Were COVID Origins a Hidden, and a Winning Campaign Issue?

THE ELECTIONS

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Sam Husseini writes:

“Back in September, I bumped into Nancy Wallace, who was running for Green Party candidate for governor of Maryland.

She pitched me on writing pieces she wanted to get published. I heard her out and then told her about my work on pandemic origins.

She [told] me that she was ‘5,000% on board with the questioning’ of COVID origins but that ‘I don’t want the campaign to touch the pandemic origin issue.’

She would [later] write me: ‘It’s hard enough getting basic legitimacy with the voters when they can’t see any mention of us in the press, major yard signs, etc. There are much more immediate, important, local and global issues such as criminal justice reform, climate change, marijuana legalization approaches (there are several variations) that matter to the voters.’ Citing no evidence, she added: ‘Basically numbers wise, no significant number of voters will change their vote based on this pandemic issue.’

She also told me ‘My father died from the swine flu emergency government vaccine’ in the 1970s. Also: ‘I nearly died a year and a month ago, with a beginning heart attack but got to the emergency room in time — 5 weeks after the Pfizer COVID vaccine.’

But she didn’t want the campaign to address vaccine mandates as well.

I responded to Wallace: ‘You’re disregarding your own personal lived experience, as well as that of your father, for what you *think* is the politically shrewd thing to do.

You’re also likely ignoring the concerns and lived experiences of millions of people — possibly a majority of the public.

And then you wonder why people go right-wing.

Maybe it’s because some right-wingers actually give voice to some legit concerns.’

COVID upended every life in the US over the last two and a half years. It’s remarkable how the Democrats in the House have blocked any real move to investigate the origins of the pandemic. And given that it’s effectively an issue of biowarfare, that progressives have stayed silent or worse, become apologists. And it’s remarkable how little the Republicans stressed the origins of the COVID pandemic as a campaign issue. (Though, what lobby would push the issue, there’s no counter to the Big Money of Big Pharma.)

It’s virtually impossible to try to establish causality, but Republicans who did question the establishment claims on pandemic origins like Sen. Rand Paul and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis had strong showings on Tuesday.

Paul went up from 57.3% in his last election cycle to 61.8% in this year.

Paul gained notoriety by repeatedly questioning Biden’s head medical advisor Anthony Fauci on COVID origins. Fauci and much of the establishment pretended from the beginning of the pandemic that it could not have lab origin, which was a ridiculous falsehood. A reckoning on this issue is long overdue and with a few exceptions, the Republicans did not seize the political opening.

Indeed, Paul declared his victory party Fauci’s retirement party, see video.

Gov. Ron DeSantis jumped from 49.6 in his last run to 59.4 this year. DeSantis, like Paul, has questioned a number of aspects of COVID policy, but has also called for an investigation into the origins of the pandemic.

In the House, Rep. Michael McCaul who led by producing a report—”The Origins of Covid-19: An Investigation of the Wuhan Institute of Virology“—for the House Republicans on the Foreign Affairs Committee saw his numbers jump over ten points from 52.5% in 2020 to 63.7% in 2022.”