More than five months have passed since the nation and world have come under the grip of the coronavirus. Today, as Covid-19 continues to surge throughout the U.S., we wait in lines to get into stores, wear face coverings (well, at least most of us), follow floor markers to help ensure social distancing, and shop quickly to get in and out with our groceries.

University researchers genetically engineer a human pandemic virus. They inject the new virus into a laboratory mouse. The infected mouse then bites a researcher…..It is a plot worthy of a Hollywood blockbuster about risky coronavirus research.

But according to newly obtained minutes of the Institutional Biosafety Committee (IBC) of the University of North Carolina (UNC), Chapel Hill, these exact events need not be imagined. They occurred for real between April 1st and May 6th this year.

Public health advocates were winning. City after city was innovating ways to reduce smoking and protect public health between the 1960s and 1970s. As former industry lobbyist Victor Crawford observed, you’d “put out a fire one place, another one would pop up somewhere else.”

On Monday, NBC News published a puff-piece for the Wuhan Institute of Virology - giving controversial lab which 'could pass for a college campus' a glowing review after a five-hour visit and interviews with several employees.