The narrative that the COVID-19 pandemic originated in an animal “wet market” is unraveling.
Former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Robert Redfield says he was excluded from key conversations on the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020.
“It was told to me that they wanted a single narrative and then I obviously had a different point of view,” Redfield testified before the U.S. House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, on March 8.
National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) Director Antony Fauci and National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Francis Collins kept him out of early conversations because of his suspicion the virus leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), said Redfield.
Fauci has denied Redfield’s claim. Redfield also testified he is still of the belief that COVID-19 was the result of an accidental lab leak and it is critical to determine the origins for certain. Both Fauci and Collins, and the World Health Organization and Chinese officials, pushed the view the virus likely spread from animals to humans, and as late as March 12, Fauci indicated on CNN he was still leaning in that direction but “since it hasn’t been definitively proven, we have to keep a completely open mind.”
‘Prompted’ Origin Story
A classified intelligence report by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) concluded a laboratory leak is the most likely origin of the COVID-19 virus, The Wall Street Journal reported on February 26.
The DOE joins the FBI in now concluding the coronavirus probably escaped from the WIV, reversing its previous stance. Other intelligence agencies disagree, but a 2020 analysis by the U.S. State Department pointed out there was circumstantial evidence of a lab leak, including the fact Chinese authorities sealed off the WIV in January 2020 and the lab employee rumored to be “patient zero,” Huang Yanling, disappeared.
A March 2020 letter in the British medical journal The Lancet condemning COVID-19 “conspiracy theories” and a March 2020 Nature Medicine article concluding the “proximal origin” of the novel coronavirus was not a “laboratory construct” were written by NIH-funded scientists.
The House subcommittee presented new evidence Fauci “prompted” the drafting of the “proximal origin” article in 2020. After the article was published, Collins told Fauci he wanted the NIH to “put down this very destructive conspiracy,” in an email in April 2020.
‘Dismissed’ Competing Theories
Fauci and Collins may have propped up the natural origin hypothesis to quash the lab-leak question, says Robert E. Moffit, Ph.D., a senior research fellow in health care at The Heritage Foundation.
“Not only did Collins and Fauci dismiss it as a ‘conspiracy theory,’ but they may have used their considerable power and influence to get top NIH-funded scientists to help cement the initial narrative that the novel coronavirus originated in nature,” said Moffit.
People were banned from social media and ostracized in public after the Fauci-Collins narrative took hold, said Moffit, referring to a 2021 tweet by Apoorva Mandavilli of The New York Times.
“Even questioning the natural origins of the deadly coronavirus was socially and intellectually unacceptable over the last three years, particularly after a prominent New York Times reporter dismissed the lab leak speculation as racist,” said Moffit. “It was an elite- produced-and-directed theater of the absurd.”
Cracks In Fauci’s Facade
Fauci turned down offers of cabinet positions by two presidents to keep his job at NIAID for 38 years, says Matt Dean, a senior fellow in health care policy outreach at The Heartland Institute, which co-publishes Health Care News.
“He certainly did not remain at NIAID because he was held back by modesty,” said Dean. “Fauci is a bureaucrat who painstakingly created a network of hierarchical funding streams and tributaries that flowed where he said they should. This system—combining academia, pharma, and government—created a feedback loop of affirmation that always supported his position.”
The many faces of Fauci during the pandemic presaged these recent revelations, says Dean.
“Fauci’s first appearances before Congress show the dazzling showmanship, folksy charm, and confidence that made him a rising star decades earlier,” said Dean. “But as the pandemic wore on, cracks formed. His confidence became arrogance, his charm turned sour, as he became combative, famously sparing with Sen. Rand Paul over the origins of the COVID virus. We need to know if it came from a lab, and if it did, who paid for it.”
Harry Painter (harry@harrypainter.com) writes from Oklahoma.
Internet Info:
“An Analysis of Circumstantial Evidence for Wuhan Labs as the Source of the Coronavirus,” U.S. State Department, March 24, 2022: https://usrtk.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/State-Department-FOIA-An-Analysis-of-Circumstantial-Evidence-for-Wuhan-Labs-as-the-Source-of-the-Coronavirus.pdf
