Former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) head Anthony Fauci privately admitted that scientists suspected the coronavirus likely stemmed from a lab leak as he publicly blasted it as a wild conspiracy theory, revelations from his diary showcase.
A January 2020 entry in the diary released by Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), Chairman of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, features Fauci detailing a conference call with “several” scientists, including the following:
• Francis Collins, Director of the U.S. National Institutes of Health, U.S.;
• Anthony Fauci, Director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, U.S.;
• Jeremy Farrar, Director of the Wellcome Trust;
• Patrick Vallance, U.K. Chief Scientific Adviser and Head of the Government Science and Engineering;
• Kristian Anderson, Director of Infectious Disease Genomics, Scripps Research Translational Institute, CA, U.S.;
• Christian Drosten, Director of Human Virology at the German Center for Infection Research at Charité – Universitätsmedizin, Germany;
• Edward Holmes, Professor of Viral Evolution at University of Sydney;
• Andrew Rambaut, Professor of Molecular Evolution, University of Edinburgh’s Institute of Evolutionary Biology, U.K.;
• Ron Fouchier, Deputy Head of Department of Viroscience, Erasmus Medical Center, NL;
• Robert Garry, Professor of Virology, Tulane University School of Medicine, Louisana, U.S.;
• Mike Ferguson, Professor of Life Sciences at University of Dundee, U.K.; and
• M.P.G. Koopmans, Head of Department of ViroScience, Erasmus Medical Center, NL.
In his diary, Fauci mused, “There was not total agreement about the likelihood of deliberate insertion” – speaking of the engineering of the virus in a lab. He then revealed that only two seemed to openly disagree with the possibility of the lab leak theory. All of the other scientists believed it was very possible.
It is important to note that January 2020 was before the lockdowns had started and was also before the World Health Organization had even declared it a pandemic.
Fauci continued:
Ron Fouchier said he was sure that this could occur naturally and we should not waste our time and divert effort to pursue this. This is expected of him since he was the original GOF person with Yoshi Kawaoka. Also, Christian Drosten was with Ron; the rest felt that deliberate insertion was possible and given the fact that Dr. Zheng-Li Shi at the University of Wuhan has been working for years in GOF in coronaviruses to allow adaptation of the spike protein to bind to the human ACE2 receptor, we could not let this go. We decided to have Jeremy with Francis to contact Tedros with Stewart Simonson’s help (I arranged this) to see if Tedros would convene experts. [Emphasis added].
Despite that, Fauci spent years publicly dismissing the credible lab leak theory as a wild conspiracy. Yet, he often struck a softer tone in his diary, asserting that no one is “100% certain of the origin,” including himself.
In a May 2021 entry, he wrote:
The situation continues to get “out of control” with regard to the press reports concerning my “flip flopping” concerning the theory of the origin of the virus. I had always said that the very highly likelihood is that the virus originated naturally from an animal reservoir jumping to a human. However, over the past couple of days given the amount of speculation about the possibility of a lab leak I have been saying that no one is 100% certain of the origin including me and so I am calling for a thorough investigation. [Emphasis added].
On June 7, 2021, he seemed to reference the call with other experts and, if he is referencing the January 2020 diary entry, he contradicted himself by asserting that “about half” of those on the call believed “this was possibly a constructed virus and the other half were convinced that this was a natural occurrence.” If he is referencing that specific meeting, that is simply not true, as only two flagged it as being a likely natural occurrence – not half.
He wrote:
Scott Gottlieb had appeared on Face the Nation and mentioned in an attempt to help me then I had actually gone to Europe in Jan/Feb. 2020 to brief health ministers about the possibility that the virus could have been constructed an escape from the laboratory. He did this to indicate that I was not hiding anything because I already knew that this was a possibility and so I didn’t change my mind currently by saying that a lab leak is a possibility since I was talking about it openly back then. As it turns out, he was a little bit mixed up because on January 31st, 2020 I received a call from Jeremy Farrar who conferenced in Christian Andersen to tell me that Ed Holmes and Christian had seen a copy of the sequence of the virus and felt that there was a possibility that because of the unusual furin cleavage site that this could possibly have been a constructed virus. as indicated in my notes of January 31st and February 1st , 2020, since I am not an evolutionary biologist I called together by phone a group knowledgeable scientist together with Francis Collins and a few other people to discuss this. After a considerable amount of discussion about half of the people felt that this was possibly a constructed virus and the other half were convinced that this was a natural occurrence. A few weeks later Christian Andersen got together with Bob Garry and Andrew Rambaut to examine this more carefully and they came to the conclusion that they were convinced that this was a natural occurrence and a jump from the animal reservoir. They published their data in a preprint server in February followed by a nature paper in March of 2020 . That is the reason why it appears that a I briefed people which I did not. I was briefed by them. Scott had said that I had briefed a group of international health people he seemed to have gotten some of the story wrong , but overall he was correct. [Emphasis added].
As time went on, Fauci became more hostile in his personal diary toward the lab leak theory, despite his own previous entries pointing to the possibility. “Great Article in Politico that describes the lies of the Trump people about the ‘lab leak’ theory,” he noted, also praising the Guardian for similar reporting. He later accused the right of spreading conspiracies, writing, “The conspiracy of the far right and the trump loyalists continues. Recently representative Mike McCall the minority On the House Foreign Affairs Committee released a report by the panel’s republican staff essentially saying that the lab leak was the cause of COVID-19 and hinting the NIH’s role in creating the virus.”
His theory continued:
This is based on no new information or no new data. It is very clear what is going on and it needs to be called out. It is all part of “The Big Lie”. First, trump actually won the election; next, January 6th was a friendly visit to the capital book shop; next trump was right and China caused the virus; next Fauci and the NIH helped the Chinese create the virus; next, discredit Fauci and it looks like trump is telling the truth. It is plain and simple a concerted effort aimed at getting trump re-elected and exonerating him from any blame in the complete mess up of his response to COVID-19.
Fauci has since desperately tried to save face to diminish his role in spreading lies, including his involvement in gain-of-function research. Even the Trump White House revamped the coronavirus guidance page, which identifies a lab leak as the likely origin of the virus.
“‘The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2’ publication — which was used repeatedly by public health officials and the media to discredit the lab leak theory — was prompted by Dr. Fauci to push the preferred narrative that COVID-19 originated naturally,” it states, noting that the virus “possesses a biological characteristic that is not found in nature” and pointing out that “Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) researchers were sick with COVID-like symptoms in the fall of 2019, months before COVID-19 was discovered at the wet market.”
Fauci is set to testify before the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs on Wednesday.