Tony Abbott tried to warn us of pandemic threat
As health minister in 2005, Tony Abbott raised the alarm of a pandemic sweeping out of Asia. Now, his prediction has become reality – and China is stonewalling an investigation, writes Alan Jones.
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We can be proud of the fact that it was our Prime Minister who made the first call, anywhere in the world, to label the Chinese disease as a pandemic.
Now, sensibly, he is asking powerful world leaders, including China, to consider an independent committee headed by a world health expert to inquire into the origins of the outbreak.
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In a perverted sense of logic, elements of the Chinese administration want an inquiry, down the track, by the World Health Organisation, the same outfit which, despite reports circulating as early as December about the virus, failed to investigate.
Indeed, the WHO, right up to mid-January, publicly endorsed Chinese insistence that there was no human to human transmission.
The former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, speaking on New York talkback radio last month, was not far off the mark when he said, “They sent over a million people around the world – 1.5 million – almost like ambassadors carrying the disease … what’s wrong with them? They have no conscience. It’s really a tragedy. This is directly caused by the Chinese Communist Government and by the choices they made.”
I have spoken before about the American social scientist Steven Mosher.
Admittedly, he has a bit of a cloudy academic past, but only because he has done extensive research work in China.
He is the founding member of an outfit called “A Committee on the Present Danger: China”.
Mosher wrote a piece on February 22 referring to an emergency meeting held by Chairman Xi in which the Chairman reportedly said, among other things, that lab safety is “a national security issue”.
Chairman Xi did not admit that the coronavirus had escaped from one of the country’s bio-research labs.
But Mosher did write, re the virus escaping, “The very next day, evidence emerged suggesting this is exactly what happened as the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology released a new directive titled ‘Instructions on Strengthening Biosecurity Management in Microbiology Labs that handle Advanced Viruses like the Novel Coronavirus’”.
There is only one microbiology lab in China that handles “advanced viruses”, which is in Wuhan.
No one is suggesting that the viruses were made and let loose.
On the contrary, Mosher argues that a senior researcher, Major General Chen, was dispatched to Wuhan, suggesting that the coronavirus may have escaped from the National Biosafety Laboratory which is part of the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
She was sent to put the genie back in the bottle, so to speak.
Mosher argues that China first blamed the seafood market, not the wet market, not far from the Institute of Virology, even though the first documented cases of COVID-19 involved people who had never set foot in the seafood market.
Was this one of the many cover ups?
Mosher argues that China pointed to snakes, bats and even a cute scaly little anteater called a pangolin as the source of the virus.
But, snakes don’t carry coronaviruses and bats aren’t sold at the seafood market.
The evidence he said, therefore, points to research being carried out at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and he further argues the virus may have been carried out of the lab by an infected worker or crossed over into human beings when they unknowingly dined on a lab animal.
The point is simple.
A world inquiry is urgent.
And it must be an inquiry conducted by an entity that does not offer China the power of veto.
The world needs to know
While sections of the Trump Administration are arguing that the naturally occurring virus came out of a laboratory, rather than a wet market, they are not arguing that this was deliberate, but rather accidental, consistent with what Mosher is arguing.
This makes Scott Morrison’s call even more urgent.
Let us not forget that it was on February 13 that the Chinese Embassy in Canberra was expressing “deep regret and dissatisfaction” over Australian restrictions on travel from China.
You and I know we most probably should have imposed such restrictions much earlier.
But the Chinese Embassy was saying these were “extreme measures which were an over-reaction”.
What is China likely to do while it perceives America and Europe, with people dying, as being dangerously incapacitated economically?
It is clear that the Chinese Communist Party is determined to emerge from COVID-19 in a stronger, strategic position than pre-coronavirus.
We can’t afford China to grow strategically stronger simply because of the West’s conspicuous economic weakness.
Abbott saw it coming
It would do no harm to dust off a speech made by Tony Abbott, as Health Minister, back in May 2005, in Ottawa, in which he argued, “It’s impossible to say if and when and how a pandemic might develop, but it could be a worldwide biological version of the Indian Ocean tsunami”.
Tony Abbott drew attention, at an infectious diseases conference that “worldwide Spanish flu killed an estimated 40 million people compared to 15 million killed in the Great War”.
He wrote, “In the United States … where it struck early, it’s estimated the virus severely affected 25% of the then population of 105 million with 650,000 deaths”.
I say this only because we tend to forget the brutality of such numbers.
Wrote Tony Abbott at that time, 2005, “Manning Clark’s History of Australia reports that in January 1919, theatres, picture shows, pubs, race meetings and schools were closed until further notice and that people were advised to wear masks over their faces in public … 12,000 deaths in hospital made comparatively little impact alongside the 61,000 deaths in battle that the young nation had just suffered, even though 60% of the flu victims were aged between 20 and 45”.
Prophetically he said, “Although the WHO would formally declare that any new pandemic had broken out, it may be prudent for Australia to commence border security measures beforehand”.
Well though we have done, many would argue we could have closed our borders much earlier.
Abbott said “Once a decision to impose border security measures had been made, every incoming passenger would be required to make a health declaration; thermal scanners would operate at international airports to detect possible flu cases on entry and quarantine isolation areas would be established”.
Did this happen?
Abbott made the further point, “Not since World War II have Australians had to cope with very large numbers of premature deaths. Australians are unused to contemplating the possibility of death on a massive scale … it is hard to discuss potential disasters outside people’s ordinary experience without generating the sort of lurid headlines which make some scoff and others panic”.
“It’s important,” he wrote, “not to overreact to potential threats. On the other hand … people and their governments need to take credible threats seriously and take reasonable and proportionate precautions against them. If a deadly flu pandemic ever seems imminent, no preparations will be enough”.
Abbott, in 2005, very much ahead of his time.
Surely, in any “National Cabinet”, Tony Abbott’s knowledge would be invaluable.
One final point which disturbs all Australians.
Why, when push turns to shove, do bats come first and human beings second?
These things are vermin, they are pests and they are dangerous.
Here in Australia we now have 97 deaths, and the whole world is talking about wet markets and bats.
What do we do?
Well, farmers and landholders are prohibited from eradicating bats.
Yet they excrete a virus, a deadly virus, more often than usual in stressful situations.
We’re talking about the Coronavirus.
What about the Hendra Virus?
It kills.
And Lyssavirus?
It kills.
Yet governments protect bats; but we don’t protect people.
There is no treatment for bat Lyssavirus, which results in paralysis, delirium, convulsions and death.
Why are animal rights activists heard over the pleas of the public, parents and landowners?
Bats, here as in China, are killing people.
Doing nothing is not an option.
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