Cotton spouts ‘Wuhan virus’ in echo of his claim coronavirus may be bioweapon
In a tweet, the Arkansas Republican left no doubt that his statement was directed at China:
Critics slammed Cotton for exploiting the deadly pandemic to beat the drums of war as the U.S. struggles to contain the COVID-19 outbreak. […]
Cotton’s statement Thursday was not the first time the senator has indulged in conspiracy theories related to the origins of the novel coronavirus, which has infected more than 130,000 people and killed nearly 5,000 worldwide.
In a Feb. 17 appearance on Fox News, Cotton parroted the unfounded claim that coronavirus may have emerged from a biochemical lab in Wuhan, China, the epicenter of the outbreak. […]
Richard Ebright, a professor of chemical biology at Rutgers University, told the Washington Post last month that “there’s absolutely nothing in the genome sequence of this virus that indicates the virus was engineered.”
“The possibility this was a deliberately released bioweapon can be firmly excluded,” said Ebright.
TOP COMMENTS • HIGH IMPACT STORIES
“Without equity, pandemic battles will fail. Viruses will simply recirculate, and perhaps undergo mutations or changes that render vaccines useless, passing through the unprotected populations of the planet. A man lucky enough to receive an effective vaccine against a new viral threat in Los Angeles may be re-exposed a year later to a mutated version of that germ that circulated among unimmunized populations in poor countries, only to slam North America in a second wave. That is what happened with influenza in 1918, which spread across Europe in a mild form, returning months later in its terrifying virulence and killing more than 50 million people (by recently adjusted estimates perhaps 100 million people).” ~~Laurie Garrett, 2011
At Daily Kos on this date in 2007—Impeach Gonzales:
Of course the people at the highest levels of the White House were involved in the prosecutor purge. That can’t come as any surprise to anyone who’s paid a modicum of attention to the machinations of this administration for the past six years. Of course Rove is in the thick of it.
While Rove’s role is interesting, don’t lose sight of the fact that it is Alberto Gonzales, confirmed by the Senate to serve as the top law enforcement officer of the land, who swore in testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee that he understood that as Attorney General he would serve the Constitution above the president. Don’t forget it was Alberto Gonzales who testified under oath before the Senate Judiciary Committee on January 18, 2007 that none of the firings were politically motivated.