How Much Should We Blame China for COVID-19?

How Much Should We Blame China for COVID-19? This week, I talk with Havok Journal owner Charlie Faint and his father, retired Colonel Don Faint about the origins of COVID-19 and how much responsibility China should have for the outbreak and the spread of it. Spoiler alert: a lot. So this was one of those weeks where the subject fell into our lap because this is the week the lab leak theory gained a lot of mainstream attention, and then the guest fell into our lap because Charlie’s dad was in town. It was a pleasure to have Don on, especially because his long and fascinating Army career had absolutely nothing to do with China and he willing tackled the subject with humility and insight anyway. Honestly, I feel that he says more simply and in a few words than I do pontificating and caveating and sidebarring for five minutes. The end result is an episode that goes beyond the mask debate, the school closures, the state guidelines, and focuses on the real villain - the CCP.

Show Alibis

My big alibi this week is we managed to record a show during Memorial Day weekend and didn’t say a word about Memorial Day. Totally my fault. But it is funny. Memorial Day never meant that much to me when I was in the military for the simple reason that every day was Memorial Day – I never stopped thinking about my fellow soldiers, the missions, and the losses in both my life and others. This was my first Memorial Day as a civilian in 14 years and it means a lot more to me now. Free and clear of military obligations, I can sort of exhale and examine things with perspective now, so I find myself a lot more emotional, wistful, and awed by others’ service. Of course that newfound impact occurred on Monday – Memorial Day – and not on Saturday when we recorded. Next year’s show will probably be very different.

Errors were remarkably few and far between during this episode. Charlie says that “you can never have enough Chris” which really should have warranted a “phrasing” from me, and I mention the “temperature” we live in these days, which was a not-totally-successful attempt at repurposing a word for purely literary reasons. But other than that…

This weekend A Quiet Place II premiered. That is not why we included mysterious and suspicious shuffling noises throughout the episode. Charlie’s dogs were on the loose early in the episode. In case discussing China’s role in the outbreak isn’t suspenseful enough, hopefully you’re on the edge of your seat listening to the sounds of impending slobber about to engulf Don.

Hey – The Hill by Aaron Kirk is out for pre-order!!!

Show Notes

Who Are the Uighers?

Lab leaks do happen

Jameson Fouss letter to Washington about WIV

2012 outbreak in Yunnan Province

Jim Geraghty’s Pulitzer-worthy reporting on COVID-19

Matthew Pottinger on Face the Nation

ODNI warning about China’s collection of global bio-data

China welding Wuhan citizens into buildings to cover-up COVID-19

China arrested 8 for “spreading hoaxes” about COVID-19. What happened to them?

Claims about China bioweapons program from former head of the Soviet bioweapons program