Thread by @GMWatch

Could #COVID19 Have Escaped from a Lab? bostonmagazine.com/news/2020/09/0… Is the way this question is being dealt with science or censorship?

There’s long been a sense that if the public and politicians really knew about the dangerous pathogen research being conducted in many labs, they’d be outraged. Denying the possibility of a catastrophic incident like this, then, could be seen as a form of career preservation.

“For the substantial subset of virologists who perform gain-of-function research, avoiding restrictions on research funding, avoiding implementation of appropriate #biosafety standards, and avoiding implementation of appropriate research oversight are powerful motivators.”

It quickly amounted to global gaslighting of the media—and by proxy the public. An unhealthy absolutism set in: Either you insisted that any questions about lab involvement were absurd, or you were a tool of the Trump administration & its desperation to blame China for the virus.

@Ayjchan: “I hope the pandemic motivates local ethics and #biosafety committees to think carefully about how they can reduce risk.”

“I’d also—personally—prefer if high biosafety level labs were not located in the most populous cities on earth.”