It’s a reversal for an administration that’s been loath to prepare for pandemics or cooperate with China, where Covid-19 jumped from wildlife to people.
A group of scientists gathered—virtually, of course—to share their research on a video call. At this point in the Covid-19 pandemic, that was utterly normal. What was not at at all normal: The group was launching an international network to detect pathogens that can jump from wildlife to the human population, a field of inquiry that’s become politicized since the coronavirus pandemic began—and they were doing it with federal money, even though the United States government has been the source of the politicization.
The network, known as CREID (for Centers for Research in Emerging Infectious Diseases), was announced three weeks ago by the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases within the National Institutes of Health. The NIH is investing $17 million this year and $82 million across five years to create 11 research nodes, mostly at US universities, that will spin up research partnerships in 28 other countries—including China, where the current pandemic began.
It’s an odd investment, maybe even a quiet about-face, for an administration that has spent the past nine months casting doubt on the coronavirus’s origins and demonizing the country where people were first affected, variously alleging malign secrecy, lab sloppiness, and malicious intent. Scientists who will be heading the centers are trying not to look too hard at that paradox, choosing instead to focus on the network’s promise: If all goes well, this could establish a worldwide surveillance structure that detects the next pandemic pathogen before it leaps into humans from the wild world.
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