Today, May 25, 2020, is Memorial Day, now and since 1971 a national holiday which was first commemorated in the United States as Decoration Day to remember the soldiers who died in our Civil War.  In 1971 Congress declared that Decoration Day would henceforth be celebrated on the last Monday in May, and it would be renamed Memorial Day to remember all members of the United States military forces who have died in all wars for the cause of liberty.

This Memorial Day there are fewer parades, fewer assemblies of any kind to commemorate and honor our war dead.  The reason for fewer assembly celebrations of the lives of those who fought and died for us is not that we have surrendered our liberty to a more powerful foe.  It’s that we have surrendered it to the debilitating fear of a microscopic corona virus known formally as SARS-CoV-2 or COVID-19  introduced into our country by the Chinese Communist government of the People’s Republic of China (ChiCom) in late 2019/early 2020.

If we believe the ChiComs, the COVID-19 virus was zoonotic, born naturally near the city of Wuhan and not created or refined by man as an agent for biological warfare. Likewise, according to the ChiComs, its release that has killed thousands of people worldwide was accidental, not an act of biological warfare forbidden by international convention.

Regardless of whether you believe COVID-19 is the product of bats in a cave or beakers in a lab, the fear of the highly infectious disease has been as devastating as the disease itself on the social, political, and economic institutions in the United States.   That fear has been intensified by our news media whose obvious and abysmal lack of subject matter knowledge of virology, immunology,  and epidemiology make it impossible for them to ask relevant questions and then translate the answers into relevant understandable information.

Similarly, decision-making public officials at state, county, and municipal levels may often have access to truly knowledgeable public health experts providing accurate, complete, and timely information, but like the news media and those of us in the general public, our representative officials may lack the subject matter knowledge to even ask the right questions of the experts, let alone translate their good information into good public policies and practices.

The officials’ initial reaction may be to close everything down.   Close businesses, institutions such as schools and courts, public buildings and offices, shut down air travel and freight.   Force people into social isolation, usually stay-at-home orders or quarantine.

The question is, for how long must everything be closed down?  It seems as if at that point, the political decision-makers, the scientists, and the medical professionals all stand in a big circle facing inward, point to the person on his right, and say, “Ask him!”  Unfortunately, the rest of us (AKA:  normal people) are outside the circle and unable to get answers from those who have locked arms to form the circle.

Eventually, those of us outside the circle get tired of our questions being unanswered and we begin to take matters into our own hands.

Now comes The Reopen Movement.  In the hyperlinked report, it also refers to itself as The Reopen the States movement.  Even if you choose not to read the entire report, the reasons for the movement are clearly and concisely explained in the Introduction on pages 4 and 5.  Please take the time to at least read the Introduction on pages 4 and 5.

As I read the report, I thought of the words spoken by attorney Patrick Henry on March 23, 1775, to the Second Virginia Convention assembled at St. John’s Henrico Parish Church in Richmond, Virginia.  Please turn your computer audio on (.mp3 format) and listen to this seven minute vocal interpretation by Richard Schumann for The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation.

Sic semper tyrannis

According to a press release issued Thursday, May 21, 2020, “Today, Senators Rick Scott, Mike Braun, Marsha Blackburn, Joni Ernst, Martha McSally, Tom Cotton and Ted Cruz introduced the COVID-19 Vaccine Protection Act to prevent Communist China from stealing or sabotaging American COVID-19 vaccine research.”

Of particular interest in the press release was a link to a May 11, 2020, NPR piece entitled U.S. Officials:  Beware of China and Others Trying To Steal COVID-19 Research.

Senator Scott’s press release provides a bullet-point summary of what the proposed legislation will accomplish.

As soon as the exact legislation is posted on the Congressional website, we’ll link to it in an addendum to this post.  It may be S.3837.

On May 14, 2020, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued a Health Advisory to provide parents and healthcare providers with background information on several cases of a recently reported multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C) associated with novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).

A CDC Health Advisory provides important information to increase awareness of a specific incident or situation but may not require immediate action.

