VERY LONG READ.....but explains how convoluted and confusing the whole scenario rolled out. STILL remaining questions (unanswered) by many different players
The clash between these two scientific worldviews—and related debates over how to collaborate with an advanced institute like the WIV, in an autocratic country hostile to Western interests—is hardly contained to the US. In Canada, a government lab’s decision to ship Ebola samples to the WIV set off a scandal that resounded all the way to the office of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and played a role in the dissolution of parliament in the fall of 2021.
This history of conflict helps explain why the debate over COVID-19’s origins, which remains unresolved, has been so fiercely argued among scientists. If you’ve spent your career collaborating with foreign scientists to identify animal viruses that could spill over to humans, the lessons of the pandemic likely look very different from how they would if you’d been kept awake by visions of lab-generated superviruses.
