Who instigated the cover-up of the lab leak theory of Covid’s origins? Many of us have assumed it was Anthony Fauci, then-Director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). However, newly released emails and messages indicate that initially Fauci was open to investigating the possibility of a lab leak properly. Following his now infamous February 1st 2020 teleconference with leading virologists Kristian Andersen, Eddie Holmes and others, Fauci wrote to several Government officials to inform them that Jeremy Farrar, the Director of the Wellcome Trust, and Francis Collins, the Director of the National Institutes of Health, had been tasked with contacting the WHO to set up an international investigation group into virus origins with “no judgement at all” on the outcome. “Where that leads remains to be seen,” he wrote.
Fauci writes that some of the scientists on the call deemed a lab origin possible or likely, doing so even “more strongly” after the call, while just two said they believed such a scenario could be ruled out (these were Ron Fouchier and Christian Drosten). Fauci thus presents the matter to Government colleagues as an unresolved scientific argument, with a number of scientists favouring a lab origin. The main course of action he proposes is to organise a group under the auspices of the WHO to look into it in an impartial way.
The following day, Collins wrote to Farrar to confirm he was following this up with WHO Chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. Collins told Farrar he was “coming around to the view that a natural origin is more likely” but said it needed to be looked into by the WHO – though also added that he “shares your view” that this is mainly to be a “confidence-inspiring” initiative to pre-empt “voices of conspiracy” that would otherwise do “great potential harm to science and international harmony”. This does suggest a non-neutral political agenda being pursued, much more so than Fauci’s email of the day before, an agenda apparently being driven by Farrar.
What happened next is crucial. The impartial investigation Fauci proposed never took place. What happened instead was that on February 3rd – two days after the teleconference and Fauci’s email – another teleconference was convened, this one hosted by the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine (NAS). This was in response to requests from the U.S. Government for scientific advice on the origin of the virus. Fauci was invited to give the “perspective from NIH/NIAID” ahead of an open discussion. The proposed output prior to the meeting appears to have been a “based on science” web posting, not unlike what Andersen and others were already working on.
However, the following day an email went out from Andrew Pope, an official in the NAS, saying the “plans have changed” and in place of a ‘based on science’ web posting there was now to be a statement signed by the Presidents of the three National Academies and sent to the Government. It appears that this change was what was agreed at the teleconference, though that is not completely clear as the email doesn’t specify who the “we” are who now think the original plan is not “appropriate”. What makes it likely it was agreed at the teleconference is that the email does not seem to expect anyone to object to the change and assumes all are on board with the new proposal.
As can be seen below, the statement from the NAS (in the form of a letter) claims to have consulted relevant scientific specialists (this presumably was what the teleconference was doing) and reports from them a consensus that the available genomic data are “consistent with natural evolution” and there is “no evidence” the virus was engineered. This is not a fair summary of the conversations the scientists were actually having at the time, of course. Rather, it represents a political effort to shut down the lab origin theory – the beginning of such an effort, in fact.
Kristian Andersen was involved in both the Fauci teleconference of February 1st and the NAS teleconference of February 3rd, and interestingly his contribution after the latter was to push for the statement to be stronger on rejecting the idea that the virus was engineered, claiming that the “data conclusively show” that it wasn’t. This is despite him being a key voice both before and after this arguing that a lab origin can’t be ruled out.
Andersen seemed to take a very different attitude two weeks later, when Nature rejected the first version of the ‘Proximal Origin’ paper because one of the reviewers (who was never publicly identified) said it was not strong enough on dismissing a lab origin. Andersen responded (on February 20th) with a robust defence of not dismissing the possibility of a lab origin, saying the evidence didn’t allow ruling it out and it “must be considered as a serious scientific theory”. It seems odd that this is the same scientist who was urging the NAS to go further in dismissing a lab origin. The most likely explanation is that Andersen is making an obscure distinction between an engineered virus and a virus that originated in a lab from serial passage through cell culture. This is a distinction that will be lost on most people, and indeed some of the scientists in the email discussions themselves said the distinction was not valid in this context. Andersen’s arguments ruling out engineering are also not sound.
