Why did Peter Daszak change his mind? – UnHerd

In this newly uncovered presentation, the scientist warned that gain-of-function research which boosts the transmissibility of viruses was elevating the risk that deadly novel biological agents could be released through accident or design. The document, demanding the urgent development of counter-measures, put such risk at the same level as natural spillover from the wild. It even focused on the specific threat from coronaviruses.

Yet after the pandemic erupted in Wuhan, Daszak headed the charge against those claiming the mysterious new disease might be potentially linked to research in the city, with even the British Medical Journal branding him the leader of the campaign to label such critics as conspiracy theorists.

Little wonder the disclosure of this document has provoked angry claims of hypocrisy. Richard Ebright, an expert on biosecurity and professor of chemical biology at Rutgers University in New Jersey, told me it meant that Daszak and his allies have spent the past three years not telling the world the whole truth. The revelations, he said, underlined the shocking recklessness of funding gain-of-function research in Wuhan that was being carried out at a low-level biosecurity lab with no protections beyond a pair of gloves, a lab coat and a hood .

Today, Daszak is the $460,368-a-year president of EcoHealth Alliance, a New York-based group that channelled US research funding to Wuhan Institute of Virology until the payments were exposed and terminated by President Trump in April 2020. The former Kingston University snail researcher responded with outrage, rounding on suggestions that research in Wuhan might have sparked the pandemic. Typical was a June 2020 article in The Guardian entitled Ignore the conspiracy theories: scientists know Covid-19 wasn t created in a lab that insisted claims of frankenviruses made in labs were the latest chapter in a tale of blame, misinformation and finger-pointing .

via unherd.com

Daszak was a snail researcher which makes me think less of snails. We have lots of snails out where we live and I had just recently come around to not finding them disgusting. I resolve to try to be more objective about snails. It’s not as if they end up killing millions of humans just to maintain their careers. But I guess they do carry some nasty parasites. So there’s that.