GOP Medical Witnesses: COVID-19 'Exactly What You'd Expect If You'd Gone Through...

Gain of function. Gain of function. But I thought Fauci declared there was no gain of function research. Oh, wait, it's been reported that there was.... <sheeesh/>

Compelling testimony. It is important to understand the origin of the virus with the aim of implementing measures to prevent future incidents, if it was indeed a laboratory leak. But as Doctor Quay pointed out when introducing his comments, the whole question has been tainted by politics and what we are seeing are people looking for a reason to assign blame for political gain rather than a sincere desire to address the immediate problem much less preventing future incidents.

The next question goes to intent and if a leak was purposeful, and it appears many have already jumped to that conclusion though I haven't see anything to indicate that, if it the virus was released from a lab it was done so purposefully. Also a lot of finger pointing around funding totally ignoring how funding for research is completely fungible and near impossible to say this dollar went to this procedure. But the desire to assign blame overrides this simple fact.

Lastly, if the virus was leaked from the lab, and if, hypothetically, it was done so on purpose, it still doesn't explain why a large portion of the population with a certain political ideology would refuse to do anything to defend themselves or the general public from something they want to characterize as an attack other than the desire to seek political gain from the deaths of Americans. It doesn't explain why they would initially characterize the situation as a "hoax" or try to pretend it wasn't happening. And now, failing those tactics, perhaps blame is the best they can do.