Essay by Eric Worrall
Note from Anthony: I don’t like running stories on CV19, as they end up in food fights and more suppression by Google, FB, etc. But this one, deserves to be told. If true, it is madness – Anthony
h/t Dr. Willie Soon; Is the plan to keep attempting to wipe out mankind until they get it right?
Outcry as British researcher is given ANOTHER US grant to investigate COVID – despite fears his initial work at Wuhan lab triggered pandemic: Peter Daszak is paid $650,000 to study bat coronaviruses – and ‘assess their ability to infect humans’
- The EcoHealth Alliance was awarded a new $650,000, 5-year grant in August
- The funding will see the group study coronaviruses and bats in southeast Asia
- It’s the same type of research that many believe is linked to Covid’s origin
- The EcoHealth Alliance was previously known to use the Wuhan Institute of Virology in its research
By PAUL FARRELL FOR DAILYMAIL.COM
PUBLISHED: 15:55 AEDT, 3 October 2022 | UPDATED: 02:24 AEDT, 4 October 2022
US health officials have given a hugely controversial research organization another $650,000 (£580k) grant to experiment on Covid-like viruses – despite fears similar risky work may have actually sparked the pandemic.
EcoHealth Alliance, run by British zoologist Peter Daszak, funded studies in Wuhan – the Chinese city where the pandemic began – on manipulated coronaviruses.
Such research, known as ‘gain of function’, can see viruses deliberately engineered to become more dangerous to humans.
EcoHealth Alliance’s five-year experiment will investigate ‘the potential for future bat coronavirus emergence’ in Asia, with scientists set to trawl caves in Myanmar, Laos and Vietnam in the hunt to prevent another viral crisis.
The grant was awarded last month by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), which is still ran by Dr Anthony Fauci.
…
Daszak’s group, which bizarrely evolved from a save-the-manatees non-profit to a top champion of viral gain-of-function research as it chased federal funding, has long been at the center of questions about the origins of Covid.
…
Surely there is someone in the Biden administration with enough sense to shut this craziness down.
A word of caution, as far as I know nobody has explicitly said the money is for “gain of function” research But this seems a reasonable inference, given the history of EcoHealth Alliance’s apparent association with gain of function research, and the previous use of gain of function research to conduct such assessments.
Note I am not in any sense accusing Peter Daszak of lax biosecurity. My position is no level of biosecurity is good enough. The potential downside of an accidental release of a genetically enhanced virus, as may have happened in Wuhan, in my opinion makes such experiments completely unacceptable, no matter how tight the biosecurity.
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If true, unbelieveable! Does no-one ever learn?
Covid been very very good to Fauci. It’s been reported that between he and his wife, their net wealth is up over $5 million within the past three years to over $12 million. Such low reward for careers in government “service.”
How do they sleep at night?
psychopaths always sleep well
Upside down, hanging from a beam.
Hi Scissor – my too-long Covid-19 post for you that was censored on wattsup is posted here on Brian Peckford’s site and was well-received.
We WARNED you over & over and we were always right; Bobby Kennedy jr., McCullough, Malone, Risch, Tenenbaum, Cole, Wolf, I, etc.,we warned you; see short list of some of the things we warned you about | peckford42 (wordpress.com)
This is new and also worth reading:
THE CLINICAL TRIALS WERE FRAUDULENT THE SPIKED PROTEIN IS KILLING MILLIONS
https://www.bitchute.com/video/gZKjZ5t7YPmq/
Two minute video by Dr. Mike Yeadon – former VP Research at Pfizer.
Millions more will die or be vaxx-injured.
