While there is “no irrefutable evidence,” experts called by congressional Republicans at the first national hearing on the origins of the coronavirus pandemic say the United States deserves to continue investigating whether a Chinese lab released the virus that causes COVID-19.
Most foreign fitness experts have downplayed this possibility, preferring to focus on learning about the global reaction itself to the pandemic that has killed an estimated 7 million people worldwide. But a subcommittee formed after Republicans took over the House of Representatives in January is examining theories that have been widely dismissed across the clinical network as racist conspiracies.
Determining the origins is politically sensitive, as the investigations may further heighten tensions between the U. S. and Canada. Public health experts say international cooperation is in the fight against pandemics, and that blaming someone can only diminish long-term cooperation.
None of the witnesses summoned through the Republican-controlled House Selection Subcommittee on the coronavirus pandemic provided new evidence to show the virus originated in a lab, but cited events, grant proposals and other incidents as too coincidental to ignore.
Last month, the Wall Street Journal reported that the U. S. Department of Energy has been working on the agenda. The U. S. government, which oversees its own high-security labs, had concluded with little confidence that the virus originated from a leak at a lab in Wuhan, China. FBI Director Christopher Wray echoed this and said a lab leak “most likely” the source.
“It’s necessarily a weapon, but the developing framework of circumstantial evidence suggests a weapon that, at the very least, is hot to the touch,” Jamie F said. Metzl, foreign relations expert, commentator and senior fellow at Atlantic. Counsel.
Metzl joined virologist Dr. Robert Redfield, former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and former New York Times science reporter Nicholas Wade to push new research into a lab leak.
Redfield, an early proponent of the laboratory leak theory. He and others have called for a global moratorium on studies on task gain, arguing that it is too harmful to existing structures.
In gain-of-function studies, scientists intentionally modify a virus to verify the effectiveness of vaccines or other treatments. Redfield argued that monitoring these studies should not be limited to scientists, and the wider network deserves to be appreciated.
The CDC and the labs it oversees have violated containment procedures many times, as USA TODAY has shown, adding to a 2014 incident in which vials of smallpox were moved between labs in a cardboard box.
Redfield led CDC President Donald Trump, who praised the Chinese government’s reaction to the pandemic but also called the virus “Kung flu,” a label that many U. S. Asian leaders have used to use in the country. U. S. officials have accused them of helping provoke domestic anti-Asian attacks since the pandemic began.
Most experts say the pandemic likely began when an existing coronavirus naturally mutated and passed from an animal to a human, perhaps at a wildlife market in Wuhan. This is how other viruses would have started, adding MERS, SARS and Ebola, in a procedure called zoonoses. But filing reports of respiratory illnesses among Wuhan researchers in the fall of 2019, the lab leak theory claims that scientists who read the increase in service made the coronavirus more virulent and then released it.
Subcommittee Chairman Rep. Brad Wenstrup, R-Ohio, said the two origin theories have deeply divided Americans and said he is committed to pursuing science. He also criticized Dr. Anthony Fauci, former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, for pressuring the fitness network to minimize leakage from a lab.
Speaking at the request of subcommittee Democrats, Dr. Paul Auwaerter of the Infectious Diseases Society of America echoed many of Fauci’s previous statements at the hearing and the importance of global cooperation.
“We would probably never know conclusively where the COVID-19 pandemic came from. Making claims that cannot be sufficiently supported by the available data fuels confusion and mistrust,” he said. “But we can still gain valuable insights from those investigations. And ultimately we use this data to prevent environmental or man-made epidemics and pandemics to prevent loss of life and severe social disruption. “