4 years later, U.S. suspends funding to EcoHealth Alliance over Wuhan Lab funding

[Open Source Intelligence]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2024/05/15/ecohealth-hhs-funding-covid/

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

Who cares the damage is already done with COVID

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

Let this be a warning, if you cause a global pandemic, you might only get another 4 1/3 years of funding.

[NYSforKennedy2024]

“Racist! Conspiracy theorists!”

[Open Source Intelligence]

2 real responses to this, really? This pandemic killed 7 million people globally. Meanwhile there are 37 responses of some piece of sh*t Rep calling another piece of sh*t Rep a beach blonde butch bitch

[Associate Justice PiT]

2 real responses to this, really? This pandemic killed 7 million people globally. Meanwhile there are 37 responses of some piece of sh*t Rep calling another piece of sh*t Rep a beach blonde butch bitch

     This isn't useful for pushing a partisan narrative, so interest is low.

[quesaisje]

It's also not clear how significant this move is. Any given group can lose funding, but what about this type of research in general? What is being done to mitigate the risks? We need an international movement comparable to nuclear disarmament.

[dead0man]

2 real responses to this, really? This pandemic killed 7 million people globally. Meanwhile there are 37 responses of some piece of sh*t Rep calling another piece of sh*t Rep a beach blonde butch bitch

look man, we have SUPER serious issues to discuss right now, a professional kicker said some crazy sh**t dontchaknow.  If you want people to pay attention and post in your threads, don't remind them of something they were wrong about, they hate that sh**t.  You've got to give the otherside something to bite on or at least some easy dunks so they can pat each other on the back and say "attaboy".

also, a naked link with no commentary or quote is not likely to spawn much.

[emailking]

US halts funding to controversial virus-hunting group: what researchers think
Some scientists think the decision regarding EcoHealth Alliance is fair; others say it might negatively affect virus surveillance.

The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has suspended federal funding for EcoHealth Alliance, a New York City-based non-profit organization that came under scrutiny during the COVID-19 pandemic for collaborating with a virology laboratory in China that was accused of potentially leaking the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus. Researchers who spoke to Nature are divided in their reaction to the decision: some think that the HHS made the right call, given EcoHealth’s apparent failure to comply with the terms of a grant that it had received, undermining public trust; others say that the decision seems to be unfairly wrapped up in politics.

In a memo detailing the decision, Henrietta Brisbon, the HHS’s suspension and debarment official, argued that EcoHealth had not provided adequate oversight of research activities at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), in China. The WIV was a subrecipient of a federal grant awarded to EcoHealth by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), meaning that it was a partner given funds to carry out some of the research covered by the grant. The document also describes how EcoHealth repeatedly failed to provide information requested by the NIH pertaining to the research conducted.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-01460-3

[Fuzzy Bear Loves Christian Missionaries]

This issue doesn't favor the Red Avatar narrative on COVID-19, so it's not a big deal.  It makes it appear that Trump and the critics of Tony Fauci are right on a time when the chips are down in the Presidential race for their current candidate.

[Bleach Blonde Bad Built Butch Bodies for Biden]

There shouldn't be a partisan narrative. The problem is that the lab claim was made prior to the emergence of evidence. Asking questions is one thing, but you don't get points for guessing sh!t. It's also pretty tacky to be using this pandemic to score political points. I have my share of complaints on how it was handled but I'm generally going to lean on what the current scientific consensus says more than some troll on 8chan or XXX or Trump's own stupid advice he gave during the pandemic to take hydroxychloroquine. Also, Trump could have fired Fauci at any time. He opted not to. But the bottom line is misinformation is a pandemic in itself.

It's a good thing they're suspending the funding.

[Fuzzy Bear Loves Christian Missionaries]

There shouldn't be a partisan narrative. The problem is that the lab claim was made prior to the emergence of evidence. Asking questions is one thing, but you don't get points for guessing sh!t. It's also pretty tacky to be using this pandemic to score political points. I have my share of complaints on how it was handled but I'm generally going to lean on what the current scientific consensus says more than some troll on 8chan or XXX or Trump's own stupid advice he gave during the pandemic to take hydroxychloroquine. Also, Trump could have fired Fauci at any time. He opted not to. But the bottom line is misinformation is a pandemic in itself.

It's a good thing they're suspending the funding.

Trump could have fired Fauci.  He could have fired Fauci after the election, out the door..  He didn't, and that's on him.

