research proposal of covid 19

A proposal for long-term COVID-19 control

Download the full working paper

Subscribe to Global Connection

Universal vaccination, prophylactic drugs, rigorous mitigation, and international cooperation, william a. haseltine william a. haseltine chair and ceo - access health international, trustee - the brookings institution @wmhaseltine.

August 20, 2021

Introduction

Four successive waves of COVID-19 have buffeted the United States for the past year and a half. With each wave, we have bet on different measures to push us through: First, public health measures, then drugs and treatments, and now, with our fifth wave, we hold out hope for vaccine-led recovery. But from the outset, we have underestimated this virus and its ability to maneuver the public health battleground; it is escaping the best defenses we are able to muster and finding new avenues of attack.

In this paper, I propose a multimodal strategy for long-term COVID control, one that sets up multiple barriers of protection so that we are able to not only contain SARS-CoV-2 and eliminate COVID-19 as a major life-threatening disease, but also return to a new social and economic life. The strategy uses the best of what we have on hand today—a rapidly growing arsenal of vaccines and antiviral drugs and public health measures— with an eye towards future improvements and developments.

The most immediate priority should be supporting additional research on the molecular biology of SARS-CoV-2, of which we still know surprisingly little. This is particularly important since there is great likelihood that COVID-19 will become endemic . Unlike the viruses that cause smallpox or polio, SARS-CoV-2 has demonstrated an impressive ability to adapt and thrive in both humans and animals, including our much-loved pet, cats and dogs. Even if we can eliminate the disease from our own communities, it is unlikely we can do the same across the globe and for all our animal populations at the same time.

The best we can hope for is containment of COVID-19 at levels we can tolerate both personally and economically. We have to use all the tools we have at our disposal— being aware of the inequities and disparities from country to country and within countries—that have made this and other diseases so hard to address.

Related Content

John Nkengasong

January 21, 2021

Matthew M. Kavanagh, David Dollar

June 7, 2021

Philip Schellekens

April 2, 2021

Global Economy and Development

Andrew Atkeson, Stephen Kissler

March 27, 2024

Anna Saavedra, Morgan Polikoff, Dan Silver

March 26, 2024

Vanda Felbab-Brown

March 21, 2024

Research proposals to address COVID-19 challenges sought

Washington University’s  McDonnell International Scholars Academy  and Social Policy Institute (SPI) seek proposals from WashU researchers and their international partners to identify and address the challenges of COVID-19 through artificial intelligence, technology and big data.

This is the second year the Social Policy Institute and McDonnell Academy have partnered to provide seed grants for international research to capitalize on the strengths of both institutions and to further establish Washington University as a leader in global research.

Leaders anticipate providing funding for up to three proposals at $25,000 each in this round, with support from the Mastercard Impact Fund , in collaboration with the Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth. Proposals are due Feb. 26. For more information, visit the McDonnell International Scholars Academy site . 

Comments and respectful dialogue are encouraged, but content will be moderated. Please, no personal attacks, obscenity or profanity, selling of commercial products, or endorsements of political candidates or positions. We reserve the right to remove any inappropriate comments. We also cannot address individual medical concerns or provide medical advice in this forum.

You Might Also Like

Latest from the Record

Announcements.

Public university directory being phased out

Apply to join Danforth Staff Council, attend spring forum

MetroLink updates schedules, reopens platforms

Macias appointed director of student leader development for Leaders Academy

WashU swimmer McCormick wins NCAA title for backstroke

Kazakhstan launches child account policy informed by Brown School research

Amarnath Ghosh, student in Arts & Sciences, 34

Philip E. Cryer, former director of endocrinology division, 84

Peter Alan Fedders, professor emeritus of physics, 85

Research Wire

Understanding how anxious misery affects brain networks aim of new grant 

Michaelides wins NASA fellowship for early-career researchers

Huebsch wins NSF CAREER award

The View From Here

Washington people.

Kim Thuy Seelinger

Antonio Douthit-Boyd

Katharine Flores

Who Knew WashU?

Who Knew WashU? 1.27.21

Who Knew WashU? 1.13.21

Who Knew WashU? 12.9.20

Greater Good Science Center • Magazine • In Action • In Education

Society Articles & More

11 questions to ask about covid-19 research, how can you tell if a scientific study about the pandemic is valid and useful we have some tips..

Debates have raged on social media, around dinner tables, on TV, and in Congress about the science of COVID-19. Is it really worse than the flu? How necessary are lockdowns? Do masks work to prevent infection? What kinds of masks work best? Is the new vaccine safe?

You might see friends, relatives, and coworkers offer competing answers, often brandishing studies or citing individual doctors and scientists to support their positions. With so much disagreement—and with such high stakes—how can we use science to make the best decisions?

Here at Greater Good , we cover research into social and emotional well-being, and we try to help people apply findings to their personal and professional lives. We are well aware that our business is a tricky one.

Summarizing scientific studies and distilling the key insights that people can apply to their lives isn’t just difficult for the obvious reasons, like understanding and then explaining formal science terms or rigorous empirical and analytic methods to non-specialists. It’s also the case that context gets lost when we translate findings into stories, tips, and tools, especially when we push it all through the nuance-squashing machine of the Internet. Many people rarely read past the headlines, which intrinsically aim to be relatable and provoke interest in as many people as possible. Because our articles can never be as comprehensive as the original studies, they almost always omit some crucial caveats, such as limitations acknowledged by the researchers. To get those, you need access to the studies themselves.

And it’s very common for findings and scientists to seem to contradict each other. For example, there were many contradictory findings and recommendations about the use of masks, especially at the beginning of the pandemic—though as we’ll discuss, it’s important to understand that a scientific consensus did emerge.

