An Object Lesson from Covid on How to Destroy Public Trust
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
> Could you address these suggestions or concerns that this virus was somehow manmade, possibly came out of a laboratory in China?"
> "There was a study recently that we can make available to you, where a group of highly qualified evolutionary virologists looked at the sequences there and the sequences in bats as they evolve. And the mutations that it took to get to the point where it is now is totally consistent with a jump of a species from an animal to a human," Fauci replied.
> He underscored in his remarks that studies of the virus' genome have strongly indicated that it was transmitted from an animal to a human rather than created or enhanced in a laboratory setting, as a review in a scientific journal found.
https://www.businessinsider.com/fauci-throws-cold-water-cons...
Kristian G. Andersen, a researcher dependent on funding controlled by Fauci, published this after discussion directly with Fauci himself. In FOIA'd emails, Andersen had previously expressed concern that SARS-CoV-2 had arisen unnaturally, but he changed his public position after the discussion.
He says new scientific evidence changed his mind, but his arguments don't make any sense. David Relman (of Stanford) writes:
> Some [that's Andersen] have argued that a deliberate engineering scenario is unlikely because one would not have had the insight a priori to design the current pandemic virus. This argument fails to acknowledge the possibility that two or more as yet undisclosed ancestors i.e., more proximal ancestors than RaTG13 and RmYN02) had already been discovered and were being studied in a laboratory—for example, one with the SARS-CoV-2 backbone and spike protein receptor binding domain, and the other with the SARS-CoV-2 polybasic furin cleavage site. It would have been a logical next step to wonder about the properties of a recombinant virus and then create it in the laboratory
https://www.pnas.org/doi/pdf/10.1073/pnas.2021133117
Even Andersen himself has since moved on to more sophisticated (but still flawed) arguments like Pekar's "The molecular epidemiology of multiple zoonotic origins of SARS-CoV-2". But at the time, "Proximal origin" justified the false consensus that SARS-CoV-2 unquestionably arose naturally. So any speculation otherwise was a "conspiracy theory", derided in the press and banned from major social media platforms. Do you not find any of that objectionable?
Experts talking to each other? Anyone talking to, or being funded by, Fauci? People changing their opinion after digging into the evidence? People disagreeing with your interpretation of the facts?
1. The "Proximal origins" publication that you referenced argues that SARS-CoV-2 is surely natural, because it wasn't a chimera of any two known natural viruses.
2. But I don't think that's a meaningful argument, because (as Relman said) it could be a chimera of two newly-discovered viruses. The WIV had the biggest program anywhere in the world to sample new sarbecoviruses from nature.
It's obviously normal for people to change their views after obtaining new evidence; but I don't see where that evidence is. So I don't see a good reason for Andersen to change his views, but I do see a bad reason in that initially-undisclosed conflict of interest. I also see a deliberate attempt to evade FOIA obligations, which makes me suspect there might be more bad stuff that I'm unaware of. That's what I think is objectionable.
A majority of Americans now believe that SARS-CoV-2 definitely or probably arose from a research accident, including a majority of Democrats:
https://today.yougov.com/politics/articles/45389-americans-b...
Countless highly-credentialed scientists have made the arguments, including professors at top universities and Nobel prize winners. Baric still thinks natural is more likely, but even he acknowledges the uncertainty and has criticized the WIV's safety standards. So if all this genuinely seems incomprehensible to you, then you're in a very unusual place.