By Dr. Joseph Mercola | mercola.com
STORY AT-A-GLANCE
- Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), has defended the natural-origin theory for SARS-CoV-2 since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic
- In his biggest about-face to date, Fauci is now saying he’s “not convinced” the virus had a natural origin after all, and that we must continue to investigate “what went on in China until we find out, to the best of our ability, what happened”
- Considering Fauci’s opinion has been used by mainstream media and fact-checkers to censor any and all other experts, this very public 180 is no doubt causing embarrassment among mainstream reporters
- Fauci is now also denying ever having funded gain-of-function research, even though there’s irrefutable evidence that he did. It seems he’s trying to redefine “gain-of-function,” such that none of the research he paid for will fall under that definition
- National Institutes of Health director Dr. Francis Collins is backing Fauci’s denials in what appears to be a preemptive attempt to distance the NIAID/NIH from future blame, should the lab leak theory be determined to have caused the COVID-19 pandemic
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), has been a staunch defender of the natural-origin theory for SARS-CoV-2 since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Back in May 2020, CNN used Fauci's statements on the issue as proof that then-President Donald Trump was spouting a ridiculous conspiracy theory:1
“For weeks now, President Donald Trump has been making the case that the coronavirus originated not in nature but in a lab in Wuhan, China,” CNN wrote.2
“Enter Anthony Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease and perhaps the single most prominent doctor in the world at the moment. In an interview with National Geographic … Fauci was definitive about the origins of the virus …
‘If you look at the evolution of the virus in bats and what's out there now, [the scientific evidence] is very, very strongly leaning toward this could not have been artificially or deliberately manipulated … Everything about the stepwise evolution over time strongly indicates that [this virus] evolved in nature and then jumped species,' [Fauci said].
Now, before we play the game of ‘he said, he said' remember this: Only one of these two people is a world-renowned infectious disease expert. And it's not Donald Trump.”
Oh, the difference a year can make. Mainstream media is finally forced to face the fact that Fauci and a number of other so-called “experts” they've paraded before their viewers and readers have been no more reliable than your average armchair scientist.
Fauci Pulls Biggest 180 Yet
Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, Fauci has been front and center, spouting recommendations, over time changing his mind again and again.
A virtuoso of contradiction, he's flip-flopped on the usefulness and needs for masks multiple times, from “Americans shouldn't be wearing masks because they don't work,” to masks definitely work and should be worn by everyone, to you should wear not just one but two, for safe measure.
He's gone from promising a mask-free existence once the vaccine rolls out, to insisting mask-wearing is still necessary after vaccination because vaccine-resistant variants might pop up, to proposing we might need to wear masks every flu season in perpetuity.
His biggest flip-flop to date, however, has to be his stance on the origin of SARS-CoV-2. As reported by Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti in a May 24, 2021 “Rising with Krystal & Saagar” episode (see video above), Fauci is now claiming he's “not convinced” the virus had a natural origin after all, and that we must continue to investigate “what went on in China until we find out, to the best of our ability, what happened.”
Considering Fauci's opinion has been used by mainstream media pundits and fact-checkers to censor any and all other experts — including people with far more impressive credentials than Fauci, who at the end of the day is an administrator, a paper-pusher, not a working scientist — this very public 180-degree turn is no doubt causing embarrassment among many mainstream reporters.
Krystal and Saagar both look uncomfortable having to explain how the media, en masse, ended up being so wrong for so long.
Mainstream Media Scramble to Justify Their Errors
According to Krystal and Saagar, new information indicating workers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) fell ill with COVID-like symptoms in November 2019 now makes the lab leak theory the most plausible.
What's so ironic about that statement is that this isn't new information that would definitively tip the scale. It's just that now, all of a sudden, it's not being dismissed off-hand. The weight of the evidence has, for over a year now, strongly leaned in the direction of SARS-CoV-2 being a lab creation that somehow escaped.
