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Scalise Blasts Democrats’ Failures; Releases Key Findings from Select Subcommittee Republicans’ Investigation

Republican Response.

Views: 28

 

Summary.

The Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis (Subcommittee) was formed on
April 23, 2020, with Chairman James Clyburn (D-SC) promising the Subcommittee would be
“forward looking” and would “look at the totality of the current response.” The Subcommittee
failed on both accounts.
Instead, Congressional Democrats used the Subcommittee as a hatchet against political
adversaries and the former Trump Administration. The most prominent example of this is the
fact that the Subcommittee held five hearings with Trump Administration officials in 2020,
compared to two with Biden Administration officials in 2021 and only two in 2022. Further, the
Subcommittee sent 31 public letters to Trump Administration officials in 2020, compared to 10
letters to Biden Administration officials in 2021 and only three in 2022. Subcommittee
Democrats failed to hold the Biden Administration accountable.
Specifically, Subcommittee Democrats refused to investigate: (1) the origins of COVID19, (2) President Biden’s politically motivated decision making, (3) the Biden Administration’s
decision not to purchase more rapid, at-home COVID-19 tests leading up to the holidays in 2021,
and (4) the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) and Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention’s (CDC) actions sideling scientific experts regarding vaccine booster shots.
While Democrats sat idly by, Subcommittee Republicans uncovered: (1) the United
States likely funded gain-of-function (GOF) research on novel coronaviruses at the Wuhan
Institute of Virology (WIV), (2) the scientific establishment, including Drs. Anthony Fauci and
Francis Collins, worked to suppress the lab leak hypothesis, (3) the Biden Administration
provided uncommon access to teachers unions to draft and edit official CDC guidelines so they
could make it easier to keep schools closed, causing devastating learning loss for America’s
young people, and (4) the governors of certain Democrat-led states, particularly New York,
violated CDC and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) guidance to force

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potentially COVID-19 positive patients into nursing homes, causing thousands of unnecessary
deaths.
This internal memorandum details efforts from Subcommittee Republicans to uncover the
truth and hold bad actors accountable. It also addresses the failures stemming from
Subcommittee Democrats inaction. Simply, Republicans acted while Democrats failed.
SELECT SUBCOMMITTEE REPUBLICANS’ FINDINGS
Finding 1: The United States likely funded gain-of-function research on novel
coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
On June 1, 2014, EcoHealth Alliance, Inc. (EcoHealth) received a $3.7 million dollar
grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), entitled
“Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence.”1 Through this grant, EcoHealth sent
more than $600,000 to the WIV in Wuhan, China. Also pursuant to this grant, EcoHealth was
required to report to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and “immediately stop all
experiments” if it created a virus that showed evidence of viral growth 1,000 percent that of the
original virus.2 Even if EcoHealth did not immediately report an experiment that met these
parameters as required by the grant, EcoHealth would have to submit its annual progress report
by September 30, 2019.
On October 20, 2021, the House Committee on Oversight and Reform received a letter
from Dr. Lawrence Tabak, Principal Deputy Director of the NIH. According to Dr. Tabak,
EcoHealth “failed” to properly and promptly report an experiment that violated the terms of the
grant.3 In one experiment, EcoHealth created a virus which showed evidence of viral growth
over the stated threshold, but subsequently failed to report it. This experiment qualified as GOF
research since the virus gained enhanced transmissibility.
This is further complicated by the NIH’s revolving and changing definition to GOF to fit
their preferred narrative. Prior to October 20, 2021, GOF was defined as, “research that modifies
a biological agent so that it confers new or enhanced activity to that agent.”4 EcoHealth’s
experiment would clearly fit this definition. However, after October 20, this definition was
stripped from NIH’s website. The only viable explanation for this is to shield NIH from scrutiny
and accountability since Drs. Fauci and Collins have long been proponents of GOF research
1 Project Grant, Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Research, EcoHealth Alliance, Inc. (June 1, 2014).
2 Letter from Hon. Francis Collins, Dir., Nat’l Insts. Of Health, to Hon. James Comer, Ranking Member, H. Comm.
on Oversight & Reform (July 28, 2021) [hereinafter Collins Letter]. 3 Letter from Lawrence Tabak, Deputy Dir., U.S. Nat’l Insts. Of Health, to Hon. James Comer, Ranking Member, H.
Comm. on Oversight & Reform (Oct. 20, 2021) [hereinafter Tabak Letter].
4 Gain-of-Function Research Involving Potential Pandemic Pathogens, U.S. NAT’L INSTS. OF HEALTH (last updated
July 12, 2021) (archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20211019065407/https:/www.nih.gov/news-events/gainfunction-research-involving-potential-pandemic-pathogens.)

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stating, “important information and insights can come from generating a potentially dangerous
virus in the laboratory.”5
Select Subcommittee Republicans will continue this investigation.
Finding 2: The scientific establishment, including Drs. Anthony Fauci and Francis
Collins, worked to suppress the lab leak hypothesis.
Despite Dr. Fauci claiming otherwise on multiple occasions, he was, in fact, aware of the
monetary relationship between the NIAID, the NIH, EcoHealth, and the WIV by January 27,
2020.6 Dr. Fauci also knew that NIAID worked with EcoHealth to craft a grant policy to sidestep
the gain-of-function moratorium at the time.7 This new policy, designed by EcoHealth and
agreed to by NIAID, allowed EcoHealth to conduct dangerous experiments on novel bat
coronaviruses—with very little oversight—that would have otherwise been blocked by the
moratorium.8 In January 2020, Dr. Fauci was also aware that EcoHealth was not in compliance
with the terms of its grant that funded the WIV.9 EcoHealth was required to submit an annual
progress report to NIAID by September 30, 2019, and failed to timely submit the report.
10
On February 1, 2020, Dr. Fauci, Dr. Collins, and at least eleven other scientists convened
a conference call to discuss the origins of COVID-19.11 It was on this conference call that Drs.
Fauci and Collins were first warned that COVID-19 may have leaked from the WIV and, further,
may have been intentionally genetically manipulated:
• Dr. Kristian Andersen said, “The unusual features of the virus make up a really small part of
the genome (<0.1%) so one has to look really closely at all the sequences to see that some of
the features (potentially) look engineered . . . Eddie [Holmes], Bob [Garry], Mike [Farzan],
and myself all find the genome inconsistent with expectations from evolutionary theory.”12
• Dr. Robert Garry said, “I really can’t think of a plausible natural scenario . . . I just can’t
figure out how this gets accomplished in nature . . . Of course, in the lab it would be easy . . .
.”13
5 Anthony S. Fauci, Gary J. Nabel, & Francis S. Collins, A flu virus risk worth taking, WASH. POST (Dec. 30, 2011). 6 Email from Greg Folkers to Anthony Fauci, et. al. (Jan. 27, 2020) (On file with Comm. Staff); Zachary Basu,
Fauci and Rand Paul clash over NIH funding for Wuhan Institute of Virology, AXIOS (May 11, 2021). 7 Sharon Lerner & Mara Hvistendahl, NIH Officials Worked with EcoHealth Alliance to Evade Restrictions on
Coronavirus Experiments, INTERCEPT (Nov. 3, 2021). 8 Id.
9 Letter from Lawrence Tabak to James Comer (Oct. 20, 2021).
10 Id. 11 Email from Jeremy Farrar to Anthony Fauci, et. al. (Feb. 1, 2020) (On file with Comm. Staff). 12 E-mail from Dr. Kristian Andersen to Dr. Anthony Fauci & Dr. Jeremy Farrar (Jan. 31, 2020) (On file with
Comm. staff).
13 Letter from Hon. James Comer, supra note 2.