The ‘Proximal Origin’ paper was then amended to reject a lab origin more strongly before being accepted for publication in Nature Medicine. Andersen told the House Pandemic Subcommittee that he had changed his view on the possibility of a lab origin between the rejection and re-submission, which must therefore have occurred between February 20th and 27th. However, as the team at Public have shown, it’s clear that Andersen did still think a lab origin (including engineering) was plausible after this date. On April 16th he wrote to his co-authors: “I’m still not fully convinced that no culture was involved. We also can’t fully rule out engineering (for basic research).” It’s apparent from Andersen’s messages that pressure to reject a lab origin came from ‘higher-ups’ and he was either feigning rejecting the theory or had artificially talked himself into it for a period of time.
So who did orchestrate the suppression of the lab origin theory? We can now see for the first time when precisely the cover-up began. It began with the NAS teleconference on February 3rd and not, as many have previously assumed, with the Fauci teleconference on February 1st. This is clear because while Fauci came away from his teleconference proposing an impartial investigation “with no judgement” to see “where that leads”, the outcome of the NAS teleconference was an explicit plan to dismiss a lab origin and artificially claim consensus.
Who made that decision? It seems to have been something agreed at the NAS teleconference. But who pushed it in that direction, and why did scientists like Andersen endorse it despite not really being in agreement? Indeed, Andersen and Co were still trying to get a lab theory into Nature on February 20th, only abandoning it because a hostile reviewer insisted the possibility be ruled out. So despite Andersen, Holmes and others stating at times in their private messages that they are keen to try to disprove the lab idea, they don’t appear to be the instigators of the cover-up.
It is possible Fauci suddenly changed his mind overnight, but it also seems unlikely, at least without some pressure put on him from elsewhere. So he does not seem to be the original source of the suppression idea, even if he soon became a ruthless enforcer of it – though we’d need to know more about his role at the NAS teleconference to know for sure.
It also seems unlikely to be the biodefence people like Robert Kadlec, as Kadlec was and continues to be a lab leak proponent, being the main author of the recent Muddy Waters Senate report pushing the theory. U.S. security services are known to have been involved in pushing lab origin theories right from the start of January 2020. Why they were doing that is not fully clear, but it may relate to wanting to paint China as the villain and upping the fear of the virus as a potential biological agent to allow activation of biodefence protocols. It’s fair to say that the clash between the security services pushing the lab origin theory and the suppression of that theory by other parts of the state, and even at times by the security services themselves, has been one of the more confusing aspects of the pandemic origin picture. It might be thought, for example, that the biodefence people would want to protect their biodefence research and not jeopardise it by convincing everyone that the virus could have come from such research. But this doesn’t appear to be the case, at least not for all of them.
So whom does that leave? Farrar seems a prime suspect, as it was him who seems to have been persuading Francis Collins of the importance of avoiding “harm to science and international harmony” by dismissing a lab origin. But a glance at the NAS teleconference invite list below indicates he doesn’t appear to have been involved (unless he was blind copied). EcoHealth Alliance’s Peter Daszak is on there, but why would he have authority to demand a cover-up? Ralph Baric is also there, whose paper with the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s Shi Zhengli on manipulating coronaviruses had so startled Andersen. But what authority would he have in this group?
Perhaps then it was just a groupthink that took over during the teleconference out of a misplaced sense of needing to protect “science and international harmony”. But is groupthink really sufficient to explain such a powerful and sustained move to suppress the theory?
Despite all the effort that has gone into investigating Covid origins, this key question remains outstanding. Who ordered the cover-up?
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I get the sense that collectively the fact that this virus may indeed have been formed in a lab was dawning on Farrar, Fauci and co. through the early weeks of 2020. But that then a collective panic set in as they began to realise what this meant for their reputations and that of the (clearly dangerous and not in fact in the public interest) work they had been doing for may years – bearing in mind that many of the working practices appear to have been dubious in the least.
Thus there quickly emerged a collective will to suppress the lab-leak theory.
But my suspicion is that scientists in the Wuhan Lab had known about the leak since August 2019, and that they had told their American handlers about it back then. Of course, only a very, very select few people would have known about this through the rest of 2019 and into 2020. But as the virus became centre stage in the early weeks of 2020, and especially by February, they realised the lab-leak theory would have to be suppressed. Of course, it didn’t take much to induce Farrar, Fauci and co. to go along with this.
