates what I previously posted on the blog. (BTW, what does being Indian have to do with the credibility of a journalist?)
Your conclusions are based on what? What expertise do you have in healthcare? When you make such definitive statements as if you “are in the know,” you’ve got to be able to back it up. Nothing you’ve written previously suggests you have a background in healthcare.
To think “something that’s “unlike anything found in nature before”, is not really anything unusual” is nonsensical. Of course scientists discover new things. Like in this instance when they created an new way to open a human cell to the virus.
Yes Gail Yes! Very important to hear the scientific and medical credentials and scope of reading that the naysayers have.
Since January I have been reading scientific (not NYT) reports about the backstory which substantiate your scenario. Sadly some folks apparently naively believe/hope/wish that no country would bioengineer a virus ~ whether to use as a biochemical weapon or to manufacture its own vaccine to what they could anticipate was in the works from reading scientific papers and reports for the past few years!
What view of human nature do such have? Of course if they are deprived of info due to their trusted reading sources, that’s a shame but correctable. Again all seems tangled in political rather than scientific viewpoint or more accurately the secular/atheistic vs. spiritual understanding of unredeemed human nature.
To these mocking naysayers I say: I have known folks who worked on chemical weapons for the US govt and y’all may recall Hiroshima. So if “we” would do that, why would one believe that a totalitarian atheistic regime would not do the same since they have zero spiritual imperatives to love thy neighbor or even their own people? And why so quick to believe that all countries would not work on a cure for a virus which might be invented or which they knew was being invented from the scientific papers from the past years?
Just hoping to hear the underlying world view of those so dismissive of the possibility that it was created for some purpose and dismissive of those who have read more than they scientifically. And those who value and quote the NYT, would like to hear the same. The NYT’s known agenda to present the “news” selectively and with great bias renders them a secular political historically revisionist organization, or secular political tool, not a “news”paper. Therefore to read it exclusively is revealing.
my question if it was man-made and released, which I really think it was, and considering that the death rate is remarkably low, what was the point of all this? why not create something like the plague, that really would wipe out everybody? Or, is this thing actually a lot worse, but we won’t know until a few months down the road? Is this just a small fire to get everybody out of the building and destroy civil liberties while pumping us full of ‘vaccines?’
Maybe because, in its original form it was far more virulent but that the Lord in His mercy attenuated it? And in so doing exposed the globalists’ plot?
That’s my working hypothesis.
That’s correct, George. I tend to agree.
For some reason, the secular globalists who dream of taking over the world ALWAYS — without fail — end up ignoring the fact that God and Christ is ultimately in charge. It’s blatant pride and hubris, but even in the most terrible of times, for the faithful, we definitively know that if suffering or a disease or whatever envelops much of the world, it is still only because Christ allows it.
It’s exceptionally demonic to believe that one is more powerful than God. But for those of us who try to faithfully pray, read the Holy Scriptures, get immersed with the lives of the Saints, attend liturgy/vespers, stay in communion and connection with our fellow Christians — I think we easily lose sight of how demonic and disassociated from God much of the non-Christian world really is.
For myself, over the past month it has indeed been a significant eye-opener for me, living in America and being in-our-faces confronted with how disconnected from God so many of my fellow Americans live. Or as Fr Thomas Hopko would say, how they are *not* living. Being cut off from God is not living — it is merely existing in the pig sty — and to top it off, so many of them seem to “enjoy” being cut off from God. We must pray for them.
It’s a type of overreach brought on by the lack of humility that disbelief in God engenders.
Like when Napoleon thought he was on top of the world. And then he invaded Russia. Or when Stalin asked “how many divisions has the Pope?”
You know, “this time socialism will really work!”
I believe depopulation is a big part of things for the elites, so I wondered a similar thing: why didn’t they make the virus stronger and wipe more people out. Perhaps what George said is right and they did make it stronger, and then God made it weaker, but then another idea is that they couldn’t risk depopulating in this way, because it’d be too uncontrollable/unpredictable and might even take out some of their own. For me, the purpose of this whole plandemic, then, was to just get things rolling even quicker with regard to getting more powers, blocking freedoms, installing surveillance, testing resources, plugging/monitoring holes etc. I believe that when it comes time for knocking people off, they’ll have enough tricks up their sleeve to not have to worry about using deadly viruses. Some of these might include: breaking down supply chains and starving people (an old favourite of theirs); non-contagious bio terrorist attacks (radical Islam has been quiet for a while); vaccines (something you mentioned and which could be made much easier thanks to the plandemic); weakening peoples’ immune systems etc through over cleanliness or excessive hand and bench top washing, not going outside, vegan diets etc; staged wars and environmental disasters.