Incomplete news reporting about COVID-19 has suggested that COVID-19 does not affect significant numbers of children under 21 years old.  Consequently, CDC issued the Health Advisory to remind parents and guardians who see either COVID-19 symptoms or MIS-C symptoms in children to contact their healthcare provider for direction.   The Health Advisory notes that at this time it is unknown if multisystem inflammatory syndrome is specific to children or if it also occurs in adults.  Consequently, adults observing symptoms in themselves or in children in their care should contact their healthcare provider for further instructions.

Because there is currently limited information about MIS-C, CDC requests healthcare providers who have cared or are caring for patients younger than 21 years of age meeting MIS-C criteria should report suspected cases to their local, state, or territorial health department.

“Would the present US Congress have the courage to propose, debate, and pass a declaration of war against the People’s Republic of China (PRC) pursuant to the US Constitution, Article 1, Section 8, Clause 11 if the Wuhan corona virus release is proven to have been accidental but maliciously and fortuitously exploited rather than explicitly created as a biowarfare weapon?”

I’ve led several OpenCdA posts recently with that same question.   The absence of any news/skews stories even hinting that it may have been discussed in Congress suggests it has not and probably will not.  Now I’ve begun to wonder what the body count of dead United States citizens must be before one of our esteemed members of Congress timidly grovels at the feet of San Fran Gran Octogenarian Nan for permission to ask it.  My question has a historical basis.

The Japanese attack on Naval Station Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, killed 2,403 US military and civilians.  One day later, on December 8, 1941, as the US Pacific fleet lay in ruins at Pearl Harbor, President Franklin Roosevelt asked the House of Representatives for a formal declaration of war on Japan.    Roosevelt’s 10-minute “Day which will live in infamy” speech was greeted in the House by thunderous applause and stamping of feet. Within one hour, the president had his declaration of war with only one dissenting vote from Montana Representative Jeannette Rankin,  a pacifist. President Roosevelt signed the declaration of war at 4:10 p.m. in December 8, wearing a black armband to symbolize mourning for those 2,403 American lives lost at Pearl Harbor.

Fast forward now to late December 2019.

PRC health officials informed the World Health Organization (WHO) that there was an outbreak of a mysterious new pneumonia in the vicinity of the Hunan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan, PRC.  Then on January 7, 2020, PRC authorities identified a new variation of corona virus called novel coronavirus or nCoV.   On February 11, 2020, WHO officially identified it as COVID-19.  The Chinese Communist government of the PRC (ChiCom) assures the world that the release of COVID-19 was purely accidental.

Recent information indicates that COVID-19 made its first appearance in the United States in Santa Clara, California, 2-3 weeks before early February.  The first death on US soil from COVID-19 was reported on February 29, 2020.  As this post is being prepared on May 15, 2020 at 16:03 PDT, the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is showing 85,990 deaths in the US attributed to COVID-19.  Worldwide, approximately 304,000 deaths have been attributed to COVID-19.

Readers should remember, however, that there are very credible allegations that the US COVID-19 death figures have been inflated because of variations in the states’ death declarations.  For example, in some states coroners list COVID-19 as a cause of death in instances where it was merely present but was not shown to have significant effect on the decedent’s death.  The reasons for the discrepancy may be more social or political than medical.

Nevertheless, contrast our national emotional and subsequent political reaction to the Japanese bombing of the US fleet at Pearl Harbor in 1941 with our emotional and subsequent political reactions to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.  In 1941 we rightly blamed the Japanese for attacking us, but in 2020 some Democrats and Trump-Haters (including the skews media) have sought to blame President Trump rather than the ChiComs for the medical and economic catastrophe they inflicted on the world.

When it finally notified the rest of the world of this COVID-19 release, the ChiComs assured everyone that the release was purely accidental.  Working with almost no meaningful scientific input from the ChiComs, the US Intelligence Community (IC) can only say it “…concurs with the wide scientific consensus that the COVID-19 virus was not manmade or genetically modified. […] The IC will continue to rigorously examine emerging information and intelligence to determine whether the outbreak began through contact with infected animals or if it was the result of an accident at a laboratory in Wuhan.”  That is roughly the equivalent of the IC saying, We think COVID-19 occurred naturally rather than being manmade, but we cannot prove whether the ChiComs dispersed it intentionally or accidentally.