But, as Will says, the instigators of the cover-up – that is those who first started pushing for it – remain, for the time being, anonymous. Doubtless more will be revealed in time, and thus we’ll edge slowly further towards the truth.
I disagree. This article misses an essential point that is key to Fauci’s entire career. The man is an utter snake and knew exactly what was going on at the lab, who was funding it and what that meant but he is a pure political animal, an exceptionally good politician in the sense of being a great deceiver. What people perhaps don’t appreciate is there are at any time more people in government against the agenda of people like Fauci than it might feel to us after the event.
IMO his initial attitude to this was confected for the members of the meeting where he was fully aware the consensus originally was against natural origin and he was fully aware that consensus had scientific merit and that he would have to give the impression of wining people round to natural origin on it;s merits. He was also aware, more than those in that meeting, what the bombshell implications of the real story were. So the guy is talking with his colleagues assuring them he is onside and in agreement. So attuned are his political instincts he knows absolutely how to avoid tipping a future historical evidence trail definitely one way or another on such matters. But he couldn’t change the evidence of what his colleagues were saying and getting committed to meeting minutes.
Instead, IMO it will have been private personal chats and words in the ear.
“Perhaps it’s not such a good idea we present this as a lab leak, think about how that will bounce back on us.”
That kind of thing.
Sure Farrar was thoroughly in the mix. But once there was traction on that shift in direction, it was Fauci who had the resources and influence to ensnare others into writing a piece they didn’t believe in. And once that is achieved the political Co-conspirator trap is sprung. And Fauci the clever snake isn’t the one caught in it. The one caught in it is, ironically, the least politically aware, and probably the one by nature wanted to be most honest but who wasn’t resolute enough in staying true to what he really thought. The one who made the mistake of committing to stating it was most likely a lab leak even after having written a draft of the zoonotic spillover paper contradicting this belief; Kristian Andersen. Fauci is far too clever a political operator to have become ensnared in that way. Instead, IMO he is masterful at leading others to that position.
IMO this article is therefore falling completely for Fauci’s Machiavellian plotting. He has a long, long career of operating this way, always the same man has been at the centre of pharma scandal and controversy. Never implicating himself.
He’s so good at playing the political game, in a morbid way he is quite admirable. A true modern day Machiavelli.
Agree. This was 20 years in the planning. mRNA patents go back to 2000. Fauci knew and was part of the planning. CDC is a Pharma firm, so of course he was involved with all of it. He promised in 2017 a scamdemic before the next election. The Rona fascism was a DoD-CIA project and the NIIAD and CDC along with Pharma were the distribution channels. This is why VAERS, death and injury from the stabs were ignored.
Fraudci just splashed out $12 mn to buy an estate with cash along the Potomac. Need more evidence for corruption? He was rewarded for his 20 years of scamdemic planning and propaganda during the Rona fascism.
I think your hypothesis may well be plausible – that Fauci was in on the secret much earlier than Will’s article implies. But I haven’t read the original documentation so hesitate to make any assertive statements.
I wonder what Will’s thoughts on this might be?
But I remain of the opinion that a very select few (and probably not including Fauci – why would he need to know?) knew about the lab leak as far back as August 2019.
I was a little in a rush writing this this morning, so didn’t say all I wanted to. There is also the evidence of Francis Collins (an ex CDC Director, virologist, and firm believer there was a lab leak) that Fauci ensured there were “9 million reasons” for one of the zoonotic spillover paper authors to “change his mind.” Again this isn’t direct evidence because such awards are made by a committee. A committee where Fauci is the most important member and the one no one wants to cross. Then there are all the emails he has written referring to the work at the lab (which he was aware of). Then there was his pretence, at his press conference, that he had just stumbled across the zoonotic spillover paper because a colleague had sent it to him. The psychology of this makes it clear he knew exactly what he was doing and that it was downright deception and we know the motive for that deception. And then there was the continual lying about Gain of Function work being done at the lab – all qualified by him with a politician attempt to change definitions.
Yes, you are making good points and this is a most important debate.
Clearly, as you say, Fauci is an absolute snake, and there’s no depths he wouldn’t sink to in pursuit of his own interests. And it’s difficult to believe that he hadn’t suspected a lab leak from the official start in late December 2019. (Is there any evidence he knew of SARS-COV-II before this?)
