Since the beginning of the COVID pandemic in early 2020, there has been intense interest in how the pandemic started. Was it started by a leak of the virus from a dirty seafood market stall in China? Did it begin because the virus leaked from a research laboratory in Wuhan, China?
Republican elected officials in Washington became convinced that it began because the virus escaped from a lab in Wuhan, China, that researching dangerous viruses; that the lab was involved in gain-of-function research; that the research was funded by the United States; and that Dr. Anthony Fauci knew and must be held accountable.
In other words, a worldwide pandemic that caused millions of deaths was Dr. Fauci’s fault. They launched hearings yesterday at which Dr. Fauci was grilled.
Dr. Paul Offit is an infectious diseases specialist. He blogs at “Beyond the Noise” and recently wrote a book about COVID. He wrote the following post to explain what scientists know about these issues.
He wrote:
On February 13, 2024, National Geographic published a book I wrote called, TELL ME WHEN IT’S OVER: AN INSIDER’S GUIDE TO DECIPHERING COVID MYTHS AND NAVIGATING OUR POST-PANDEMIC WORLD. For the past few months, I have been writing about various issues discussed in that book.
In the wake of some emails that recently came to light, the question of whether the United States government knowingly funded gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology has resurfaced. Does this new information prove the lab-leak theory?
First, what is “gain-of-function” research? Second, did gain-of-function research give birth to SARS-CoV-2 virus? One way to understand gain-of-function research is through the prism of rabies virus. People get rabies when they are bitten by a rabid animal. Once under the skin, the virus travels up the nerves and enters the brain, where it causes delirium, seizures, coma, and invariably death. Rabies is without question the deadliest infection of humans.
Now, imagine that a scientist engineers rabies virus so that, instead of being transmitted by animal bites, it is transmitted by small droplets from the nose and mouth, like the common cold. This new virus would be highly contagious and uniformly fatal. In the absence of an effective vaccine, it could eliminate humans from the face of the earth. The good news is that no one has tried to make rabies virus more contagious. But that doesn’t mean that it’s not possible or that no one would be willing to try. Indeed, in 2011, one experiment so frightened U.S. public health officials that within two years federal regulators made gain-of-function research illegal.
The worrisome experiment took place at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Researchers took a strain of influenza virus found in birds and altered it to grow in ferrets (which, like humans, are mammals). In other words, these researchers had taken a strain of influenza virus that was limited to birds—to which no one in the world had immunity—and altered it so that it might cause disease in people. They had created a potential pandemic virus.
In 2016, three years before SARS-CoV-2 virus entered the human population, the lead researcher studying coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology was Dr. Zheng-Li Shi. Her studies were funded in part by the United States government through EcoHealth. Dr. Shi was studying a coronavirus strain called WIV1 (Wuhan Institute of Virology-1): a bat coronavirus that could grow in monkey cells in the laboratory but didn’t cause disease in people. The WIV1 strain bears no resemblance to SARS-CoV-2. Dr. Shi wanted to see what would happen if she combined WIV1 with each of eight different bat coronaviruses that had been found in caves in and around Wuhan. None of the combination viruses that she created, however, were more dangerous than the strain she had started with (WIV1). None of them, like WIV1, could cause disease in people. Although Dr. Shi had performed gain-of-function studies that would have been illegal in the United States, she didn’t create a coronavirus strain that was dangerous to people.
So, while it was true that the United States government funded gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, no function was gained. The recent seemingly endless posting of hidden emails and secret communications by government officials—all breathlessly claiming conspiracy and coverup—has, in the final analysis, been much to do about nothing.
Indeed, overwhelming evidence continues to support an animal-to-human spillover event that occurred in the western section of the Huanan Wholesale Seafood Market at the end of 2019. This is consistent with many other animal-to-human spillover events in history. Influenza virus (birds), human immunodeficiency virus (chimps), Ebola virus (bats), mpox (rodents), and the coronaviruses SARS-1 (bats) and MERS (bats) were all originally animal viruses. Indeed, about 60 percent of human viruses and bacteria have their origins in animals.
For a lengthy but complete discussion about why it is now clear that SARS-CoV-2 was an animal-to-human spillover event, you might want to check out a podcast called Decoding the Gurus, which features evolutionary biologists Michael Worobey, Kristian Anderson, and Eddie Holmes.
I watched and listened to a news video showing MTG attacking Dr. Fauci. MTG is one of Trump’s hardcore, deplorable, dumber than dumb septic tank mouth MAGA cult members. If Traitor Trump tells her to spit, she’ll ask how far.
The primary reason I think Trump ordered that attack on Dr. Fauci is because the traitor has a lifelong history of micromanaging everyone that he owns and/or controls.
MTG is his loyalist puppet. Who do you think ordered MTG to file impeachment papers against Biden his first day he was in office?
And MTG isn’t alone. Most elected Republicans across the country are taking their orders directly or indirectly from Traitor Trump.
