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It Was Always a Lab Product
The House Oversight Committee has exhaustively confirmed what should have already been well-known about the origins of COVID-19 but for the concerted effort by the governments of China and the USA with the cooperation of zealously anti-Trump media to promote a lie.
The initial rise of COVID-19 cases in the northeast USA and Western Europe simultaneously began in mid-March 2020 and initially peaked in mid-April. However, virologists had already analyzed the virus in January, and Anthony Fauci knew he had a problem. It was already clear that the virus was very unlikely to have a natural origin.
NIH Director Francis Collins and CDC Director Robert Redfield had both opined that it was probably lab-created. Collins would soon change his mind when the political and funding implications of the virus’ likely origin became clear.
[For an excellent detailed summary of the history of the effort to conceal or distort the origins of the virus I highly recommend this article. ]
The campaign to create an official “proximal origin” narrative was behind the creation of a paper that is still touted as the definitive refutation of the lab origin theory. It was published just as the pandemic was beginning. It became official dogma that the lab-leak theory had been debunked and the media obediently followed that line and cited this paper as the ultimate source.
Prior to completing the article, the authors were on a conference call with Anthony Fauci, Wellcome Trust Director Jeremy Farrar in the U.K., and National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins, who together controlled over $70 billion in research funds. The unambiguous purpose of the call was to find ways to challenge the notion that the virus had been engineered. The authors were in no doubt what the preferred finding would be. Not so much as a thumb on the scale as a full fist. Finding the wrong answer could jeopardize funding for virology in general, gain of function in particular and presumably not be a boon to the career of any author who came up with the wrong answer.
The ”definitive paper” made two essential claims.
- It was likely from a natural origin.
Despite testing hundreds of samples from the Wuhan wet market five miles from the lab where the virus actually emerged, the COVID-19 virus was not found in any specimen. COVID-19 was not found in any specimen in any animal species prior to the human outbreak. ( In 2021, an estimated 50% of white-tailed deer in North America were Covid-19 seropositive, an indication of contagiousness that meant the virus should have already been widespread in animal populations prior to the human outbreak if there were a natural, non-lab origin.)
Nevertheless, the authors found that there were viruses in the Wuhan wet market that were 96% similar to COVID-19 and breezily concluded that a mutation could have happened to create the pandemic virus. Other virologists have found that claim to be preposterous. It would be like saying it would not be surprising if a pair of chimpanzee parents were to produce a fully human offspring given that their DNA has a 98% similarity to that of humans.
2. The authors asserted that there was no known methodological pathway to create the COVID-19 virus from known coronaviruses.
However, in earlier private communications, one of the paper’s authors had written that “a grad student could have done it” indicating that the means to build the spike structure was known. Wuhan partner EcoLab had even applied for a DARPA grant in 2018 to do exactly that so the notion that this was a yet unknown methodology was more than just a stretch.
We do not know which specific coronaviruses viruses could have been used as the bases of the creation of COVID-19 because (a) the Wuhan lab was deficient in reporting throughout the grant period (b) destroyed all viral samples and all records after the outbreak and (c) called upon NIH to destroy whatever records they did have pursuant to the data sharing agreement which records were dutifully trashed by NIH.
And of course, there is the Chinese researcher at that lab who (a) applied for a vaccine patent within weeks of the outbreak–golly, almost as if he already had samples of the virus for several months and then (b) jumped or was pushed off the roof of the Wuhan Virology Institute. Then there is the saga of the fellow at that lab who was and then was not patient zero… But if you can’t trust the Chinese Communist Party and Anthony Fauci, then who can you trust?
Fauci and Collins put institutional interests and their own reputations ahead of ethical and professional obligations to provide truthful answers to the American people. They corrupted science and scientists complicit in the lie along with major media outlets and undeservedly prominent journalists. The history of their betrayal needs to be firmly established. Americans’ trust in science, in our institutions and in our media has never been lower, and Fauci and Collins are a major contributing factor in that decline. They should be remembered accordingly.
Published in General
I would like my final memory of Fauci to be with him in an orange prison jumpsuit.
There definitely needs to be a reckoning.
I agree with the conclusion.
I do not think that a partisan investigation in Congress is worthy of much confidence. This is my view without regard to which political party was carrying out the investigation. In this instance, it is my opinion that they got the general conclusion correct.
I’d like a more harsh punishment.
I want him on the streets, dressed in a barrel, selling apples.
It’s really very simple…
Back in the 2000’s research into these novel coronaviruses was being done here in the US at UNC. The Obama administration, to their credit, forced a halt to that research because it was dangerous as hell. But Dr Fauci disagreed. Publicly. In Dec 2011 he wrote an Op Ed for the NYT saying that while dangerous, he believed this was a risk worth taking.
The Chinese scientists at the Wuhan virology lab were part of the research team led by UNC. When the US put the kibosh on the domestic research, Fauci simply assisted in moving the hub of that research to China from UNC.
