Dr. Anthony Fauci has dismissed recent revelations that he was warned at the start of pandemic that COVID-19 may have been 'engineered' as he claimed Donald Trump supporters 'resent' him because they do not 'understand' science.
The chief medical advisor admitted he 'can't guarantee everything that is going on in the Wuhan lab' amid increased speculation that the virus did not not originate naturally.
Speaking with MSNBC's Deadline, Fauci said: 'There is no doubt that there are people out there who, for one reason or another, resent me for what I did in the last administration, which was not anything that was anti-Trump at all.
'It was just trying to get the right information, to try and get the right data. What they didn't seem to understand, I guess that it is understandable that they didn't understand it, is that science is a dynamic process.
'So something that you know in January, you make a recommendation or a comment about it, but as you get more and more information, the information leads you to change because that is what science is, it is a self-correcting process.
'That is what I was trying to do, always tell the truth on the basis of what the data is. It was never deliberately something against the president.'
In a separate interview with NewsNation Now anchor Leland Vittert on The Donlon Report, Fauci explained why scientists focused their theories on the natural transmission from bats to humans through an intermediary species.
The interview comes after a trove of 3,200 of Fauci's emails from January to June 2020 were obtained and published by Buzzfeed on Tuesday that showed leading virus experts warned him COVID-19 may have been created in a lab while he publicly played such claims down.
'The only trouble is they are really ripe to be taken out of context where someone can snip out a sentence in an email without showing the other emails, and say 'based on an email from Dr. Fauci, he said such and such' where you don't really have the full context,' Fauci told Vittert.
Dr. Anthony Fauci dismissed recent revelations that he was warned by scientist at start of pandemic that COVID-19 may have been 'engineered'
Fauci made his comments in an interview with NewsNation Now anchor Leland Vittert on The Donlon Report where he also admitted he 'can't guarantee everything that is going on in the Wuhan lab'
Fauci, who is considered America's top expert on infectious disease, also explained why scientists focused their theories on the natural transmission from bats rather than an accidental leak from the Wuhan lab
Researchers at a number of top universities have recently penned a letter claiming that theories that COVID-19 escaped from a Wuhan lab 'remain viable'
The Wuhan Institute of Virology is about 20 miles from the Huanan Seafood Market where the first coronavirus cases are reported to have occurred
Another trove of emails, published by the Washington Post, also revealed his cozy relationship with China's top infectious disease expert Dr. George Gao - the director of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention - during the early days of the pandemic in March and April of last year.
'Let's put things in context ... We're not talking about the Chinese Communist Party. We're not talking about the Chinese military. We're talking about scientists that we've had relationships for years,' Fauci said.
Fauci then defended his relationship with Gao, a colleague of Fauci's 'for many years' and a member of the United States National Academy of Scientists.
'The scientists there, and others that we dealt with the original SARS, with the influenza virtually every year, the scientists are experienced,' Fauci said.
He then defended a grant the United States had provided the Wuhan lab, which has raised concerns that American money may have helped pay for the alleged creation of virus at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
'The Wuhan lab is a very large lab to the tune of hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars. The grant that we're talking about was $600,000 over five years for an average of about $125,000 to $140,000 a year,' Fauci said.
He added: 'I can't guarantee everything that is going on in the Wuhan lab, I can't do that. But it is our obligation as scientists and public health individuals to study the animal-human interface' in the aftermath of the original SARS virus in 2002.
Fauci explained that SARS-CoV-1 'was clearly a jumping of species from a bat, to a civet cat, to a human.'
'So it was incumbent upon us to study the animal-human interface and to understand what potential these viruses have of infecting humans which then might damage the United States,' Fauci said.
'So you don't want to go to Hoboken, New Jersey or to Fairfax, Virginia to be studying the bat human interface that might lead to an outbreak. You go to China.'
During the interview, Fauci also defended the government's early messages telling Americans not wear masks before nationwide mask mandates were later ordered.
In one email, Fauci had said: 'The typical mask you buy in the drug store is not really effective in keeping out virus, which is small enough to pass through the material.'
Responding to questions about that email, Fauci said: 'Let me explain, and it is a complicated issue. At the time we were saying it wasn't necessary to wear masks there were three things that were going on.'
'One of them was, there was a consideration that there was a shortage of personal protective equipment, particularly among people who actually needed the mask – those who were taking care of patients in the hospital.
'So we didn't want to have people running to the stores and getting N95 and other masks. So I should have probably been more explicit, you're right, and said that there are a number of aspects to it – including the poor fitting.'
In March 2020, Gao had told Science magazine that it was a 'big mistake' for U.S. experts including Fauci to tell their citizens that they did not need to wear face masks.
A subsequent email shows that Gao was anxious as to how Fauci would interpret the remark.
He messaged Fauci on March 28 saying: 'I saw the Science interview... That was journalist's wording. Hope you understand. Lets work together to get the virus out of the earth.'
Fauci warmly replied: 'I understand completely. No problem. We will get through this together.'