But the reason Trump didn't fire him was because of the near-deification of Fauci by almost the entire Democratic Left.  Fauci had political capital that was given to him by Democrats and Democratic donors.  They ought to be taken to task.

That includes the bulk of the Red Avatars here.  Those who were shilling for bats and wet markets as a serendipitous genesis for COVID-19 and defending Fauci ought to be able to say, "Yes, I was wrong."

[emailking]

Trump could not have fired Fauci because he was not a political appointee. He could have been fired for cause but he could have appealed that and he would have won because he didn't do anything.

[Open Source Intelligence]

2 real responses to this, really? This pandemic killed 7 million people globally. Meanwhile there are 37 responses of some piece of sh*t Rep calling another piece of sh*t Rep a beach blonde butch bitch

look man, we have SUPER serious issues to discuss right now, a professional kicker said some crazy sh**t dontchaknow.  If you want people to pay attention and post in your threads, don't remind them of something they were wrong about, they hate that sh**t.  You've got to give the otherside something to bite on or at least some easy dunks so they can pat each other on the back and say "attaboy".

also, a naked link with no commentary or quote is not likely to spawn much.

We helped fund all this. We gave money to the Chinese government that was used outside of the terms of contract given to perform gain of function virus research. And years later, 7 million people are dead. The number of dead in Ukraine and Israel/Gaza combined from those wars will be a small fraction of 7 million to give a sense of scale to all this.

Meanwhile, Peter Daszak is still a free man that has not been charged with a crime.

[Open Source Intelligence]

There shouldn't be a partisan narrative. The problem is that the lab claim was made prior to the emergence of evidence. Asking questions is one thing, but you don't get points for guessing sh!t.

This is from the famous Nicholas Wade article written in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists in May 2021.

https://thebulletin.org/2021/05/the-origin-of-covid-did-people-or-nature-open-pandoras-box-at-wuhan/

From early on, public and media perceptions were shaped in favor of the natural emergence scenario by strong statements from two scientific groups. These statements were not at first examined as critically as they should have been.

“We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin,” a group of virologists and others wrote in the Lancet on February 19, 2020, when it was really far too soon for anyone to be sure what had happened. Scientists “overwhelmingly conclude that this coronavirus originated in wildlife,” they said, with a stirring rallying call for readers to stand with Chinese colleagues on the frontline of fighting the disease.

Contrary to the letter writers’ assertion, the idea that the virus might have escaped from a lab invoked accident, not conspiracy. It surely needed to be explored, not rejected out of hand. A defining mark of good scientists is that they go to great pains to distinguish between what they know and what they don’t know. By this criterion, the signatories of the Lancet letter were behaving as poor scientists: They were assuring the public of facts they could not know for sure were true.

It later turned out that the Lancet letter had been organized and drafted by Peter Daszak, president of the EcoHealth Alliance of New York. Daszak’s organization funded coronavirus research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. If the SARS2 virus had indeed escaped from research he funded, Daszak would be potentially culpable. This acute conflict of interest was not declared to the Lancet’s readers. To the contrary, the letter concluded, “We declare no competing interests.”

Virologists like Daszak had much at stake in the assigning of blame for the pandemic. For 20 years, mostly beneath the public’s attention, they had been playing a dangerous game. In their laboratories they routinely created viruses more dangerous than those that exist in nature. They argued that they could do so safely, and that by getting ahead of nature they could predict and prevent natural “spillovers,” the cross-over of viruses from an animal host to people. If SARS2 had indeed escaped from such a laboratory experiment, a savage blowback could be expected, and the storm of public indignation would affect virologists everywhere, not just in China. “It would shatter the scientific edifice top to bottom,” an MIT Technology Review editor, Antonio Regalado, said in March 2020.

A second statement that had enormous influence in shaping public attitudes was a letter (in other words an opinion piece, not a scientific article) published on 17 March 2020 in the journal Nature Medicine. Its authors were a group of virologists led by Kristian G. Andersen of the Scripps Research Institute. “Our analyses clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus,” the five virologists declared in the second paragraph of their letter.

Unfortunately, this was another case of poor science, in the sense defined above. True, some older methods of cutting and pasting viral genomes retain tell-tale signs of manipulation. But newer methods, called “no-see-um” or “seamless” approaches, leave no defining marks. Nor do other methods for manipulating viruses such as serial passage, the repeated transfer of viruses from one culture of cells to another. If a virus has been manipulated, whether with a seamless method or by serial passage, there is no way of knowing that this is the case. Andersen and his colleagues were assuring their readers of something they could not know.

