By Peter Daszak

“Determining the origins and emergence of a pandemic is as messy and complex as studying a plane crash.”
(Not sure about that analogy - a plane crashes - an outbreak takes off? Is this one of those ‘out in the weeds’ things?)

"Just as an air crash investigator pieces together fragments at a crash site, pinpointing the origins of a new virus is painstakingly difficult (not so difficult as you're making out Pete - we’ll look at that later) ...and time-consuming (= public money-consuming; to pay for the time consuming) ...and requires logic and reason. (tautology, but agreed.

So using “logic and reason”, if the plane crashed in Wuhan - wouldn’t you investigate the site of the crash in Wuhan? Look for the black box? In this case: WIV’s internationally accessible database on which new viruses are meant to be logged?

That database has been offline since July 2020, with “at least 100 unpublished sequences of bat betacoronaviruses” as well as unpublished experimental data from RaTG13 and BtCoV/4991, collected from the Yunan mine outbreak in the spring of 2012.)

What’s the ‘logic and reason’ behind holding an investigation and not looking at that?

According to you, it will exonerate WIV and vindicate your “open and transparent” advocacy of China. So why not investigate it?