Over the past few weeks, more reports from US government sources indicate the source of the novel coronavirus that is responsible for the covid pandemic is a laboratory from China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology.
I recently noted that Dr. Anthony Fauci, the now-retired coronavirus advisor to the White House, commissioned and had final approval on a scientific paper written in February 2020 designed to disprove this theory.
Evidence that he now realizes this plan has wholly gone awry comes in the form of an interview with CNN’s Jim Acosta, during which Fauci argued the pandemic could be considered a “natural occurrence” if the definition of lab leak meant that someone was infected in the wild and went “into a lab,” was studied in a lab, and then “came out of the lab.”
The former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who retired at the end of last year, made the remarks on CNN Saturday, two weeks after an Energy Department assessment found that the coronavirus likely originated in a Chinese lab.In the months after the pandemic began, Fauci had discounted the theory that the virus had emanated from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.The 82-year-old now said he was still keeping a “completely open mind” to the origin of the virus, while explaining how a lab leak still could be considered a “natural occurrence.”“A lab leak could be that someone was out in the wild, maybe looking for different types of viruses in bats, got infected, went into a lab and was being studied in the lab and then came out of the lab,” Fauci told anchor Jim Acosta.“But if that’s the definition of a lab leak Jim, then that’s still a natural occurrence.”
I have to say, that stretch in reasoning is astonishing.
Fauci also insisted that he keeps an open mind on the pandemic’s origins.
“You know, Jim, I’ve kept an open mind throughout the entire process. What has changed over months to a year or more is what I mentioned a bit ago, namely that as evolutionary virologists went into this deeper and deeper and analyzed it from a number of standpoints, epidemiologically, virologically, geospatially; they wrote two very important, well written, peer-reviewed papers in Science Magazine strongly suggesting that, in fact, it was a natural occurrence from an animal to a human.But strongly suggesting, Jim, doesn’t nail it down definitively. And that’s the reason why I say to this day I will keep a completely open mind as to what the origin is,” he responded.Fauci has said for months now that, while he was keeping a “completely open mind,” he believed evidence pointed away from a lab leak.
Unfortunately for “Mr. Science,” the internet and I have long memories. In May 2020, Fauci said he was convinced the virus originated naturally.
“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] evolvedScientists themselves have stated there was indeed some trepidation about openly discussing the lab theory. Alina Chan, a postdoctoral associate at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard University, recently admitted previous skepticism of the lab-leak theory was tied to politics.”At the time, it was scarier to be associated with Trump and to become a tool for racists, so people didn’t want to publicly call for an investigation into lab origins,” she said in an interview with Yahoo News.
Late last week, the House of Representatives voted unanimously for the Biden administration to declassify all information about the origins of covid. Biden hasn’t decided if he will sign it.
The bill now heads to President Biden’s desk after the Senate passed it earlier this month, and Republicans have demanded he signs it to clarify what happened.If the President does not take action for ten days while Congress is in session, it automatically becomes law. He can veto it, but Congress has enough votes – two-thirds of the House and the Senate – to override a veto.
Fauci is desperately rewriting science and history as facts about covid’s origins are closer to being made public.
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