On April 3, Fauci formally reversed his stance on mask-wearing, telling Americans that they should cover their noses and mouths to stop the spread. The top doctor was slammed by numerous pundits and millions of Americans for giving mixed messages.
He later said he did so to try and prevent members of the public panic-buying masks when hospitals were struggling to obtain adequate supplies of PPE.
Less than a week later, Gao emailed Fauci again expressing his support amid the onslaught of attacks.
'I saw some news (hope it is fake) that you are being attacked by some people. Hope you are well under such a irrational situation,' Gao wrote on April 8.
'Thank you for your kind note. All is well despite some crazy people in this world,' Fauci replied three days later.
Fauci also admitted during the interview that he doesn't believe COVID-19 will ever be fully eradicated.
'I don't believe we will ever fully eradicate SARS-COV-2, I hope we will be able to eliminate it or greatly control it in this country,' he said.
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.
U.S. 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, Andersen 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 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.
US virus researcher Kristian Andersen responded to a January 2020 Fauci email about COVID
NIH Director Dr Francis Collins (left) appeared to dismiss the theory that COVID-19 leaked from a Wuhan lab as a 'conspiracy' in an email to Dr Anthony Fauci (right) on April 16 last year
The other email recipients included NIH Deputy Director Dr. Lawrence Tabak, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Deputy Director Clifford Lane and NIH spokesman John Burklow.
The story linked in Collins' original email was based on an April 15 broadcast on Fox News during which Baier told fellow anchor Sean Hannity that 'multiple sources' believed COVID-19 originated in a Wuhan lab before accidentally escaping.
'This is from multiple sources who have been briefed at the beginning part of the origins of China and the beginning of the virus. They've also seen documents, open source and classified,' Baier said.
'We've asked to see those documents directly, but they are saying that it is increasingly likely, that there is increasing confidence that the virus - COVID-19 - started in a Wuhan lab.
'They're saying it occurred naturally because China was trying to show that they could be as good or better than the US in handling viruses, discovering viruses, and that this was a botched effort to contain this and it got out to the population.
'They are 100 percent confident that China altered the data, the statistics, they did a lot of things to contain the information. Meanwhile, they cut down, as you mentioned, travel from Wuhan internally, but left the international flights going, and there obviously is how you have a spread like this.'
Evidence has been mounting of late that supports the theory that the pandemic began as an accidental leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
The subject line of Collins' email to Fauci and several others at the National Institutes of Health was titled 'conspiracy gains momentum'. It 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 (above)
New evidence, including word of three workers at the Wuhan lab who fell seriously ill with COVID-like symptoms in November 2019, has forced a sober reassessment among doubters
President Joe Biden last week ordered a 90-day intelligence review to investigate the possibility and several high-profile public health experts have come out in recent months saying they believe that's how COVID-19 started.
Former CDC director Robert Redfield told CNN in March that he believes the virus 'escaped' from a Wuhan lab and started spreading as early as September 2019.
Fauci later dismissed Redfield's belief when asked about them at a White House COVID-19 briefing - noting that if the virus had been circulating for months it would make the assertion that it came from a lab less likely.
'So when you think about the possibilities of how this virus appeared in the human population, obviously there are a number of theories,' Fauci said in the briefing.
'The issue that would have someone think it's possible to have escaped from a lab would mean that it essentially entered the outside human population already well adapted to humans, suggesting that it was adapted in the lab.'
However, Fauci said that most public health officials believe that the virus was actually circulating in China for a month or more before they were clinically recognized at the end of December 2019.
'If that were the case, the virus clearly could have adapted itself to a greater efficiency of transmissibility over that period of time up to and at the time it was recognized,' Fauci said.
'So, Dr. Redfield was mentioning that he was giving an opinion as to a possibility. But, again, there are other alternatives — others that most people hold by.'
Even Collins has appeared to change his tune as recently as last month while speaking to senators when he told them the Wuhan lab leak theory couldn't be completely ruled out.
'It is most likely that this is a virus that arose naturally, but we cannot exclude the possibility of some kind of a lab accident,' he said.
David Arnold Relman, left, and Jesse D. Bloom, right, recently organized a letter for the Science journal which said that the Wuhan lab escape theory can't be ruled out yet
There is continued discussion over whether COVID is a naturally-occurring virus or a more sinister genetically-modified virus that was meant to be confined to the Wuhan institute that leaked by accident.
Claims that the virus escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology have been laughed off as conspiracy theories - but even researchers at a number of top universities like Harvard and Cambridge have suggest in a letter that the 'hypotheses' cannot be ruled out until there is more evidence.
New evidence, including reports of three workers at the Wuhan lab who fell seriously ill with COVID-like symptoms in November 2019, has forced a sober reassessment among doubters.
Facebook also has been forced to reverse its policy censoring posts speculating that the virus was engineered in a lab, amid serious questions about the 'gain of function' experiments being done on coronavirus strains at the Wuhan lab.
China continues to furiously deny that the virus behind COVID-19 escaped from its lab in the original epicenter, accusing the United States of taking a 'dangerous stance' in calling for a full investigation into the possibility.
No comments:
Post a Comment