As of May 31, 2022, there were 6·9 million reported deaths and 17·2 million estimated deaths from COVID-19, as reported by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME; throughout the report, we rely on IHME estimates of infections and deaths; note that the IHME gives an estimated range, and we refer to the mean estimate).

This staggering death toll is both a profound tragedy and a massive global failure at multiple levels. Too many governments have failed to adhere to basic norms of institutional rationality and transparency, too many people—often influenced by misinformation—have disrespected and protested against basic public health precautions, and the world's major powers have failed to collaborate to control the pandemic.

The multiple failures of international cooperation include

• (1) the lack of timely notification of the initial outbreak of COVID-19;
• (2) costly delays in acknowledging the crucial airborne exposure pathway of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, and in implementing appropriate measures at national and global levels to slow the spread of the virus;
• (3) the lack of coordination among countries regarding suppression strategies;
• (4) the failure of governments to examine evidence and adopt best practices for controlling the pandemic and managing economic and social spillovers from other countries;
• (5) the shortfall of global funding for low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs), as classified by the World Bank;
• (6) the failure to ensure adequate global supplies and equitable distribution of key commodities—including protective gear, diagnostics, medicines, medical devices, and vaccines—especially for LMICs;
• (7) the lack of timely, accurate, and systematic data on infections, deaths, viral variants, health system responses, and indirect health consequences;
• (8) the poor enforcement of appropriate levels of biosafety regulations in the lead-up to the pandemic, raising the possibility of a laboratory-related outbreak;
• (9) the failure to combat systematic disinformation; and
• (10) the lack of global and national safety nets to protect populations experiencing vulnerability.

This Commission report aims to contribute to a new era of multilateral cooperation based on strong UN institutions to reduce the dangers of COVID-19, forestall the next pandemic, and enable the world to achieve the agreed goals of sustainable development, human rights, and peace that governments are committed to pursue as members of the UN. We address this Commission report to the UN member states, the UN agencies and multilateral institutions, and multilateral processes such as the G20 and the G7.

Our aim is to propose guideposts for strengthening the multilateral system to address global emergencies and to achieve sustainable development. In issuing this report, we commend the excellent work of many important international studies that have preceded our own, most notably those from the Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response and the G20 High-Level Independent Panel on Financing the Global Commons on Pandemic Preparedness and Response.

Section 1 of this Commission report provides a conceptual framework for understanding pandemics.

Section 2 provides an annotated chronology of the COVID-19 pandemic and thematic findings regarding several issues.

Section 3 presents our policy recommendations, particularly around multilateral cooperation centred at WHO to address global health crises, and around investments in preparedness for future health crises through strong national health systems and international financing and technology cooperation with the world's lower-income regions.

The Lancet COVID-19 Commission was established in July, 2020, with four main themes: developing recommendations on how to best suppress the epidemic; addressing the humanitarian crises arising from the pandemic; addressing the financial and economic crises resulting from the pandemic; and rebuilding an inclusive, fair, and sustainable world.1

The 28 Commissioners are global experts in public policy, international cooperation, epidemiology and vaccinology, economics and financial systems, sustainability sciences, and mental health. The Commissioners oversaw the work of 12 thematic Task Forces, which met on an ongoing basis (once every 2 weeks or once per month) to support the work of the Commission. These Task Forces included a total of 173 experts. The Commission Secretariat acted as liaison among the Task Forces. The Task Forces published short pieces on their respective areas of focus on the Commission website and in peer-reviewed journals, contributing to the efforts of the overall Commission.

Five pillars of the successful fight against emerging infectious diseases

There are five basic pillars of a successful fight against emerging infectious diseases. The first is prevention: to stop an outbreak before it occurs by taking effective measures to prevent the emergence of a new and dangerous pathogen.

The second is containment: to eliminate the transmission of disease from infected individuals to susceptible individuals after a disease has emerged.

The third is health services: to save the lives of people with the disease and ensure the continuity of other health services, including those for mental health.

The fourth is equity: to ensure that economic and social burdens are shared among the population and that the most vulnerable groups and individuals are protected.

The fifth is global innovation and diffusion: to develop, produce, and distribute new therapeutics and vaccines in an equitable and efficient manner.

To accomplish these five pillars requires an ethical framework of prosociality—the orientation of individuals and government regulations to the needs of society as a whole, rather than to narrow individual interests.5

In the 14th century, authorities in Venice, Italy, battled plague outbreaks by requiring ships to remain at anchor for 40 days before landing (the word quarantine derives from the Italian quaranta giorni, or forty days), as an early and incipient form of prosocial regulation.9

Prosociality nowadays includes voluntary behaviours by individuals, such as the proper use of face masks, in addition to government regulations, such as the enforcement of workplace safety standards, to prevent the transmission of disease. Challenges of prosociality arise especially in circumstances of strategic dilemmas, in which the pursuit of narrow self-interest by each member of the society ends up weakening the society as a whole.

By turning from the pursuit of narrow self-interest to the pursuit of shared interests, members of society can increase the wellbeing of all. Prosociality generally requires some form of the Golden Rule (doing to others what you would have done to you) or the Kantian Imperative (acting according to maxims that can be universal laws). Pandemics have many strategic dilemmas, and therefore require cooperative responses rather than selfish—and self-defeating—behaviours.

Prosociality was at a low ebb in many societies during the past 2 years. In many countries, social trust in government and other authorities among citizens has declined markedly in the past two decades (and over the past four decades in the United States)10 —related, at least in part, to the persistent increase in socioeconomic inequalities. In places of low social trust, prosocial behaviours are rejected by many groups within society. Additionally, at the national level, many governments showed themselves to be untrustworthy and ineffective.11

At the global level, cooperation among governments was undermined by rancour among the major powers. This hostility gravely weakened the capacity of international institutions such as WHO to conduct their assigned roles in the pandemic response.

The initial outbreak On Dec 20, 2019, a cluster of atypical pneumonia cases was noted by clinicians in Wuhan. Around this time, as a result of these cases, concern was growing in the global scientific community about a new outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome or a related disease.

However, some studies suggest that the virus, subsequently identified as SARS-CoV-2, was circulating several weeks before the identification of the cluster of cases in December,and, according to some hypotheses, could have been circulating in one or more places outside of China before the outbreak in Wuhan. The exact timing and identity of the earliest cases remains uncertain, but this timing matters, as the world might have lost several precious weeks in containing the outbreak.

The proximal origins of SARS-CoV-2 are still not known. Identifying 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. We concur with the position of 18 leading scientists who wrote in Science magazine in May, 2021: “We must take hypotheses about both natural and laboratory spillovers seriously until we have sufficient data.”

