English Video with Chinese Subtitled: Powerful, timely, forceful, convincing by HK KOL Dominic Lee, educated at Rice University gave testimony on America’s Hypocrisy Exposed, at 47th session of UNHRC Side meeting

English Video with Chinese Subtitled: Powerful, timely, forceful, convincing by HK KOL Dominic Lee, educated at Rice University gave testimony on America’s Hypocrisy Exposed, at 47th session of UN Human Rights Commission (UNHRC) Side meeting 聯合國邊會發言,鬧爆美國對國安法,黑暴雙重標準 by 李梓敬 July 1 2021

https://vimeo.com/571461129
https://youtu.be/3ElWL9r8ask
https://www.facebook.com/100036400039778/posts/523774352179228/?d=n

In 1996 US turned off the GPS on China during the Taiwan Strait Crisis forced China to develop home grown Baidu Satallite System.

In 1996 US turned off the GPS on China during the Taiwan Strait Crisis forced China to develop home grown Baidu Satallite System. 1996 年台海危機期間,美國關閉了對中國的 GPS,迫使中國發展自己的北斗衛星系統.

In 2020 US cut off chips and technology to China, China is now forced to develop her home grown chips and technology. Based on past experiences on how US short sighted past impulsive actions to contain China. Just like the US GPS System, within 5 years, US will lose not only trillions of revenue on chips and technology sales to China each year, China will soon come back to compete with US with better, cheaper and much superior products. US is always so good to pick up the stone to strike her own feet. 2020年美國切斷對中國的芯片和技術,中國現在被迫開發自己的芯片和技術。 基於過去美國如何短視遏制中國的衝動行為的經驗。 就像美國的GPS系統一樣,5年內,美國不僅每年要損失數万億美元的芯片和技術銷售給中國,而且中國很快就會回來以更好、更便宜、更優質的產品與美國競爭. 美總是那麼笨拿起石頭砸自己的腳.

Now send the Beidou satellite call to you, click on it and click on the call, it will connect your mobile phone with the Beidou satellite, and display a number, telling you how many satellites can connect to your mobile phone? If it is zero, the mobile phone does not support Beidou, and it can be replaced by a domestic one! It also shows your location. Please click to open it, everyone! The Beidou satellite is too great! 現將北斗衛星呼叫發給各位,點開後點擊呼叫,就會將你的手機與北斗衛星連接,並顯示數字,告訴你有多少顆衛星可以連接上你的手機?如為零,則手機不支持北斗,可換國產的了!同時還顯示你本人所在的位置。各位請點開試試吧!北斗衛星太偉大了!

https://ar.qxwz.com/?isfrom=2&from=groupmessage

Congratulatory messages from more than 140 countries and regions around the world: China’s Beidou officially runs successfully, China uses its own network 全球140多個國家及地區發來賀電:中國北斗正式運行成功中國用自己的網絡。🇬🇧🇵🇸🇧🇲 🇮🇸🇧🇿🇰🇵🇹🇬🇪🇷🇹🇫🇨🇻🇨🇴🇬🇬🇰🇿🇸🇽🇰🇬🇮🇨🇨🇲🇨🇰🇱🇧🇷🇪🇲🇻🇲🇰🇲🇺🇲🇳🇲🇲🇲🇽🇸🇸🇳🇬🇵🇼🇨🇭🇸🇳🇨🇽🇸🇲🇸🇮🇸🇴🇹🇨🇹🇲🇪🇺🇸🇬🇯🇲🇮🇱🇻🇬🇯🇪🇹🇩🇮🇴🇮🇹🇦🇲🇳🇨🇬🇷🇧🇳🇹🇰🇹🇹🇹🇯🇵🇲🇸🇿🇸🇹🇨🇾🇸🇻🇵🇳🇳🇺🇳🇷🇲🇩🇲🇩🇲🇸🇲🇷🇸🇧🇩🇲🇦🇿🇳🇮🇳🇴🇵🇹🇸🇸🇨🇻🇸🇩🇹🇭🇹🇳🇬🇪🇸🇳🇮🇳🇯🇴🇬🇮🇨🇱🇳🇮🇮🇶🇭🇺🇪🇭🇺🇦🇻🇺🇹🇻🇹🇿🇸🇷🇱🇰🇰🇳🇸🇦🇷🇸🇯🇵🇳🇫🇳🇵🇦🇶🇲🇨🇵🇪🇦🇸🇹🇲🇷🇴🇱🇾🇱🇸🇭🇷🇨🇨🇨🇿🇨🇦🇰🇮🇳🇱🇬🇺🇬🇱🇨🇬🇫🇯🇵🇫🇷🇺🇩🇪🇧🇫🇧🇦🇧🇯🇧🇷🇵🇰🇦🇺🇦🇴🇪🇬🇦🇷🇦🇪🇪🇹🇦🇮🇲🇴🇵🇾🇧🇾🇧🇪🇧🇴🇧🇮🇹🇱🇪🇨🇫🇮🇨🇩🇬🇪🇬🇾🇧🇶 China no longer uses the US Internet and is no longer subject to the United States, and can save 10 trillion yuan in rental fees every year. The whole world has to pay China’s network and Beidou usage fees, which can generate tens of trillions of yuan in rental fees. With only these two parts, each Chinese citizen can earn tens of thousands of yuan a year.中國不再用美國的英特網,不再受制於美國,每年可省下租賃費10萬億人民幣。全世界都要向中國交網絡、北斗使用費,可收入租賃費幾十萬億人民幣。僅這兩部分每個中國公民每年可收入幾萬元人民幣。

