Given the university’s response, this is clearly an institutional problem. The United States of America should not award them more grant money to study viruses in any capacity.
Putting millions of lives at risk via this kind of intentional negligence (failure to report and failure to quarantine after exposure) should be a felony.
> Given the university’s response, this is clearly an institutional problem. The United States of America should not award them more grant money to study viruses in any capacity.
I suspect that this could have happened at any institution. Bureaucracy is the same everywhere. There are always weak links, misjudgments, selfishness, ass-covering. IMO this is clearly a human problem.
There's not a better institution. Nobody can be trusted with this dangerous research.
It would have been no different at any other university. When anything goes wrong with science, safety related or not, the universities and other academic/governmental institutions always protect the professors. Always. Including if the professors have been engaging in fraud. It's a cultural problem in which academics are afforded far too much respect and allowed to do their work with effectively no oversight.
Putting millions of lives at risk via this kind of intentional negligence (failure to report and failure to quarantine after exposure) should be a felony.