As a group of 16 scientists communicated in The Lancet in October, 2021: “Overwhelming evidence for either a zoonotic or research-related origin is lacking: the jury is still out.” More than 2 years into the pandemic, the search for the origin of SARS-CoV-2 remains incomplete and inconclusive. Independent experts consulted by the Lancet COVID-19 Commission shared the view that hypotheses about both natural and laboratory spillovers are in play and need further investigation.

Although the proximal origins are unknown, SARS-CoV-2 is thought to derive from a bat SARS-CoV-related coronavirus with a furin cleavage site that enhances the capacity of the virus to infect human cells. Furin cleavage sites are found naturally in almost every family of coronavirus, although they have not been observed in other SARS-related coronaviruses (subgenus Sarbecoronavirus). Since 2006, following the emergence of severe acute respiratory syndrome, furin cleavage sites have also been the subject of laboratory manipulation, including their insertion into coronavirus spike proteins.52 The presence of the furin cleavage site in SARS-CoV-2 therefore does not by itself identify the proximal origin of the virus, whether natural or laboratory.

COVID-19 presents special challenges in terms of control, as transmission occurs from presymptomatic (before symptoms) and asymptomatic (without symptoms) individuals as well as from those with symptoms. Such transmission makes COVID-19 control especially difficult, because people who are infected are often not aware of their infectivity.

In technical terms, the reproduction number, R, denotes the number of infections caused by each infectious person. At the start of an outbreak, when no control measures have been put in place, R is denoted as R0, called the basic reproduction rate. In the uncontrolled first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in Wuhan, R0 was around 2·4.20

With intensive contact tracing and the isolation of infected individuals, in addition to the implementation of a range of public health and social measures,the effective reproduction rate can be reduced to less than 1, and the epidemic will decline. Epidemiologists therefore distinguish between four kinds of COVID-19 control regime.

First is the uncontrolled scenario, R0=2·4. In this case, the epidemic eventually ends when most of the population has been infected and therefore has eventually acquired immunity (at least temporarily). This kind of mass infection that eventually results in mass acquired immunity through natural infection is sometimes called the herd-immunity strategy.22

This strategy is highly problematic for COVID-19, because many infected people will die of the disease, and many who survive have what is known as long COVID.23 Second is the limited control case in which R is reduced to less than R0=2·4 but remains greater than 1. In this case, the epidemic still grows exponentially, but less rapidly than with no control measures. The peak in the number of new infections per day is lower and occurs later than in the uncontrolled case. We have classified this control scenario as a mitigation strategy. During the COVID-19 pandemic, this strategy was often referred to as flattening the curve of the epidemic.

The eventual (cumulative) number of cases of infection during the epidemic is nearly the same as in the uncontrolled epidemic, but the infections are spread out over a longer time, and therefore put less pressure on the capacity of hospital and health-care systems at any given time.

Third, through the implementation of combinations of layered control measures—including widespread testing, contact tracing, and isolating; proper use of face masks; physical distancing; limitations on mass gatherings; and improved ventilation systems at workplaces—R decreases to less than 1, so the epidemic declines.

Early implementation of public health and social measures—including closing businesses and venues, banning public events, launching public information campaigns, and requiring the use of face masks—is more effective at keeping cumulative cases and deaths low than implementation at a later stage.27

We call this a suppression strategy. However, if circulation of the virus is not brought to zero, and infected people continue to arrive from other areas, this strategy needs to be implemented on an ongoing basis to contain each new outbreak in the community, and becomes progressively more difficult as highly transmissible variants emerge.

The overwhelming case for global cooperation in response to an emerging infectious disease has long been recognised in international law, diplomacy, and practice. The late economist Richard Cooper argued that successful intergovernmental cooperation was in fact pioneered in an 1851 international conference on epidemic control, which led to the founding of the International Office of Public Hygiene in 1907, the precursor of WHO. WHO was established in 1948 and is now the central organising body for global cooperation on health.

Articles 21(a) and 22 of the WHO Constitution assign the World Health Assembly (WHA) the authority to adopt regulations “designed to prevent the international spread of disease”. These regulations, known as the International Health Regulations (IHR), were first adopted in 1969 and have been amended three times, most recently in 2005 after the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome in 2003. These regulations remain in force for all WHO member states after adoption by the WHA, aside from member states that affirmatively opt out of the regulations within a prescribed period.

In principle, the IHR (2005), which are the governing regulations for the COVID-19 response, marked a decisive upgrade of international cooperation amid the massive expansion of international trade and travel in the early 2000s.85 The foreword of the IHR (2005) notes seven areas of revision and improvement of previous versions of the IHR, notably: (1) a wide scope of application, (2) obligations of member states to develop minimum core public health capacities, (3) responsibilities of member states to notify WHO of events that could constitute a public health emergency, (4) provisions authorising WHO to consider unofficial reports of public health events, (5) the power for WHO to designate a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (as was done on Jan 30, 2020 in the case of COVID-19), (6) protection of the human rights of persons and travellers, and (7) mechanisms for urgent communications between member states and WHO.85

Nonetheless, these measures failed to ensure a sufficiently robust global response to the emergence of SARS-CoV-2. In part, WHO fell victim to the increasing tensions between the United States and China, including the announcement in May, 2020, that the United States intended to withdraw from WHO, effective July, 202186 —a decision that was later rescinded.87

More generally, WHO has lacked high-level political backing, financing, and convening power. As a general matter, governance of WHO by the WHA, composed of the health ministers of each member state, proved to be inadequate for pandemic response for at least three reasons. First, the WHA meets only annually, whereas a pandemic requires daily hands-on action.

Second, the WHA is too large a body to take executive decisions on behalf of the 193 WHO member states. Third, health ministers lack the political authority within their governments to guide whole-government decision making, and therefore do not have the political authority to guide strong and decisive WHO actions in emergency conditions. For these and related reasons, in 2021 the WHA launched a process of WHO reforms, starting a two-track process to determine whether to update the IHR (2005) and whether the WHA should develop a new global accord on pandemic prevention, preparedness, and response.90

In the swirl of uncertainty during the COVID-19 outbreak, WHO—acting under the IHR (2005)—repeatedly erred on the side of reserve rather than boldness. Initially, there were basic uncertainties about the infectiousness of the virus, its asymptomatic spread, and the methods of transmission, although over time the scientific community confirmed that considerable asymptomatic airborne transmission occurs and that the virus is highly transmissible. WHO was hesitant to act on these potentially grave risks until the uncertainties over viral transmission were better resolved, and was therefore slow to advocate policy responses commensurate with the actual dangers of the virus.

There is no doubt that false alarms about emerging infectious diseases can be politically costly, as was seen during the H1N1 influenza scare in 1976—an epidemic that never occurred —and the 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic, which ultimately had a relatively low mortality rate of 0·1–0·7%.93

However, in the case of the 2009 H1N1 pandemic, politically cautious US national authorities deferred to local authorities with costly results worldwide, including the rapid global spread of the virus. Although over-reaction can be politically embarrassing, the COVID-19 pandemic has shown that centralised under-reaction can be devastating.

