May 24, 2021 04:29 AM
https://bgr.com/science/coronavirus-upda...y-5927190/
EXCERPTS: In an interview with Dr. Anthony Fauci published around this time last year by National Geographic, the longtime director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases strongly [...endorsed that it was not...] the result of an accident of some kind originating inside China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology (the so-called “lab leak” theory).
“If you look at the evolution of the virus in bats, what’s out there now is very, very strongly leaning toward this (virus) could not have been artificially or deliberately manipulated — the way the mutations have naturally evolved,” Dr. Fauci told NatGeo. “A number of very qualified evolutionary biologists have said that everything about the stepwise evolution over time strongly indicates that it evolved in nature and then jumped species.”
Exactly 12 months later, however, Dr. Fauci is now the chief medical advisor for the Biden White House, and he now appears prepared to do a 180 on the origin of the coronavirus pandemic. [...] he gave the following answer after being asked about all of the different possibilities that could explain the origin of the COVID-19 virus.
“There’s a lot of cloudiness around the origins of COVID-19 still, so I wanted to ask, are you still confident that it developed naturally?” PolitiFact’s Katie Sanders asked him. Needless to say, his answer has left many netizens and social media users aghast, especially since the prevailing response for a year now to anyone who simply wondered whether an accident of some kind could have caused the virus at the heart of the pandemic was treated with the same level of contempt you’d reserve for someone who thinks the earth is flat.
Dr. Fauci’s answer: “No actually [...] I am not convinced about that. I think we should continue to investigate what went on in China until we find out to the best of our ability exactly what happened.” As he continued, Dr. Fauci added that there have certainly been authoritative experts who’ve investigated and said that COVID-19 likely emerged from an animal reservoir of some kind, “but it could have been something else. And we need to find that out.”
[...] The Wall Street Journal on Sunday added yet another wrinkle — that at least three researchers from the virology institute in Wuhan, China, where the pandemic originated reportedly became sick enough that they needed hospital care back in November 2019, suggesting that both our understanding of the timeline for the pandemic as well as the institute’s centrality to it might need to be re-examined.
As you might can imagine, this news is creating shockwaves online. “The newspaper said the report — which provides fresh details on the number of researchers affected, the timing of their illnesses, and their hospital visits — may add weight to calls for a broader probe of whether the COVID-19 virus could have escaped from the laboratory,” Reuters notes about the WSJ findings.
[...] About a week ago, former New York Times science writer Donald McNeil Jr. — who until his resignation from the paper over an unrelated matter was one of the premier journalists in the US covering the pandemic — wrote a Medium post entitled “How I Learned to Stop Worrying And Love the Lab Leak Theory.”
[...] McNeil’s whole piece is worth a read. “The Occam’s Razor argument — what’s the likeliest explanation, animal or lab? — keeps shifting in the direction of the latter,” he notes at one point. “The whole thing may just be a cold case, and stay that way forever. But there are more embers left to sift. The whole world, China included, needs a hard answer, whoever is to blame — so we can prevent this from happening again.” (MORE - missing details)
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Cynical Sindee: Science's ultimate nemesis is Woke (all the failed pestering from religion over the course of the 20th-century can't equal the threatening effectiveness of the former). So if the mundane arm salutes to political correctness aren't satisfactorily keeping this in the bag any longer... Then the soon, forthcoming outcries from the SJW outlets of racism against Chinese will intimidate the abruptly emboldened Fauci and the rest to slink back into their holes and retract. Typical wonks consumed with their Western guilt trip -- just poke them a bit with that and they'll fall back into proper, virtue-saluting line.
EXCERPTS: In an interview with Dr. Anthony Fauci published around this time last year by National Geographic, the longtime director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases strongly [...endorsed that it was not...] the result of an accident of some kind originating inside China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology (the so-called “lab leak” theory).
“If you look at the evolution of the virus in bats, what’s out there now is very, very strongly leaning toward this (virus) could not have been artificially or deliberately manipulated — the way the mutations have naturally evolved,” Dr. Fauci told NatGeo. “A number of very qualified evolutionary biologists have said that everything about the stepwise evolution over time strongly indicates that it evolved in nature and then jumped species.”
Exactly 12 months later, however, Dr. Fauci is now the chief medical advisor for the Biden White House, and he now appears prepared to do a 180 on the origin of the coronavirus pandemic. [...] he gave the following answer after being asked about all of the different possibilities that could explain the origin of the COVID-19 virus.
“There’s a lot of cloudiness around the origins of COVID-19 still, so I wanted to ask, are you still confident that it developed naturally?” PolitiFact’s Katie Sanders asked him. Needless to say, his answer has left many netizens and social media users aghast, especially since the prevailing response for a year now to anyone who simply wondered whether an accident of some kind could have caused the virus at the heart of the pandemic was treated with the same level of contempt you’d reserve for someone who thinks the earth is flat.
Dr. Fauci’s answer: “No actually [...] I am not convinced about that. I think we should continue to investigate what went on in China until we find out to the best of our ability exactly what happened.” As he continued, Dr. Fauci added that there have certainly been authoritative experts who’ve investigated and said that COVID-19 likely emerged from an animal reservoir of some kind, “but it could have been something else. And we need to find that out.”
[...] The Wall Street Journal on Sunday added yet another wrinkle — that at least three researchers from the virology institute in Wuhan, China, where the pandemic originated reportedly became sick enough that they needed hospital care back in November 2019, suggesting that both our understanding of the timeline for the pandemic as well as the institute’s centrality to it might need to be re-examined.
As you might can imagine, this news is creating shockwaves online. “The newspaper said the report — which provides fresh details on the number of researchers affected, the timing of their illnesses, and their hospital visits — may add weight to calls for a broader probe of whether the COVID-19 virus could have escaped from the laboratory,” Reuters notes about the WSJ findings.
[...] About a week ago, former New York Times science writer Donald McNeil Jr. — who until his resignation from the paper over an unrelated matter was one of the premier journalists in the US covering the pandemic — wrote a Medium post entitled “How I Learned to Stop Worrying And Love the Lab Leak Theory.”
[...] McNeil’s whole piece is worth a read. “The Occam’s Razor argument — what’s the likeliest explanation, animal or lab? — keeps shifting in the direction of the latter,” he notes at one point. “The whole thing may just be a cold case, and stay that way forever. But there are more embers left to sift. The whole world, China included, needs a hard answer, whoever is to blame — so we can prevent this from happening again.” (MORE - missing details)
- - - - - -
Cynical Sindee: Science's ultimate nemesis is Woke (all the failed pestering from religion over the course of the 20th-century can't equal the threatening effectiveness of the former). So if the mundane arm salutes to political correctness aren't satisfactorily keeping this in the bag any longer... Then the soon, forthcoming outcries from the SJW outlets of racism against Chinese will intimidate the abruptly emboldened Fauci and the rest to slink back into their holes and retract. Typical wonks consumed with their Western guilt trip -- just poke them a bit with that and they'll fall back into proper, virtue-saluting line.