The discussion part of their letter begins, “It is improbable that SARS-CoV-2 emerged through laboratory manipulation of a related SARS-CoV-like coronavirus.” But wait, didn’t the lead say the virus had clearly not been manipulated? The authors’ degree of certainty seemed to slip several notches when it came to laying out their reasoning.

The reason for the slippage is clear once the technical language has been penetrated. The two reasons the authors give for supposing manipulation to be improbable are decidedly inconclusive.

First, they say that the spike protein of SARS2 binds very well to its target, the human ACE2 receptor, but does so in a different way from that which physical calculations suggest would be the best fit. Therefore the virus must have arisen by natural selection, not manipulation.

If this argument seems hard to grasp, it’s because it’s so strained. The authors’ basic assumption, not spelt out, is that anyone trying to make a bat virus bind to human cells could do so in only one way. First they would calculate the strongest possible fit between the human ACE2 receptor and the spike protein with which the virus latches onto it. They would then design the spike protein accordingly (by selecting the right string of amino acid units that compose it). Since the SARS2 spike protein is not of this calculated best design, the Andersen paper says, therefore it can’t have been manipulated.

But this ignores the way that virologists do in fact get spike proteins to bind to chosen targets, which is not by calculation but by splicing in spike protein genes from other viruses or by serial passage. With serial passage, each time the virus’s progeny are transferred to new cell cultures or animals, the more successful are selected until one emerges that makes a really tight bind to human cells. Natural selection has done all the heavy lifting. The Andersen paper’s speculation about designing a viral spike protein through calculation has no bearing on whether or not the virus was manipulated by one of the other two methods.

The authors’ second argument against manipulation is even more contrived. Although most living things use DNA as their hereditary material, a number of viruses use RNA, DNA’s close chemical cousin. But RNA is difficult to manipulate, so researchers working on coronaviruses, which are RNA-based, will first convert the RNA genome to DNA. They manipulate the DNA version, whether by adding or altering genes, and then arrange for the manipulated DNA genome to be converted back into infectious RNA.

Only a certain number of these DNA backbones have been described in the scientific literature. Anyone manipulating the SARS2 virus “would probably” have used one of these known backbones, the Andersen group writes, and since SARS2 is not derived from any of them, therefore it was not manipulated. But the argument is conspicuously inconclusive. DNA backbones are quite easy to make, so it’s obviously possible that SARS2 was manipulated using an unpublished DNA backbone.

And that’s it. These are the two arguments made by the Andersen group in support of their declaration that the SARS2 virus was clearly not manipulated. And this conclusion, grounded in nothing but two inconclusive speculations, convinced the world’s press that SARS2 could not have escaped from a lab. A technical critique of the Andersen letter takes it down in harsher words.

Science is supposedly a self-correcting community of experts who constantly check each other’s work. So why didn’t other virologists point out that the Andersen group’s argument was full of absurdly large holes? Perhaps because in today’s universities speech can be very costly. Careers can be destroyed for stepping out of line. Any virologist who challenges the community’s declared view risks having his next grant application turned down by the panel of fellow virologists that advises the government grant distribution agency.

The Daszak and Andersen letters were really political, not scientific, statements, yet were amazingly effective. Articles in the mainstream press repeatedly stated that a consensus of experts had ruled lab escape out of the question or extremely unlikely. Their authors relied for the most part on the Daszak and Andersen letters, failing to understand the yawning gaps in their arguments. Mainstream newspapers all have science journalists on their staff, as do the major networks, and these specialist reporters are supposed to be able to question scientists and check their assertions. But the Daszak and Andersen assertions went largely unchallenged.

Like you said, you don't get points for guessing sh*t.

[Bleach Blonde Bad Built Butch Bodies for Biden]

There shouldn't be a partisan narrative. The problem is that the lab claim was made prior to the emergence of evidence. Asking questions is one thing, but you don't get points for guessing sh!t.

-snip-

Well, I read the article and all I can really say is thank you for backing your stuff up. I do agree that there should be criminal charges and severe penalties for those responsible for the outbreak.

[emailking]

Just to clarify, most scientists still believe COVID has a zoonotic origin more likely than not. It's the intelligence agencies that have leaned towards lab leak in the last couple years.