Acknowledging the uncertainties faced by WHO before the event, we list five areas in which WHO was too slow to act after the COVID-19 outbreak: (1) the recognition of asymptomatic human-to-human transmission, (2) the announcement of a Public Health Emergency of International Concern, (3) the advice on precautionary approaches to travel, (4) the advice on face masks, and (5) the acknowledgement of the crucial airborne exposure pathway of SARS-CoV-2, and the resulting implementation of appropriate risk reduction measures, such as increased ventilation and enhanced filtration, to slow the spread of the virus.

WHO first acknowledged the possibility of limited human-to-human transmission of COVID-19 on Jan 14, 2020, 2 weeks after the initial notification of the novel coronavirus from Chinese authorities. 8 days later, on Jan 22, 2020, WHO declared that human-to-human transmission was occurring, but clarity on the severity of COVID-19 infection was pending.94

On Jan 22, 2020, the WHO Director-General convened a closed-door meeting of virologists, public health researchers, and some government representatives, as the IHR (2005) process dictates.95

After this meeting, WHO declined to declare the rapid spread of the novel coronavirus a Public Health Emergency of International Concern, but changed its position around a week later with an announcement on Jan 30, 2020.95 This loss of a week enabled considerable global diffusion of the virus. Some observers, including the Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response, argue that the term Public Health Emergency of International Concern does not properly convey the urgency of the situation, and that only after WHO used the term pandemic—which is not defined in IHR (2005)—was the outbreak taken seriously worldwide.

A third consequential delay was the hesitation by WHO to recommend a more precautionary approach to travel from China.99 This delay contributed to the spread of the virus and limited the possibilities for risk mitigation. Before the onset of COVID-19, it was widely believed that travel restrictions were not highly effective for the control of emerging infectious diseases.

With this perspective, the IHR (2005) does not recommend travel restrictions and requires countries that adopt them to provide the public health rationale and relevant scientific information.100

The IHR (2005) does allow for the early use of measures such as the collection of travel information and travel history from passengers and the use of screening.

There are three methods of transmission of respiratory infectious diseases. The first and main method is airborne transmission, which occurs through the inhalation of viruses carried in microscopic respiratory particles (≤100 μm in diameter) suspended in the air, known as aerosols

Although transmission can occur through touch, it is rare for respiratory viruses, and touch and spray transmission are not likely to contribute to widespread transmission or superspreading events. As nearly all transmission occurs indoors, the way in which we design and operate building ventilation and filtration systems can reduce transmission.

Long-standing erroneous thinking about airborne transmission led WHO to discount the role of this transmission route at the start of the pandemic. The downplaying of airborne transmission can be traced to the misinterpretation of observations and experimental results from around 100 years ago. Because most transmission occurs when people are in close contact, it was wrongly assumed that transmission was through spray rather than through airborne aerosols. In fact, much of the close transmission is through aerosols, because people release considerable quantities of aerosol in addition to large droplets, especially when talking and coughing,133 and also because aerosol is most concentrated close to the source, like cigarette smoke particles near a smoker.134 135

Therefore, although transmission via the airborne route by virus-laden aerosol can occur both in the near-field and in the far-field, the risk of near-field transmission for a single person in proximity to an infected person is generally greater than the risk of far-field transmission.134 Nonetheless, the greater frequency of transmission by close contact, combined with a desire of scientists to refute miasma theory—the prevailing theory of the transmission of respiratory infectious disease from the mid-to-late 19th century, in which vague explanations for the causes of disease, such as so-called bad air, were perpetuated with little to no causative basis136 —led to the desire to promote infection-control recommendations centring on hygiene and sanitation.²⁾

Prof Jeffrey D Sachs, PhD Prof Salim S Abdool Karim, MBChB PhD Prof Lara Aknin, PhD Joseph Allen, DSc Kirsten Brosbøl, MA Francesca Colombo, MSc Gabriela Cuevas Barron, BA María Fernanda Espinosa, MA Vitor Gaspar, PhD Alejandro Gaviria, PhD Prof Andy Haines, FMedSci Prof Peter J Hotez, MD PhD Prof Phoebe Koundouri, PhD Prof Felipe Larraín Bascuñán, PhD Jong-Koo Lee, PhD Muhammad Ali Pate, MD MBA Gabriela Ramos, MA Prof K Srinath Reddy, DM Ismail Serageldin, PhD John Thwaites, LLB Vaira Vike-Freiberga, PhD Chen Wang, MD PhD Miriam Khamadi Were, PhD Prof Lan Xue, PhD Chandrika Bahadur, MPA Prof Maria Elena Bottazzi, PhD Prof Chris Bullen, PhD George Laryea-Adjei, PhD Yanis Ben Amor, PhD Ozge Karadag, MD PhD Guillaume Lafortune, MSc Emma Torres, MA Lauren Barredo, MEM Juliana G E Bartels, BA Neena Joshi, MS Prof Margaret Hellard, PhD Uyen Kim Huynh, PhD Shweta Khandelwal, PhD Prof Jeffrey V Lazarus, PhD Prof Susan Michie, DPhil

Published:September 14, 2022DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(22)01585-9 ³⁾

The Lancet COVID-19 Commission

Published: September 14, 2022

Executive Summary The Lancet Commission on lessons for the future from the COVID-19 pandemic provides a comprehensive investigation, analysis, and response to COVID-19. The Commission delivers a number of recommendations that are divided into three main areas. First, practical steps to finally control and understand the COVID-19 pandemic. Second, realistic, feasible, and necessary investments to strengthen the first line of defence against emerging infectious agents in countries by strengthening health systems and widening universal health coverage. Third, ambitious proposals to ignite a renaissance in multilateralism, integrating the global response to the risk of future pandemics with actions to address the climate crisis and reversals in sustainable development.

Executive summary As of May 31, 2022, there were 6·9 million reported deaths and 17·2 million estimated deaths from COVID-19, as reported by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME; throughout the report, we rely on IHME estimates of infections and deaths; note that the IHME gives an estimated range, and we refer to the mean estimate). This staggering death toll is both a profound tragedy and a massive global failure at multiple levels. Too many governments have failed to adhere to basic norms of institutional rationality and transparency, too many people—often influenced by misinformation—have disrespected and protested against basic public health precautions, and the world's major powers have failed to collaborate to control the pandemic.

