When Jim Jordan asked Anthony Fauci on Monday whether he agreed that there was a push to downplay the ‘lab leak’ theory of the origins of SARS-CoV-2, Fauci gave an interesting answer. He did not say “no”. He said, “not on my part”. This has led some to claim that Jordan had cleverly trapped Fauci into perjuring himself. But Anthony Fauci, clearly measuring his words, told the truth. There was indeed a push to suppress the ‘lab leak’ theory, but it did not come from Fauci.
It came from Germany’s ‘star virologist’ Christian Drosten, designer of the ‘gold standard’ SARS-CoV-2 PCR test, and the other members of what I have called the ‘EU crew’ which participated in the discussions of the ‘lab-leak’ theory with their Anglosphere colleagues in the ‘Farrar-Fauci’ e-mails and on the famous February 1st 2020 conference call. This is completely clear from the documentary record, and I showed it in my last article on the subject here.
As we know from the e-mails, when Kristian Andersen came to Anthony Fauci with his suspicions that the virus had been genetically engineered, Fauci’s response was to suggest that Andersen should publish a scientific paper supporting his hypothesis. This is the evidence of Fauci’s involvement cited by the Covid Select committee.
But in what sort of ass-backwards logical universe is telling someone to publish a paper supporting the ‘lab leak’ hypothesis evidence of trying to suppress the ‘lab leak’ hypothesis?
The issue is how that paper eventually became Andersen et al.’s infamous ‘Proximal Origins’ paper, which instead of supporting the ‘lab leak’ hypothesis, rejected it, and supported the opposite hypothesis of a natural ‘zoonotic’ origin. But, as discussed in my previous article, we know full well how this happened from the documentary record. We know who pressured Andersen and his Anglosphere colleagues to recant. It was not Fauci. On Andersen’s recollection, Fauci played no role whatsoever. It was Christian Drosten and his Dutch colleague Ron Fouchier, a well-known practitioner of Gain-of-Function research.
The full ‘EU crew’ consisted of the German virologists Christian Drosten and Stefan Pöhlmann and the Dutch virologists Ron Fouchier and Marion Koopmans. But from the documentary record, we know that it was, above all, Drosten and Fouchier who functioned as the tag-team which pummelled Andersen into submission on the phonecall and in the e-mails. It would be interesting to pinpoint exactly when a weary and confused Andersen finally dropped his hands to his sides and said “no más”, and I will look at this matter another time. (Hint: Pangolins played a role.)
The next major step in the international conspiracy to suppress the “lab-leak” hypothesis was, of course, the infamous WHO investigation, which gave rise to a report which has been widely denounced as a whitewash. As a group pf concerned international scientists (including Alina Chan, but also none other than Ralph Baric!) pointed out in a letter to Science, “Only 4 of the 313 pages of the report and its annexes addressed the possibility of a laboratory accident”.
But, here too, the documentary record clearly shows what a complete non-entity Anthony Fauci was on the international stage and, more specifically, in the international efforts to suppress the hypothesis of a lab-origin of SARS-CoV-2.
Much of the early discussion in the ‘Farrar-Fauci’ e-mails was precisely about the formation of the investigative team, and, encouraged by Farrar, who was directly in touch with the WHO, Anthony Fauci offered his own suggestions for potential team members. See his February 5th 2020 e-mail below.
And here is the list of the team members from the WHO website:
Fauci’s suggestions were totally ignored. Not a single one was accepted.
What about the influence of the German-Dutch ‘EU crew’ and of German and EU authorities more generally? Did they have any better luck with the WHO? Well, even without having access to, say, Christian Drosten’s e-mails or those of Lothar Wieler, the then President of Germany’s public health authority, the Robert Koch Institute, it is completely obvious from the team’s composition that they did.
To start with, one of the members of the ‘EU crew’, Marion Koopmans, was herself part of the WHO team. As touched upon in my ‘The Greatest Story Never Told‘, Koopmans is a key collaborator of Drosten, having co-authored Drosten’s PCR protocol paper, and is also Fouchier’s boss at Erasmus University Medical Centre in Rotterdam as Chair of the Department of Viroscience.
Moreover, if we look at the annexes of the WHO report (see. p. 27f. here), we find that Koopmans played an especially prominent role in the team, being a member of two of the three sub-groups, epidemiology and molecular epidemiology, and indeed the head of the latter.
Note, furthermore, the presence of Fabian Leendertz of none other than Germany’s Robert Koch Institute among the team members. As touched upon in my article here, Leendertz was at the time the head of the RKI’s “Epidemiology of Highly Pathogenic Microorganisms” research group. At the very same time, his boss, then RKI chief Lothar Wieler, would personally lead the WHO committee on reviewing the International Health Regulations in light of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Imagine if Anthony Fauci had been so well-connected to the WHO and had been able to place one of his deputies – David Morens, say – on the WHO investigative team. But he was not and he could not. Fauci and Morens were outsiders. Wieler and Leendertz were insiders. Both of them, incidentally, are veterinarians and proponents of the ‘One Health’ approach to public health.
It is hardly surprising that the WHO showed such indulgence toward German authorities, given that the chef de cabinet of WHO Director-General Tedros was at the time none other than the German virologist Bernhard Schwartländer. It was “Tedros and Bernhard” who were communicating with Farrar and who presumably blew off Fauci’s suggestions. Schwartländer is currently the German Foreign Office’s ‘Global Health Envoy’. (For more on Schwartländer’s role, see here.)
If we include the team leader, the Dane Peter Ben Embarek (who is not listed above), no less than four of the 11 team members came from the EU. The team not only did not include any of Fauci’s suggestions, it did not include any Americans at all. The team leader, Embarek, and two of the three sub-group leads (Koopmans and Thea K. Fischer) came from the EU. The third sub-group lead was Peter Daszak, the British head of the U.S.-based EcoHealth Alliance, whose involvement in the investigation has been the target of much criticism and accusations of conflict-of-interest.
But why should the involvement of Koopmans be any less controversial? Or, for that matter, the presence of Leendertz, given his and his then boss’s commitment to the ‘One Health’ approach? The ‘One Health’ approach, which Daszak shares, would clearly bias any such investigation, predisposing investigators toward finding a zoonotic origin. This is exactly what transpired, the official brief of the team, as stated here, being “as part of the One Health approach, to identify the zoonotic source of the virus”. No wonder their investigation gave short shrift to the ‘lab leak’ hypothesis!
When the first WHO investigative team was disbanded and then replaced in October 2021 by a follow-up “Scientific Advisory Group for the Origins of Novel Pathogens”, Peter Daszak would not be invited to participate. But Marion Koopmans was. And a new, but somehow familiar, face would join the follow-up group, someone who ought to be a person of great interest to any genuine inquiry into the suppression of the lab leak hypothesis: none other than Christian Drosten.
Robert Kogon is the pen name of a widely-published journalist covering European affairs. Subscribe to his Substack.
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