THE MORE COVID SHOTS YOU GET, THE MORE LIKELY YOU’LL GET COVID. HERE’S WHY.
https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/covid-booster-lowered-immunity-infections-cola/
7.7% SEEK MEDICAL CARE AFTER COVID-19 VACCINATION AND 25% HAVE SERIOUS SIDE EFFECTS
BREAKING: ICAN Wins Lawsuit Forcing CDC to Turn Over V-SAFE Covid Vaccine Injury Data – Shows 7.7% Seek Medical Care After Vaccination and 25% Have Serious Side Effects (VIDEO)
http://click1.e.westernjournalism.com/fryngctbzjcwgcnpwbqdcwcdcqwqrlhtrtjyqnlsdsbbngr_rnjvvcjnnvpcvvklnwrnj.html
The vaxxed are screwed – we tried to warn them.
We hold these truths to be self evident…
If it isn’t broken, fix it until it is
“Surely there is someone in the Biden administration with enough sense to shut this craziness down.”
I’ve seen no evidence to date (almost 2 years in) suggesting such a person exists.
And don’t call me Shirley…
There’s no one in the Biden Administration with any sense at all
And don’t call me Shirley
😉
Though most of them are flush with Quarters
More like duffel bags full of Benjamins
Naw … all a bunch of Two Bit politicians
😉
Peter Daszak did his level best to cover-up any inquiry into what went on in Wuhan
Birds of a feather flock together
According to Tucker Carlson, who ran this last evening, Daszak et al are attempting to find a ‘precursor’ to the C-19 virus in the wild (Thailand?), which would buttress their claim that it did not originate / escape from the Wuhan lab.
Clarification: regarding “buttressing their claim that it did not originate/escape from the Wuhan lab… ”
No: that was not according to Tucker Carlson, it was according to his guess, Alex Berenson. The quote from Tucker to Alex’s theory was “That is a very interesting theory and that never would have occurred to me”
Correct, and I think Berenson’s point has merit.
Thx! Agreed. And my typo guess was supposed to be guest! But both words sort of work to get our point across.
former nyt writer?
fiction author?
The truth or falsity of a statement is completely independent of the nature of the person who asserts it.
Wow, five words, no spelling errors and two instances of punctuation to boot. Naturally, no capitalist letterz.
Does anyone care what the content of those sentences was supposed to convey? How can the sane make sense of the ravings of a madman?
Yep. He writes awesome fiction.
except they DID claim to find a near perfect match in the poor pangolins in various jungles in asia brought to china as food
Berenson is brilliant. That’s why so many sites have blocked him.
This likely a correct assumption. However SARS-2 belongs to a sub-branch of coronavirus’s called surbicoronavirus. To date SARS-2 is the only surbicoronavirus to contain a furin cleavage site.
Serial passage in humanized mice of close relatives to SARS-2 did not result in variants containing an FCS. Additionally, China claims to have sampled thousands of animals and not a single animal has been pegged as a primary or secondary host.
UNC’S Ralph Baric pioneered what he calls the “No-See-Em” technique of creating novel chimeric viruses from several natural viruses. Baric also developed humanized mice containing human lung tissue. Baric sent a seed colony of these mice to shi zhengli (Batwoman) at the WIV.
China and Southeast Asia encompass several thousand square miles The chances of a novel surbicoronavirus emerging on the doorstep of the same lab that was collecting and conducting risky research on surbicoronavirus’s is astronomical.
The same propagandists that attack legitimate questions from climate realists are engaged in a pitched battle to belittle researchers abd quash calls for an open investigation.
Mr. 97% Peter Jacobs is all in and uses guerilla tactics to attack folks with legitimate concerns. If he gets caught out in this one his reputation will be trash.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33340798/
natural
Yeah, now there’s a totally credible source, amirite? No conflict of interest there. It’s the government! Why would they lie?
A curious point—mosh uses capitalist letterz in his name. Could be the narcissism?
Mosh,
The paper you cited does not refute anything I wrote above. The fact remains that, to date not a single surbicoronavirus containing an FCS has been discovered.
Here is the conclusion from the paper you cited:
“Furin cleavage sites in spike proteins naturally occurred independently for multiple times in coronaviruses. Such feature of SARS-CoV-2 spike protein is not necessarily a product of manual intervention, though our observation does not rule out the lab-engineered scenario.”