The multiple failures of international cooperation include (1) the lack of timely notification of the initial outbreak of COVID-19; (2) costly delays in acknowledging the crucial airborne exposure pathway of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, and in implementing appropriate measures at national and global levels to slow the spread of the virus; (3) the lack of coordination among countries regarding suppression strategies; (4) the failure of governments to examine evidence and adopt best practices for controlling the pandemic and managing economic and social spillovers from other countries; (5) the shortfall of global funding for low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs), as classified by the World Bank; (6) the failure to ensure adequate global supplies and equitable distribution of key commodities—including protective gear, diagnostics, medicines, medical devices, and vaccines—especially for LMICs; (7) the lack of timely, accurate, and systematic data on infections, deaths, viral variants, health system responses, and indirect health consequences; (8) the poor enforcement of appropriate levels of biosafety regulations in the lead-up to the pandemic, raising the possibility of a laboratory-related outbreak; (9) the failure to combat systematic disinformation; and (10) the lack of global and national safety nets to protect populations experiencing vulnerability.

This Commission report aims to contribute to a new era of multilateral cooperation based on strong UN institutions to reduce the dangers of COVID-19, forestall the next pandemic, and enable the world to achieve the agreed goals of sustainable development, human rights, and peace that governments are committed to pursue as members of the UN. We address this Commission report to the UN member states, the UN agencies and multilateral institutions, and multilateral processes such as the G20 and the G7. Our aim is to propose guideposts for strengthening the multilateral system to address global emergencies and to achieve sustainable development. In issuing this report, we commend the excellent work of many important international studies that have preceded our own, most notably those from the Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response and the G20 High-Level Independent Panel on Financing the Global Commons on Pandemic Preparedness and Response.

Section 1 of this Commission report provides a conceptual framework for understanding pandemics. Section 2 provides an annotated chronology of the COVID-19 pandemic and thematic findings regarding several issues. Section 3 presents our policy recommendations, particularly around multilateral cooperation centred at WHO to address global health crises, and around investments in preparedness for future health crises through strong national health systems and international financing and technology cooperation with the world's lower-income regions.

Methodology The Lancet COVID-19 Commission was established in July, 2020, with four main themes: developing recommendations on how to best suppress the epidemic; addressing the humanitarian crises arising from the pandemic; addressing the financial and economic crises resulting from the pandemic; and rebuilding an inclusive, fair, and sustainable world.1

The 28 Commissioners are global experts in public policy, international cooperation, epidemiology and vaccinology, economics and financial systems, sustainability sciences, and mental health. The Commissioners oversaw the work of 12 thematic Task Forces, which met on an ongoing basis (once every 2 weeks or once per month) to support the work of the Commission. These Task Forces included a total of 173 experts. The Commission Secretariat acted as liaison among the Task Forces. The Task Forces published short pieces on their respective areas of focus on the Commission website and in peer-reviewed journals, contributing to the efforts of the overall Commission. ⁴⁾

August 25, 2022 - The Defender Show ‘The Defender Show’ Episode 64: The Origins of COVID-19 With Jeffrey Sachs ⁵⁾

Lancet Investigation Into Origin of Pandemic Shuts Down Over Bias Risk

The work of a task force commissioned by the Lancet into the origins of COVID-19 has folded after concerns about the conflicts of interest of one its members and his ties through a nonprofit organization to the Wuhan Institute of Virology. By Paul D. Thacker

The work of a task force commissioned by the Lancet into the origins of COVID-19 has folded.

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The work of a task force commissioned by the Lancet into the origins of COVID-19 has folded after concerns about the conflicts of interest of one its members and his ties through a non-profit organization to the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Task force chair Jeffrey Sachs, economics professor at Columbia University in New York, told the Wall Street Journal that he had shut down the scientist led investigation into how the COVID-19 pandemic started because of concerns about its links to the EcoHealth Alliance, a non-profit organization run by task force member Peter Daszak.

“A lot is going on around the world that is not properly scrutinized or explained to the public,” Sachs told the newspaper, adding that the task force would broaden its scope to examine transparency and government regulation of risky laboratory research.

The decision came as evidence continued to accumulate that Daszak had not always been forthright about his research and his financial ties to the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Daszak now faces increased scrutiny from scientists, the media and members of U.S. Congress.

EcoHealth Alliance has been given millions of dollars in grants by the U.S. federal government to research viruses for pandemic preparedness. The alliance has subcontracted out its research, including around $600 000 (£434 000; €504 000) to the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

“Sachs has taken the correct action,” said Richard Ebright, professor of molecular biology at Rutgers University in New Jersey and a biosafety expert, adding that too many of the task force members had financial ties to EcoHealth Alliance, which he characterized as “disqualifying conflicts of interest.”

On the Lancet’s website for its COVID-19 commission, which set up the task force into the origins and early spread of the pandemic, a statement said that the work had ended in “the interests of ensuring transparency and objectivity.” A final report will be issued, but by the commission’s secretariat, “in consultation with global experts.”

Shortly after the pandemic began Peter Daszak led a February 2020 statement in the Lancet alleging that it was a “conspiracy theory” to argue that the pandemic could have started from a laboratory leak in Wuhan.

“I have no conflicts of interest,” Daszak later told the Washington Post, regarding his collaboration with Shi Zhengli of the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

But Daszak’s story began falling apart last November when the non-profit group U.S. Right to Know published emails gathered through a freedom of information request that showed he had orchestrated the Lancet statement without disclosing that he was funding Shi Zhengli through grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Daszak’s credibility took a further hit this June when Sachs published an essay that called for an independent investigation of the pandemic’s origin and charged that both China and the NIH should be transparent about virus research, including “gain-of-function” studies that make viruses more transmissible and virulent.

“It is clear that the NIH co-funded research at the WIV [Wuhan Institute of Virology] that deserves scrutiny under the hypothesis of a laboratory-related release of the virus,” Sachs wrote.

That same month the Lancet posted an addendum to the February 2020 statement, which had previously read, “We declare no competing interests.” The half page addendum discusses EcoHealth Alliance’s funding of researchers in China and studies involving recombinant bat viruses. Daszak also resigned that month from the Lancet task force.

In the weeks preceding Sachs’s decision to end the task force’s work, further information emerged questioning the veracity of several other statements made by Daszak.

After suing the NIH to gain access to Daszak’s grants, the U.S. media organization the Intercept released details of several of Daszak’s NIH grants and grant applications, including one that seemed to involve gain-of-function research by creating chimeric SARS viruses.

Both Daszak and the NIH’s Anthony Fauci have said that these experiments were not gain-of-function studies, which would have required the grant to have a risk mitigation.

However, a week after the Intercept’s story a group of online investigators called DRASTIC (Decentralized Radical Autonomous Search Team Investigating COVID-19) published leaked documents that included a grant application that Daszak had submitted to the U.S. Department of Defense in 2018.

In that document Daszak proposed creating chimeric SARS viruses. The department declined to fund Daszak’s grant, adding that if it were funded in the future the chimeric research would require a risk mitigation plan for gain-of-function research.

“Jeffrey Sachs made the right decision,” said Gilles Demaneuf, a member of DRASTIC, adding that Daszak’s attempts to hide gain-of-function research from public scrutiny helped force this decision.

