A “highly transmissible” and “virulent respiratory illness” for which there is no cure may incite a global pandemic.
That was the assessment of a 2008 US intelligence report. The prediction was accurate — but no one was prepared.

The 2008 report by the US National Intelligence Council (NIC) warned that this new disease could be “extremely contagious” and that there would be “no adequate treatment” available at the time of its spread, leading to worldwide pandemic. It suggested that highly pathogenic strains of bird flu like H5NI were “likely candidates,” but a “coronavirus or other influenza strains” could have the same potential.
It said this outbreak would begin in an area of high population density and where humans and animals often live in close quarters, giving China as a specific example. The Covid-19 virus is said to have originated at a wet market in Wuhan, where live and dead animals are sold and where hygiene standards are poor.

By Danielle Ryan, an Irish freelance writer based in Dublin. Her work has appeared in Salon, The Nation, Rethinking Russia, teleSUR, RBTH, The Calvert Journal and others. Follow her on Twitter @DanielleRyanJ
Read more:
https://www.rt.com/news/485718-experts-warned-pandemic-years/
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In 1988, I visited a friend in Los Angeles who was dying from AIDS. It seems such a long time ago, or as if it was yesterday. AIDS at the time was a “gay” disease. No matter what happened after, most of the people infected were homosexual men. It started to spread into the hetero-community via bis-sexual men, sharing drug needles and via blood transfusion. The first death from AIDS I was made aware off, was a cousin of my friend, in 1984. Even at the time, the doctors did not know much about this. It is only recently that gays have been allowed to give blood to the Red Cross, under severe screening conditions. I could not give blood because I had had malaria and had experienced fever here. Like Gus in the mid 1960s, my friend had spent time during the late 1950s and 1960s in Africa as well, where some of his friends were chimps apart from other humans. In nature, chimpanzees could be our closest relative. 

In the early 1980s, when this new HIV virus hit humanity, especially gay men, many questions were asked about the origin of an ordinary pathogen living peacefully in monkeys, now crossing into the defenceless humans. AIDS was destroying our immune system. When I saw my friend in May, he knew his fate in regard to this “bloody thing”. He was rich enough to afford a very expensive course of AZT that got him alive through another year, though he had nearly died in August 1987. He died in September 1988. And there was nothing I could do except share his hospitality as if there was nothing to fear. And there was nothing to fear, I felt. Here, contagion was specific. Note here that Gus has always been heterosexual  but care had to be taken nonetheless. The sales of condoms shot through the roof worldwide in parallel with population control, as “the pill” was effective in controlling making babies, but not infections from AIDS and other venereal claps.

But some of the questions then had been, had the AIDS virus been specially “engineered” in secret labs somewhere to hit gays? At the time, some immunologist German doctors I’m still friend with after 50 years, could not believe that this was the case. Few people were aware of the warfare biolabs in the USA (though they were mentioned after the utterance by Richard Nixon in 1972)  and of those around the world, which at the time did not have “genetic manipulation” as such in their repertoire, but were practicing selective breeding to increase the virulence of pathogens  Planned or accidental release, or natural boundary crossing? As TOM's Law #1 says: There Is No such thing as a Stupid Question.

Note: TOM’s law here could relate to Carl Sagan’s work The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark that said: "There are naive questions, tedious questions, ill-phrased questions, questions put after inadequate self-criticism. But every question is a cry to understand the world. There is no such thing as a dumb question”. A woman, recounting a story about an old man who used to answer all her "stupid questions", explained "Chica, if you ask a question it makes you look stupid for 5 minutes – but if you don't ask – you stay stupid for fifty years, so always ask questions in your life”.
Or it could refer to Tom Law’s INYAFACE — The title ‘In Ya Face’ came about from a close friend who, on viewing some of Tom’s twitter posts, thought they were a little aggressive and bordering on the offensive! This second volume Inyaface2 is the resulting collection of a proportion of Tom Law’s posts for 2018 to 2019. It was another eventful year with a broad spectrum of political shenanigans and wars going on around the world some of which are portrayed here. Hopefully of some entertainment value and not to be taken too seriously!

Not to be taken too seriously? We’re in effing lockdown mate! We’re not dying from laughter!

