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It's a shame that this article decided to focus so heavily on Peter Hotez. While I would never advocate for, or defend the people who are threatening the man, H
by timr 2y ago
It's a shame that this article decided to focus so heavily on Peter Hotez. While I would never advocate for, or defend the people who are threatening the man, Hotez' actions both before and during the pandemic were questionable, at best.
For those who do not know, Peter Hotez has been a staunch defender the EcoHealth Alliance, which recently had its funding pulled by congress in a bi-partisan response to ongoing revelations about mismanagement and lack of oversight of grants related to the Wuhan Institute of Virology [1]. Hotez has been on many threads (for example [2]) in recent releases of emails related to EcoHealth, where government officials were caught attempting to dodge FOIA [3, 4].
Again, I don't support threats or violence, but Hotez is not above the fray. He is not merely an innocent, naïve scientist, targeted unfairly for his research. He was intimately involved in an emerging scientific / political scandal related to the Covid-19 pandemic at the highest levels of the US government.
[1] https://www.science.org/content/article/federal-officials-suspend-funding-ecohealth-alliance-nonprofit-entangled-covid-19 https://www.science.org/content/article/federal-officials-su...
[2] https://x.com/emilyakopp/status/1788283704432844926 https://x.com/emilyakopp/status/1788283704432844926
[3] https://x.com/COVIDSelect/status/1794811284652753280 https://x.com/COVIDSelect/status/1794811284652753280
[4] https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/nih-foia-covid-origins-morens-hearing/ https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/nih-foia-covid-ori...
- graphe 2y agoSo you don't support people who for good reasons don't like peter hotez for covering up the lab leak but you understand that he was responsible for it? People died from it and the size of the pandemic could have been prevented, what is suitable punishment for him?
- timr 2y agoI don't support vigilantism, and also I don't know if anything you have said is true. All I know right now is what I wrote, which is bad enough.
- addicted 2y agoFrom the article [1] (quote at the end of the comment) you’ve linked, all the experts quoted from a variety of unaffiliated institutions and from both the U.S. and the UK call the pulling of funding political and baseless. Even the expert who supports the move only does so purely because of the optics. But even setting aside all of that, it’s ridiculous that you think that there is any sort of equivalence between supporting a research institution that even if we grant for the sake of argument fucked up here, at worst the fuckup is defensible as seen by all the credible people defending it, and actually threatening and attacking people. This is worse than saying “oh yeah, I’m against threats but you know, that guy got a parking ticket once” because a parking ticket isn’t least breaking some rules. Defending what at worst is an extremely reputable organization that made a filing mistake is not even close to getting a parking ticket. —————- From [1] > Lawrence Gostin, an expert on global health law at Georgetown University, says that although EcoHealth has 30 days to contest the suspension, he expects any such effort will fail. “All in all, this has an unpleasant political smell behind it,” Gostin says, adding that he believes the move reflects “a political campaign to dissuade scientific cooperation with China.” Virologist Stuart Neil of King’s College London says the alleged grant offenses are not “crimes, nor are they evidence of misuse of public money.” He calls the HHS action “performative political nonsense carried through by the cowardice of the ranking Democrat members [on] the select committee.” Peter Hotez, a vaccine researcher at Baylor College of Medicine, adds that “EcoHealth Alliance is one of the few organizations we have to track the emergence of new and dangerous virus pathogens. If they disappear, our national security suffers.” But critics of EcoHealth applauded the decision. Filippa Lentzos, a biosecurity expert at King’s College London, says that although “there are a range of views” among virologists and other experts about EcoHealth’s alleged transgressions, “for me, an overriding concern is to have, and to be seen to have, a robust oversight system,” particularly for potentially risky research.
- timr 2y agoI am not prosecuting the case. I am saying that Peter Hotez -- someone regularly included on email threads with White House staff subject to congressional investigation -- is not in the same category as the other scientists mentioned in the story (except Anthony Fauci, who was also a ridiculous inclusion). It's a bit like grouping together Joe Biden and your local dogcatcher in "journalism" on political intrigue.
- anonymousiam 2y agoPeter Hotez also appeared regularly on morning TV with a constantly-changing narrative about how many vaccine injections were necessary, and how much longer the "two weeks to flatten the curve" lock-downs would continue. https://x.com/TruePerspectiv3/status/1619293294474973184 https://x.com/TruePerspectiv3/status/1619293294474973184 After reviewing the above video clip, I believe that it's understandable why he has been attacked by so many.