When Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) began digging into the origins of the pandemic, he latched on to the possibility that the SARS-CoV-2 virus that caused the catastrophe may have leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) Lab in China.
As Anthony Fauci's diary confirms, he was also concerned about a lab leak. He was fully aware of the gain-of-function research on bat viruses being conducted by Dr. Peter Daszak at the lab, and he was also fully aware of the Wuhan lab's shortcomings and its inexperience in handling high-risk viruses.
And yet, "Several leading virologists privately told Fauci in late January 2020 that they suspected a lab leak," writes Sigrid Bratlie, molecular biologist and author of The Mystery of Wuhan in The Free Press.
A few days later, Fauci faced his friends in the media and lied like the trouper he was. He said, “we know that such viruses have a natural origin. Other claims are in the realm of conspiracy theories.”
Bratlie writes, "This was before there was a single published study on Covid-19 origins, before he had fully investigated matters related to the research he funded in Wuhan, and at a time when the scientists he consulted in the backroom were deeply divided and still believed that lab leakage was at least as likely an explanation as natural origin."
Fauci's premature denials were part of a cover-up. Fauci wanted no hint whatsoever that the risky, gain-of-function research he was paying for had anything to do with the outbreak of a disease that has killed millions of people.
This is what Sen. Paul was trying to get Fauci to acknowledge during his testimony before Paul's committee looking into COVID's origins. Paul was well versed in the WIV's safety record.
Following visits to the facility in early 2018, U.S. State Department science diplomats issued multiple diplomatic cables warning of a critical shortage of properly trained technicians and investigators required to safely operate the high-containment BSL-4 facility and conduct experiments on bat coronaviruses. (Biosafety Levels, or BSLs, are rated 1-4, with BSL-1 handling pathogens with "minimal risk" and BSL-4 working with pathogens of "extreme risk.")
Reports and grant documents revealed that a significant amount of coronavirus engineering, sampling, and animal research was conducted in BSL-2 and BSL-3 facilities rather than the BSL-4 lab. Biosafety experts (such as Dr. James Le Duc) noted privately that "lower biosafety levels carry higher risk for accidental release due to less stringent airflow, physical containment, and suit requirements."
Even the Chinese were worried about systemic issues at WIV. Chinese scientists, including Yuan Zhiming (director of WIV's BSL-4 lab), published academic papers acknowledging "broader systemic issues in domestic biosafety laboratories, including a lack of operational technical support, insufficient specialized maintenance, and high maintenance costs leading to compromised safety routines."
The WIV lab that Antony Fauci placed so much trust in that he was willing to gamble the lives of millions on its Third World safety protocols, was finally cited by the Department of Health and Human Services in 2023 when HHS formally suspended WIV's eligibility for U.S. federal funding and moved to debar the institute, citing its failure to provide requested documentation regarding biosafety compliance and safety protocols following federal inquiries into NIH-grant-funded research.
The virologists who questioned the quick and decisive "natural origin" conclusion by Fauci in January of 2020 couldn't have known about his risky research into bat coronaviruses and the inclusion of what some virologists believe is a "smoking gun": a "furin cleavage site," which is the main characteristic of SARS-CoV-2 (the DEFUSE proposal). When present on a virus, a furin cleavage site acts like a molecular "key" that significantly increases the virus's ability to infect human cells. In other words, it becomes a new, supercharged infectious disease.
Those virologists had all signed the Fauci-ordered letter, “The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2," which claimed a natural origin for the coronavirus with no chance of any other theory. Fauci's sidekick Peter Daszak had organized the project, and in 2022 those scientists were having second thoughts.
Andersen and his colleagues were outraged. Andrew Rambaut wrote that “it really isn’t beyond plausibility that someone went ahead and tried some of this stuff,” and Andersen noted that it was neither technically difficult nor scientifically illogical to make such a virus in a lab—the opposite of what they had argued in the “Proximal Origin” article.
Where did this gap between public and private communication come from? The answer is likely complex, involving a set of political considerations, academic vested interests, and private ties. But the scientists were not operating in a vacuum.
In my book The Mystery of Wuhan, I accuse Fauci of steering the scientific narrative about the origins of the pandemic unreasonably strongly in the direction of natural origin, both through his own public statements and by influencing the scientists who addressed the question. For example, released communications show that he was one of those who initiated the “Proximal Origin” paper and helped with its content, but significantly downplayed his involvement in public.
The enormous respect Fauci held in the international scientific community, largely due to his excellent work on the AIDS virus, was the reason for the unusual skepticism relating to the lab leak theory and origins of the pandemic. Fauci was willing to trade that reputation to keep the cover-up going.
Fauci has never acknowledged that he authorized gain-of-function research. In fact, in congressional testimony, Fauci has denied it repeatedly while under oath. The reason Fauci can get away with this is that he can bend the definition of "gain-of-function" to mean anything but the scientific definition that would place him in legal jeopardy.
Robby Soave of Reason.com:
[I]t is now well-established that Fauci's straightforward denial to Sen. Rand Paul (R–Ky.) regarding U.S. funding of gain-of-function research was at best misleading—and potentially an outright lie. (Lying to Congress is, in fact, a crime.) David Morens, a top Fauci deputy, has admitted to thwarting journalistic inquiries by making certain emails invisible to Freedom of Information Act requests. There are serious questions about whether Fauci pushed scientific experts in his orbit to embrace the natural spillover explanation of COVID-19's origins, possibly because the lab leak explanation would have invited greater scrutiny of U.S. health bureaucrats and their research priorities.
Fauci was the frontman for a much larger, more insidious conspiracy involving the entirety of HHS and probably other agencies and the risky research being paid for with taxpayer dollars. The worst part of this is that it's an ongoing problem. Gain-of-function research may be halted, but scientists who think like Fauci can get around that definition and engage in other research just as risky.
The research may be necessary. But conducting it in Third World labs is not.