Now, mainstream media are scrambling to save face, and it's rather hilarious to watch them trying to justify their previous refusal to do what journalists and reporters are expected to do: Report the facts without interjecting their own personal opinions and biases.
Of course, you'd be hard-pressed to find an unbiased news outlet these days — it's all tightly and centrally controlled, as detailed in “Reuters and BBC Caught Taking Money for Propaganda Campaign” — so, in all likelihood, the only reason mainstream media are now starting to report on the lab leak theory is because of the success of alternative media.
Their viewers simply aren't buying what they're selling anymore, so they have no choice but to acknowledge what a majority of people already know, or lose what little credibility they have left.
The Case for the Lab-Leak Theory
In the video above, Freddie Sayers interviews3 Nicholas Wade, a former New York Times science writer, about the two primary origin theories. Wade recently published a widely-read article4 detailing the evidence supporting the lab-leak and natural-origin theories.
As reported by Wade in “Origin of COVID — Following the Clues: Did People or Nature Open Pandora's Box at Wuhan?”5 if we are ever to solve the mystery of where this novel virus came from, we must be willing to actually follow the science, as “it offers the only sure thread through the maze.”
“It's important to note that so far there is no direct evidence for either theory,” Wade writes.6 “Each depends on a set of reasonable conjectures but so far lacks proof. So I have only clues, not conclusions, to offer. But those clues point in a specific direction.”
In summary, the preponderance of clues leans toward SARS-CoV-2 originating in a lab, most likely the WIV, and having undergone some sort of manipulation to encourage infectiousness and pathology in humans.
As just one example, there's research dating as far back as 1992 detailing how inserting a furin cleavage site right where we find it in SARS-CoV-2 is a “sure way to make a virus deadlier.” One of 11 such studies was written by Dr. Zhengli Shi, head of coronavirus research at the WIV.
The arguments laid out in support of natural origin theories, meanwhile, are grounded in inconclusive speculations that require you to throw out scientifically possible scenarios. From a scientific standpoint, doing so is ill-advised.
“It seems to me that proponents of lab escape can explain all the available facts about SARS2 considerably more easily than can those who favor natural emergence,” Wade writes.7
Fauci Pulls 180 Turnabout on Gain-of-Function Backing Too
Getting back to Fauci, he's also now denying ever having funded gain-of-function research, even though there's irrefutable evidence that he did. As reported by the National Review:8
“Dr. Roger Ebright, a professor of chemistry and chemical biology at Rutgers University and biosafety expert, is contesting … Fauci's testimony before the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee on [May 11, 2021].
Dr. Fauci's claim — made during an exchange with Senator Rand Paul9 — that ‘the NIH has not ever and does not now fund gain of function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology' is ‘demonstrably false,' according to Ebright …
A research article written by WIV scientists, ‘Discovery of a rich gene pool of bat SARS-related coronaviruses provides new insights into the origin of SARS coronavirus,'10 for example, qualifies as gain-of-function and was clearly a product of NIH-funding.
Ebright insists that the research can be classified as gain-of-function under a number of different definitions, including those found in two pieces of Department of Health and Human Services guidance on the subject.
The first details the Obama administration's 2014 decision to halt domestic gain-of-function research, which it defines as that which ‘may be reasonably anticipated to confer attributes to influenza, MERS, or SARS viruses such that the virus would have enhanced pathogenicity and/or transmissibility in mammals via the respiratory route.'11
The second — drafted in 2017 as Fauci was pushing to renew government funding for gain-of-function research — provides a definition of what are called ‘enhanced potential pandemic pathogen (PPP)' or those pathogens ‘resulting from the enhancement of the transmissibility and/or virulence of a pathogen.'12
Ebright claims that the work being conducted at the WIV, using NIH funds originally granted to Peter Daszak of EcoHealth Alliance, ‘epitomizes' gain-of-function research under the definition HHS provided in its guidance, and is the exact kind of research that led the Obama administration to conclude that gain-of-function was too dangerous to continue domestically.”
