There’s a rather remarkable column in the New York Times from Zeynep Tufekci, undoubtedly motivated by the fifth anniversary of COVID-19. Here’s the meat of the piece:
The C.I.A. recently updated its assessment of how the Covid pandemic began, judging a lab leak to be the likely origin, albeit with low confidence. The Department of Energy, which runs sophisticated labs, and the F.B.I. had already come to that conclusion in 2023. But there are certainly more questions for governments and researchers across the world to answer. Why did it take until now for the German public to learn that way back in 2020, their Federal Intelligence Service endorsed a lab leak origin with 80 to 95 percent probability? What else is still being kept from us about the pandemic that half a decade ago changed all of our lives?
I found the use of the passive voice in the title amusing, given the tenor of the column itself: “We Were Badly Misled About the Event That Changed Our Lives”.
And, as Dr. Tufekci makes clear in her column, it was not just a case of knowing little about the virus at the outset but that physicians, scientists, and bureaucrats actively and knowingly lied about the virus and what they knew or did not know.
The German press recently has been full of stories about how the German intelligence service believes with high certainty that the pandemic was the consequence of a “lab leak” from the Wuhan laboratory. My own view, as I have said before, is that is a step too far.
We don’t really know what produced the pandemic—naturally evolving or lab leak—and we are unlikely to know unless the Chinese government miraculously becomes forthcoming about it. The only thing I can imagine that might cause that to happen, as I have said before, would be for our judges and political leaders to allow a civil suit against the Chinese government seeking in the vicinity of $30 trillion in consequential and punitive damages over COVID to proceed.
In the meantime I hope we learn how essential it is for professionals on whom we rely for their expertise be unswervingly honest in their public pronouncements. To be otherwise undermines public trust and, indeed, the very reasons that we rely on them. Furthermore, I hope we have learned that we should not subsidize “gain of function” research outside a place where we can control the safety measures put in place or how the knowledge is used.
The number of things about which health care professionals, meaning the CDC/NIH was very few. In the overall picture of how covid was managed it was a small issue. The biggest 2 issues are that the virus was new and we weren’t really prepared very well and second, that it was quickly politicized. POTUS said the virus was under control and would be gone in a couple of weeks. That anyone who wanted to get a test could get one. He went on to make pretty off the wall comments unsupported by medical evidence about specific drugs and treatments. As a result his follower, meaning half the country, believed him and did not act on treatments guided by actual evidence.
Trump gave the OK to go ahead and pay for the development of some of the vaccines and for that he should get some credit, but he gets the lions share of the blame for making covid a political/ideological/tribal issue rather than a public health one. He is why so many people didnt get vaccinated, took quack medicines and why we got attacked in hospitals and got death threats.
Speaking of vaccines, the Epstein files showed RFK taking some of those flights. When asked about it he said he was just there to make sure the girls were not vaccinated.
Steve
the political dance requires at least two dancers.
So your fear is the actual reason I was not allowed to visit and help her.
https://transcriberb.dreamwidth.org/10261.html
Unfortunately, this debate continues to be highly partisan, unnecessarily so. There still seem to be some dead-enders who insist the lab leak theory is racist, for example, which logically makes zero sense.
Anyway, my point has long been what Dave noted—we don’t know the origin for certain. We don’t have evidence that proves or disproves either theory (or related theories). And because China is going to China, we are unlikely to ever know. Of course, China does support the lab-leak theory, but their theory is that it was created in a US Army lab, not in China.
So what really matters is not this “debate” which will likely never be conclusively won by either side, but what ought to be done. And my view is that we need to proceed as if both theories are true. We ought to take steps to tighten lab security, especially in countries like China, and we also ought to be pressuring the Chinese to get a handle on their wet market problem. And of course, there ought to be greater preparation here in the US for future pandemics.
Is any of that happening? I have no idea. The press and politicians seem uninterested, so it looks like everyone is sticking their heads in the sand.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14503159/Labour-Wuhan-lab-leak-pandemic-Boris-johnson.html
A classified dossier compiled by Sir Richard Dearlove, the former head of MI6, was passed to then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson at the start of the outbreak in March 2020 which stated: ‘It is now beyond reasonable doubt that Covid-19 was engineered in the Wuhan Institute of Virology’.
The file, marked ‘Secret – Recipient’s Eyes Only’ argued that Beijing was pushing a fake narrative that the virus had originated in an animal market. The dossier, compiled by a group of eminent academics and intelligence experts and seen by The Mail on Sunday, said China even retrospectively manipulated viral samples to give credence to the deception.
Better dead than rude, eh?
“In the meantime I hope we learn how essential it is for professionals on whom we rely for their expertise be unswervingly honest in their public pronouncements”
Not just honesty, but humility about how much they know and how much they don’t know.
As an example, think of the Covid vaccine trials. Scientists reporting the results were honest, 90+% effective against infection, hospitalization and death, all done with the gold standard for medcine, an RCT trial. But one key limitation no one mentioned was they only measured effectiveness at 3 months, and there were no guarantees it would extrapolate to 12 months or more importantly, for life.
That caused no end in grief when we fought over vaccine mandates in the hope of eradicating the disease, and public cynicism when Delta and Omicron showed the limitations of the vaccines.
In the age of Google and ChatGPT where everyone has the body of all human knowledge on their fingerprints its expected experts are omniscient; but experts serve everyone better when they spell out how much we don’t know.
This was apparent from the beginning – Occam’s Razor. It began in a city with a virus lab studying this specific virus. The safety protocols were lax, and the first cases were lab workers.
If it were the same circumstances but at the ‘Trump Research Center’, I doubt it would be so difficult.
Honestly, this is too stupid, but for the holdouts, bless your heart.
(NOTE: Lab-leak does not mean genetically altered.)
An opinion I read was that a test animal died at Wuhan, protocol said incineration.
Lax security measures led to an employee taking the carcass and selling it to someone at the meat market.
Incompetence is always more likely than not and the nature of the Chinese authorities explains the delay and subsequent cover up.
It’s more than lax security measures. Strong security measures are impossible there. Unless you believe they’ll say “no” to the authorities if the authorities tell them to do something that would break protocol.
Everything Curious said X10.
In the intel community, that was hammered into us. Don’t bullshit. Don’t be definitive if the evidence doesn’t support it. Be open about what you don’t know.
Not telling the truth is unethical:
“A physician shall uphold the standards of professionalism, be honest in all professional interactions, and strive to report physicians deficient in character or competence, or engaging in fraud or deception, to appropriate entities.”
That someone mostly told the truth is irrelevant. One lie brands that individual as unethical. Furthermore, it tars the entire profession. How do you tell lying from not lying? Note, too, the obligation to report unethical physicians. Failing to do so is unethical.