WASHINGTON — Democrats and Republicans generally agreed Wednesday that scientists and the intelligence network fully investigate the origins of COVID-19 without political interference in whether the virus emerged from the wild or through a lab leak.
Members of either political party said at the hearing of the U. S. House Special Subcommittee that they would be able to say that they would be able to do so. U. S. Coronavirus Pandemic Discovery Finds Origins May Prepare U. S. The U. S. and other countries to better cope with the next pandemic, if not to save it.
However, experts who testified before the panel noted that there will never be enough evidence for the clinical network to coalesce around an origin.
“There is still no consensus on the origins of the virus,” said Paul Auwaerter, clinical director of the Division of Infectious Diseases and a professor at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. He is president of the Infectious Diseases Society of America.
“The Energy Ministry, with little confidence, decided that the virus escaped from a laboratory in China based on classified data that is not publicly available. The FBI came to its conclusion with moderate confidence,” Auwaerter said. On the other hand, many virologists who reliably evidence attribute an animal origin. They conclude that the maximum coronavirus maximum likely passed from a caged wild animal to other people at a seafood market. “
“We would possibly never know the origin conclusively – making claims that cannot be sufficiently supported through available knowledge only fuels confusion and mistrust,” Auwaerter added.
Robert Redfield, director of the U. S. Centers for Disease Control and PreventionA U. S. citizen government under the Trump administration, he said there are two divergent perspectives within the clinical network on the origins of COVID-19.
The first is that the virus passed from an animal population to humans, which is known as an indirect event of nature, and then began to spread from there.
“This is a scenario where the virus naturally mutates and becomes more transmissible from species to species,” Redfield said. “In this case, from bats to humans to an intermediate species. This is what happened in previous outbreaks of SARS and MERS and past coronaviruses that emerged from bats and spread an intermediate animal.
The timing of speculation about the origins of the virus, he said, is that it evolved in a lab related to Array’s gain function.
“This is a type of study in which scientists seek to develop the transmissibility or pathogenicity of an organism to better perceive that organism and count preparedness efforts and progression of countermeasures, such as therapies and vaccines,” Redfield said. this theory, COVID inflamed the general population after an accidental leak from a laboratory in China. “
Redfield said he believes COVID-19 “was more likely the result of an accidental leak in the lab than the result of an herb overflow event. “
Redfield later testified that he did not personally assist the winning investigation, though he later tried to point out to the committee that “the people who help her are people of good faith, because they will actually lead to a possible benefit. “
Jamie Metzl, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, a think tank that tends to focus on foreign policy, told the panel to be open to any of the hypotheses as new evidence emerges about the origins of COVID-19.
Metzl, who is a scientist or medical researcher but a senior non-resident researcher for generation and homeland security, said he believes existing data makes a lab leak more likely.
“There is no irrefutable evidence to prove original speculation in the lab, but the developing framework of circumstantial evidence suggests a weapon that is at least to the touch,” Metzl said.
He noted, following a panel chair, Brad Wenstrup, an Ohio Republican, that the Chinese government has unsuccessfully searched a portion of its animal population for COVID-19.
“We know that the Chinese government has been very competitive in finding this type of intermediate host animal. They sequenced about 100,000 animals. They didn’t locate anything,” Metzl said. Everyone has an explanation for why it is necessary to locate it, especially the Chinese government. And I think it’s very telling that after 3 years, we still haven’t figured it out.
Auwaerter, however, noted in reaction to it that researchers have not yet discovered this type of link when it comes to Ebola.
“In terms of finding intermediaries, there are examples, for example, with the Ebola virus, where we have not yet discovered a transparent intermediary despite a very complicated search. And nobody thinks it’s because of a lab accident, you know. “, decades ago,” Auwaerter said.
“So I think it’s still an open question. I think everything wants to be explored,” Auwaerter added. And here are opposing perspectives that want to be weighed and not all assumptions are weighed equally. “
While the vast majority of members of the House Special Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic agreed that tracing the origins of COVID-19 deserves to be nonpartisan and free from political interference, there were still partisan moments in the hearing.
Democrats questioned the fact that Republicans invited Nicholas Wade, a former scientist and editor of The New York Times, former science editor and former editor of Nature, to testify.
