Acting NIH director Lawrence Tabak's testimony to Congress on Covid-19 origins, and media coverage of it, was a perfect storm of all that has gone wrong with the origins debate.
This is another thoughtful and important report on a subject of major public importance by Michael Balter, this time devoted to the origins of the coronavirus responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic. I sense a definite shift in informed conclusions regarding this issue over the past year. For some time, it seemed that the laboratory-origin hypothesis did not fit with available evidence, and that the coronavirus had probably jumped from an animal host of some kind to humans. However, there is mounting skepticism regarding the supposed "refutation" of the laboratory-origin hypothesis, and my judgement is that the issue is now wide open once again. Indeed, I believe that the laboratory-origin hypothesis needs careful re-examination. I find it very worrisome that the Chinese authorities have still not provided crucial evidence, which raises suspicions of some kind of cover-up. Millions of people around the world died because of the pandemic, and we deserve to see full disclosure of any relevant information that has so far been withheld.
Stolberg's wording is misleading. If you watch the footage, Tabak wasn't referring generally to "viruses being studied at a laboratory in Wuhan", as Stolberg paraphrases him - https://archive.is/H6shg - but confined himself to a specific sub-project:
2:47:56 "... how did the agency fail to notice that the annual report and research done by Ecohealth and the WIV was overdue for two years?"
2:48:06 Tabak: "The most important point to appreciate here is that the viruses that were under study in that sub-project bear no relationship to SARS-CoV-2. They are genetically distinct. They are absolutely unrelated to SARS-CoV-2"
How are you, Michael?
This is another thoughtful and important report on a subject of major public importance by Michael Balter, this time devoted to the origins of the coronavirus responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic. I sense a definite shift in informed conclusions regarding this issue over the past year. For some time, it seemed that the laboratory-origin hypothesis did not fit with available evidence, and that the coronavirus had probably jumped from an animal host of some kind to humans. However, there is mounting skepticism regarding the supposed "refutation" of the laboratory-origin hypothesis, and my judgement is that the issue is now wide open once again. Indeed, I believe that the laboratory-origin hypothesis needs careful re-examination. I find it very worrisome that the Chinese authorities have still not provided crucial evidence, which raises suspicions of some kind of cover-up. Millions of people around the world died because of the pandemic, and we deserve to see full disclosure of any relevant information that has so far been withheld.
Stolberg's wording is misleading. If you watch the footage, Tabak wasn't referring generally to "viruses being studied at a laboratory in Wuhan", as Stolberg paraphrases him - https://archive.is/H6shg - but confined himself to a specific sub-project:
2:47:56 "... how did the agency fail to notice that the annual report and research done by Ecohealth and the WIV was overdue for two years?"
2:48:06 Tabak: "The most important point to appreciate here is that the viruses that were under study in that sub-project bear no relationship to SARS-CoV-2. They are genetically distinct. They are absolutely unrelated to SARS-CoV-2"
https://www.c-span.org/video/?525878-1/cdc-fda-nih-leaders-testify-covid-19-response