‘The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.’
Apart from their nationality?
We were supposed to stop anything like G of F in US.
We continued to fund G of F through laundering and lied about it.
Lots of people are doing lots of things wrt to C-viruses but “they” CDC FDA Fauci and others are suppressing the who and what… lies
The Furin cleavage site which can occur naturally seems like a perfect gain of function to develop in man designed virus designed to make the body’s early response (interferon) not work and then cytokine and so forth. Who did it knows who did it. They are lying about even doing G of F. So we have more lies than truths surrounding this WuHan or wherever released virus.
Me thinks that the jab forced quick mutations in human experiments (everyone who got the jab).
The Furin cleavage site did not make the cut and seems to have disappeared for now.
Do I know a hell of a lot more than that? Nope!
How many of those ‘jabbed’ now have fur in their cleavage?
haha. I told someone at my company, that this has now turned into an endemic disease of the vaccinated. The reaction was priceless.
hmm I thought they DID get furin cleavage in those mice
Ozspeaksup, as mentioned, serial passage of close CV19 relatives did not induce adaptations with an FCS.
how dare they look for evidence when racial predjudice against the chinese is all you need to prove the case
??
Anyone who dared to point out that SARS-CoV-2 originated in China was called racist.
And the ‘Xi’ Variant proves that?
Or not?
The whole WuFlu episode, trashing economies and involving millions of deaths, seems heavily obscured by falsehood.
Anything that shines a light, even obliquely, on it is welcome.
And experimeters, and publishers, and posters, may have an axe to grind.
Auto – deeply concerned about an offered fourth ‘Injected experiment’ in the UK ….
I didn’t realize Fauci and Daszak were Chinese. Live and learn, I guess.
Daszak is Chinese now???
Funny, I thought Fauci was an Eye-talian name. Who knew he’s a Chinaman? (A reference to St Colin Powell there, don’t get your knickers in a twist). Now we white nationalist ultra-rayciss ultra-MAGAs just gotta hate him more! Thanks for the tip, mosh.
Who’s more deplorable, a turncoat skeptic or an English major who abuses the language? Ah but you’ve got it covered.
First … the word is “prejudice”… second… the CCP is the entity to be opposed, NOT the Chinese, per se.
So why the title of the article?
This is not gain of function research.
But it does sound a bit dangerous.
I agree, based on the description. But what does it mean to the researchers? Do they have any real restraints?
Your statement, “This is not gain of function research.” is certainly not certain.
IF, they were performing gain of function research, do you think it would be touted in their press releases?
I am just fine having them execute documents that say their lab is subject to random inspections and if they are found to be performing gain of function research, then they go straight to prison for 10 years.
If they do not sign, then no funding.
Doesn’t 100% solve the problem, but my ridiculous solution definitely makes hidden gain of function research far less likely.
its not in the proposal,
The problem is, you cannot explicitly name “gain of function research”, or they will engage in discussions about its definition (like Fauci did). One has to phrase the whole proposition so that any “genetic” modifications leading to increased infectivity in humans is covered, with simple phrases where it’s not possible to reshape what the text means. Then: either sign .. or no money. Another good attack would be to write research disclosures (general descriptions) on these things, including vaccines and therapies. Then no one would be able to get patent protection, since the general principle would be known and not considered to be an “invention.” The whole field would then become “uninteresting” for such people and pharma companies.
mosh 1941 version:
Dr Goebbels didn’t put anything in the Endlösung proposal about cyanide poisoning. Those dirty Jews just need showers.
“This is not gain of function research.”
How on earth do you know that? As many many others on this blog and numerous others have pointed out, including Dr David Martin whose knowledge of this disaster is very relevant, Daszak was a key partner of the cabal revealed by the Fauci emails who once the comment “…it looks engineered” went into overdrive to deflect, dissemble, obfuscate, deny and cover up what truly had gone on. Was he not part of the attempt to “disguise” the origin of SARS COV2 via The Lancet – correct me if I am wrong.
