Senate Panel Minority Staff Report Argues for Lab-Leak Theory of COVID Origins

It then contrasts the 8 months it took for OWS viral vector candidates to human clinical trials with the 67 days it took one AMMS team to do the same, writing “Given Operation Warp Speed’s success, it is unusual that the two AMMS COVID-19 vaccine development teams were able to reach early milestones in vaccine development even more quickly. The Chen AMMS team beat AstraZeneca-Oxford to phase I clinical trials by 38 days. The Zhou AMMS team built and validated the effectiveness of its COVID-19 candidate vaccine 44 days after the sequence of SARS-CoV-2 was released. The extremely accelerated vaccines development timelines achieved by the AMMS teams pose the following two outstanding questions:”

·  “What additional steps, processes, or novel techniques did AMMS researchers take that advanced the development of their vaccine faster than the Operation Warp Speed timeline?”

·  “If no additional steps were taken to speed up the development timeline, when did researchers in China have access to the genomic sequence? Was it before January 11, 2020? If so, how far in advance of January 11, 2020?”

This argument does not address differences in the regulatory environments of the US and PRC. Rather, it seems to imply that this is evidence the Chinese had advance knowledge of this outbreak with no discussion of drug and therapeutic approval reforms in recent years that aim to improve the country’s ability to compete in pharmaceutical manufacturing globally and incentivizes development of vaccines and drugs for rare diseases. The CCP has identified competition in global biopharmaceutical manufacturing as a top priority, so the implication that the faster timeline to clinical trials supports the lab leak theory is unsatisfactory as presented.

It also does not appear to have even won over prominent supporters of the lab leak theory, including Dr. Richard Ebright, a molecular biologist at Rutgers University. The New York Times explains, “Dr. Ebright, who was interviewed by the report’s authors, said he supported the argument that evidence pointed to a laboratory origin. But the only new element, he said, appeared to be questions raised about how China could have developed a vaccine so quickly, which he did not find persuasive. Otherwise, he said, “there was no information in the report that has not been publicly presented in the media and discussed in the media previously.”

Naturally, this interim report has been heavily criticized. The conclusion reached in this report obviously differs from the two peer-reviewed Science articles published earlier this year that found 1) the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market was the epicenter of the initial outbreak and 2) that there were at least two distinct spillovers from animals sold at the market. Scientists supporting the market origin still have not identified which animals were infected or where they came from, as no animals were tested before the market was shut down early in 2020. Of this, the report states “Critical corroborating evidence of a natural zoonotic spillover is missing. While the absence of evidence is not itself evidence, the lack of corroborating evidence of a zoonotic spillover or spillovers, three years into the pandemic, is highly problematic.”

Dr. Michael Worobey, Department Head of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Arizona and a co-author of both the Science articles, addressed the report with Science news, with the news team writing “Michael Worobey, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Arizona who has co-authored scientific reports examining data from the early days of the pandemic that provide some of the strongest support for a jump from animals to humans, speculates that the timing of the report’s release could be “a cynical effort to try to win Republican votes” in the upcoming midterm congressional and state elections.  Or, Worobey says, “it could just be a bunch of staffers with no ability to understand the science who stumbled across a bunch of misinformation and disinformation-filled tweets.” (“Senator Burr felt enough compelling, open-source information had been gathered during staff’s comprehensive review of the facts that an interim report was appropriate,” a senior aide to the minority staff told Science.)”

After the minority interim report was released, Senator Patty Murray, Chair of the Senate HELP Committee, issued a statement on “continuing bipartisan oversight efforts into the origins of the virus that causes COVID-19” that did not address the minority report. Sen. Murray stated “COVID-19 has caused so much pain, hardship, and loss for people in Washington state, across our country, and all across the globe. As I’ve said time and again, it is absolutely critical we learn the lessons from this pandemic so that we never find ourselves in a similar situation again—and that, of course, includes undertaking a full examination of how COVID-19 first emerged.”

“That’s why I made it a top priority as Chair to craft bipartisan legislation to strengthen our public health and pandemic preparedness systems with the PREVENT Pandemics Act—which, among so many other vital steps, would establish an independent task force to conduct a comprehensive review of COVID’s origins and the federal response to the pandemic. And it’s why, in 2021, I announced a bipartisan oversight effort with Senator Burr into the origins of this virus. The HELP Committee is continuing bipartisan work on this oversight report, and I remain committed to passing the PREVENT Pandemics Act, which advanced out of Committee with overwhelming bipartisan support.”

This article is published courtesy of the Pandora Report.