Will’s Sanshawgers retweetledi
Six years ago, a small group of virologists held a secret teleconference with Dr. Fauci. They discussed the origins of the novel coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2. Dutch virologist Marion Koopmans @MarionKoopmans sent this email to the others on February 9, 2020.
"As I mentioned to Jeremy (Farrar), I would not be in favour on publicing something specific of the lab escape hypothesis, because I agree with Kristian (Andersen) that this could backfire."
What Koopmans wrote at the time shows that this small group considered the virus's origin to be in a lab. However, this was dismissed as a "conspiracy theory," and in March of that year, "The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2" was published. In that article, a possible origin of SARS-CoV-2 from a laboratory was relegated to the realm of conspiracy theories. Thus, a small group of virologists determined how COVID-19 was viewed: that the virus had a natural origin and was a zoonosis. This small group of virologists acted irresponsibly at the time, by determining for all of humanity what they didn't need to know. While they themselves were certainly considering a possible laboratory origin.
Indeed, this "could backfire", but for me in a different way than Koopmans intended at the time. When scientists call things a "conspiracy theory" these days, you can suspect they have something to hide and that (a core of) truth is very well being swept under the rug.
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