Since the AIDS epidemic we have come a long way. GENETIC MANIPULATION IS NOW IN FULL SWING. We cannot ignore this. We the general public are barely aware of what the GM possibilities are — except in food — and a Chinese doctor who did such genetic manipulation on a human embryo that grew into a kid, is now in prison for breach of “ethics” (or possibly for revealing the trick). 

So when a 2008 report (see article above) by the US National Intelligence Council (NIC) warned us about the possibility of new disease that could be “extremely contagious”, we shall ask the question: would it be natural or man-made? Straight away just asking this is going to be seen as “conspiracy theory”. But we have to ask, haven’t we?

Even in Africa, one Gus was aware of diseases such as malaria and leprosy. Like the Covid19 virus, the leprosy bacteria is easily rid off by washing with soap. Malaria was more iffy. Still is. It kills about 450,000 people a year with about 15 million infected added per year. Some strain and style of infection are more dangerous than others. Malaria is an infection by a protozoa. 

The flu — a viral infection — still kills 290 000 to 650 000 people per year worldwide depending on the spread, with say between 100 to 300 million people “getting the flu”. Now with Covid19, it seems that, in about four months, the number of infected people is about 1.5 million and the number of death around 100,000. Is it more virulent than previous diseases? The WHO chief tells us it’s 10 times more dangerous than N1H1… (see: https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/2009-h1n1-pandemic.html)

So what is so different with Covid19? Why now, 2020? Why not say in 1977 or 1983? What would have been our reaction? Would we practice severe isolation added to the long established state of quarantine? How would the media have reported this outbreak then? Would the outbreak have been seen as less severe than it is now because the media could not froth it up? Or would have we not counted the dead so "accurately"? And please do not pass the hat with the answer of “wet markets” and high concentration of people. This would be a STUPID answer.

Although there were less humans on this planet, there was “wet markets” and high concentrations of people in places, back then in 1960, 1977 and 1983. We can admit that “there was less travel”. Tourism was mostly an activity for some rich bourgeois, adventurers, poets, and the royals on a junket to visit subjects in the antipodes. Some unhygienic travel was also due to refugees fleeing wars, like Vietnamese crowding on sinking boats. As well in the 1970s, the media was not such an immediate medium and had a certain “moment of truth” by revealing the damage of the Vietnam war. Presently, like during he war on Saddam, a lot media has been EMBEDDED with the government and saturated while wasting investigations and asking questions, on “colour” stories of people’s experiences via youtube, Skype and other individual platform. These stories rarely add to the general ignorance nor to the practical knowledge...

We thus have a problem. We had constructed “freedom-based” liberal democratic systems in the West, trying to implement such in the East and Middle East with various successes and failures — but we valued what we had achieved in a relative “free spirit”. And we were “globalizing". But was “globalizing" with freedom fraught with problems for the Empire that preferred CONTROLLED globalisation, with boots and all? Is this a stupid question?

Did we have too much freedom? Is this virus designed to reset the human relationships parameters or is it totally accidental BUT USED by the powers to reset and control these relationships… It seems we have entered a dark tunnel despite the daily sunlight and we don’t know what’s at the end of it. 

But is there people who secretly know what’s there is to come? DID THEY PLAN IT? Just asking this is going to make us seen as “conspiracy theory”. Remember TOM's Law #1 says: There Is No such thing as a Stupid Question.

These are fair questions which are not see yet on the main stream media, or the answers from the MSM presently are that "asking such question is to subscribe to conspiracy theory”. We shall see the MSM in six months time, when the isolation of individuals and the loss of jobs would have probably taken a far heavier toll on humans than the disease. This is what we’re facing. The governments are prepared to walk a fine line here and are using the media from traditional to internet platforms.The media itself has become a virus by transmitting stories about the virus. How will we regain our “free-spirit”? Will we be allowed to? has democracy died?

When could another such pandemic hit us between the eyes? Next year? In 2023? Would we have to go through the same painful process again, as, more than likely, the next pandemic would be more severe than this one, because of the “concentration of people” and “wet markets”. Would the next pandemic be designed to control population and rearrange its colour "mix”?

You do not have to answer, just ask the questions… Say, why does KFC use the flower duet song from Lakmé by Delibes to sell its fried chicken legs… Perverse, isn’t it?

GL.Questionator...