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• Dr. Michael Farzan said he was “bothered by the furin site and ha[d] a hard time explain[ing]
that as an event outside the lab . . . I am 70:30 or 60:40 [lab].”14
• Dr. Andrew Rambaut said, “[f]rom a (natural) evolutionary point of view the only thing here
that strikes me as unusual is the furin cleavage site.”15
• Dr. Edward Holmes indicated that he was “60-40 lab . . . .”16
• Dr. Jeremy Farrar said, “I am 50-50 [lab].”17
Only three days later, on February 4, 2020, four participants of the conference call
authored a paper entitled “The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2” and sent a draft to Drs. Fauci
and Collins.18 Prior to final publication in Nature Medicine, the paper was sent to Dr. Fauci for
editing and approval.19 It is unclear what, if any, new evidence was presented or if the
underlying science changed in those three days, but after speaking with Drs. Fauci and Collins,
the authors abandoned their belief COVID-19 was the result of a laboratory leak. It is unclear if
Drs. Fauci or Collins edited the paper prior to publication.
On April 16, 2020, more than two months after the original conference call, Dr. Collins
emailed Dr. Fauci expressing dismay that the Nature Medicine article—which they saw and were
given opportunity to edit prior to publication—did not squash the lab leak hypothesis.
20 Dr.
Collins asks if the NIH can do more to “put down” the lab leak hypothesis.21 The next day—after
Dr. Collins explicitly asked for more public pressure—Dr. Fauci cited the Nature Medicine paper
from the White House podium likely in an effort to further stifle the hypothesis COVID-19
leaked from the WIV.22
The Biden Administration continues to hide, obfuscate, and shield the truth. By
continuing to refuse to cooperate in the Republican investigation into the origins of COVID-19,
the Administration is choosing to hide information that will help inform the origins of the
pandemic, prevent and respond to future pandemics, inform the United States’ current national
security posture, and restore confidence in our public health experts. This continued obstruction
is likely to cause irreparable harm to the credibility of these agencies.
14 Id; “Furin” refers to COVID-19’s Furin Cleavage Site. Generally, Furin is a protease enzyme that breaks down
proteins into single amino acids, to then form new proteins. This is done by cleaving bonds within specific proteins.
COVID-19’s unique Furin Cleavage Site enhances transmissibility and ability to infect other tissue types in the
body.
15 Id. 16 Id. 17 Id. 18 Email from Jeremy Farrar to Anthony Fauci & Francis Collins (Feb. 4, 2020) (On file with Comm. Staff) 19 Email from Kristian Andersen to Anthony Fauci, Francis Collins, & Jeremy Farrar (Mar. 6, 2020) (On file with
Comm. staff).
20 Email from Kristian Andersen to Anthony Fauci, Francis Collins, & Jeremy Farrar (Mar. 6, 2020) (On file with
Comm. staff).
21 Email from Francis Collins to Anthony Fauci, et. al. (Apr. 16, 2020) (On file with Comm. Staff). 22 John Haltiwanger, Dr. Fauci throws cold water on conspiracy theory that coronavirus was created in a Chinese
lab, BLOOMBERG (Apr. 18, 2020).

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Select Subcommittee Republicans will continue this investigation.
Finding 3: The Biden Administration provided uncommon access to teachers unions to
draft and edit official Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines
so they could make it easier to keep schools closed, causing devastating
learning loss for America’s young people.
On May 11, 2021, after public reports of political interference by American Federation of
Teachers (AFT) in the school re-opening policymaking process, Subcommittee Republicans
wrote to CDC Director Rochelle Walensky to request documents and information regarding the
formulation of the “Operational Strategy for K-12 Schools through Phased Prevention”
(Operational Strategy).
23 On July 19, 2021, Director Walensky responded and asserted CDC’s
consultation with AFT was routine and consistent with the agency’s customary process for
issuing guidance.24 Documents and testimony show, however, that Director Walensky
downplayed the degree to which CDC departed from past practice to allow AFT to influence the
policymaking process. In fact, CDC allowed AFT to insert language into the Operational
Strategy that made it more likely schools across the country would remain closed after February
2021.
Contrary to the CDC’s long-standing practice of keeping draft guidance documents
confidential Republicans learned through documents and testimony that senior CDC officials
shared a draft copy of the Operational Strategy with the AFT, a political union with no scientific
expertise but an extensive record of providing financial support to the Biden campaign and other
elected Democrats. After reviewing the draft, AFT staff asked Director Walensky to install a
“trigger” in the guidance that would cause schools to close automatically if COVID-19 positivity
rates reached a certain threshold.25 The CDC obliged, and thousands of schools across the
country remained closed throughout the 2020-2021 school year.
On February 18, 2022, Subcommittee staff interviewed Dr. Henry Walke, a career CDC
scientist and medical doctor. Dr. Walke testified this level of coordination between the CDC and
an outside organization was “uncommon.”26 In fact, according to Dr. Walke, the CDC does not
typically share draft guidance outside the agency for any reason, even with other federal
partners.27
23 Letter from Hon. Steve Scalise, Ranking Member, Select Subcomm. on the Coronavirus Crisis, H. Comm. on
Oversight & Reform, et. al., to Dr. Rochelle Walensky, Director, U.S. Cents. For Disease Control & Prevention
(May 11, 2021).
24 Letter from Dr. Rochelle Walensky, Director, U.S. Cents. For Disease Control & Prevention, to Hon. James
Comer, Ranking Member, Comm. on Oversight & Reform (July 19, 2021). 25 Email from Ms. Kelly Trautner, American Fed. Of Teachers, to Dr. Rochelle Walensky, Dir., U.S. Cents. for
Disease Control & Prevention, et. al. (Feb. 11, 2021).
26 Transcribed Interview of Dr. Henry Walke, Director, Cent. for Preparedness & Response, U.S. Cents. For Disease
Control & Prevention, by H. Comm. on Oversight & Reform Staff (Feb. 18, 2022) [hereinafter Walke TI].
27 Id.

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The actions by the AFT and the Biden Administration led to more school closures.
Virtual school and school closures will be one of the biggest failures during the pandemic and
they were largely perpetuated by teachers unions and Democrats nationwide. According to
University of Harvard professor Thomas Kane, “…the closures came at a stiff price—a large
decline in children’s achievement overall and a historic widening in achievement gaps by race
and economic status.”28 Further according to Brown University professor Emily Oster, “[t]he
past two years have seen enormous test score declines for kids…these declines were caused, at
least in significant part, by school closures.”29 Professor Oster continued, “…the lack of
resumption of in-person learning was a significant contributing factor to test score declines.”30
Compared to the academic decline, the mental health toll on America’s youth is vast but more
difficult to ascertain.
Because lawyers for the Biden Administration prevented a key witness from explaining
why the CDC allowed AFT to write key portions of its guidance for re-opening schools, there are
still several unanswered questions.31
Select Subcommittee Republicans will continue this investigation.
Finding 4: The governors of certain Democrat-led states, particularly New York,
violated Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Centers for
Medicare and Medicaid Services guidance to force potentially COVID-19
positive patients into nursing homes, causing thousands of unnecessary
deaths.
On March 13, 2020, the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) issued
guidance “For Infection Control and Prevention of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) in
Nursing Homes.”32 This guidance is a blueprint for individual states to follow when determining
how to best control outbreaks of COVID-19 in nursing homes and long-term care facilities. This
guidance does not direct any nursing home to accept a COVID-19 positive patient if they are
unable to do so safely. In fact, it says “nursing homes should admit any individual that they
would normally admit to their facility, including individuals from hospitals where a case of
COVID-19 was/is present” only if the nursing home can follow Centers for Disease Control
(CDC) quarantining guidance.33
28 Thomas Kane, Kids Are Far, Far Behind in School, THE ATLANTIC (May 22, 2022). 29 Zachary Rogers, Sharpest learning loss occurred in school districts that stayed remote longer, study says, CBS
(Sept. 15, 2022).
30 Id. 31 Id. 32 Memorandum from David R. Wright, Director, Quality, Safety & Oversight Group, U.S. Centers for Medicare &
Medicaid Services, to State Survey Agency Directors (Mar. 13, 2020) (on file with Comm. Staff).
33 Id; (emphasis added).