And when it went to hell in a hand basket, Fauci and Co. had to cover their tracks.
Clear as can be.
I wonder if maybe China learned more from it than “we” did.
Yes. And yet another reason for me to hate UNC.
UPDATE
Fauci is 83 and even in the unlikely event of being convicted of some crime in the DC courthouse it is highly unlikely that he would go to jail. A pardon might be better because (a) it establishes a presumption of wrongdoing and (b) means he cannot plead the fifth when forced to tell the truth about what he knew and when he knew it.
Biden is sending 70+ year old grannies who pray in front of abortion clinics to the slammer so why should we not do the same to Fauci who is essentially a mass murderer w/respect to Covid.
Presumption of wrongdoing? It is obvious to anyone with a brain that Fauci is a menace to society.
He needs to be made an example of – too many people in government get away with acts that would have the rest of us in jail.
Agree but it will never happen. In DC law, you can bring down the hammer on outsiders. You can bring down insiders for being greedy or outright betrayal. But you cannot bring down insiders for doing what other insiders went along with and who would be embarrassed if their support were deemed tainted in any way.
Funding Daszak /Ecolab to make the virus was not illegal (I think). It was NIH, not Fauci who failed to supervise or enforce reporting requirements for the Wuhan contract but that is negligence, not criminal. Only if we have the equivalent of an instance of lying under oath when questioned about what he knew and when he knew it is there criminal liability.
Fauci weaseled on masks, on school closings, on shutdowns. His shtick was to pretend he was somehow providing enlightened guidance and then wait for the pandemic to burn out and then take credit for successful stewardship. Heavy interventionist governors were seen as his allies, others (e.g. DeSantis) as insufficiently deferential to “experts” and thus an enemy. The collective goal was to sustain a hideously costly, deadly kabuki of mandated useless gestures to establish a claim of (eventual) success and a precedent for undemocratic, technocrat rule and to feed Fauci’s rather considerable ego in the meantime.
This is an incredibly damning comment on how DC operates. All of our hard earned tax money goes to these grifters who are never held accountable. This is why DC is so full of scum human beings. Get elected/appointed and you will become rich and never held to account. There needs to be a mass exorcism held over the city prior to the wrath of God descending on that despicable place. I had better quit before my head explodes.
In our system the solution is supposed to be elections to get rid of such people. But in a permanent administrative state elections only count at the margins. The funding continues even if there are slight changes in the beneficiaries. So much of the country depends on that funding that neither party can stay in power by making substantial cuts. Fauci ran NIAID under seven presidents. Like most senior bureaucrats he watched elected people come and go while he remained ensconced.
The Argentine miracle repeated in the USA would require an actual landslide (tiny majorities in both houses is not a landslide) to make dramatic change and then the pain of the necessary cuts would have to be offset by spectacular and almost immediate economic gains resulting in broadly shared perception of enhanced personal welfare such that additional reforms can be effected. Otherwise, the pro-spending, pro-government forces would roar back into power with a mandate.
I dunno, Fauci might be subject to more state-level charges than anyone else. Which a Biden pardon would not cover.
What specific crimes do you have in mind? Being a BS-ing bureaucrat who directed/applauded/assisted/provided cover for disastrous policies is almost a norm not a criminal exception.
They could charge him for deaths that occurred in the separate states. Both civil and criminal charges, too.
So you’re telling me we’re F’ed.
I pray Musk and Ramaswamy can actually accomplish something.
A good X thread on Saint Fauci – it is missing the votive candle, however.
https://x.com/goddeketal/status/1864482953369182663?
Anthony Fauci is foremost a narcissist and a thief. He used positions of public trust to secure status and money for himself, without regard to us whom he was hired to serve. His crimes began before the emergence of AIDS.
The way to punish a successful 83 year old thief is to truthfully state what he did so that we remember it, and take his money. Isn’t the best way to do both of those things to try him in court?
You are not suggesting that he get transition surgery so that he can serve his time in a woman’s prison, are you?
Part of the reason, yes. More likely is that Fauci knew, which he did, that the Wuhan lab was engaged in bioterrorism studies. He and everyone else in the know expected Covid to be more severe and lethal than it was. If Covid were an infectious encephalitis with a 30% mortality in the young then Fauci-esque measures would have made sense. Once he was committed he could not pull back both for fear of lethal mutations and to avoid losing face.
A truly evil man and a blot on my profession.
How about give him transition surgery, but keep him in a men’s prison.
Fauci was always an advocate for cutting edge medicine.
And that way he would face years of getting done to him, what he did to us.
It was immediately clear from the viral sequence, specifically of the furin cleavage site, which was exactly a human sequence that could only have been there if the virus was engineered, that this was from the WIV and not a naturally occuring virus. The pro forma equivocations quoted in the email to Fauci in this post are simply the kind of caveat scientists have to mention to avoid loss of credibility. The con was on from the moment the viral sequence came out. There is no other possible origin of the virus. Everything else is obfuscation. Fauci and Collins are still denying the obvious.