The original constituents of the chimeric Coronavirus stitched together by Baric of UniCal with help from China were not pathogenic until they had a hitherto non naturally occurring molecular sequence inserted – the furin cleavage element which enhanced the virus to then be able to bind to ( and thus enter ) human ACE2 receptor cells – they certainly conducted experiments to “assess their ability to infect humans” during their US taxpayer funded, Fauci directed, Eco Alliance facilitated experiments; what the hell do you think that involved – flower arranging classes, or a deep dive into mindfulness concepts maybe?
nothing in their proposal is gain of function
this is data collection and modelling
not science, not gain of function
Please, please volunteer for the task of crawling though bat excrement in caves to take samples.
Mosh,
The issues with funding Daszak are manifold:
First, Daszak organized the Lancet letter that essentially shut down discussion of a possible lab leak. Subsequently he was chided by Lancet for failing to declare competing interests. ” Mr. Horton wrote in a Dec. 11 Lancet column, “They argued that the overwhelming majority of scientific opinion supported the view that SARS-CoV-2 ‘originated in wildlife.’ And they signed off their letter, ‘We declare no competing interests.’ But what fast became clear is that one author of that Lancet letter did indeed have an interest to declare, and an incendiary one at that — a direct link to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, including experiments on viral spillover events and recombinant bat coronaviruses.”
The unnamed “author” is clearly Peter Daszak.”
Second, Daszak has a track record of failing to make timely reports as required in grant stipulations to include; lab books from the WIV and tables on increases lab animal mortality rates.
Third, the grant effectively says, Daszak will use his old contacts and lab partners. The dangerous viruses collected from remote locations must be brought to labs located in urban areas for sequencing. Such activities provide several vectors for infection. Additionally, Daszak has no control over what happens after a virus is sequenced to include GOF experiments and potential weaponization.
Fourth, advances in synthetic biology technology have greatly outstripped oversight and regulation of dangerous research. Any entity with a modestly equipped lab can create duplicate viruses from sequence data. In fact, SARS-2 has been duplicated in lab.
SARS-2 has escaped from a lab in Tiawan and there is no conclusive proof that it did or did not leak from a lab in Wuhan. Knock the Sinophobic BS off, millions have died…we need answers.
and its very odd that variants of covid are now said to target liver/kidneys when normally it would stop in lungs upper airways
but the vax went full systemwide so….
“I’m doctor.” – Dr. Who, thereby implying that he can be trusted. Surely we know better by now.
As Dr. Who himself said – “first rule, the doctor lies.”
Why? WHY? Because they performed GoF research in the past, or at least they were paid to do as much and used that language in the past all while denying it.
It surely does. They just send people crawling in caves full of bat excrements and wait till someone gets sick. If the sickness is bad enough, or if the person dies, then they have a potential next candidate virus to “improve” on … like RatTG13 on which the Furin cleavage site was “introduced” … There’s no limit to what greed for fame and money can do to people.
it WILL be GOF as they do that to make it lethal with the excuse they “have to” to then be able to develop vax to counter it
the fact it probably would never happen is ignored
My guess is that they are going to try to create a related virus and release it into bats. Then they can say “look we found a similar virus in bats, therefore the human virus must have come from bats not from a lab leak.”
In the scale of NIAID grants, $650k/5 years is small, as was the earlier grant to Daszak’ lot. I suppose that off-shoring the actual research to China multiplies the amount of work that can be done. However, one does wonder if Daszak has something on Fauci that entails at least a minimal payoff.
Looks like Xi Jinping knows much more about that ‘extra work” on GoF. The penalty for pleasing a few elite Americans is an endless lockdown on the Chinese masses plus a risky re-selection for that elite Chinese.
