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Richard H. Ebright

@R_H_Ebright

10 Apr

Coronavirus origins: how unseen Wuhan research notes could hold the answers

Secrecy has only served to foster distrust among the international scientific community – and fuel speculation that Sars-Cov-2 escaped from a lab
scmp.com/week-asia/heal…

"Koblentz said the search should include an independent audit of all labs in Wuhan working on bat coronaviruses and researching Sars, given the deaths and global disruption caused by the pandemic, and most importantly the threat of a repeat."

"Koblentz, the biosecurity specialist, said it was unusual for (WIV) database to be taken offline and never restored, as cybersecurity breaches were usually fixed after companies or government agencies detected a hacking attack."

Read 5 tweets

Richard H. Ebright

@R_H_Ebright

8 Apr

"[Under Trump swamp creature and former Emergent consultant Robert Kadlec,] Emergent..became the main U.S. location for manufacturing Covid-19 vaccines developed by Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca"

"[S]o far not a single dose has been usable"

nytimes.com/2021/04/06/us/…

["I]nternal documents and interviews..depict a factory operation that was ill-equipped to take on such a mammoth manufacturing task, despite Emergent’s having received a $163 million federal contract to improve the facility"

"Audits and investigations—including ones conducted..by Johnson & Johnson, AstraZeneca,..federal agencies and Emergent’s own quality evaluators—found..Emergent had not followed..basic industry standards..and identified repeated shortcomings in efforts to..prevent contamination."

Read 7 tweets

Richard H. Ebright

@R_H_Ebright

5 Apr

"An oversight board created to scrutinize research that would enhance highly dangerous pathogens did not review..NIH grant that funded..lab in Wuhan, China, to genetically modify bat-based coronaviruses."

dailycaller.com/2021/04/04/nih…

"NIH subagency that awarded the grant to the nonprofit group EcoHealth Alliance to study Chinese bat coronaviruses opted against forwarding it to the P3CO committee"

"Had EcoHealth’s grant been subjected to P3CO review, an HHS panel would have independently evaluated the grant and, if necessary, recommended additional biocontainment measures to prevent potential lab leaks — or even recommended that the grant be denied entirely."

Read 4 tweets

Richard H. Ebright

@R_H_Ebright

2 Apr

"[T]he entire genre of research Redfield was referring to, known as gain-of-function research (in which viruses are captured from the wild and developed in lab settings to make them more dangerous), needs to be thoroughly reexamined."

washingtonpost.com/opinions/what-…

"The world’s current plan to respond..entails a huge expansion of..this type of research. The $200 million program meant to 'predict' virus outbreaks is set to grow into a $1.2 billion Global Virome Project, which has the stated goal of discovering 500,000 new viruses"

"The plan is, having failed to predict and preempt[,] and having possibly triggered the current pandemic, to increase the scale six times"

Read 4 tweets

Richard H. Ebright

@R_H_Ebright

30 Mar

Relman: "I would call it..superficial, skewed and incomplete..I'm struck by the fact that there are very few primary data..on which we can judge the kinds of assessments that are made, in some cases quite, quite enthusiastically"

pbs.org/newshour/show/…

Relman: "We can't simply dismiss one idea as very unlikely and hold another as very likely, when, in both cases, we have no direct evidence.

Secretary of State Blinken: "We have got real concerns about the methodology and the process that went into that report, including the fact that the government in Beijing..helped to write it."

Read 4 tweets

Richard H. Ebright

@R_H_Ebright

30 Mar

"Determining the origin of..SARS-CoV-2..should have nothing to do with politics. It is a forensic question, one that requires thorough investigation of all possible theories"

washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…

"But a fatally flawed investigation by the World Health Organization and Chinese officials and experts only muddies the waters, and it places the WHO further at odds with the U.S. government and the Biden administration."

"The Chinese government received the report in advance and had tightly controlled the investigators’ visit to Wuhan, where the outbreak originated and where labs hold the world’s largest collection of bat coronaviruses."

Read 6 tweets

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