Maryland Democratic Rep. Kweisi Mfume, as a qualifying panel member Raul Ruiz of California and Rep. Jill Tokuda of Hawaii, criticized statements made through Wade in his book “A Problematic Inheritance: Genes, Race and Human History. “
Mfume noted that several white supremacists praised the e-book and that it “was promoted on a neo-Nazi forum that is related to approximately one hundred racially motivated murder attempts in the last five years. “
“I read his book and I’m horrified,” Mfume said. I hope that giving him this platform doesn’t ruin or pollute what we’re trying to confront and face here. “
Ruiz noted that Wade’s e-book “suggests that other racial and ethnic teams have evolved to possess genetic variations, traits and behaviors similar to their prosperity or not. “
“The concept that other people from other racial or ethnic teams are more successful or intellectually amazing because of a predisposed genetic makeup is completely incompatible with the consensus of clinical and medical scholarship,” Ruiz said.
Some Republican lawmakers on the panel have continually criticized the paintings by Dr. Anthony Fauci, former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, adding his own over speculation that COVID-19 arose from an indirect event.
And Maryland’s Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin chided former President Donald Trump over the COVID-19 pandemic, posting one of the tweets in which Trump praised Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Raskin said that on at least 42 occasions, Trump “openly praised and defended the performance” of the Chinese president and Raskin for why Trump never introduced an investigation into the origins of COVID-19.
“Whatever the origins of COVID-19, bats or bureaucrats, no discovery can exonerate or rehabilitate Donald Trump for his fatal recklessness in mishandling the crisis in America,” Raskin said.
“In fact, if COVID-19 were in fact the product of a lab leak or the worst biological weapon of mass destruction ever invented, as some have argued and evidently we still don’t have the clinical evidence to say all this, not only would it not remove Donald Trump’s guilt, it would only deepen his guilt within.
by Jennifer Shutt, Nebraska Examiner March 8, 2023
WASHINGTON — Democrats and Republicans generally agreed Wednesday that scientists and the intelligence network fully investigate the origins of COVID-19 without political interference in whether the virus emerged from the wild or through a lab leak.
Members of either political party said at the hearing of the U. S. House Special Subcommittee that they would be able to say that they would be able to do so. U. S. Coronavirus Pandemic Discovery Finds Origins May Prepare U. S. The U. S. and other countries to better cope with the next pandemic, if not to save it.
However, experts who testified before the panel noted that there will never be enough evidence for the clinical network to coalesce around an origin.
“There is still no consensus on the origins of the virus,” said Paul Auwaerter, clinical director of the Division of Infectious Diseases and a professor at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. He is president of the Infectious Diseases Society of America.
“The Energy Ministry, with little confidence, decided that the virus escaped from a laboratory in China based on classified data that is not publicly available. The FBI came to its conclusion with moderate confidence,” Auwaerter said. On the other hand, many virologists who reliably evidence attribute an animal origin. They conclude that the maximum coronavirus maximum likely passed from a caged wild animal to other people at a seafood market. “
“We would possibly never know the origin conclusively – making claims that cannot be sufficiently supported through available knowledge only fuels confusion and mistrust,” Auwaerter added.
Robert Redfield, director of the U. S. Centers for Disease Control and PreventionA U. S. citizen government under the Trump administration, he said there are two divergent perspectives within the clinical network on the origins of COVID-19.
The first is that the virus passed from an animal population to humans, which is known as an indirect event of nature, and then began to spread from there.
“This is a scenario where the virus naturally mutates and becomes more transmissible from species to species,” Redfield said. “In this case, from bats to humans to an intermediate species. This is what happened in previous outbreaks of SARS and MERS and past coronaviruses that emerged from bats and spread an intermediate animal.
The timing of speculation about the origins of the virus, he said, is that it evolved in a lab related to Array’s gain function.
“This is a type of study in which scientists seek to develop the transmissibility or pathogenicity of an organism to better perceive that organism and count preparedness efforts and progression of countermeasures, such as therapies and vaccines,” Redfield said. this theory, COVID inflamed the general population after an accidental leak from a laboratory in China. “
Redfield said he believes COVID-19 “was more likely the result of an accidental leak in the lab than the result of an herb overflow event. “
Redfield later testified that he did not personally assist the winning investigation, though he later tried to point out to the committee that “the people who help her are people of good faith, because they will actually lead to a possible benefit. “
Jamie Metzl, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, a think tank that tends to focus on foreign policy, told the panel to be open to any of the hypotheses as new evidence emerges about the origins of COVID-19.
