by Eric Lendrum
Newly unearthed emails reveal that former head of the National Institute of Allergy Infectious Disease (NIAID), Dr. Anthony Fauci, was part of a group of scientists assembled for the sole purpose of “disproving” the COVID-19 origin theory claiming that the virus originated from a lab in Wuhan, China.
According to the Daily Caller, others in the group besides Fauci included Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH); Jeremy Farrar, director of Wellcome Trust; Kristian Andersen of Scripps Research; and Dutch virologist Ron Fouchier, among others. The emails revealing the collaborative effort were uncovered by journalist Jimmy Tobias after a prolonged legal battle with the NIH.
In an email sent on February 8th, 2020, Andersen explicitly wrote that the group’s sole purpose was “trying to disprove any type of lab theory.”
“Our main work over the last couple of weeks has been focused on trying to disprove any type of lab theory,” Andersen continued, “but we are at a crossroad where the scientific evidence isn’t conclusive enough to say that we have high confidence in any of the three main theories considered.”
Andersen went on to become the first author listed on the paper “The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2,” a report issued in the earliest days of the pandemic which was subsequently cited by most of the mainstream media as a leading source on the Chinese coronavirus.
The paper promoted the now-debunked theory that the virus originated naturally out of a wet market in Wuhan, near the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) but unrelated to the research facility.
Originally, Andersen and several other members of the group expressed support for the notion of a lab leak, but quickly changed their minds in a short period of time. Andersen was against the idea of publishing a paper on the matter, but ultimately relented and sent the draft to Nature Medicine for distribution. After publication, Fauci simply replied “nice job on the paper.”
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Eric Lendrum reports for American Greatness.
Background Photo “Wuhan Institute of Virology” by Ureem2805. CC BY-SA 4.0.
