Tefview x over speaker will not go away2/26/2023 You might care to read a recent reprint on the distribution of endonuclease cleavage sites within the SARS-CoV2 sequence ( ), a Substack explaining the paper in layman’s terms ( ), the accompanying twitter thread ( ), the comments of Prof. And that matters, because the party could take control of Congress in the upcoming mid-term elections and then the White House in 2024.Īs the report reminds us, “over one million Americans have died from COVID-19 and tens of millions have died from this virus worldwide.” Those facts make this an awfully big issue for a blame-game between superpowers. The people trying to dismiss the Senate report are missing another point, too: it is a clear signal that the Republicans aren’t going to let this lie. Further, there’s still no evidence of Covid having entered the human population anywhere except Wuhan - which just happens to be a global centre for research into respiratory viruses. As the Senate report sets out on pages 11 and 12, no intermediate host species has been found - which, by definition, would be required for a natural zoonotic origin. Three years on from the start of the pandemic, it is this continued absence that is the most important fact available to us. Not only are the Chinese authorities in a position to cover up evidence that might support the lab-leak hypothesis they also have the means and motive to provide proof (if it exists) for the official explanation. However, China’s control of the evidence on the ground (and in the lab) is precisely why the natural origin hypothesis is now so widely doubted. In his forward to the report, Senator Richard Burr notes the “lack of transparency and collaboration from government and public health officials in the People’s Republic of China.” Of course, there’s a reason why new information is so hard to come by: the Chinese authorities have suppressed it. Meanwhile the New York Times coverage is distinctly sceptical in tone: “in relying largely on existing public evidence, rather than new or classified information, the report came as something of a letdown even to those who supported its conclusions.” For instance, it’s been written-up by the Daily Mail, (“bombshell Senate report”), but not - as yet - by the BBC. This partisan aspect may explain why coverage in the media hasn’t been universal. In other words, it is a Republican report. While we’re on the subject of accuracy, it should be made clear that this particular Senate report is the work of the “Minority Oversight Staff” of the “Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labour and Pensions”. However, the hypothesis of a natural zoonotic origin no longer deserves the benefit of the doubt, or the presumption of accuracy.” Indeed, the report states that, on the evidence available, “it appears reasonable to conclude that the Covid-19 pandemic was, more likely than not, the result of a research-related incident.” The authors hedge their bets, but not by much: “New information, made publicly available and independently verifiable, could change this assessment. Though it doesn’t come to a final verdict, it was clearly written to cast doubt on the idea that the virus had a purely natural origin. Yesterday, a US Senate report was published addressing the issue. But how did it start? Three years on we still don’t have a definitive answer, but the question won’t go away.
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