Tag: Wuhan (China)

What We Know About Dr. Fauci Pleading the Fifth in Senate Hearing on Covid Origins

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After Dr. Anthony S. Fauci invoked his Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate himself at the start of a Senate hearing on Wednesday, Republicans spent the next three hours battering him with questions and allegations as he sat in silence. Citing thousands of pages of government records, they held Dr. Fauci, the government’s top Covid adviser during the pandemic, responsible for school closures and lockdowns; accused him of enriching himself as people died; and even mocked his interactions with celebrities. Most significantly, they accused him of funding research that led…

Fauci, in Private Diary, Reflected on Covid’s Origins and His Own Fame

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The world was just awakening to the novel coronavirus, and a full-fledged pandemic was still in the future, when Dr. Anthony S. Fauci jotted a note in his diary on Jan. 26, 2020, musing about whether the virus might have originated in an open-air “wet market,” where live animals were sold, in Wuhan, China. “Now we know the market was not the source, it was the amplifier,” Dr. Fauci, then the government’s top infectious disease expert, wrote. “Having said that, somewhere the virus jumped from animals to humans.” Those private…

China’s Clean Energy Push is Powering Flying Taxis, Food Delivery Drones and Bullet Trains

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By The New York Times Dec. 17, 2025 Battery-swapping robots for carsLunch from the skyVery rapid transitTaxis that drive themselvesRobot trucks don’t need windowsSubways get a makeover NYT

The Sunday Read: ‘The Ongoing Mystery of Covid’s Origin’

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By David Quammen Produced by Adrienne Hurst and Aaron Esposito Edited by John Woo Original music by Aaron Esposito Engineered by Corey Schreppel and Brian St. Pierre Listen to and follow “The Daily”Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher Where did it come from? More than three years into the pandemic with untold millions of people dead, that question about the origin of Covid-19 remains widely disputed and fraught, with facts sparkling amid a tangle of analyses and hypotheticals like Christmas lights strung on a dark, thorny tree. One school of…

W.H.O. Dismisses Covid Origins Investigator for Sexual Misconduct

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The World Health Organization dismissed a lead investigator into the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic “following findings of sexual misconduct,” according to an agency spokeswoman. Peter K. Ben Embarek, an expert on food safety and animal-borne diseases, was dismissed last year; the dismissal was reported by The Financial Times on Wednesday. The findings stem from events that took place in 2015 and 2017, Marcia Poole, the W.H.O. spokeswoman, said in an email. The agency’s investigations team first learned about the allegations in 2018. At the time, “there was a significant…

Scientist Revisits Data on Raccoon Dogs and Covid, Stressing the Unknowns

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A new study of genetic data from a market in Wuhan, China, said the data did not support the case that the pandemic had started with illegally traded animals, touching off fresh debate about samples that other scientists see as critical pieces of the puzzle of how the coronavirus reached humans. The new study, which examined the relative amounts of animal and viral material in swabs taken from surfaces at the market in early 2020, said it was difficult to draw conclusions about whether given samples of the virus had…

Chinese Censorship Is Quietly Rewriting the Covid-19 Story

Chin@Strategy

Early in 2020, on the same day that a frightening new illness officially got the name Covid-19, a team of scientists from the United States and China released critical data showing how quickly the virus was spreading, and who was dying. The study was cited in health warnings around the world and appeared to be a model of international collaboration in a moment of crisis. Within days, though, the researchers quietly withdrew the paper, which was replaced online by a message telling scientists not to cite it. A few observers…

WHO Accuses China of Withholding Data on Covid’s Origins

Chin@Strategy

The World Health Organization rebuked Chinese officials on Friday for withholding scientific research that may link the origin of the coronavirus to wild animals called raccoon dogs, asking why the data had not been made available three years ago and why, after it was published online in January, it could not be found now. Before the Chinese data disappeared, an international team of virus experts downloaded and began analyzing the research. They say it supports the idea that the pandemic could have begun when illegally traded raccoon dogs infected humans…

New Data Links Pandemic’s Origins to Raccoon Dogs at Wuhan Market

Chin@Strategy

An international team of virus experts said on Thursday that they had found genetic data from a market in Wuhan, China, linking the coronavirus with raccoon dogs for sale there, adding evidence to the case that the worst pandemic in a century could have been ignited by an infected animal that was being dealt through the illegal wildlife trade. The genetic data was drawn from swabs taken from in and around the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market starting in January 2020, shortly after the Chinese authorities had shut down the market…

Republicans Push Lab Leak Theory on Covid’s Origins, but Lack ‘Smoking Gun’

Chin@Strategy

WASHINGTON — The former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention accused top federal health officials on Wednesday of excluding him from discussions in early 2020 about whether the coronavirus was the result of a laboratory leak — an assertion that one of the officials, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, later said had “nothing to do with reality.” Three years into the pandemic, the accusation by the former C.D.C. director, Dr. Robert R. Redfield, put a spotlight on the lingering bitterness and partisan divisions around the scientific question of…