Shannon Murray, a staff scientist with U.S. Right to Know (USRTK), said that Daszak’s experiments that the Department of Defense had flagged for gain-of-function risk mitigation were the same as the ones he did with NIH grants. “It’s spelt out so clearly in the grants,” she said.

The NIH, however, has denied that the research met the criteria for gain-of-function risk mitigation. Daszak did not return The BMJ’s requests for comment.

Ebright noted that the conflicts of interest involving virologists denying that the pandemic could have come from a laboratory in Wuhan were “simply unprecedented.”

In a statement to The BMJ, U.S. Right to Know said, “There still has to be robust, independent investigations into the origins of COVID-19. It’s well past time for Congress and the World Health Organizations to do their jobs.”

Originally published by The BMJ Oct. 1 2021, written by Paul D. Thacker reproduced here under the terms of the CC BY NC license.

Paul D. Thacker is an American journalist who specializes in science, medicine and environmental reporting. He has written for Science, JAMA, Salon, The New Republic and Environmental Science & Technology. ⁶⁾

Jeffrey Sachs Presents Evidence of Possible Lab Origin of Covid-19 An article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences calls for an independent investigation of information held by U.S.-based institutions that could shed light on the origins of Covid. by Sharon Lerner - May 19 2022

In an article published Thursday, economist Jeffrey Sachs called for an independent investigation of information held by U.S.-based institutions that could shed light on the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic. Writing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Sachs and his co-author, Neil Harrison, a Columbia University professor of molecular pharmacology and therapeutics, said that federal agencies and universities possess evidence that has not been adequately reviewed, including virus databases, biological samples, viral sequences, email communications, and laboratory notebooks. Sachs and Harrison also highlighted a tantalizing scientific detail that may be an indication that SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes Covid-19, originated in a laboratory: a sequence of eight amino acids on a critical part of the virus’s spike protein that is identical to an amino acid sequence found in cells that line human airways.

Sachs and Harrison are hardly the first to suggest that SARS-CoV-2 might have been created in a lab. Since its genetic sequence was first published in February 2020, scientists have puzzled over the furin cleavage site, an area on the virus’s spike that allows it to be broken apart by a protein on the membrane of human cells and makes the coronavirus particularly dangerous to people. Once split, the virus releases its genetic material into the cell and reproduces. While all viruses work by attaching themselves to cells, breaking apart, and releasing their genetic material, SARS-CoV-2 is the only one of its class, sarbecoviruses, to use this particular mechanism to do so.

As with past discussion of a possible lab origin of SARS-CoV-2, this latest theory has already been met with considerable pushback. Even some scientists who are open to the idea that a lab accident could have sparked the pandemic remain unconvinced by the particular trail of evidence laid out by Sachs and Harrison.

Growing List of Coincidences

The intriguing theory of viral engineering hinges on two observations: that the amino acid sequences match and that experts in both the ENaC-alpha furin cleavage site and the insertion of genetic sequences into bat coronaviruses happen to work at the same academic institution: the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

Ralph Baric, whose work aims to prevent and create treatments for viral outbreaks, has previously inserted segments of DNA and RNA into viruses and created an infectious clone of SARS using his own patented “No See’m” method of inserting genetic materials without a trace. He has also collaborated on coronavirus research with scientists from a center for lung studies at UNC-Chapel Hill who are knowledgeable about ENaC-alpha. In one 2016 study, the scientists created a new virus using the spike of a bat coronavirus that had been isolated and characterized by the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The experiment found that the new virus “replicated efficiently” in human airway cells that were cultured in a lab.

In another paper, published a year earlier, Baric, along with the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s Shi Zhengli and a lung expert UNC-Chapel Hill’s lung institute, described creating a hybrid virus using a SARS-like virus from a bat and a “mouse-adapted” coronavirus. The new virus caused mice to get sicker than those exposed to the original virus. The goal of these experiments was to prepare for the possibility that a virus might jump naturally from animals to humans, as SARS had in 2003. But even before the pandemic, the experiment drew criticism from other scientists, who were concerned because the researchers had created a virus that was able to spread in humans.

Sachs and Harrison note that the scientists who co-authored the DARPA grant proposal would have been aware of research on coronavirus furin cleavage sites, including one 2006 experiment in which a furin cleavage site was inserted into a coronavirus. “The research team would also have some familiarity with the FCS sequence and the FCS-dependent activation mechanism of human ENaC, which was extensively characterized at UNC,” they write.

Still, both the overlap in the amino acid sequence and the fact that experts in the furin cleavage site of the ENaC-alpha and insertion of genetic material into bat coronaviruses work at the same university could be coincidental, as Harrison and Sachs acknowledge. Some virologists, though, say that the coincidence strains credulity.

“Could be,” Richard Ebright, a molecular biologist at Rutgers University, wrote in an email to The Intercept when asked about the possibility that these things are both chance occurrences. “But the list of coincidences is getting verrrrrrrrrrry long.”

Ebright, a vocal proponent of the lab-leak theory whom Harrison and Sachs thank “for helpful commentary on the manuscript,” spelled out some of the other Covid coincidences that he considers questionable, including its initial outbreak in a city that, well before 2019, had already been pegged as a biosafety risk. Ebright also noted Wuhan’s 1,000-mile distance from the nearest wild bats that carry the type of SARS-related coronaviruses that caused the pandemic. And he pointed to the particular coding of the amino acids in the furin cleavage site of SARS-CoV2.

“The sequence encoding the FCS of the pandemic virus contained two consecutive CGG arginine codons,” Ebright explained in his email. (A codon, or a combination of three nucleotides, supplies the genetic code for a single amino acid, though most amino acids can be represented by multiple different codons. Each nucleotide is represented by a letter — for RNA, either A, C, U, or G.) “This codon usage is unusual for a natural bat SARS-related coronaviruses (for which fewer than 1 in 30 arginine codons are CGG) but is optimal for humans (for which most arginine codons are CGG codons).”

Still, Ebright said that at first he didn’t see the identical amino acid sequences as particularly suspicious. “I had known for more than a year that there was a perfect match to an eight-amino acid sequence present in human ENaC. What I had not known was that the sequence was known to be a functional furin cleavage site and that it was a sequence extensively studied at UNC,” he said. “The crucial point that the ENaC sequence was a known functional site, not just that there happens to be a match to a protein that happens to be in humans. … That suddenly turned it from what I thought to be largely irrelevant to being a logical and obvious choice to proceed.”

Ralph Baric and the University of North Carolina did not immediately respond to requests for comment. ⁷⁾

Jeffrey Sachs: What is Washington Hiding About Covid's Origin?

An interview of Jeffrey D. Sachs by Nathan Robinson

August 2, 2022

Prof. Jeffrey Sachs says he is “pretty convinced [COVID-19] came out of US lab biotechnology” and warns that there is dangerous virus research taking place without public oversight.

