The question was whether you’re willing to accept the use of all sources, partisan or not, as part of the review or if you would implicitly rule out anything that came from one and refuse to question anything in the other? I.e. treat both as equally untrustworthy sources, where every statement and quote needs to be evaluated for trustworthiness, independently of every other element.
E.g. we might reject the “inerrancy” view of the Bible but that doesn’t mean that the thing is completely useless for historical analysis. You don’t have to accept 100% nor reject 100%, everything can be judged separate from everything else as reason, secondary sources, etc. renders fit.
I haven’t been following the details of this closely but I’m struck by the remarkable similarity to the so-called “Climategate” controversy in 2009 when the computer system at the University of East Anglia was hacked and thousand of emails and other documents circulating among climate researchers were stolen.
Ultimately, after close and impartial examination, there turned out to nothing untoward or improper there at all – just normal scientific research. But – and this is the similarity with the Fauci case – that didn’t stop unethical liars with an axe to grind – in this case determined climate change deniers – from trying to turn this into the biggest deal they could, allegedly the biggest exposé of scientific malfeasance the world had ever seen!.
They did this through a combination of stupidity that led them to misunderstand the scientific method and science terminology, and willful distortion of facts along with outright lying and complete fabrications. All were readily accepted by a sector of the community already predisposed to believe that climate science was fraudulent.
ISTM that much the same is happening here, except that in the absence of financial incentives the motivation is less clear, except perhaps grandstanding by Rand Paul and an irratioinal seething hatred for Fauci by the political right. The fact that Trump was directly responsible for the deaths of at least half a million Americans – probably many more – doesn’t seem to concern these morons.
I think people were upset with mandates, such as letting loved ones die alone( Janice Dean is a proponent of this) so they need an enemy to take it out on.
These are by and large people who think that changing your mind is the worst thing you can do and shows weakness of character, so if they can demonstrate that scientists changed their mind as we learned more about covid, and policymakers changed their policies in response, this shows some sort of mental weakness and/or conspiracy, and they can make false accusations of hypocrisy where they say “you knew X was wrong (later) but said X was right (earlier) so clearly you’re a liar!”
That seems to be the basis of this whole thing. Fauci updated his ideas as the data unfolded, and they’re using that “inconsistency” imply he’s insincere and sinister.
I noticed that Janice Dean does not know about why the 5th amendment need to be used when confronting chicanery. The New York post reported that she accused him of using the pandemic to enrich himself… and I stopped there, because there is really no good evidence that that was the case, one can then safely ignore the rest of what that ignorant said.
Multiple congressional investigations have found no evidence linking Fauci to illegal personal financial gain, for sure the congress-critters complained about the money he made legally back then, but no, no evidence of malfeasance.
The issue here is that there was indeed discussion about that, but most experts now are more in favor of the natural mutation. Point being that the reality is that, there were suggestions that it could had come from a lab, but the Republicans now do pretend that that change in opinion and that the latest research points elsewhere has never occurred.
The key principle is that support for any hypothesis must be reserved until it is backed by sufficient scientific evidence. The White House’s recent statement deviates sharply from this principle. For a national government to officially declare a politically convenient theory while scientific uncertainty persists undermines both academic freedom and the pursuit of truth.
It is the same antiscience pattern seen from the Republicans in congress in regards to Climate change, vaccines and many other subjects.
Timelines/the march of time are always their weakest point, so they willfully ignore it.
So, none of them were taking the position it was a lab leak.
As we used to say at the time, who cares? It’s the same virus regardless of the origin. I suppose if it was a deliberate leak from a Chinese lab, that would have some implications. But a negligent leak versus a natural origin seems like the same thing from our prospective. I don’t see an obvious motive for deliberately creating a worldwide pandemic. Maybe I don’t get economics and politics though.
I agree with that. Even if the source was a lab leak, would that change how we should have responded to the pandemic?
And I just saw a Daily Show segment on Dr Fauci’s testimony which showed clips of Fox News talking heads claiming that Fauci overstated the need for isolation, closing schools and so forth. Were that true, wouldn’t we see less of these measures in other countries? As far as I know, every country responded in much the same way.
New Zealand basically closed their borders, but it would be easier for them to do that than 90% of the other world’s nations.
I do think that closing schools was overkill, but hindsight is always 20/20, and maybe things would have been worse later if we hadn’t. I hope we never find out again.
I think it is relevant to the thread that Fauci’s statements concerning zoological origin being highly likely were vindicated by multiple DNA studies released in 2023. The evidence is summarized for laymen here:
This seems to be the most important study that came in after that book went to the press: