Why Kamala Harris can’t depose Joe Biden

 One of the recurring concerns that I’ve heard about the 2020 election is the fear that Kamala Harris will declare Joe Biden incompetent and have him removed from office. Harris would then become president and Nancy Pelosi would be elevated to the vice presidency, or so the theory goes. This was always an unlikely possibility that was intended more as a scare tactic than a concern grounded in reality. As election returns continue to come in, the possibility of such a coup is even more remote.

The most obvious flaw in this conspiracy theory is that Joe Biden has demonstrated over the past few months that he is not senile. It was easier to paint Biden as a dementia patient before he bested Donald Trump in two debates and held a live town hall in front of the nation. Biden has also given several live televised speeches at this point, and the evidence that he is mentally incompetent is just not there.

Biden is also much more popular than Kamala Harris. Although Harris was painted as a shoo-in by many in both the mainstream and conservative media, she was one of the first candidates to drop out of the Democratic primary. She ended her campaign on Dec. 3, 2019 after failing to gain traction.

Although the conservative media paints Harris as a liberal bogeywoman, she is not that popular with the progressive left, which prefers Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. Black voters rejected her for Joe Biden. Harris currently has a negative favorability rating among the nation at large and is only marginally popular within her own party.

The point here is that Harris has no progressive constituency that would support such a nefarious move against Biden, the man of the hour who is the toast of the Democratic Party after his defeat of Donald Trump. An unpopular vice president removing a popular president under suspicious terms would not end well for either Harris or the country.

If Harris’s relative unpopularity among both Democrats and the nation at large isn’t convincing, the rules for declaring a president incompetent should kill the conspiracy theory. The 25th Amendment sets out the rules for presidential succession so let’s examine what would be required in such a scenario.

The 25th Amendment is a complex amendment that is comprised of four sections. Section one is straightforward:

In case of the removal of the President from office or of his death or resignation, the Vice President shall become President.

The second section is clear and concise as well:

Whenever there is a vacancy in the office of the Vice President, the President shall nominate a Vice President who shall take office upon confirmation by a majority vote of both Houses of Congress.

One part of the conspiracy is debunked here. While the speaker of the House is third in line of succession to the presidency, the speaker does not become vice president if the current vice president assumes the presidency. The Constitution clearly states that the new president will nominate a new vice president, who must then be confirmed by Congress.

The third section details what would happen if the president chooses to step down on his own initiative:

Whenever the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that he is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, and until he transmits to them a written declaration to the contrary, such powers and duties shall be discharged by the Vice President as Acting President.

While some versions of the conspiracy theory speculate that Biden intends to step down and pass the presidency to Harris, these claims are so far without evidence. Nor do they pass the smell test. No objective observer can watch Biden’s performance in the debates and town halls over the past few months or his address to the country on Friday night and come away with the conclusion that the man who ran for president three times does not really want to be president. This is not a man who intends to take office and then resign.

The fourth and final section of the amendment is the most complex. Perhaps that is why so many of the conspiracy theorists seem not to have bothered to read it.

Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.
     
Thereafter, when the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that no inability exists, he shall resume the powers and duties of his office unless the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive department or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit within four days to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office. Thereupon Congress shall decide the issue, assembling within forty-eight hours for that purpose if not in session. If the Congress, within twenty-one days after receipt of the latter written declaration, or, if Congress is not in session, within twenty-one days after Congress is required to assemble, determines by two-thirds vote of both Houses that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall continue to discharge the same as Acting President; otherwise, the President shall resume the powers and duties of his office.

Section four spells out exactly how a president can be removed if he is unable to fulfill his duties. The first step is that the vice president and a majority of the cabinet must agree that the president is unable to “discharge the powers and duties of his office.” In other words, removing Biden would not be at the sole discretion of Harris. She would have to obtain the agreement of a majority of cabinet officials who were just appointed by Biden to their jobs to become the acting president. Presumably, loyalty to the Biden would be a factor filling these jobs.

But the process does not end there. If President Biden disputed the cabinet’s decision, he would resume the role of president (and presumably be much less trusting of Vice President Harris afterward). If Harris continued to force the issue, Congress would decide whether the president was capable of continuing. Upholding the president’s removal would require a two-thirds majority in both houses of Congress. This is a higher bar than for impeachment which requires a simple majority in the House and a two-thirds vote in the Senate.