Every Chinese in the world is proud! Congratulations! Cheers! The big step into the Chinese dream is about to come true! 全球每個中國人都自豪吧!慶賀吧!歡呼吧!跨入中國夢的一大步馬上就要實現了!

Video: Two Chinese Astronauts Walked Outside Their Space Station For Seven Hours

Video: Two Chinese Astronauts Walked Outside Their Space Station For Seven Hours 兩名中國宇航員走出空間站七個小時

On July 4, 2021, at 14:57, Beijing Time, Two Chinese astronauts, Liu Boming and Tang Hongbo, went back to the Tian Her core module of China’s space station after 7 hours of spacewalks. The 55-year-old General Liu Boming could no help letting out a heartfelt acclamation. “Wow, it’s so beautiful out there.” The earth was so beautiful, and all countries on it looked so obscure. It was the first time Chinese astronauts got out of their own space station and returned safely.
https://vimeo.com/571230696
https://youtu.be/MwhZck9YTB0
https://www.facebook.com/100036400039778/posts/523454815544515/?d=n

Video: China Does Not Recognize US Order disguised as The Rule-Based International Order!

Video: China Does Not Recognize US Order disguised as The Rule-Based International Order! 中國不承認偽裝成國際秩序的美國秩序!

China has never interfered in the internal affairs of other countries and never obstructed their development. It will never accept any country interfering in China’s internal affairs and obstructing its development. Today’s China has long been different from the China of 100 years ago. No one and no force should underestimate the Chinese people’s firm will and strong ability to defend national sovereignty, security, and development interests.
https://vimeo.com/571245217
https://youtu.be/Hm6FUQCqddY
https://www.facebook.com/100036400039778/posts/523475362209127/?d=n

DiDi’s Adrian Perica was an officer in the US Army graduated from West Point, also suspect to be an CIA agent. Chinese regulator orders app stores to remove Didi, shows resolve to enhance data protection

DiDi’s Adrian Perica was an officer in the US Army graduated from West Point, also suspect to be an CIA agent. Didi Chuxing, the Chinese ride-hailing giant best understood as the “Uber of China” appointed Apple M&A chief Adrian Perico to to its Board of Directors as the representant of Apple to the Didi’s board – The Information reports – citing the filing and sources familiar with the matter.

Chinese regulator orders app stores to remove Didi, shows resolve to enhance data protection by Li Qiaoyi and Hu Yuwei Jul 04 2021

China’s cyberspace regulator said on Sunday that it has ordered app stores to remove the nation’s most widely used ride-hailing app Didi Chuxing, due to confirmed reports of “serious violations of law and regulation” in the collection and use of personal information.

Coming after the company was put under a review for cybersecurity on Friday – just two days after its massive IPO in the US, the latest order further underscored Chinese regulators’ resolve to crack down on illegal activities on online platforms and enhance the protection of data security, analysts said.

The Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) also told Didi to rectify problems in strict accordance with the law and relevant national standards to ensure the security of users’ personal information, the CAC said in an announcement on Sunday.

On Friday, China’s cybersecurity review office said that it has launched a review into Didi. During the review period, new user registration would be suspended “to prevent the expansion of risks,” it said.

Didi quickly responded to the Sunday announcement, saying it would strictly comply with the requirements and make improvements for a secured service.

