Has anyone done more damage to science than Anthony Fauci? I'm open to suggestions.
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Covidgate - How a group of scientists and government officials tricked the public.
Roger Pielke Jr.
July 2
On July 11, 2023 the U.S. House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic will hold a hearing titled,
Investigating the Proximal Origin of a Cover Up. The cover-up being referred to was put into place by a small group of scientists at the request of U.S. government officials to quash any public discussion of the possibility that COVID-19 resulted from a research-related incident — known colloquially as a lab leak.
The cover-up is well known and
well documented by those who
closely follow this issue This post provides an overview for those who may not be as familiar with the cover-up.
Before diving in, let me state the obvious — this is a
big effing deal, as Joe Biden might say. Scientists and government officials conspired — yes, conspired — to mislead the public by knowingly promoting misinformation in the guise of a peer-reviewed paper in a major journal. Given the stakes, this is a scientific scandal with huge significance.
This cover-up, which I’ll call Covidgate, is independent of the ultimate answer to the question of whether Covid-19 had only natural origins or was associated with a research-related incident. Currently, the U.S. intelligence community has
determined, “All agencies assess that two hypotheses are plausible: natural exposure to an infected animal and a laboratory-associated incident.”
The cover-up was designed to render the possibility of a “laboratory-based scenario” off limits for public discussion or investigation. The cover-up was wildly successful in stopping further public discussion of a lab leak for several years, until
information about the cover-up started to become public. In fact, perhaps the cover-up was too successful, which may explain why the scientists and government officials are now under such scrutiny.
Covidgate centers on a research paper —
The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2 — which concludes:
“[W]e do not believe that any type of laboratory-based scenario is plausible.”
This conclusion, as I’ll show below, is not what the authors of the paper actually believed when they wrote it, as revealed in various Freedom of Information Act
disclosures. The scientists worked to shape a misleading public narrative via the scientific literature at the request of government officials, who then promoted the misleading narrative from the White House. Like I said, a big effing deal.
Let’s dive in.
Last January,
The Nation and
The Intercept released emails between Anthony Fauci — who was then director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and member of President Trump’s Coronavirus Task Force — and Jeremy Farrar, the director of the Wellcome Trust, a large British biomedical Foundation. The emails span January to July 2020, as Covid-19 was spreading around the world and the seriousness of the pandemic was becoming undeniable.
The emails tell a story of the origins of the “Proximal Origins” paper. On February 1, 2020 Fauci emails Farrar to tell him that he,
“just got off the phone with Kristian Anderson and he related to me his concern about the Furine site mutation in the spike protein of the currently circulating 2019-nCoV.”
Andersen, professor in the Department of Immunology and Microbiology at the Scripps Research Institute, called Fauci to express concern that Covid-19 showed signs of being engineered.
The conversation between Andersen and Fauci was entirely appropriate. This is exactly the sort of responsible action that we should expect from a scientist. Following the call, Fauci immediately raised with Farrar the possibility of going to the FBI and MI5 with the concern about a lab leak.
Fauci asked Farrar to organize a conference call to discuss the matter. List below are who was on the call (I’ve highlighted the four authors of the Proximal Origins paper that would result from the call):
- Kristian Anderson
- Bob Garry
- Christian Drosten
- Tony Fauci
- Mike Ferguson
- Ron Foucher
- Eddie Holmes
- Marion Koopmans
- Stefan Pohimann
- Andrew Rambaut
- Paul Schreier
- Patrick Vallance
- Frances Collins
Of note, on the call were Fauci and his boss, Frances Collins, who was then the director of the National Institutes of Health. Also on the call was Patrick Vallance, then the government’s Chief Scientific Advisor in the United Kingdom. The rest of the participants on the call were scientists.
From the emails, we know that the focus of the call was on the possibility that Covid-19 was engineered. Afterwards, here is how Ron Foucher characterized the call (emphasis added):
An accusation that nCoV-2019 might have been engineered and released into the environment by humans (accidental or intentional) would need to be supported by strong data, beyond reasonable doubt. It is good that this possibility was discussed in detail with a team of experts. However, further debate about such accusations would unnecessarily distract top researchers from their active duties and do unnecessary harm to science in general and science in China in particular.
His two points were that it was possible that Covid-19 was engineered and they should not discuss it further because it would harm science.
The House Select Committee has
documented that multiple people on the call, in addition to Andersen, viewed a research-related incident as the cause of the pandemic to be possible and plausible — including all of the authors of the Proximal Origins paper.
- On February 2, 2020, Dr. Robert Garry similarly wrote, “I really can’t think of a plausible natural scenario . . . . I just can’t figure out how this gets accomplished in nature . . . . Of course, in the lab it would be easy . . . .”
- On February 2, 2020, Dr. Michael Farzan wrote he was “bothered by the furin site and ha[d] a hard time explain[ing] that as an event outside the lab . . . . I am 70:30 or 60:40 [lab].”
- On February 2, 2020, Dr. Andrew Rambaut stated, “From a (natural) evolutionary point of view the only thing here that strikes me as unusual is the furin cleavage site.”
- On February 4, 2020, Dr. Edward Holmes indicated that he was “60-40 lab . . . .”
- On February 4, 2020, Dr. Jeremy Farrar wrote, “I am 50-50 [lab]”
Despite these views, the authors of the Proximal Origins paper decided to write the paper to dismiss the possibility of a research-related origin. A first draft was apparently prepared by February 4, 2020.
On February 8, 2020 Holmes characterized the choice they faced as follows:
“I believe the aim/question here is whether we, as scientists, should try to write something balanced on the science behind this? There are arguments for and against this.”
In a response the following day, Christian Drosten says that the choice had already been made:
“[D]idn't we congregate to challenge a certain theory, and if we could, drop it?”