Fauci Was Warned About Possible Gain-Of-Function Creation Of COVID-19 In January 2020, Newly Transcribed Emails Show
By: Michael Ginsberg
Well I'll be damned................
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
N ational Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease head Dr. Anthony Fauci and several other top scientists were warned that COVID-19 could have been created by gain-of-function research in early 2020, according to email transcriptions released Tuesday by Republicans on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
Two scientists, Michael Farzan of the Scripps Research Institute and Robert Garry of Tulane University, noted properties of the virus that they believed pointed to enhanced transmissibility stemming from gain-of-function research.
The opinions of both men were provided to Fauci, then-National Institutes of Health head Francis Collins, and then-NIH Principal Deputy Director Lawrence Tabak in an email from researcher Jeremy Farrar sent on Jan. 31, 2020. The existence of the emails was first revealed by Buzzfeed News in June 2021, but they were released with significant redactions. Due to classification rules, the emails could only be viewed by the Republican committee members and staff, who could then take notes and transcriptions in a classified setting.
Farzan was “bothered by” SARS-CoV-2’s furin cleavage site, which he viewed as “ highly unlikely ” to have been created in “ an event outside the lab,” according to the transcriptions. The existence of a furin cleavage site , which enables the virus to become more transmissible, has been pointed to by several proponents of the lab leak theory, since the two closest known relatives of SARS-CoV-2, RaTG13 and BANAL-236 , do not have the site.
Farzan claimed that a likely scenario for the creation of the furin cleavage site was the “ passage [of] SARS -live CoVs in tissue culture on human cell lines (under BSL-2) for an extended period of time.”
Garry noted the similarities between SARS-CoV-2 and RaTG13, then the closest known relative to SARS-CoV-2, which was discovered in a cave in Yunnan Province in 2013. The protein sequence would “ all have to be added at the exact same time to gain ” the enhanced transmissibility, he wrote, adding, “ I just can’t figure out how this gets accomplished in nature.”
“ Of course, in the lab it would be easy to generate” the missing protein sequence that separates SARS-CoV-2 from RaTG13, Garry noted.
Garry later downplayed the possibility of the lab leak hypothesis, telling the Daily Caller News Foundation in June 2021 that there was no evidence to support the theory.
Farzan and Garry were not the only experts whose concerns about gain-of-function research and a potential lab leak Fauci was made aware of. Kristian Andersen, an infectious disease expert at Scripps, wrote to Fauci in an email, also in January 2020, that “some of the [virus’] features (potentially) look engineered.” Andersen would backtrack just days later in an email addressed to Peter Daszak, the head of EcoHealth Alliance, blasting “crackpot theories” that COVID-19 is “somehow engineered with intent.”
Despite the concerns of Farzan, Garry, and others, Fauci, Collins, and Tabak would also go on to blast the lab leak hypothesis as a “very destructive conspiracy” theory, after Fox News’ Bret Baier reported on concerns within the U.S. government that COVID-19 originated in the Wuhan Institute of Virology. While Collins looked for ways to “put down” the lab leak hypothesis, Fauci derided it as “a shiny object that will go away in times [sic].”
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Hmmm. Kept it under wraps pretty well didn't he..................
And lied about it several times during congressional hearings.
A picture is no substitute for an argument.
All facts and evidence to the contrary. Good to know the left's love affair with criminals is still going strong.
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It’s all a lie and you know it Jim.
What's a lie?
I just love how some come on here with the "it's a lie" bs and give nothing to prove it's a lie. Then expect to be taken seriously.
Yep. They cannot deny that Dr. Fauci was informed of the possibility. It's documented in emails FFS.................the kicker is what he decided to do with the information.
So little lord Fauntleroy lied again ..... what a shocker
Fauci was warned? The reports from the WIV credit the NIH and NIAID for funding, and I'm almost certain Collins is mentioned by name in several of the reports, dating back to 2003. The report from 2018 expressly states that they were conducting gain of function research, and unmistakably provides, in more than one place, that they created a chimeric virus by replacing the amino acids and spike protein, and that it proved capable of replicating in human cells both in vitro and in humanized mice, and that they had not seen anything like it in nature. These fuckers were not caught off guard or surprised by any of this.
Yes they already knew, But DARPA didn't know that.. They were probably told to seek funding from DARPA first cause then the research could be kept secret...
DARPA decided to warn the NIH Not knowing that NIH thru NIAID were already well aware of what was being researched...
There is no possible way they can claim they didn't know... Heck they sent EcoHealth there trying to get it under DARPA's security umbrella...
That DARPA refused is the astounding thing here...
Agree to Disagree
Well you could at least make an effort to debunk what was said instead of making childish cheap shots.