Didi halted new user registrations on Saturday, and the app will be taken down for rectification in strict accordance with relevant rules, the company said in a statement on Sunday.

Users who have downloaded the app can use it without interference.

The swift regulatory actions came just days after the ride-hailing platform raised $4.4 billion in its IPO on the New York Stock Exchange on Wednesday.

Its shares ended up 1 percent on the first day before soaring nearly 16 percent on Thursday.

But after the cybersecurity review announcement, shares plunged as much as nearly 11 percent before finishing down 5.3 percent on Friday.

Investors in Didi’s US shares were apparently caught off guard by the review, and the company might be the target of a class action lawsuit.

Hao Junbo, chief lawyer at the HAO Law Firm in Beijing, told the Global Times on Sunday that some of Didi’s investors have reached out to his law firm and are considering participating in a class action suit to seek compensation.

The regulatory actions against Didi, coming as China stepped up crackdown on illegal activities on online platforms including anti-monopoly and privacy law violations, showed Chinese regulators determination to strengthen protection for personal information and data, analysts said.

Reckoning the review as a timely move to institute a firewall to ensure data security, which is of vital significance to national security as a whole, Dong Shaopeng, a senior research fellow at the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies at Renmin University of China, called for delisting of Didi’s newly floated shares.

Ride-hailing firms manage large amounts of data regarding national transport infrastructure, flows of people and vehicles, among other types of information that involve national security, according to Dong.

The rise of “data sovereignty” versus the US government’s vigilance against Chinese firms ought to be a wake-up call for national security awareness to be given priority when it comes to fundraising plans in areas that might pose threats to China’s national security, Dong told the Global Times on Sunday.

Didi’s global annual active users for the 12 months ended on March 31 stood at 493 million, according to the company.

Happy 4th of July from the Muslims Women and Children in the Middle East, from the millions of refugees forced to left their ruin homes and countries, from the survivors of Agent Orange in Vietnam, from the People of China that 94% supported CPC learned what US fake freedom democracy and human rights is all about.

Happy 4th of July from the Muslims Women and Children in the Middle East, from the millions of refugees forced to left their ruin homes and countries, from the survivors of Agent Orange in Vietnam, from the People of China that 94% supported CPC learned what US fake freedom democracy and human rights is all about. Thank you America. When you light the fireworks this July 4th, please remembered we are human beings just like you, be kind, be humane, please don’t be so gun trigger happy, we want to live just like you. 祝福美國國慶日快樂是來自中東離世的穆斯林婦女和兒童,來自被迫離開家園和國家的千萬難民,來自橙劑的越南倖存者,來自 94% 支持中國共產黨的中國人民,了解了美國虛假的自由民主和人權讓中國人更團結. 謝謝美國. 當你在今年 7 月 4 日燃放煙花時,請記住我們(有色人種和穆斯林)和你(西人)一樣也是人,要善良,要人道,請不要那麼激動的隨便向我們開槍,我們也像你一樣, 眞的想活下去. 求求你!

Video: July birthday boy celebration in California, more to follow till the end of this month.

Video: July birthday boy celebration in California, more to follow till the end of this month. 七月生日的我在加利福尼亞家中雀局餐會, 有更多生日活動將持續到本月底.
https://vimeo.com/570743862
https://youtu.be/Agxri7ObIRQ
https://www.facebook.com/100036400039778/posts/522555518967778/?d=n

Video: Lone Wolf Terrorists era has arrived in Hong Kong

Video: Lone Wolf Terrorists era has arrived in Hong Kong 屈穎姸: 孤狼時代來臨了

https://vimeo.com/570727603
https://youtu.be/6BW31k0B9v8
https://www.facebook.com/100036400039778/posts/522521515637845/?d=n

《蘋果》執笠、黃媒刪帖、政棍跳船、黃工會黃政黨紛紛解散……這不代表黑暴已除,天下太平,相反,更危險的時刻才剛開始,昨天,孤狼正式出現了。

孤狼不一定孤身一人,2013年在美國發生的孤狼式恐襲——波士頓馬拉松炸彈案,兇手就是兩兄弟。

昨晚在銅鑼灣鬧市拿著匕首向警察施襲的人,看似單獨行事,但我相信他是有伙伴的,至少,跟在旁邊拍攝直播謀殺那個人,就相當有嫌疑。

想一想,由兇手正面步來再把鏡頭掃到警察身後再等到襲擊發生,拍攝者似乎已預知謀殺將至。拍了殺人過程,卻沒拍後續的兇手自殺畫面,難道他們又要把死亡責任諉過於警方?