As far as Will’s article goes – Who ordered the lab leak cover-up? – Fauci may well have played a major role, and certainly did from a few days into February. To me what Will appears to be teasing out is that the cover-up goes much deeper than might first appear, and that it was initiated from deeper than Fauci. Like your hypothesis, I find this too plausible. I think we need more evidence, and preferably direct rather than circumstantial evidence.
As of now I think we’re all still groping in the dark.
I suspect they didn’t know which virus had got out at first and whether it was one or many, which is why I wonder if the lockdowns were over more than just COVID-19. COVID-19 is a good cover if they thought that something worse might be out there. China’s extraordinarily brutal lockdowns and reports of screams being heard in funeral crematoria makes one wonder… How far would guilty men go to cover for their sins? In light of the last three years, we know they’d happily imprison the population of the world. So ‘what else could have escaped from the Wuhan lab?’ is worth considering.
Interesting.. but my concern is that this is simply a distraction. The scandal is not where the alleged virus came from, because this controversy bolsters the notion that there was an existential threat to civilisation that required unprecedented measures, including the loss of civil liberties. The scandal is that governments across the world acted almost in unison to become despotic and tyrannical. Who was managing this? I’d like to see those emails a lot more.
I have to agree with you, CG. Looking for real culprits and their real agenda is being sidelined by all these other rabbit holes. It’s a case of ‘hey look over there!’ when you’re uncovering the tentacles of some other power that was directing all of this in lock-step. I would say that governments worldwide ‘fell in unison’. Some governments didn’t and their leaders met untimely ends as a result.
This is another official narrative to perpetuate the myth of another ‘deadly dangerous viral pandemic’ sweeping the globe.
From all the research I’ve been doing I’ve come to the conclusion that virology is a sham, that viruses as a transmissible dangerous pathogens are a lie designed to keep big pharma in profit & that what is tested as ‘proof’ of the existence of viruses is nothing more than the body clearing out material which is toxic to the body. A cold, a runny nose, influenza symptoms are the body’s means of healing & cleaning.
Viruses do not exist.
One you wrap your head around that one – it’s taken me about 9 months – then the whole official narrative, the pharma push, the WHO’s fearmongering narrative falls apart completely.
The existence of a virus is the means to terrify the populace into compliance.
As viruses don’t exist, there is no reason to be fearful of them, hence the heavy censoring of those who have questioned that viruses are a thing.
Always ask “Cui bono?” – with the virus narrative still being promoted as a lab leak, the only folk to profit will be those who have a stake in the pharma profits.
I’m up for believing that, and wouldn’t put anything beneath the pharmaceutical industry; I can also see how easy it would have been / is for Rockefeller types to buy universities and create orthodoxies that everyone coming through the system is required to adopt. I’m sure Bill Gates is in the process of creating many of these orthodoxies right now. The fact remains though that so many people are so profoundly unaware of even the most basic facts about what’s just happened that trying to convince them that viruses don’t exist is a bridge too far. The many crimes committed in the name of that virus, real or not, are what needs to be exposed I think..
This goes all the way back to Pasteur & the development of germ theory at the expense of terrain theory, which was then heavily pushed by Rockefeller to support his pharma industry.
I agree that it would explode the minds of anyone who has fallen hook, line & sinker for the lies – I’ve been a sceptic for the past 3 years & this was really challenging to get my head round. What really nailed it for me was work by Beverly Rubik about the effects of radiation on the physiology of the human body & how those physiological effects have been hijacked to create the false narrative using useless PCR testing to create the scamdemic. I’ve just been joining up a lot of dots which on their own were interesting, but once connected reveal the sheer extent of the lies, fraud & propaganda to perpetuate the money making & capture of the narrative by these evil parasitic class.
Link to a presentation by Beverly Rubik: https://rumble.com/v30y8oi-adverse-health-effects-of-wireless-communication-radiation-by-berverly-rubi.html
Apologies, I’m not actually fully aware of the details of terrain theory. But if viruses don’t exist then by what mechanisms do we ‘catch’ diseases? Why do certain diseases come in clusters in a population, and clearly appear to be transmitted from one person to another?
