zlacker

Remember that US State Department members were warning of risky coronavirus research at the lab in Wuhan years before this pandemic happened.

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/03/08/josh-rogin...

That isn't proof of anything but all of this makes for interesting reading.

>>EMM_38+(OP)
Josh Rogin has been misrepesenting these diplomatic cables for a year now. If you read the actual cables (which Rogin refused to publish when he wrote his first story - they only came out later due to a FOIA request), they did not warn that the lab was unsafe. The cables stated said that the lab did not yet have enough technicians to run at full capacity. As of the time of writing of the cables, the lab had not yet opened.

The cables were simply arguing that the US should continue to fund its training program for the lab's staff (they're trained at the premiere US high-biocontainment laboratory, in Galveston, Texas). The cables did not point to any safety problems with the lab. The people who visited the lab and wrote the cables wouldn't have known how to identify safety problems anyways - they were just diplomats. They simply stated that the US training program was important and to emphasize that, they stated that the not-yet-opened lab did not yet have enough technicians.

Rogin has been trying to spin this into some sort of dire warning, but that's simply a willful misreading of the cables.

>>Diogen+f1
I disagree. You are referring to part (5).

Part (6) in the cable specifically warns with regard to WIV scientists studying SARS viruses that interact with human ACE2 receptors.

The cable is here:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/context/read-the-state-depart...

>>EMM_38+w5
Part 6 is about a paper published in PLoS Pathogens. It says nothing about safety concerns.