Letters which have not been made public (why?) but for which HHS arranged an 'in camera' review of printed copies by a bipartisan Committee, at HHS headquarters on Oct 5 and monitored by HHS staff.
See particularly pages 6 and 7:
What they show is how easily EHA argued that their research objectives did not constitute GoF, against the initial concerns of the NIH.
They got way with it on rather specious grounds.
No proper risk evaluation, instead a focus on arbitrary definitions which used and abused give an easy free pass.
(Thanks God, nuclear power stations are not managed with such casuistic principles - or we would all be long gone).
Anyway EHA was able to proceed.
Just to be safe - or to sound like it at least - NIH added that 1 log clause.
Clause which was then just ignored.
Neither EHA nor the NIH paid attention to it when despite all the windy reassurances of EHA, spike experiments with SHC014 produced more than 3 logs of comparative growth (x1000, well beyond the limit of x10).
The whole thing then degenerated into a comedy, with EHA filling with 2 years of delay that year 5 report that briefly mentioned the 3 logs experiments.
And then adding that they had tried to report it on time in 2019 but that NIH systems did not work.
"the benefits of such experiments [--] outweigh the risks. It is more likely that a pandemic would occur in nature, and the need to stay ahead of such a threat is a primary reason for performing an experiment that might appear to be risky."
But it may be time to remind him of what he wrote next to that statement, because it seems that it has totally forgotten about it: ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/labs/pmc/artic…
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
Let's get a few things clear about this declassified ODNI assessment (ODNI: Office of the Director of National Intelligence) : washingtonpost.com/national-secur…
First as is written on page 2:
"This assessment is based on information through August 2021."
In other words it does NOT include any information that has come up since the summary assessment of 26th Aug 21. dni.gov/index.php/news…
In particular it does not include the DEFUSE revelations (especially about the FCS).
Or the latest revelations that show that GoF on BatCoVs was indeed happening within the WIV.
It is based on data frozen in time - nothing new since the summary report: dni.gov/index.php/news…
It’s only over the last 15 years that BatCoVs have been extensively studied, and there were 6 primary cases of LAIs including one with community outbreak.
@BiophysicsFL@stuartjdneil@Ayjchan@TheSeeker268@R_H_Ebright@breakfast_dogs Not counting that outbreak because it was not a pandemic is based on another wrong generalisation: it’s only during the last few years that China was looking at enhanced pathogenicity of BatCoVs at scale using passaging or by building chimeras (you can date that to 2017).
The NIH tries to call it 'limited' and 'unexpected'.
[I won't go trough the details but it is not much unexepected as far as I can tell - it's a fully possible result that was being tested for here.]
That was part of year 5 reporting - officially submitted on the 3rd August 2021 according to the records.
"Nothing goes right all the time. So it is in research labs. Despite sophisticated safety installations and strict rules in virology labs accidents and leaks happen. Indeed, they are underreported."
"The virologists doing this work said it would help them predict the next pandemic virus. Armed with this insight, they claimed it would be possible to develop preventive vaccines and drugs that could be frozen and stored."