Coronavirus, week 64A: Zeynep Tufekci speaks big truth!

And, #BlueAnon probably won't like it, as it challenges a bunch of tribalism.

Public intellectual Zeynep Tufekci has written a long piece at the NYT about the possible origins of COVID. It's very interesting. VERY interesting. She starts with the relative stability of the H1N1 virus and says that, ACCIDENTALLY, the Chinese government appears to have caused that stability. Tufecki addresses all the things that I have before in giving Orac and others from #BlueAnon (as well as wingnuts) a good smackdown — lab insecurity, "gain of function" research at the UNC lab where Dr. Shi, along with Dr. Baric, worked, and lab leaks for other pathogens, like hoof-and-mouth disease from a British lab. (Note: I have a follow-up to my smackdown coming later in the week. It's already mostly written; I'll try to remember to include whether or not he talks about Tufekci's piece by then. Actually, in another week, given her second Substack piece, at bottom, I'll have yet more.)

Next, she notes that social media users in China, before Xi Jinping could institute a Xi Jinping Thought crackdown, were among the first skeptics of the official WIV story. (Orac hasn't told you that in the past, either.)

She then notes that the virus the Chinese identified as 96 percent like SARS-CoV-2 had first been identified in 2012, not 2016. She notes that this and other facts were mentioned in the 2016 paper about this virus. In short, Chinese lies related to COVID go back 5 years.

What's really clear in all of this is that the Obama Administration's 2014 decision to pause gain of function research was correct. It's even more clear that outsourcing US gain of function research to China in 2017 was as disastrous as outsourcing our manufacturing there. What's also really clear is that a number of WIV's actions, as Tufekci puts it, "weren't deviations from international norms."

Back to WIV, though. Tufekci busts Peter Dazsak in lies about his claim that WIV didn't collect bats. It did then and likely still does.

After that? What Orac also probably won't tell you in the future? A number of signers of that (in)famous Lancet letter of early 2020 have since at least partially repented of their stance.

One, Bernard Roizman, an emeritus virologist at the University of Chicago with four honorary professorships from Chinese universities, said he was leaning toward believing there was a lab accident. 

“I’m convinced that what happened is that the virus was brought to a lab, they started to work with it,” he said, “and some sloppy individual brought it out.” He added, “They can’t admit they did something so stupid.” 

Charles Calisher of Colorado State University, another signatory, recently told ABC News that “there is too much coincidence” to ignore the lab-leak theory and he now believes “it is more likely that it came out of that lab.” 

Peter Palese, the virologist who wrote about the 1977 flu pandemic, said that “a lot of disturbing information has surfaced since The Lancet letter I signed” and that he wants an investigation to come up with answers.

Tufekci goes on to note that a number of other virologists and related scientists who did not sign the Lancet letter but supported its general ideas have also since changed their minds.

Next, Tufekci hints that Dr. Shi, despite head-fakes at transparency, not only isn't actually transparent but is likely a liar when she claims zero infection of anybody at the lab.

But wait, that's not all!

On her Substack, Tufekci explains the backdrop of the piece and promises a further breakout there.

She also has a SECOND follow-up, and among its hot takes are a specific decrying of the attitudes behind that Lancet letter. 

Biggest takeaway? She uses the phrase "cover-up."

She also thinks that people saying "don't make people mad" were in reality not wanting to talk about lab leaks.

Finally, this, which is DIRECTLY relevant to Orac and others of #BlueAnon. It's a long quote, but needed:

Again and again, throughout the past year, the more unlikely and extreme scenarios get “debunked” and the many actual questions and sensible and factual worries have been treated like… they don’t exist. 

After enough of that faux “debunking” and knocking down of genuinely unhinged stuff and/or strawman versiions of reasonable questions, people have gotten used to treating the entire question of virus-origins as something of only interest to crazies, or of no interest to anyone because there is no question there. 

Any discussion about potential lab/research connections are then deemed to be “conspiracy theories” (used in the sense of extremely unlikely or impossible events being speculated on because of other reasons), rather than substantive discussions we can use as figuring out how to take steps so as not to find ourselves here again. 

In this worldview, just saying there is a cover-up and that there are real questions about the virus origins, can be called a “conspiracy theory,” too, if you define conspiracy theory to mean any scenario in which authorities and people in power are lying, and are potentially coercing and pressuring everyone else, including the scientists. In reality, given this is China, such deliberate obstruction is obviously likely.

And, Orac has posted twice at his site since I first started trolling him on Twitter. (I have no problem admitting that that's what I'm doing, but also have no problem saying that he deserves it.) He hasn't addressed Tufekci at all; he has worried SO much about ivermectin that he blogged twice about it.

It's exactly things like this that led me to add her to my