近日朋友圍爐話聚時都說,沒想到《蘋果》收檔得這麼快,沒想到政棍舉手投降得這麼徹底,現在看來,不無原因。當大台的號召作用結束,任務完成,便火速退下,輪到孤狼上場。

2019年黑暴有句口號,叫Be water,最近在黃人網絡中又再出現。Be water的概念類似《孫子兵法》中的「兵形像水」,意即避其虛實,不吃眼前虧,隨機應變,從對手薄弱處打擊。昨天孤狼假扮途人在巡警背後施襲,正是這種手法。

面對來無蹤去無影的恐襲,第一,就是要定性。我希望,政府所有官員都如保安局長鄧炳強那樣堅定,把2019的亂象稱為「暴動」,把昨天的襲擊稱為「恐襲」,而不是再含含糊糊說什麼「社會事件」、「襲擊事件」。

第二,涉及嚴重暴力襲擊的案件要加速審理、判刑,以收即時阻嚇作用。大家還記得2019年11月何君堯議員被插在胸口那一刀嗎?當日明明有施襲者束手就擒,但事件距今快兩年了,原來,案件竟然還未開庭審理。

2019年歐盟曾經做了一份《恐怖主義現況及趨勢報告》,列出各恐襲案例及判刑,其中一則,甚值得香港借鏡。

報告指出,英國一對母女在國會附近企圖以刀向途人施襲,另一女兒則在大英博物館附近作出襲擊,兩次恐襲雖未導致任何傷亡,但該名母親卻被法庭判處終身監禁,兩名女兒也被判囚超過6年。火速重判,皆因法官認為,是該母親令兩名女兒成為激進分子,故處以極刑。這種以法律阻止恐襲的手法,我們望塵莫及。

第三,取締及封鎖一切鼓吹暴力及殺人訊息的網絡平台。其實,西方國家非常重視打擊社交媒體及網絡平台的恐怖主義傳播,無論是發放或持有文宣、招募他人作出相關行為,甚至自我陶醉式的恐怖主義,都會被判罪。

意大利高等法院就曾裁定一男子利用互聯網,煽動並挑起恐怖主義行為,法院認定他犯下恐怖主義罪行,判處28個月監禁。

在奧地利,一名16歲塞爾維亞人因為積極參與「聖戰聊天群」並散播「聖戰」文宣,也被判支持恐怖主義罪行。

如保安局長鄧炳強所言,不停鼓吹暴力、煽動仇恨、並美化相關行為的人,一樣滿手鮮血。我們要揪出這些幕後推手,阻止恐襲病毒的傳播鏈。

LA Times follows SF Chronicle, debunks Wuhan lab leak idea by anti-China hates groups back by Western Empires

LA Times follows SF Chronicle, debunks Wuhan lab leak idea by anti-China hates groups back by Western Empires 美國加州洛杉磯時報跟著舊金山時報,揭穿西方帝國反華仇恨團體對武漢實驗室洩密的假信息.

Column: The lab-leak origin claim for COVID-19 is in the news, but it’s still fact-free. The Wuhan Institute of Virology – Speculation about the origins of COVID-19 has caused some stock-taking by the press, which is accused of ridiculing the lab-leak theory during 2020 merely because it was promoted by President Trump. (Ng Han Guan / Associated Press)
By MICHAEL HILTZIKBUSINESS COLUMNIST JUNE 3, 2021

https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2021-06-03/lab-leak-covid-origin

A corollary to the scientific truism that “nature abhors a vacuum” is that nature tends to fill the void with any garbage near at hand.

For example, consider the surge of interest in the claim that the coronavirus reached the outside world through a release — accidental or deliberate — from a virus laboratory in Wuhan, China.

The “lab leak hypothesis,” as it’s known to virologists, is experiencing a heyday. Long dismissed by many experts, it’s now being taken more seriously as one of two general possibilities for COVID-19’s origin, along with the theory that the virus reached humans through contact with animal hosts.

Follow the animals. That’s where we’re going to find the origin of COVID-19.
TULANE VIROLOGIST ROBERT F. GARRY
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In a May 14 letter in the magazine Science, 18 eminent experts urged that “a transparent, objective, data-driven” investigation be undertaken of both theories to achieve “greater clarity about the origins of this pandemic.” Their letter was directed to the World Health Organization, which in April labeled the laboratory origin of COVID-19 “extremely unlikely.”

