Colby Cosh: The bipartisan consensus against risky coronavirus research in China – National Post

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Democrats and Republicans now agree that a viral research funder swindled the public on the (genuine but unproven) possibility of a lab leak

Published May 18, 2024 Last updated 20hours ago 2 minute read

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On Wednesday, the United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)issued a legal notice to the EcoHealth Alliance, the disease research NGO that has found itself at the heart of a political struggle over COVID-19 origins. The HHS letter amounts to a warning that the Biden administration intends to debar EcoHealth, a major funder of Chinese coronavirus research activity, from receipt of U.S. federal funding for some undetermined period.

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The congressional caucuses of the two major parties are still divided, and still sniping at each other, over COVID-origins questions. You can see this for yourself by reading twin reports issued this month by the House select subcommittee studying oversight and accountability aspects of the pandemic one of which is the question whether the U.S. government might have accidentally paid for a megacidal epidemic through EcoHealth and its links to Chinas Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV).

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The majority report criticizes EcoHealth president Peter Daszak for obstructing and obfuscating origins investigations, hiding awkward and shocking facts about the Chinese research activity Americans were paying for and acting with unspeakably poor scientific integrity. It also throws in a bunch of praise for former president Donald Trump.

Meanwhile,a minority report issued by the committees Democratswarns against praising Trump or accepting kooky biowarfare theories of COVID origins. But it concurs emphatically with the majoritys judgment on EcoHealth and Daszak. On some points, and particularly on Daszaks sleazy role in organizing the early publicity effort to deny the possibility of a laboratory accident in Wuhan (see page 28), the Democratic report is harsher and more specific.

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In other words, one thing everyone now agrees on is that Daszak is a wrong un who worked to save his behind by swindling politicians, media and the public on the (genuine but unproven) possibility of a lab leak. EcoHealth clearly felt itself to be serving a higher purpose in funding Chinese research on coronaviruses and particularly bat coronaviruses, but its oversight of the WIVs safety characteristics and its knowledge of WIV research detailshave turned out to be culpably feeble. All of this adds up to somethingvery much like jailing Al Capone for tax evasion: EcoHealth may get the equivalent of a scientific death penalty because of the piss-poor quality of its reporting to the authorities.

The emergence of an awkward bipartisan consensus on EcoHealth really a three-way consensus now that the executive branch is acting is obviously significant. So too is the presence of a strong component, within the liberal mainstream media, of a group of lab-leak re-revisionists. Well, Im not sure if thats the right word, but I dont quite know what to call these people. Theyre just journalists who knew from the start that there is a recorded history of harmful virologist lab accidents; who didnt like the way the lab-leak theories were impulsively suppressed by means of social media censorship and catcalls of racism; and who thoughtthere was a story in it all. Two of these writers,New York Timescolumnist Zeynep TufekciandVanity Fairs Katherine Eban, have new long Twitter threads reacting to the HHS announcement and outlining the sordid background.

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Colby Cosh: The bipartisan consensus against risky coronavirus research in China - National Post