Former NYT science writer discusses coronavirus origin controversy
Nicholas Wade joins 'Life, Liberty & Levin'
Retired New York Times science editor Nicholas Wade joined "Life, Liberty & Levin" to discuss the origins of the coronavirus and what to think of grants given by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and National Institutes of Allergy & Infectious Disease (NIAID) – the latter headed by Anthony S. Fauci for many years – to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV).
Wade and Levin noted the actual facts surrounding the origin of the virus' transmission to humans has been obscured by the Chinese Communist Party – which rules China unilaterally.
"I think we see a sustained Chinese propaganda effort at work," Wade said when discussing why he has focused on the coronavirus origins. "But, you know, more than that, it was just the the blindness, if I could put it that way, of our media, we're too polarized to see scientific issues for their own sake without putting a political gloss on them."
"We don't know for sure: The origin of the virus is just we've got these two possible scenarios. But if you look at all the evidence and ask yourself, well, which scenario explains all these facts better on present evidence, it seems, to me at least, that the lab-escape hypothesis explains it a lot better," said Wade, who left the Grey Lady in 2012.
"But it's a sort of complicated conclusion to arrive at. And I can only assume…that the media was blindsided – they didn't do the work that was necessary."
Wade said the mainstream press has failed to leave politics aside when it comes to the important issue of the virus and its origin, and instead do their job as journalists and take a balanced, investigative approach to finding the answers.
Levin later asked about the Bethesda, Md-based health bureaucracies – NIAID and NIH – and noted how for decades the American people have tacitly but strongly "put their faith" in them as institutions.
"[T]hey have a responsibility to try and figure out how this happened. I hear nothing from those institutions about where they think this virus came from other than they dismiss people who have thoughts and comments and so forth," he said.
While the New York-native Fauci leads NIAID, the larger NIH is led by Virginia-born geneticist Dr. Francis Collins.
"It just seems to me if you're going to be in the business of grant-giving, I don't care if it's three levels below or whatever it is at this point, you know, something horrific happened," Levin said.
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"Shouldn't they have some responsibility to try and get to the bottom of it, including saying, look, we're trying to get the data, but the communist regime in China won't give it to us?"
Wade replied that Collins' institution, NIH, had a "duty to investigate the origin" of COVID-19 as carefully as it could and better explain its funding of the Wuhan lab.
"There are lots of questions that I wish the NIH had addressed a year ago and been upfront about and invited public comment and scrutiny and just laid out everything they knew and tried to see what had happened and explain it to us. And they haven't done that," he said.
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