[dead0man]

Just to clarify, most scientists still believe COVID has a zoonotic origin more likely than not.

cite

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

2 real responses to this, really? This pandemic killed 7 million people globally. Meanwhile there are 37 responses of some piece of sh*t Rep calling another piece of sh*t Rep a beach blonde butch bitch

Republicans love to misread events to follow the narratives that make them feel good, and they're not amenable to reasonable argument (if they were, they would not be Republicans); not everyone likes playing chess with pigeons.  The first two paragraphs of your linked article address most of what I'm seeing in the thread so far:

Federal health officials Wednesday suspended funding to a U.S. research organization linked to investigations about the novel coronavirus’s origins, saying the move is “necessary to protect the public interest” given the organization’s failure to monitor virus experiments in a Chinese lab before the pandemic.

Federal officials also are seeking to block future funding to EcoHealth Alliance, which worked with the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China, citing new evidence about EcoHealth’s actions that emerged ahead of a contentious congressional hearing this month.

There's more and better evidence linking Donald Trump to Russian intelligence than there is linking EcoHealth to the COVID pandemic, but the same crowd scream to cislunar orbit if you suggest taking any action based on that evidence. And this is the same pandemic which, by the way, Republicans have spent years telling me wasn't all that dangerous and is just an excuse for government overreach.

Republicans liking for this decisions is completely independent of any merits it may have; they like it solely because it makes them feel good. If deliberately sparking a pandemic made them feel good, they'd do that, too.

[emailking]

Just to clarify, most scientists still believe COVID has a zoonotic origin more likely than not. It's the intelligence agencies that have leaned towards lab leak in the last couple years.

cite

Covid origin: Why the Wuhan lab-leak theory is so disputed

That idea was backed by the WHO report, which said it was "likely to very likely" that Covid had made it to humans through an intermediate host.

This hypothesis was widely accepted at the start of the pandemic, but as time has worn on, scientists have not found a virus in either bats or another animal that matches the genetic make-up of Covid-19, leading some to doubt the theory.

Nevertheless, following FBI Director Wray's remarks, many scientists who have studied the virus have stressed there is no new scientific evidence pointing to a lab leak.

A natural origin is still the more likely theory, said Professor David Robertson, head of viral genomics and bioinformatics at the University of Glasgow.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-57268111


What does the science say about the origin of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic?

The Wall Street Journal added to that debate this week when they reported that the U.S. Department of Energy has shifted its stance on the origin of COVID. It now concludes, with "low confidence," that the pandemic most likely arose from a laboratory leak in Wuhan, China.

The agency based its conclusion on classified evidence that isn't available to the public. According to the federal government, "low confidence" means "the information used in the analysis is scant, questionable, fragmented, or that solid analytical conclusions cannot be inferred from the information."

And at this point, the U.S. intelligence community still has no consensus about the origin of SARS-CoV-2. Four of the eight intelligence agencies lean toward a natural origin for the virus, with "low confidence," while two of them — the DOE and the Federal Bureau of Investigation — support a lab origin, with the latter having "moderate confidence" about its conclusion.

https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2023/02/28/1160162845/what-does-the-science-say-about-the-origin-of-the-sars-cov-2-pandemic


I think that covers both things you might be asking for. I also put my whole post back in the quote.

[Fuzzy Bear Loves Christian Missionaries]

There shouldn't be a partisan narrative. The problem is that the lab claim was made prior to the emergence of evidence. Asking questions is one thing, but you don't get points for guessing sh!t. It's also pretty tacky to be using this pandemic to score political points. I have my share of complaints on how it was handled but I'm generally going to lean on what the current scientific consensus says more than some troll on 8chan or XXX or Trump's own stupid advice he gave during the pandemic to take hydroxychloroquine. Also, Trump could have fired Fauci at any time. He opted not to. But the bottom line is misinformation is a pandemic in itself.

It's a good thing they're suspending the funding.

It IS a partisan narrative, and it will REMAIN a partisan narrative solely because of the degree to which the Democrats sought to censor this talk on social media platforms as "disinformation" and "Xenophobia".  You can't put that genie back in the bottle until the Democrats who did this admit they were wrong to attempt to censor the Free Speech of others, as well as peddling Wet Market Fairy Tales.

The apology should be for attempting to stifle the speech of the American people whose views on COVID-19 they did not agree with. 

