I am a cranky old lady with 18 years disease control experience, two degrees in Political Science and no patience left for nonsense. Any questions? No? Good.

The entire response to the panicdemic was botched. The WHO and ESPECIALLY the CDC knew better than the crap they were pulling. We here in the United States have over EIGHTY YEARS of successful disease intervention. We lead the charge in ERADICATING small pox. We DANGED WELL know how to handle a respiratory disease outbreak.

Because we’ve assisted worldwide and because we’re not the only nation-state in the developed world, most nation-states have some level of disease control competence and the rest know who to ask if they need help. We and they know how to handle novel diseases. This was not even close to our first rodeo. And we failed miserably.

No excuses. The CDC should be criminally investigated for its role in the mismanagement of the entire panicdemic. We blew it and we blew it big time. Nothing we should have been doing was done – hey, California, looking at you for hiring DIS (Disease Intervention Specialists) at the beginning. Moronic doesn’t cover that move and yet that was smarter than anything the CDC pulled.

So why does the title say ‘China edition’? Because figuring out where EXACTLY the virus came from was Job 1 for the CDC. I know, I know, y’all love them experts and anything in a lab coat can’t be wrong, but you need the right lab coats in the right sequence.

This is NOT rocket science nor is it anything a basically trained DIS doesn’t know. The first line of defense against a newly emerging disease are the DOCTORS. Period. The only guys we let determine treatment are those with MD after their names. PhD need not apply.

While the doctors are doing their thing, the CDC is supposed to be getting them information. Fancy words like ‘morphology’ just mean ‘how the heck does this disease act?’ When is it infectious? How long? Is it infectious when asymptomatic? Are some symptoms more infectious than others?

That’s just the start of a litany of questions doctors need answered. That’s why we waste a doctor’s valuable time having he or she filling out information and sending it to the local health department. From there it goes to the number crunchers (aka epidemiologists) at CDC. No one doctor is going to see enough patients fast enough to figure all that stuff out but thousands of doctors seeing tens of thousands of patients can provide more than enough information to start sorting out what exactly we’re dealing with – which is what we pay epidemiologists to do.

But it’s not a one sided process. Those lab guys do come in handy. Knowing what kind of virus they are dealing with and WHERE IT CAME FROM can provide invaluable clues to both the epidemiologists and more importantly to the doctors figure out the best ways to tackle treating this new disease.

I was an STD DIS for 18 years. There are no ‘off limits’ questions with patients. Of course, you have to treat the patient like a person – that should not need saying – but you can’t tiptoe. The information a DIS asks for may make a big difference in how treatment progresses and what the doctors choose to do. In the same vein, it’s insane that there would be any off limits questions or topics when it comes to the source country.

China gave the CDC and the WHO the runaround for most of two years and EVERY DIS, interviewer and non-braindead employee of BOTH organizations KNEW it. China’s story was crap – an open air market that JUST HAPPENED to be a couple blocks from the Wuhan Virology Lab was the source of a virus that somehow no one knew where it came from? Give me a break.

I had a patient once swear up and down she’d never had sex with anyone, ever. She had symptoms of secondary syphilis that I could see and had already tested positive. Riiiight. Her story made better sense than China’s. “No, no, it couldn’t have leaked from the virology lab working on coronavirus’. Must have come from Fort Dietrich.” Riiight.

I have a bridge in New Jersey I’ll sell you really cheap.

When the outbreak started, knowing exactly what the virus was and where it had originated from (bats, humans, aliens, whatever) would have been incredibly valuable information to both the virologists worldwide and the doctors battling this disease. The CDC KNEW that. The WHO KNEW that. The Chinese CDC (yes, they really have one) knew it, too.

This is NOT okay now.

People died who shouldn’t have while doctors stumbled around blindly because the CDC and the WHO refused to do their blankity-blank jobs! It doesn’t stop there – the State Department isn’t full of total morons. Career diplomats are supposed to come in size healthy skeptic especially when a nation-state is so obviously lying.

Yeah, I’m toughest on our guys – wait until Wednesday when I really lay into them – but all of my complaints against the CDC and the WHO and the State Department DO NOT absolve China one iota. China deliberately and maliciously withheld critical information. No amount of shooting fish on the other side of Taiwan or launching badly equipped spy balloons over US airspace should be allowed to distract from that.

The Chinese people are bearing the brunt of the incompetent response right now. In my opinion, that’s probably because they couldn’t resist the insane lockdowns even remotely as effectively as those of us in the free world could, once we got our heads screwed on straight. Lockdowns are insane – they do everything you SHOULDN’T do to a healthy population because of the negative effects on the immune system. High stress, low vitamin D – this is a prescription for immune suppression. Add malnutrition because China couldn’t keep people properly fed – gee, were they TRYING to make it worse?

Real politik has its place but taken too far it becomes an excuse to let bad actors act badly. It also assumes incorrectly that other nation-states, namely the US, have critical control of the policies of other countries by simply acting in the ‘right’ way. Nonsense. Sure, we have influence – boatloads of it – but if China wants to invade Taiwan letting them get away with the COVID coverup won’t make them change their minds.

China is no longer a baby nation-state and it is past time to stop treating them with kid gloves. China wants to play with the grown ups then it is just gonna have to play by grown up rules. That means we don’t let the CCP get away with ANYTHING.

No, it doesn’t mean go to war every time China makes us mad. We do have a LOT more options than that. Especially when the State Department gets off its backside and does its job. We got China admitted to the WTO. Maybe its time we got them kicked out.

Maybe. It’s one of many clubs in our bag. We pay the State Department to figure out what club to hand the President. Yep, our diplomatic corps is basically made to be a presidential caddy. Bout time they got on with it. After all, they definitely don’t work for peanuts. They work for us.

Full investigations. Full cooperation. No more nonsense.

And absolutely NO OFF LIMITS QUESTIONS.

Got it? Good.