Given the complexities and ambiguities of the scientific endeavor, is it possible for a non-scientist to strike a balance between wholesale dismissal and uncritical belief? Are there red flags to look for when you read about a study on a site like Greater Good or hear about one on a Fox News program? If you do read an original source study, how should you, as a non-scientist, gauge its credibility?

Here are 11 questions you might ask when you read about the latest scientific findings about the pandemic, based on our own work here at Greater Good.

1. Did the study appear in a peer-reviewed journal?

In peer review, submitted articles are sent to other experts for detailed critical input that often must be addressed in a revision prior to being accepted and published. This remains one of the best ways we have for ascertaining the rigor of the study and rationale for its conclusions. Many scientists describe peer review as a truly humbling crucible. If a study didn’t go through this process, for whatever reason, it should be taken with a much bigger grain of salt. 

“When thinking about the coronavirus studies, it is important to note that things were happening so fast that in the beginning people were releasing non-peer reviewed, observational studies,” says Dr. Leif Hass, a family medicine doctor and hospitalist at Sutter Health’s Alta Bates Summit Medical Center in Oakland, California. “This is what we typically do as hypothesis-generating but given the crisis, we started acting on them.”

In a confusing, time-pressed, fluid situation like the one COVID-19 presented, people without medical training have often been forced to simply defer to expertise in making individual and collective decisions, turning to culturally vetted institutions like the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). Is that wise? Read on.

2. Who conducted the study, and where did it appear?

“I try to listen to the opinion of people who are deep in the field being addressed and assess their response to the study at hand,” says Hass. “With the MRNA coronavirus vaccines, I heard Paul Offit from UPenn at a UCSF Grand Rounds talk about it. He literally wrote the book on vaccines. He reviewed what we know and gave the vaccine a big thumbs up. I was sold.”

From a scientific perspective, individual expertise and accomplishment matters—but so does institutional affiliation.

Why? Because institutions provide a framework for individual accountability as well as safety guidelines. At UC Berkeley, for example , research involving human subjects during COVID-19 must submit a Human Subjects Proposal Supplement Form , and follow a standard protocol and rigorous guidelines . Is this process perfect? No. It’s run by humans and humans are imperfect. However, the conclusions are far more reliable than opinions offered by someone’s favorite YouTuber .

Recommendations coming from institutions like the CDC should not be accepted uncritically. At the same time, however, all of us—including individuals sporting a “Ph.D.” or “M.D.” after their names—must be humble in the face of them. The CDC represents a formidable concentration of scientific talent and knowledge that dwarfs the perspective of any one individual. In a crisis like COVID-19, we need to defer to that expertise, at least conditionally.

“If we look at social media, things could look frightening,” says Hass. When hundreds of millions of people are vaccinated, millions of them will be afflicted anyway, in the course of life, by conditions like strokes, anaphylaxis, and Bell’s palsy. “We have to have faith that people collecting the data will let us know if we are seeing those things above the baseline rate.”

3. Who was studied, and where?

Animal experiments tell scientists a lot, but their applicability to our daily human lives will be limited. Similarly, if researchers only studied men, the conclusions might not be relevant to women, and vice versa.

Many psychology studies rely on WEIRD (Western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic) participants, mainly college students, which creates an in-built bias in the discipline’s conclusions. Historically, biomedical studies also bias toward gathering measures from white male study participants, which again, limits generalizability of findings. Does that mean you should dismiss Western science? Of course not. It’s just the equivalent of a “Caution,” “Yield,” or “Roadwork Ahead” sign on the road to understanding.

This applies to the coronavirus vaccines now being distributed and administered around the world. The vaccines will have side effects; all medicines do. Those side effects will be worse for some people than others, depending on their genetic inheritance, medical status, age, upbringing, current living conditions, and other factors.

For Hass, it amounts to this question: Will those side effects be worse, on balance, than COVID-19, for most people?

“When I hear that four in 100,000 [of people in the vaccine trials] had Bell’s palsy, I know that it would have been a heck of a lot worse if 100,000 people had COVID. Three hundred people would have died and many others been stuck with chronic health problems.”

4. How big was the sample?

In general, the more participants in a study, the more valid its results. That said, a large sample is sometimes impossible or even undesirable for certain kinds of studies. During COVID-19, limited time has constrained the sample sizes.

However, that acknowledged, it’s still the case that some studies have been much larger than others—and the sample sizes of the vaccine trials can still provide us with enough information to make informed decisions. Doctors and nurses on the front lines of COVID-19—who are now the very first people being injected with the vaccine—think in terms of “biological plausibility,” as Hass says.

Did the admittedly rushed FDA approval of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine make sense, given what we already know? Tens of thousands of doctors who have been grappling with COVID-19 are voting with their arms, in effect volunteering to be a sample for their patients. If they didn’t think the vaccine was safe, you can bet they’d resist it. When the vaccine becomes available to ordinary people, we’ll know a lot more about its effects than we do today, thanks to health care providers paving the way.

5. Did the researchers control for key differences, and do those differences apply to you?

Diversity or gender balance aren’t necessarily virtues in experimental research, though ideally a study sample is as representative of the overall population as possible. However, many studies use intentionally homogenous groups, because this allows the researchers to limit the number of different factors that might affect the result.

While good researchers try to compare apples to apples, and control for as many differences as possible in their analyses, running a study always involves trade-offs between what can be accomplished as a function of study design, and how generalizable the findings can be.