In other words, our IC seems to be doing everything it can to avoid considering the possibility the ChiCom intelligence service, the MSS, turned an accidental COVID-19 release into a clandestine worldwide human test experiment to determine if and how even more dangerous biowarfare agents could be delivered against the United States and other nations.   Given the panicked response of the US people, state and local governments, and news media to the release of the less lethal COVID-19, do the ChiComs even need to consider using the more dangerous and difficult to deploy biowarfare agents listed in the Army Technology document to achieve the ChiComs’ objectives?

The ChiComs have learned several important lessons from observing our official, media, and public responses to COVID-19.

• The United States government apparently doesn’t intend to aggressively enforce the Biological Weapon Convention and its amendments or international law forbidding nations to make and deploy biological weapons and requiring nations (including the PRC) to timely disclose and provide all assistance required to identify, contain, and mitigate the effects of any release of biological agents.
• It is not necessary to bribe US government officials directly.  US corporate boards of directors and executives are more than willing to exert pro-ChiCom financial and political pressure on US politicians in return for their companies being financially enriched for putting critical US manufacturing plants in the PRC and for encouraging US colleges, universities, and companies to share sensitive research with the ChiComs.  The ChiComs have made the entire United States industrial and educational institutions the PRC’s R&D arm and have either bought or stolen information critical to our national security. 
• On January 3, 2020, the ChiComs’ ordered the destruction of all their laboratory samples of the virus material, the destruction of the scientists notes and experiments, and the silencing of the scientists.  This  was likely a move to destroy any and all evidence that if analyzed in US laboratories might have revealed the ChiComs’ true motives for having the viral samples in the first place.
• “Buying off” the World Health Organization was a wise investment for the ChiComs.
• In 2017 the US learned that during the Obama presidency from 2010 to 2013, US intelligence assets in the PRC were mysteriously identified and neutralized by the ChiComs.  It is entirely likely that their removal by ChiCom counterintelligence helped the ChiComs blind their American adversaries to the work being done at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
• The “free press” in the United States is willing to accept and distribute ChiCom propaganda as if it is news and with little or no critical analysis.  (See CPB, NPR, ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, New York Times, Washington Post, ad nauseum.)  The US news media (I prefer “skews media”) are gullible, very easily distracted from the essence of important news stories, and easily manipulated.  The media reporters often lack sufficient subject matter knowledge to frame informative questions and recognize newsworthy answers.  Colleges and universities are now teaching advocacy journalism rather than the traditional fact verification and complete reporting journalism.
•  Many US citizens almost seem to like being manipulated and deceived by uninformed politicians elected to national, state, county, and local offices.  The manipulation and deception as well as political party affiliation are frequently used as excuses to avoid critical, independent thinking and thoughtful decision-making.
• It takes relatively little effort to induce panic and despair in many US citizens, particularly in densely populated urban areas.  Why use a sledge hammer when a puff of wind will do?
• In spite of historical reverence for the American revolutionaries who were willing to fight to the death for independence from the British Crown, too few supposedly conservative citizens today are willing to remind public officials that when tyranny becomes law, rebellion becomes necessary.
• Many American state, county, and local officials are afraid or unable to adapt policy decisions they made earlier in an emergency to contemporary circumstances.   Intransigence is easier than adaptation.
• Many policies and practices of the US federal and state governments tend to encourage more heavy dependence on the government while at the same time discouraging independent problem solving without government involvement.
• In the 2016 presidential election, the US voters demonstrated with the election of Donald J. Trump that the will of the voters still prevails in the US.  The ChiComs will do everything in their power to undermine the public’s confidence in the integrity of elections and willingness to participate in them.

We must hope that the US government and especially the US military is cataloguing the lessons they must learn about the ChiCom involvement in the pandemic.  If all the victim nations, not just the US, do not retaliate meaningfully and painfully against the ChiCom government of the PRC, the ChiComs will do this again.

“Would the present US Congress have the courage to propose, debate, and pass a declaration of war against the People’s Republic of China (PRC) pursuant to the US Constitution, Article 1, Section 8, Clause 11 if the Wuhan corona virus release is proven to have been accidental but maliciously and fortuitously exploited rather than explicitly created as a biowarfare weapon?”

That’s the question OpenCdA began our posts with on April 17, 2020,  April 28, 2020, and May 2, 2020.  We ask it again here today.

