Vanity Fair and ProPublica’s report last week The fact that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was facing an unspecified emergency around the time the coronavirus emerged has renewed debate among Americans about the lab leak theory of the pandemic.
The Vanity Fair and ProPublica story paints a picture of a mysterious biosecurity incident at the lab shortly before people began to become infected with the new virus.
Citing translations by Toy Reid, a State Department political officer who covers China, who reviewed documents from the Wuhan Institute of Virology website, the article said Chinese officials were facing “an acute security emergency” a month before to start a coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan.
This suggests that the virus may have come from a laboratory accident, according to the the conclusion drawn by Republicans on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, who released the documents to reporters.
The Wall Street Journal has previously reported that US intelligence operatives believe three employees at the virology institute sought hospital care around the time Reid said the emergency occurred.
Vanity Fair investigative reporter Katherine Eban and ProPublica computer reporter Jeff Kao said they cross-checked Reid’s translations with experts in Chinese Communist Party communications. But Reid made mistakes, according to local speakers since then, according to an LA Times business columnist AND Traffic light media journalist, casting doubt on the story.
Eban wrote one Vanity Fair article published June 2021 that is cited a preliminary essay in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists making the case for the lab leak theory by former New York Times science writer Nicholas Wade. Eban’s piece helped lend legitimacy to the lab leak theory and suggested the US was covering up the leak because it had previously paid for “gain-of-function” research that sought to make viruses more dangerous in order to learn to controlled them.
Ambiguous findings: The debate over whether the coronavirus came from nature or from a lab is almost as old as the pandemic itself.
or March 2021 report by public health experts that the World Health Organization tasked with looking into the origin of the disease relied heavily on the likelihood of a natural spread and dismissed the possibility of a laboratory leak.
But the report was mired in controversy because Chinese authorities were heavily involved in its drafting. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at the time that a laboratory leak was not beyond the realm of possibility.
or US intelligence report the end of last year said the intelligence community was divided about the origin of the virus and more evidence was needed to make a definitive assessment.
The case for a natural origin: But two reviews of scientific findings, published last year and last month, make the case for a natural spread of the virus.
IN a self-published one review21 virologists pointed to reports indicating that markets in Wuhan live animals are soldsuch as palm civets and raccoon dogs, which can carry the virus, The New York Times reported.
Second review, published in the journal sciencenoted that peer-reviewed evidence shows that the virus moved from bats to other wildlife and then to people who traded those animals, sparking an outbreak at a seafood market in Wuhan.
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Many media outlets saw the spike in Covid cases in Europe earlier this fall as evidence of another wave of winter construction. That could still happen, but it’s too early to tell, given that the WHO says cases are now falling across the pond, falling 17 percent week-on-week.
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Today in ours Pulse control podcast, Ben talks to Megan Messerly about the new report from Senate Cybersecurity Co-Founder Mark Warner (D-Va.), which urges Congress to consider getting the Department of Health and Human Services to set minimum security standards for the health industry. Plus, Katherine Ellen Foley on what you need to know from Pfizer and Moderna’s earnings calls.
Cases of Covid-19 recovery after using the antiviral drug Paxlovid no longer seem as rare as federal health experts once said.
That was the conclusion many Twitterati drew from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s announcement Monday that its director, Rochelle Walensky, had returned. Walensky first positive test for Covid on Oct 22, started a round of Paxlovid, tested negative, then experienced symptoms again and it was positive on October 30.
Her case of relapse follows similar double periods with the disease for President Joe Biden, First Lady Jill Biden and the White House Chief Medical Advisor Anthony Maw.
All but Fauci’s case came after Ashish Jha, the White House’s Covid-19 response coordinator, said 5 to 8 percent of people experienced a relapse.
Many now doubt this assessment.
FDA Commissioner Robert Califf took to Twitter to warn that Paxlovid’s ability to prevent serious illness and death is more important than its curative effect.
That benefit remains, Califf tweeted.
But Twitterati found fault with this as well, noting that The FDA approved Paxlovid in December 2021 after its manufacturer, Pfizer, showed that the drug helped unvaccinated people who had not previously contracted Covid. Pfizer did not study its effects first in those who had received vaccines against the coronavirus.
company later made a case that his regime also helps vaccinated people, but the data were unclear. And many Tweeters don’t buy it.