The Science of Happiness

What does it take to live a happier life? Learn research-tested strategies that you can put into practice today. Hosted by award-winning psychologist Dacher Keltner. Co-produced by PRX and UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center.

• Apple Podcasts
• Google Podcasts

You also need to ask if the specific population studied even applies to you. For example, when one study found that cloth masks didn’t work in “high-risk situations,” it was sometimes used as evidence against mask mandates.

However, a look beyond the headlines revealed that the study was of health care workers treating COVID-19 patients, which is a vastly more dangerous situation than, say, going to the grocery store. Doctors who must intubate patients can end up being splattered with saliva. In that circumstance, one cloth mask won’t cut it. They also need an N95, a face shield, two layers of gloves, and two layers of gown. For the rest of us in ordinary life, masks do greatly reduce community spread, if as many people as possible are wearing them.

6. Was there a control group?

One of the first things to look for in methodology is whether the population tested was randomly selected, whether there was a control group, and whether people were randomly assigned to either group without knowing which one they were in. This is especially important if a study aims to suggest that a certain experience or treatment might actually cause a specific outcome, rather than just reporting a correlation between two variables (see next point).

For example, were some people randomly assigned a specific meditation practice while others engaged in a comparable activity or exercise? If the sample is large enough, randomized trials can produce solid conclusions. But, sometimes, a study will not have a control group because it’s ethically impossible. We can’t, for example, let sick people go untreated just to see what would happen. Biomedical research often makes use of standard “treatment as usual” or placebos in control groups. They also follow careful ethical guidelines to protect patients from both maltreatment and being deprived necessary treatment. When you’re reading about studies of masks, social distancing, and treatments during the COVID-19, you can partially gauge the reliability and validity of the study by first checking if it had a control group. If it didn’t, the findings should be taken as preliminary.

7. Did the researchers establish causality, correlation, dependence, or some other kind of relationship?

We often hear “Correlation is not causation” shouted as a kind of battle cry, to try to discredit a study. But correlation—the degree to which two or more measurements seem connected—is important, and can be a step toward eventually finding causation—that is, establishing a change in one variable directly triggers a change in another. Until then, however, there is no way to ascertain the direction of a correlational relationship (does A change B, or does B change A), or to eliminate the possibility that a third, unmeasured factor is behind the pattern of both variables without further analysis.

In the end, the important thing is to accurately identify the relationship. This has been crucial in understanding steps to counter the spread of COVID-19 like shelter-in-place orders. Just showing that greater compliance with shelter-in-place mandates was associated with lower hospitalization rates is not as conclusive as showing that one community that enacted shelter-in-place mandates had lower hospitalization rates than a different community of similar size and population density that elected not to do so.

We are not the first people to face an infection without understanding the relationships between factors that would lead to more of it. During the bubonic plague, cities would order rodents killed to control infection. They were onto something: Fleas that lived on rodents were indeed responsible. But then human cases would skyrocket.

Why? Because the fleas would migrate off the rodent corpses onto humans, which would worsen infection. Rodent control only reduces bubonic plague if it’s done proactively; once the outbreak starts, killing rats can actually make it worse. Similarly, we can’t jump to conclusions during the COVID-19 pandemic when we see correlations.

8. Are journalists and politicians, or even scientists, overstating the result?

Language that suggests a fact is “proven” by one study or which promotes one solution for all people is most likely overstating the case. Sweeping generalizations of any kind often indicate a lack of humility that should be a red flag to readers. A study may very well “suggest” a certain conclusion but it rarely, if ever, “proves” it.

This is why we use a lot of cautious, hedging language in Greater Good , like “might” or “implies.” This applies to COVID-19 as well. In fact, this understanding could save your life.

When President Trump touted the advantages of hydroxychloroquine as a way to prevent and treat COVID-19, he was dramatically overstating the results of one observational study. Later studies with control groups showed that it did not work—and, in fact, it didn’t work as a preventative for President Trump and others in the White House who contracted COVID-19. Most survived that outbreak, but hydroxychloroquine was not one of the treatments that saved their lives. This example demonstrates how misleading and even harmful overstated results can be, in a global pandemic.

9. Is there any conflict of interest suggested by the funding or the researchers’ affiliations?

A 2015 study found that you could drink lots of sugary beverages without fear of getting fat, as long as you exercised. The funder? Coca Cola, which eagerly promoted the results. This doesn’t mean the results are wrong. But it does suggest you should seek a second opinion : Has anyone else studied the effects of sugary drinks on obesity? What did they find?

It’s possible to take this insight too far. Conspiracy theorists have suggested that “Big Pharma” invented COVID-19 for the purpose of selling vaccines. Thus, we should not trust their own trials showing that the vaccine is safe and effective.

But, in addition to the fact that there is no compelling investigative evidence that pharmaceutical companies created the virus, we need to bear in mind that their trials didn’t unfold in a vacuum. Clinical trials were rigorously monitored and independently reviewed by third-party entities like the World Health Organization and government organizations around the world, like the FDA in the United States.

Does that completely eliminate any risk? Absolutely not. It does mean, however, that conflicts of interest are being very closely monitored by many, many expert eyes. This greatly reduces the probability and potential corruptive influence of conflicts of interest.

10. Do the authors reference preceding findings and original sources?

The scientific method is based on iterative progress, and grounded in coordinating discoveries over time. Researchers study what others have done and use prior findings to guide their own study approaches; every study builds on generations of precedent, and every scientist expects their own discoveries to be usurped by more sophisticated future work. In the study you are reading, do the researchers adequately describe and acknowledge earlier findings, or other key contributions from other fields or disciplines that inform aspects of the research, or the way that they interpret their results?

