Im-Politic: More Support for the Lab Leak Theory – From China

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Anthony S. Fauci, CCP Virus, China, coronavirus, COVID 19, gain-of-function research, George Fu Gao, Im-Politic, Kristian Andersen, lab leak, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health, natural origin, wet markets, Wuhan Institute of Virology

Imagine if a close friend of Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the recently retired U.S. medical official who spearheaded the nation’s fight against the CCP Virus pandemic, just made public comments undercutting a pandemic proposition pushed long and hard by Fauci – along with many American apologists for Beijing (Or were they simply Trump-ly deranged scolds determined to beat what they saw as the former’s xenophobic penchant for blaming foreign countries for…anything? Or both?)?

This belief, of course, is that this this devastating disease originated in a wild animal and not from a virology lab in China with a terrifyingly casual – but evidently typical Chinese attitude – toward preventing accidental pathogen release.

Imagine further that this friend of Fauci – whose initial response to the “lab leak theory” was to use his power in the American research community to slime as “conspiracy thinking” any suggestion that the Chinese regime’s recklessness loosed the virus on humanity – was an eminent virologist himself.

And finally, imagine that this Fauci friend had until last year been not only a leading medical authority, but essentially Fauci’s Chinese counterpart.

That would be a development you’d think would supercharge U.S. government and other international pressure on China to come clean on the virus’ origin, and thereby help identify crucial steps needed to reduce the odds of another possibly preventable medical disaster engulfing the globe.

And that’s exactly what happened Friday in London at an international conference. Dr. George Fu Gao, former head of Beijing’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention, told attendees that there was still “no evidence” showing which animal the virus supposedly came from.

Gao’s full statement: “Even now, people think some animals are the host or reservoir. Cut a long story short, there is no evidence which animals (were) where the virus comes (from).”

As known by those who have followed the virus origins debate closely, Gao’s remark is nothing unusual per se. Finding conclusive evidence along these lines is difficult because it typically requires finding the pathogen in specimens caught in the wild – which are carrying the disease before they’ve had any contact with possible human sources. In fact, despite searching for decades, scientists still haven’t identified the natural “reservoir host” of the ebola virus.

But Gao’s view matters a lot because just a month ago, a report was published that many “natural origins” proponents claimed all but clinched the case that the CCP Virus first jumped to humans from raccoon dogs that were sold at a “wet market” in the city of Wuhan. That is, no Chinese lab was involved.

Interestingly, one of the report’s lead authors was Dr. Kristian Anderson of the reknowned Scripps Research Institute, who in early 2020 worked closely with Fauci and other specialists to (in his words) “disprove any type of lab theory” (italics in original), and who had been the recipient of big grants from Fauci’s agency.

A close reading of the findings (good summaries can be found in the above-linked Atlantic and New York Times articles) makes clear that they don’t clinch the case at all. For example, although the Chinese-collected samples from the Wuhan market did contain mostly genetic material testing positive for the virus that matched the raccoon dog genome – the evidence that so excited the natural origins supporters. But infected human samples were found as well. Moreover, the Chinese researchers who collected the samples used at least some test kits designed to filter out human material (which sure sounds consistent with a lab leak cover-up campaign), though it’s not certain how effectively they did achieved this goal.

To be clear, Gao has not endorsed the lab leak theory. In fact, in principle, his remarks could dovetail with the Chinese regime’s claim that the virus came to the People’s Republic from abroad. (Beijing, ironically, doesn’t endorse the natural origins theory because it’s embarrassed by the minimal-at-best hygienic conditions at the wet markets.)

But Gao’s comments are important because he undoubtedly recognizes that, since no one outside China (except some apologists?) takes seriously the foreign-origin claims, any development that undercuts the natural origins theory ipso facto strengthens the only remaining alternative – the lab leak theory. And therefore it would strengthen the case not only for Chinese responsibility, but for Chinese government responsibility.

In turn, if Chinese government responsibility is so distinctly possible, it raises the question of why Fauci worked so hard to discredit it. And one answer is supported by abundant evidence: that very soon after the virus’ severity became clear, Fauci realized that his own agency had funded the kind of research (known as “gain of function”) dangerous enough to create novel and indeed unprecedently deadly pathogens at the Chinese government-operated lab in Wuhan that had already come under scrutiny as the virus’ possible origin point. (See, e.g., my post here.)

This doesn’t mean that Fauci’s American and Chinese grantees at the Wuhan Institute of Virology accidentally created the bug that became SARS-Cov-2 (the scientific name for the CCP Virus). That charge seems implausible. (At least, that’s what been stated by the U.S. National Institutes of Health, and even though it’s the parent agency of Fauci’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and therefore was responsible for funding Wuhan research, too, I haven’t yet seen a convincing refutation.)