Our bureaucracy is out of control. The best evidence strongly suggests the virus that causes Covid19 is man-made. Maybe someday the truth will be told.
IMO, Fauci belongs in prison.
Wasn’t Daszak involved in the WHO whitewash report on the Wuhan lab. No matter what they say you will never convince me that Covid did not leak from the Wuhan lab
Yes, and Prof. Jeffrey Sachs seems to be taking the counter narrative (of caution).
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/backlash-major-covid-origins-report-suggests-virus-could-have/
Yes Daszak was involved in the “investigation” – and not as a witness!
How much crime would be uncovered, if we put the alleged criminals in charge of the investigations?
Personally, having Daszak involved in the investigation increased my belief that it was a human involved pandemic. Even the leading world health officials are not so stupid as to let the possible perpetrator run the investigation. Unless they WANTED the investigation to be a whitewash.
(I know I sound paranoid, but sometimes the bastards are truly out to get everyone!)
“you will never convince me that Covid did not leak from the Wuhan lab”
I think you could be convinced, as I am, that Covid did not “leak” from the Wuhan lab, but was a deliberate release of a bioweapon.
I think all “gain of function” experimentation should be declared a crime against humanity, and that anybody performing such experimentation is, as Churchill would describe them, “an Enemy of the Human Race”. They should be subject to immediate execution.
Obama ordered a ban on gain of function, but Fauci created some companies and got China involved. He has not been brought to justice because the DOJ is full of corrupt people whose only objective now is to chase Trump. The swamp needs draining.
Followed by slash and burn, salt the earth, pave over, drop a nuke.
ya if you collect bats in a lab, one could get out.
Ah but how can you trust a Chinese guy like Peter Daszak? What? But mosh said…
a man made mild flu? remind me why this is a problem.
Devout student of history, eh?
I would argue for the appropriateness, and marketability of a televised hanging.
If it’s $650k over 5 years, that’s pretty much 1 fully trained staff member funded full time, plus a budget for consumables/research tools and a spartan travel/accommodation budget. Once you factor in the ‘administration overheads’ etc.
If it’s $650k a year, for five years, that’s a different kettle of fish.
The issue I see is using subcontractors. Why is EcoHealth Alliance involved? NIAH should be more open in it’s contracting.
Contractors is where the money is 😉
They are all controlled by Fauci and his cohorts.
The Biden administration doesn’t care what the people of America want or need. They have an ideology to fulfil consequently they are deaf to genuine concerns about controversial matters like this.
Having said that, the British CINO (Conservative In Name Only) Government is no better so it’s not a ‘left’ or ‘right’ thing.
There are genuine fears of mounting ‘vaccine’ injuries from a drug which does not conform to normal testing regimes yet the only response from any western government is to shut down debate. Australia has now passed a law to shut doctors up about it.
If governments answered our questions rather than censoring, or allowing us to be censored, there would probably be little division over the subject and this grant would be uncontroversial.
But they have, instead, made every effort to shut down debate. This is the real problem.
The Biden Executive Order of September 12, 2022 makes for extremely interesting reading in parallel with this news story. The EO explicitly pushes for more advances in biotechnology and bioresearch, maintaining US dominance in this field yet at no point explicitly bans gain of function or genetic research. The only mention of security or a watchdog is to enhance cybersecurity and prevent secrets from getting out; there appears to be zero oversight, control of methods or even investigation of ethical considerations anywhere in it. The language used implies that all organisations will be trusted fully (probably self-regulation) to stick to the rules which, given everything that has happened, appears to be just wishful thinking.
The problem doesn’t appear to be the POTUS running the country, it’s the deep state none of them can control.
It’s so bad now in the west that our newly appointed PM in the UK will be lucky to make it through the next two weeks.
Yes, they’re reckless and corrupt. And they’ll rub all our faces in it, too, while still enjoying the protection of our despicable bureaucracy and pro-corruption ultra-left party.