Prof. Jeffrey Sachs is the Director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University and the President of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network. He has also served as the chair of the COVID-19 commission for leading medical journal the Lancet. Through his investigations as the head of the COVID-19 commission, Prof. Sachs has come to the conclusion that there is extremely dangerous biotechnology research being kept from public view, that the United States was supporting much of this research, and that it is very possible that SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for COVID-19, originated through dangerous virus research gone awry.

Prof. Sachs recently co-authored a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences calling for an independent inquiry into the virus’s origins. He believes that there is clear proof that the National Institutes of Health and many members of the scientific community have been impeding a serious investigation of the origins of COVID-19 and deflecting attention away from the hypothesis that risky U.S.-supported research may have led to millions of deaths.

If that hypothesis is true, the implications would be earth-shaking, because it might mean that esteemed members of the scientific community bore responsibility for a global calamity. In this interview, Prof. Sachs explains how he, as the head of the COVID-19 commission for a leading medical journal, came to the conclusion that powerful actors were preventing a real investigation from taking place. He also explains why it is so important to get to the bottom of the origins of COVID: because, he says, there is extremely dangerous research taking place with little accountability, and the public has a right to know since we are the ones whose lives are being put at risk without our consent.

NATHAN ROBINSON:

I want to quote something that you said recently-

“I chaired the commission for the Lancet for two years on COVID. I’m pretty convinced it came out of U.S. lab biotechnology, not out of nature, just to mention. After two years of intensive work on this. So it’s a blunder in my view of biotech, not an accident of a natural spillover. We don’t know for sure, I should be absolutely clear. But there’s enough evidence that it should be looked into. And it’s not being investigated, not in the United States, not anywhere. And I think for real reasons that they don’t want to look underneath the rug, the statement.”

The statement that you made there is a controversial one. Just to read a couple of quotes from the New York Times in the last year-

“In a review of recent studies and comparisons to other outbreaks, a group of virologists contends that there is more evidence to support a natural spillover from animals to humans.”

“Scientists released a pair of extensive studies over the weekend that point to a large food and live animal market in Wuhan, China, as the origin of the coronavirus pandemic.”

So I want to start by asking you just to tell us a little bit about the investigation that you were part of and what led you to think that what I just quoted is a misleading statement of the state of the evidence.

JEFFREY SACHS:

Well, the funny thing is those scientists who are saying that said the same thing on February 4, 2020, before they had done any research at all. And they published the same statement in March 2020, before they had any facts at all. So they’re creating a narrative. And they’re denying the alternative hypothesis without looking closely at it. That’s the basic point.

Now, what is the alternative hypothesis? The alternative hypothesis is quite straightforward. And that is that there was a lot of research underway in the United States and China on taking SARS-like viruses, manipulating them in the laboratory, and creating potentially far more dangerous viruses. And the particular virus that causes COVID-19, called SARS-Cov-2, is notable because it has a piece of its genetic makeup that makes the virus more dangerous. And that piece of the genome is called the “furin cleavage site.” Now, what’s interesting, and concerning if I may say so, is that the research that was underway very actively and being promoted, was to insert furin cleavage sites into SARS-like viruses to see what would happen. Oops!

Well, that is what may have happened. And what has been true from the start is that that very real possibility, which a lot of scientists know, has not been looked at closely, even though it’s absolutely clear that it could have happened that way. They’re not looking. They just keep telling us, “Look at the market, look at the market, look at the market!” But they don’t address this alternative. They don’t even look at the data. They don’t even ask questions. And the truth is from the beginning, they haven’t asked the real questions.

But not quite the beginning. Because at the beginning, which we could date from the first phone call of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) with a group of virologists on February 1, 2020, the virologists said “Oh my god, that is strange, that could well be a laboratory creation. What is that furin cleavage site doing in there?” Because scientists knew that was part of an active ongoing research program. And yet, by February 3, the same group is saying “No, no, it’s natural, it’s natural.”

By February 4, they start to draft the papers that are telling the public, “Don’t worry, it’s natural.” By March, they write a paper—totally spurious, in my view—called the proximal origins paper that is the most cited bio paper in 2020. It said: it is absolutely natural. [Note: the paper’s conclusion is “we do not believe that any type of laboratory-based scenario is plausible.”] But they didn’t have any of the data that you read about in the New York Times. They didn’t have any of this. They just said the labs weren’t working on this alternative. But you know what, they don’t know what the labs were working on, because they never asked, and NIH hasn’t told us.

And the scientists like those that talk about the Huanan market, they don’t even discuss that research that was underway. That is just misdirection, to my mind. It’s like sleight of hand art. Don’t look over there. Look over here. But we know that there was a tremendous amount of this research underway. We have interviews by the lead scientists. We have these research proposals. I know the intention of doing this research from discussions. I’ve read so many studies of the importance of this research claimed by the scientists. And yet I see NIH with its head in the ground. “Oh, no, nothing here to look at.” And then I see the scientists. “Oh, nothing here to look at. We know it’s the market. Did we find an animal? No. Do we have an explanation of where that furin cleavage site came in? No. We don’t have an explanation of the timing, which doesn’t quite look right. Oh, but don’t look over there, because there’s nothing there,” they keep telling us. Well, that’s a little silly.

So my point is, there is a huge amount of reason to believe that that research was underway. Because there are published papers on this. There are interviews on this. There are research proposals. But NIH isn’t talking. It’s not asking. And these scientists have never asked either. From the very first day, they have kept hidden from view the alternative. And when they discuss the alternative, they don’t discuss the research program. They discuss complete straw men about the lab, not the actual kind of research that was underway, which was to stick furin cleavage sites into SARS-like viruses in a way that could have created SARS-Cov-2.

What I’m calling for is not the conclusion. I’m calling for the investigation. Finally, after two and a half years of this, it’s time to fess up that it might have come out of a lab and here’s the data that we need to know to find out whether it did.

ROBINSON:

One of the things that struck me that I didn’t know when I started writing about this and actually doing some some research is realizing that in the years leading up to the pandemic, there was a huge controversy about whether it was wise to modify viruses in the course of research in ways that could make a virus more infectious or more lethal. And some people were arguing that this kind of research was insane. And some people were warning that in the case of a lab accident—an accident, mind you, not as an intentional “bioweapon”—a simple human error could cause a real catastrophe.

SACHS:

That is exactly right. There were several kinds of experiments of manipulation of the genes of dangerous viruses. And this raised a lot of alarm. And there was actually a moratorium in 2014. But the champions of this kind of research pushed on, they applied for waivers, which they got, and finally the moratorium came off in 2017. And they said how important it is to do this dangerous kind of research, because they claimed, “Well, there are lots of viruses out there. And we don’t know when they’re going to become highly pathogenic, and we need to develop drugs and vaccines against a wide spectrum of them. So we have to test all these viruses that we can find, to see whether they have high spillover potential.”