But at that early stage, neither Fauci nor anyone else could know that for sure. And clearly even once that allegation was disposed of, any solid reason to think that Fauci had funded dangerous work in China – especially given that country’s slipshod lab safety record – would have indicated judgement appalling enough to justify his firing.

Before long, Fauci will be appearing before Congressional committees investigating these and other controversial aspects of his record in the fight against the virus. Here’s hoping some lawmaker asks him if he thinks his friend George Gao is a lab leak conspiracy-monger, too.   

 

 

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Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Beyond Blaming the Victim

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CCP Virus, China, coronavirus, COVID 19, Edward G. Luce, Financial Times, George W. Bush, global terrorism, Iraq war, lab leak, Mario del Poro, Melvyn Leffler, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, September 11, The Washington Post, weapons of mass destruction, Wuhan lab, Wuhan virus

When a line of argument appears twice in Mainstream Media publications on consecutive days, it’s hard not to conclude that a trend might be forming – or has been well underway. And when it comes to the particular line of argument I’m posting about, that’s disturbing news, since it’s an especially repugnant form of blaming the victim that could become dangerously influential. For these views can all too easily become rationales for official paralysis in the face of major threats, or excessively feeble responses, because the media organizations spreading these views are still taken so seriously by so many U.S. policymakers.

The first example of such blaming the victim comes from Edward G. Luce, a columnist for the Financial Times. Now before you go objecting that both this pundit and his newspaper are British, keep in mind that the author is based in Washington, D.C. and that the Times has long published a U.S. edition that’s must reading in high level American policy circles that are by no means confined to business and economics.

In his March 1 offering on how some revised American intelligence assessments of the CCP Virus lab leak theory might impact U.S.-China relations, Luce worries that “America’s growing tendency to demonise China — and the fact that China keeps supplying it with material — poses a threat to global health” and could poison the entire spectrum of bilateral ties because “The world’s superpower and its rising great power are both now working from home and nourishing paranoia about each other.”

It’s the first half of this analysis that especially caught my eye. According to Luce, practically the entire U.S. political system is increasingly “demonising” China – phrasing that, along with the follow-on reference to “paranoia,” can only mean that U.S. positions on the entire range of Sino-American relations have become unjustifiably harsh.

But at the same time, he notes that “China keeps supplying [Americans] with material.” That sounds like a confession that China’s record actually does warrant more confrontational stances in Washington. Luce’s contention of mutual paranoia stoking, however, indicates that this isn’t what he believes at all.

Practically identical is Luce’s observation that “Beijing’s reluctance to play global citizen on pandemic warning systems — on top of climate change and other common threats — means we are hearing far less from Washington about co-operating with China and far more about confronting it.”

Yet how is Luce advising the United States to deal with a country that he himself believes isn’t buying the argument about the need for cooperation on issues of common concern? Simply, it seems, by talking as much as ever or even more about “co-operating with China” – which appears to reflect the hope that some particularly inspiring official U.S. verbiage can bring Beijing around and of course a clear triumph over experience.

The second example of such victim blaming came in a book review published the following day in the Washington Post. Writing about American historian Melvyn Leffler’s new study of the 2003 U.S. Iraq War, French political scientist Mario del Pero describes Leffler as arguing that President George W. Bush and his top advisors

“were imbued with a ‘sense of exceptional goodness and greatness’ and believed in the superiority of ‘America’s system of democratic capitalism.’ This hubris encouraged a strategy that favored deploying America’s overwhelming power to protect the country and its way of life. The terrorist attacks fed this arrogance and blinded the administration to the moral and strategic issues it confronted.”

Leave aside the suggestion that belief in the superiority of “America’s system of democratic capitalism” is ipso facto a sign of “hubris” and “arrogance” (which strikes me as weird) and the contention that the Bush administration underestimated “the moral and strategic issues it confronted” (more persuasive IMO, especially the strategic part).

Concentrate instead on the final sentence about the September 11 attacks “feeding” the administration’s “arrogance.” This sounds just like Luce’s portrayal of over-the-top U.S. responses to Chinese provocations that he concedes in the next breath have been awfully provocative. Unless American leaders post-September 11 should have viewed that day’s strikes as a one-off?

Yet del Pero makes clear that Leffler makes no such argument. The author (in del Pero’s words) maintains that

>U.S. leaders “believed that America’s way of life was under threat”;

>”The shared assumption — within the administration as well as among allies and arms-control experts — was that Iraq still had secret weapons-of-mass-destruction (WMD) programs. The new global landscape made the possibility of a WMD-armed Iraq all the more ominous”; and

>“No threat [Leffler’s words] worried Bush and his advisers more than the prospect of terrorists getting their hands on weapons of mass destruction.”

Finally, (back to the reviewer’s words) “Intelligence was inconclusive and some of it, it was later realized, simply fabricated. But no risks could be taken.”