Outrageous! Do ‘they’ think the self inflicted destruction of economies around the world will not result in sufficient depopulation, or not quickly enough?
well its been slower than they hoped but the above average death tolls seem to be rising in most heavy vaxxed places and not elsewhere so theyre probabl;y smiling. adding ohmigod TO the EUA base is how they avoided having to do proper trials not just 8 mice for example.
Im control group and damned pleased I am. sure will NOT be accepting donor blood if I need it I will donate ahead of time
I was just in a discussion about “pork-barrel” research, but it needs a better descriptive name. Regardless of the real serious danger here, what started out a seemingly reasonable need for information morphed into a crony-scientific funding system attracting those whose non- scientific motivations, at least eventually, dominated. I recall a warning about dumping money into a field lacking the brain resources attracting those poorly trained. I know some adapted doing their homework, but many did not. Some politicians began to notice, probably not too competently, and sounding fiscally responsible muddied the water so to speak. Given all the other complications like top heavy administration, maybe we should not be surprised since the back-scratching process is not new. It just went beyond knowing that too many both with the ‘itch’ and ‘scratching’ were incompetent and/or corrupt. Maybe we deal too much with metaphors and their relatives also, refining thoughts here necessary.
There is so much interesting in the world, let’s help keep these sharks, no offense to those cartilaginous, not so successful. https://www.livescience.com/primeval-shark-fossils-china
Lots of what seems to be excessive grant money around for sitting behind these machines. https://www.wboc.com/news/dsu-awarded-thousands-of-dollars-for-research/article_b6bac81c-4296-11ed-b77e-9b327d9fc876.html
Every word is absolutely accurate. The language of the grant mentions existing ” network” partners. Meaning, these clowns may be importing and conducting GOF research at a lab near you.
Iowa Senator Ernst has introduced legislation that will terminate all grants to EHA due to failing to meet progress report requirements. Additionally, Daszak has failed to produce the lab books used by the WIV for research funded with US dollars.
Please contact your Senator’s and urge them to support Ernst’s bill. At the very least, the money poured into sample collection and experimentation failed to prevent SARS-2. In the worst case, a leak at the WIV has unleashed a scourge on humankind.
Peter Jacobs, Lewandowski and the usual suspects are carpet bombing Twitter with the same ugly rhetoric used on climate skeptics. EHA, has funded a NASA project where Jacobs works as a press agent.
To learn more: see DRASTIC web site and follow: Matt Ridley, Dr. R Embright and Dr. Alina Chan on Twitter.
Matt Tye, a YouTuber who goes under the name Laowhy86 and who reads and speaks Mandarin, has produced some excellent videos on the origin of Covid. Whatever that clown Steven Mosher thinks, there is a veritable ton of evidence for the Wuhan Institute of Virology being the source.
Thanks. I have previously watched several of his “motorcycle” videos but haven’t seen him report on COVID19.
Could have fired Fauci legitimately in April of 2020 after the CDC released the COVID-19 Alert No. 2, March 24, 2020 which is an admission that the CDC was fraudulently reporting the number of Covid-19 deaths.
Hush money
Maybe OJ Simpson could take a break from searching for Nicole Simpson’s murderer and help Daszak search for the origins of the Covid 19 virus.
Careful! mosh will chide you for your racial hatred of Chinese, er chinese.
FOIA emails indicate Scripps Scientist Kristian Andersen sent fauci and email noting the unusual properties of the virus. Fauci ordered Sat. midnight conference call with Andersen, Holmes, Lipkin, Farrar from Wellcome Trust.
Wellcome is a non-profit spin-off from GlaxoSmithKline. GSK subsidiary just awarded a billion dollar contract for monoclonal antibodies.
Andersen et al. started drafting the pro-zoonosis paper “The Proximal Origins of COVID19 within days of the meeting.
Subsequently, Andersen received several millions in grant money from NIAID.