When it finally decided to publicly acknowledge the Wuhan corona virus release, the Chinese Communist Party government of the PRC (ChiCom) declined to identify the exact point of release.  However, it was quick to assert that it had been an accidental release even though it refused to identify or make “Patient Zero” available for medical interviews and epidemiological examinations.

Several relevant facts have been reported by sources who have reported reliably in the past:

— The Chinese Communist Party government of the PRC (ChiCom) deliberately withheld sounding a timely worldwide warning about the release.

— The ChiComs demanded that the sock-puppet president of the World Health Organization delay reporting of the release and then minimize the danger posed.

— The ChiComs began urgently but covertly hoarding personal protective equipment and other materiel which could be used to protect their own people from the virus while at the same time limiting access of other nations to the protective equipment.

— The ChiComs allowed or directed their own people in the contaminated Wuhan area to leave the PRC for destinations outside the PRC while at the same time forbidding those people to travel to major populated urban areas inside the PRC.  It’s almost as if the ChiComs were using their own asymptomatic people as vectors to spread the ChiCom Wuhan virus to other parts of the world.

— The ChiComs steadfastly refused to provide any detailed information about the release, refusing to allow its scientists to meet with their counterparts from other nations, release their research and experiment notes, or release samples of the viral material for separate analysis.  The ChiComs refused to allow US scientists to visit the Wuhan release site.  In short, the very information our epidemiologists, other scientists, and policy makers needed to assess the medical and military threat levels in the COVID-19 virus was intentionally withheld from us and the rest of the world by the ChiComs.

— On April 30, 2020, the United States Director of National Intelligence (DNI) issued a press release on behalf of the US Intelligence Community.  The DNI’s release did not explicitly state that the ChiCom’s COVID-19 release was accidental or intentional.  Neither did it state the ChiCom’s purpose for working with what was to eventually be labeled COVID-19.  The DNI’s press release said, “The Intelligence Community also concurs with the wide scientific consensus that the COVID-19 virus was not manmade or genetically modified.”  It concluded with, “The IC will continue to rigorously examine emerging information and intelligence to determine whether the outbreak began through contact with infected animals or if it was the result of an accident at a laboratory in Wuhan.”

The ChiComs’ secretive behavior to delay issuing public health warnings, to conceal the release of the highly contagious and lethal Wuhan corona virus COVID-19, and to then withhold critical medical science and hoard medicines and equipment that other nations would need to deal with this pandemic disease strongly suggests that even if the initial release was accidental, the ChiComs seized the opportunity to exploit their “accident” and turn it into a physiological, psychological, economic, and political weapon of war.

To help OpenCdA readers better understand why biological agents (even accidentally released ones like the ChiCom’s represent COVID-19 to be) are so dangerous to the United States, here is a link to the “Biological Agents” and “National with Chemical-Biological Weapons Capability” sections of a larger study entitled “Chemical-Biological Attack:  Achilles Heel of the Air Expeditionary Force” by Byron C. Hepburn, Colonel, USAF, MC, FS, September 2019, as part of The Counterproliferation Papers, Future Warfare Series No. 4, USAF Counterproliferation Center, Air War College, Air University, Maxwell AFB, Alabama.

Readers who are closely following the scientific, social, economic, and political effects of the COVID-19 pandemic will quickly realize the striking similarities between the COVID-19 effects and the outcomes associated with the hostile use of biological agents as weapons.

In my opinion, biological agents used as biological weapons are far more dangerous than conventional, chemical, and nuclear weapons.  Whereas the conventional, chemical, and nuclear weapons’ immediate effects are detectable and eventually containable and correctable, biologicals can be much more difficult to detect, identify, and contain.  In contrast to conventional, chemical, and nuclear materials which will disappear and become inert or neutral over time (though it may take decades or centuries), biologicals can replicate and mutate and adapt to changes in their environments and vector hosts.

International treaties and laws become useless when they are circumvented by evil actors like the Chinese Communist government of the People’s Republic of China.  Lawsuits against the ChiComs to recover financial damages for the harm already done and yet to be done will be greeted with laughter.  In the Wuhan release of the COVID-19 corona virus, the ChiComs happily sacrificed the lives of who knows how many of their own citizens to achieve the ChiComs’ own objective:  domination of the world economy.  An evil government willing to do that will not be deterred by lawsuits or bad press or the bluster of self-serving politicians who may put their own economic interests ahead of national security.