Further, President Biden on May 26 gave federal intelligence agencies 90 days to provide him “the most up-to-date analysis of the origins of COVID-19, including whether it emerged from human contact with an infected animal or from a laboratory accident.”

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The new speculation about the origins of COVID-19 has caused some stock-taking by the press, which is accused of ridiculing the lab-leak theory in all its manifestations during 2020 merely because it was promoted by President Trump.

That’s treated as another strike against the “liberal media” supposedly marching in lock-step to disdain conservatives. The mainstream press, wrote Jonathan Chait of New York Magazine, “took Donald Trump’s bait, answering the former president’s dissembling with false certainty of their own.”

What’s missing from all this reexamination and soul-searching is a fundamental fact: There is no evidence — not a smidgen — for the claim that COVID-19 originated in a laboratory in China or anywhere else, or that the China lab ever had the virus in its inventory. There’s even less for the wildest version of the claim, which is that the virus was deliberately engineered. There never has been, and there isn’t now.

No one disputes that a lab leak is possible. Viruses have escaped from laboratories in the past, on occasion leading to human infection. But “zoonotic” transfers — that is, from animals to humans — are a much more common and well-documented pathway.

Column: The evidence is clear — COVID lockdowns saved lives without harming economies

That’s why the virological community believes that it’s vastly more likely that COVID-19 spilled over from an animal host to humans.

That was the conclusion reached in a seminal paper on COVID-19’s origins published in Nature in February 2020 by American, British and Australian virologists. “We do not believe that any type of laboratory-based scenario is plausible,” they wrote.

“We cannot prove that SARS-CoV-2 [the COVID-19 virus] has a natural origin and we cannot prove that its emergence was not the result of a lab leak,” the lead author of the Nature paper, Kristian Andersen of the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, told me by email.

“However, while both scenarios are possible, they are not equally likely,” Andersen said. “Precedence, data, and other evidence strongly favor natural emergence as a highly likely scientific theory for the emergence of SARS-CoV-2, while the lab leak remains a speculative incomplete hypothesis with no credible evidence.”

Coauthor Robert F. Garry of Tulane Medical School told several colleagues during a recent webcast: “Our conclusion that it didn’t leak from the lab is even stronger today than it was when we wrote the paper.”

As the veteran pseudoscience debunker David Gorski sums up the contest between the lab-leak and zoonotic theories, “the likelihood of the two hypotheses is nowhere near close to equal.”

What remains of the lab-leak theory is half-truths, misrepresentations, and tendentious conjecture.

Consider one trigger of heightened speculation, a May 23 article in the Wall Street Journal reporting that three researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which is located in the community where the first major outbreak was identified, became sick enough in the fall of 2019 to seek hospital treatment. That was months before the start of the pandemic.

Yet the report offered no evidence linking the patients’ illness to COVID-19 research at the Wuhan lab. The report said the researchers had “symptoms consistent with both COVID-19 and common seasonal illness.” Well, yes: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advises that the symptoms of COVID and seasonal flu resemble each other.

There’s no evidence that the three researchers had contracted COVID-19 as opposed to flu or any other virus. Nor is there information about the clinical outcome of these three cases, which might tell us more.

Virologists point out, moreover, that it would be unlikely for COVID to affect only three people seriously enough to warrant hospital care without infecting hundreds of others in the lab or their households. The other victims might have had milder symptoms, but an outbreak of that magnitude would have been difficult to keep under wraps.

As for the letter in Science, some of its 18 signatories have taken pains to emphasize that they are not endorsing the lab-leak theory; some are highly skeptical of the hypothesis.

The organizer of the letter, David Relman of Stanford, told Nature’s Amy Maxmen, “I am not saying I believe the virus came from a laboratory.” Another signatory, Ralph S. Baric of the University of North Carolina, told the New Yorker, “The genetic sequence for SARS-CoV-2 really points to a natural-origin event from wildlife.”

Their goal in signing the letter, they said, was not to point fingers at the Wuhan lab, but to urge WHO to devote more effort to determining the origin, whatever it might be, before expressing a categorical opinion.

Biden’s directive to the intelligence agencies has been taken as a virtual endorsement of the laboratory origin claim. For example, the Financial Times headlined its report on the directive, “How Biden came around to the lab-leak theory.”

