>It later turned out that the Lancet letter had been organized and drafted by Peter Daszak, president of the EcoHealth Alliance of New York. Dr. Daszak’s organi

>It later turned out that the Lancet letter had been organized and drafted by Peter Daszak, president of the EcoHealth Alliance of New York. Dr. Daszak’s organization funded coronavirus research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. If the SARS2 virus had indeed escaped from research he funded, Dr. Daszak would be potentially culpable. This acute conflict of interest was not declared to the Lancet’s readers. To the contrary, the letter concluded, “We declare no competing interests.” This is the first I'm hearing of Mr. Daszak, and I think the Lancet has some explaining to do for why they would declare something like this. There's a lot to unpack in this essay, but perhaps at a higher level we have a major problem with how mainstream publications report on science. I get it that a pandemic has stressed all these institutions to their breaking point, but it's now pretty clear to me that what I was reading in March of 2020 about the origins of the virus was not only not verifiably true, but was possibly intentionally misleading, or a coordinated misdirection campaign. It's possible the journalists writing these stories didn't know it at the time, but in hindsight it feels like they got used.