“Would the present US Congress have the courage to propose, debate, and pass a declaration of war against the People’s Republic of China (PRC) pursuant to the US Constitution, Article 1, Section 8, Clause 11 if the Wuhan corona virus release is proven to have been accidental but maliciously and fortuitously exploited rather than explicitly created as a biowarfare weapon?”

That’s the question OpenCdA began its posts with on April 17, 2020, and April 28, 2020.  It seems that with each passing day, the question becomes more and more relevant.

Readers have no doubt heard about a 15-page dossier recently completed by the Five-Eyes intelligence services that was leaked to an Australian newspaper.

OpenCdA has been unable to find a copy of the dossier, however here is a reprint (with citation) to the newspaper article published by Australia’s The Daily Telegraph newspaper online on May 2, 2020, at 10:26am and authored by Sharri Markson.  The Daily Telegraph’s article is better written and far more detailed than anything we’ve seen in US skewspapers.  It is headlined Bombshell dossier lays out coronavirus case against Chinese.  (NOTE:  If readers follow the Source link act the top of the reprint’s page, you will be taken to the Telegraph’s most updated version of this online story.  It may display a different headline and have different content.)

Readers may also recall that we mentioned The Biological Weapons Convention in our April 17, 2020, post cited previously and entitled Could Congress Pull the Trigger?   For a more detailed and easily understandable discussion of that Convention and its relevance to the COVID-19 release by the ChiComs, see the article entitled Oh The Irony! On This Day in 1972, US, USSR & 70 Other Nations Agree to Ban Biological Weapons.

My OpenCdA post dated April 17, 2020, asked, “Would the present US Congress have the courage to propose, debate, and pass a declaration of war against the People’s Republic of China (PRC) pursuant to the US Constitution, Article 1, Section 8, Clause 11 if the Wuhan corona virus release is proven to have been accidental but maliciously and fortuitously exploited rather than explicitly created as a biowarfare weapon.

That post included a reference to the presence at the University of Idaho of an international student friendship organization named the Confucius Institute.  (Presidential candidate Joe Biden would likely view that as a positive development for Idaho.)

An OpenCdA reader added a comment to that post acknowledging his or her unfamiliarity with the Confucius Institute and its connection to the ChiCom government of the People’s Republic of China.  That’s okay.  It certainly sounds benign, right?  After all, Idaho is not exactly the center of national security interests for our nation.  We’ve only got trees, mines (mostly closed), the Idaho National Laboratory, and agriculture.

Nothing in that list could ever be of any interest to the ChiComs, right?  Certainly not agriculture.  And yet the Confucius Institute also has a chapter at Kansas State University (KSU) in Manhattan, Kansas.  (Insert “who cares <yawn>” here.)  Just another ag school, right?  Seems logical that the ChiComs would be interested in improving their agricultural production capabilities.  You may recall that in 2010 Idaho Governor Otter  led an Idaho business promotion delegation to the PRC.  Yeah.  Sell the ChiComs spuds and build a Micron technology plant there.

But the ChiComs’ interest in US agriculture likely goes far deeper than milk, beef, and potato production.

In 2022 and 2023 a biosafety level-4 (BSL-4) lab will open and become fully operational at KSU.  That laboratory will the the National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility (NBAF).  It was begun by President George W. Bush in his Homeland Security Presidential Directive 9 signed in 2004.  When you read and understand the NBAF Plan, the presence of the Confucius Institute chapter on the KSU campus should become even more concerning.

As if to punctuate the importance of agricultural security and to clarify the relationship between the current COVID-19 pandemic and food security, please read today’s Fox News online piece entitled Trump to invoke Defense Production Act to keep meat-processing plants open amid fears of supply shortage.

The ChiComs are more interested in the security of our food sources than cow farts.

Would the present US Congress have the courage to propose, debate, and pass a declaration of war against the People’s Republic of China (PRC) pursuant to the US Constitution, Article 1, Section 8, Clause 11 if the Wuhan corona virus release is proven to have been accidental but maliciously and fortuitously exploited rather than explicitly created as a biowarfare weapon?

