- Dr. Anthony Fauci was warned that the coronavirus was possibly ‘engineered’ in a lab before the pandemic started, emails show
- Fauci seemed to be taking it seriously behind closed doors while downplaying the idea in public
- NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins appeared to dismiss the theory that COVID-19 leaked from a Wuhan lab as a ‘conspiracy’ in an email to Dr. Anthony Fauci
- The subject line of Collins’ email to Fauci, which was sent on April 16 last year, was titled ‘conspiracy gains momentum’
Leading virus experts were warning Dr Anthony Fauci COVID-19 may have been created in a lab while he publicly played such claims down, newly-released emails show.
A Freedom of Information Act request saw thousands of Fauci’s emails released from last spring – including multiple discussions about COVID being man-made, some of which were later redacted.
Fauci was warned that the coronavirus was possibly ‘engineered’ in a lab before the pandemic started and seemed to be taking it seriously behind closed doors while downplaying the idea in public.
In a Jan. 31, 2020 email – more than two months before the World Health Organization characterized COVID-19 as a pandemic – Fauci forwarded a copy of Science magazine article titled ‘Mining coronavirus genomes for clues to the outbreak’s origins’ to two people.
US virus researcher Kristian Andersen and Sir Jeremy Farrar, who runs a global health charity in Britain, were on the receiving end of the email.
‘This just came out today. You may have seen it. If not, it is of interest to the current discussion,’ wrote Fauci, the longtime head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
Andersen, who runs a viral genomics lab at Scripps Research in La Jolla, California, wrote back, ‘The problem is that our phylogenetic analyses aren’t able to answer whether the sequences are unusual at individual residues, except if they are completely off.
‘The unusual features of the virus make up a really small part of the genome (<0.1%) so one has to look really closely at all the sequences to see that some of the features (potentially) look engineered.’
Andersen also noted that he and others ‘all find the genome inconsistent with expectations from evolutionary theory’ but added that ‘there are still further analyses to be done, so those opinions could still change.’
On March 30 and April 1, Andersen sent dozens of tweets in a thread after the World Health Organization released its report about the origin of the coronavirus.
In the thread, he included a tweet saying, ‘First of all, I have very carefully considered the possibility of a lab leak, dating back to January, 2020. A committee under the White House OSTP/NASEM was set up in response to these enquiries and I remain a member of that committee today.’
On Wednesday, after Fauci’s emails went viral, he tweeted a reply to Australian reporter Sharri Markson downplaying the idea of a cover up.
‘I know it’s super mundane, but it isn’t actually a “massive cover-up,” Sharri. It’s just science. Boring, I know, but it’s quite a helpful thing to have in times of uncertainty,’ Andersen tweeted.
Two days later – February 2, 2020 – Farar sent an email to Fauci and other US health officials sent a ZeroHedge article wit the headline ‘Coronavirus Contains “HIV Insertions,” Stocking Fears Over Artificially Created Bioweapon.’
The messages were included in a batch of more than 3,200 of Fauci’s emails from January to June 2020 that were obtained and published by Buzzfeed on Tuesday.
The emails show Fauci received ‘a flurry of correspondence about the theory that coronavirus leaked from a lab in Wuhan,’ Buzzfeed reported, including one email sent to Fauci on April 16, 2020 by Francis Collins.
Collins, the director of the National Institute of Health, wrote ‘conspiracy gains momentum’ in the subject line and included a link to a Mediaite news article referencing comments made a day earlier about the Wuhan lab leak theory by Fox News anchor Bret Baier.
The contents of Collins’ email was redacted.
Fauci replied on April 17 at 2.45am but his response also was blacked out. Fauci requested a ‘quick call’ with Collins in one of his earlier replies.