In other words, even though this second Iraq War turned out terribly, the idea that the dangers of global terrorism “fed” a Bush administration “arrogance” and “hubris” that presumably was already bloated is far too dismissive. Instead, the grievous damage already done by such terrorism, the genuinely frightful and plausible prospect of more to come – and possibly sooner rather than later – and the frustrating uncertainties policymakers always face in crises, mean that the 2003 invasion is best seen as an understandable and entirely rational response.

In fact, reviewer del Pero winds up substantially agreeing, calling Bush’s approach “coherent in theory.” Also worth keeping in mind. At least rhetorically, Bush didn’t start out as a chest-thumping foreign policy President.

In his October 11, 2000 debate with Democratic rival Al Gore during his first campaign for President, Bush stated:

“If we’re an arrogant nation [other countries will] resent us. If we’re a humble nation, but strong, they’ll welcome us. And our nation stands — stands alone right now in the world in terms of power. And that’s why we’ve got to be humble and yet project strength in a way that promotes freedom.”

Obviously, September 11 produced a change. But how could it not have, to at least some extent?

A famous bit of French snark memorably “complains” “This animal is dangerous. When attacked, it defends itself.” That’s a good way to think about both these charges that there’s something as fundamentally diseased about the overall American body politic’s reactions to the burgeoning threats posed by China as there was about the Bush administration’s invasion of Iraq.

Of course, although some policies will always be rooted in real paranoia, and although their more reasoned counterparts can always go awry for any number of reasons, the failure of Luce, del Pero, and apparently Leffler (along with their Financial Times and Washington Post editors) to recognize a healthy sense of national self-preservation that’s vital in a dangerous world when they see it, is pretty diseased itself. Here’s hoping it doesn’t become epidemic.

Im-Politic: Six Million

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CCP Virus, China, coronavirus, COVID 19, Holocaust, Im-Politic, Jews, lab leak, natural origin, Nazis, Wuhan virus

Even if the situation in Ukraine, including the actual on-the-ground state of the fighting, wasn’t fluid enough to warrant pausing with the commentary and analysis until more clarity emerges, the approach of a global CCP Virus milestone should command major attention, and it involves the number six million.

As known by anyone familiar with contemporary history, it’s one of the few numbers powerful enough to stand alone, without elaboration – something like “nine-eleven.” For others, it’s the number that’s enough to summon up all the horrors of the Holocaust, representing the number of European Jews widely thought to have been killed by the Nazis.

That’s why it’s important to point out that it already may describe the number of people killed worldwide by the virus – and that according to the reliable Washington Post and Worldometers.info pandemic trackers, if the victim count actually hasn’t hit this level yet, it’s certain to by tomorrow. Or the next day. (Nearly one million of these victims have been Americans.)

In many, and even most ways, of course, the Holocaust’s impact remains in a class by itself. The six million killed during the Holocaust accounted for an estimated 63 percent of the Jews living in Europe before 1933 – when Adolph Hitler became Germany’s Chancellor (via election, indirectly).

Moreover, with the continent’s surviving Jewish population literally in tatters in 1945, never to achieve critical mass again, it’s fair to say that an entire civilization or culture, developed over centuries, was wiped out. The effect on the pre-1933 global Jewry was extraordinary, too: Holocaust victims represented nearly 43 percent of that pre-1933 population. (The data in this and the preceding paragaph come from here.)

The raw numbers tell a different story about CCP Virus victims. That six million represents less than 0.08 percent of the entire world population (based on this current estimate of nearly 7.9 billion). And because of all the difficulties, legitimate and not so legitimate, in distinguishing deaths caused by the virus and deaths related to the virus, the six million figure probably shouldn’t be taken too literally.

But the raw numbers can never express the full extent of a genocide or an atrocity or a tragedy of any kind. So the ability of a pathogen to be as great a killer in this age of miraculous medical technology as the fanatically obsessed ruler of a major power equipped with that era’s state-of-the-art technology – and all within two years – should be enough to give anyone pause (even if the Spanish flu of a century ago was far deadlier).

And at least as bad as the death toll, at least in my view, is that efforts to affix responsibility for the pandemic – which almost certainly began in China, whether you believe in the natural origin theory or the variants of the lab leak theory – seem to have ended with a whimper. Unless you’ve heard anything significant lately about either a Biden administration or World Health Organization investigation?

Once the Nazi Holocaust was revealed, the world in general vowed “Never again” and brought the perpetrators to justice. Now its quantitative equivalent has happened again, and accountability – or even simple explanation of the origin – of any kind seems as remote a prospect as ever.

