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When The Heritage Foundation released its comprehensive report on the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, headlines tended to focus on the cost to the U.S. That’s not surprising: At an eye-popping $18 trillion, it’s almost 10 times the projected 2024 budget deficit. Arguably, however, the commission’s most infuriating conclusion was this: The global pandemic was “totally preventable,” in the words of Commissioner Dr. Robert Redfield, an experienced virologist who headed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention during the outbreak. Had the Chinese government been more transparent and cooperative at the outset of the pandemic, millions of lives and trillions of dollars could have been spared. The pandemic’s “proximal origin,” the commission found, was the Chinese government’s “aggressive opposition to honesty, transparency, and accountability” along with its “systemic cover up.” The Cover-Up The commission—a blue-ribbon team of experts led by former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe and supported by data scientists, economists, and lawyers—concluded that the SARS-CoV-2 virus began circulating months before Beijing warned the world, likely in August-September 2019. The Chinese government then not only withheld key details, it engaged in an elaborate and deadly cover-up. Dr. Jamie Metzl—one of the commission’s Democrats who served at the National Security Council, U.S. Senate, and State Department—condemned Beijing for having “destroyed samples, hidden records, imprisoned Chinese citizen journalists, gagged Chinese scientists, blocked any meaningful international investigations, and cynically sandbagged the World Health Organization.” Ratcliffe described China’s behavior during this period as “frankly inexcusable.” Added Metzl: “There can be, in our view, little doubt that China’s government is primarily responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic. But for the unique pathologies of the Chinese state, there very likely would have been no pandemic at all.” The Cost Worldwide, the COVID-19 pandemic is considered one of the seven deadliest plagues in human history, with excess deaths topping 28 million, according to some estimates. The World Bank has characterized the economic upheaval caused by the pandemic as “the largest global economic crisis in more than a century,” with low-income countries hit the hardest. The commission’s assessment that the pandemic cost the U.S. alone $18 trillion includes $8.6 trillion in “excess deaths,” $1.8 trillion in income lost, $6 trillion in chronic conditions like “long COVID,” $1.1 trillion in mental health costs, and $400 million in education losses. The Origin While the origin of the pandemic wasn’t the focus of the commission, notably all nine commissioners concluded, without dissent, that the pandemic “very likely stemmed from a research-related incident in Wuhan.” Indeed, evidence continues to emerge further strengthening the “lab leak” theory and casting greater doubt on the “natural spillover” theory. The Wuhan Institute of Virology was at the time conducting dangerous gain of function experiments to make coronaviruses more transmissible to humans, and it was doing so in alarmingly unsafe conditions. The Wuhan Institute of Virology experienced an unspecified “incident” in 2019, when several lab workers fell sick, the Chinese military abruptly assumed control of the lab, the lab mysteriously deleted its online database of over 10,000 bat virus samples at 2 a.m., and ordered an expensive new air incinerator. A Chinese military scientist then produced a vaccine with logic-defying speed before suddenly going missing and being scrubbed from government records. In recent months, new details have emerged about a 2018 grant proposal that sought funding to manipulate coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in very specific ways—ways that exactly match the highly unusual features of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that have never been seen in nature. At the event unveiling the Heritage report, Redfield contended SARS-CoV-2 shows “clear signs of engineering” and its origin “had nothing to do with” a natural spillover event at a Wuhan animal market. The full commission report concludes that despite four years of extensive hypothesis testing, today “there is no evidentiary basis” for the theory of natural spillover. The handful of early pandemic academic papers advancing the natural spillover theory have since been hollowed out by fatal challenges to their underlying methods and conclusions. Rather than a viral leap from animal to humans, Redfield contended that the pandemic was “a direct consequence of scientific arrogance, with the scientists that were intentionally teaching this virus how to infect humans never recognizing something would ever go wrong. And, in fact, unfortunately this virus did escape.” Preventing Another Pandemic To avoid a future pandemic and hold the Chinese government accountable, the commission report concluded with several practical recommendations for the U.S. government: Establish a bipartisan national COVID-19 commission to conduct “a review of China’s negligence and cover-up as well as an evaluation of domestic policies that were implemented” in response to the pandemic. Create a bipartisan reparations or compensation task force to cover claims against the Chinese government. Facilitate the filing of civil claims against China to allow civilians harmed by COVID-19 to receive compensation by amending the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act. Decouple U.S. government and commercial supply chains from Chinese state-backed companies. Audit all U.S. government funding for biomedical research and related research activities in China. Impose economic sanctions on Chinese officials and entities who were complicit in or supported the “distortion and concealment” of information related to the COVID-19 pandemic. The COVID-19 pandemic was almost certainly the deadliest and costliest event of the 21st century. Beijing’s ability to escape virtually any accountability—and the global media’s relative disinterest in the pandemic’s origins, cost, and China’s culpability—are equal parts confounding and infuriating. “China’s response to SARS1 20 years ago was abysmal,” Metzl argued at the Heritage event. “China’s response to SARS2, 20 years later despite all these international processes, was even worse. And the reason … is there was no accountability for all the obfuscation in the first case. With 28 million people dead as a result of COVID-19 and tens of trillions of dollars in damages it simply unacceptable, and frankly unimaginable, that every stone should not be overturned examining what went wrong.” This article was originally published by RealClearWorld and made available via RealClearWire The post COVID-19: The Preventable Pandemic appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Whatever one may think of former President Donald Trump, it's hard to deny that the man has a penchant for wit. After all, you need some some semblance of improvisational chops to become a WWE Hall of Famer. More so, there's something beyond politics about why so many swathes of...

