The COVID Response. What We Got Wrong.
The Lab-Leak Debate: What Is Gain-of-Function Research, Anyway?
In response to the US Energy Department, the FBI, and several prominent scientists announcing that it was looking much, much more likely that COVID originated as the result of a lab leak, Fauci went on CNN and did his best to “walk back” his earlier insistence on the natural-origin theory:
“A lab leak could be that someone was out in the wild maybe looking for different types of viruses in bats, got infected, went into a lab, and was being studied in a lab, and then came out of the lab,” said Fauci. “The other possibility is someone takes a virus from the environment that doesn’t actually spread very well in humans, and manipulates it a bit, and accidentally it escapes or accidentally infects someone and then you get an outbreak.”
But that was early last week. Since then, Fauci (and the mainstream media) have decided to continue to argue for the natural-origin theory, correctly assuming that the American public will have no way of figuring out which story is true.
Meanwhile, you may be wondering, “What difference does it make?”
I’ll tell you the difference. It’s big. And it’s important. It’s about “gain-of-function” research – a kind of research that most people have never heard of. But it has been done, off and on, for decades. Because it is so risky, it is often conducted secretly to avoid public outrage, which could result in the termination of its funding.
In these experiments, scientists play around with the biological structure of various pathogens – making them more and less contagious, and more and less deadly – for the stated purpose of being better able to understand and control outbreaks in the future.
Needless to say, gain-of-function research is scary. It’s the stuff of horror movies. A dangerous virus becomes 100 times more deadly in a lab. Because of some minor mishap, it escapes into the outside world. And then… well, you know the rest of the story. We’ve just lived through it.
Now, here’s what you may not know. For the past two years, Fauci has been denying that the US has been supporting gain-of-function research by funding such research in, among other places, the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
And why has he been denying it? Well, he could be telling the truth. But I don’t think so. I think that if it is determined that COVID-19 came from a lab leak, and that lab leak took place in Wuhan, and the NIH, the CDC, or some other US government institution funded it… well, that would sound like… like the pandemic was, at least in part, US-created!
Oh, and by the way…
For a moment, it looked like the lab-leak theory was going to be accepted by that gang that didn’t shoot straight and that they were going to walk back their natural-origin narrative (just as they’ve been walking back the other things they got wrong). In fact, just after the announcement by the FBI and Energy Department that a lab leak was looking more and more likely, John Kirby, National Security Council coordinator for strategic communications, all but admitted to funding gain-of-function research, saying it was necessary “to help prevent future pandemics.”
But someone in the gang must have realized that wasn’t going to work. So they doubled down on their original story and began inserting new experts into the discussion to get us back to the wet-market theory.
Strategically, it was a good move. Most people aren’t going to wade through the science to figure out the truth. And most don’t care. Which means the discussion will be ignored by the press and die out on its own. Naturally! (Unless, of course, something very awkward is discovered if and when the Congressional Committee follows the money!)
What gives?
David Zweig of The Free Press explains here.
MarkFord