But they weren’t actually aiming to just test viruses that they were collecting in nature. They were aiming to modify those viruses. Because the scientists knew that a SARS-like virus without a furin cleavage site wouldn’t be that dangerous. But they wanted to test their drugs and vaccines and theories against dangerous viruses. Their proposal was to take hundreds, by the way—or least they talked about in one proposal more than 180 previously unreported strains—and test them for their so-called “spillover potential.” How effective would they be? And to look: do they have a furin cleavage site, or technically what’s called a proteolytic cleavage site? And if not, put them in. For heaven’s sake. My God! Are you kidding?

Okay, but we didn’t even ask the question from the first day: did you guys do that? Tell us what you did. Could you give us your lab notebooks? We’re kind of curious. Instead, these people who are writing these New York Times articles right now and publishing these pieces about the market, from the first day—without asking about the experiments—they said, “Nope, it’s natural.” That’s why I don’t trust them. Because they’ve never looked at the alternative hypothesis. And their hypothesis has so many gaps, so many holes in it. But they don’t even try to look at the alternative hypothesis.

ROBINSON:

I think it’s very important to make clear that the “alternative hypothesis” is mainly a hypothesis about an accident, and scientific hubris. It’s important to distinguish the kooky theories from the incredibly plausible theories. Because what you’re talking about is people who did not appreciate the dangers of what they were doing.

SACHS:

In fact, it’s very interesting. The alternative that is the right one to look at is part of a very extensive research program that was underway from 2015 onward, funded by the NIH, by Tony Fauci, in particular NIAID [National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases], and it was to examine the spillover potential of SARS -like viruses. The champions of this research explained in detail their proposals. But after the event, we’d never asked them, “So what were you actually doing? What experiments did you do? What do you know?” We somehow never asked. It was better just to sweep it under the rug, which is what Fauci and the NIH have done up until this point. Maybe they could tell us, “Oh, full exoneration,” but they haven’t told us that at all. They haven’t shown us anything.

So there’s nothing “kooky” about it, because it’s precisely what the scientists were doing. And then you can listen to the scientists on tape describing why they think the research program is so important, because they say these are dangerous viruses, and therefore we have to prepare broad spectrum vaccines and drugs. They explain it’s not good enough to test one or two viruses. We have to test all of them. And then they came to realize, as I said earlier, that just having a SARS-like virus, if it doesn’t have this piece of the gene, it’s almost surely not going to be that effective. So they got around to the idea. “Well, let’s put these in,” if you can imagine that. To my mind, it’s mind-boggling.

But they were proud of this, because it’s actually genius at a technological level. Can you imagine: you can take a sequence of letters, which defines the genome, you can recreate the virus just from the letters. You don’t even have to have the biological virus in hand, you just need the sequence. Then you can say “I’m going to add these four letters RRAR, the furin cleavage site, or maybe it’s eight, RRARSVAS, this is a sequence of eight amino acids—I’m going to stick it in there right at the S1 S2 junction of the spike protein, because I know from my research program that will make it more pathogenic, that is more disease-causing. And then I can see whether my drug candidates like remdesivir, or some other candidate works against it. That is their idea. There’s nothing kooky about our claim: Hey, what were you doing? Because they told us that they wanted to do these projects. And they told us that they were wanting to do these projects in the months leading up to this outbreak. And then what is absolutely strange is that even though scientists knew right from the start, that is very weird to have that RRAR furin cleavage site in there—never saw that before in a SARS-like virus, and that that could well have come from a lab—hush, hush. Don’t talk about it. Don’t even discuss it. Just say right from the beginning: This is natural. Of course, it’s natural. Everything else is kooky.

So you saw a narrative being created. And the scientists are not acting like scientists. Because when you’re acting like a scientist, you’re pursuing alternative hypotheses. And the scientists just wrote recently an op-ed saying the only evidence that this came out of a lab that’s been put forward is that it came in a city, Wuhan, where an institute was located. Well, that’s a lie. That is not the only coincidence that leads to this theory. What leads to this alternative hypothesis is the detailed research program the NIH funded that was underway in the years leading up to the outbreak. So I see the scientists absolutely trying to create a narrative and take our eyes off of another issue.

Now, again, let me emphasize, we don’t have definitive evidence of either hypothesis. But what we do have is definitive evidence that officialdom has tried to keep our eyes away from the lab creation hypothesis.

ROBINSON:

You mentioned the lab in Wuhan. It’s not just that there was a lab in Wuhan doing research on viruses. But there were ties between the lab and those pursuing this program. What do we know about the research that was actually occurring there?

SACHS:

We know that at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the scientists there had been trained by American scientists to use advanced bioengineering methodologies. And in particular, we have scientists in North Carolina, Texas, and so forth who do this kind of research, believe in it, argue for it, and say that they don’t want any regulations on it and so on. And they were in close contact with Wuhan Institute of Virology, and they were part of a joint research group that was stitched together by something called EcoHealth Alliance. And EcoHealth Alliance was the kind of marriage maker between the American scientists and the Chinese scientists. That was the vehicle for funding from the U.S. government, especially from the National Institutes of Health, and especially from Tony Fauci’s unit, the NIAID. There were years of grants, there were grant proposals. We don’t know exactly what was done. But we have enough reason to know that we should be asking exactly what was done. And we know definitively that from the beginning, NIH has been running from telling us what has been done. They’re not telling us the truth, that they had reason to fear from the start that this came out of a lab. And that to this day, they have reason to suspect it, but they’re not talking.

ROBINSON:

A shocking thing to me was that the head of the EcoHealth Alliance was on the World Health Organization team that actually investigated the origins of COVID and concluded that it wasn’t the lab.

SACHS:

Well, more than that: I appointed him—this was Peter Daszak —I appointed him to chair the task force of the pandemic commission that I was running for the Lancet. And he headed a task force on the origins. I thought, naively at the beginning, “Well, here’s a guy who is so connected, he would know.” And then I realized he was not telling me the truth. And it took me some months, but the more I saw it, the more I resented it.

And so I told him, “Look, you have to leave.” And then the other scientists in that task force attacked me for being anti-scientific. And I asked them: “What are your connections with all of this?” They didn’t tell me. Then when the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) released some of these documents that NIH had been hiding from the public, I saw that people that were attacking me were also part of this thing. So I disbanded that whole task force. So my own experience was to witness close up how they’re not talking. And they’re trying to keep our eyes on something else. And away from even asking the questions that we’re talking about. We don’t have the answers. But we have good reasons to ask. And we have good reasons to know that NIH is not doing its job properly right now.⁸⁾

Why the Chair of the Lancet’s COVID-19 Commission Thinks The US Government Is Preventing a Real Investigation Into the Pandemic

Prof. Jeffrey Sachs says he is “pretty convinced [COVID-19] came out of US lab biotechnology” and warns that there is dangerous virus research taking place without public oversight.

filed 02 August 2022 in The Virus by Nathan Robinson

Prof. Sachs recently co-authored a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences calling for an independent inquiry into the virus’s origins. He believes that there is clear proof that the National Institutes of Health and many members of the scientific community have been impeding a serious investigation of the origins of COVID-19 and deflecting attention away from the hypothesis that risky U.S.-supported research may have led to millions of deaths.