[dead0man]

Covid origin: Why the Wuhan lab-leak theory is so disputed

That idea was backed by the WHO report, which said it was "likely to very likely" that Covid had made it to humans through an intermediate host.

This hypothesis was widely accepted at the start of the pandemic, but as time has worn on, scientists have not found a virus in either bats or another animal that matches the genetic make-up of Covid-19, leading some to doubt the theory.

Nevertheless, following FBI Director Wray's remarks, many scientists who have studied the virus have stressed there is no new scientific evidence pointing to a lab leak.

A natural origin is still the more likely theory, said Professor David Robertson, head of viral genomics and bioinformatics at the University of Glasgow.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-57268111


What does the science say about the origin of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic?

The Wall Street Journal added to that debate this week when they reported that the U.S. Department of Energy has shifted its stance on the origin of COVID. It now concludes, with "low confidence," that the pandemic most likely arose from a laboratory leak in Wuhan, China.

The agency based its conclusion on classified evidence that isn't available to the public. According to the federal government, "low confidence" means "the information used in the analysis is scant, questionable, fragmented, or that solid analytical conclusions cannot be inferred from the information."

And at this point, the U.S. intelligence community still has no consensus about the origin of SARS-CoV-2. Four of the eight intelligence agencies lean toward a natural origin for the virus, with "low confidence," while two of them — the DOE and the Federal Bureau of Investigation — support a lab origin, with the latter having "moderate confidence" about its conclusion.

https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2023/02/28/1160162845/what-does-the-science-say-about-the-origin-of-the-sars-cov-2-pandemic


I think that covers both things you might be asking for. I also put my whole post back in the quote.

neither of those quotes say "most scientists still believe COVID has a zoonotic origin more likely than not" or at least I'm not seeing it.  I see one guy saying that.  It would be weird if their was such a scientific consensus in either direction at this point in time.


People will keep digging, hopefully the truth, ugly as it may be, will come out in time.  That is if the PRC hasn't destroyed all the evidence (including humans) yet.

[Bleach Blonde Bad Built Butch Bodies for Biden]

There shouldn't be a partisan narrative. The problem is that the lab claim was made prior to the emergence of evidence. Asking questions is one thing, but you don't get points for guessing sh!t. It's also pretty tacky to be using this pandemic to score political points. I have my share of complaints on how it was handled but I'm generally going to lean on what the current scientific consensus says more than some troll on 8chan or XXX or Trump's own stupid advice he gave during the pandemic to take hydroxychloroquine. Also, Trump could have fired Fauci at any time. He opted not to. But the bottom line is misinformation is a pandemic in itself.

It's a good thing they're suspending the funding.

It IS a partisan narrative, and it will REMAIN a partisan narrative solely because of the degree to which the Democrats sought to censor this talk on social media platforms as "disinformation" and "Xenophobia".  You can't put that genie back in the bottle until the Democrats who did this admit they were wrong to attempt to censor the Free Speech of others, as well as peddling Wet Market Fairy Tales.

The apology should be for attempting to stifle the speech of the American people whose views on COVID-19 they did not agree with. 

The xenophobia claim would hold a lot more weight if anti-Asian racism and hate crimes didn't spike at the time - which they did. People are stupid and incapable of separating people from the governments of their or their ancestors' nation of origin. Or even doing racism "right" because non-Chinese Asians were attacked as well.

[Open Source Intelligence]

https://www.newsweek.com/inside-fauci-morens-coronavirus-emails-1904099

News story on how everyone was circumventing FOIA.

Video of Kweisi Mfume questioning Morens.

[John Dule]

There shouldn't be a partisan narrative. The problem is that the lab claim was made prior to the emergence of evidence. Asking questions is one thing, but you don't get points for guessing sh!t. It's also pretty tacky to be using this pandemic to score political points. I have my share of complaints on how it was handled but I'm generally going to lean on what the current scientific consensus says more than some troll on 8chan or XXX or Trump's own stupid advice he gave during the pandemic to take hydroxychloroquine. Also, Trump could have fired Fauci at any time. He opted not to. But the bottom line is misinformation is a pandemic in itself.

It's a good thing they're suspending the funding.

There was always overwhelming circumstantial evidence in support of this theory. That doesn’t make it true, but at the very least, it makes it worthy of serious discussion— as opposed to throwing around allegations of racism or conspiracy theories whenever someone brings it up.