Babaamaajimowinan (Telling of news in different places)
Babaamaajimowinan (Telling of news in different places)
"This is not an attack on science. It's not an attack on peer review," Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio), the chair of the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, said in an opening statement at the oft-contentious hearing on Tuesday.
The House panel investigating the government's response to the coronavirus pandemic heard testimony Tuesday from influential virologists who concluded in 2020 that the pandemic did not begin as a laboratory leak. The hearing came amid dueling reports from lawmakers and bitter recriminations from the scientists, who say they have been wrongly maligned.
And it traces its beginning to 13 words: "We do not believe that any type of laboratory-based scenario is plausible."
That assertion, written in a widely cited paper by five leading virologists studying the early coronavirus outbreak in March 2020, helped prompt government officials and others to repeatedly dismiss the possibility that the pandemic began with a lab accident. But more than 1,200 days later, and framed by a steady change in public opinion about the origins of the virus, the scientists' conclusion was the focus of the House hearing, with Republicans alleging the paper represented a "coverup" purportedly orchestrated by former National Institutes of Health officials Anthony S. Fauci and Francis S. Collins.
Reader Comments(0)