Im-Politic: A Rapidly Mounting Case Against Fauci – and His Former Boss

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Anthony S. Fauci, CCP Virus, China, Congress, coronavirus, COVID 19, Francis Collins, gain-of-function research, Im-Politic, lab leak, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health, natural origin, NIAID, NIH, Wuhan virus

Dr. Anthony S. Fauci must be one of the luckiest people in the world, with Dr. Francis S. Collins not far behind. President Biden’s chief medical advisor and the recently retired head of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) have been leading charmed lives because evidence keeps emerging of their incredibly shady and quite possibly corrupt and illegal behavior in dealing with the China angle of the CCP Virus pandemic, and so far they’re getting off scot free.

As known by RealityChek readers, overwhelming evidence exists that Fauci, longtime head of NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) lied to Congress when he denied under oath that his agency funded gain-of-function research at a Chinese virology lab in violation of federal government guidelines at the time. Such deceitful statements are criminal offenses and Kentucky Republican Senator Rand Paul has rightly asked the Justice Department for a criminal investigation. But how anxious do you think this Biden administration cabinet agency will be to look into someone whom the President himself has repeatedly touted as the world’s greatest expert on handling the pandemic?

This Fauci decision on gain-of-function funding, by the way (as opposed to misleading Congress about it) should be enough to put him in serious legal jeopardy. And ditto for Collins if he knew about Fauci’s action.

In the last month, however, recently released emails suggest two more major reasons for investigating Fauci and Collins.

The first concerns statements by both in their correspondence during 2020 and 2021 that they not only tried to suppress public discussion and consideration of Chinese responsibility for loosing the virus on the world – which has been clear enough from the numerous times they described as “fringe” and “conspiracy” thinking positions arguments made in support of the lab leak theory made by numerous eminent virologists and epidemiologists.

Now, thanks to a new group of emails – released by Republican members of the House Oversight and Reform Committtee – we know that the agencies for which Fauci and Collins have worked are trying to cover up the reasons that scientists tasked by the former during the pandemic’s early U.S. stages to examine the virus’ origins switched from viewing as solid and even convincing both main versions of the lab leak theory (that a naturally occuring coronavirus escaped due to Chinese carelessness, and that the pathogen that leaked was man-made) to staunch opponents of these ideas.

If such a cover up wasn’t taking place, why were virtually all the contents of the communications that could have shed light on the specific reason for this dramatic change redacted? Like scientific and medical information should suddenly be treated as a state secret?

Second, these emails also speak volumes about the motives of Fauci and Collins. Their sole aims, the wording strongly suggests, weren’t to make sure that pseudo-science didn’t distract and inhibit the nation’s response to the pandemic. Instead, they were also concerned with maintaining “international harmony” (as Collins put it in a February 2, 2020 message) and not doing “unnecessary harm to science in general and science in China in particular” (according to one of the experts involved in the electronic discussions on the same day).

There’s nothing wrong with scientists worrying about the state of science worldwide and about dangers to the international cooperation that drives so much scientific progress. But there’s everything wrong (although it’s probably not a crime) for such scientists, and especially government scientists who have been appointed and not elected to their jobs, trying to stamp out any discussions – both inside and outside the government – involving an entirely possible danger to public health in order to advance the above aims, or for any non-scientific reason. In the American system of government, that call – which involves major and complicated scientific and non-scientific tradeoffs – must be made by elected officials. The appointed technocrats should be providing input reflecting their paticular expertise, and nothing more.

Third, two conservative-leaning news organizations (see here and especially here) have obtained NIH documents showing that some of the scientists who changed their minds and indeed began leading the charge to debunk the lab leak theories got big increases in grant funding from Fauci’s NIAID (and by extension, Collins’ NIH). In other words, these experts could well have done these government scientists’ bidding in exchange for a payoff.

None of this new material is enough to declare anyone guilty of anything. But it’s full of information demanding a far-ranging probe. During the Watergate era, Congress rightly sought to determine whether there was a “cancer on the Presidency.”  Especially as an era of pandemics may well be starting, the possibility of a cancer on the public health establishment should be equally alarming. 

Im-Politic: From Inside the Wuhan Lab

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Anthony S. Fauci, Bloomberg.com, CCP Virus, coronavirus, COVID 19, Danielle Anderson, gain-of-function research, Im-Politic, lab leak, Michelle Fay Cortez, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health, NIH, Ralph Baric, Shi Zeng-li, virologists, virology, WIV, Wuhan Institute of Virology, Wuhan virus

That was some scoop by Bloomberg.com’s Michelle Fay Cortez the other day, bagging an interview with the last (and only) non-Chinese scientist to work in the Wuhan, China lab suspected of being the origin point of the CCP Virus and the pandemic it’s spawned.

Danielle Anderson apparently wasn’t working on coronaviruses per se, but her views are of special interest not only because she has first-hand knowledge of the Chinese researchers who were, and of the safety standards at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). Her views are of special interest because she’s the only person with such knowledge who isn’t vulnerable to Chinese regime threats against herself or her family or friends.

