BF2S Forums Pandemic thread

unnamednewbie13 wrote:

Did I specifically say they would?

re: "fundamental freedoms," uh, vaccine requirements are not a new thing. What about fundamental freedoms to drink and drive? Maybe a bad comparison. I said increase pressure, not outlaw.

SuperJail Warden wrote:

Those Australia flags are something. Australia keeps getting a lot of coverage in right wing media for being heavy-handed in regards to all of this.

The work of a task force commissioned by the Lancet into the origins of covid-19 has folded after concerns about the conflicts of interest of one its members and his ties through a non-profit organisation to the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

The decision came as evidence continued to accumulate that Daszak had not always been forthright about his research and his financial ties to the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Daszak now faces increased scrutiny from scientists, the media, and members of US Congress.

EcoHealth Alliance has been given millions of dollars in grants by the US federal government to research viruses for pandemic preparedness. The alliance has subcontracted out its research, including around $600 000 (£434 000; €504 000) to the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

In the weeks preceding Sachs’s decision to end the task force’s work, further information emerged questioning the veracity of several other statements made by Daszak. After suing the NIH to gain access to Daszak’s grants, the US media organisation the Intercept released details of several of Daszak’s NIH grants and grant applications, including one that seemed to involve gain-of-function research by creating chimeric SARS viruses. Both Daszak and the NIH’s Anthony Fauci have said that these experiments were not gain-of-function studies, which would have required the grant to have a risk mitigation.7

However, a week after the Intercept’s story a group of online investigators called DRASTIC (Decentralized Radical Autonomous Search Team Investigating Covid-19) published leaked documents that included a grant application that Daszak had submitted to the US Department of Defense in 2018. In that document Daszak proposed creating chimeric SARS viruses. The department declined to fund Daszak’s grant, adding that if it were funded in the future the chimeric research would require a risk mitigation plan for gain-of-function research.

In a statement to The BMJ US Right to Know said, “There still has to be robust, independent investigations into the origins of covid-19. It’s well past time for Congress and the World Health Organizations to do their jobs.”

Last edited by uziq (2021-10-05 21:53:57)

uziq wrote:

The work of a task force commissioned by the Lancet

The decision came as evidence continued to accumulate that Daszak had not always been forthright

uziq wrote:

i think it's less of a james bond plot and more an indictment of the way that certain types of science are conducted without due process and proper supervision. this isn't 'rogue agent daszak and evil chinese empire'. it's the american NIH – the main grant-awarding body in all of scientific research – and the department of defense. it's grant proposals written and massaged in such a way so that highly controversial research will get funding without proper auditing or risk management. this is how a lot of modern-day science is done. it's international, it's collaborative, and more than one superpower are interested in it.