More emails from Dr. Fauci and his colleagues about the lab leak theory that have been released by two Republicans on the House Oversight and Judiciary Committees reveal that Fauci was more concerned with upsetting “international harmony” by releasing speculation about a lab leak from Wuhan than he was in getting to the bottom of the origins of the coronavirus.
They wrote a letter addressed to Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra that shows that Fauci and his colleague, Dr. Francis Collins, were desperate to tamp down any speculation — no matter how well argued — that the coronavirus escaped from a lab in Wuhan.
The letter included questions the members wanted the answer to.
On February 1, 2020, Dr. Fauci, Dr. Collins, and at least eleven other scientists convened a conference call to discuss COVID-19.7 It was on this conference call that Drs. Fauci and Collins were first warned that COVID-19 may have leaked from the [Wuhan Institute of Virology] and, further, may have been intentionally genetically manipulated. Again, it is unclear if either Dr. Fauci or Dr. Collins ever passed these warnings along to other government officials or if they simply ignored them.
Only three days later, on February 4, 2020, four participants of the conference call authored a paper entitled “The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2” and sent a draft to Drs. Fauci and Collins.
Prior to final publication in Nature Medicine, the paper was sent to Dr. Fauci for editing and approval.
It’s unknown how Fauci intervened to dampen the investigation, but we know that in April he had pretty much won his point with other government scientists.
On April 16, 2020, more than two months after the original conference call, Dr. Collins emailed Dr. Fauci expressing dismay that the Nature Medicine article — which they saw prior to publication and were given the opportunity to edit — did not squash the lab leak hypothesis and asks if the NIH can do more to “put down” the lab leak hypothesis.
The next day — after Dr. Collins explicitly asked for more public pressure — Dr. Fauci cited the Nature Medicine paper from the White House podium likely in an effort to further stifle the hypothesis COVID-19 leaked from the WIV.
The Republicans’ letter to Becerra includes an image of an email from Dr. Collins to Drs. Jeremy Farrar, Anthony Fauci, and Lawrence Tabak dated Sunday, Feb. 2, 2020 — the day after the conference call with Fauci where the speculation on the coronavirus leaking from a Wuhan lab was first recorded.
Though the arguments from Ron Fouchier and Christian Drosten are presented with more forcefulness than necessary, I am coming around to the view that a natural origin is more likely. But I share your view that a swift convening of experts in a confidence inspiring framework (WHO seems really the only option) is needed, or the voices of conspiracy will quickly dominate, doing great potential harm to science and international harmony. . . .
It’s well-known that Dr. Peter Daszak’s EcoHealth Alliance had submitted a grant proposal to DARPA in 2018 looking to fiddle with coronaviruses in a “gain of function” exercise that, as Fauci reminds us constantly, isn’t really “gain of function” research because we’re calling it something else. But the coverup of this research was done using the lab leak theory to discredit any alternative theories to the naturally occurring coronavirus theory.
Related: Sen. Ron Johnson Demands Details From Pentagon on Project Veritas COVID Story Origins Report
It appears that Fauci, Collins, and others feared the exposure of their gain of function research if investigators began looking too closely at the lab leak theory.
The emails unveiled this week reveal no good scientific reason at all for why these leading virologists changed their minds and became deniers rather than believers in even the remote possibility of a lab leak, all in just a few days in February 2020. No new data, no new arguments. But they do very clearly reveal a blatant political reason for the volte-face. Speculating about a lab leak, said Ron Fouchier, a Dutch researcher, might ‘do unnecessary harm to science in general and science in China in particular’. Francis Collins was pithier, worrying about ‘doing great potential harm to science and international harmony’.
Worrying about something like “international harmony” instead of scientific data makes Fauci look like the political cretin he is and undeserving of being called “a scientist.”
As Stephen L. Miller of Spectator World wrote, “At best, Fauci and Collins looked like they were engaged in a PR operation to protect colleagues like Daszak. At worst, it was much, much more nefarious than that.”
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