So when the Australian virologist speaks highly of the integrity of Wuhan colleagues and of the lab’s safety policies, she deserves to be taken seriously. Ditto for her claim that, although U.S. intelligence agencies are reported to have determined that three WIV researchers became sick enough with flu-like symptoms to have sought hospitalization in November, 2019 – about a month before physicians in Wuhan first reported to Chinese health officials the appearance of a novel coronavirus – she knew of no such illness among Institute staff. So that appears to undercut the argument that the three researchers’ illness tightly connect the pandemic to work done at the lab.

Nonetheless, in many ways, Anderson’s statements generally leave the lab leak theory – as opposed to the contention that the virus’ emergence had nothing to do with the WIV and jumped naturally from animals to humans – decidedly alive and kicking.

For example, Anderson’s praise of the WIV’s safety culture seems retricted to its BSL-4 facility – a lab that supposedly met the highest internationally used standards for handling dangerous pathogens. But Dr. Shi Zheng-li, China’s lead bat virus expert, has stated on the record that she’s conducted her coronavirus research in facilities at the Institute that meet less exacting safety requirements.

Moreover, her suggestion that using a form of gain-of-function research known as reverse genetics to increase the infectiousness of viruses is too difficult to have taken place at the WIV is contradicted by two important facts. First, this is precisely the kind of work at that lab that was paid for grants from the U.S. government’s National Institutes of Health and National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (the latter of course headed by Dr. Anthony S. Fauci). Second, the WIV doubtless got the grants largely because Shi and a U.S. coronavirus researcher named Ralph Baric had in fact used the technique to create a novel coronavirus as early as 2015. (See this post for documentation.)

Perhaps most important, although she doubts the WIV gave the world the CCP Virus, Anderson made clear that she “could foresee how [an accident spawning the virus] could maybe happen, declared that “I’m not naive enough to say I absolutely write this off,” and said that she thinks, in Cortez’ words, that “an investigation is needed to nail down the virus’s origin once and for all.”

Which leaves me with only one criticism of Cortez’ interview: Given her distinctive vantage point, why didn’t she ask Anderson why she thought China has done everything possible to prevent such a probe?

Im-Politic: A Pandemic of Coverups?

Tags

Anthony S. Fauci, CCP Virus, censorship, coronavirus, COVID 19, EcoHealth Alliance, Facebook, Fauci, Fauci emails, Google, Im-Politic, lab leak, Mark Zuckerberg, National Institutes of Health, NationalPulse.com, natural origin, NIH, Peter Daszak, social media, The New York Times, Wuhan Institute of Virology, Wuhan lab, Wuhan University, Wuhan virus, Zeynep Tufekci

What a June it’s been so far for anyone who’s always been skeptical of claims that anyone linking the CCP Virus’ emergence to virology facilities in Wuhan was trafficking in fringe-y conspiracy theories. Many crucial pieces of the puzzle are still missing. But June’s developments should make it harder than ever to dismiss not only the possibility that a natural or engineered version of the virus escaped from the lab, but that U.S. public health authorities ignored official prohibitions on funding so-called gain-of-function work at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and that they and other powerful American institutions even acted to suppress news of their Wuhan connections.

After all, it’s already been a month in which no less than Anthony S. Fauci appeared to emphasize that the virus featured characteristics not normally found in the wild. The longtime head of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and President Biden’s chief science advisor told a New York Times interviewer that

“This is an unusual virus because about a third to 40 percent of the people get no symptoms at all. Yet it’s capable of killing 600,000 Americans. We’ve never had a situation like that where a virus that would be benign or almost half the people or 40 percent of the people and yet kill so many people.”

And this after declaring that

“I’m not an evolutionary virologist, but those who are look at the virus, and they say it’s absolutely totally compatible with something that evolved from bat viruses because of the closeness to. But we don’t have that extra link that’s come in, but there’s nothing they see in there that makes you think it was something that came from a lab.”

Clear as mud, right?

It was also a week in which another New York Times contributor made an observation indicating that even if the the Wuhan Institute of Virology whose research Fauci and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) overall helped finance wasn’t engaged in federally prohibited gain-of-function experiments, it still might have created the pathogen in question where none existed before. According to Zeynep Tufekci,

“Just trying to culture bat viruses in the lab can create risks that the scientists may not even be aware of. While trying and failing to cultivate one strain, they might inadvertently culture another one they don’t even know about. It’s even possible, [Stanford University neurobiologist and bioengineer Michael Lin] told me, that viruses can coexist in a single sample and quietly recombine, giving rise to something novel but undetected.”

In other words, creating the specific SARS-CoV-2 virus that has swept over the world might not have been the goal of the Chinese scientists in question. But this virus might have resulted from their efforts to simulate natural processes. If you or loved ones have suffered from the virus medically, or from the economic and other public health damage it’s caused, this is likely to look like a distinction without a difference. It’s also likely to raise further questions about why U.S. public health agencies funded clearly risky research in a facility they’ve acknowledged they couldn’t monitor adequately.

