“We now know U.S. scientists collaborated with their Chinese counterparts on controversial gain-of-function experiments and that grants from NIAID flowed to the Wuhan lab through various channels. It’s highly likely that U.S. researchers provided the skills and our government offered some funding that allowed Chinese researchers to continue independently tinkering with deadly viruses until one accidentally escaped the lab. From the start, the NIAID head used his enormous bureaucratic clout to make sure no one explored that relationship. While Dr. Fauci repeatedly told the media that the Covid lab-leak scenario was “just conspiracy theories,” he was conspiring to quash questions about his agency’s possible role.”
James B. Meigs, in the Wall St Journal ($)
Here are a couple more paragraphs for those of you unable or unwilling to get past the paywall. I think it is notable that a bastion of free market, centre-right opinion, the Wall Street effing Journal no less, is letting rip in this vein:
How did Dr. Fauci enforce public unanimity, despite these scientists’ private doubts? Power and money, for one thing. As the head of the NIAID, he operated with minimal political oversight and supervised a $6 billion research budget. Politics also played a role. Once President Trump mentioned the possibility of a lab leak in April 2020, few scientists or media figures wanted to be seen as carrying water for the White House. For science reporters, the question of Covid’s origin should have been the story of a lifetime. But almost no one touched the topic for the first year of the pandemic. When a few later did, a New York Times reporter said, “Someday we will stop talking about the lab leak theory and maybe even admit its racist roots. But alas, that day is not yet here.”
This is not the way a healthy democracy responds to a disaster. After the Space Shuttle Challenger blew up in 1986, President Reagan appointed a blue-ribbon commission to investigate. NASA opened its books and answered every question. When a mysterious virus began killing thousands of Americans a week, Dr. Fauci and other public-health leaders did the opposite. They gaslit reporters, stonewalled congressional inquiries and evaded Freedom of Information Act requests. In two recently released emails, another Dr. Fauci ally urged the Wuhan lab’s Dr. Shi not to share information with a respected American virus researcher. Talk about a coverup.
A reason why this matters as much as it does in my view is that it shows the extent of the intellectual and moral corruption of parts of the scientific/public health/media/public policy community, and that corruption is a major reason for loss of trust, a loss that alas extends to those who don’t deserve it. And it also shows how people are more willing to give cover to the likes of a brutal regime – China – than they are to be open about the causes of this pandemic. It raises questions about the merits or otherwise of “gain of function” research and why countries should engage in it, given that on a risk-reward tradeoff, chances of catastrophe, even if small, are enough to get people to press the “no” button. For that matter, I wonder what happens when such research intersects with AI, but that’s a topic for another time.
This virus originated in a city that has one of the world’s central labs for doing research on exactly this kind of virus and does gain of function research on this kind of virus, and which is known for its poor safety record.
How is it possible that people didn’t automatically assume it was the source unless proven otherwise by overwhelming evidence? Surely the only serious question was “was it an accident or was it deliberate or maybe somewhere between the two?”
Instead we got a “it might look that way but we scientists have secret knowledge that you plebeians don’t have, we looked at the magic DNA and used our huge brains to discern things that you could not possibly understand, and you just have to trust us that it is from a wet market. Oh and these scientists over there who disagree with us, they are evil and we are going to destroy them.”
It is so outrageous, and the outrage is exceeded only by the fact that nobody has gone to jail, in fact nobody has even been fired. We can only hope that Fauci suffers some consequences over his contempt of congress; small comfort though it is when the man got rich off the massive suffering and death he is at least indirectly responsible for. Most likely though he will not, either from the wobbly republican senate or a 95% “we love Fauci” DC grand jury.
It is simply shocking that a public servant who continues to draw a gigantic pension from the public treasury would plead the fifth in front of a congressional committee, particularly so while being immunized and, consequently having no 5th amendment privilege.
How can we ever trust the public science establishment ever again? Certainly not until they apologize and accept blame, or at the very least stop gaslighting us that they were right all along.
@Fraser Orr
I suspect the only serious question to those directly concerned was “Will I get the blame for this?”
That Fauci nearly got away clean with this massive coverup surprises me far less than the fact that nearly half the population still believe (firmly!) that masks were a good idea, that the mRNA vaccines were exactly what they purported to be, that it’s racist to assert that the Wuhan virus (also known after much Woke flailing as COVID) originated in Wuhan China, and that it’s still important to Trust The Science™.
They are the Immovable Herd meeting the Irresistible Force of actual events. What will happen next?