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CMS Administrator Seema Verma said, “[u]nder no circumstances should a hospital
discharge a patient to a nursing home that is not prepared to take care of those patient’s needs.”34
The most infamous violation of this guidance came from former New York Governor
Andrew Cuomo. On March 25, 2020, the New York Department of Health posted, on their
website, a now deleted directive entitled “Hospital Discharges and Admissions to Nursing
Homes.”35 This directive said “[n]o resident shall be denied re-admission or admission to the
[nursing home] solely based on a confirmed or suspected diagnosis of COVID-19” and “[nursing
homes] are prohibited from requiring a hospitalized resident who is determined medically stable
to be tested for COVID-19 prior to admission or re-admission.”36 For clarity, this advisory
mandated nursing homes accept known COVID-19 positive patients andmandated that nursing
homes not even test patients for COVID-19 prior to admission.
On October 13, Subcommittee staff interviewed former White House COVID-19
Coordinate Dr. Deborah Birx. When asked about Governor Cuomo’s infamous March 25, 2020,
nursing home order, Dr. Birx testified that the order violated CMS guidance and that admitting
potentially positive COVID-19 nursing home residents back into the nursing home could have
led to unnecessary deaths.37
Because the former Cuomo Administration and the current Administration of Governor
Kathy Hochul have refused to share any information with the Subcommittee, several unanswered
questions remain.
Select Subcommittee Republicans will continue this investigation.
SELECT SUBCOMMITTEE DEMOCRATS’ FAILURES
Failure 1: Subcommittee Democrats failed to investigate the origins of COVID-19.
Select Subcommittee Democrats affirmatively declined to investigate the origins of
COVID-19; a never-before-seen virus that has now killed more than six million people
worldwide. On three occasions, Subcommittee Republicans requested Subcommittee Democrats
investigate the origins of COVID-19. On each occasion, they refused. Finally, on June 11, 2021,
Chairman Clyburn responded to Republicans’ request. He stated, “[w]e are concerned that your
request may be designed…to deflect accountability from the Trump Administration.”38 He
34 Charles Creitz, Medicare chief Verma blasts Cuomo for trying to deflect blame onto White House fo NY nursing
home deaths, Fox News (May 28, 2020). 35 Memorandum from the New York State Department of Health to Nursing Home Administrators, et. al. (Mar. 25,
2020) (on file with Comm. Staff). 36 Id; (emphasis added). 37 Oct. 13 Birx TI at 119-121. 38 Letter from hon. James E. Clyburn, Chairman, Select Subcomm. On the Coronavirus Crisis, H. Comm. On
Oversight & Reform, & Hon. Carolyn B. Maloney, Chairwoman, H. Comm. On Oversight & Reform, to Hon. Steve

Page 8 of 10
continued, “[y]our apparent effort to use the issue of the origin of the virus in order to shift
accountability from President Trump…is an irresponsible gambit that we urge you to
abandon.”39
Unfortunately for Subcommittee Democrats, investigating the origins of COVID-19 is
not a political pursuit. In fact, on May 14, 2021, Dr. Jesse Bloom and 17 other respected
scientists called for the origins to be investigated. They wrote, “[k]nowing how COVID-19
emerged is critical for informing global strategies to mitigate the risk of future outbreaks.”40 The
authors continued, “[w]e must take hypothesis about both natural and laboratory spillovers
seriously…”41 Additionally, on September 17, 2021, another 16 scientists writing in The Lancet,
said, “[o]verwhelming evidence for either zoonotic or research-related origin is lacking: the jury
is still out.”42
On September 14, 2022, The Lancet COVID-19 Commission said, “[i]dentifiying these
origins would provide greater clarity into not only the causes of the current pandemic but also
vulnerabilities to future outbreaks and strategies to prevent them.”43 The Commission continued,
“…hypothesis about both natural and laboratory spillovers are in play and need further
investigation.”44
Despite these calls from numerous respected scientists for further investigation into the
origins of COVID-19, Subcommittee Democrats chose to play politics and ignore them.
Understanding the origins of COVID-19 is not only about accountability but also about
preparing for and defending against future viral pandemics.
Failure 2: Subcommittee Democrats failed to investigate President Biden’s politically
motivated decision making.
Select Subcommittee Democrats refused to investigate the Biden Administration’s
routine decisions that followed the political science instead of the medical science. For instance,
while campaigning, President Biden promised there would be no vaccine mandate but on
September 9, 2021, through executive order, he imposed a vaccine mandate.45 The Biden
J. Scalise, Ranking Member, Select Subcomm. On the Coronavirus Crisis, H. Comm. On Oversight & Reform, &
Hon. James R. Comer, Ranking Member, H. Comm. On Oversight & Reform (June 11, 2021). 39 Id. 40 Jesse D. Bloom, et. al., Investigate the origins of COVID-19, SCIENCE (May 14, 2021). 41 Id. 42 Jacques van Helden, et. al., An appeal for an objective, open, and transparent debate about the origin of SARSCoV-2, THE LANCET (Sept. 17, 2022). 43 Jeffrey D. Sachs, et. al., The Lancet Commission on lessons for the future form the COVID-19 pandemic, THE
LANCET (Sept. 14, 2022). 44 Id. 45 See Jacob Jarvis, Fact Check: Did Joe Biden Reject Idea of Mandatory Vaccines in December 2020?, NEWSWEEK
(Sept. 10, 2021); Bloomberg Quicktake (@Quicktake), Twitter (July 23, 2021 02:16 p.m.),
https://mobile.twitter.com/Quicktake/status/1418636102643167235; Zeke Miller, Sweeping new vaccine mandates
for 100 million Americans, ASSOC. PRESS (Sept. 9, 2021).

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Administration went so far as to blame the pandemic on Republicans and the unvaccinated
without any evidence.46
Further, on February 24, 2022, polling firm Impact Research argued in a now-public
memoranda that the Democrats need to “declare the crisis phase of COVID over and push for
feeling and acting more normal.”47 The next day, the CDC ended their masking restrictions in
most places despite the fact that just two weeks prior CDC Director Walensky said it was not yet
time.48
In addition, the Biden Administration has repeatedly renewed the COVID-19 public
health emergency, and thus the extension of social welfare programs, despite President Biden
declaring the pandemic over.49 Select Subcommittee Democrats’ have refused to investigate any
of these politically based decisions by the Biden Administration.
Failure 3: Subcommittee Democrats failed to investigate the Biden Administration’s
decision not to purchase more rapid, at-home COVID-19 tests leading up to
the holidays in 2021.
Select Subcommittee Democrats ignored reports that the Biden Administration refused to
purchase more rapid, at-home tests for Americans headed into the 2021 holiday season which
corresponded with a dramatic surge in cases. In July 2020, during the Trump Administration,
Chairman Clyburn said, “[w]ithout widely available, rapid testing, it is nearly impossible to
control the spread of the virus…”50 The Chairman went on to say that the Trump Administration
was “warned” about testing and “failed.”51
However, the Biden Administration was not only warned about a lack of available testing
but flatly rejected an October 22, 2021 proposal to ramp up manufacturing and deliver tests to
Americans prior to Christmas.52 This plan detailed the need for about 400 million tests.53
Ironically, exactly two months later, President Biden said, “I wish I had thought about ordering”
46 Remarks, The White House, Remarks by President Biden on Fighting the COVID-19 Pandemic (Sept. 9, 2021). 47 Julie Hamill, @hamill_law, Twitter (Feb. 25, 2022),
https://twitter.com/hamill_law/status/1497205184790872065. 48 Julie Hamill, @hamill_law, Twitter (Feb. 25, 2022),
https://twitter.com/hamill_law/status/1497205184790872065; Mitch Smith & Shawn Hubler, Masks Come Off in
More States, but Not Everyone is Grinning, THE N.Y. TIMES (Feb. 9, 2022). 49 Declaration, Administration for Strategic Preparedness & Response, U.S. Dep’t of Health & Human Serv.,
Renewal of Determination that a Public Health Emergency Exists (Oct. 15, 2022); Adam Cancryn & Krista Mahr,
Biden declared the pandemic ‘over.’ His Covid team says it’s more complicated, POLITICO (Sept. 19, 2022). 50 The Urgent Need for a National Plan to Contain the Coronavirus, Hearing Before the Select Subcomm. on the
Coronavirus Crisis, H. Comm. on Oversight & Reform, 117th Cong. (July 31, 2020). 51 Id. 52 Katherine Eban, The Biden Administration Rejected an October Proposal for “Free Rapid Tests for the
Holidays”, VANITY FAIR (Dec. 23, 2021). 53 Id.