It’s also been a month in which, thanks in part to that New York Times Fauci interview, more reasons emerged to wonder whether Fauci and social media giants Facebook and Google conspired (yes, the word would be justified in these instances) to suppress reporting on the lab leak theory – in Google’s case because it, too, had helped pay for the Wuhan lab’s work at various times recently.

In January, 2020 – when the CCP Virus was declared a public health emergency by the World Health Organization (WHO) – Facebook began a campaign to “keep harmful misinformation about COVID-19 from spreading on our apps” and direct customers “to resources from the WHO and other health authorities through our COVID-19 Information Center and pop-ups on Facebook and Instagram with over 350 million people clicking through to learn more.” Throughout the pandemic period, WHO of course has been a major actor trying to debunk any version of the lab leak theory.

Given Fauci’s own clear interest in drawing public attention away from the possibility that his agency helped create the virus, it’s more than a little interesting that in March of that year, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg sent Fauci an email that the recipient told Times interviewer Kara Swisher, who covers Big Tech, “hey, is there anything that we can do to help out to get the messages out, the right public health messages? I have a very important medium here in Facebook. Can I help? And as a matter of fact, if you guys don’t have enough resources and money to do some of the things you want, just let us know.”

Fauci took Zuckerberg up on his offer but nothing is known about the details of this arrangement because although this email exchange has been made public (with redactions that are odd to say the least since it’s hard to imagine any national security secrets changed hands), the content of follow-up communications (which surely included not only emails but phone conversations) remain under wraps.

Can we all agree that all of this material should be released ASAP, so that we won’t have to accept Fauci’s word that “any thought” that his dealings with Zuckerberg had to do with censoring inconvenient virus-related truths “is total conspiracy theory and total flight of fantasy”? Especially since Facebook didn’t announce until May 26 of this year that “we will no longer remove the claim that COVID-19 is man-made or manufactured from our apps.” (The company has said nothing about the possibility that the virus escaped a Chinese lab in natural form.)

As for Google, news of its own dodgy CCP Virus-related practices came out on June 9. Shortly thereafter, the company’s own virus and China connection was revealed. A website called TheNationalpulse.com produced proof that Google “funded research conducted by Peter Daszak’s EcoHealth Alliance – a controversial group which has openly collaborated with the Wuhan Institute of Virology” on that controversial bat virus research.

Google insists that “The one-off philanthropic grants referenced are years old and had nothing to do with COVID,” and that ‘We have engaged precisely zero times with this organization on any work related to COVID or the Wuhan lab.” But as the National Pulse post showed, one of the studies co-sponsored by Google – from 2018 – described itself “conducted in Guangdong Province, China, to characterize behaviors and perceptions associated with transmission of pathogens with pandemic potential in highly exposed human populations at the animal-human interface….” So it’s easy to conclude that Google also wanted to draw attention away from and discredit the idea that the Institute had anything to do with the pandemic’s outbreak.

Finally, June has been a month when the news came out that in June, 2020, a group of Wuhan University scientists asked the NIH to delete from a key medical genomics database data CCP Virus genome sequences they gathered from patients in that city in January and February.

The scientists claimed their reasons for the request were technical, and no evidence of deceitful intent has appeared. For its part, the NIH says that it receives such requests all the time, and typically complies. Fair enough. But given the importance of such very early pandemic stage information in determining the virus’ origins, and given China’s extensive efforts to keep data from this crucial early pandemic period secret, why on earth didn’t the NIH at least report the request and its response right away? Could it be because of its own funding of virus research in Wuhan?

As I said above, many major pieces of these puzzles remain missing.  But many are now in place also, and if ever there was a subject that screamed out for a comprehensive official investigation of the relevant actions and relationships at least of the U.S. players, with broad subpoena power, you’d think a pandemic that’s killed more than 600,000 Americans and sickened and disrupted or flat-out ruined the lives of tens of millions more amply fits the bill.  

 

Im-Politic: Why Fauci’s China Blind Spot Really Matters

Tags

Anthony S. Fauci, CCP Virus, coronavirus, COVID 19, gain-of-function research, Im-Politic, lab leak, National Institutes of Health, national security, research, totalitarianism, virologists, Wuhan Institute of Virology, Wuhan virus

Looking at some of Dr. Anthony S. Fauci’s recent related comments about the renewed controversy over the CCP Virus’ origins and U.S.-China scientific cooperation, it’s easy to conclude that, when it comes to anything other than the science of infectious diseases, the anti-virus point man in this administration and its predecessor is pathetically naive. Easy and misleading – and above all, useless in terms of the imperative of reducing the odds that such deadly pandemics break out again.