Even if Republicans did not retain control of the Senate, the vote to remove the president would have to be a bipartisan one. Simple math tells us that a two-thirds majority would require 290 votes in the House and 67 votes in the Senate. Democrats briefly held a supermajority in both houses from 2009 to 2011 but Congress will be closely divided in 2021.

When the Constitution is considered, the possibility of Kamala Harris having Joe Biden declared incompetent is even more remote than Donald Trump pulling out a popular vote victory. There is approximately zero chance that Republicans would side with Harris to remove President Biden, but I have to admit that the possibility of Republicans in Congress rallying to save the Biden Adminstration is intriguing.

Nevertheless, some conspiracies go one step further. What if Harris had Biden whacked? Killing the president would bypass sections three and four and revert to the simplicity of section one.

There are multiple problems here, beginning with the fact that there is not a shred of evidence that Kamala Harris is morally capable of ordering the murder of her political ally and friend. There is also the obvious problem of Biden’s Secret Service protection and the inherent risks of such a plot. If such a conspiracy was real and discovered – either before or after the fact – it would be an impeachable and criminal act. At that point, we would likely see bipartisan impeachment proceedings.

It would make far more sense for Kamala Harris to serve Biden loyally and hope to be his successor. There is speculation that Biden may serve only one term due to his age and a vice president who had not committed treason would have an advantage in competing for the Democratic nomination.

However, Republicans can take some comfort from the fact that, although 14 vice presidents have ascended to the presidency only six of these have been elevated through elections. Eight gained the office through the death of the president. So, if Joe Biden survives his term, and there is little reason to think that he won’t, Harris stands a good chance of losing to a Republican candidate in either four or eight years.

The conspiracy theories that Joe Biden is a Trojan horse to install Kamala Harris as president are completely unfounded. These claims are merely scare tactics that were intended to undermine the Biden campaign during the election and should not be treated seriously.

Originally published on The First TV

Donald Trump Defends The COVID Vaccine… Finally

 President Trump has come out swinging after Democratic vice-presidential candidate Kamala Harris expressed doubt about a potential Coronavirus vaccine last week. The president charged that Harris and Democratic nominee Joe Biden were engaging in “reckless anti-vaccine rhetoric” and “endangering lives.” To some extent, he has a point but that’s not the full story.

The kerfuffle began last week when CNN released a clip of Harris saying, “I will say that I would not trust Donald Trump and it would have to be a credible source of information that talks about the efficacy and the reliability of whatever he’s talking about. I will not take his word for it.”

Or did it?

Maybe it started last month when President Trump announced a push to approve a vaccine before Election Day or earlier last week when the CDC advised states to be ready to begin distribution of a vaccine by November 1.

Or did it?

Maybe the vaccine brouhaha began way back in the spring when right-wing conspiracy theorists started claiming that Bill Gates was planning to use a COVID vaccine as a Trojan horse for either mind control or population control (or both) depending on which version of the conspiracy they embraced. Like the underwear gnomes from South Park, the plan by Gates and/or the Illuminati/New World Order/whatever was generally explained like this:

Step One – Vaccine and/or mask mandates
Step Two – ???????????
Step Three – Fascism… Or communism… Or both.

I do applaud the president for defending the upcoming vaccine. His statement that a vaccine would be “very safe and very effective” was much needed. If there was any problem with this part of the statement, it was that it was five months in coming.

“The people will be happy, the people of the world will be happy,” the president added.

If you doubt the anti-vaccine hysteria surrounding a Coronavirus vaccine, you need only look to an August Gallup poll which found that 35 percent of Americans would not get an FDA-approved COVID vaccine, even if it was offered at no cost. The kicker is that Republicans were the only group in which a majority opposed the vaccine (53-47 percent).

But, while Kamala Harris’s words did not help the matter, it is the president’s own rush to approve a vaccine that has led at least some of the non-conspiracy crowd to doubt the safety and the efficacy of vaccine that bypasses the normal trials and approvals process.

Problems that come from bypassing safeguards, not mind-control chips, are the real danger of a vaccine. In 1976, the federal government rushed a swine flu vaccine in response to an expected epidemic. Smithsonian magazine notes politics became prevalent and science took a backseat. In the end, the vaccine was linked to increased risk for a rare neurological disorder, and the fiasco contributed to skepticism about vaccines that lasts to this day.

Even more recently, last spring Coronavirus test kits were in short supply because of a problem in the manufacturing process. The Washington Post reported that the problems were due to contamination at a CDC lab that “violated sound manufacturing practices.”

