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Fauci Says He’s Always Been ‘Honest’ as COVID Origins Questions Raised
Anthony Fauci has insisted he has always been honest throughout his career after he was accused by lawmakers of engaging in a “cover-up” in light of fresh intelligence disclosures concerning the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The former chief medical advisor to the president, who was regularly the face of the government’s response to coronavirus, has been repeatedly accused of attempting to obfuscate indirect United States funding of the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and previously testified that America had never financed research to enhance viruses in a lab.
It comes as two U.S. intelligence agencies have said they believe COVID-19 was the result of a mishap in a Chinese lab, rather than the virus crossing the species barrier from an infected animal. The revelations have reignited scrutiny of the government’s handling of the pandemic.
Fauci previously came under fire after it emerged that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) — which he had been a key member of since 1984 until last year — gave U.S.-based EcoHealth Alliance a $3.7 million grant in 2014, $600,000 of which was sent to the Wuhan Institute of Virology in order to study bat coronaviruses.
COVID Origins Hearing Opens With Arguments for Lab Leak Theory
The New York Times via The Seattle Times reported:
The House panel investigating the origins of the coronavirus pandemic opened its first public hearing Wednesday with Republicans and their witnesses making an aggressive case that the virus may have been the result of a laboratory leak — a notion that has become the subject of intense political and scientific debate.
“There is no smoking gun proving a lab origin hypothesis, but the growing body of circumstantial evidence suggests a gun that, at the very least, is warm to the touch,” said Jamie Metzl, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and a former State Department official.
Metzl was one of three witnesses invited by Republicans. The others were Dr. Robert R. Redfield, who served as the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention under President Donald Trump, and Nicholas Wade, who was the science editor of The New York Times in the 1990s and left the news organization at the end of 2011.
The three have previously said the virus may have accidentally escaped from a laboratory. But they all said Wednesday that the question of how the virus originated remained an open one and that it was important to settle the question. Dr. Paul G. Auwaerter, the clinical director of the infectious diseases division at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, testified at the invitation of Democrats.
COVID Lab Leak Fight Obscures the Global Rise of High-Security Biolabs
The number of high-containment labs around the world conducting potentially risky scientific research is surging, despite a lack of global agreement on how to make sure they’re safe. There are 69 so-called Biosafety Level 4, or BSL-4, facilities designed to study dangerous infectious pathogens in operation, under construction or planned worldwide, according to Global Biolabs, a tracking project run out of King’s College London and George Mason University in Virginia. About a decade ago, there were only 25.
Scientific safety has re-emerged as a high-stakes global issue in the weeks since the U.S. Department of Energy suggested it had intelligence showing a lab leak was the most likely origin of the COVID-19 pandemic. On Wednesday, Congress is holding the first of what is likely to be a series of hearings on the matter. China has rejected the idea of a lab leak, and the scientific consensus remains that the pandemic began when the coronavirus leaped from animals to people.
Health scares — from the 2001 anthrax attacks to outbreaks of SARS, Ebola and Zika — have prompted numerous countries to pour enormous sums of money into building these types of labs. More facilities than ever are handling, and in some cases genetically enhancing infectious pathogens. BSL-4 labs can now be found in more than 25 countries. They are frequently located in cities, where a loose virus or harmful organism could potentially spread quickly.
Highly secure labs are meant to ensure safe conditions for risky studies. Research in which scientists make biological agents more potent, and possibly more harmful, can be used to understand future mutations of viruses and build better vaccines. The downside is these super-pathogens can escape the lab if they’re not handled with sufficient safety practices in place.
COVID Raises Odds for Long-Term Gastro Problems
U.S. News & World Report reported:
Add gastrointestinal problems to the long list of lingering conditions that can follow COVID-19.
New research has found that people who have had COVID-19 are at an increased risk of gastrointestinal disorders within a year of their infection — including liver problems, acute pancreatitis, irritable bowel syndrome, acid reflux and ulcers in the lining of the stomach or upper intestine.
They may also have an increased likelihood of constipation, diarrhea, abdominal pain, bloating and vomiting, according to researchers from the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Mo., and the Veterans Affairs St. Louis Health Care system.
Omission of Children’s COVID Vaccine Deaths in Australia Raises Concerns
Australia’s drug regulator was slow to update the country’s Database of Adverse Event Notifications (DAEN) despite several deaths being attributed to the vaccine, including two children, aged 7 and 9.
The information came to light following a Freedom of Information request by an Australian doctor that found the delayed response from the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA). Senator Gerard Rennick said he would push for independent oversight of the TGA.
“A third independent medical party should examine the evidence as the TGA has a conflict of interest because they approved the vaccines and would therefore be held responsible for the deaths of these children due to poor regulatory oversight,” Rennick told The Epoch Times.
The senator also said he was concerned that the TGA was soft-pedaling the risks with the COVID-19 vaccines, especially around myocarditis and cardiac arrests.
Gene That Shielded Some Against Black Death May Be Helping, Harming People Today
U.S. News & World Report reported:
Some people may have a gene that helps protect them from respiratory diseases like COVID-19 — and helped their ancestors fight the plague. It comes at a cost. This same gene variation may be linked to an increased risk of autoimmune disease, including rheumatoid arthritis and inflammatory bowel disease, according to British researchers.
“Although we don’t know the exact mechanism influencing disease risk, carriers of alleles that provide more protection against respiratory disease seem to have an increased risk of autoimmune disease,” lead author Fergus Hamilton, a fellow at the University of Bristol, said in a university news release. “It is potentially a great example of a phenomenon termed ‘balancing selection’ — where the same allele has a different effect on different diseases.”
Past research has found that survivors of the bubonic plague pandemic in the Middle Ages, known as the Black Death, carried a variant — or allele — in a gene known as ERAP2. Those who died lacked this variant.
The new study found that humans now have the same variants, which are associated with protection against infections such as pneumonia and COVID.
COVID Vaccines Won’t Be Free for Long. What Will They Cost?
The Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions will hold a hearing on March 22 to discuss the pricing of the COVID-19 vaccines. Pfizer and Moderna are preparing to offer their vaccines in the private sector, without the federal government covering the cost.
This will be necessary, given that the COVID-19 national and public health emergencies will expire on May 11. This will also shift the cost burden to health insurance companies, or for some people, be an out-of-pocket expense, although Moderna has indicated they will provide their vaccine at no cost to the uninsured and underinsured.
The federal government has been paying between $15 to $31 per dose for the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. Both companies have proposed prices between $110 and $130, around four times higher. The federal government provided funds to make these vaccines possible. This means that the development risks were borne by the government so that if the venture failed, the companies would not bear any costs. Their only loss was the opportunity cost to develop other products.
At the same time, they were guaranteed a market for the vaccines if they were successful. This provided a development effort with little financial risk and significant upside potential, a highly favorable investment environment. This places downward pressure on vaccine prices, at least in the short term.