The Traitor’s goal is to spread chaos, and this is another one of his attempts to do that, plus he sees Fauci as one of his enemies to punish for not doing what he was told. Also, the Traitor wants the country to shift his failure over handling COVID to someone else and Dr. Fauci is his target, at this time.
It is cheaper to fool the public into thinking that you have the public health in mind than it is to actually care about the public health. Don’t want people thinking about how you botched the pandemic? Blame the Chinese. Blame the scientists. Blame the media. Anything that takes the blame off you.
Right wing media have never met a conspiracy that they didn’t want to spread. These folks are prone to fomenting lies and finding targeted scapegoats. As Dr. Fauci noted, it is impossible to prove where and how the Covid virus originated. It is unfortunate that he and his family were in the crosshairs of these conspiracy theorists. Extremists feed on chaos and misinformation.
I suppose the Republicans want to turn the question of where the pandemic started into a partisan issue, to divert attention from Trump’s recklessness during the pandemic, e.g. telling people to inject bleach.
thank you so much Diane for that incredible laugh . Are you just realizing how corrupt fauci is? How he made up all this bogus “science.” He was nearly run out of town in the 80s for aids . You think Gates is not in on it ? How come we don’t know where this virus came from still ? Even though Wuhan China or Chyna Ukraine
this research was also funded by Obama. When it is all said and done Fauci will be associated with Joseph Mengele .
Ms. Right, you are wrong.
Get your science from scientists, not politicians.
Another anonymous troll. Who is paying you, “Ms. Right?
Diane, you just be doing something right if these unprincipled and downright nasty imposters keep attacking you on your own blog. Keep up the good work. They are getting desperate.
“Ms. Right,”
Clearly, you are delusional. Take your meds, or seek some help. You need it.
MTG is a disgrace to all people, including other republicans. Remember she refused to wear a mask in the people’s House; was fined a ton of money-straight out of her paycheck.
But what angered me most was her callous and demeaning treatment of Dr Fauci and her complete lack of knowledge about viruses, the nature of a pandemic, why non-pharmaceutical methods were all we had to decrease the spread of COVID. We knew all of this from research on previous pandemics, especially the 1918 pandemic. Read join Barry’s The Great Influenza.
oops. I didn’t mean to hit just yet.
there is a lot of scientific research on the origins, and spread of any virus, especially COVID -19.
in my book The Trump Files, I devoted more than 100 pages to COVID-19. The section starts with a review of the literature and research on COVID-19, followed. By three chapters of blog posts I wrote during the pandemic. I’m going to put a link on my website, jackhassard.org to the 100 pages I wrote on the pandemic. You are free to share and use in any way. Give me day or two. Keep checking. All the best. Dr Fauci is one of my hero’s. His work saved lots of lives. He is the Rachel Carson of our age.
In her Letter of June 3, Heather Cox Richardson notes that despite Dr. Fauci’s being under threats of death, QAnon conspiracy theorist Ivan Raiklin and convicted January 6 rioter Brandon Fellows were seated right behind Fauci at the hearing. Something indicates to me this wasn’t simply a coincidence.
I hope they had to go through a metal detector.
The Repugnicans under Trump are the Know Nothing Party. They are the party of space lasers, Evil Dr. Fauci, the great Antifa and CRT conspiracies, Soros-sponsored caravans of immigrants, and Hunter’s laptop.
Not a one of those obsessions does anything to help people or improve society.
None of them. They are distractions. This is a party of buffoons with a purpose. One purpose: to make their fat cat donors fatter via tax breaks and legal carve outs and government contracts. All the rest is noise to keep the base base engaged, except on the part of a few utter idiots like MTG and The Idiot in Chief, Donnie.
Republican politicians and opinion makers practice reification–the logical fallacy that naming something makes it real. CRT in public schools. Antifa as a national movement. They take tiny things and blow them up into THE ENEMY. ROFL. Idiots. And the fools who follow them lap this stuff up.
Their goal here – as always with anti-democracy fascists – is to denigrate any expert authority that threatens the omnipotence of the Traitor. All authority – whether scientific, cultural, economic – must flow from the font of the cult leader. It’s beyond pathetic to assail educated sober adults who have dedicated their energies to public service.
Why did Fauci have that heated argument with Rand Paul earlier where Fauci adamantly insisted that the NIH was not funding gain of function research in Wuhan? Can someone explain that to me? How can we know for sure what kind of research was happening in the Wuhan lab when even the experts who advocate the animal transmission theory fully acknowledge the fact that China is not transparent and will not cooperate with an investigation? One factor that gives me pause to accept the animal transmission theory is the fact that in the past scientists have always been able to track the animals that the virus travelled from and in the case of covid they don’t have the smoking gun. There was a debate 2 yrs ago between Linfa Wang, Michael Worobey, Alina Chan, and Jesse Bloom. I thought that both sides made a strong case for their position and came away from the debate undecided.