Covid Inquiry ?

[Observer II]

I doubt this multi million £ Inquiry will alter any opinions of the pandemic;  and will certainly confirm some.  Namely, the character of the then PM Boris Johnson, now no doubt most believed him to be a scatter brained bafoon, which perhaps provided some light relief in a world of self centred politicians, taking themselves seriously, it seems his inabilty to get serious bordered on an insensitive disregard for the victims of covid, particulary the elderly.  Such a cavalier attitude imo, is not suited to the position he held and his performance would seems to warrant some form of sanction, if only to appease the relatives of those lost.     😷😠

[ninearches]

I would be much more impressed if the inquiry was to find out how the virus got to our shores in the first place & from where.

[Observer II]

Migrants and holiday makers no doubt. Remember, how they sent a busload up to a hotel in the Wirral for isolation, then forgot about isolation after that ?   😠🤧

[Confused52]

2 hours ago, ninearches said:

I would be much more impressed if the inquiry was to find out how the virus got to our shores in the first place & from where.

We have known that for a long time now. There is a group which sequences the RNA of flu viruses to work out which strain should be in the annual vaccines. That group also received the test specimens of Covid patients and they produced a report showing that the virus arrived here mostly from European countries. Other countries also did genomic analysis and all of the data, including time and place, went into a globally available database. That data allowed the lineage of infection to be track from place to place. That meant that the Covid-19 Genomics-UK Consortium of Universities (COG-UK) could write on the 10th June 2020 - 

"The study found that the UK epidemic was composed of a very large number transmission lineages. Each lineage was founded by a separate introduction event from inbound international travel, then grew through local transmission within the UK. The study detected 1356 independent transmission lineages, based on analysis of genome and travel data up to 22 May 2020. However, this is likely to be an underestimate of the actual number of virus introduction events that have resulted in onwards transmission, because we have generated virus genome sequences for only a small fraction of UK infections.

An estimate of the daily intensity of SARS-CoV-2 importation into the UK indicated that importation intensity to the UK rose rapidly in early March, peaked around 15th March, then quickly declined to a low level in April. This pattern is driven by the interplay between two trends throughout March: a substantial fall in the number of inbound travellers and a rapid growth in the number of infections in many European countries.

The study found that early importations from Italy were, by early March, surpassed in number by importations from inbound travellers from Spain and France. The diversity of source locations also increased in March, with importations attributed to a growing range of countries. The contribution of China and other Asian countries to the number of importations was very small"

So the initial importation was from Italy and from thence via France and Spain. So the immigration limitations from China were practically pointless. By the time we knew what was going on it was arriving from places that the NHS thought was still safe. The reason that it went to Italy is also known. The garment trade in Northern Italy had historical links with Hunan and was the only place in Europe with a direct daily air service to Hunan. It is the interaction between that linkage and winter sports traffic to the North of Italy which made the spread unstoppable via indirect routes before we even knew what was going on. This wasn't suspected in time because the Chinese said there was no asymptomatic transmission, they were wrong.

As to the actual origin of the disease there is no definitive answer. The pendulum is currently swinging back to the lab-leak explanation at the moment but my understanding is that no-one believes it was an attempt at developing a weapon. I do not believe the origin is in the scope of the UK enquiry.

[ninearches]

I firmly believe a lab leak tbh . I don't think the Chinese government would have taken such draconian measures with the citizens of Wuhan for a virus from a wet market. Something was known & what better way for it to spread worldwide than air travel. We had the Chinese New Year with celebrants world wide travelling back & forth & mingling with countless air travellers on their Winter breaks. 

[Confused52]

I have always thought it was a lab-leak myself. As I understand it the regional government seized all the documentation of the early cases and it went to central Government. That meant there was no documentation for the WHO folks to look at it had been taken away and they didn't know who had it or if it had been destroyed. The locals were told that they couldn't discuss it and that secrecy causes concern in the West but could be seen as normal state paranoia in China. (the handling is described in BBC Sounds - Fever: The Hunt for Covid's Origin - Available Episodes)

[Lt Kije]

On 11/1/2023 at 2:46 PM, ninearches said:

I would be much more impressed if the inquiry was to find out how the virus got to our shores in the first place & from where.

Completely agree😀

[Confused52]

Davy,

You might be interested in this.

https colon slash slash public dot substack dot com slash p slash first-people-sickened-by-covid-19

The dangers of gain-of-Function research were highlighted very early by an eminent virologist I met while we were students, he is Professor Simon Wain-Hobson OBE of the Pasteur Institute in Paris. He has been concerned about this for a long time since the Chinese started to do the work on Flu viruses back in the mid 2010's. Yo may also wish to web search the names Zhou Yusen and Robert Kadlec together. I will not pass comment of the contents beyond noting that they support what I have seen elsewhere in open source material.