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500 million at-home tests “two-months ago.”54 Yet no investigation was launched by the Select
Subcommittee Democrats.
Failure 4: Subcommittee Democrats failed to investigate the Food and Drug
Administration’s and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s actions
sidelining scientific experts regarding vaccine booster shots.
Select Subcommittee Democrats disregarded the fact that President Biden’s FDA and
CDC intentionally sidelined or ignored outside vaccine experts that did not support the Biden
Administration’s vaccine only strategy. On August 18, 2021, without evidence and data,
President Biden announced that booster doses of the mRNA vaccines would be available for
Americans starting September 20, 2021.55 Top scientists and researchers were stunned by this
decision—particularly because the CDC and the FDA had not yet conducted their independent
review of the data.56 In fact, two vaccine manufacturers have not yet submitted the relevant data
to the government agencies.57 This political manipulation and pressure to interfere with the
science by President Biden’s White House reportedly contributed to the decision of two top
career scientists, Marion Gruber and Phill Krause, who were key in the vaccine process, to leave
the FDA.58 They felt that the FDA was being sidelined by the Biden Administration and
according to press reports “what finally did it for them was the White House getting ahead of
FDA on booster shots.”59
We now know that those same FDA scientists disagreed with the Biden Administration
on the need for booster shots. In a paper published September 13, 2021, both Krause and Gruber
argued that “[c]urrent evidence does not, therefore, appear to show a need for boosting in the
general population, in which efficacy against severe disease remains high.”60 Despite this blatant
disregard of scientific process, Select Subcommittee Democrats refused to investigate allowing
the Biden Administration to engage in politicization of the vaccine approval process.
54 Ben Gittleson, President Biden to ABC’s David Muir on at-home COVID testing: ‘Nothing’s been good enough’,
ABC NEWS (Dec. 23, 2021). 55 Bob Herman, FDA’s top vaccine leaders are leaving, Axios (Aug. 31, 2021); Erin Banco, Sarah Owerwohle &
Adam Cancryn, Tensions mount between CDC and Biden health team over boosters, POLITICO (Sept. 13, 2021). 56 Caitlin Owens, The bureaucracy pushes back on Biden’s booster plan, AXIOS (Sept. 1, 2021). 57 Erin Banco, Sarah Owerwohle & Adam Cancryn, Tensions mount between CDC and Biden health team over
boosters, POLITICO (Sept. 13, 2021). 58 Caitlin Owens, The bureaucracy pushes back on Biden’s booster plan, AXIOS (Sept. 1,2021). 59 Id. 60 Phillip R Krause, et.al, Considerations in boosting COVID-19 vaccine immune responses, LANCET (Sept. 13,

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Links from other news sources. Reprints from others. Science

Because we are Pro Science. US scientists make major breakthrough in ‘limitless, zero-carbon’ fusion energy: report

The US Department of Energy is set to reveal the "holy grail" of zero-carbon power. John Jett and Jake Long/LLNL.

Views: 31

 

U.S. government scientists at a California laboratory have reportedly made a monumental breakthrough in harnessing the power of fusion energy.

The scientists, working at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, recently achieved a net energy gain in a fusion reaction, the Financial Times reported, citing three people with knowledge of the experiment.

sun solar flare

An X2.0-class solar flare bursting off the lower right side of the Sun. (NASA / Fox News)

Scientists have been struggling since the 1950s to harness the fusion reaction that powers the sun. But no group has been able to produce more energy from the reaction than it consumes.

 

Though developing fusion power stations at scale is still decades away, the breakthrough has significant implications as the world seeks to ween itself off of fossil fuels. Fusion reactions emit zero carbon and do not produce any long-lasting radioactive waste. Per The Times, a small cup of hydrogen fuel could potentially power a house for hundreds of years.

“If this is confirmed, we are witnessing a moment of history,” said Dr Arthur Turrell, a plasma physicist, told the paper. “Scientists have struggled to show that fusion can release more energy than is put in since the 1950s, and the researchers at Lawrence Livermore seem to have finally and absolutely smashed this decades-old goal.”

 

U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm and under-secretary for nuclear security Jill Hruby are expected to formally announce “a major scientific breakthrough” at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory on Tuesday.

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Elections The Courts The Law

Why this must never happen again. Hopefully Moore Vs. Harper will fix this.

Cases to come.

Views: 53

Why this must never happen again. Hopefully Moore Vs. Harper will fix this. Back in 2020 four states, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, and Wisconsin in which the state executive branch (that is, the governor or other executive official) and or the judicial branch (that is, the state supreme court) changed the rules of the election apart from the authority of the state legislature.

The Democrats claim this is illegal gerrymandering. But the Republicans use the Constitution as their reason it’s not. Article I, Section 4 of the Constitution tells us who makes the rules regarding national elections: “The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof. . . .” In other words, the Constitution gives the authority over national elections to the legislatures in each of the states.

With the 2024 elections less than two years away, Giving a Secretary of State or Governor dictorial powers was not what the founding fathers wanted. That’s why the state legislatures were given that power. A group of men and women elected by the people for the people.

 

 

 

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Links from other news sources. Reprints from others. Social Venues-Twitter

Hate from the leftist Executives Twisted Rules to Blacklist Donald Trump

LUCAS NOLAN10 Dec 2022- Breitbart

Views: 19

LUCAS NOLAN

367

The fourth part of the “Twitter Files” series was published Saturday night by journalist Michael Shellenberger, outlining how Twitter executives twisted the platform’s rules with the intention of blacklisting former President Donald Trump on January 7, 2020.

In a recently published thread, journalist Michael Shellenberger outlined the fourth release of the “Twitter Files” series, detailing the internal workings at Twitter and conversations between executives ahead of the banning of former President Donald Trump.

Shellenberger states that following the events at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, Twitter faced immense pressure to ban former President Trump, with many claiming they needed to ban Trump for safety reasons. During this time, then-CEO Jack Dorsey was on vacation and appeared to delegate much of the decision-making to other top executives including Global Head of Trust and Safety Yoel Roth and Head of Legal, Policy, & Trust Vijaya Gadde, the platform’s censorship queen:

On January 7, Dorsey emailed employees saying that the platform must remain consistent in its policies, including allowing users to return to the platform following temporary bans. Roth reassured an employee that “people who care about this… aren’t happy with where we are.”