Fauci and NIH Try to Redefine ‘Gain-of-Function'
Essentially, Fauci is now trying to redefine what “gain-of-function” actually is. However, as explained above, the type of research Fauci has been funding at the WIV has always and repeatedly been referred to as gain-of-function.
It appears as though Fauci and National Institutes of Health director Dr. Francis Collins are preemptively trying to position themselves in such a way as to distance themselves from future blame, should the lab leak theory be proven true. In a May 19, 2021, statement, Collins backed Fauci's convoluted word-wrangling and attempts at rewriting the definition of gain-of-function research, stating:13
“Based on outbreaks of coronaviruses caused by animal to human transmissions such as … SARS and … MERS, NIH and the NIAID have for many years supported grants to learn more about viruses lurking in bats and other mammals that have the potential to spill over to humans and cause widespread disease.
However, neither NIH nor NIAID have ever approved any grant that would have supported ‘gain-of-function' research on coronaviruses that would have increased their transmissibility or lethality for humans.”
In other words, both admit they funded research at the WIV and other places, but they insist none of it was gain-of-function specifically, so even if the COVID-19 pandemic turns out to have been the result of a lab leak at the WIV, Fauci and Collins had no part in the creation of that particular virus — or any other virus capable of causing a deadly pandemic — and should not be on the list of people to be held accountable.
Wordplay Won't Save Fauci
Considering what the NIH has stated previously, and what we already know about the coronavirus research the NIAID/NIH funded, Collins' statement appears to be a desperate lie, issued to prop up Fauci's indefensible stance that no gain-of-function research was ever funded.
For example, as reported by the National Review,14 we know that the WIV received NIAID/NIH funding to create novel chimeric SARS-related coronaviruses capable of infecting both human cells and lab animals. “Chimeric viruses” refers to artificial man-made viruses, hybrid organisms created through the joining of two or more different organisms. This is precisely what gain-of-function research is all about. So, as noted by the National Review:15
“Fauci appears to have been, at best, mistaken while sparring with Senator Paul … At worst, he was playing tenuous word games meant to deceive.”
Of course, Fauci and Collins have good reason to develop sudden amnesia when it comes to the definition of complicated words like “gain-of-function.” While statistics have been massively manipulated to overcount COVID-19 deaths, there's no doubt that this pandemic has been one of the most destructive in modern history.
Sure, we can blame global and regional leaders for playing along with the globalist game to use a hyped-up pandemic to justify a Great Reset of our global economic and societal systems, but without doubt, the creators of this virus will not get off scot-free, and neither will those who enabled its creation. And those people may well include Fauci and Collins at the NIAID and NIH.
At the end of it all, should SARS-CoV-2 be deemed a man-made bioweapon, even if its release was a total accident, which appears to be the case, a number of individuals stand to lose their careers, and perhaps their freedom, as the punishment for having anything to do with the creation of biological weapons includes both potentially hefty fines and lengthy jail sentences? The Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989 states:16
“Whoever knowingly develops, produces, stockpiles, transfers, acquires, retains, or possesses any biological agent, toxin, or delivery system for use as a weapon, or knowingly assists a foreign state or any organization to do so, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for life or any term of years, or both.”
Gain-of-Function Research Is the Real Threat
I believe research cooperation and sharing between nations is such that blame will ultimately be shared by multiple parties. The key issue, really, if SARS-CoV-2 did in fact come from a lab, is how do we prevent another lab escape? And, if it turns out to have been a genetically manipulated virus, do we allow gain-of-function research — based on the conventionally accepted definition — to continue?
I believe the answer is to ban research that involves making pathogens more dangerous to humans. As it stands, the same establishment that is drumming up panic by warning of the emergence of new, more infectious, and dangerous variants is also busy creating them.
World leaders need to realize that funding gain-of-function research is the real threat here and take action accordingly to forestall another pandemic. As long as researchers are allowed to mutate and create synthetic pathogens, they're creating the very risk they claim they're trying to prevent. We got off easy this time, all things considered. The next time, we may not be as lucky.