The Chinese Communist government (ChiCom) of the People’s Republic of China has asserted that the COVID-19 coronavirus release in Wuhan, Hubei Province, PRC, was accidental.  Of course, the ChiComs also asserted that it was introduced intentionally by the US military in Wuhan.

A civilized nation that was genuinely concerned about health and safety of its own citizens and the citizens of nations around the world would have immediately taken all appropriate actions to warn others of the danger of the released viral biological agent.  They would have immediately taken measures to contain the virus and limit its spread.

That’s what the government of a civilized nation would have done.

But the PRC is not a civilized nation, primarily because its government is completely ChiCom.   One need only look at the measures the ChiComs took and failed to take immediately after the Wuhan coronavirus release to see that.

As a direct and indisputable result of the ChiComs malicious actions and failures to act,  the thriving economy of the United States has been decimated.  As bad as that is, it is even worse that as of April 17, 2020, at 12:50 PM PDT, the Center for Disease Control is reporting that among the United States and its territories, there have been 661,712 COVID-19 cases (660,430 confirmed; 1,282 probable) and 33,049 deaths (28,823 confirmed; 4,226 probable).

Today (04-17-2020) Fox News online is running an article headlined US officials confirm full-scale investigation of whether coronavirus escaped from Wuhan lab by Brett Baier, Gillian Turner, and Adam Shaw of Fox News.  Please take the time to read this article carefully.  One informative paragraph reads:

U.S. officials and the intelligence community have confirmed to Fox News that they have taken the possibility of the coronavirus being man-made or engineered inside China as some sort of bioweapon off the table and have ruled it out at this point. (emphasis mine)

Clearly the Trump administration doubts the honesty and completeness of the ChiCom’s assurances, as well it should.

So how does all this justify questions about whether or not the US Congress would have the courage to declare war against the ChiCom PRC?  After all, this was just a big “oopsie” by the ChiCom PRC, right?  That might be valid if “accidental release” and “bioweapon attack” are the only two choices available, but they’re not.

There is a third choice that must be considered:  What if the Wuhan release was in fact an accident BUT the ChiComs had sufficient controls and intelligence assets in place to exploit the accidental release and closely monitor its subsequent results and our reactions for hostile purposes?  Just from the reporting done by the US’s “free press” skews media (Donald Trump Jr. refers to CNN as “XiNN” and my own nickname for NBC is “MSS-NBC“), the ChiComs successfully benched the US Navy’s nuclear aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt in Guam.  They’ve also managed to cripple our thriving economy.  It is also most likely they have begun tasking their ChiCom sources on college campuses including professors, researchers, and students in organizations such as the Confucius Institute.  (I wonder how many people in north Idaho know there is Confucius Institute representation here?)

The ChiComs have acceded to the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC).  Both the United States and the PRC have agreed to participate.  Thus, any willful violation of the BWC that results in the death of over 33,000 US citizens in the United States and its territories could and logically should be considered to be an act of war.

If the full-scale investigation ordered by the President and reported in Fox News today reveals that the Wuhan release was either intentionally originated or fortuitously manipulated by the ChiCom PRC as an intel operation or an aggressive action against the United States, the President and the US Congress need to seriously discuss a formal declaration of war.

Those talks need to exclude any present and former members of Congress who or whose family members have business dealings with the ChiCom PRC.

Addendum:  04-19-2020 at 11:00 PDT.  White House Trade Adviser Peter Navarro said during an exclusive interview on Fox News “Sunday Morning Futures” that China “cornered” the personal protective equipment (PPE) market during the coronavirus outbreak and “is profiteering.” Follow this link to see the online article.

Navarro’s assertion, if complete and accurate, has diminished the capacity of the US public health agencies to effectively fight COVID-19.  It has likely led to the deaths of not only US citizens but citizens of other nations as well.

As of 12:00 PDT today approximately 39,400 US citizens have died as a result of the ChiCom-originated corona virus COVID-19.   Given that the ChiCom PRC sought to hide and lie about its actions rather than notify the world of the biological monster it had created,  Congress should at least formally discuss if the ChiComs’ actions in the aggregate are an act of war against the United States.