Those very points are what makes it so difficult to get your head around this. We don’t transmit flu or covid to one another. The symptoms of a cold or flu are due to the body clearing toxins out of the cells. We are constantly bombarded with toxins in the air, water, food & when these accumulate in the body, disease occurs. When they reach a critical mass, a healing crisis occurs. These symptoms are the healing process.
We’re exposed to EMF as a group, we’re exposed to fear porn as a group, we’re exposed to cold weather as a group etc & stress also affects how the body responds to external toxins. It can appear that there is a wave of infection going through a community when in fact it is a wave of stress, or temperature or an increase in EMF impacting on a community to which we each respond individually.
If you want to dig deeper & get your head around this look at the work of Sam Bailey (though she is a bit of a no virus fundamentalist), Alec Zeck who is more understanding of how difficult it is for folk to wrap their head around it & the work of Arthur Firstenberg on EMF (he’s totally bought into Net Zero so ignore that bit! but you can’t be right all of the time).
You can learn about their work in presentations on this Rumble site: https://rumble.com/user/cbkovess
Ok thanks, can’t say I’m convinced though. If a cold or flu is the body clearing out toxins (which in a sense even with the viral theory I suppose it is) then why is it someone brings a cold into the house and everyone goes down one by one? Why should there be a short lag in them each reaching a critical mass of toxins? Don’t the observed phenomena strongly suggest – to the point of proving – something being passed from one person to another? And why shouldn’t that something be a virus?
I do believe, however, that our relationships with viruses are a lot more complicated that is often presented or generally understood.
I strongly advise you to do your own research, seek out as broad a range of information as possible & come to your own conclusion. I don’t have the knowledge to give detailed answers to your questions – which are all reasonable given the history of everything we’ve been taught about viruses. One reason for folk going down with a cold one after the other has been proposed as being expecting to become ill if they’ve been around folk who have symptoms ie the psychological aspect of ill health a bit like a placebo effect.
The interesting bit about the going down one by one is that in studies where healthy folk have been purposely exposed to bodily fluids ie snot, saliva, lung mucous from an ill person the symptoms have not occurred in those test subjects, which removes that mode of transmission.
Enjoy researching ‘cos it’s very interesting & challenges one’s belief system.
Thank you for posting this. I agree that the virus argument is full of holes.
Have you seen this? (18) Prather Point Interview – by Sasha Latypova (substack.com)
Why does no one go to prison for white collar crime?
They own the judiciary and the prisons I guess.
So, in summary, bad guys did bad things. ‘Usual suspects’ were heavily involved: Farrar, Fauci, Ghebreyesus, WHO, Big Pharma. Who’d have thunk it?
I want people tried and sentenced!
To a long drop on the end of a short rope.
Squeamish downvoter? Mass murderers? After a trial. Really?
I am surprised that Putin hasn’t been blamed. He gets fingered for most of the ills in the West by the Yanks. Failing that it must be Trump.
We have our answer in the first sentence of this piece
“Who instigated the cover-up”
“WHO to look into it in an impartial way.”
The words “who” and “impartial” in the same sentence! Now there’s a side splitter!
“But a glance at the NAS teleconference invite list below indicates he [Jeremy Farrar] doesn’t appear to have been involved (unless he was blind copied).”
The invite list has over 50% of the names blacked-out. Couldn’t one of them have been Farrar?
It’s the email addresses which have been redacted.
Thanks, that makes Will’s comment make sense to me now.
Rand Paul gets the go ahead to prosecute Fauci & next day his office burns down !! How Queer
Just a cock up. An honest mistake. A coincidence.
Very interesting read and comment thread gives me hope that those guilty will eventually be exposed.
I watched Rand Paul question Fauci (probably on you tube ? Now) about gain of function. Fauci’s manipulative strategies in his choice of language reply was plain to see and hear. He definitely has something to hide which may well be the end of him, as he plays in a very dangerous geo political group of people. Hence the lengths he goes to so he can avoid his masters? wrath. WHO and their cabal comrade IMO.
I have read the snake analogy hear; More accurate description is a ‘pit of vipers’.
The cover-up goes much deeper than the Wuhan Lab leak. The origins of Covid SARS 2 were American scientists developing a virological weapon for the American Military. Only when it got too close and dangerous was it exported to China. The original scientific developers had no idea how far it would spread once it was possibly deliberately leaked in China.