November 4, 2020
COVID-19 IS PREVIEW OF DEVELOPING BIOWEAPONRY
ANALYSIS & OPINION BY RUSS STEWART
Note: Nadig Newspapers did NOT publish this column.
(Note: his article was written before Nov. 3. Future columns will analyze election results.)
The prevailing American culture demands and expects instant gratification. Satisfaction must be immediate. Patience is not an option. That same culture also demands and expects immediate solutions. Like to the coronavirus.
Loss of life, now approaching 230,000, is not overly paramount. The U.S. population is 235,000,000, so the COVID-19 mortality rate is 0.0097 percent. Loss of lifestyle, employment and/or quality of life IS paramount.
A recurrence of the misery and disruption of March thru August is unacceptable. Yet there are now 100,000 new positive cases per day, 9 million cases in total over 8 months. The much-feared "second wave" has arrived, another lockdown beckons, the vaccine is unavailable, and nobody has a clue when the pandemic will end.
History's deadliest flu pandemic was the "Spanish Flu" of 1918-20, also called influenza, which killed 200 million. COVID-19's worldwide death toll is 1,210,000 in two-thirds of a year.
Disgraced former president Richard Nixon is better remembered as a crook than as a prophet. But he did make this prophesy: Biological warfare "has massive, unpredictable and potentially uncontrollable consequences...(and) may produce global epidemics...." And they will much resemble the 2020 impact of COVID-19.
It is a fact that in 1969 in the area around Johnston Atoll, an uninhabited series of volcanic islands 1,000 miles west of Hawaii, the U.S. Navy conducted what were characterized as "hot field tests" of biological weapons by using a plane to drop bio-aerosol, or bio-particles of a dry powder, over an area the size of Los Angeles. Strategically placed in that "hot zone" were barges filled with test monkeys. The process was called dry-line source dissemination, with dry powder emanating from airplane pods.
It is a fact that all the monkeys died within 3 days. It included those in cages in the open air, and those below-decks in closed spaces. Poisonous gas has no barriers.
Nixon signed a treaty with the Soviet Union and Great Britain known as the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC). It renounced the first-strike use of chemical weapons, such as anthrax, sarin and tabun, which are chemical nerve gases. And the signatories, called "depository states" because they had stockpiles of BOTH chemical and biological weaponry, promised to destroy those chemical weapons.
Who knows if the destruction of those stockpiles actually occurred?
The Soviets (now Russians) had laboratories with the primary lab called Compound 19 in Sverdlovsk and Obolensk where they grew bacterial life forms, and that the Chinese had a similar laboratory outside of Wuhan, where the COVID-19 coronavirus allegedly originated. They created viruses, using germs and toxins derived from the dead but poisonous residue of bacteria, which are capable of being transmitted through the air and are a strategic bioweapon. They are intended to be deployed in germ warfare situations to cause disease and death over a wide (if not worldwide) geographic area. A bioweapon does not kill everybody but is designed to "crash" a population, wiping out a third or more. Small viral quantities are sufficient to engender an epidemic. If the epidemic occurs on more than one continent, it is a pandemic. The only other strategic weapon is a nuclear bomb, where post-detonation fall-out kills those well beyond the circle of incineration, but destroying everything.
Somewhere in the U.S. there are probably caches of pre- and post BWC chemical and biological weapons. That is a geo-political reality and self-protective necessity. And the U.S. military and the CDC are certainly developing both pathogens and antidotes. America's enemies are doing likewise.
In contrast to biological weapons, chemical weapons are tactical, to be used on a limited basis in a battlefield, city or country, exterminating an army or a population. Such weapons, leaving the terrain and infrastructure intact, must be disseminated in massive quantities. The Soviets in the 1970s were working on low-grade tactical nuclear bombs as well as anthrax-filled field bombs, to be used against NATO troops. Every other non-BWC country can develop what they want or can. Syria used chemical weapons to suppress dissent.