Roth later excited DM’d colleagues stating “GUESS WHAT. Jack just approved repeat offender for civic integrity.” This would allow Twiter to create a system where five violations of rules would result in permanent suspension:

Colleagues continued to ask Roth about “incitement to violence,” and on January 8, Twitter announced a permanent ban on Trump’s account due to the “risk of the further incitement of violence.” Twitter said that the ban was based on “specifically how [Trump’s tweets] are being received & interpreted,” but Shellenberger notes that in 2019, Twitter stated that it did “not attempt to determine all potential interpretations of the content or its intent.”

In another discussion, Roth asks a colleague to add “stopthesteal” and “Kraken” to a blacklist of terms to be unamplified. The colleague objects stating that doing so could risk “deamplifying counterspeech” that validated the 2020 election results.

The latest Twitter Files release appears to show a general attempt by Roth and other Twitter employees to justify the banning of Trump and attempts to figure out how current policy could be applied in a way that would explain the permanent suspension.

Shellenberger ends the thread by noting that Facebook’s suspension of former President Trump and its willingness to ignore its own rules put the final nail in the coffin for Trump’s return to Twitter.

Read the full Twitter Files thread here.

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Elections Links from other news sources. Politics

Sinema going Independent is good news for Republicans in 2024.

The new Independent. Krysten Sinema Wins AZ Christian Petersen/Getty Images

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Sinema going Independent splits the Arizona party. Sure she’s not very popular there  now, but say the Republican candidate does poorly and only gets 40%. That leaves Sinema and the endorsed Democrat to split the other 60%.

Also that hurts the Democrat Presidential candidate in 2024. Here’s what the outgoing vice chair of the Arizona party has to say. Her decision could also make it harder for Democrats to carry Arizona on the presidential level again in two years, if she spends two years attacking her party and splintering its successful coalition.

 “It does make things more difficult for Joe Biden, but I don’t think she cares at all.”

Winning.

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Winning again. Judge denies justice department plea to hold Trump in contempt over records

The man, the myth the legend. Winning.

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A top federal judge denied a request from the justice department to hold Donald Trump’s office in contempt of court for failing to fully comply with a subpoena demanding the return of all documents bearing classified markings, according to sources familiar with proceedings.

The chief US judge for the District of Columbia Beryl Howell told the department during a closed-door hearing on Friday to resolve the matter with the Trump legal team itself because a contempt ruling would not hold, the sources said.

The precise details about the hearing were not clear with the case under seal. But the judge’s move amounts to a victory for Trump as he contends with a criminal investigation into unauthorized retention of national security information at his Mar-a-Lago resort and obstruction of justice.

Federal prosecutors had sought to force Trump to name a custodian of records and certify under oath that all documents with classified markings had been returned to the government – as demanded by the grand jury subpoena issued in May – or otherwise find Trump’s office in contempt.

The contempt action is understood to be focused on Trump’s political office because the subpoena sought the return of all documents and writings “in the custody of Donald J Trump and / or the Office of Donald J Trump” bearing classification markings.

In response to the subpoena, Trump’s lawyer Evan Corcoran turned over a folder of documents to the justice department and asked another Trump lawyer Christina Bobb to sign a certification that she heavily caveated because she had not done the search, the Guardian previously reported.

The letter ultimately said that Bobb was making the attestation “based on the information provided to me” and “to the best of my knowledge”, a fact that she emphasized to the department around the time that prosecutors collected the folder and the certification letter, a person familiar with the matter said.

But after the FBI searched Mar-a-Lago on 8 August and found 103 documents marked classified – leading prosecutors to believe the subpoena had not been complied with – the department sought Trump’s lawyers to again certify that no further materials remained.

The Trump legal team has resisted designating a custodian of records and providing a sworn statement, despite repeated requests. That deeply frustrated prosecutors who told the legal team that if they did not provide a second attestation, they would seek judicial enforcement.

Part of the Trump legal team’s reluctance comes because neither they nor any other member of the former president’s office have had custody of all documents marked classified and do not think they could comprehensively answer every question about them, the sources said.

In a statement, a Trump spokesman said the former president and his lawyers would “continue to be transparent and cooperative even in the face of the highly weaponized and corrupt witch-hunt from the Department of ‘Justice’.”

The closed-door court battle between the justice department and Trump’s lawyers comes after it emerged that a search of a storage unit in Florida holding boxes of material belonging to Trump turned up two more documents marked classified, in addition to the 103 found at Mar-a-Lago by the FBI.

It was not clear whether the department initiated the contempt proceeding before or after the two additional documents were found, though the Trump legal team is understood to have turned over the two new documents as soon as they were discovered, the sources said.

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Something Conservatives knew was happening. Twitter Confirms Shadow Banning Conservatives

Musk to tell all. Twitter photo.

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Twitter Confirms Shadow Banning Conservatives

By Jeremy Frankel    |   Thursday, 08 December 2022 09:55 PM EST

 

Journalist Bari Weiss dropped a second round of “Twitter Files” Thursday.

Following last week’s release by new owner Elon Musk through journalist Matt Taibbi that said it revealed Twitter’s collusion with the Biden 2020 presidential campaign, Weiss  revealed “that teams of Twitter employees build blacklists, prevent disfavored tweets from trending, and actively limit the visibility of entire accounts or even trending topics—all in secret, without informing users.”

Weiss dropped the second batch of files on Thursday in a lengthy Twitter thread, continuing: “Twitter once had a mission ‘to give everyone the power to create and share ideas and information instantly, without barriers.’ Along the way, barriers nevertheless were erected.”

The thread continued with examples, such as Stanford’s Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, who was placed on a “Trends Blacklist” after arguing that COVID-19 lockdowns would harm children. The blacklist prevented his tweets from trending.

Conservative radio and TV host Dan Bongino was placed on a “Search Blacklist” at one point, while the account of conservative activist Charlie Kirk was set to “Do Not Amplify.”

“Twitter denied that it does such things,” Weiss continued. “In 2018, Twitter’s Vijaya Gadde (then Head of Legal Policy and Trust) and Kayvon Beykpour (Head of Product) said: ‘We do not shadow ban.’ They added: ‘And we certainly don’t shadow ban based on political viewpoints or ideology.'”

“What many people call ‘shadow banning,’ Twitter executives and employees call ‘Visibility Filtering’ or ‘VF.’ Multiple high-level sources confirmed its meaning,” Weiss continued. “‘Think about visibility filtering as being a way for us to suppress what people see to different levels. It’s a very powerful tool,’ one senior Twitter employee” said.

“‘VF’ refers to Twitter’s control over user visibility. It used VF to block searches of individual users; to limit the scope of a particular tweet’s discoverability; to block select users’ posts from ever appearing on the ‘trending’ page; and from inclusion in hashtag searches. All without users’ knowledge,” Weiss said.

A Twitter engineer said, and two other Twitter employees confirmed: “We control visibility quite a bit. And we control the amplification of your content quite a bit. And normal people do not know how much we do.”

Weiss added that the Strategic Response Team-Global Escalation Team, or SRT-GET, was the group that made the decision on whether to limit the reach of specific users. This team handled up to 200 “cases” per day.

 

However, there was also a level that existed beyond official ticketing or following Twitter’s policy on paper, called the “Site Integrity Policy, Policy Escalation Support,” or “SIP-PES.”

“This secret group included Head of Legal, Policy, and Trust (Vijaya Gadde), the Global Head of Trust & Safety (Yoel Roth), subsequent CEOs Jack Dorsey and Parag Agrawal, and others,” Weiss continued, adding, “This is where the biggest, most politically sensitive decisions got made. ‘Think high follower account, controversial,’ another Twitter employee told us. For these ‘there would be no ticket or anything.'”