Type Andersen’s name in the search function. Fauci paid for Andersen’s paper because of his ties to GOF research at the WIV.
https://reporter.nih.gov/
Thank You.
See the following link. RePORT ⟩ RePORTER (nih.gov) Left click to reveal relevant URL. Daszak has received many millions of dollars from NIH, but from reading the summary reports, none of it has anything to do with gain of function studies.
Daszak is an intermediary who connected the collection of coronavirus’s with the WIV. The WIV most certainly conducted some GOF experiments in secrecy.
Daszak is responsible for the actions of activities he underwriters. He was late in several required reports and failed to produce the lab books from the WIV. He should not receive one cent more of tax-payer money.
Here is a Daszak pitch to DARPA for dangerous GOF research to include chimeric viruses and serial passage through humanized mice.
https://www.lotuseaters.com/darpa-denied-daszak-funding-for-dangerous-covid-research-in-2018-23-09-2021
“We cannot expect those who have these concerns to simply take us, the scientific community, at our word that the benefits of this work outweigh the risks, nor can we ignore their calls for greater transparency, their concerns about conflicts of interest, and their efforts to engage in a dialog about whether these experiments should have been performed in the first place.”
He put it in writing here:
file:///C:/Users/micha/Downloads/research-on-highly-pathogenic-h5n1-influenza-virus-the-way-forward.pdf
The “benefits of this work outweigh the risks”. It’s there in black and white.
Dr. Fauci, we are still awaiting the benefits. Meanwhile, you still have a job.
That was my personal download. In case it doesn’t work for anybody, the title of the paper is
“Research on Highly Pathogenic H5N1 Influenza Virus: The Way
Forward”
It is the business of the future to be dangerous. I have no issue with dangerous research as long as appropriate controls are in place. Trouble is these days, can we trust that the researchers are upto understanding what is appropriate medical security to play with the viruses?
A brief history of the past three years would appear to give you an answer.
Playing God with viruses will wipe out humanity one day.
We would be better off letting them play with nuclear weapon’s, at least then when the stuff up they only blow up themselves and a few dozen square miles of the neighbourhood.
Rand Paul will hear another round of vehement, carefully parsed denials, tomorrow.
the money is not for gain of function.
the money is for collecting data
To achieve this, we propose the following: Specific Aim 1) community-based surveys and biological sampling of people frequently exposed to wildlife in Myanmar, Laos, and Vietnam, to find serological evidence of spillover and assess behavioral, social structure, spatial connectivity and mobility factors that lead to exposure, spillover, and spread;
basically blood tests for people who are exposed to critters
survellience
Specific Aim 2) sampling and PCR screening of bats and other wildlife at community surveillance sites to identify viruses and hosts related to the human infections detected in Aim 1;
samlpe bats to see if any bats have viruses found in aim 1.
full genome sequencing and cell entry assays to assess ability to infect human cells;
not gain of function, but needed for it.
machine learning approaches to estimate zoonotic potential of each novel CoV;
note machine learning and NOT serial passage.
serial passage would be part of gain of function. machine learning, is not gain of function
is more like structural micro biology
Specific Aim 3) syndromic PCR-based surveillance in clinics to identify ‘cryptic’ cases or case clusters caused by bat-CoVs; contact tracing to assess whether cases represent initial spillover or community spread events.
observation
Our results will provide detailed information on the risk of future CoV spillover and spread and will inform 24 potential public health interventions to reduce spillover risk and outbreak potential. They may also provide data 25 on wildlife reservoirs and community spillover events of relevance to the origin of COVID-19. Finally, we will 26 rapidly supply viral sequences and isolates for use in vaccine and therapeutic development, including 27 “prototype pathogen” vaccines, via an existing MOU with the NIAID-CREID network. Our long-term goal is that 28 this work will act as a model to
So what you’re saying is that the publicly available proposal is to collect samples of as many different bat viruses as possible, analyse them and sequence them all? And the restrictions placed on them that this will never be used for further gain of function or experimentation is where, exactly? What regulatory or oversight framework are they using? Who is then responsible for these samples and data, and what steps have been taken to ensure that it will not be used for purposes other than the publicly stated ones? I’m guessing that there are no answers to these questions and there will likely never be.