Greater Good’s Guide to Well-Being During Coronavirus

Practices, resources, and articles for individuals, parents, and educators facing COVID-19

This was crucial for the debates that have raged around mask mandates and social distancing. We already knew quite a bit about the efficacy of both in preventing infections, informed by centuries of practical experience and research.

When COVID-19 hit American shores, researchers and doctors did not question the necessity of masks in clinical settings. Here’s what we didn’t know: What kinds of masks would work best for the general public, who should wear them, when should we wear them, were there enough masks to go around, and could we get enough people to adopt best mask practices to make a difference in the specific context of COVID-19 ?

Over time, after a period of confusion and contradictory evidence, those questions have been answered . The very few studies that have suggested masks don’t work in stopping COVID-19 have almost all failed to account for other work on preventing the disease, and had results that simply didn’t hold up. Some were even retracted .

So, when someone shares a coronavirus study with you, it’s important to check the date. The implications of studies published early in the pandemic might be more limited and less conclusive than those published later, because the later studies could lean on and learn from previously published work. Which leads us to the next question you should ask in hearing about coronavirus research…

11. Do researchers, journalists, and politicians acknowledge limitations and entertain alternative explanations?

Is the study focused on only one side of the story or one interpretation of the data? Has it failed to consider or refute alternative explanations? Do they demonstrate awareness of which questions are answered and which aren’t by their methods? Do the journalists and politicians communicating the study know and understand these limitations?

When the Annals of Internal Medicine published a Danish study last month on the efficacy of cloth masks, some suggested that it showed masks “make no difference” against COVID-19.

The study was a good one by the standards spelled out in this article. The researchers and the journal were both credible, the study was randomized and controlled, and the sample size (4,862 people) was fairly large. Even better, the scientists went out of their way to acknowledge the limits of their work: “Inconclusive results, missing data, variable adherence, patient-reported findings on home tests, no blinding, and no assessment of whether masks could decrease disease transmission from mask wearers to others.”

Unfortunately, their scientific integrity was not reflected in the ways the study was used by some journalists, politicians, and people on social media. The study did not show that masks were useless. What it did show—and what it was designed to find out—was how much protection masks offered to the wearer under the conditions at the time in Denmark. In fact, the amount of protection for the wearer was not large, but that’s not the whole picture: We don’t wear masks mainly to protect ourselves, but to protect others from infection. Public-health recommendations have stressed that everyone needs to wear a mask to slow the spread of infection.

“We get vaccinated for the greater good, not just to protect ourselves ”

As the authors write in the paper, we need to look to other research to understand the context for their narrow results. In an editorial accompanying the paper in Annals of Internal Medicine , the editors argue that the results, together with existing data in support of masks, “should motivate widespread mask wearing to protect our communities and thereby ourselves.”

Something similar can be said of the new vaccine. “We get vaccinated for the greater good, not just to protect ourselves,” says Hass. “Being vaccinated prevents other people from getting sick. We get vaccinated for the more vulnerable in our community in addition for ourselves.”

Ultimately, the approach we should take to all new studies is a curious but skeptical one. We should take it all seriously and we should take it all with a grain of salt. You can judge a study against your experience, but you need to remember that your experience creates bias. You should try to cultivate humility, doubt, and patience. You might not always succeed; when you fail, try to admit fault and forgive yourself.

Above all, we need to try to remember that science is a process, and that conclusions always raise more questions for us to answer. That doesn’t mean we never have answers; we do. As the pandemic rages and the scientific process unfolds, we as individuals need to make the best decisions we can, with the information we have.

This article was revised and updated from a piece published by Greater Good in 2015, “ 10 Questions to Ask About Scientific Studies .”

About the Authors

Jeremy Adam Smith

Uc berkeley.

Jeremy Adam Smith edits the GGSC’s online magazine, Greater Good . He is also the author or coeditor of five books, including The Daddy Shift , Are We Born Racist? , and (most recently) The Gratitude Project: How the Science of Thankfulness Can Rewire Our Brains for Resilience, Optimism, and the Greater Good . Before joining the GGSC, Jeremy was a John S. Knight Journalism Fellow at Stanford University.

Emiliana R. Simon-Thomas

Emiliana R. Simon-Thomas, Ph.D. , is the science director of the Greater Good Science Center, where she directs the GGSC’s research fellowship program and serves as a co-instructor of its Science of Happiness and Science of Happiness at Work online courses.

You May Also Enjoy

This article — and everything on this site — is funded by readers like you.

Become a subscribing member today. Help us continue to bring “the science of a meaningful life” to you and to millions around the globe.

• National Security
• Environment
• Special Investigations
• More Ways to Donate
• Impact & Reports
• Join Newsletter
• Become a Source

© THE INTERCEPT

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Leaked Grant Proposal Details High-Risk Coronavirus Research

The proposal, rejected by U.S. military research agency DARPA, describes the insertion of human-specific cleavage sites into SARS-related bat coronaviruses.

A grant proposal   written by the U.S.-based nonprofit the EcoHealth Alliance and submitted in 2018 to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, provides evidence that the group was working — or at least planning to work — on several risky areas of research. Among the scientific tasks the group described in its proposal, which was rejected by DARPA, was the creation of full-length infectious clones of bat SARS-related coronaviruses and the insertion of a tiny part of the virus known as a “proteolytic cleavage site” into bat coronaviruses. Of particular interest was a type of cleavage site able to interact with furin, an enzyme expressed in human cells.

