In an October 20 letter to Congress, the National Institutes of Health grudgingly admitted it funded gain of function experiments at the Wuhan lab but claimed it had nothing to do with Covid-19; a fine example of a Modified Limited Hangout (admitting some of the truth while still managing to withhold the key and damaging facts in the case).
Bottom line is Anthony Fauci and segments of the virology community thought the best way to prevent a pandemic was to find novel coronaviruses in bat caves, bring them hundred of miles to a lab in a city of 11 million people, and enhance them to increase their infectiousness and virulence to humans. And then they covered it up when it backfired.
When the Obama administration banned gain of function research in 2014 it unfortunately turned over the task of establishing the development of detailed guidelines, monitoring, and reviewing projects to Anthony Fauci. Bureaucratically this was understandable, since NIAID was the natural spot for the task, but it enabled Fauci, who wanted to continue the research (and still does!), to write guidelines and implement them in such as way as to not impede the projects he wanted to proceed.(1)
Fauci is the 21st century version of J Edgar Hoover, a career bureaucrat (he’s headed NIAID since 1984, held senior positions there since 1974 and started working at the agency in 1968 – and his wife is head of the Bioethics Dept of the National Institutes of Health of which NIAID is a part). He’s accumulated enormous power and prestige, has very little oversight, loves publicity, manages the media well, and has a cult following that will turn on anyone who attacks him.
Josh Rogin, who wrote Chaos Under Heaven, a very good account of China policy in the Trump administration (about which I plan to write more) which concludes with the Covid pandemic, reported that when he tried to talk to researchers about Fauci they would not go on the record with criticisms because he controlled so much of their funding.
The problems with this research and the response of Fauci and the virology community are multiple.
Should it be occurring at all, given the risk?
If the research should be done, why is the U.S. government funding a lab in the middle of a metropolitan area in China to do it? Particularly with the lack of transparency and outright deception by both the lab and the China government. And co-located with Chinese military labs conducting biological research!
Why is the EcoHealth Alliance still receiving U.S. funding (and not just from NIH, it also gets DoD grants), when it has deceived the public and now the U.S. government also admits being deceived by EcoHealth?
Why has NIH refused to release to Congress the details on its funding of projects at the Wuhan lab?
And read Alina Chan on twitter, for calm, thorough and knowledgeable analysis of all this.
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(1) I've been doing additional research and finding a lack of clarity around Fauci's specific role (was it direct or indirect?), and around key definitions. That he manipulated the process and worked around the end result is clear, but it is less clear to me how he did it.
Bottom line is Anthony Fauci and segments of the virology community thought the best way to prevent a pandemic was to find novel coronaviruses in bat caves, bring them hundred of miles to a lab in a city of 11 million people, and enhance them to increase their infectiousness and virulence to humans. And then they covered it up when it backfired.
ReplyDeleteDid you link to the wrong document? Because I read this part:
The research plan was reviewed by NIH in advance of funding, and NIH determined that it did not to fit the definition of research involving enhanced pathogens of pandemic potential (ePPP) because these bat coronaviruses had not been shown to infect humans. As such, the research was not subject to departmental review under the HHS P3CO Framework.
There is nothing in here about increased ability to affect humans. There's still no reason to think these viruses did infect humans.
Looking at Alina Chan's twitter looks nothing like calm or thorough analysis. It's all "there's no way it can be a coincidence" with no actual evidence of a tie between the lab and the outbreak. I mean, she's talking about people punching holes in hard drives.
I find your reaction to Alina Chan bizarre. First, she has more very careful to say from the start several months ago that the lab leak theory needs to be investigated in an even handed way along with a natural origin. I think that as we've had more revelations about suppressed information she has stressed more the potential lab origin. Secondly, we have a situation where the China government has actively obstructed investigation of any potential ties and simply blamed others (the latest is that Maine lobsters are the origin point for covid). The biggest tell is the difference in their response between SARS and Covid. I spent a lot of time in China over several years, including both just before and after SARS. In that case, China fairly quickly identified a natural origin for SARS and provided evidence. Here, they are no longer even trying. Third, is the effort by some virology researchers and Fauci (and their media enablers) to actively obscure what they knew about Wuhan and the link to their activities. Oh, and to use the standard trope of accusing anyone who says otherwise of racism. So, of course we are left trying to figure out what is going on, which is why Chan and others are calling for an investigation. Even Jeffrey Sachs disbanded the Covid origins committee he was heading on behalf of the Guardian because of the inclusion of the EcoHealth folks as part of the investigation team and their refusal to provide relevant documents that are in their possession. You seem to be obtuse on this subject. Is it deliberate?
ReplyDeleteI accept that Chan was a more balanced presenter of information at the start of the pandemic. I only about a half-day's worth of tweets, and based by description on that, but I acknowledge that might no represent her overall output. When she discussed punching holes in hard drives, did you take that as serious or humorous?
ReplyDeleteThe SARS-COV-1 epidemic was almost 20 years ago. There were more than 3 years between the first case in Toronto and the discovery of a common origin in the disease between civets and humans.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Severe_acute_respiratory_syndrome
You probably know China better than I, but I also get a very different feel from Jinping's government than I remember getting from Jintao's.
I agree with the call for a thorough investigation, of course.
I have no idea if Chan was joking(she usually doesn't joke) or just expressing exasperation, either one of which is understandable given EcoHealth's track record of deception and obstruction, and the attacks she faced when she first started looking at covid origins in more depth.
DeleteAs to SARS and the different regimes. What I was referring to was the timeline between when China first acknowledged SARS and the identification of civets as the direct animal vector (it was later that bats were identified firmly as the original source). China has had a chronic problem with transparency but it is much worse now under Xi and the situation has certainly escalated in terms of the threat from the course he has charted.
Thank you. In case it's not clear, I am very appreciative of the information you offer and your perspective.
ReplyDeleteThanks.
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