It has been a while since I added to this blog. My apologies. I have been busy being retired. (A little joke there.)
Today I will correct that with a short piece in reaction to a recent article by Rand Paul in Imprimis. For those of you who are not familiar with Imprimis, it is an occasional publication of Hilldale College, a private, conservative, Christian liberal arts college in Michigan. About 6 million people receive this 4-page little pamphlet every month or so. For some reason, I got on their mailing list about a year ago. It makes interesting reading from a conservative Christian perspective, which I largely disagree with. I am glad to hear from the other side though, especially from this more scholarly perspective that doesn’t seem to be screaming.
But recently, I started to read their missives more carefully and have found an interesting problem. They are not always internally consistent. At certain points they can even be misleading. I think someone should call them out on this. Hence, this blog. My review will make the most sense to those of my readers who also receive Imprimis.
Today we will examine “Lessons From the Great Covid Cover-Up” by Rand Paul. It is impressive that Dr. Paul, an MD and US senator from Kentucky should contribute to such a small publication. I will try to give full air to Dr. Paul’s view here. Senator Paul (I am not quite sure how to address him. I think I will alternate between Dr. and Senator. I hope that is appropriate.) is concerned with the apparent cover-up by officials in our government of the source of the COVID virus, the role our government may have played in its creation, and in ways to prohibit other more dangerous viruses from being created.
My criticisms are threefold. Senator Paul misleads us about the source of the virus. He misunderstands how science and the NIH work. He places the blame on others for his (and the legislative branch’s) own failures.
First, a long quote from his article that first convinced me that Senator Paul was a scoundrel and I needed to say something. This is the third paragraph of the article (on the top of page 2 for those with copies). First some context: January 2020 was at the very beginning of the pandemic. I don’t think it had even been declared a pandemic yet. Fauci is, of course, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the longtime head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and one of the Federal leaders in the fight against the pandemic. Also, the Wuhan lab was a lab in China very near where the virus was first identified that did research on viruses.
“In January 2020, Fauci was told that the Covid virus appeared “inconsistent with expectations from evolutionary theory.” He and his fellow scientists were worried that it may have originated in the Wuhan lab because they knew that the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) under Fauci’s direction had been funding work at the lab for years. They also knew of a paper by Ralph Bark and Shi Zhenli describing gain-of-function research – which involves taking two viruses and combining their genetics to create something more dangerous, more lethal or more contagious – on various coronaviruses at the Wuhan lab.”
Having read this over, I would like to ask my readers this question: Was the NIAID funding gain-of-function research at Wuhan? As I first read it, I said, yes, clearly that is why Fauci was worried. But read this paragraph more carefully. Senator Paul first states that NIAID funds research at Wuhan. Period, full stop. Then he states that an article on gain-of-function research came out of that lab. Period Full stop. These two facts may or may not be connected at all. But the Senator’s brilliant phrasing has deeply planted that supposition in our brains without any proof. Brilliant but misleading. And he will build on this fabrication throughout the rest of this article.
Senator Paul, and many other people, have a poor understanding of how science and the NIH work. The NIH is the sugar daddy of all medical research funding agencies, with a budget of $45 billion. Most of that is distributed through competitive research grants. The success rate for new research grant applications is about 20%. The grants are generous, usually starting at $500,000.
Scientists from all over the world compete for these grants. Many of my friends have tried and failed at obtaining one of these grants. They are extremely hard to get. Only the very best proposals pass muster. The fact that scientists at Wuhan virology labs got one or more of these grants is a testament to the excellent science that was being done there. The quote above gives the impression that Dr. Fauci was taking money from NIAID and giving it to Wuhan. No. Wuhan won an extremely competitive grant process and were granted the money. Did the Covid virus escape from there? We don’t know. The Chinese have been less than helpful in this matter. We may never know. What we can be sure of is that no gain-of-function research was funded there by the NIAID. Dr. Fauci must sign off on every grant from his agency. He would know better than anyone and in an angry televised confrontation with Senator Paul while under oath, he made it very clear that Senator Paul had no idea what he was talking about.
Another question for my readers: Can a scientist change his or her mind? Yes, of course, especially at the very beginning of a fast-moving national crisis when the facts are changing every day. Science is a slow-moving sport. It is poorly suited for the kind of crisis that befell our country and world in early 2020. Science works by increments, by gathering all the facts. Virologists knew a lot about the type of virus that the Covid virus was, but not everything. Dr. Fauci was derided for making some wrong guesses at the beginning of things. Did anyone know any more than him or his team? No. They were doing the best they could with what they had. And when they had more, they made better recommendations.
Dr. Paul, later in the article, again combines statements to raise an alarm that should not be there. He strongly criticizes research that is being done to identify all the known viruses out there. Dr. Paul then conflates this identification research with gain-of-function research. Baloney. How did we (scientists and society in general) know anything about this new virus? Because institutes such as the NIAID had been diligently researching new viruses and had some idea of what we faced. Did they know everything, such as its mode of spreading? No. But they knew a lot abut how viruses spread and took an educated guess.
This is how science works. It is slow and tedious and what it doesn’t know would fill volumes. But there are no better tools to find out things that can defeat a pandemic.
The senator makes an interesting claim that “no human vaccine has been developed in advance of a human epidemic.” Actually Dr. Paul, this happens every year with the flu vaccine that we are all familiar with. The newest virus strain is predicted, a vaccine is produced, we are vaccinated, and an epidemic is largely avoided. Every year. The doctor needs a yearly checkup.
Finally, Senator Paul spent the last third of the article bringing forward a new idea about how to regulate gain-of-function research at the NIH. This seems rather reasonable to me to debate at least. Brother, I say go for it. But wait, you are preaching at us about a policy decision that is within the realm of Congress to debate and to enact. Well, go do it if it is so important. So, why are you preaching to us instead of to your fellow Senators? They are the ones you need to convince. What, you can’t convince them? That’s what politics is all about, finding the right compromise to get good legislation enacted. Is this one of those many initiatives that did not make it into law because we have become too partisan? You could not reach across the isle and find a partner to move this through? Don’t blame us or Dr. Fauci for your inability to be a good politician.
One fact that the senator apparently got right. Oddly, Dr. Fauci was the highest paid federal employee at the time of the pandemic. First, he is an MD. Second, he had been the head of the NIAID for 38 years. That is a lot of incremental raises. And given all the grief he got from Senator Paul and others, I would say he deserved every penny.
While I appreciate Senator Paul taking on technically challenging issues such as gain-of-function research at the NIH, he does not need to besmear the good name of a respected public servant in the process or cast doubts on the beleaguered public health establishment of our country. I would expect more knowledge and respect for the process of science from a physician and better politics from a working senator.
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