How key virologists manipulated published research findings to cement a natural origins story for the 2014 West African Ebola outbreak, and then did the same thing again for SARS-2 in 2020

This detailed piece surveying evidence for the laboratory origins of the 2014 West African Ebola outbreak is very much worth your attention.

I’m not sure I find its core argument persuasive, but in many ways that’s not important. It’s everything else the authors have to say that matters. They reveal beyond all doubt that public understanding of virus outbreaks is subject to heavy manipulation by a small clique of favoured, well-funded virologists. These scientists used many of the same tactics in 2014 as they did in 2020, with the aim of establishing a natural origins story for unusual outbreaks, and keeping important anomalies surrounding these outbreaks out of the press. In both cases, their efforts unfolded in the context of US AID-associated PREDICT animal sampling efforts to identify emerging pathogens with pandemic potential. Also in both cases, research into these viruses was offloaded to overseas laboratories, preferred partly because they lay beyond the scrutiny of Western authorities.

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