The political elite in Washington D.C. practice an occult religion that involves the sacrifice of children and the consumption of their blood, according to a young whistleblower who spent years working on Capitol Hill. According [...] The post Whistleblower: Nancy Pelosi Murdered a Child in ‘Horrific’ Adrenochrome Ritual  appeared first on The People's Voice.

Israel thwarted a massive Hezbollah attack that was directed at their Mossad headquarters, eleven IDF bases, and many other targets. In a pre-emptive strike, 100 Israeli fighter jets simultaneously hit thousands of rocket launchers last night in Lebanon, which were mostly aimed at southern Israel. Hezbollah still managed to fire hundreds of rockets and nearly […] The post Massive Hezbollah Attack: Israel Strikes Pre-Emptively appeared first on www.independentsentinel.com.

It was Christmas 1988 and the last one that my whole family enjoyed together. My parents had just divorced but still came to my aunt and uncle’s house for the holiday, so it was one of the most vivid holiday memories I have. It was the first year my aunt and uncle offered us the Christmas Box, where my brother and I could take the contents of the box or $10. My older brother took the $10, leaving my younger brother to dig through all the crap they put in the box, including about thirty bucks in hidden $5 bills.That wasn’t the best gift of that day, and neither was the Transformers double Power Master Doubledealer I received, which was still pretty awesome. No, the best gift my brothers and I got was Fireball Island. “The Dimensional Adventure Game of Pitfalls and Perils!” had players climbing to the peak of the Fireball Island to be the first to obtain a jewel from the idol Vul-Kar and return to the beach. But watch out, Vul-Kar will burn and crush you to death, spewing fireballs until all the treasure hunters are destroyed.Fireball Island was unlike practically any board game I’d ever played because instead of laying flat on a table, it rose with a full 3-dimensional topography. Hell, the box itself was twice as tall as any board game I’ve ever owned before. Many valleys and canyons ran from the peak in the center down to the base of the mountain in fabulous molded detail. Each individually named path is marked with spots players travel along with each roll of the dice, and small indents and caves dotted each trail. Pieces included in the game acted as bridges over some canyons, offering players precarious paths.As players made their way up the island, red marble fireballs would careen down their path, either when a player rolled a 1 on the die or played a Fireball card. If a player gets hit by the fireball (or knocked off a bridge by one), they end up in a smolder pit or water and may lose a turn or two before they can attempt their run again. As soon as a player reaches the idol and steals the jewel, it’s a race to the beach, with every other player trying to steal the jewel for themselves. Of course, the fireballs are the primary draw of the game, with five of them placed atop the board at various locations. Any time a player rolls a 1 or plays a fireball card, they can pick a fireball to roll down the chutes to run over other players. I remember doing it all the time, even when not playing the game, just to run over the miniature figures lined up in the valley. The best spot though was inside Vul-Kar’s idol itself, which players can rotate atop its spot at the peak to go down any path on the board, which is where my brightest memory of that Christmas lays.You have to remember that I was 11 when we got this game. While everyone else was busy watching my brothers open their presents, I looked around to make sure no one was looking. When I saw everyone was occupied, I enacted my plan – to push the marble out of the idol with my tongue. I got into position and the marble rolled out, and as soon as the mission was accomplished, I discovered that my Uncle Kurt had witnessed the whole thing. He just looked at me, smiling and shaking his head. My secret was safe with him.Even though the game has been updated after a successful Kickstarter campaign, the original game still holds a special place in my heart, and not just because it was my first French kiss.