1/ When analysing the actions of Shi Zhengli, Peter Daszak, Kristian Andersen and others who insisted on shutting down doubts about the lab leak origin of SARS-CoV-2 in Jan and Feb 2020, it's worth remembering that at that stage it looked likely to be a minor Chinese epidemic.
2/ Almost nobody expected that millions would die, the entire world would be convulsed and therefore that every detailed action by scientists would later come under intense scrutiny.
3/ Thus you might expect to get away with publishing the genome of a bat virus without mentioning its origin, or the fact that you are renaming it without saying so, or the fact that three people died of a mystery viral pneumonia caught at the site.
4/ Likewise there would have seemed little risk at the time in insisting that an outbreak of a bat-derived virus in a city with the biggest bat-virus research lab did not merit further questioning.
5/ And it would have seemed sensible to suppress your own doubts about the natural nature of the genome of the virus lest it hand ammunition to the critics of virology laboratories.
6/ After all, it was far more important to undermine a blustering buffoon of a president than to get at the truth, even if it meant supporting the agenda of a totalitarian autocrat of a president.
7/ This is not to argue that the virus definitely came from a lab, but to understand the motives of those who insisted -- rather hamfistedly -- on prematurely ruling out that possibility at a time when it looked like a story that might last only a few weeks.
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
