On bipartisan legislation to create a Sept. 11-style panel to investigate pandemic response and #OriginOfCovid...
"the White House is privately resisting it, according to an official familiar with the measure" nytimes.com/2022/12/12/us/…
What are the reasons for the White House to reject a bipartisan commission into #OriginOfCovid and pandemic response?
Especially since the latter largely targets the previous administration.
Part of the beauty of democracies is that you can investigate previous administrations without carrying the burden of blame.
Wrt #OriginOfCovid I can't see any particular administration being solely responsible even if it did come from a lab in Wuhan.
The main people who would suffer from an #OriginOfCovid investigation are those who continue to shut down a lab origin as implausible or conspiracy and those who funded/collaborated/endorsed/praised the type of risky virus research that might have caused the pandemic.
If these leaders, scientists, and journalists are so certain of a natural #OriginOfCovid, they should embrace a bipartisan investigation with open arms as this would exonerate all of the suspected scientists once and for all.
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Conflicts of interest work the same way in science as they do in journalism, politics, law etc.
If you are "debunking" a lab leak #OriginOfCovid, best to declare the COI that you worked with the scientists suspected of starting the pandemic.
There was literally a situation where collaborators of the Wuhan Institute of Virology realized putting their name on @TheLancet letter condemning lab #OriginOfCovid would be seen as self-serving and linked back to their collaboration.
@TheLancet It is surprising to me that the co-authors of the @ScienceMagazine market #OriginOfCovid papers failed to see what even Peter Daszak of the EcoHealth Alliance could see in early 2020 - that a collaboration with the Wuhan Institute of Virology was a COI.
I am going to respond to Dr Rasmussen's questions as honestly as I can here.
But first I thank the wise people in my life who reached out to me, reminded me of the ultimate goal of finding the #OriginOfCovid and advised me to take the high road.
I waded into #OriginOfCovid without knowing the kind of mess I would get in for writing a single line in a preprint that the virus might have come from nature or it might have come from a lab.
A year later, I wrote VIRAL: The Search for the Origin of Covid-19 with @mattwridley
Half of the money I've made from the book has been donated to charity (non-political). I have not accepted $ for doing #OriginOfCovid research despite several offers. Thankfully the publication and open access fees were waived for my peer reviewed paper. academic.oup.com/mbe/article/39…
Does Dr Fauci mean Dr Holmes? The expert who collaborated with the Wuhan Institute of Virology lab on novel SARS-like viruses in 2018 & forgot to declare this relationship in papers debunking lab #OriginOfCovid but could pull up a 2014 photo of a raccoon dog at the Wuhan market?
I'm not sure how one forgets spending the year before the pandemic in academic review with Wuhan scientists after analyzing novel coronavirus sequences, but fishes out a photo they took 5 years ago at the local market.
I refuse to be gaslit into believing that it was ok for Western scientists "debunking" a lab #OriginOfCovid to forget to declare their relationships with the Wuhan scientists suspected of having accidentally caused the pandemic.
I don't know if Reid's interpretation of WIV memos are correct. However the fact remains "in 2019, the WIV was addressing serious safety issues while scientists there faced pressure to perform."
Any credible virologist should be able to tell you now that live SARS-like viruses poised for emergence in human should not have been worked with at BL2.
"Maybe there’s a lab leak but it’s not with the viruses that the NIH was funding. That’s almost certain that that’s the case."
- Dr Fauci, speaking of the viruses that the Wuhan scientists had told NIH about in their progress reports.
The problem is that money from the NIH did go to the Wuhan scientists who are suspected of having discovered and/or manipulated a precursor of the pandemic virus that then leaked.
That US money could have been spent on general "tools and resources" for the lab's many projects.
Looking at the big picture, the type of work - virus hunting followed by infection studies & genetic engineering - was and continues to be endorsed by numerous virologists in the US and internationally.
The NIH funded these projects including by the Wuhan scientists.