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The Covid crisis has taken a surprising turn with the publication of an article in the "Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists" recently. "The Orgins of Covid: Did people or nature open Pandora's box at Wuhan?" by Nicholas Wade is a well written and only moderately complicated article covering where the virus came from. Well worth the read. One of the more surprising elements of the story came near the end of the article where it was shown that Dr. Anthony Fauci (National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director) and Dr Francis Collins (National Institutes of Health director, Fauci's boss) twisted the rules in order to give several million dollars to the Wuhan Institute of Virology for "Gain of Function" research on corona bat viruses. I have seen figures between 3.7 milion taxpayer dollars and 7.4 million taxpayer dollars. Whatever the amount, it was substantial. Also, it is uncontested. Even sites such as Politifact agree that taxpayer money was given to Chinese Virologists via an intermedary named Peter Daszak. Officially, the goal of "Gain of Function" research is to "increase the capacity of a pathogen to cause illness" or in plainer words: a naturally occuring virus is modified by genetic engineering techniques to make it more infectious to humans and this in order to effect a more potent vaccine. Whether there is another goal here is still being argued about. Representative Mike Gallagher (R - Wisconsin) is one of the few that have begun to ask Fauci and company what they were thinking when they did an end run on the moratorium against fiddling with these neutron bomb viruses (ie. diseases that can wipe out millions of people and leave structure standing).

One of the little details that has been nagging me since the start is the lack of infection rate statistics. Websites are everywhere that will tell you how many cumulative infections there have been, total deaths, what the increase has been this day, where the increases are located, and on and on. But I have yet to see a website publicize cumulative infections vs total population. So I put away my concerns about internet covid number accuracy, looked at a few countries, wrote down some of those numbers and pulled out my calculator. Topping the cumulative infection list with 33.1 million is the USA. With a population of 332.6 million, it's easy to figure out that 9.9% of our population has been infected, and that's the top of the list too. Looks like the US is number one again. Israel has only had 839 thousand infections but with a population of 9.23 million they have an infection rate of 9.1% of their population, second on the list. You can see where I am going with this. Although there is currently a raging outbreak in India, only 1.4% of their population has ever been infected. Russia: 3.3%, Mexico 1.8%, Canada 3.2%. The standout in this ignored statistic is China. The websites tell me that there has only been 103,622 cases of covid in all of China since the start and that gives an infection rate of .0074%. Seems like the Chinese know something about how to control this disease that we don't. Did the Chinese create a disease using US taxpayer dollars and engineer a fix for it as well? Or is covid a random evolutionary event and the Chinese have simply been extrordinarily lucky in avoiding its effects?

The God vs Devil part of this is in the fault line of the debate. There is no denial that these bureaucrat doctors gave taxpayer money to elements of a competing power in order to carry on risky research that if it went wrong could kill millions. That's not where the disagreement is taking place. The thing being argued is: "Did the corona virus come from intelligent design in a lab or was it a random evolutionary event?" The answer to this question has consequences. Is genetic research a force for good or a force for evil? Can Dr. Fauci or the vaccine be trusted? Will random evolution be the source of all future pandemics? For me, the debate is uncannily similar to the debate "Did world come from intelligent design or did the world simply evolve by a series of random events?" The answer to this debate has consequences as well. Is there a God? Is there good and evil in the world or is it all just random events? Do I trust random evolution to save me or do I need a supernatural God? The debate over the origins of the corona virus seems like a smaller real world version of this larger debate that only theologians and those churchy types seem to care about. But maybe that's the point. If humans don't care whether God or Random Chance created the world, maybe they will care about the origins of this killer virus when their lives are on the line.

How about you? What is your response to where the world seems to be headed? Do events happen from intelligent design or via random chance? Choose well, there are consequences to either path.

Robert Wayman

Musselshell