Thread by @byjayroot

When the pandemic hit I thought it might be useful to get records of the dealings @utmbhealth had with the Wuhan Institute of Virology. I didn't know I was about to go on a remarkable journey of opacity, crazy cost estimates and insane delays #txlege 1/

I wanted to see @utmbhealth records because, as @nickpowellchron reported, scientists there "helped train staff from the Wuhan lab." #transparency #txlege 2/ houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-t…

When I asked for @utmbhealth docs in April 2020 related to the Wuhan lab, I was told on June 15, 2020 they just didn't have the "bandwidth" to mess with it at the moment. Mkay. #txlege 3/

Then out of the blue, nearly a year and a half later, @utmbhealth responded to my request for Wuhan lab-related records by saying they wanted me to modify what I asked for last year because it was too broad and cost prohibitive. I declined. #txlege 4/

At 1st, @utmbhealth estimated it would take 300,000 hours & require them to sift thru 14 million pages of docs. At $15 an hour for labor, that would be $4.5 million. I said they were proposing the most expensive method possible & again declined to change my request. #txlege 5/

Finally today, @utmbhealth sent me a cost estimate for my request for records related to the Wuhan lab, as the law requires. The estimate that it would take 300k hours has dropped to 1,145 hours & what would have cost $4.5m has dropped to $20k. Still high, but wtf #txlege 6/

Now I'm asking @utmbhealth how much it would cost to inspect records related to the Wuhan lab in person, because when you do that it limits what they can charge, particularly for labor. I will let you tweeps know what happens. #txlege 7/