The United States has now suffered over 580,000 deaths due to COVID, daily rates are way down now with the vaccine readily available (My 13-year-old got her first Pfizer jab yesterday, in just five weeks, she and I can travel the world. We are among the lucky to have made it through). There is obviously never a “good time” to have an epidemic, but COVID came to the United States when we couldn’t have been more susceptible. The U.S. was led by the single dumbest, least responsible, most self-centered, and vain president in history.

In 2018, Trump gutted the carefully created White House Pandemic Response Team – almost surely because it was an Obama-era office – the one borne after miscommunication involving Ebola. When COVID hit, Trump responded in the same way he’s responded to problems throughout his life, deny it was a problem, talk about greatness around the corner, say people are lying. As it got worse, Trump worried more about the economy than he ever did about public health or even his own health. Universal mask-wearing provided the most effective means to combat the disease and there was no damned way in hell Trump was wearing a mask. And yes, it all came while Trump was busy campaigning. COVID peaked during the holiday season between 2020-21 worst while Trump was desperate trying to “unlose” the election.

Now Devin Nunes wants some damned answers as to what went wrong. He wants the Biden administration to investigate what happened. But he only wants to know what happened in China, not here. Devin spoke to Maria Bartiromo, who agrees with everything every MAGA says on her show. Per Crooks and Liars:

“If you begin to look at the circumstantial evidence, I think it’s pretty clear that there wasn’t some guy in a wet market in China that ate a bat,” began Nunes, ever sensitive to racial stereotypes and the rise in hate crimes against Asian-Americans since early 2020. (/sarcasm) “It likely didn’t come from there. There’s zero evidence of that.”

“But there’s building circumstantial evidence that indeed this did come from a lab, and indeed, likely there was money that flowed from the U.S. government through non-profits, that was actually supporting this type of research that was going on in China,”

We are in no position to make a judgment on the origin of the virus, nature versus lab. We have not read of any report establishing that the virus came from a lab. But we are in a position to say that Devin Nunes doesn’t know much about anything. Devin doesn’t even know when “it’s pretty clear” to give up lawsuits against internet cows, lawsuits in which he had “zero evidence.” We do not think that Nunes is “credible” in any situation in which he talks about “research.”

And then Devin accuses the Biden Administration of sitting on intelligence against China!

“I think they’re sitting on, and suppressing a lot of intelligence that the American people should see in order to know how to move ahead over the coming next few years, as China continues to gain control of the life science arena, and the life science global economy. We’re trying to move all this technology over to China, while at the same time, not answering basic questions about the origins of this virus.

We think that the Trump administration would have been the ones to gather such intelligence and indeed did try to gather such intelligence. China is an adversary but they were not the only American adversary, nor even the most “adversarial,” not until the Trump administration, that is. We are still adversaries with Russia but all talk of that ended with Trump, all of it. So it continues to serve MAGAs (and Putin) well by having Americans angry with the Chinese.

We will hear more and more of this type of thing throughout the Biden administration. Just like January 6th has become whitewashed, the MAGAs will try to increasingly associate COVID with the Biden Administration.

Devin Nunes claims to have evidence, which he then adds is circumstantial, that the US government-funded the creation of COVID 19 in a Chinese lab.

A reminder: Devin Nunes is the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee. pic.twitter.com/N99cgxmFrK

— Sarah Reese Jones (@PoliticusSarah) May 16, 2021

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Peace, y’all
Jason
[email protected] and on Twitter @JasonMiciak