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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   27148 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 20, 2023

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The CDC probably has a rule about commenting on ongoing investigations.

One would think, but there's a lot of public comments going around, either through things like the AP news report I linked above, or the lengthy messages sent to the town or to its police. Perhaps more seriously, whether for good or ill local officials had applied in early June for destruction of all biological materials on-site, and had completed that destruction by mid-August. While the CDC did show up for two days in the initial search in May, while accompanied by state officials, none of the court documents discuss the CDC even taking samples to test, nevermind actually returning the results of those tests. The congressional investigation summarizes this as :

The CDC’s refusal to test any potential pathogens with the understanding that local officials would otherwise have to destroy the samples through an abatement process makes it impossible for the Select Committee to fully assess the potential risks that this specific facility posed to the community. It is possible that there were other highly dangerous pathogens that were in the coded vials or otherwise unlabeled. Due to government failures, we simply cannot know.

In its refusal to test, the CDC likewise did not offer to connect local officials with any other federal agency or authorized lab that may be able to test the samples. Based on statements from local officials and briefings the Select Committee received from the CDC, the CDC did not contact the National Biodefense Analysis and Countermeasures Center, the government biodefense laboratory located in Fort Dietrich, Maryland that could potentially have provided greater assistance.

According to local official accounts, in a subsequent conversation with the CDC in early September 2023, local officials again pressed the CDC on why they refused to test any potential pathogens. A CDC official informed the local officials that it was illegal for the CDC to test any samples that were not expressly labeled as a Select Agent. City Manager Nicole Zieba expressed shock at this fact. She asked whether, if that were the case, the CDC had any authority to stop a terrorist in the United States who simply removed the label off a vial of a deadly virus. The CDC official said that the CDC had no authority to test the deadly virus in that hypothetical and that it was a noted gap in its authority. This characterization of the CDC’s authority appears to be false.

Which doesn't prove that they're not investigating further, but it does wink and point suggestively that at least they're not investigating usefully.

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