Agreed. When you revolt against the Logos, the Pattern, the Way, you become a revolutionary. When you identify with Barabbas, the murderer and revolutionary, unleashing HIM into society while crucifying Christ, and call this sin down upon your children and children’s children, you eat and drink from the synagogue of satan. Christ Himself calls them sons of satan – not as a race, obviously, but ideologically.
“Out of fear of the Jews,” the disciples hid and locked doors and carried the body of Christ down from the cross. Are we not doing the same in our parishes during the crisis?
We wonder what’s going to happen next. It’s all in the Protocols – ask the Russians, ask St Nicholas and the Royal Martyrs if the Protocols came true through every Orthodox country at that time. Through International Communism – the Jewish religion – which is globalism – the end game is a one world government with a military leader, their messiah, the anti-Christ.
With the death of Geronda Ephraim, a great shift occurred in the world, especially here in America. My guess something great indeed will occur with the uncovering of his relics. I look forward to that day.
Scary information Gail — you sure know your stuff – think we’re living in an Aldos Huxley book ? Brave New World
Of course Gates knew, it was obvious as soon as he started hardcore campaigning for the vaccine. This is their plan if they succeed, to have wave after wave of disease come and just keep locking down and giving us vaccines
On a completely separate note. I can’t believe there are actually still clergy in the GOA, why do they not just switch jurisdictions:
https://www.helleniscope.com/2020/06/25/goa-clergy-outraged-at-elpidophoros/
Why indeed?
Obviously, they love the earthly things (Ethnicity etc) more than Christ!
Some priests love and revere a wonderful metropolitan like Met. Isaiah of Denver who are doing their best for the parishioners at risk to themelves in the Church. And deep in prayer for us all. I have long been grateful to Metropolitan Isaiah who was one of the blessed trio including Bishop Basil of Kansas and Vladika Dmitri of St. Seraphim’s who made our area Pan-Orthodox Lenten services so beautiful in a spirit lasting through the year. He has also supported the Elder Ephraim monasteries as have the local Patristic priests who love Met. Isaiah…So there are always pockets of beauty, wisdom, knowledge and holiness to encourage our priests and us, glory to God.
Nicole, like you, I can’t say enough about Metropolitan Isaiah of Denver.
I’ve often thought that back when he and Arb Dmitri of Dallas and Bishop of Wichita would concelebrate a “what if?”.
The “what if?” being that they could have united their respective dioceses into an autonomous American Orthodox Church of the Heartland. We’d probably be in a much better place today, would we not?
GM, if only Met. Isaiah of Denver was Archbishop of USA ?? …
we can spiritually pretend can’t we? Notice he’s a military man ?
I wonder if the EP regrets elevating all the GOAA bishops to Metropolitans. As Archbishop, Elpi doesn’t actually have much real authority over any of them. That’s why his multiple spoon directive is being ignored in several regions.
Word on the street is that he has indeed regretted elevating them to metropolitan status. That was one of the reasons he was going to come to America: to boot them down back to bishop. Covid interrupted his plans.
Beautiful thought George!!!
thank you!
Not sure if this observation amounts to anything, but I clicked the link for Kevin Loria at the head of the article and got this:
https://www.businessinsider.com/author/kevin-loria
It says, “Kevin was a correspondent covering science and health for Business Insider. He covered…” <emphasis mine>
It lists the articles he wrote for BI; none of them were the article in question.
Life is full of wonderment, isn’t it?
In the second article, it says hospitals get $13K to list patients and $39K for respirator designation. Funny how msm is reporting Houston’s Med Cntr hospitals are nearly maxxed out. Clearly a money-making plan by hospitals and pharma everywhere, especially when medicare and medicaid is so slow in paying and insurance companies will do anything not to pay a regular claim. So next question, how much do doctors get for this referral in kickbacks? I finally go to a gp or a storefront walkin clinic at the grocery store to have a say about a sinus infection gone bad, say, for instance and maybe have drainage and he says get an exray, then sees fluid, just say. He then decides to dub it the “C” and then the whole akin-to-leprosy-sequestering-thing starts, I lose my job, get home-jailed, and am kicking myself for having caved and gone to him in the first place. Has anyone reported this, that he gets a kickback for designating me C-potential material? Shortness of breath, also, happens for a number of reasons, not just ‘this.’
Who in his right mind would want a vaccine that is pushed by a man whose goal is to decrease the world population?
Pithy! Agreed!
Look, United Nations supports militant communism: https://archive.is/fxyjU
United Nations is militant communism, it’s just that the mask is slipping off.
This one should really be filed under “The World According to Gail”:
https://www.businessinsider.com/sweden-coronavirus-cases-deaths-fall-not-mean-lockdown-plan-worked-2020-7
Anyway, Sweden’s approach to the lock-down is vindicated yet again.