The NIH Director says we are already totally prepared for “emerging threats” — so why would we want to put the WHO in charge?

And why not add a little Gain of Function too? she thinks...

https://www.medpagetoday.com/opinion/faustfiles/109672

from Monica Bertagnolli, the new head of the NIH:

We continue to study COVID-19 as well as other emerging threats, and I think we’d do very well if we hit a challenge again. NIAID [National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases] has a program that is going continuously to innovate in methods for vaccine generation, for identification and diagnosis of emerging threats, for observation from the community and clinical environment, and for being able to both monitor and respond very quickly. I think it’s actually pretty exciting to see things that are going on behind the scenes here at NIH for all the new threats. And so I think we are going to be as ready as any government or organization could possibly be.

We can learn a tremendous amount about viruses from any number of different methods of studying them. I do know that gain-of-function, looking at the hypermutable region of the genome of a virus that might code a particular area of importance for susceptibility, might be a good bet to kind of try to be able to get ahead of something before it truly emerges. But that kind of research certainly comes with risks and we have really worked hard to come up with very, very stringent oversight and containment procedures to make that type of research — if it is to occur — as absolutely safe as possible. You know, the bottom line is the benefit of any research like that has got to exceed the risk. And so that’s why any kind of gain-of-function research for infectious agents is taken very, very seriously.