Mosher, I agree what you say is possible, and I added a note of caution because it isn’t cut and dried. But I’m not convinced the oversight in place for this process will prevent gain of function research. In my opinion these guys don’t seem to have any limits when it comes to risking our lives with their research.
So, a natural virus found in bats evolved into a virus that spread throughout the human population of the world in a matter of days, yet it still has not yet been found in bats? Who thinks that sounds logical, reasonable, or rational? Sounds to me like they’re looking for a scapegoat more than a bat.
and 2+yrs on they STILL cant ID anything it “passed through” to get into humans
really?
Apparently it was a threesome involving a bat, a pangolin, and seriously maladjusted human.
Yup. What I see is an attitude that “in order to protect ourselves from dangerous pathogens we have to experiment with making them”.
No. Having done a PhD involving no small amount of immunology, I attest that this is just not the case. Examining existing viruses provides more than enough work.
The fact that the vaccines to Covid work, errrm…, moderately just shows how inadequately the vaccines are designed. They don’t appear to have advanced their thinking and practices much in the two decades since I studied the topic.
The main advance seems to be that when they thought there really was a very very nasty threat from this virus, they really got their skates on in terms of speeding things up regulatory wise.
The rebuttal is that we can’t trust them. Already they redefined ‘gain of function’ to mean ‘gain of function on human compatible micro organisms’. Then they performed a ‘non gain of function’ modification on a bat virus that made it human compatible…accidentally we hope but maybe it was deliberate. Why would they not use similar sophistry or outright lie on their application? Obviously the controls around what they are doing are somewhere between non-existent and inadequate. Their hubris especially after getting away with creating Covid knows no bounds.
This is next order of magnitude dangerous as they could easily create something much more potent than Covid that could leave survivors incapacitated or wishing they were dead. You can’t ‘uncreate’ this or contain it once it’s out. We are in a dangerous place where we can make whatever modifications we want, but we have a really limited understanding of what it might do, and even less of an understanding of how it might mutate.
Scientists should be terrified of the personal consequences of messing with viruses to the point of being unwilling to perform anything remotely similar to gain of function. Instead, it is next level evil where the people who helped to create the problem in the first place are then lauded as heroes for trying to contain their own problem.
I would expect republicans will run a lot of ads based on this event. “The Biden administration was not satisfied with the level of suffering created by Covid and is funding the same bat virus scientists for an encore in ‘24”
Once we have facilities that don’t orbit the earth, then scientists willing to never return to the planet can screw around and create plagues on themselves without impacting earth.
It’s crazy that people are freaked out by a phantom 1.5 C, but are just accepting of the much worse biological danger here. It is also totally bonkers that rational people are arguing to give these same scientists another shot “they learned their lesson and aren’t doing anything similar. We promise!”. Instead we should be sending them to a crimes against humanity trial.
So obviously we didn’t learn our lesson with having millions of people killed round 1. Hopefully their next ‘whoopsie we would be sorry except this was definitely natural’ will not sterilize the survivors or otherwise confine the human race to perpetual misery.
Great post
The fast growth of “charity” type bodies, of “not-for-profit” whatever the label is, IMHO, another of the failures of modern society that should be high on the fixit list. The impression that forms in the minds of the people is that the motivation of these bodies is pure and giving, when in reality mostly it is tax minimization while covering up harm to society under a pious pseudonym. Geoff S
This should not even be a conversation. The USAs federal leviathan must be cut back drastically. DOE, DOJ, DOE, HUD, EPA, SSA, IRS etc, ect, must be reduced in size by 90% and power accordingly.
What could possibly go wrong???
12 Monkey’s?