The EcoHealth Alliance did not respond to inquiries about the document, despite having answered previous queries from The Intercept about the group’s government-funded coronavirus research. The group’s president, Peter Daszak, acknowledged the public discussion of an unfunded EcoHealth proposal in a tweet on Saturday. He did not dispute its authenticity.

Join Our Newsletter

Original reporting. fearless journalism. delivered to you..

Since the genetic code of the coronavirus that caused the pandemic was first sequenced, scientists have puzzled over the “furin cleavage site.” This strange feature on the spike protein of the virus had never been seen in SARS-related betacoronaviruses, the class to which SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes the respiratory illness Covid-19, belongs.

The furin cleavage site enables the virus to more efficiently bind to and release its genetic material into a human cell and is one of the reasons that the virus is so easily transmissible and harmful. But scientists are divided over how this particular site wound up in the virus, and the cleavage site became a major focus of the heated debate over the origins of the pandemic.

Many who believe that the virus that caused the pandemic emerged from a laboratory have pointed out that it is unlikely that the particular sequence of amino acids that make up the furin cleavage site would have occurred naturally.

Adherents of the idea that SARS-CoV-2 emerged from a natural spillover from animal hosts have argued that it could have evolved naturally from an as-yet undiscovered virus. Further, they argued, scientists were unlikely to have engineered the feature.

“There is no logical reason why an engineered virus would utilize such a suboptimal furin cleavage site, which would entail such an unusual and needlessly complex feat of genetic engineering,” 23 scientists wrote earlier this month in an  article in the journal Cell. “There is no evidence of prior research at the [Wuhan Institute of Virology] involving the artificial insertion of complete furin cleavage sites into coronaviruses.”

But the proposal describes the process of looking for novel furin cleavage sites in bat coronaviruses the scientists had sampled and inserting them into the spikes of SARS-related viruses in the laboratory.

“We will introduce appropriate human-specific cleavage sites and evaluate growth potential in [a type of mammalian cell commonly used in microbiology] and HAE cultures,” referring to cells found in the lining of the human airway, the proposal states.

The new proposal, which also described a plan to mass vaccinate bats in caves, does not provide conclusive evidence that the virus that caused the pandemic emerged from a lab. And virus experts remain sharply divided over its origins. But several scientists who work with coronaviruses told The Intercept that they felt that the proposal shifted the terrain of the debate.

Tipping the Scales

“Some kind of threshold has been crossed,” said Alina Chan, a Boston-based scientist and co-author of the upcoming book “Viral: The Search for the Origin of Covid-19.” Chan has been vocal about the need to thoroughly investigate the possibility that SARS-CoV-2 emerged from a lab while remaining open to both possible theories of its development. For Chan, the revelation from the proposal was the description of the insertion of a novel furin cleavage site into bat coronaviruses — something people previously speculated, but had no evidence, may have happened.

“Let’s look at the big picture: A novel SARS coronavirus emerges in Wuhan with a novel cleavage site in it. We now have evidence that, in early 2018, they had pitched inserting novel cleavage sites into novel SARS-related viruses in their lab,” said Chan. “This definitely tips the scales for me. And I think it should do that for many other scientists too.”

Richard Ebright, a molecular biologist at Rutgers University who has espoused the possibility that SARS-CoV-2 may have originated in a lab, agreed. “The relevance of this is that SARS Cov-2, the pandemic virus, is the only virus in its entire genus of SARS-related coronaviruses that contains a fully functional cleavage site at the S1, S2 junction,” said Ebright, referring to the place where two subunits of the spike protein meet. “And here is a proposal from the beginning of 2018, proposing explicitly to engineer that sequence at that position in chimeric lab-generated coronaviruses.”

“A possible transmission chain is now logically consistent — which it was not before I read the proposal.”

Martin Wikelski, a director at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior in Germany, whose work tracking bats and other animals was referenced in the grant application without his knowledge, also said it made him more open to the idea that the pandemic may have its roots in a lab. “The information in the proposal certainly changes my thoughts about a possible origin of SARS-CoV-2,” Wikelski told The Intercept. “In fact, a possible transmission chain is now logically consistent — which it was not before I read the proposal.”

But others insisted that the research posed little or no threat and pointed out that the proposal called for most of the genetic engineering work to be done in North Carolina rather than China. “Given that the work wasn’t funded and wasn’t proposed to take place in Wuhan anyway it’s hard to assess any bearing on the origin of SARS-CoV-2,” Stephen Goldstein, a scientist who studies the evolution of viral genes at the University of Utah, and an author of the recent Cell article, wrote in an email to The Intercept.

Other scientists contacted by The Intercept noted that there is published evidence that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was already engaged in some of the genetic engineering work described in the proposal and that viruses designed in North Carolina could easily be used in China. “The mail is filled with little envelopes with plasmid dried on to filter paper that scientists routinely send each other,” said Jack Nunberg, director of the Montana Biotechnology Center at the University of Montana.

NIH Documents Provide New Evidence U.S. Funded Gain-of-Function Research in Wuhan

Vincent Racaniello, a professor of microbiology and immunology at Columbia University, was adamant that the proposal did not change his opinion that the pandemic was caused by a natural spillover from animals to humans. “There are zero data to support a lab origin ‘notion,’” Racaniello wrote in an email. He said he believed that the research being proposed had the potential to fall in the category of gain-of-function research of concern, as did an experiment that was detailed in another grant proposal recently obtained by The Intercept. The government funds such research, in which scientists intentionally make viruses more pathogenic or transmissible in order to study them, only in a narrow range of circumstances . And DARPA rejected the proposal at least in part because of concerns that it involved such research.