Cutting corners can cost lives. This is true both in the direct sense that an untested vaccine could be dangerous and indirectly due to time lost in fixing problems that would have been revealed earlier by following established procedures. As my dad has been known to say, “You can make time to do it right or make time to do it over.”

To his credit, Joe Biden stepped up to quell vaccine fears. Fox News quoted Biden as saying, “If I could get a vaccine tomorrow I’d do it. If it cost me the election I’d do it. We need a vaccine and we need it now.”

“I would want to see what the scientists said,” Biden qualified.

But Biden had some sharp words for Trump as well, charging that the president was “playing with politics. He said so many things that aren’t true.”

“If we do have a really good vaccine people are going to be reluctant to take it,” Biden added, which is a true statement supported by the poll cited earlier.

So what to do? The obvious answer is to avoid politicizing the vaccine. President Trump should stand back and let the scientists and medical experts handle the matter. In the past, the FDA has said that it will not “cut corners” in vaccine trials, and Moncef Slaoui, the scientist heading the “Operation Warp Speed” vaccine effort said last week that a vaccine by November was “possible but very unlikely,” per the Washington Post.

It is when the president’s statements conflict with those of the scientists that it sets off alarm bells in many people’s heads. In medical matters, we should be listening to the medical experts and not the guy who suggested injecting disinfectants. If the president wants to undercut a vaccine panic among Democrats and non-Republicans, it is as simple as saying that no vaccine will be approved or deployed before the doctors say that it is ready. Mr. Trump should paraphrase the old wine commercial with the consistent message, “I will serve no vaccine before its time.”

In the meantime, if the president wants to help the fight against the pandemic, he can start talking more to his base about the need for masks, social distancing, and a vaccine. In the end, it is the president’s own supporters who are more likely to “just say no” to a COVID vaccine than Biden backers. Straight talk about the need for mitigations from a president loved for his “truth-telling” might go a long way with the right-wing conspiracy crowd.

Or it might not. The president took months to call on his supporters to wear a mask (and to wear one publicly himself). In truth, the president’s message has been inconsistent. In July, the president called wearing a mask “patriotic” but no masks were in sight at the August Republican National Convention, even though attendees were not socially distanced.

From my conversations with Trump supporters over the past few months, it doesn’t seem as if the president’s call for masks made much of an impression on his supporters. Republicans seem just as anti-mask after the president made his pitch as they were before with many wearing masks (often incorrectly) only when they are required.

The same may be true of the vaccine. The anti-vaxxer conspiracies may now be so ingrained into so many Republicans that even President Trump cannot reverse it at this point. (It should be noted that the president made anti-vaccine comments back in 2016.)

To test this theory, I asked several friends in a Facebook group whether the president’s defense of the vaccine. Of the people who responded at press time, none said that the president’s statement changed their mind about vaccines.

“I am not a fan of vaccines in the contemporary era,” Russ said. “Proven old-school vaccines we grew up with were time tested, but the modern vaccine feels rushed, pushed (as in media advertising) and generally come off as ‘sales pitchy.'”

“If big pharma had not grown into a ‘mega-plex’ industry I might feel differently,” he added. “If science had not become ‘doctrine’ and ‘dogma’ on most matters, I would feel differently. Industrial growth is bad for overall trust.”

“I’m not a fan of the president, nor will I be getting the vaccine,” Tracy stated.

“I support effective vaccines for illnesses that are necessary to be vaccinated against,” said Janice. “My jury is still out on COVID.”

Janice’s opinion is where a lot of people are. They aren’t necessarily against vaccines in general, but they do want to ensure that a Coronavirus vaccine is safe and effective before they take it. That underscores the need for President Trump and his medical experts to be on the same page with respect to the fact that the vaccine will not be given until it is fully tested and approved.

My plea to both President Trump and the Democrats is this: Don’t make this political. Let the scientists follow established guidelines and do their jobs.

Originally published on The Resurgent

Republicans Nominate 'Florida Woman'

Over the past couple of years, the hashtags #FloridaMan and #FloridaWoman have become an internet staple. The phrases are often found in bizarre news stories with titles such as “Florida woman who tried to kiss strangers calls 911 about lack of social distancing” and “Florida woman arrested after attempting to burn down former home with blow torch.” While I hate to denigrate an entire state with the Florida woman stereotype, last night Republican voters in Florida nominated a stereotypical example of a Florida woman to Congress. As Dave Barry, a Florida man himself, used to protest, I am not making this up.