One of these accounts was Libs of TikTok (LTT), which was both placed on the Trends Blacklist and designated as “‘Do Not Take Action on User Without Consulting With SIP-PES.'”

Libs of TikTok, which was started by Chaya Raichik in November 2020 and has over 1.4 million followers, received six suspensions in 2022 alone, Raichik said. “Twitter repeatedly informed Raichik that she had been suspended for violating Twitter’s policy against ‘hateful conduct.'” These suspensions each blocked Raichik from posting for up to a week.

However, Weiss continued, “in an internal SIP-PES memo from October 2022, after her seventh suspension, the committee acknowledged that ‘LTT has not directly engaged in behavior violative of the Hateful Conduct policy.'”

The group internally justified her suspensions by claiming that her posts “encouraged online harassment of ‘hospitals and medical providers’ by insinuating ‘that gender-affirming healthcare is equivalent to child abuse or grooming.'”

However, when Raichik herself was doxxed and a photo of her home and address went up on Twitter, Twitter Support responded: “We reviewed the reported content, and didn’t find it to be in violation of the Twitter rules.” The doxxing tweet is still up, and no action was taken, Weiss said.

“In internal Slack messages, Twitter employees spoke of using technicalities to restrict the visibility of tweets and subjects,” Weiss continued.

Roth said in one of these messages to a colleague that “a lot of times, SI has used technicality spam enforcements as a way to solve a problem created by Safety under-enforcing their policies. Which, again isn’t a problem per se — but it keeps us from addressing the root cause of the issue, which is that our Safety policies need some attention.”

Six days later, Roth messaged an employee on the Health, Misinformation, Privacy, and Identity research team requesting more research to support expanding “non-removal policy interventions like disabling engagements and deamplification/visibility filtering.”

“Roth wrote: ‘The hypothesis underlying much of what we’ve implemented is that if exposure to, e.g., misinformation directly causes harm, we should use remediations that reduce exposure, and limiting the spread/virality of content is a good way to do that.'” Weiss said.

Roth added, “We got Jack on board with implementing this for civic integrity in the near term, but we’re going to need to make a more robust case to get this into our repertoire of policy remediations — especially for other policy domains.”

“The authors,” who include journalists Abigail Shrier, Michael Shellenberger, Nellie Bowles and Isaac Grafstein, “have broad and expanding access to Twitter’s files,” Weiss said. “The only condition we agreed to was that the material would first be published on Twitter.

“We’re just getting started on our reporting. Documents cannot tell the whole story here. A big thank you to everyone who has spoken to us so far. If you are a current or former Twitter employee, we’d love to hear from you. Please write to: tips@thefp.com,” Weiss said.

Weiss concluded by telling readers to watch journalist Matt Taibbi for the next installment.

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Winning. Independent abortion clinics are ‘disappearing from communities’ after the end of Roe v. Wade

Left wishing abortion up to birth. SEBASTIAN KAULITZKI/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY/ iStock/Getty

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When I saw the USA Today about independent baby killing clinics closing, I reacted with joy. But more needs to be done. Planned Parenthood are by far the largest killers of babies. But this is still a win. Part of the USA article is below.

Twice as many independent abortion clinics have closed so far in 2022 compared to the year before as facilities shuttered in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision this year to overturn Roe v. Wade, according to an association for independent abortion care providers.

As of November, 42 independent abortion clinics closed or were forced to stop providing abortion care in 2022 — more than double the 20 closures in 2021, according to a Tuesday report by the Abortion Care Network.

Independent abortion care providers, also called “indies,” are community-based reproductive health clinics not affiliated with a national organization like Planned Parenthood, said ACN Deputy Director Erin Grant.

While indies represent about 24% of all facilities offering abortion care nationwide, they provide 55% of all abortion procedures, according to the report.

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COVID Links from other news sources. Medicine Reprints from others. Science

A Review of Criticisms of a ProPublica-Vanity Fair Story on a COVID Origins Report

Researcher Toy Reid sits before a timeline chronicling the lead-up to the pandemic at the Hart Senate Office Building in Washington. Credit: Mark Peterson/Redux for Vanity Fair

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ProPublica and Vanity Fair are left wing, but this ProPublica article states something that most folks didn’t even know existed. the origins of COVID-19 released by the Republican oversight staff of a Senate committee. Here’s another shocker. Our examination affirms that the story, and the totality of reporting it marshals, is sound. So please read the complete article. I’ll give my assessment in the comments section.

by Stephen Engelberg

On Oct. 28, ProPublica and Vanity Fair published a story about an interim report on the origins of COVID-19 released by the Republican oversight staff of a Senate committee. The interim report was the product of a far-reaching investigation into the question of how the pandemic began, and we wanted to give readers an inside view of the team’s work and share independent experts’ views of its findings.

The debate over COVID-19’s origins has been contentious from the start, and the report’s conclusion that the pandemic was “more likely than not, the result of a research-related incident” triggered criticism. Scientists, China observers and others questioned the Senate team’s findings and our reporting about them.

Over the past several weeks, reporters and editors at both publications have taken a hard look at those criticisms.

Our examination affirms that the story, and the totality of reporting it marshals, is sound.

We re-interviewed some of our original sources and reached out to other specialists to address questions that were raised about the work we did to put in context the evidence cited by the interim report. In particular, we took a close look at how Toy Reid, a State Department political officer on loan to the committee, translated a Chinese Communist Party branch dispatch that was cited in both the interim report and in our story as evidence that staff at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) may have been responding to a biosafety hazard or breach.

We commissioned three Chinese language experts with impeccable credentials who were not involved in the original story to review Reid’s translation. They all agreed that his version was a plausible way to represent the passage, though two also said they would have translated the words to refer to the dangers of day-to-day lab operations. The third produced a translation that was in line with Reid’s. All agreed the passage was ambiguous. We have updated the story to underscore the complexity of interpreting that dispatch.

We have added additional context to the story. We have also identified two factual errors inconsequential to the premise of the story. They have been corrected.

It remains clear that in 2019, the WIV was addressing serious safety issues while scientists there faced pressure to perform. Risky coronavirus research took place in laboratories that lacked the maximum biocontainment safeguards, according to the interim report.

A series of WIV patents and procurement notices “suggest that the WIV experienced persistent biosafety problems relevant to the containment of an aerosolized respiratory virus like SARS-CoV-2,” the interim report says. On Nov. 19, 2019, the same day a senior government safety official arrived at the WIV to discuss what a meeting summary described as a “complex and grave situation currently facing [bio]security work,” the WIV sought to procure a costly air incinerator. One expert told us such equipment could be used as a “quick fix” if the HEPA air filtration system had failed in some way. A few weeks after that procurement notice, the WIV filed a patent application for an improved device to contain hazardous gases inside a biological chamber, like ones used to transport infected animals.

The interim report described the WIV’s struggles to find disinfectants that were effective enough to kill dangerous pathogens without corroding metal. In November 2020, with the pandemic well under way, the WIV filed a patent application for a new disinfectant. The patent said existing disinfectants corrode metals in ways that could allow pathogens to escape, “resulting in loss of life and property and serious social problems.”

The director of the WIV’s highest-level biosecurity lab acknowledged in September 2019 that some Chinese facilities researching dangerous viruses had “insufficient operational funds for routine yet vital processes.” Dr. Gerald Parker, a biosecurity health expert and adviser to the interim report, said he found such revelations “a recipe for disaster.” He added: “You further couple that with an authoritarian regime where you could be penalized for reporting safety issues. You are in a doom loop of pressure to produce, and if something goes wrong you may not be incentivized to report.”