While Racaniello acknowledged that the research in the DARPA proposal entailed some danger, he said “the benefits far, far outweigh the risk.” He also said the fact that the viruses described in the proposal were not known pathogens mitigated the concern. “This is not SARS,” he said, referring to SARS-CoV-1, the virus that caused a 2003 outbreak. “It’s SARS-related.”

But SARS-CoV-2 is not a direct descendant of that virus — it’s a relative.

In fact, the viruses described in the grant proposal, which was first posted online by the research group DRASTIC , were not known pathogens. And the authors of the grant proposal make the case that because the scientists would be using SARS-related bat viruses, as opposed to the SARS virus that was known to infect humans, the research was exempt from “gain-of-function concerns.” But according to several scientists interviewed by The Intercept, the viruses presented a threat nevertheless.

“The work describes generating full-length bat SARS-related coronaviruses that are thought to pose a risk of human spillover. And that’s the type of work that people could plausibly postulate could have led to a lab-associated origin of SARS-CoV-2,” said Jesse Bloom, a professor at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and director of the Bloom Lab, which studies the evolution of viruses. Bloom pointed out that the scientists acknowledge the risk to humans in their proposal. “It’s an explicit goal of the grant to identify the bat SARS-related coronaviruses that they think pose the highest risk.”

Stuart Newman, a professor of cell biology who directs the developmental biology laboratory at New York Medical College, also said the fact that the viruses weren’t known to be dangerous didn’t preclude the possibility that they might become so. “That’s really disingenuous,” Newman said of the argument. “The people that are claiming natural emergence say that it begins with a bat virus that evolved to be compatible with humans. If you use that logic, then this virus could be a threat because it could also make that transition.” Newman, a longtime critic of gain-of-function research and founder of the Council for Responsible Genetics, said that the proposal confirmed some of his worst fears. “This is not like slightly stepping over the line,” said Newman. “This is doing everything that people say is going to cause a pandemic if you do it.”

While the grant proposal does not provide the smoking gun that SARS-CoV-2 escaped from a lab, for some scientists it adds to the evidence that it might have. “Whether that particular study did or didn’t [lead to the pandemic], it certainly could have,” said Nunberg, of Montana Biotechnology Center. “Once you make an unnatural virus, you’re basically setting it up in an unstable evolutionary place. The virus is going to undergo a whole bunch of changes to try and cope with its imperfections. So who knows what will come of it.” The risks of such research are profound and irreversible, he said. “You can’t call back the virus once you release it into the environment.”

DARPA, a division of the Department of Defense, said regulations prevented it from confirming that it had reviewed the proposal. “Since EcoHealth Alliance may or may not be the direct source of the material in question, and we are precluded by Federal Acquisition Regulations from divulging bidders or any associated proposal details, we recommend that you reach out to them to confirm the document’s authenticity,” a DARPA spokesperson wrote in an email to The Intercept. The British Daily Telegraph reported that it had confirmed the document’s legitimacy with a former member of the Trump administration.

The Telegraph story erroneously reported that the scientists proposed to inoculate bats with live viruses. In fact, they hoped to inoculate them with chimeric S proteins, which were proposed to be developed through a subcontract in the grant in Ralph Baric’s lab at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, not in Wuhan. Baric did not respond to The Intercept’s request for comment.

Conflict of Interest

Many questions remain about the proposal, including whether any of the research described in it was completed. Even without the DARPA funding, there were many other potential ways to pay for the experiments. And scientists interviewed for this article agreed that often researchers do some of the science they describe in proposals before or after they submit them.

“This was a highly funded group of researchers that wouldn’t let one rejection halt their work,” said Chan, the “Viral” author.

Perhaps the most troubling question about the proposal is why, within the small group of scientists who have been searching for information that could shed light on the origins of the pandemic, there has apparently been so little awareness of the planned work until now. Peter Daszak and Linfa Wang, two of the researchers who submitted the proposal, did not previously acknowledge it.

Daszak, the EcoHealth Alliance president, has actively sought to quash interest in the idea that the novel coronavirus originated in a lab. In February 2020, as the pandemic began to grip major cities in the U.S., he began organizing scientists to write an open letter that was published in the Lancet addressing the origins of the virus. “The rapid, open, and transparent sharing of data on this outbreak is now being threatened by rumours and misinformation around its origins,” read the statement signed by Daszak and 26 co-authors. “We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin.”

Daszak directed and gathered signatures for the letter, all the while suggesting that he and his collaborators on the proposed DARPA project, Baric and Wang, distance themselves from the effort.

“I spoke with Linfa [Wang] last night about the statement we sent round. He thinks, and I agree with him, that you, me and him should not sign this statement, so it has some distance from us and therefore doesn’t work in a counterproductive way,” Daszak wrote to Baric in February 2020, just weeks before it appeared in the journal, according to an email surfaced a year later by public health investigative research group U.S. Right to Know. “We’ll then put it out in a way that doesn’t link it back to our collaboration so we maximize an independent voice.” Ultimately, Daszak did sign the letter.

“I also think this is a good decision,” Baric replied. “Otherwise it looks self-serving and we lose impact.”

Baric and Wang — a professor in the emerging infectious diseases program at Duke-NUS Medical School, Singapore — did not respond to inquiries from The Intercept about their decision not to sign the letter in the Lancet.

Daszak was also a member of the joint team the World Health Organization sent to China in February 2020 to investigate the origins of the pandemic, which concluded that it was “extremely unlikely” that the virus had been released from a laboratory. (In March, WHO  called  for further investigation of the origins of the virus and stated that “all hypotheses remain open.”)