Last night, the Republican voters of Florida’s 21st congressional district nominated Laura Loomer, a longtime fringe right conspiracy theorist and anti-Muslim bigot to challenge Democrat Rep. Lois Frankel. You may remember Loomer from 2019 when she handcuffed herself to the Twitter office building in New York City after being banned from the social media platform after she, in Buzzfeed’s description, “tweeted a series of anti-Muslim falsehoods about Ilhan Omar.”

President Trump praised Loomer in a tweet after her primary victory last night. She was also supported by none other than Roger Stone and alt-right idols Milo Yiannopoulos and Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes per USA Today.

Loomer has a long and disturbing record of activism and attention-seeking. In 2017, she gained notoriety after her arrest for disrupting an anti-Trump version of “Julius Caesar” in New York’s Central Park. There are indications that the incident may have been both a publicity stunt and an attempt to cash in on a “FreeLaura” website. In 2018, she came into her own as a professional provocateur after she disrupted several events including the trial of the Pulse nightclub murderer’s wife, a promotional event for James Comey’s book, and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey’s congressional testimony.

In 2019, Loomer jumped fences at both Nancy Pelosi’s house and the California governor’s mansion to protest immigration policy. Ironically, the activist was heard to scream that walls work after hopping Pelosi’s fence to trespass on her property in Napa. Trespassing at the governor’s mansion resulted in another arrest.

Loomer also has a history of spreading conspiracy theories. She “investigated” the Parkland shootings for Infowars, advanced conspiracy theories about the Las Vegas massacre, and claimed that the 2018 Florida pipe bombings by a Trump supporter were a “false flag.” She also tried to paint a right-wing bombmaker arrested in South Dakota in 2018 as an Antifa member.

In addition to her Twitter ban, Loomer has been kicked off of Paypal, GoFundMe, and Venmo. She was also banned from Uber and Lyft after tagging the companies in a tweetstorm in which she called for the creation of a “non Islamic” [sic] rideshare app “because I never want to support another Islamic immigrant driver.”

Loomer’s Twitter ban occurred in November 2018 after another rant in which she called Rep. Omar “anti Jewish” [sic] and described Islam as a religion in which “homosexuals are oppressed” and “women are abused” and “forced to wear the hijab.” Twitter called the comments a violation of is rules of conduct but Loomer defended her words.

“Everything I said is 100 percent true and factual. It’s not malicious, it’s not mean, it’s not hateful,” Loomer said, quoted by NBC News.

Loomer’s nomination comes on the heels of QAnon supporter Marjorie Taylor Greene’s primary win in Georgia. Greene also tweeted her congratulations to Loomer.

Unlike Greene, who faces no serious opposition from Democrats in the general election, Loomer will face a tough campaign. Democrats have represented the 21st district since 2013 and Hillary Clinton won the district by 20 points in 2016. Republicans should breathe a sigh of relief that Loomer, unlike Greene, won’t spend the next two years saying and doing embarrassing things as a Republican elected official.

Still, the now-established pattern of Republican voters nominating radical fringe activists as mainstream candidates represents a disturbing trend for a party that has become enamored with and given over to the conspiracy fringe. For the past four years, Republicans have lurched from one conspiracy to the next including the Deep State, the belief that the FBI concocted the Russia hoax, QAnon, and the belief that pandemic is an attempt to “get” Trump. But Republican conspiracies go back even further. Before Trump, there was Obama’s birth certificate and the belief that he was a closet Muslim as well as Jade Helm and the idea that RINO Republicans were a fifth column that was selling out conservatives.

It is the growing conspiracy wing of the party that propelled Donald Trump to the nomination (when traditional Republicans split the vote of the majority opposed to Trump). Trump’s increasing hold on the party and the mainstreaming of the conspiracy theories has made candidates like Loomer and Greene acceptable.

In reality, I suspect that it wasn’t despite Loomer’s history that she won her primary but because of it. As with Trump, many Republicans assume that, if the media is against them, they must be doing something right, so attempts to de-platform the nuts give them more credibility with the tinfoil hat base.

For me, a major (but not the only) stumbling block to voting Republican these days is the party’s slide into conspiracy madness. That includes a denial of the seriousness of the pandemic. Laura Loomer and Marjorie Taylor Greene are not in my district but the Republican acceptance of the pair and their far-out beliefs taints the entire party.

