COVID Throwback, Rion Weaves the NC Lab Leak Conspiracy, March 20, 2020
A Series on Misinformation, Disinformation and Subterfuge
While COVID still claims an insanely high number of lives daily, it is no longer a major political boiling point it once was, understanding the propaganda and misinformation pumped out by pro-Russian/Republican media sources, is still needed. One of the biggest pieces was that of OAN, One American News, Chanel Rion.
Citing a published November 2015 study and a “trusted” source, Greg Rubini, Rion laid a foundational conspiracy that not only did the GOP weaponize, but China did too. Here is that source.
It gets better, because the Op account’s profile picture like Brad Shuttleworth’s who at least altered his Bill Murray, just posted a lazy quickly identifiable headshot from one of the best movies of all-time.
Rion, took offense to being caught, and deployed the same ableist attack that our trained trolls do, and got out Meme’d as a Twitter slap down.
It honestly was “fun” at the time with the Twitter spat until one sees what was happening at the foundational level.
The state of the art vaccines based on the technology “gain of function” research Rion highlights, would be shunned heavily, causing significant die-offs of mostly older Americans whose lives likely would have been saved had it not been for the collective fear mongering that ensued. People were convinced the propagandists were the smart ones and the PHDs that had prepped for such emerging threats the untrusted nincompoops, forsaking the protection the vaccines granted without actually risking an infection.
That gain of function research, the use of only a minuscule portion of the entire genetic code of a virus, in no way is the possible source of the COVID outbreak in Wuhan. To put it simply, it’s like having only a single line from a Shakespearean play, running that through the copy machine and expecting the entire literary work to be printed off. Rion’s report was simply a foundational conspiracy push.
For the record, although identified first spreading in Wuhan, China, there is no reason to believe that the disease was a bio lab leak. Further, the Virus was circulating and undetected elsewhere prior to the October 2019 Wuhan Military Games that brought international troops to the region coinciding with 10-14 days incubation and spread that naturally occurred after that event.
Brazil is where research has indicated the disease first began to spread. A March 8, 2021 published study on poop confirmed that it was spreading late November 2019, and other reports stated other studies found viral samples in sewage as early as March 2019. More research needs to be conducted; however, at this time the COVID lab leak has zero substantiated credibility to it despite the GOP push to manufacture such a conspiracy.