Only a little less distracting are charges that Fauci and his boss, head of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Dr. Francis Collins, have downplayed evidence that the virus escaped from a Chinese virology lab because they approved federal funding for research there. In this view, they’re trying to cover up having sent taxpayer dollars to a facility that either manufactured the virus or was operated carelessly enough practically to guarantee a leak.

Of course, if the two are covering up, they should be fired and investigated criminally (e.g., for violating federal guidelines governing the financing of such research, or for lying to Congress, or both).

But the most serious problem raised by actions we know about for sure is that they’re both scientists. Undoubtedly, they and their colleagues in these fields have invaluable contributions to make to help the country’s policymakers make the biggest calls when science-based problems threaten major, multidimensional damage to the nation’s well-being. Yet they’re utterly unqualified to make such calls, which entail major considerations outside their discipline, themselves. And this point applies these days particularly to Fauci, who has practically blanketed the new media since the virus’ potential to hit the United States became clear, and whose pronouncements on responses that have inevitably and profoundly impacted every corner of American life have been widely viewed as gospel – including by President Biden.

In this case, the reason is that one of the biggest features of this profession’s culture – the overriding value it places on knowledge sharing and collaboration – can be downright dangerous when scientists have to deal with the outside world, which of course contains ruthless and dangerous regimes like China’s. This powerful collaborative ethos – which is unquestionably has fostered much and even most vital scientific and technological progress, and which surely will continue to do so – in turn sheds light on a subject I wrote about at the end of last month: why Fauci and colleagues have acted so thoroughly oblivious to, and sometimes positively obtuse about, the risks of cooperating with China.

Both the naivete and corruption charges have been fueled by Fauci statements like the following:

>his February, 2020 contention that “early on in the outbreak it was clear that there was some muddling of information, but over the last several weeks, the Chinese authorities have really been very explicit that they were not going to tolerate any misinformation going out because it really was clear that no one was believing them, and they’re really very sensitive to that right now” and

>his June 3 claim that “It’s obviously in China’s interests to find out exactly what it is. And the ‘is’ of the natural theory would be to find that link. So you have to keep looking for it.”

Not helpful either: remarks like “The idea, I think, is quite far-fetched that the Chinese deliberately engineered something so that they could kill themselves, as well as other people. I think that’s a bit far out” – which on top of being an obvious absurdity, ignores the possibility that the virus was being stored in a naturally occuring form at one of the facilities of the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) and leaked out because of shoddy safety practices.

In addition, given that he’s the (very) long-time head of the U.S. agency within the NIH that specializes in infectious diseases like coronaviruses, Fauci seems surprisingly ill-informed about conditions at the WIV. Last week in another interview, he called it “a very well known, highly qualified laboratory.”

Yet as early as January, 2018, State Department officials reported after an inspection tour that the Institute’s single supposedly world-class lab was plagued with safety issues. And the WIV’s top bat coronavirus expert (and a Fauci grant recipient) admitted shortly after the pandemic’s outbreak that she performed much of her most dangerous research – the gain-of-function work that seeks to heighten natural virus’ most dangerous qualities to assess their potential to infect humans – at WIV facilities which maintained considerably lower fewer safety standards.

Further, Fauci seems to have been curiously unaware that China’s military was closely involved with the WIV’s work, or that in China, the military is entitled to learn the results of any research performed by officially civilian scientists. In the second above-linked June interview, he took great pains to argue there’s a bright line between the two sectors – even after hearing that the U.S. armed forces’ top official declared these categories to be distinctions without differences.

But the recent Vanity Fair investigation linked above reports that “U.S. government virologists” themselves had found an April, 2020 WIV study in which eleven of the 23 listed authors worked for the Chinese military’s medical research institute. In addition, by that time, U.S. National Security Council officials had “tracked collaborations between the WIV and military scientists—which stretch back 20 years, with 51 coauthored papers.” Author Katherine Eban also writes that by mid-January, 2020, “a team of military scientists led by China’s top virologist and biochemical expert, Major General Chen Wei, had set up operations inside the WIV.” And as I documented in my post late last month, President Biden’s own chief national security adviser publicly confirmed this relationship in February. 

None of this necessarily means that the WIV was trying to create a coronavirus-based bio-weapon, as some have suggested. But all of it underscores Beijing’s policy of treating everything produced or discovered by Chinese entities, and especially of course by any formal Chinese government agencies, as resources that must be put at the disposal of the leadership to be used in any way it sees fit.

And then of course there’s Fauci’s jumble of inconsistent statements, including under oath to Congressional committees, about whether any of his agency’s grants to the WIV were spent on gain-of- function research, on how much realistically could have known about how the monies were spent once they were out the door, and whether he tried to evade government restrictions (although not an outright ban) on supporting such experiments. (See my post last month for examples.) 