It is far too late to re establish any credibility to “science”. Fauci is Science, and Science is Fauci, in the very real sense that all of science is now seen to be fraudulent. “Science” claims authority that it does not have. It is the base of a secular, materialistic civilization that has become completely unmoored from any reality other than its own technical capacities, on which it is intoxicated. A civilization that has completely lost its moral and ethical underpinnings (which underpinnings have been a target for several hundred years and are now essentially gone, and unrecoverable in our current state of mind).
Fauci was raised and educated as a Catholic, but rejected that religion and became a “secular humanist.” In his very being he represents the depravity and existential danger of that particular mindset and worldview.
Science arose out of a Judeo-Christian civilization. Science then cut itself loose from that civilization and tried to assume the central role to itself and its practitioners. The scientists, like Fauci, tried to make themselves gods. Judeo-Christian ethics having been jetisoned by Science, Science has become “science” or scientism, and a clear and present danger to the world. Fauci, in his fevered ego, believes himself to be the infallible pope of a ‘scientific’ civilization. This is “science” as a cult, including a cult of personality. This is not the “Power and the Glory” but the ‘Power and the Depravity”.
I will concede that in the days of Moses, God sent the plagues. Today, Fauci does. Those Divine plagues were to free Israel from slavery. Fauci’s plagues, in contrast, were to liberate no one, but to enslave us all to the whims of the “scientists” like Fauci.
Bhattacharya and Makary have a hero’s quest ahead of them in attempting to restore Science. That can actually only be done by a profound change in our civilization. Perhaps such a change is coming. It is beginning to look like it might.
In ancient days, the message would be that of Jonah to Ninevah: Repent in sackcloth and ashes, fast, and pray to God. Otherwise, we will almost certainly destroy ourselves.
Fauci already had an empire. He controlled the financial lifeblood of the biomed research industry and was treated with extreme deference. He was the highest paid federal employee. He could join the board or any big Pharma company or select numerous other post-federal sinecures.
The Ecolab/Wuhan disaster required leadership, courage and candor. The fact that there really is no effective response to prevent respiratory viral transmission other than isolation of the uninfected vulnerable was a hard truth the nation needed to hear. Fauci chose to strike a pose as the most important man in the room at the same time he worked to suppress embarrassing truths about research he supported. He chose to support pointless costly (even deadly) interventions to sell the myth that these efforts (and Fauci) were saving lives even though he knew in advance they were not going to be even minimally effective.
In Man for All Seasons, More says to the treacherous Richard Rich “For Wales? Why Richard, it profit a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world. . . but for Wales!” Fauci sold his soul for media adulation in hundreds of gratuitous interviews in which the adoring interviewers did not care how often he changed his mind or spouted nonsense. The kneejerk adulation of liberals is an unstable currency.
Government funding has been a prime factor in the corruption of science — everything from medicine to climate science. A little noted part of Eisenhower’s “beware the military industrial complex” speech was a caution about the corruption of science through just this sort of public funding. Michael Crichton was also very insightful on the subject and recommended that opposing scientific views be funded. Of course, gain of function shouldn’t be funded with our tax dollars at all. My hope is DOGE save us a lot of money.
Government funding has been a prime factor in the corruption of science — everything from medicine to climate science. A little noted part of Eisenhower’s “beware the military industrial complex” speech was a caution about the corruption of science through just this sort of public funding. Michael Crichton was also very insightful on the subject and recommended that opposing scientific views be funded. Of course, gain of function shouldn’t be funded with our tax dollars at all. My hope is DOGE save us a lot of money.
It wasn’t just Fauci who sold his soul. It was virtually the whole of the biomedical research industry, the whole of the healthcare system, the whole of the scientific system, the whole of the media, government, military, academia, and a terrorized society that put its faith in all of the above. I was clamoring for the vaccine when it came out. My wife was sterilizing every item in the shopping bag when she came home from the supermarket. Some, like DiSantis and Kemp realized we were being had, and some few started paying attention to the GBD sooner than others. In March of 2020 Bhattacharya had done a serological study in Santa Clara where there were no reported cases of Covid and found that a significant percent of the population had already had Covid. That was the key finding that the spread was not stoppable but the virulence was low. That should have underpinned the entire response but the NIH, CDC, the whole of government and pretty much everyone else in decision making positions ignored the actual science, with malice aforethought.
Our institutions are utterly corrupt.Our society is entirely corrupt. Or terminally stupid. You tell me.
What is really discouraging is the people who are extremely hostile to any remedy that uses constitutional principles. I’m talking about conservatives right here on Ricochet. One of them thinks there should be no impediments in the way of deterring bad behavior other than electing better people.
Maybe there is a fear that if we provide sufficient deterrents to Fauci-like behavior, that there will not be enough things left to be outraged about. I don’t know if that’s what motivates the hostility, but personally I don’t worry about running out of things to be outraged about.