This is difficult to write about, think about, and find solid information about. But I will try.
The politics around this are completely warped. Republicans generally hate Fauci because he insisted COVID-19 was a serious emergency that demanded serious measures including lockdowns and masking (and it was). Democrats love Fauci because "science" (but that's not the only thing involved here, there are also human motives like self interest and the effect they have on people weighing different hypotheses, with or without consciousness of that fact), Fauci insisted that COVID-19 was serious (it was, etc) and that there's no "scientific" reason to believe the Lab Leak Hypothesis (but there are reasons to believe it, despite there being panels of scientists--often with their own fields and careers on the line--insisted that the Lab Leak Hypothesis was unlikely...Fauci himself initially believed that the Wuhan Meat Market was only an "amplifier" of pandemic...and to this day continues to say that that it is not impossible that the pandemic originated from a "lab leak"...meaning that someone in the lab first caught the disease from GOF boosted specimens they were working on).
Given that we just had a Senate Hearing in which Fauci refused to answer 100 questions about COVID-19 it might be interesting to see what all of those questions were. But instead, the media and every source I can find is more interested in the politics of Fauci invoking the Fifth Ammendment when he was pardoned by Biden for activities starting in 2014. I have not even found (yet) the questions asked in official Senate documents released to the public.
If the politics which unfairly demonize Fauci have more to do with his handling of the Pandemic, why did Biden pardon him for activities going back to 2014?
It seems, precisely so we couldn't learn more about COVID-19 origins by threatening Fauci with prosecution.
What we do know is this: Gain of Function research on several risky viruses was banned in 2014, but the ban was lifted in 2017 because of "stricter oversight."
But starting, in 2014, the NIH funded the EcoHealth alliance to study viruses in Wuhan. This appears to have been to evade the ban. The research in Wuhan continued despite the ban up to the origins of COVID-19 and probably beyond.
Because this research was being done in China, it was not affected by the ban on doing this research in the US, and the later "stricter oversight" applied to doing it in the US.
It is known that Wuhan Institute (WIV) was doing research on Coronaviruses that could be characterized as GOF research (though perhaps not by certain definitions of that) in a BSL-2 laboratory (inadequate for the task and outside US oversight) at the time COVID-19 was released. Therefore, a lab leak from WIV is a highly plausible origin of COVID-19, and several US intelligence agencies concluded that COVID-19 likely originated from a lab leak as early as 2021 and to this day (FBI, DOE, and CIA).
The panels of scientists (with vested interests) conclude otherwise based on technical details about the virus and the Wuhan Meat Market, but those conclusions are not air tight, so a lab leak remains plausible. (It should be noted that no "smoking gun" was ever found at the Meat Market or elsewhere.)
Fauci denies that particular Coronavirus research was funded by NIH. However, previous research of that nature WAS funded by NIH through EcoHealth Alliance. What WIV was likely doing (and this is what Jeffrey Sachs, who led one task force investigating COVID origins said in 2021) was unfunded research in the anticipation of funding. Like Dr Sachs, I have worked in science and I know this is how labs operate. A cynic could even believe the real research is the "unfunded research," and when the funding finally arrives that research is now virtually complete, and the funding is then used to start research seeking the next funding opportunity, in effect being the "unfunded research" for that.
Funded or not, the research which may have originated COVID-19 was done in a lab that had previously received funding for doing very similar research, and they could have anticipated funding for that research too eventually.
Because of the risks, and the ban on GOF research in the US, the NIH should not have been funding EcoHealth alliance to do the GOF research anyway in China.
Because of a politically motivated pardon issued by Biden, Fauci cannot be prosecuted for that, and it appears he won't even answer questions about it to the Senate.
If I may, let me add one more thing. People who are scared of germs do not go into research in Virology. People who are scared of germs avoid going near Virology Departments. Virologists tend to downplay the risks of the research they are sometimes doing, and overplay the benefits. It is not clear to this day that GOF research on viruses has done anything useful. Vaccines, for example, are not devised using GOF research.
Finally there is one small issue about pandemic handling that also involves Fauci, but has been so warped by the politics we can't get straight answers. Many Republicans and especially MAGA are still convinced today that masks are useless (often along with the unfounded notion that COVID-19 was fake). That is bad, and universal N95 masking could have prevented many COVID-19 deaths. China rolled out N95 masks for public use quickly and as a result suffered far fewer COVID-19 deaths.
Early in the pandemic, Fauci (and others) emphasized the importance of hand washing (which is relatively unimportant in the transmission of COVID-19 and many other infectious respiratory diseases) and did not tell the public that masking was a good idea. (This attitude was and still is common among doctors and in hospitals.) Later, when it was finally admitted that masking was important, the public was prevented getting effective N95 masks and instead told to use simple cloth masks, which protect others more than oneself. I see this as a grave error. Instead, all measures possible should have been taken to ensure an adequate supply of N95 masks both for professionals and the general public.
No comments:
Post a Comment