We continue to see our story as a measured exploration of the array of questions raised about the WIV’s laboratories. The possibility that a biosecurity breach at the WIV occurred, and sparked the pandemic, remains plausible.

We plan to keep reporting on this issue and expect new evidence to emerge. It is our view that both the natural-spillover and laboratory-accident hypotheses for the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic merit continued investigation. Given the human toll, which continues to mount, it is imperative that we continue this work.

For those who want to know more details about our exploration of issues raised, our reporting methodologies and conclusions, we are providing more information below on:

 

More on the Translations and Interpretations

After the Vanity Fair-ProPublica story appeared online, questions began to emerge on social media about Reid’s translation of a key passage of a Chinese Communist Party branch dispatch dated Nov. 12, 2019, on the WIV website. According to Reid’s translation, it begins by pointing out that the lab works with dangerous pathogens and that once the test tubes are opened, “it is just as if having opened Pandora’s Box.” While the lab had “various preventive and protective measures,” it was nonetheless important to “avoid operational errors that give rise to dangers.”

The next phrase was the focus of the criticism. It appeared in bold letters in the interim report:

“Every time this has happened, the members of the Zhengdian Lab [BSL4] Party Branch have always run to the frontline, and they have taken real action to mobilize and motivate other research personnel.”

Our story shared Reid’s thought process. We wrote:

“Reid studied the words intently. Was this a reference to past accidents? An admission of an ongoing crisis? A general recognition of hazardous practices? Or all of the above?”

Reid recognized that there was an ambiguity in the phrase he translated as “Every time this has happened.” Did the word “this” refer to the daily dangers of doing experiments in a lab that handles deadly pathogens? Or did it point to the “operational errors that give rise to dangers”?

Before we published our story, Reid told us he found the passage to have a defensive tone. In the story, we quote Reid as concluding, “They are almost saying they know Beijing is about to come down and scream at them.”

Seven days later, on Nov. 19, a senior Chinese official arrived from Beijing to the WIV for a small, high-level safety training. A meeting summary said that the official had come bearing important oral remarks and written instructions from China’s senior leaders, including General Secretary Xi Jinping, related to “the complex and grave situation currently facing [bio]security work.”

To Reid, the mention of instructions from party leaders and reference to a “complex and grave situation” reinforced that the Nov. 12 dispatch was an attempt by the party branch to deflect criticism for something that had gone awry, as he explained.

We interviewed three experts on Chinese Communist Party communications before publication and shared with them the dispatches as they appeared in Chinese on the WIV website. We conducted the interviews on background to get their candid input. They expressed concerns regarding personal safety, given the sensitivity of the subject matter. All agreed with Reid’s interpretation that the safety training on Nov. 19, 2019, as described in the meeting summary, appeared to be urgent, nonroutine and related to some sort of biosafety emergency.

To assess the criticisms of Reid’s work that were raised after the story was published, we commissioned three Chinese translators, each with more than a decade of experience. One has translated for officials at the highest levels of the American and Chinese governments. We wanted their objective view of what the passage said, so we asked them to translate it and did not mention the interim report. After they had done that, we went back and asked them to review Reid’s translation from the report.

All three of their translations were different from one another’s and different from Reid’s. Yet, each agreed that Reid’s translation was one plausible way to translate the passage into English. Our translators looked at the Chinese characters that Reid had translated to read “Every time this has happened” and instead said they read them to mean “on such occasions” or “at every such an occasion.”

Before one of the translators was told what Reid had written, she said she thought the word “occasions” referred to when lab workers make mistakes that lead to hazards — an interpretation that mirrored Reid’s. The two others said they thought “occasions” referred to something more routine: opening test tubes for experiments. The language in Chinese, all three agreed, was ambiguous and could be read either way.

Some readers noted that the Nov. 12, 2019, passage actually appeared in August 2019 in a party publication. The existence of the earlier reference, they argued, proved that its repetition in November meant that it could not refer to a biosecurity emergency at that time.

We took a close look at the August 2019 post and asked our translators and the experts we consulted to do so as well. While the posts were very similar, the version uploaded on the WIV website in November 2019 was slightly different. It included additional language after the sentence that compared opening test tubes of viruses in the lab to opening Pandora’s box. The translator we commissioned who had the most experience rendered the additional language as follows: “These viruses are untraceable both coming and going, and although there are various protective measures, it is still necessary for lab workers to operate very carefully in order to avoid creating dangers through mishandling.” The translator was puzzled by the August post because without the language added in November, “it sounds as if they are leading the charge to open Pandora’s box,” she said. “If I were reading it, I’d be scratching my head.” That additional sentence, she said, “means that they go to the front lines to show everybody to be careful and not to cause errors that would be dangerous.”

One of the experts we consulted before and after publication, a former senior U.S. intelligence official, said the language added in November 2019 gave the post a defensive posture and was consistent with Reid’s analysis that party members were responding to some type of incident. The Chinese idiom that Reid translated as “come without a shadow and leave without a trace,” he said, “is a nice phrase to describe something that sneaked up on you and there was no way to defend against it. They’re basically saying to whoever this is being delivered to: ‘We didn’t see it coming. We did the best that we could to deal with the problem.’”

More on the Corrections and Added Context

There are two sentences in the story that have been corrected.

We reported that a Chinese military vaccinologist who had in the past collaborated with the WIV, Zhou Yusen, was the first to apply for a patent for a vaccine against COVID-19. The interim report stated that Zhou “was the first to patent a COVID-19 vaccine on February 24, 2020.” In fact, other researchers around the world sought patents before Zhou’s Feb. 24, 2020, filing.

However, it was the timing and nature of Zhou’s patent application and subsequent research papers that raised questions for interim report researchers.

In our review of early SARS-CoV-2 vaccine patent filings, the U.S. patent applications we found that predated Zhou’s were provisional applications, a number of which forecast experiments they planned to do in the future. Many of these applications were for vaccine candidates proposing to use a technology like mRNA. Such applications could be filed with the SARS-CoV-2 genetic sequence in hand and minimal experiment data.

By contrast, Zhou filed a full patent application for a different kind of vaccine that required more upfront work before its submission. Our story says, “In his patent application and in subsequently published papers, Zhou documented a robust research and development process that included both adapting the virus to wild-type mice and infecting genetically modified ones with humanized lungs.” We have updated the story to make clear why Zhou’s work stood out to the interim report researchers.

In our article, we quoted two independent experts and one adviser to the interim report about when they thought Zhou’s research was likely to have begun. After reviewing the patent and the papers, two said that they thought Zhou would have had to have started this work no later than November 2019. Jesse Bloom, a virologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, said he believed Zhou’s timetable was feasible since his team had substantial expertise and ongoing work developing similar SARS-related coronavirus vaccines, but only if “everything went right.”

We have also corrected the sentence stating that Gabriel Gras was the last French expert at the WIV. We have learned that at least one other French scientist came to the WIV after Gras left.

Elsewhere, we’ve clarified language. Our story said that party officials at the WIV’s top biosafety lab “repeatedly lamented” the problem of “the three ‘nos’: no equipment and technology standards, no design and construction teams, and no experience operating or maintaining [a lab of this caliber].” We found two references to this concept in party branch dispatches on the WIV website in 2019. These Chinese Communist Party dispatches, we reported, “are often couched in a narrative of heroism — a focus on problems overcome and challenges met, against daunting odds.” We have updated the story to clarify that authors of those posts referred to the “three ‘nos’” as a recounting of problems from early in the lab’s construction that they said had been overcome, rather than a reference to ongoing struggles.

However, one of the experts on party communications we consulted saw the inclusion of the “three ‘nos’” in WIV dispatches as a telling sign that these serious problems from the beginning were “part of the DNA of this lab.”