 Originally published on The Resurgent

QAnon Believer Arrested For Trying To ‘Take Out’ Joe Biden

A follower of the QAnon conspiracy theory has been arrested by police in New York City for attempting to assassinate Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden. The Illinois woman traveled to New York with more than a dozen illegal knives in an attempt to 'take out' Biden to save children from an alleged Democrat pedophile ring. Biden was never in imminent danger.

Citing law enforcement and the woman's own social media posts, The Daily Beast reports that Jessica Prim, 37, a stripper from Peoria, was arrested on Wednesday after she began acting strangely on a New York pier near the USS Intrepid, a retired aircraft carrier that is now a museum, and attracted the attention of police.

In a Facebook live stream of the arrest, Prim is in her truck and tells police that she thinks she has Coronavirus. As she talks to the officers, she says that she was watching the Coronavirus Task Force press conferences and felt like President Trump “was talking to me.”

She goes on to say that someone sent her a YouTube video that detailed the conspiracy theory that prominent Democrats are involved in a pedophile ring.

“I felt like I had to come here, to this ship, because I need help,” Prim told officers. “I feel like I’m the Coronavirus.” She was apparently trying to get to the USNS Comfort hospital ship, which was departing the following day.

The Facebook video shows officers putting Prim into handcuffs as they explain that she is not under arrest but is being detained as they wait for an ambulance to arrive. At that point, Prim is moved away from the camera in her truck which makes the conversation difficult to understand, but she can be heard wailing in the distance.

Later, she can be heard telling officers, “You should really look at my Facebook. It will explain everything.”

Among the numerous pro-Trump and conspiracy-related posts on Prim’s Facebook page is a post that says, “Hillary Clinton and her assistant[s], Joe Biden and Tony Podesta, need to be taken out in the name of Babylon! I can’t be set free without them gone. Wake me up!”

A separate post calls Mike Pence “the Antichrist” and notes that “if they hurt Trump, Pence becomes president and Pelosi vice president.”

As officers search her vehicle, she yells in the background, “You are violating my rights. I’m not going anywhere.”

In the course of the conversation with police, Prim said she smokes pot every day “throughout the day.”

The New York Post reports that the Secret Service had put out an alert for Prim after she made threatening the Facebook post about Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton. Secret Service agents were on the scene when the arrest was made per the report. Prim has since been released and has resumed posting to Facebook.  

After her arrest, Prim was taken to Mount Sinai West for evaluation and is being charged with multiple counts of criminal possession of weapons and marijuana. New York City has very strict knife laws that prohibit blades longer than four inches in public places.

There are numerous lessons to take from the tragic tale of Jessica Prim. The most obvious is that conspiracy theories are not harmless. Conspiracy theories and their close cousin, fake news, can be socially destructive and dangerous especially when paired with drug use and mental illness.

Not all Republicans or Trump supporters embrace conspiracy theories but in recent years many conspiracy theories, from Obama’s birth certificate to Jade Helm to Coronavirus skepticism, have found widespread acceptance among Republicans. QAnon is another one of those conspiracies.

For those who are not familiar with QAnon, it is a conspiracy derived from the Pizzagate conspiracy of 2016, which claimed that Hillary Clinton and other prominent Democrats were operating a child-sex ring out of a Washington, D.C. pizza parlor.  

Adherents of the QAnon conspiracy believe that an anonymous government official who goes by the pseudonym “Q” is posting messages to social media that detail the secret inner workings of the Trump Administration. This is a world in which President Trump and Robert Mueller were secretly working together to expose and arrest Democratic crimes, including the Pizzagate pedophilia, and treason. If you’ve seen pro-Trump posts saying a storm is coming, that is a reference to QAnon.

It isn’t know how widespread belief in QAnon is among Republicans, but several Republican congressional candidates this year were avowed supporters of the Q conspiracy. Only about 18 percent of Republicans say that they are familiar with the conspiracy.

Since the onset of the pandemic, which they believe was caused by either a Chinese bioweapon or Bill Gates, Q believers have been focused on the field hospitals in New York and the hospital ship Comfort, reports Buzzfeed. The conspiracies surrounding the Comfort may explain Prim’s motives in going to the ship.

Prim’s attempt to kill Biden and Podesta was not the first crime that the conspiracy has spawned. In 2016, a North Carolina man fired several shots into the restaurant named in the Pizzagate conspiracy. Fortunately, no one was injured and the man was arrested.

A few days later, a Louisiana man was arrested for making a threatening phone call to another pizza restaurant in the area. The man said he was “coming there to finish what the other guy didn’t,” per the Daily Beast.

