Bloom's view on these sequences turned out to be wrong. The sequences were accurately described in a peer-reviewed paper that the Chinese scientists in questio

Bloom's view on these sequences turned out to be wrong. The sequences were accurately described in a peer-reviewed paper that the Chinese scientists in question published (well before Bloom's preprint). The raw sequence reads, which were deleted from the NIH database, added nothing. The important information (the mutations in the sequences) were already listed in the paper. From the point of view of the origins of SARS-CoV-2, the sequences themselves were not interesting. They were from fairly late in the Wuhan outbreak, and they were only very short segments of the viral genome. The Chinese paper in question was actually a technical paper testing a new sequencing technology. The message of the paper was, "We have this new sequencing machine, and we're going to show it off using some random CoVID patient samples," not, "We've identified particularly important patient samples that will shed light on the outbreak in Wuhan." What Andersen and Fauci objected to was Bloom's accusation that the Chinese scientists who wrote the paper were engaging in deliberate deception and were part of a cover-up. Bloom had no evidence of that, and there's nothing to indicate that the Chinese scientists' explanation is incorrect: that they meant to upload the data to a Chinese database but didn't get around to it. After all, the raw data itself wasn't that interesting, and was already accurately summarized in their paper. In my opinion, Bloom owes his Chinese colleagues an apology. Accusing people of covering up a pandemic with no evidence is a pretty low thing to do.