New Information Confirms Fauci and NIH Misled the Public on Lab Leak Theory
… to no one’s surprise
Turns out that the possibility of COVID originating from a lab leak was not a conspiracy theory after all.
“Experts” dictated many inexcusable and destructive protocols during the pandemic, from pushing ineffective mask mandates to promoting lockdowns and school closures.
But one of their most sinister actions was the almost immediate attempt to shut down debate over the lab leak hypothesis.
This likely emanated from the wrong people noticing the bizarre coincidence of a novel coronavirus beginning to spread in Wuhan, just a few miles away from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a research lab dedicated to studying viruses and how they spread.
Republican Senator Tom Cotton was one of the first prominent individuals to suggest the lab could have been partially responsible. Former President Donald Trump did as well.
That meant that politically motivated “experts” and media outlets such as the Washington Post immediately rushed to label any discussion of the hypothesis as a debunked conspiracy theory.
However, over the past year and a half, the discussion finally shifted towards taking the possibility seriously. That shift has even more abruptly accelerated in recent days.
The Intercept just published newly unredacted emails showing that the same “experts” who had attempted to undermine competing narratives, actually believed it was probable the virus came from the lab.
Scientists like Dr. Fauci, the UK’s Jeremy Farrar, and multiple others repeatedly sent each other messages during the early days of the pandemic suggesting that they harbored substantial doubts about the possibilities of a natural origin.
However, when they realized the implications of that possibility, they rapidly and dramatically switched positions.
Lab Leak Was Initially Deemed Possible
Naturally Dr. Fauci was one of the ringleaders of the early discussions.
When one expert, Kristian Anderson explained that there was a possibility that the virus had been “engineered,” he leapt into action.
Fauci was so concerned that he believed this information might need to be reported to the FBI and MI5
“He should do this very quickly and if everyone agrees with this concern, they should report it to the appropriate authorities. I would imagine that in the USA this would be the FBI and in the UK it would be MI5,” he wrote.
International experts quickly organized a conference call to discuss, and Fauci famously emailed one of his top employees, Hugh Auchincloss, that he would urgently need to speak with him.
“It is essential that we speak this AM. Keep your cell phone on. … You will have tasks today that must be done,” Fauci said.
During a recent deposition, he gave quite an unsatisfactory explanation for the motivations in that email.
He claimed in one answer that he “wanted to be briefed on the scope of what our collaborations were and the kind of work that we were funding in China. I wanted to know what the nature of that work was.”
Except, of course, that doesn’t explain what “tasks” said employee would be required to complete. Explaining the scope of their work and connection to the Wuhan lab would explain why it was “essential” to speak. But what tasks were so imperative that Auchincloss “must” do?
Fauci is, of course, no stranger to deflection when it comes to full and complete explanations for his behavior or statements.
Dr. Fauci Was Finally Asked Difficult Questions, And Unsurprisingly, He Lied
Multiple “experts” on that conference call repeated in writing that they believed the lab leak required strong consideration.
One was described as being “70:30” or “60:40” in favor of an “accidental-release.” Another said he essentially couldn’t imagine the virus occurring naturally.
“I just can’t figure out how this gets accomplished in nature. … it’s stunning.”
Many of those involved then collaborated to write an article just over a month later. It was famously published in Nature, and stated that those who signed didn’t believe “any type of laboratory-based scenario is plausible.”
That article was released quickly, despite the concerns, thanks in large part to Fauci.
One of the other scientists involved in the email chain, Dutch scientist Ron Fouchier, had suggested waiting for more information to emerge before taking a public position.
But Fauci was more concerned about protecting reputations, egos, money and his organization. So he pushed for immediate action.
“I agree that we really cannot take Ron’s suggestion about waiting,” Fauci emailed. “Like all of us, I do not know how this evolved, but given the concerns of so many people and the threat of further distortions on social media, it is essential that we move quickly.”
Jeremy Farrar concurred, replying, “Critical that responsible, respected scientists and agencies get ahead of the science and the narrative of this and are not reacting to reports which could be very damaging.”
Farrar implying that it could be “very damaging” if the lab leak hypothesis was deemed credible is likely the explaination for the rapid mobilization.
Experts didn’t want the wrong people, or those in the media, to seriously consider the possibility that the lab could have potentially “engineered” the virus in some capacity.
Another email from Fouchier was even more obvious.
Lab leak discussion “would unnecessarily distract top researchers from their active duties and do unnecessary harm to science in general and science in China in particular,” Fouchier said.
The emails make it clear that no one involved really had a definitive answer either way.
But instead of telling the truth about their uncertainty while acknowledging the need for more information, they moved to quickly shut down debate.
Informing the public about the possibility of the lab leak may have led to additional government oversight, or in a more catastrophic outcome, awareness that scientific research may have gone too far, resulting in a loss of funding.
So with no further justification, they rapidly coalesced and organized into “debunking” the lab leak as a “conspiracy theory” spokesmen in order to ensure that the proper channels closed ranks around their perspective.
And how right they were. Media outlets and “fact checkers” rushed to label anyone who discussed the lab leak hypothesis. They fanatically defended Fauci and patronizingly dismissed legitimate concerns.
All to protect themselves and their field.
The Intercept quoted Sergei Pond, a virologist from Temple University, on these unredacted emails. He pointed out that they show how poorly conducted their process was, once they determined that it could be damaging for their profession.