If that hypothesis is true, the implications would be earth-shaking, because it might mean that esteemed members of the scientific community bore responsibility for a global calamity. In this interview, Prof. Sachs explains how he, as the head of the COVID-19 commission for a leading medical journal, came to the conclusion that powerful actors were preventing a real investigation from taking place. He also explains why it is so important to get to the bottom of the origins of COVID: because, he says, there is extremely dangerous research taking place with little accountability, and the public has a right to know since we are the ones whose lives are being put at risk without our consent.

Nathan Robinson: I want to quote something that you said recently:

“I chaired the commission for the Lancet for two years on COVID. I’m pretty convinced it came out of U.S. lab biotechnology, not out of nature, just to mention. After two years of intensive work on this. So it’s a blunder in my view of biotech, not an accident of a natural spillover. We don’t know for sure, I should be absolutely clear. But there’s enough evidence that it should be looked into. And it’s not being investigated, not in the United States, not anywhere. And I think for real reasons that they don’t want to look underneath the rug, the statement.”

The statement that you made there is a controversial one. Just to read a couple of quotes from the New York Times in the last year. ⁹⁾

(Insincere headline they make Sachs a conspiracy theorists & anto-vax adjacent & conclude more WHO power is needed )

‘Untrustworthy and ineffective’: Panel blasts governments’ covid response In long-awaited report, the Lancet Covid-19 Commission also revives disputed claims about virus’s origins By Dan Diamond - September 14, 2022

A global panel of experts Wednesday blamed the World Health Organization, the U.S. government and others for serious failures in coordinating an international response to covid-19, while laying out recommendations to protect against future pandemics and reviving disputed claims about the virus’s origins.

In a 45-page editorial, the Lancet Covid-19 Commission warned that many governments proved “untrustworthy and ineffective” as the pandemic tore across the world, citing examples such as richer nations hoarding vaccine doses and failing to fund global response efforts, and politicians such as former U.S. president Donald Trump and Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro playing down the virus’s risks, even as hundreds of thousands of their citizens died of it.

“What we saw — rather than a cooperative global strategy — was basically each country on its own,” Jeffrey Sachs, a Columbia University economist who chaired the commission, told reporters in a briefing convened by the respected medical journal. “National leaders deciding … the strategy and the fates of their countries in an incredibly haphazard way.”

But the Lancet report also comes after Sachs, the panel’s chairman, publicly embraced the “lab-leak theory,” which posits that the virus may have escaped from a laboratory and could even have man-made origins, leading to backlash from scientists who warned that his advocacy for the disputed theory would cloud the panel’s work.

Government officials such as Anthony S. Fauci “are not being honest” about the virus’s origins, Sachs claimed on an August podcast ¹⁰⁾ with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has spread conspiracy theories about vaccines. Sachs also co-authored a May article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that argued U.S. scientists may have had a role in shaping SARS-CoV-2 and called for a probe of the pandemic’s origin through a “bipartisan congressional inquiry with full investigative powers.”

Sachs’ advocacy provoked a private, year-long fight with other commission members who say there is far more evidence that the virus has a “natural origin” and was first transmitted to humans from an animal, and who worked to reach a compromise over what the final report would say.

“Along with a couple of other commissioners, I helped lead efforts to keep the conspiracy nonsense and the whacka-doodle out of the final report,” said Peter Hotez, a virologist at the Baylor College of Medicine and a panel member. “I will be disappointed if covid origin conspiracies wind up detracting from some of the important and legitimate deficiencies in our understandings of how SARS, MERS and covid emerged.”

The Lancet commission report carries no legal or regulatory authority. But its recommendations, which draw on more than two years of work from more than 170 experts, represent one of the highest-profile attempts to identify lessons from covid-19 and how to better prepare for the next pandemic. U.S. efforts to conduct a bipartisan review of the pandemic response have stalled in Congress, and other independent bids have also struggled to win funding or capture widespread attention.

But the Lancet report also comes after Sachs, the panel’s chairman, publicly embraced the “lab-leak theory,” which posits that the virus may have escaped from a laboratory and could even have man-made origins, leading to backlash from scientists who warned that his advocacy for the disputed theory would cloud the panel’s work.

Government officials such as Anthony S. Fauci “are not being honest” about the virus’s origins, Sachs claimed on an August podcast with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has spread conspiracy theories about vaccines. Sachs also co-authored a May article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that argued U.S. scientists may have had a role in shaping SARS-CoV-2 and called for a probe of the pandemic’s origin through a “bipartisan congressional inquiry with full investigative powers.”¹¹⁾

The Overton Window of the Lancet Covid-19 Commission

Eventually the window simply doesn't even fit into the house

Substack - PANDA Uncut -September 19, 2022

Harder, faster, longer, stronger. It appears this is all the Lancet Commission want for the next time a pandemic comes along. The authors of the recently released The Lancet Commission on lessons for the future from the COVID-19 pandemic saw failure at all levels, and their only solution is to do the same, but on steroids.

The Lancet report, as Will Jones puts it “makes no sense, but then the pandemic response never has”.

Perhaps its incoherence is rooted in its reliance on the “emergence paradigm”. As Kuhn put it, a paradigm is based on “shared preconceptions, made prior to – and conditioning – the collection of evidence. These preconceptions embody both hidden assumptions and quasi-metaphysical elements”.

The emergence paradigm in question assumes that a virus consists of a single sequence of genetic material and all its descendants, traced back in unbroken lines to the point of emergence.

Once this shared preconception become paradigmatic, then all search for evidence is based on it. Evidence that cannot be explained by the paradigm is ignored. Quasi metaphysical elements, such as a belief in instantaneous contagion of whole regions as a result of a return to the discredited “miasma” paradigm (in the form of airborne transmission), is used instead of attempting to provide explanations. It has been described as “Those who did not see the wisdom and truth of the metaphysics are decried as not embracing the faith in time for their own salvation, and that of humanity”.

Lancet is a private business so perhaps this report is not surprising. The first line of the executive summary says it all: 17.2 million dead, which is roughly total excess mortality, so it discounts virtually all global lockdown deaths, which we conservatively know are in the millions. It also falls into the standard trap of using deaths and not life-years lost, even though it quotes Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), the home of life-years lost prior to 2020.

If this is another attempt to move the Overton window towards their side of the house they are going too far. Eventually the window simply doesn't even fit into the house, so those on the inside looking out don't notice its existence, and those on the outside looking in just see a gaping, empty space beyond it. ¹²⁾