'Baric told investigators that the experiment in dispute,…which…created a chimeric virus that made lab mice sicker, was 'absolutely' gain-of-function research: 'You can’t argue with that.' He also said…the experiment's results should have triggered regulatory review.'

Surely this is the big new idea. Much more ventilation - which in turn means much more heating and cooling, which in turn means much more energy.

Ouch.

Pity Baric never said this in public.

Post pandemic, he emailed EcoHealth Alliance president Peter Daszak that his claim that WIV had appropriate biosafety protocols was 'a load of BS.' /4

'The Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic recommends that EcoHealth Alliance and Dr. Peter Daszak are formally debarred and cut off from receiving any future U.S. taxpayer funding.'
oversight.house.gov/release/new-se…

'In an email turned over to the Select Subcommittee as part of its investigation, Baric told Peter Daszak, president of the scientific nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance, that it was “a load of BS” to suggest that the WIV conducted coronavirus research in labs with sufficient biosafety

'Baric testified that he had specifically warned Shi Zhengli that the WIV’s critical coronavirus research was being conducted in labs with insufficient biosafety protections. When he urged her to move the work to a more secure biosafety level 3 (BSL-3) lab, he testified that she

In addition to publishing the first COVID sequence, Zhang recently published a detailed phylogenetic analysis that suggests the virus first spilled over into humans before the wet market outbreak.

twitter.com/jbloom_lab/sta…

In a POLITICO profile today, I’m described by a virologist as investigating the lab leak theory out of “deliberate malice and scientific ignorance.”

If you’re coming to my page from that profile, please allow me to clarify my actual motivations.

The Biden administration has

posted without comment

Scully Hans Mahncke Chicken and egg problem — without an FCS the virus is enteric and poorly transmissible but with an FCS it is respiratory and highly transmissible. So unless you think SARS2 developed its FCS at the Huanan market in Wuhan, it would have spilled over to humans long before it got to

Farrar in private:
“On a spectrum if 0 is nature and 100 is release - I am honestly at 50! My guess is that this will remain grey, unless there is access to the Wuhan lab - and I suspect that is unlikely!”

↕️

Farrar in public:
“scientists know Covid-19 wasn’t created in a lab”

The dangerous thing is not just gain of function, but the whole enterprise of collecting pathogens from remote places to probe them in leaky labs in the name of pandemic prevention. It likely caused a pandemic. Has it prevented anything?

Indeed

'Look', I am repeatedly told, 'we don't need to know if it was a lab leak. We should stop doing both kinds of risky thing - selling live mammals in markets AND hunting and manipulating animal viruses in labs.'

Are we doing so? No.

Lucrative business as usual for virus hunters.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change ignores crucial peer-reviewed literature and cherry-picks evidence to promote doom scenarios on climate change. These are just some of the findings of Climate Intelligence founder emeritus professor Guus Berkhout after critically

1/ This is unbelievable.

Daszak continues to be funded for doing very risky and useless stuff (hunting novel viruses, infecting humanized mice, etc) in *South-East countries*.

I thought he was 'only' into virus hunting, post-pandemic.

thesun.co.uk/news/27559273/…

“The Crown Prosecution Service has authorised Northumbria Police to charge Daniel Graham and Adam Carruthers with causing criminal damage after the Sycamore Gap tree was cut down last September.” telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/04/3…

'Scientific institutions just must earn back the public’s trust by demonstrating intellectual humility, a disinterest in how results come out, and by showing that they are open to a wide diversity of opinion and vigorous debate on contested topics'
thebreakthrough.org/journal/no-20-…