“It started out being a fairly careful discussion, with anomalies being aired out and people saying multiple times that there is simply not enough data to resolve this,” he said. “But at some point, I think there was such strong pressure that they went from ‘Let’s just wait to get more data’ to ‘Let’s publish something that has a very strong opinion favoring one explanation over another without acquiring any new data.’”
David Relman, another expert professor of microbiology, immunology, and medicine at Stanford University, agreed.
“When I first saw it in March 2020, the paper read to me as a conclusion in search of an argument,” he said. “Among its many problems, it failed to consider in a serious fashion the possibility of an unwitting and unrecognized accidental leak during aggressive efforts to grow coronaviruses from bat and other field samples. It also assumed that researchers in Wuhan have told the world about every virus and every sequence that was in their laboratories in 2019. But these [unredacted emails] actually provide evidence that the authors considered a few additional lab-associated scenarios, early in their discussions. But then they rushed to judgment, and the lab scenarios fell out of favor.”
Multiple investigations have suggested that COVID was “most likely” due to a lab leak, yet many of those involved in these initial discussions have refused to take responsibility.
Their dismissals shaped the national and international conversation for months, if not years. Yet they were intentionally misleading, as is now almost universally acknowledged.
In particular, Anthony Fauci is guilty of revisionist history, as he so often has been.
The emails clearly show his intention was always to protect his profession, his agency and the scientific community by shutting down debate.
Yet recently he’s claimed to have an “open mind” about the lab leak.
“I have a completely open mind about that, despite people saying that I don’t,” Fauci told Meet the Press.
He made this laughable assertion despite the truth; he didn’t approve of the open discussions taking place daily on social media.
This would be the same social media he claims he never uses.
“I don’t have a Twitter account. I have never had a Twitter account. I don’t intend on having a Twitter account. And I have had nothing to do with Twitter,” Fauci told Neil Cavuto recently.
Intellectually honest people with nothing to hide would have apologized, admitted why they had misgivings, and worked to regain the public’s trust.
But as has been publicly displayed over the past few years, there are evidently few intellectually honest people in the fields of epidemiology or virology.
The unredacted emails reveal what should have been obvious from the beginning. The lab leak was the possible, if not likely explanation for the start of the pandemic.
Yet politics and self-protection took over, and open debate was crushed by the expert-media industrial complex.
Like so many other aspects of COVID debates, Fauci did his best to ensure that he, his methods and his allies were never questioned.
Fauci’s rush to discredit the lab leak hypothesis was also due in part to what he likely learned from Auchincloss. Namely, the fact that hundreds of thousands of dollars of grant money from the U.S. government had been sent to the Wuhan lab.
And not just by the U.S. government, but agencies he was directly involved with.
The National Institutes of Health, under former leaders like Dr. Francis Collins and Fauci, gave grant money to the EcoHealth Alliance, a “scientific research” group that works to prevent the outbreak of emerging diseases.
EcoHealth received this money ostensibly to study how best to identify and control pandemics. They then redirected funds to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where bat viruses were being studied.
The same Wuhan Institute of Virology which may possibly be the source of the pandemic.
The Office of the Inspector General at the Department of Health and Human Services recently conducted an audit of NIH and EcoHealth and found that they failed to ensure compliance with grant requirements.
“Despite identifying potential risks associated with research being performed under the EcoHealth awards, we found that NIH did not effectively monitor or take timely action to address EcoHealth’s compliance with some requirements,” the report read.
Essentially, NIH sent grant money to EcoHealth Alliance with certain limitations on what kind of research it could fund. EcoHealth then sent money to the Wuhan lab, which was conducting risky experiments, and neither the agency or the company effectively monitored the work that was actually being performed.
If that sounds like a major problem, that’s because it is.
Although the investigators said that the lab did cooperate for a time, after the start of the pandemic, they immediately stopped.
“Although WIV cooperated with EcoHealth’s monitoring for several years, WIV’s lack of cooperation following the COVID 19 outbreak limited EcoHealth’s ability to monitor its subrecipient,” it read.
In a stunning turn of events, after the initial outbreak that they may have played a role in starting, the Wuhan lab declined to cooperate with efforts to uncover what happened.
Who could have possibly predicted that? Certainly not those in charge of NIH who distributed grant money and then essentially turned a blind eye to what it was used on afterwards.
The importance of this inexcusable decision making can’t be overstated.
The U.S. government essentially handed over taxpayer money to the Wuhan lab, with little knowledge of how it was being used.
And then scientists involved in funding and advancing this research used their credentials and status to label anyone who pointed out the connection.
Anthony Fauci, Francis Collins, Peter Daszak and an international community of experts organized to write a paper claiming to debunk the lab leak, all while being fully aware that the lab had been experimenting with little oversight or accountability.
Their emails show that they had been reliably informed that the virus could have been “engineered,” and that it seemed impossible for it to have occurred naturally.
NIH had little to no awareness of how their grant money was being used, yet its leaders collaborated with the company who could not or would not give them answers.
While it’s extremely disturbing, it’s not remotely surprising.
At this point, it’d be more of a surprise if an investigation uncovered that they had actually been telling the truth.
January 27, 2023 -
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Covid-19, NIH, United States
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