A germ-driven virus is a bioweapon capable of undermining socio-economic systems and fomenting domestic dissent, which is what COVID-19 has done. Only a small quantity, with a host, is needed to initiate viral transmission. In a war situation, only two ounces are needed per square mile. Unlike chemical weapons, which disperse and bio-degrade their genetic materials in sunlight, bio-particles remain airborne for a long duration and attach themselves to lungs in humans and animals, then into the circulatory system, and then to the mid-brain, the complex cluster of nerves at the top of the spinal cord which controls respiration and such mental states as aggression and food consumption. Delirium and then death ensue.
Prior worldwide pandemics have not been man-made, but have been spread both unknowingly and unintentionally, at least initially. Once recognized and isolated, a few became primitive bioweapons. It is reported that at various points in history rotting corpses were catapulted over the walls of besieged cities, arrowheads and sword-blades were dipped into bacteria to insure victims' tetanus, and streams were contaminated by dead bodies. Extermination knows no boundaries. And let's not forget the nearly 1.5 million "Indigenous Americans," who mostly died because of settlers' European diseases - not U.S. Army bullets. It is now called genocide.
INFLUENZA, also known as the 1918-20 "Spanish Flu": It was transmitted virally, originating in the trenches of World War I and spreading across the Atlantic as troops returned. Over 200 million died. Other flu-related pandemics have occurred, including the Russian Flu and the Hong Kong Flu, but none matched the Spanish Flu's deadliness.
BUBONIC PLAGUE: Europe's so-called "Black Death" of 1346-53 wiped out an estimated two-thirds of the population, and was a replication of the 541-542 Plague of Justinian, which wiped out half of Europe. Add to that a Chinese plague in the 1850s, which killed 12 million, and the worldwide death toll, is about 250 million. It was a bacterially transmitted disease spread through bites on humans from fleas who had sucked the blood of diseased rats.
MALARIA: Blame it on the mosquitoes. It is a parasitical disease that has killed an estimated 300 million over the centuries. It was called "Roman Flu" in the days of the Roman Empire. It is especially virulent in tropical areas. Almost a third of the U.S. Panama Canal workforce died from malaria during construction. There are 350-600 million annual worldwide cases of malaria, which can be treated by drugs.
CHOLERA: A bacterial disease transmitted through contaminated drinking water, causing dehydration, vomiting, diarrhea and sometimes death. An estimated 100 million worldwide have died from cholera. The ancient Greeks contracted and cured the problem, which resurfaced in India during the 1800s when pollution clogged the Ganges River. It should be remembered that Chicago used to dump raw sewage into Lake Michigan until the late 1800s.
TYPHUS: A bacterial disease spread by lice, fleas, dirty water or unsanitary conditions. Flu-like symptoms manifest, followed by red pimples all over the body, then foul-smelling open sores and then death. A total of 50 million have died. The disease is increasingly rare. It is said that Napoleon's retreating army lost more soldiers to Typhus than to Russians.
TUBERCULOSIS (TB): An airborne bacterial germ, infecting over one in three living humans during their lifetimes. It remains latent in the lungs of 90-95 percent of people, not affecting respiration capability. Symptoms of the disease are night sweats, chills, chest pain, and expectorating blood by constant coughing. It is treatable. In the early 1900s public "tuberculosis sanitariums" were built (like the existent one at Peterson-Pulaski in Chicago) on large properties. Death toll is 200 million but now minimal.
AIDS: Transmitted virally through sexual activity, AIDS was a scourge in the 1980s among gay men. But drugs, at least in America, have brought it under control. Death toll to date is 40 million, and it originated in Africa from chimps in the 1920s. Most active HIV cases are clustered south of the Sahara.
MEASLES: Transmitted virally like COVID through a cough or sneeze, its toxins hang in the air for 2 hours. Those unvaccinated or immune are at risk, but measles has been declared to be "eliminated" in the U.S. Over 300 million have died over time of the disease.
SMALLPOX: Simple contact - touching or breathing - spreads this viral disease. It starts with a rash, which progresses to pus-filled blisters, then scabs, scars and lesions, then excruciating pain and blindness. Then death. Not a nice way to die. Smallpox has been around for 12,000 years, and was the principal agent of extermination of the American Indians.
The bottom-line: Gases of mass destruction are stockpiled and exist, and the motivation to use these bioweapons exists. Some day, somewhere, somebody - country or terrorist - is going to use them. COVID-19 may be an unintentional sneak preview.