New emails show Fauci commissioned paper to disprove Wuhan lab leak theory

New emails uncovered by House Republicans probing the COVID-19 pandemic reveal the deceptive nature of Dr. Anthony Fauci.  

They show he “prompted” or commissioned — and had final approval on — a scientific paper written specifically in February 2020 to disprove the theory that the virus leaked from a lab in Wuhan, China. 

Eight weeks later, Fauci stood at a White House press conference alongside President Trump and cited that paper as evidence that the lab leak theory was implausible while pretending it had nothing to do with him and he did not know the authors.

“There was a study recently,” he told reporters on April 17, 2020, when asked if the virus could have come from a Chinese lab, “where a group of highly qualified evolutionary virologists looked at the sequences… in bats as they evolve and the mutations that it took to get to the point where it is now is totally consistent with a jump of a species from an animal to a human. 

“So, the paper will be available. I don’t have the authors right now, but we can make it available to you.”

That paper, entitled “The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2” was sent to Fauci for editing in draft form and again for final approval before it was published in Nature Medicine on Feb. 17, 2020. 

It was written four days after Fauci, and his NIH boss Francis Collins, held a call with the four authors to discuss reports that COVID-19 may have leaked from the Wuhan lab and “may have been intentionally genetically manipulated”. 

The House Oversight subcommittee published emails Sunday in which the paper’s co-author Dr. Kristian Andersen admits Fauci “prompted” him to write the paper with the goal of “disprove” the lab leak theory.

On February 12, 2020, Andersen submitted the paper to Nature Medicine with a cover email: “There has been a lot of speculation, fear-mongering, and conspiracies put forward in this space. [This paper was] Prompted by Jeremy Farrah [sic], Tony Fauci, and Francis Collins”.

Farrar, then head of British nonprofit, the Wellcome Trust, which has historic ties to the pharmaceutical industry and the Gates Foundation, was rewarded with the plum role of Chief Scientist at the World Health Organization last December.

On the day the “Proximal Origin” paper was published, emails show Farrar pushing through a crucial change: “Sorry to micromanage/micro edit! But would you be willing to change one sentence?”

Farrar’s change was to replace the word “unlikely” with “improbable” in a statement about the lab leak origin, so it would read: “It is improbable that SARS-CoV-2 emerged through laboratory manipulation of an existing SARS-related coronavirus.”

Improbable means having a probability too low to inspire belief; unbelievable, even ridiculous.

That’s what Fauci and friends wanted us to think of the lab leak theory that looked probable from the “get-go”, as one dissenting scientist said at the time, and looks more probable by the day.

The question of why Fauci went to such an effort to obscure the origins of COVID-19 is a major focus of the GOP-led committee. 

While they’re at it, they should quiz the Biden administration’s new “US Negotiator for the Pandemic Accord” at the WHO, Ambassador Pamela Hamamoto, a former campaign bundler and Hawaii schoolmate of Barack Obama. 

Last month she sided with China to keep deliberations around this new international pandemic treaty secret. 

What are they trying to hide?