There is also a pretty large overlap between the set of scientists who would be positively impacted by major policy changes in virus research. "We need more money to research coronaviruses because we can't trust our counterparts in China" and "Funding should be restricted to labs in $homecountry with better biosecurity controls" are fairly natural conclusions to draw from discovering it was Chinese error, and "this is an arms race we have to fund to win" from discovering it was Chinese malfeasance.
This kind of research was already banned in America, which is why American money was funelled towards WIV research grants to continue the research with less oversight and off American soil [1].
>This body did give money to an organisation that collaborated with the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
>That organisation - the US-based EcoHealth Alliance - was awarded a grant in 2014 to look into possible coronaviruses from bats.
>EcoHealth received $3.7m from the NIH, $600,000 of which was given to the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
>In 2019, its project was renewed for another five years, but then pulled by the Trump administration in April 2020 following the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic.
>Senator Paul believes the research did qualify as "gain-of-function" research, and referred to two academic papers by the Chinese institute, one from 2015 (written together with the University of North Carolina), and another from 2017.
Yeah, right, but it may also backfire if all gain-of-function research is banned. Imagine if we accidentally invented a rogue AI that caused as much disruption worldwide as covid did? Would you trust the general public and policymakers to come up with conclusions "it is fine, we continue AI research only in big corps based in SF, we can trust those" rather than "AI bad, ban AI research!"?
I remember when this controversy about NIH grants just started, Fauci said: "if you want to ban gain-of-function research, you may just as well ban the virology entirely". And honestly, I am fine with that. I advocate for banning all gain-of-function research. If virologists can't do anything else except engineering deadly viruses on purpose, it is their problem.