Even a cursory reading of the directive shows that Biden didn’t “come around” to the lab-leak theory. His directive is resolutely neutral about COVID’s origin; it’s consistent with interest in a conclusion that the virus originated in a lab, but also with a desire to put that speculation to rest.

Let’s take a look at the science underlying the search for COVID’s origins. One important fact is that we may never get a definitive answer. The animal source of the Ebola virus, which was first identified 45 years ago, is still unknown, Maxmen reported in Nature.

Maxmen noted that it took researchers 14 years to trace the 2002-2004 outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, to a virus that leapt from bats to humans.

But the history of virological outbreaks points strongly toward a “zoonotic” transfer of the COVID-19 virus — that is, from animals to humans.

“There is an extensive history of pathogen emergence by natural means: most novel viral pathogens that have caused epidemics or pandemics in the human population have emerged naturally from a wildlife reservoir,” Angela Rasmussen of the Center for Global Health Science and Security at Georgetown University wrote in January.

“The overwhelming conclusion is that this virus, too, found its way into a human host through a series of unhappy accidental encounters with animals,” Rasmussen observed.

The virus that causes COVID-19, moreover, is known as an opportunistic virus that has little trouble passing among species — “pantropic,” in virological jargon.

For a laboratory leak to have occurred secretly or inadvertently would require “a massive conspiracy and cover-up involving a lot of people, including some very accomplished scientists, not telling the truth about what they were working on or what they had,” Garry told me.

The lab-leak theory gains from a superficial plausibility — especially to laypersons. The Wuhan lab had a collection of bat viruses, including some that appear to be similar to the coronavirus that causes COVID-19.

But some virologists say they’re not similar enough to mutate into SARS-CoV-2, even through deliberate manipulation, Garry says. “That’s a point that’s not going to resonate very strongly with people who haven’t studied viruses for a long, long time.”

The assertion that the press was too quick to disdain the lab-leak theory because it was touted by ideologically suspect sources — Trump and Sens. Tom Cotton and Rand Paul, among others — overlooks a few pertinent factors.

One is that these individuals were not merely ideologically suspect, but known promoters of falsehoods. It would have been unwise and imprudent to suddenly treat them as truth tellers, especially since their lies had often been targeted at China for political reasons. The idea that China had concealed its lab’s role in the pandemic dovetailed well with policies aimed at painting China as an untrustworthy economic and political actor.

Trump administration officials such as David Asher, who conducted an inquiry on COVID-19’s origins for former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, have been pushing the report of the three sick Wuhan researchers.

Asher is quoted in both the Wall Street Journal’s report and the Financial Times article on Biden’s directive, and has pushed the lab-leak theory on Fox News.

Another reason for journalistic skepticism was that many professional virologists labeled the lab-leak theory as implausible from the first. This was because the theory presupposed a complex series of events coming together just so — secrecy, coordination, even deliberate malevolence, abetted by extreme sloppiness.

Advocates of the lab-leak theory point to the location of the Wuhan Institute of Virology, in the same community as the first known outbreak. But they overlook the magnitude of China’s trade in wildlife for food and traditional medicine, among other uses — including in and around Wuhan.

As my colleague Alice Su reported last year, the breeding and sale of animals such as civet cats and pangolins, which are considered possible intermediary carriers of COVID-19 on its path from bats to humans, is a $73-billion industry in China.

That makes it even larger than the beef industry in the United States, which is valued at nearly $70 billion. Regulation of Chinese breeders and traders is light and rife with corruption.

Determining the origins of COVID-19 may not be important to address the current pandemic, which can only be done through public health stratagems. But it’s important for policies to deal with the next pandemics, since policies will be different for outbreaks that start with animal-human contacts and those originating in poor laboratory security.

There’s an argument for getting more accountability out of China about its handling of the viral outbreak in its earliest stages. But there’s also an argument against pointing fingers at the Chinese regime or its scientific establishment without evidence: China’s cooperation will be crucial for world health in the future, and it’s less likely to happen if China feels it has been unjustly blamed for COVID-19.

“The lab-leak hypothesis is taking the oxygen out of what’s really needing to be done, which is cooperating with China,” Garry told his colleagues on the recent webcast.

“Follow the animals,” he said. “That’s where we’re going to find the origin of COVID-19.”

Los Angeles Times columnist Michael Hiltzik writes a daily blog appearing on latimes.com. His seventh book, “Iron Empires: Robber Barons, Railroads, and the Making of Modern America,” has just been published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/hiltzikm and on Facebook at Michael Hiltzik.

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