In 2020, circumstantial evidence suggested that the COVID-19 virus had originated in a laboratory in Wuhan, China.
Let’s say that the available data, limited by Chinese uncooperativeness, couldn’t exclude the possibility of a natural origin. Nevertheless, the evidence certainly sufficed to prevent the escape-from-lab explanation from being reasonably deemed an implausible “conspiracy theory.”
Years later, U.S. officials who probably also knew better three years ago have acknowledged that, yes, escape from the lab is likely how the pandemic began.
We’re also learning from communications that have come to light that the authors of an influential 2020 paper published in Nature “proving” that “SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct” fudged their reasoning for fear of China.
Co-author Andrew Rambaut, to co-authors: “Given the shitshow that would happen if anyone serious accused the Chinese of even accidental release, my feeling is we should say that given there is no evidence of a specifically engineered virus, we cannot possibly distinguish between natural evolution and escape so we are content with ascribing it to natural process.”
Co-author Kristian Andersen: “Yup, I totally agree that that’s a very reasonable conclusion. Although I hate when politics is injected into science — but it’s impossible not to, especially given the circumstances.”
The paper itself asserted that the authors’ analyses “clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct . . .” (emphases added). And: no “laboratory-based scenario is plausible.”
This paper was then used to rationalize censorship of persons proposing the Wuhan lab as the site of origin. It was completely political; the scientists were acting as politicians and not scientists when they authored it. Better to blame bats than the dreaded Chinazis.
Funded by the U.S. Government.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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5 replies on “Infected by Politics”
Rather than “scientist” let us use something such as “institutionally credentialed prostitute” for these authors and all the others who dressed as scientists while willfully violating scientific method. They were not scientists.
Politician fudge factor:
Multiply by zero, then add the desired answer.
Not unlike the shell game where vulnerable politicians vote against the libprog narrative after they ensure that there enough votes to carry it anyway.
Scientists betrayed our trust. And now they wonder why there are many of us who will never trust them, ever again.
If Covid had come from a bat, the ChiComs would ave made a great todo about their bat extermination program.
Thank you for the back story of this “scientific” paper. Clearly its conclusion was tainted by the political consequences anticipated if conclusion the virus was a lab escape of a gain of function experiment, not to mention the effect it would have on continuing funding and the permissibility of similar future research.
However, I remain skeptical and suspect strongly that the real consensus of those truly in the know was that this was not a “natural” jump.
Universally the reaction to this outbreak was NOT normal. Review the reactions to swine flu, chicken flu, MERS and SARS. During those outbreaks the population was advised to protect themselves from infection to the extent possible and quarantine themselves for the period they were possibly infected to minimize the spread but otherwise to go about their business. Reality was honored during all previous jumps and outbreaks, that being that there was nothing much that could be done and the jump-epidemic-pandemic was beyond human control and would have to run its course.
That was NOT the reaction to COVID-19. The reaction to COVID-19 was panic, worldwide, and such radical difference in reaction most certainly implies there was a reason for the divergence.
I would premise that those in public health leadership must have been recommending the radically different reaction because they knew, or most strongly suspected, that this was a lab leak of an engineered virus and therefore it could not be presumed to necessarily act similarly to the natural jumps which preceded it, which historically were virulent and with high morbidity rates at the outset, to become more virulent but causing lower morbidity as the evolved and worked through the population, the process of attenuation. If there was a belief in the public health professionals that this was NOT a natural outbreak but rather a lab leak an engineered virus the all bets were off and the assumption of natural and historically observed attenuation be valid. Therefore, a much stronger, indeed, the strongest reaction and public health policies would be the conservative recommendation.
This is not to say that the politicians were apprised or knew about the basis for the “scientists” counsel, only that the scientist’s counsel was markedly different than ever before, and therefore begs for a reason for the difference from their counsel regarding similar past occurances.
Paul, there is likely much more to this than is presently in the public square, and I suspect the real motivation was more just a desire to stay in the good graces of the Chinese.