Jessica Hockett, PhD
Archiving a comment I made on Katherine Watt’s 4 August 2026 post On whether “SARS-CoV-2” is on the US-HHS list of “select agents and toxins” (42 CFR 73) subject to and/or exempt from civil enforcement and criminal prosecution under 42 USC 262a and 18 USC 175 at Bailiwick News Archives (WordPress). Published to Wood House 76 on 6 October 2026.
Hockett to Watt:
Thank you for addressing this.
Your post relates to two Wood House 76 articles published last August: “Does a SARS virus automatically trigger a WHO Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC)?” and “Revisiting questions posed to Katherine Watt about the WHO PHEIC on 30 January 2020 and U.S. PHE on 31 January 2020”.
I revised footnote 4 in the first article this morning because the previous wording was imprecise and could have been read as saying that SARS-CoV-2 was designated a select agent in 2012.
One point may need clarification regarding the new entry covering only the specified SARS-CoV/SARS-CoV-2 chimeras. In its 17 November 2021 interim final rule (86 FR 64075, at 64076), under “Background,” HHS/CDC expressly states: “It should be noted that SARS-CoV-2 is not currently a select agent. However, SARS coronavirus (SARS-CoV), a related virus, is a select agent.” That appears to conflict with the statement reproduced later in the post that “SARS-CoV-2 is listed as a biological select agent or toxin.”
The November 2021 rule also raises these questions:
1) Should we infer that the U.S. government was taking a position on the lab leak versus wet market/zoonosis false binary by creating a separate entry for specified SARS-CoV/SARS-CoV-2 chimeras?
2) What, exactly, did U.S. officials purport to mean by “SARS-CoV-2” before November 2021? How was that category distinguished, legally or physically, from SARS-CoV, a SARS-CoV-2 “variant,” or a SARS-CoV/SARS-CoV-2 chimera?
The more fundamental problem may be that the federal government keeps creating and revising named categories without clearly defining the things those names purportedly identify. The relevant documents don’t treat SARS-CoV, SARS-CoV-2, and the specified chimeras as interchangeable, or necessarily as the same type of thing. But neither do they establish stable, physically demonstrable referents for the various terms.
Saying that a named thing is or is not on a select-agent list therefore gives an impression of precision (or real-ness of non-real objects) even though the underlying “it” remains unclear. The writers of the laws, rules, regulations are attempting to “write into being” things that are not demonstrably existent and/or do not function in the manner(s) alleged.
Select-agent status aside, politically (and in terms of the “order of operations” involving actors, scripts, and performances) the public-facing justification for the WHO PHEIC and the U.S. PHE (later backdated to 27 January 2020 for reasons undisclosed) depended on the claim that a novel, disease-causing thing was spreading within and across countries.
No spread, no “emergency.”
What people may not yet fully apprehend is that no evidence substantiating a “spread” claim was presented to the public then, nor has it been presented since. Neither framework (PHEIC/US PHE) requires the relevant decision-makers to meet a formal evidentiary standard or submit the claims supporting their declarations to independent fact-finding or review.
Put simply, the IHR (2005) and U.S. law permit bodies and officials to merely say there is a threat and trigger “responses”.
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