I have frequently thought of creating other blogs with much narrower focuses. One of those narrow focuses would be that partisans these days seem to have their own facts, their own distinct realities. That was brought home to me today with a very clear example. Under a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request The Intercept received an enormous dump of documents from the National Institutes of Health. Sharon Lerner and Mara Hvistendahl report:
NEWLY RELEASED DOCUMENTS provide details of U.S.-funded research on several types of coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China. The Intercept has obtained more than 900 pages of documents detailing the work of EcoHealth Alliance, a U.S.-based health organization that used federal money to fund bat coronavirus research at the Chinese laboratory. The trove of documents includes two previously unpublished grant proposals that were funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, as well as project updates relating to EcoHealth Alliance’s research, which has been scrutinized amid increased interest in the origins of the pandemic.
The documents were released in connection with ongoing Freedom of Information Act litigation by The Intercept against the National Institutes of Health. The Intercept is making the full documents available to the public.
Basically, there’s a pretty clear paper trail from the NIH to EcoHealth Alliance to the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Short version: the NIH was doing an end-run against U. S. prohibitions of “gain of function” research as too risky.
As you might guess this is big news in the Right Blogosphere, which takes it as a prima facie case for the “lab leak” hypothesis of SARS-Cov-2 origins. So far there has been silence about it from the Left Blogosphere, from the New York Times, or the Washington Post. I would think this should be a pretty big scoop everywhere.
I don’t believe this is the “smoking gun” some have sought but it does look like pretty damning evidence of, at the least, a mistake by the NIH.
And it’s certainly graphic evidence of how, contrary to the late Pat Moynihan, everybody today has their own facts.
This is not what I would conventionally think of as facts. I guess it could be. Do we know what kind of bat research? Not a lot of details in your link so not sure what they were really doing. One paragraph suggests it was just massive screening and another says altering the virus. Meh.
I think much better examples include that you can no longer have an agreed upon set of numbers or data source. BLS number, FRED, etc are all no longer acceptable for the right. AFAICT they only accept information that comes from right wing media. Of note, that will occasionally actually use BLS numbers or other commonly (in the past) accepted sources, but only selectively. IOW BLS numbers, or any other source, is no longer valid unless it has been blessed by some source on the right. Since I prefer data based discussions when possible it is largely impossible to actually have a meaningful discussion with people on the right now.
Steve
That’s not the only alarming article lately. Here’s one with lots of detail from the Washington Post.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/interactive/2021/a-science-in-the-shadows/
‘The NIH leaders and the Department of Health and Human Services pledged to subject the work to increased transparency and vetting.
This included forming a review group of federal officials — known informally as a “Ferrets Committee .
However, Collins and Fauci in recent years have helped shape policy changes, directly and through their aides, that undercut the committee’s authority, according to federal documents, congressional testimony and interviews with dozens of present and former officials and science experts.‘. (Emphasis mine).
I still hold that we can’t control what the Chinese will do; but the US government continues to be a big funder of this type of research, and we can and should control the risks in Stateside labs.
Agreed on both counts.
“Short version: the NIH was doing an end-run against U. S. prohibitions of “gain of function†research as too risky.”
Combined with the email trail its obvious Fauci lied, unless one is into transparently misleading Clintonian parsing. It doesn’t prove a lab leak. But look at the report whitewash. One is expected to reach reasonable inferences in this world. And further, if we treat this like a court of law, we will never reach actionable conclusions.
Which is where CO makes the relevant point. You don’t fund uncontrollable Chinese research labs. You just don’t. It was malpractice. At the very least, Fauci should be fired.
I read pretty widely. It is very often the case that the left and right media are focused on very different things. And when events can’t be ignored (Afghanistan) then the coverage is skewed toward preferred narratives and aspects of events that don’t conform simply get left out.
The left and right really do live in different worlds.
For example, I only hear about AOC from right-wing blogs and media. Left-wing blogs and media mostly just ignore her, regardless of what she says. On the other side, I wouldn’t know anything about Lauren Boebert if it weren’t for left-wing blogs and media – and Boebert lives in my state!
The same thing with media criticism – the latest Maddow stupidity is covered by right-wing sources and while the latest Tucker Carlson stupidity is covered by left-wing sources. Sometimes I wonder how many liberals watch Fox and conservatives watch MSNBC because of the amount of effort put into covering them.
And what’s sad is the combined viewership of both of them is maybe 6 million – less than 2% of the population. These outlets have a lot more traction and influence than they should and I think a lot of that is driven by the criticism and exposure from the other side.