RealClearInvestigations' Picks of the Week
March 29 to April 4, 2020

Featured Investigation:
Unpacking China's Viral Propaganda War

In a timely report, Richard Bernstein explores the remarkable Chinese propaganda effort claiming that the coronavirus didn't start in Wuhan after all. Rather, the claim goes, it was purposely brought from a U.S. military biochemical lab to the Military World Games in Wuhan last October.

Bernstein reports:

• The propaganda, put out on many platforms banned in China, seems aimed outward, part of a concerted effort to convince the world that China is actually the hero of the coronavirus story - and that the real villain is America.
• Global Times, the English-language Communist Party mouthpiece, lent credence to the claim that a 50-year-old female American bicycle racer named Maatje Benassi was "Patient Zero."
• China's demand for U.S. transparency is one of the ironies of the effort: It's one of the most secretive regimes in history.
• Another irony is that the "Patient Zero" story stems from an American conspiracy theorist named George Webb.
• One Chinese video has the look and format of others put out by a Chinese army propaganda unit in Wuhan.
• The video's narrator says sarcastically: "Do you think the Americans came to Wuhan to buy soy sauce? They didn't come to compete; they came because they had a job to do."
• The narrator's implication is clear: The "job" was to plant the new virus in Wuhan, thereby framing China.
• The effort may provide a new illustration of how fake news, if repeated loudly and often enough, uses social media as a carrier to spread misinformation around the globe.

Featured Investigation:
U.S. Military's Dealing With the Virus.
But Keeps It a Secret.

Grim candor marks civilian leaders' daily updates on the coronavirus, but the Pentagon is moving to shore up secrecy about its impact on the military, Eric Felten reports for RealClearInvestigations:

• As of Monday, the Pentagon reported 1087 COVID-19 cases, of which 569 involved troops - a jump of two-thirds since the week before.
• But the demands of epidemiological accuracy are beginning to clash with the imperatives of operational secrecy: Disclosures are being restricted.
• No one wants to give bad actors the idea that American troop strength is weakened on any particular front.
• Related:Sailors Cheer Navy Captain Fired for Sounding Carrier COVID Alarm, Wall Street Journal.
• Among other virus-related complications for the military: The Commanding General of the U.S. Army in Europe, Christopher Cavoli, went into self-isolation after contact with an infected person.
• Q&A's held for soldiers and spouses suggest the Army's health system is stressed, even at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany, the largest military hospital in Europe.
• "Every time I call the Landstuhl appointment line, I get a busy signal," was one exasperated complaint.
• One secrecy exception: the privacy of service families. A soldier's wife said results of her virus test had been given first to her husband's commanding officer, then to her husband, and only after that to her.
• "In a public health emergency," a spokesman said, "the command has to know certain things that affect the ability of the unit to carry out its mission."
• Dealing with disease is key to military readiness. In the carnage-heavy Civil War, two-thirds of the more than 600,000 deaths were from maladies including dysentery, typhoid, malaria and tuberculosis.

More Coronavirus Investigations

How a Failure to Test Blinded the U.S. to Covid-19, New York Times
Military Knew Years Ago That a Coronavirus Was Coming, Nation
White House Tried to Force 3M to Divert Masks From Asia, Financial Times
As Coronavirus Crippled Small Firms, Lenders Pounced Daily Caller
Why Is 'Big Easy's' Corona Death Rate 7 Times NYC's? Obesity, Reuters
Sweden's Laissez-Faire Tack: No Lockdowns or Quarantines, Wall St Journal
Bat Virus: From Wuhan 'Wet' Market or Research Nearby? Washington Times
The NIMBYs of the Coronavirus Crisis, CityLab
The Private Chefs Risking Their Lives to Feed the Wealthy, Eater
Interactive: Nationwide County-by-County Coronavirus Map, New York Times
Interactive: Calculate Your Coronavirus Stimulus Check, Washington Post

Other Noteworthy Articles and Series

Inspector General: Pervasive Problems in FBI Wiretaps
New York Times
Since the Trump-Russia conspiracy was debunked by the Mueller Report last April, the New York Times and other prestigious news outlets that pushed that false narrative have worked to diminish the fallout. The latest effort is this article reporting that the DoJ's Inspector General found pervasive problems in the FISA court warrant system used by the FBI to spy on American citizens, including at least one Trump campaign adviser, Carter Page. A random sample of 29 applications analyzed by the IG found problems with all 29 of them. In 25 of the applications, the review found an average of about 20 problems each. One alone had 65 issues. Nevertheless, in the second graph - yes, the second graph! - the Times spins this devastating finding as good news for the bureau. Charlie Savage writes: "It also helps the F.B.I. politically because it undercuts the narrative among President Trump and his supporters that the bureau cut corners to surveil the adviser, Carter Page, as part of a politically motivated conspiracy." This isn't logic but spin. The fact that James Comey's FBI routinely cut corners is not proof that it did not have a political motivation in going after the Trump campaign. It is at least as likely that people who routinely misled the FISA court would be more likely to violate normal rules of conduct to smear a presidency.

Lifesaving Organs for Transplant Go Missing in Transit
Reveal
Scores of organs for transplant - mostly kidneys - are trashed each year and many more are critically delayed while being shipped on commercial airliners. Between 2014 and 2019, nearly 170 organs could not be transplanted and almost 370 endured "near misses," with delays of two hours or more, after transportation problems, according to an investigation by Kaiser Health News and Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting. Surgeons themselves often go to hospitals to collect and transport hearts, which survive only four to six hours out of the body. But kidneys and pancreases - which have longer shelf lives - often travel commercial, as cargo. As such, they can end up missing connecting flights or delayed like lost luggage. Worse still, they are typically tracked with a primitive system of phone calls and paper manifests, with no GPS or other electronic tracking required.

Navy Warship Toilets Cost $400,000 a Flush to Unclog
Judicial Watch
The Ty-D-Bol sailor probably wishes he could get a cut of this action. The toilet system on two new, state-of-the-art Navy aircraft carriers is so crappy that it must be cleansed with specialized acids that cost American taxpayers a breathtaking $400,000 a flush. It may seem like a bad joke but, sadly, it is par for the course for many government agencies. The outrageous toilet expense is a snippet of a larger problem involving the Navy's multi-billion-dollar budget to maintain its fleet. A new federal audit offers a breakdown by ship class and, while there are other highly questionable losses, the defective toilets appear to be in a class of their own.

Italy: World's Most Perilous Cheese Is Larva at First Bite
Outline
Guinness World Records calls casu marzu the most dangerous cheese in the world. The European Union's safety laws allow fines and jail time for those who sell the Italian specialty. Nevertheless, this article reports, Sardinians still make and eat tons of casu marzu when it's in season in the late summer and early fall — often with moistened pane carasau, a local flatbread, and a glass of strong red wine. The problem involves the cheese skipper flies, which are allowed to lay thousands of eggs in a wheel of pecorino. As a result, casu marzu is served with a host of tiny yet visible larvae alive and writhing in it. (Dead maggots are a sign that the cheese has gone bad.) When you scoop some of the creamy-mealy cheese out of the rind and make to eat it, the maggots protect themselves by coiling up like organic springs and leaping up to half a foot away from danger, all too often onto your face. Why do they eat it? It's a wedge issue: Illegal cheese production offers Sardinians a disgusting yet relatively low-stakes way to assert their autonomy in the face of sterilized standardization and European integration. Buon appetito!