…a semblance of truth sufficient to procure for these shadows of imagination that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith. – Coleridge
Particularly in light of recent developments, one of the most outrageous of the revelations of Judge Terry Doughty’s memorandum in Missouri vs. Biden involves the lab-leak theory of COVID’s origin (p.50, et seq). His recitation of facts is disturbing; subsequent events add to that.
COVID first drew national attention in mid-January of 2020 and the issue of the origin of the virus was of great concern. After all, if humans had engineered this particular strain and virology labs couldn’t be counted on to protect the public from their creations that had the ability to kill millions of people, we had a problem – a manmade one – entirely different from those caused by naturally-occurring pathogens that exist, evolve and sometimes injure other life forms.
Today, it appears that health bureaucrats and scientists conspired to censor what may well be the truth about the genesis of the virus and to substitute their own, less likely, and perhaps self-serving, theories.
On February 1, Dr. Anthony Fauci, then director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, had what Judge Doughty called a “secret phone call” with five scientists, Krisitian Andersen, Andrew Rambaut, W. Ian Lipkin, Edward C. Holmes and Robert F. Garry. Just six weeks later, they published a paper in the journal Nature Medicine entitled “The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2” that purported to debunk the lab-leak theory. Prior to publication, the authors sent drafts to Fauci for comment. At the same time, he urged the World Health Organization to “get ahead of the narrative,” calling doing so an “urgency.”
On the basis of that paper almost alone, social media platforms took down references to the possibility that the virus had originated in the Wuhan lab and the MSM and the chattering classes ridiculed all contrary ideas.
The plaintiffs in Missouri vs. Biden allege that Fauci wanted to debunk the lab-leak theory (that he called a “conspiracy theory”) because, under his direction, the NIAID had funded the very gain of function research at Wuhan that may have produced and inadvertently leaked the virus. We don’t yet know if that will turn out to be true, but, in his memorandum, Judge Doughty leaves little doubt that he doesn’t believe Fauci’s deposition testimony that’s riddled with dubious claims to not remember important events.
Subsequently of course the lab-leak theory has become perhaps the most likely culprit in the spread of the virus. Possibly the very first person to be infected with the new virus was one of the researchers at the Wuhan lab, an all but incredible coincidence if the virus originated in, say, a pangolin. But, at the time Fauci was trying to suppress that idea, the five scientists he got to write the Nature Medicine article had essentially concluded that a natural origin in a wild species and a subsequent jump to a human host, was somewhere between unlikely and impossible.
So, one day after the call with Fauci, Dr. Kristian Andersen messaged that he “literally can’t think of any way this could have come from nature.” “It is so friggin’ likely that this virus came from a lab” was Edward Holmes’ contribution to the dialogue on January 29. On February 6, Andrew Rambaut said on Slack that “I’m quite convinced this was created in a lab.”
The lab-leak theory is further bolstered by the fact, known by Andersen and others, that the Wuhan lab had failed to take the type of precautions to avoid release of dangerous pathogens that its research called for. This is from Racket’s Matt Taibbi:
At one point, Andersen complains about containment procedures at the WIV, noting, as biosafety expert James Le Duc would write in an email later that year, that the facility was conducting very dangerous experiments at Biosafety Level 3 (BSL-3), while the higher BSL-4 would normally be considered necessary. “I’m all for GOF experiments, I think they’re really important,” Andersen writes. “However performing these in BSL-3 (or less) is just completely nuts!”
Remarkably, shortly after three journalists posted on the Public Substack page the entire cache of emails and Slack messages released by the House Judiciary Committee, and concluded that the “Proximal Origin” paper was at best flawed and possibly a politically-inspired coverup, Andersen retorted thus:
So what is all of this? Scientists doing science and having private conversations…
These perfect examples of science in progress have been hijacked by grifters and conspiracy theorists…
None of this is surprising — the surprising part is that ‘journalists’ and others keep falling for the same bullshit…
It’s true that scientists sometimes change their minds and we want them too. Hypotheses often need to be abandoned in favor of better ones.
But tellingly Andersen has never said just what it was that supposedly changed his and his colleagues’ opinion on the origin of the virus. Their abrupt about-face demands an explanation, given the scientists’ previous statements and the amazingly short time in which they reversed course.
In a scant six weeks, all five (a) agreed to write a paper saying the opposite of what they’d said to each other, (b) collaboratively wrote it, (c) sent it to Fauci for his input, (d) submitted it to Nature Medicine, (e) engaged in the back-and-forth of editing and (f) had it published. All that leaves a matter of probably just a few days for them to alter their stance. What new facts spurred them to do so? No one’s ever said.
Plus, even up to and after publication, they still weren’t convinced. Here’s what Andersen, et al said in their paper:
The presence in pangolins of an RBD [receptor binding domain] very similar to that of SARS-CoV-2 means that we can infer this was also probably in the virus that jumped to humans.
And here’s what Andersen said to those same colleagues just before the piece was published:
For all I know, people could have infected the pangolin, not the other way.
And here’s what he said the day after it appeared:
Clearly none of these pangolin sequences was the source though.
Finally, it appears the scientists caved to bureaucratic pressure to erase uncertainties about the origin of the virus in order to present to the public a unified front. On February 10, 2020, emails among the five mention a recent teleconference with “higher ups,” including the National Institute of Health, that’s previously and subsequently funded much of their research. Later, they bemoaned “politics” being “injected into science” while then-director of the CDC, Dr. Bob Redfield said he thought the five had been “pressured by health bureaucrats to ignore the genuine questions about origin of the virus” in favor of a “single narrative.”
Whatever the case, Andersen, et al left a trail of evidence contradicting their paper’s message. In order to convince us that their statements therein are the result of scrupulously revised thinking and not submission to “higher ups” who’d cause a “s**t storm” if the lab leak theory were allowed to survive, they’ve got to provide actual proof and not a single bout of (feigned or real) indignation. After all, they’re scientists and understand the need to present proof for any proposition.
But they’ve done no such thing. All Andersen’s offered is a “semblance of truth” with which he seems to want to procure our “willing suspension of disbelief.” It won’t happen. The entire pandemic fiasco was too beset with lies and half-truths for anyone involved to seriously ask us to trust them now. And Andersen, et al appear to have been a willing part of that fiasco.
This article originally appeared at The Word of Damocles.
