Coronavirus: Thread

[grarpamp]

https://www.theepochtimes.com/conspiracy-at-its-height-fauci-responds-to-message-saying-he-prompted-anti-lab-leak-paper_5128165.html
https://www.theepochtimes.com/fauci-prompted-drafting-of-study-to-disprove-covid-lab-leak-theory-house-committee_5101044.html
https://www.theepochtimes.com/newly-unredacted-emails-confirm-faucis-efforts-to-conceal-covid-lab-leak-possibility_4889696.html
https://www.newsnationnow.com/video/full-interview-dr-anthony-fauci-responds-to-critics-cuomo/8473068/
https://usrtk.org/covid-19-origins/timeline-the-proximal-origin-of-sars-cov-2/

'Conspiracy At Its Height': Fauci Responds To Message Saying He
'Prompted' Anti-Lab Leak Paper

Dr. Anthony Fauci responded on March 15 to a newly released email that
said he was among those who “prompted” work on analyzing how COVID-19
came about, which resulted in a paper that claimed the laboratory
origin theory was not credible.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, former director of the National Institute of
Allergy and Infectious Diseases, on Capitol Hill in Washington on
Sept. 14, 2022. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

A special U.S. House of Representatives panel on March 5 released the
email, sent by scientist Kristian Andersen in February 2020 to the
journal Nature.

“There has been a lot of speculation, fear mongering, and conspiracies
put forward in this space and we thought that bringing some clarity to
this discussion might be of interest to Nature,” Andersen wrote at the
time. “Prompted by Jeremy Farra[r], Tony Fauci, and Francis Collins,
Eddie Holmes, Andrew Rambaut, Bob Garry, Ian Lipkin, and myself have
been working through much of the (primarily) genetic data to provide
agnostic and scientifically informed hypothesis around the origins of
the virus,” Andersen added.

In another message that had previously been made public, Andersen said
the work was “focused on trying to disprove any type of lab theory.”

Anderson was one of the co-authors of a paper published without peer
review in February 2020. Both that version and one later published by
Nature Medicine said the analysis shows that “SARS-CoV-2 is not a
laboratory construct nor a purposefully manipulated virus.” SARS-CoV-2
causes COVID-19.

Fauci was asked about the emails on Wednesday during an appearance on
NewsNation.

“Absolutely not,” he said when host Chris Cuomo inquired whether the
paper was drafted to disprove the lab origin theory.

Fauci referenced the secret phone call involving himself, Andersen,
and others that took place on Feb. 1, 2020, and involved several
experts—including Andersen—saying characteristics of COVID-19 pointed
to it being engineered.

“During the phone call on Feb. 1, where very competent evolutionary
biologists were going back and forth, and they decided on the phone
call, listen, let’s take a little time and go back and really
carefully examine those sequences and see if, in fact, there’s
anything to that,” Fauci said.

“They did that and they came to the conclusion that, in fact, it is
more likely that it was not something that was engineered, but
something that actually escaped from a wet market [in Wuhan, China].
And in order to get it peer reviewed, they wrote a paper to let the
peer review system evaluate whether it was valid, and it did and
that’s how the paper came about,” Fauci added. “So this idea of
saying, write the paper to definitively disprove something is
conspiracy at its height. It’s really ridiculous.”
Grateful for ‘Advice and Leadership’

According to other emails made public after being acquired through the
Freedom of Information Act, Fauci was involved in looking over drafts
of the paper before it was published. In one email, Andersen thanked
Fauci and several others “for your advice and leadership as we have
been working through the SARS-CoV-2 ‘origins’ paper.”

“Thanks for your note. Nice job on the paper,” Fauci responded.

Fauci’s boss, Dr. Francis Collins, was also thanked. In a later email
to Fauci, he said that the lab origin theory was “very destructive”
and that he had hoped the paper “would settle this” but that it
“probably didn’t get much visibility.”

“I would not do anything about this right now. It is a shiny object
that will go away in times,” Fauci wrote. In April 2020, Fauci cited
the paper during an official White House press conference without
mentioning his involvement, telling reporters that “a group of highly
qualified evolutionary virologists looked at the sequences there and
the sequences in bats as they evolve and the mutations that it took to
get to the point where it is now is totally consistent with a jump of
a species from an animal to a human.”

For the natural origin theory to be true, a host animal must have
passed the virus on to humans. No such animal has been identified.

Fauci has maintained during recent interviews that he’s kept an open
mind as to the origin of COVID-19.

“If that is true, why did Dr. Fauci tell the American people at a
White House briefing televised on April 17, 2020, that COVID-19 was
‘totally consistent’ with a natural origin and never mentioned that
half the scientists on a February 1, 2020, conference call thought it
was a lab leak,” Rep. Debbie Lesko (R-Ariz.), a member of the special
U.S. House panel, the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic,
told The Epoch Times via email.

“That doesn’t sound like someone with an open mind. That sounds like
someone misleading the American public,” Lesko added.

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