I have to thank @RevDrDickMove for providing this fabulous example of why liberals are so prone to fall for propaganda, as long as it blames Trump!

He really should not have brought this to my attention. https://twitter.com/RevDrDickMove/status/1259642418107826176

Fair warning, anyone attempting to bring bioweapon or intentional release by China theories into by thread will be blocked.

This thread is about legitimate research, dangerous research & risk decisions about that research.

Seems Dick was duped into blaming Trump for NIH ending the funding for a researcher who studies bat corona viruses. But as I like to deal in facts, I did a quick look around before I responded.
I guess if Trump gets blamed for every NIH decision, Obama should too right?

Well in this case he actually could blame Obama. In October 2014, Obama banned "gain-of-function" studies where researchers attempt to make a virus more deadly or contagious to then study how to fight it.
Creating a recipe for disaster if it escapes the lab environment.

These are obviously important decisions that have to be made, how much risk of causing a pandemic should be accepted in the fight to prevent or minimize a pandemic?

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2014/10/17/357010964/u-s-to-temporarily-halt-funding-for-controversial-virus-research

Many researchers stopped doing such "gain-of-function" research to comply with the ban.
Many criticized the ban on the grounds that Obama's ban would push scientists to move this research to less secure labs in other countries.

Before Obama ordered a ban on the research there was a fierce debate over it. The ban was meant to be temporary until protocols could be established to determine if the research was too risky versus the potential benefits.
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2014/08/13/339854400/biologists-choose-sides-in-safety-debate-over-lab-made-pathogens

A few months before Obama's ban, scientists were debating & word was leaking out about mistakes made at labs with dangerous pathogens. Mistakes made at the US CDC...

The other group argued that making viruses more dangerous was not a problem as long as you had adequate lab safety in place.

So Obama took the recommendations, banned research aimed at making viruses more dangerous & more likely to cause a pandemic. With a process being implemented to decide what research is too dangerous to risk.

Of course @RevDrDickMove missed his chance to blame Trump for lifting the ban in December 2017, when the temporary ban was lifted for work that NIH & NAS determined was worth the increased risk. https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2017/12/19/571744856/nih-lifts-ban-on-research-that-could-make-deadly-viruses-stronger

The ban & the lifting of it involved three viruses, one of them is SARS is a bat borne corona virus very similar to COVID-19.
Using a framework designed to ensure that doctors wanting to do research are not ignoring the risks associated with their work.

Everyone thinks their own work is the most essential thing and can easily ignore the risks & exaggerate the benefits they expect to find.
Overall a good step implemented in December of 2017 with work by both the Obama & Trump Admin to allow research but to ensure it was safe.

So lets take a look at Dr. Peter Daszak, did he lose his funding because Trump doesn't like research?
Or did he lose his funding because the risk calculation for his research changed in light of the current Corona Virus Pandemic. I'm sure @RevDrDickMove doesn't know!

So what kind of virus "gain-in-function" work was Dr. Daszak doing that NIH now thinks is too risky.

Would you believe his work is with bat corona viruses in China?

Why would NIH think the risk of a bat corona virus evolved in lab to study it higher?
https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/where-coronaviruses-come-from-67011

Yes Dr. Daszak is doing research on bat corona viruses similar to SARS & COVID-19. Surely NIH could not have honestly thought that those could pose a risk if they escaped from a lab after research to make them more contagious or deadlier... Has to be Trump's fault...

So who is Dr. Daszak collaborating with to conduct his work? Well 2 scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Where he and his partners have found & are researching more than 50 bat corona viruses!

Is your risk assessment going up yet?

It is very likely that some of his research was conducted in China during the moratorium in place by the Obama & Trump Admins. In fact, The Wuhan Institute of Virology received its certification for the most dangerous pathogens in 2015. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/04/14/state-department-cables-warned-safety-issues-wuhan-lab-studying-bat-coronaviruses/

The problem is the Wuhan Institute of Virology was not living up to it's safety standards. In 2018, the US State Department issued warnings about the lab, especially it's work on bat corona viruses which is likely the project in collaboration with Dr. Daszak.

Untrained personnel working with bat corona viruses & posing a risk of a release of a version that had gained functions during research to make it more contagious & more deadly. Note the virus they are worried about were the same virus Dr. Daszak mentioned in the Science article!

In fact, Dr. Shi is one of he collaborators with Dr. Daszak & was one of the Wuhan Institute of Virology scientists that sequenced the genome of the COVID-19 corona virus. Seems it shared 96% of it's genome with one of their samples that they worked on...
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.01.22.914952v2

So Dr. Daszak lost funding from NIH for "gain-of-function" research on bat corona viruses in a lab that had weak protocols to prevent the accidental escape of a pathogen.

The very research that may be behind this pandemic or the next one...

So @RevDrDickMove do you still believe Dr. Daszak's claim that Trump just took his research grants away?
Or do you think the NIH decided that conducting "gain-of-function" research to turn bat corona viruses into pandemic capable diseases in an insecure Chinese lab was too risky?

In case Dick blocks me & makes the original tweet disappear, here is a link to the 60 minutes tweet that covered Dr. Daszak. https://twitter.com/60Minutes/status/1259621162163855361?s=20

A quick look at the FEC election site shows Dr. Peter Daszak was a small time donor to Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election.

HT to @geoffb5 for finding this article on the outsourcing of "gain-of-function" bat corona virus work to the lab in China & the risks that were well known. https://twitter.com/geoffb5/status/1260062490404229121?s=20