“I find it really disappointing that one of the members of the joint WHO-China team, which is essentially the group of scientists that were tasked as representatives of both the scientific community and the World Health Organization of investigating this, are actually on this proposal, knew that this line of research was at least under consideration, and didn’t mention it all,” said Bloom, of Fred Hutch. “Whatever information that relates to help people think about this just needs to be made transparently available and explained.”

Correction: September 24, 2021

A previous version of this article stated incorrectly that the EcoHealth Alliance proposal had been featured on Sky News Australia.

Correction: September 23, 2021, 3:30 p.m.

A previous version of this article stated incorrectly that Linfa Wang was a member of the WHO-China team.

Contact the author:

Additional credits:.

Additional Reporting: Mara Hvistendahl

New Details Emerge About Coronavirus Research at Chinese Lab

I Visited a Chinese Lab at the Center of a Biosafety Debate. What I Learned Helps Explain the Clash Over Covid-19’s Origins.

Latest stories.

Fox Used to Hate Disinformation Experts. Now It’s Hiring One.

Ken Klippenstein

Fox Corporation is hiring a counter-disinformation specialist as Fox News continues to denounce efforts to fight disinformation.

NBC Rejects Trump Voice but Embraces War Party

Ronna McDaniel is unhired, but NBC still pays retired generals and admirals who have a personal stake in what they "analyze."

Israel’s War on Gaza

PEN America in Damage-Control Mode Amid Revolt From Staff and Palestinian Writers

Prem Thakker, Ryan Grim

“We’re not going to clean up your mess,” said analyst Rula Jebreal about PEN America’s recent outreach to prominent Palestinian voices.

Join Our Newsletter Original reporting. Fearless journalism. Delivered to you.

• Accessibility Options:
• Skip to Content
• Skip to Search
• Skip to footer
• Office of Disability Services
• Request Assistance
• 305-284-2374
• High Contrast
• School of Architecture

College of Arts and Sciences

• Miami Herbert Business School
• School of Communication
• School of Education and Human Development
• College of Engineering
• School of Law
• Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science
• Miller School of Medicine
• Frost School of Music
• School of Nursing and Health Studies
• The Graduate School
• Division of Continuing and International Education
• People Search
• Class Search
• IT Help and Support
• Privacy Statement
• Student Life
• University of Miami
• Division of University Communications
• Office of Media Relations
• Miller School of Medicine Communications
• Hurricane Sports
• UM Media Experts
• Emergency Preparedness
• Faculty Recognition
• Student Corner
• People and Community
• Lowe Art Museum
• Social Sciences
• The Advanced Study of the Americas
• Publications
• Research & Outreach
• Latest Headlines
• Arts & Sciences
• Subscribe to News@TheU Newsletter
• UM NEWS HOME

Investigating the effects of COVID-19

By Deserae E. del Campo [email protected] 04-16-2020

How is COVID-19 spreading throughout South Florida and can mathematical models help detect the transmission and containment of the virus? Is the impact of social distancing and community lockdowns affecting families and elevating anxiety and depression in children? What does the public believe about the virus and are policymakers doing their best to share correct information about COVID-19? Faculty across many disciplines will begin answering those questions and many more with the help of internal funding from the University of Miami College of Arts and Sciences . “There are multiple lessons to learn about how this pandemic is affecting society. The goal in supporting faculty research is to create innovative approaches to difficult and complex problems happening within our community and communities around the world, and how our responses to COVID-19 will help us learn to develop new methods in handling natural disasters,” said Leonidas Bachas, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences . The eight winning proposals feature projects rooted in the social and natural sciences — mathematics, psychology, political science, sociology — and are presented in methods of analytical study and scholarship addressing the many impacts of COVID-19. Here’s a look at the proposals and the teams behind them: Psychological consequences of quarantine Combining the expertise of researchers from the Department of Psychology , this proposal will examine if people adhere to social distancing measures. The team is using survey data collection from a sample of participants with diverse sociodemographic backgrounds to find predictors of adherence to social distancing and the risk factors for those who do not follow the COVID-19 social distancing guidelines. The team will analyze the psychological symptoms of the COVID-19 pandemic, which is key for planning interventions that will alleviate psychosocial effects and help people cope with social distancing. According to their proposal, self-quarantine and social distancing measures related to the pandemic can cause individuals to experience anger, depression, and post-traumatic stress symptoms.  

