In an attempt to avoid accountability for failed policies implemented to combat the COVID-19 pandemic and to save their own image, certain political elites, especially in the USA and Great Britain, have launched an information campaign, with the aid of subservient media outlets, that aggressively seeks to find someone to blame for such high numbers of individuals infected with COVID-19 and of deaths attributed to the Coronavirus.
It’s worth noting that, according to Johns Hopkins University’s Coronavirus Resource Center, the United States has reported the highest numbers of confirmed COVID-19 cases (almost 1 million inhabitants in the USA have been infected) as well as of deaths due to the virus (more than 50,000 people have died). Fox News and other media outlets have reported that almost as many Americans infected with the Coronavirus have died as those in the entire Vietnam War. Still, Washington is not prepared to admit that the US healthcare system as well as the government are in a helpless position in light of the pandemic, and instead chooses to blame the World Health Organization (WHO) and China.
Great Britain is not “far behind” the United States. More than 20,000 people have died due to COVID-19 and the number of people infected with the virus has exceeded 140,000 in the UK. Hence, according to Sky News, leading experts from all over the world predict (based on the current trends) that the Coronavirus pandemic will have the biggest impact on the Kingdom in Europe, and that the number of deaths due to COVID-19 in Great Britain will account for 40% of all the deaths on the continent.
Some American media outlets have pointed out that US intelligence agencies have long been warning the White House about threats posed by pandemics in general and more specifically by the Coronavirus more recently. However, the current administration chose to discount such alerts. In such a climate, it is inevitable that the public will take the current political elite to task and hold them accountable for the mistakes made during the battle against COVID-19. Who will be held responsible for failed responses to the ongoing crisis, first and foremost, in the United States and Great Britain, who promote themselves as nations to be emulated by the rest of the world in almost any sphere in politics and other activities? In an attempt to divert attention from mistakes made and lay the blame squarely at the feet of others, the current leadership in Washington DC and London launched a wide-reaching information campaign against China by accusing it, without any proof, of causing the COVID-19 pandemic, and also encouraged others to sue Beijing for billions of dollars.
For now, let us put some of these issues to the side. After all, the international community will, undoubtedly, get answers to their questions in the near future. At the moment, there are no facts or compelling evidence that show whether the Coronavirus is man-made or not. Still, proponents of various theories about the origins of the virus are exerting a lot of effort and spending considerable resources on spreading information in support of their ideas by different means.
One particular topic demands special attention: the role of a wide network of secret biolabs established with the assistance of the Pentagon to fight epidemics and pandemics.
According to different reports published by media outlets, nowadays, there are over 400 secret Pentagon partner biolabs throughout the world. All of them work on biotechnologies with dual purposes, which could either cure or kill.
An official statement, issued recently by the US Embassy in Kyiv, said that the “US Department of Defense’s Biological Threat Reduction Program” worked “with the Ukrainian Government to consolidate and secure pathogens and toxins of security concern in Ukrainian government facilities, while allowing for peaceful research and vaccine development”. “We also work with our Ukrainian partners to ensure Ukraine can detect and report outbreaks caused by dangerous pathogens before they pose security or stability threats,” it continued.
Such biolabs are located in many countries, including the post-Soviet space, i.e. Georgia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine and a number of other nations that have experienced wide-spread Coronavirus outbreaks. Hence, a reasonable question arises: “Why have these bio-laboratories not provided needed aid by detecting and reporting ‘outbreaks caused by dangerous pathogens before they pose security or stability threats’ and by fighting the pandemic in these nations?”.
The answer to this question is quite simple, Washington is pursuing other aims to those mentioned above in the biolabs that partner with the Pentagon. It is no secret that “researchers” from the United States are particularly interested in diseases that pose a threat to humans and that are typical of any region where the USA might engage in armed conflicts in, and in the way such illnesses are transmitted either by animals or other means. Military agencies of the USA, and also Great Britain, Germany and NATO, as a whole, require such information in the event of an armed confrontation, especially if nations of the CSTO (Collective Security Treaty Organization) or the SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organization) are involved, in order to have biological weapons suitable for any given region ready. Such essential data can only be obtained under field conditions and US partner bio-laboratories, often called Central Reference Laboratories (CRL), provide opportunities to collect it.
In addition, these bio-labs can be used for the same purposes as the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, where it is possible to carry out activities deemed illegal in the United States. For example, in 2014, a moratorium on federal funding of controversial research to make viruses more lethal to humans by, for instance, genetically modifying them, was imposed in the USA for three years. However, studies conducted at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill on a virus called SHC014, found in horseshoe bats in China, were allowed to proceed because they had started before 2014. Researchers there created a chimaeric virus capable of infecting humans. In theory, such research can be continued in any US partner biolab: in Georgia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan or anywhere else. A controversial theory thus emerges that the Coronavirus was created in one of such US biolabs.
All of these bio-laboratories and related facilities can, in fact, be viewed as undocumented US and NATO military bases, which, as the recent developments have shown, are not actually tasked with helping nations where they are located to detect dangerous pathogens before they pose a security threat and to fight epidemics and pandemics and their consequences.
It’s worth reiterating that the theory claiming the Coronavirus is man-made has not been proven. And it is up to scientists studying the genome of the virus to prove or disprove it. All the statements saying that COVID-19 originated in a laboratory are controversial and there is not enough information for the moment to come to any conclusions.
However, what is certain, at present, is that the stated aims of Pentagon partner biolabs do not appear to correspond to their actual objectives as these facilities have been unable, thus far, to protect countries and their citizens from the suffering and losses they are experiencing on account of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Hence, it will be fairly reasonable for nations where such biolabs are located to hold the United States and the Pentagon accountable right now for their inability to prevent recent outbreaks and to effectively combat the spread of the Coronavirus via international courts and other relevant organizations. These countries ought to sue the US administration for billions of dollars to compensate them for moral and physical damages caused by the pandemic and the failure of biolabs to act in accordance with the aims described by the US Embassy in Kyiv. The nations should also demand closure of such American military facilities on their soil.
Valery Kulikov, political analyst, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.