On Whether the Lab Leak Is a Question Worthy of Exploration

Our story and the interim report pointed to a pair of oft-cited scientific analyses of COVID-19’s origins, one of which concludes that the pandemic was likely the result of multiple zoonotic events in which “two distinct viral lineages” of SARS-CoV-2 that had been circulating among animals at a Wuhan market infected people there.

Michael Worobey, an author on both papers, undoubtedly speaks for many when he says that natural spillover is “the only plausible scenario for the origin of the pandemic.” We repeatedly heard the perspective that the scientific case on the origins of COVID-19 is closed and that exploring the possibility that the coronavirus could have leaked from a Chinese laboratory is something no news organization or government official should take seriously.

We believe the opposite, that it remains an essential avenue for exploration to prevent future pandemics. And as interviews with other scientists before and after publication have made clear, the question is far from resolved. In their view, there is not enough evidence to establish how the virus first reached the now-infamous Wuhan market or to assert that zoonotic spillover is the sole possible explanation for the pandemic’s origin.

Bloom, the virologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, is among those scientists. “I’ve never seen anything as controversial as this in my field,” he said. “The amount of toxicity is out of control. Each side feels uniquely wronged. To me, it remains an open question.”

The story noted that the interim report also left this question open: “The authors of the interim report do not claim to have definitively solved the mystery of COVID-19’s origin.” And the story also said the interim report is “no likelier” than studies of a zoonotic origin to “close the book on the origins debate, nor does it attempt to.”

Bloom believes the findings of the interim report and the story reinforce a need to continue to explore all possible causes of the pandemic. At the same time, he recognizes that the reactions to these investigations underscore the difficulty of having a dispassionate conversation about these questions. “Right now, this whole topic is so politically fraught, it’s hard for people to give objective assessments,” he said. “We may need an independent commission to get to the bottom of this.”

Stephen Engelberg

Stephen Engelberg is ProPublica’s editor-in-chief and served as founding managing editor from 2008–2012.

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Food Links from other news sources. Reprints from others. Uncategorized

Cookbook looks back at dynamic Popeyes founder and his food. Dedication to my dear friend.

This photo provided by Foxglove Communications shows Al Copeland Jr. with his cookbook "Secrets of a Tastemaker: Al Copeland, The Cookbook." (Sam Hanna/Foxglove Communications via AP)

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I found this in my local newspaper and right away I thought of Popeye’s number one customer and fan. I lovingly admire him for his ability to put down that fried chicken.

FILE – Popeyes founder Al Copeland holds a piece of his fried chicken outside one of his 34 fast food outlets in New Orleans on June 20, 1979. A new book, “Secrets of a Tastemaker: Al Copeland, The Cookbook,” released last month, helped mark the 50th anniversary of Popeyes Famous Fried Chicken. (AP Photo, File)
FILE – A chicken sandwich is displayed at a Popeyes fast food restaurant in Kyle, Texas, on Aug. 22, 2019. A new book, “Secrets of a Tastemaker: Al Copeland, The Cookbook,” released last month, helped mark the 50th anniversary of Popeyes Famous Fried Chicken. (AP Photo/Eric Gay, File)

Louisiana is known for delivering food with big, bold flavor. The same can be said for the founder of the Popeyes fried chicken empire, who put spicy chicken, red beans and dirty rice on the national map and whose story is outlined in a new book, “Secrets of a Tastemaker: Al Copeland, The Cookbook.”

Copeland’s son Al Copeland Jr. said he and authors Chris Rose and Kit Wohl tried to capture the “real life and times of Al Copeland” in the book released last month.

FILE - Popeyes founder Al Copeland holds a piece of his fried chicken outside one of his 34 fast food outlets in New Orleans on June 20, 1979. A new book, “Secrets of a Tastemaker: Al Copeland, The Cookbook," released last month, helped mark the 50th anniversary of Popeyes Famous Fried Chicken. (AP Photo, File)

Popeyes founder Al Copeland in New Orleans in 1979. (AP Photo, File)

This photo provided by Foxglove Communications shows Al Copeland Jr. with his cookbook "Secrets of a Tastemaker: Al Copeland, The Cookbook." (Sam Hanna/Foxglove Communications via AP)
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This photo provided by Foxglove Communications shows Al Copeland Jr. with his cookbook “Secrets of a Tastemaker: Al Copeland, The Cookbook.” (Sam Hanna/Foxglove Communications via AP)

FILE - Popeyes founder Al Copeland holds a piece of his fried chicken outside one of his 34 fast food outlets in New Orleans on June 20, 1979. A new book, “Secrets of a Tastemaker: Al Copeland, The Cookbook," released last month, helped mark the 50th anniversary of Popeyes Famous Fried Chicken. (AP Photo, File)

Popeyes founder Al Copeland in New Orleans in 1979. (AP Photo, File)

The elder Copeland, who died in 2008, made his mark in business with his restaurants, but was also known for philanthropic endeavors — including “Secret Santa” missions to thousands of children in metro New Orleans and the extravagant Christmas light display at his home. For a time, he even had a successful offshore powerboat racing career.

“Some people thought he was flashy and flamboyant, and he was,” his son said in an interview with The Associated Press. “But what they didn’t know was that everything that was his was yours — whether that was a Lamborghini or just welcoming you into his home. He was very much a man who enjoyed seeing people happy.”

Copeland built — and eventually lost — the Popeyes fried chicken empire. His first restaurant opened 50 years ago, in 1972, in the New Orleans suburb of Arabi. The “Love That Chicken” jingle, still used in commercials today, debuted in 1980.

The book recounts Copeland’s boldness in cooking, and includes recipes — though not those associated with Popeyes, his son said. Readers can get a glimpse, he said, into the kind of food Al Copeland used in Copeland’s, the casual dining restaurant chain venture he started in 1983.

The book includes dishes served at the Copeland family table, including corn and crab bisque, crawfish bread, ricochet catfish, crawfish eggplant au gratin, and pork tenderloin CP3, named for then-New Orleans Hornets star guard Chris Paul.

“What runs throughout the book … is the story of the American dream,” Copeland Jr. said. “This book is about a guy who didn’t have much of anything, not much of an education and he was living in a world that wouldn’t give him much of a shot.”

By 1989, there were 700 Popeyes franchises in the United States and abroad, and Copeland leveraged those assets to buy the Church’s Fried Chicken chain. That move gave him control over 2,000 chicken restaurants. But the success was short-lived: A little more than two years later, the merged company had amassed more than $400 million in debt and, in 1991, Copeland filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection for Al Copeland Enterprises.

In May 1992, the bankruptcy court awarded Copeland’s creditors total control of his chicken empire under a new name, America’s Favorite Chicken Company. Copeland did retain ownership of the Popeyes recipes and the manufacturing company that made the seasonings, according to the book.

“Although he was not operating Popeyes, the company could not operate — not even exist — without him,” the book reads. “That ruling reinforced Al’s longtime belief that he should always have a back door, an alternative plan for change.”

In 2017, Restaurant Brands International Inc. acquired Popeyes.

Liz Williams, founder of the Southern Food and Beverage Museum in New Orleans, said Copeland was known for being bold, in thought and business.

“He has done almost more than any other chef to get the city’s most authentic flavors to people everywhere,” she said. “I think of him as an ambassador for New Orleans … because wherever there’s a Popeyes, then you have the chance to get a piece of New Orleans.”

The September book launch helped mark the 50th anniversary of Popeyes. Copeland Jr. said the fried chicken franchise was founded when he was 9 years old so he’s had a “chance to experience the whole ride from the poorer times to the exciting times.”

“This project is bringing back a lifetime of memories and it’s a way for my father’s legacy to live on,” he said.

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