“The proposed project has significant potential benefit to South Florida. It will provide a basis for developing evidence-based intervention strategies to address the needs of the community affected by the pandemic,” the team wrote in its proposal. The team includes Professor Maria Magdalena Llabre , Professor Patrice G. Saab , and Associate Professor Kiara Timpano .    Families and child functioning For this proposal, Psychology Professor Jill Ehrenreich-May  is exploring how families and children are being affected by the COVID-19 outbreak. In her proposal, Ehrenreich-May addresses how there is little “research about the impact of community-level social distancing measures and lockdowns on family functioning and, in turn, child anxiety and depression.”  The study is part of a coordinated effort with collaborators in four different locations—Toronto, Boston, and Miami. Measurements and data will be taken from surveys assessing family functioning, child anxiety, and depression symptoms as well as media and news consumption habits, social distancing habits, and children’s comprehension of the current situation. According to the proposal, the study will also address the levels of anxiety and depression experienced by families and children during a pandemic outbreak and establish resources for individuals and families encountering similar experiences. Modeling the outbreak Funding for this project will help Department of Mathematics Assistant Professor Xi Huo and Professor Shigui Ruan analyze modelling approaches to measure the transmission dynamics of COVID-19. According to their study, social distancing, isolation, and quarantine measures are major health interventions made to contain an infectious disease. Yet, the COVID-19 outbreak has created challenges due to limited testing kits during its early phases, which hindered the detection of cases, caused late healthcare responses, and a depletion of medical supplies.   Using mathematical models, Huo and Ruan will construct simulations to study the impacts of case identifications and early interventions surrounding the outbreak of COVID-19 in South Florida specifically. They will also investigate how the magnitude of an outbreak can affect healthcare resources, as well as the efficiency of novel testing options and isolation strategies. Resilience and risk Brain functionality during times of crisis is at the core of this proposal submitted by Associate Professor of Psychology Jennifer C. Britton . By using fMRI scans of the brain, Britton will determine the relationship between emotional flexibility, the emotional response during social distancing, and the internalizing symptoms such as depression and anxiety. To find out how the brain is functioning during the pandemic, Britton is using fMRI data to analyze the brain’s valence flexibility, which is the ability to effectively switch from negative to positive information. Valence flexibility, according to her proposal, “may be an important factor in determine resilience and/or vulnerability to internalizing disorders like anxiety and depress.” “In this time of uncertainty surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic, cognitive and emotional flexibility are needed,” said Britton in her proposal. “Cognitive flexibility, an executive function, allows one to adapt to changing situations. In addition to cognitive flexibility, individuals must also exert emotional flexibility to cope with the negative emotions experienced due to COVID-19-related threats such as fear of illness and social isolation.”  People often forgotten For this proposal, Assistant Professor of Sociology Kathryn Nowotny is partnering with Dr. Zinzi Bailey, assistant scientist at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine’s Jay Weiss Institute for Health Equity at the Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center, to study the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the health and wellbeing of adults under community supervision and within community correctional facilities. “Given the rapid spread of the novel coronavirus COVID-19 within prisons in other countries, U.S. correctional agencies are scrambling to implement strategies to mitigate the spread of COVID-19. Many people under the supervision of the correctional system are in relatively poor health and have chronic health conditions, like high blood pressure, asthma, cancer, tuberculosis, hepatitis C and HIV, making them particularly vulnerable to communicable diseases,” the team wrote in their proposal. By using precise data collection and analytical techniques, Nowotny and Bailey will identify the testing and diagnosis prevalence of COVID-19, and the health and service needs such as unemployment services and childcare services of adults under community supervision. They will also characterize how the broad impacts of COVID-19 — school closures, food insecurity, stress, social isolation, as well as community corrections, service, and treatment closures — are affecting the mental health and wellbeing of adults under community supervision. Consequences of misinformation This team brings together researchers in the departments of Political Science and Geography and Regional Studies to determine the causes and consequences of COVID-19 misinformation.

According to the proposal, “recent data suggests that one-third of Americans believe the consequences of COVID-19 have been exaggerated for political gain and that the virus was intentionally created and released to harm people.” The team proposes to assess the public’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic by collecting survey data on participants’ awareness of the outbreak and their beliefs about the causes and consequences of the coronavirus. They will also measure public perceptions of government responses to COVID-19 to determine how Floridians change their perceptions and behaviors in response to shifting policies and messaging. The findings will help science, health, and policy communicators develop best practices for sharing information and improving public compliance with safety measures. Team members include Associate Professors Casey Klofstad and Joseph Uscinski in the Department of Political Science and Associate Professor Justin Stoler in the Department of Geography and Regional Studies. Digital narratives of COVID-19 Assistant Professor Susanna Allés-Torrent in the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures is using digital humanities techniques to data-mine the web to compare the academic and social views of the pandemic. The study aims to explore the social and digital narrative behind the data from humanistic and bilingual perspectives. “Particularly in this time, in which data about COVID-19 seems to be everywhere and overwhelmingly generated in large volumes, digital humanities approaches, methodologies, and tools can help people understand information about it,” she wrote in her proposal. The proposal will bring together a community of scholars and students from the University of Miami and other institutions to create a data mining group and organize a collaborative, hands-on workshop. Scholars and researchers will gather data by reading and reviewing English and Spanish sources from multiple online and social media outlets while also conducting computerized remote analytical data collection. Serving those in need   Funding for this project will help Assistant Professor of Psychology Sannisha Dale understand the needs and concerns of Black women living with HIV in Miami, and asses how COVID-19 is affecting an already stressed community. Dale and her team will conduct phone interviews and share information with a wide selection of HIV-positive Black women to obtain information on their concerns and worries regarding the pandemic and its disruption to their healthcare needs, from canceled appointments to the lack of medication supply or refills. The interviews will then be transcribed to find and decipher prominent issues expressed by the participants. “The COVID-19 pandemic has and may continue to have far-reaching consequences, particularly for those who are immune-compromised. However, timely research may be beneficial in informing future practices and interventions that could be implemented to sustain the health of immune-compromised individuals, such as women living with HIV,” wrote Dale in her proposal.

Undergraduate and Graduate

Research and outreach, get started, give to the college, make a gift.

• 1252 Memorial Drive Ashe Building - Rm # 227 Coral Gables , FL 33146
• 305- 284-4117 305- 284-4117
• UM News and Events
• Alumni & Friends
• 'Cane Watch

Tools and Resources

• Academic Calendar
• Department Search
• Parking & Transportation
• social-facebook
• social-twitter
• social-youtube
• social-instagram

Copyright: 2024 University of Miami. All Rights Reserved. Emergency Information Privacy Statement & Legal Notices Title IX & Gender Equity Website Feedback

Individuals with disabilities who experience any technology-based barriers accessing the University’s websites or services can visit the Office of Workplace Equity and Inclusion .