Look more carefully at Fauci’s recent remarks, however, and you’ll find evidence of beliefs that more convincingly represent his ultimate bottom line, and whose fatal flaws must be recognized if Washington is to prepare for future pandemics more effectively. Having lived all his professional life in the collaborative culture of science, Fauci has become incapable of admitting first, that fellow scientists can be untrustworthy and even nefarious if they come from untrustworthy, nefarious governments; and second, that even those governments themselves need to treated with extreme caution.

Indeed, as with so many in his profession, Fauci has become infatuated enough by the promise of unfettered international scientific cooperation to mistakes the ideal as the reality – or as a reality eminently and imminently attainable if not for paranoid or shortsighted laymen. Nothing, therefore, is more instinctive to him than taking for granted the good will and sense of global responsibility of the Chinese government, or insisting that its totalitarian rulers – whose obsession with controlling every significant aspect of their people’s lives must be apparent to any thinking person – leave their scientists free to pursue the truth whatever the political or geopolitical consequences.

Why else, for example, would he tell Fox News talker Laura Ingraham (in the above-linked February, 2020 appearance on her show), that his Chinese counterparts are credible on the virus’ origins and biology because

“there’s Chinese officials, party people, and there’s Chinese scientists. The Chinese scientists we’ve dealt with, I’ve dealt with myself personally for years, if not decades, many of them have trained here in the United States – now, today, when we communicate with them, which we do almost on a daily basis – I’m gonna be on a conference call tomorrow with a couple of them – I have faith that they are not distorting things. Now what the party leaders do, I can’t address. That’s not what I do. But at a medical-to-medical level, I can believe my colleagues there, and what they’re telling me now, I think, is the truth.”

Why else would he add that

“I cannot say that I am satisfied with every single bit of information [coming from China about the virus’ trajectory and origin]. But I can tell you in my direct interaction with Chinese scientists and Chinese health officials, not party politics people, but medical people and scientists, that I can believe what they’re telling me”?

Why else would he make virtually the same point in one of those June, 2021 interviews:

“The scientists in the Wuhan lab for years and years among credible, trusted scientists in China – we’re not talking about the Communist Chinese Party. We’re not talking about the Chinese military. We’re talking about scientists we’ve had relationships for years.”?

In the same session, a related characteristic of the scientist caste came through loud and clear as well: Its clubiness. In a detailed look at the virus origin debate last month former New York Times science reporter Nicholas Wade observed that:

“Virologists around the world are a loose-knit professional community. They write articles in the same journals. They attend the same conferences. They have common interests in seeking funds from governments and in not being overburdened with safety regulations.”

He emphasizes the latter point and the disaster it might have created:

“Virologists knew better than anyone the dangers of gain-of-function research. But the power to create new viruses, and the research funding obtainable by doing so, was too tempting. They pushed ahead with gain-of-function experiments. They lobbied against the moratorium imposed on Federal funding for gain-of-function research in 2014 and it was raised in 2017.”

But the purely social ties of this community’s members matter also in assessing its judgment, and in his numerous interviews, Fauci makes clear not only their strength but their incestuousness. For when asked why he trusted his Chinese colleagues’ honesty and good faith, his consistent answer amounted to “Because I know them so well.”

There’s the above June interview statement that

“The scientists in the Wuhan lab for years and years….we’re not talking about the Communist Chinese Party. We’re not talking about the Chinese military. We’re talking about scientists we’ve had relationships for years.”

In addition,

:The Chinese scientists we’ve dealt with, I’ve dealt with myself personally for years, if not decades, many of them have trained here in the United States – now, today, when we communicate with them, which we do almost on a daily basis – I’m gonna be on a conference call tomorrow with a couple of them – I have faith that they are not distorting things.”

Moreover,

“[W]e have very many years of experience of productive interaction with Chinese scientists. For example, Dr. George Gao, who’s the director of the Chinese CDC [Centers for Disease Control], has been a colleague for many years. He’s a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences….”

In other words, “Trust us. We trained lots of them. And George Gao – we initiated him into the fraternity.”

In Laura Ingraham appearance, right after vouching for all the Chinese scientists he’s long known, added that “what the party leaders do, I can’t address. That’s not what I do.” And he’s absolutely right. It’s not his job to be an expert on the Chinese political system (though you’d think he might have learned a thing or two after all those decades dealing with the scienists).

But for precisely that reason, federal government scientists like him (and surely other subject-specific specialists) clearly need their international activities much more tightly supervised by political appointees directly representing an accountable to the administration in power, and that goes double for their interactions with China, which raise so many political, national security and, as the pandemic has made so clear, economic, social, and cultural questions.

It’s long been a cliché that war is too important to leave to the generals. The pandemic and Fauci’s record on scientific collaboration are unmistakably teaching the imperative of recognizing that America needs to be just as mindful that this activity is too important to leave to the scientists.