In Feb 2020 Anthony Fauci convened a bunch of virologists to assess SARS-CoV-2 origins. The initial take from the group (revealed in private Slack messages via FOIA requests from 2023) was this was likely engineered. In Kristian Andersen of Scripps Research’s view, it was “so friggin likely because they were already doing this work.”
The same month, Fauci held an off-the-record call with the group. After that, everyone’s tunes changed and shortly after (in a matter of weeks) we got the Proximal Origins paper, with Kristian Andersen doing a 180 as the lead author. The paper posits that there is “strong evidence that SARS-CoV-2 is not the product of purposeful manipulation.” I encourage you to read the paper to determine its merits. Their evidence as I understand it is a) the structure of the spike protein is not what a computer would have generated as optimally viral, and b) pangolins. Pangolins were ruled out as carriers shortly after the paper’s release. (a) can be dismissed—or at least mitigated—by the fact that serial passage can naturally develop what a computer may not. Andersen’s Scripps Research coincidentally got a multi-million dollar grant shortly after publishing Proximal Origins, but again, that’s merely coincidence.
Some in the comments seem stuck on the fact this virus could have been obtained in the wild, and thus is zoonotic in origin. That is ignoring the substantial work the Wuhan lab undertook to take natural viruses and create chimeric viruses that were optimized for human contagiousness.
Fauci took the Proximal Origins paper on his circuit of 60 Minutes interviews, NYTimes podcasts, and Congressional testimonies, declaring, “the leading virologists say this was most likely of natural origin”.
This rhetoric undoubtedly has a massive chilling effect on any “experts” who would otherwise posit that this could be lab origin. The High Minister of Science has declared it was zoonotic, definitive proof will probably never be established either way, so you better be on the side of the High Minister of Science.
If there were an omniscient arbiter of truth that could make markets on this issue, I would take lab leak >50% in a heartbeat, and have it closer to 85%. Alas, there never will be such an arbiter, and we’ll have to rely on the experts who are heavily reliant on government research grants, gain of function research as the way of the future, and generally not rocking the boat.
I observe that literally every country in the world chose not to do challenge trials in 2020, which could have sped up the vaccine rollout by around 8 months and prevented a great deal of the deaths in those countries. For hundreds of countries to all do the same thing here looks to me exceedingly like conformity (starting with some trend-setter, which I expect is the US). So I think that beliefs like this can quite easily explained by conformity.
Hundreds seems like the wrong sample size, more like around a dozen? Realistically, I would have thought that most countries probably don’t have the affordance to distribute vaccines much earlier.
Also worth noting that Russia did something pretty aggressive with respect to vaccine roll out which I think looks pretty good from a public heath perspective in retrospect. (I think they didn’t do full clinical trials prior to roll out.)
Fauci is not the only person who created chilling effects. The Chinese also did their best to discourage people from believing in the lab leak hypothesis and there are many others who had their own reasons for discouraging the belief as well.
In Feb 2020 Anthony Fauci convened a bunch of virologists to assess SARS-CoV-2 origins. The initial take from the group (revealed in private Slack messages via FOIA requests from 2023) was this was likely engineered. In Kristian Andersen of Scripps Research’s view, it was “so friggin likely because they were already doing this work.”
The same month, Fauci held an off-the-record call with the group. After that, everyone’s tunes changed and shortly after (in a matter of weeks) we got the Proximal Origins paper, with Kristian Andersen doing a 180 as the lead author. The paper posits that there is “strong evidence that SARS-CoV-2 is not the product of purposeful manipulation.” I encourage you to read the paper to determine its merits. Their evidence as I understand it is a) the structure of the spike protein is not what a computer would have generated as optimally viral, and b) pangolins. Pangolins were ruled out as carriers shortly after the paper’s release. (a) can be dismissed—or at least mitigated—by the fact that serial passage can naturally develop what a computer may not. Andersen’s Scripps Research coincidentally got a multi-million dollar grant shortly after publishing Proximal Origins, but again, that’s merely coincidence.
Some in the comments seem stuck on the fact this virus could have been obtained in the wild, and thus is zoonotic in origin. That is ignoring the substantial work the Wuhan lab undertook to take natural viruses and create chimeric viruses that were optimized for human contagiousness.
Fauci took the Proximal Origins paper on his circuit of 60 Minutes interviews, NYTimes podcasts, and Congressional testimonies, declaring, “the leading virologists say this was most likely of natural origin”.
This rhetoric undoubtedly has a massive chilling effect on any “experts” who would otherwise posit that this could be lab origin. The High Minister of Science has declared it was zoonotic, definitive proof will probably never be established either way, so you better be on the side of the High Minister of Science.
If there were an omniscient arbiter of truth that could make markets on this issue, I would take lab leak >50% in a heartbeat, and have it closer to 85%. Alas, there never will be such an arbiter, and we’ll have to rely on the experts who are heavily reliant on government research grants, gain of function research as the way of the future, and generally not rocking the boat.
Do you think this chilling effect extends to other countries where Fauci has no presence?
Yes, by virtue of the alliance with the “top virologists”.
I observe that literally every country in the world chose not to do challenge trials in 2020, which could have sped up the vaccine rollout by around 8 months and prevented a great deal of the deaths in those countries. For hundreds of countries to all do the same thing here looks to me exceedingly like conformity (starting with some trend-setter, which I expect is the US). So I think that beliefs like this can quite easily explained by conformity.
Hundreds seems like the wrong sample size, more like around a dozen? Realistically, I would have thought that most countries probably don’t have the affordance to distribute vaccines much earlier.
Also worth noting that Russia did something pretty aggressive with respect to vaccine roll out which I think looks pretty good from a public heath perspective in retrospect. (I think they didn’t do full clinical trials prior to roll out.)
Fauci is not the only person who created chilling effects. The Chinese also did their best to discourage people from believing in the lab leak hypothesis and there are many others who had their own reasons for discouraging the belief as well.