Metzl, who is a scientist or medical researcher but a senior non-resident researcher for generation and homeland security, said he believes existing data makes a lab leak more likely.
“There is no irrefutable evidence to prove original speculation in the laboratory, but the developing framework of circumstantial evidence suggests a weapon that is at least tactile,” Metzl said.
He noted, following a panel chair, Brad Wenstrup, an Ohio Republican, that the Chinese government has unsuccessfully searched a portion of its animal population for COVID-19.
“We know that the Chinese government has been very competitive in finding this type of intermediate host animal. They sequenced about 100,000 animals. They didn’t locate anything,” Metzl said. Everyone has an explanation for why it is necessary to locate it, especially the Chinese government. And I think it’s very telling that after 3 years, we still haven’t figured it out.
Auwaerter, however, noted in reaction to it that researchers have not yet discovered this type of link when it comes to Ebola.
“In terms of finding intermediaries, there are examples, for example, with the Ebola virus, where we have not yet discovered a transparent intermediary despite a very complicated search. And nobody thinks it’s because of a lab accident, you know. “, decades ago,” Auwaerter said.
“So I think it’s still an open question. I think everything wants to be explored,” Auwaerter added. And here are opposing perspectives that want to be weighed and not all assumptions are weighed equally. “
While the vast majority of members of the House Special Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic agreed that tracing the origins of COVID-19 deserves to be nonpartisan and free from political interference, there were still partisan moments in the hearing.
Democrats questioned the fact that Republicans invited Nicholas Wade, a former scientist and editor of The New York Times, former science editor and former editor of Nature, to testify.
Maryland Democratic Rep. Kweisi Mfume, as a qualifying panel member Raul Ruiz of California and Rep. Jill Tokuda of Hawaii, criticized statements made through Wade in his book “A Problematic Inheritance: Genes, Race and Human History. “
Mfume noted that several white supremacists praised the e-book and that it “was promoted on a neo-Nazi forum that is related to approximately one hundred racially motivated murder attempts in the last five years. “
“I read his book and I’m horrified,” Mfume said. I hope that giving him this platform doesn’t ruin or pollute what we’re trying to confront and face here. “
Ruiz noted that Wade’s e-book “suggests that other racial and ethnic teams have evolved to possess genetic variations, traits and behaviors similar to their prosperity or not. “
“The concept that other people from other racial or ethnic teams are more successful or intellectually amazing because of a predisposed genetic makeup is completely incompatible with the consensus of clinical and medical scholarship,” Ruiz said.
Some Republican lawmakers on the panel have continually criticized the paintings by Dr. Anthony Fauci, former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, adding his own over speculation that COVID-19 arose from an indirect event.
And Maryland’s Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin chided former President Donald Trump over the COVID-19 pandemic, posting one of the tweets in which Trump praised Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Raskin said that on at least 42 occasions, Trump “openly praised and defended the performance” of the Chinese president and Raskin for why Trump never introduced an investigation into the origins of COVID-19.
“Whatever the origins of COVID-19, bats or bureaucrats, no discovery can exonerate or rehabilitate Donald Trump for his fatal recklessness in mishandling the crisis in America,” Raskin said.
“In fact, if COVID-19 were in fact the product of a lab leak or the worst biological weapon of mass destruction ever invented, as some have argued and evidently we still don’t have the clinical evidence to say all this, not only would it not remove Donald Trump’s guilt, it would only deepen his guilt within.
Nebraska Examiner belongs to States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported through grants and a donor coalition as a 501c public charity (3). Nebraska Examiner maintains its editorial independence. Please contact editor Cate Folsom if you have any questions: info@nebraskaexaminer. com. Follow the Nebraska reviewer on Facebook and Twitter.
Jennifer covers the nation’s capital as a senior reporter for the state newsroom. His policy spaces include congressional politics, politics and demanding legal situations with a focus on health care, unemployment, housing, and family assistance.
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