“I’m coming there to save the kids and then I’m going to shoot you and everyone in the place,” the man said.

A second lesson is that the Secret Service pays attention to online threats. Such threats should never be made, even in jest, and are not protected the First Amendment.

Third, don’t do drugs. Marijuana is not the harmless substance that many make it out to be. There is now strong evidence from numerous studies that marijuana use contributes to the development of schizophrenia, paranoia, and other mental disorders. This is especially true among adolescents and young adults.

Not all of the details about Jessica Prim and her mission to kill Joe Biden are public, but we do know that it was related to the QAnon conspiracy theory and that she was a heavy marijuana user. Her experience is a cautionary tale that both should be avoided, especially in combination with one another. Responsible people should “just say no” to drugs and conspiracy beliefs.

Originally published on The Resurgent

US Investigating Wuhan Lab Connection To COVID Pandemic

Fox News is reporting that sources in the US government say that there is “increasing confidence” that COVID-19 originated in China’s biological research laboratory in Wuhan, which was ground zero for the Coronavirus pandemic. The report, which is attributed to unnamed “multiple sources who have been briefed on the details” and who have “seen relevant materials” says that the virus was not a bioweapon but an attempt to showcase Chinese virological research efforts that went awry.

The report said that Fox News had requested to see the evidence but so far had not been provided access. The sources cautioned that the evidence, which included both open source and classified documents, was “not definitive and should not be characterized as such.” Fox noted that some in the intelligence and epidemiological communities remain skeptical of the claim.

The theory presented by the sources is that researchers at the Wuhan lab were attempting to demonstrate that China was as competent as the US in identifying and fighting viruses. The sources believe that the virus occurred naturally and that a researcher in the lab became patient zero. The virus then started spreading from human to human in the outside community after the researcher left the lab.

There is documentary evidence of efforts by the Chinese government to deflect blame from the lab to Wuhan’s wet market, which is only a short distance away. The earliest known case of COVID-19 was a shrimp vendor at the wet market.

Earlier this week, the Washington Post reported on leaked State Department messages that warned about safety and managerial issues at the Wuhan lab. Specifically, the messages warned about the potential for human transmission of bat coronaviruses being studied and the shortage of adequately trained technicians at the facility.

Whether the virus escaped from the lab or not, there is broad agreement that China was slow to share information about the virus in the early days of the outbreak. The Associated Press reported that China contained the information for six days from January 14 to 20. The delay allowed the virus to spread internationally as people traveled for Lunar New Year celebrations.

“This is tremendous,” said Zuo-Feng Zhang, an epidemiologist at the University of California, Los Angeles. “If they took action six days earlier, there would have been much fewer patients and medical facilities would have been sufficient. We might have avoided the collapse of Wuhan’s medical system.”

The Fox News sources say that China “100 percent” engaged in a coverup that included destroying samples, scrubbing contaminated areas, erasing early reports and articles, and even making doctors and journalists disappear.

One of the sources called it the “costliest government cover-up of all time.”

Even though it is possible that the outbreak originated at the lab, there is no evidence that it was manmade or that the release was intentional. Two epidemiologists explained to the Washington Post this week why they did not believe that the virus was the product of bioengineering.

“Based on the virus genome and properties there is no indication whatsoever that it was an engineered virus,” said Richard Ebright, a professor of chemical biology at Rutgers University.

Robert Garry, a virologist at Tulane agreed that COVID-19 does not appear to have been created by humans, saying, “It has too many distinct features, some of which are counterintuitive.”

A month ago, I wrote that there was no evidence that the Coronavirus was a Chinese biological weapon. That statement remains true. There is circumstantial evidence that a natural virus being studied could have escaped the lab and started the pandemic, but, as Fox’s sources acknowledge, that evidence is “not definitive.” It’s possible that the world will never know for sure exactly how the pandemic began, but investigators will have more time to spend on the outbreak’s origins after the immediate threat is contained.

“Most people believe it began naturally — it was organic if you will,” Defense Secretary Mark Esper said on Fox’s America’s Newsroom. “I think in due course, once we get through the pandemic we’re in right now, there’ll be time to look back and really ascertain what happened and make sure we have a better understanding so we can prevent this in the future.”

Regardless of whether the pandemic originated in a Chinese lab or not, obfuscations by China did allow the virus to spread around the world and cost thousands of lives. China should be held accountable for these actions. However, like tracing the origins of the outbreak, there will be time to do that when COVID-19 is defeated.

Originally published on The Resurgent