Dr. Anthony Fauci quietly worked behind the scenes to help cast doubt on the Wuhan lab leak possibility in favor of the natural origins hypothesis during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, newly released emails show.
Fauci, the head of the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, appeared to provide guidance to scientists who pushed back against the lab leak hypothesis, and he shared articles with reporters and other health officials that critiqued the possibility that COVID-19 may have escaped from a Chinese government lab. The communications by President Joe Biden‘s chief medical adviser, who has led NIAID since 1984, were part of more than 3,200 pages of emails obtained by BuzzFeed through the Freedom of Information Act.
Bill Gertz, a national security reporter for the Washington Times, messaged then-Vice President Mike Pence’s communications director, Katie Miller, on April 19, 2020, saying, “Dr. Fauci on Friday said he would share a scientific paper with the press on the origin of the coronavirus. Can you please help me get a copy of that paper?” Fauci himself responded to Gertz the next day, sharing three sources that argued in favor of a natural origin for COVID-19.
The first article shared by Fauci, which he appeared to have given some sort of input on, was a piece published in Nature on March 17, 2020, by Kristian Andersen, a microbiologist at Scripps Research, Andrew Rambaut, a professor of molecular evolution at the University of Edinburgh, W. Ian Lipkin, a professor of epidemiology at Columbia University, Edward Holmes, a virologist at the University of Sydney, and Robert Garry, a virologist at Tulane University. The piece argued in favor of COVID-19’s origin being a “zoonotic event” and would be widely cited to dismiss the lab leak hypothesis in the early months of the pandemic. The article contended that “our analyses clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus” and that “it is improbable that SARS-CoV-2 emerged through laboratory manipulation of a related SARS-CoV-like coronavirus.”
Andersen had sent Fauci, NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins, and British researcher and Wellcome Trust director Jeremy Farrar an email on March 6, 2020, to “thank you again for your advice and leadership as we have been working through the SARS-CoV-2 ‘origins’ paper” for Nature and to give them the chance to provide “any comments, suggestions, or questions about the paper or the press release.” He also thanked Fauci specifically “for your straight talk on CNN last night – it’s being noticed.” Fauci replied two days later, saying, “Thanks for your note. Nice job on the paper.”
The second article Fauci shared with Gertz was titled A Genomic Perspective on the Origin and Emergence of SARS-CoV-2 and was dated April 16, 2020, on the ScienceDirect website. The article was co-authored by Holmes and Yong Zhen-Zhang of China’s Shanghai Public Health Clinical Center, who had led the team that originally sequenced and published the genome of SARS-CoV-2. The article claimed that “given that SARS-CoV-2 undoubtedly has a zoonotic origin, the link to such a ‘wet’ market should come as no surprise.” The study was funded, in part, by the National Natural Science Foundation of China and the Special National Project on investigation of basic resources of China.
The third piece shared by Fauci was a statement from Holmes on April 16, 2020, again pushing back on the lab leak possibility.
GOP CHINA TASK FORCE LEADER SAYS COVID-19 ‘MORE LIKELY THAN NOT’ ORIGINATED IN WUHAN LAB
Officials from both the Trump and Biden administrations have said the Chinese government worked for over a year to thwart an independent investigation into the origins of the virus. Both administrations have cast doubt on the manner in which a joint study from China and the World Health Organization was conducted earlier this year, which said a lab leak was “extremely unlikely” and that a jump from animals to humans was most likely.
Lipkin emailed Fauci on May 5, 2020, to tell him that “we deeply appreciate your efforts in steering and messaging” and forwarded Fauci a message he had sent to former Chinese minister of health Chen Zhu about COVID-19’s origins, which cast doubt on the lab leak possibility and read, in part, “Uncertainty about the origin of COVID-19 pandemic is causing friction worldwide, particularly between China and the United States. There is agreement that the causative agent, SARS-CoV-2 originated in a bat. There is also a high level of confidence that the virus was not deliberately modified in any laboratory.” Zhu was sanctioned by the Trump administration in December 2020 for his role as a vice chairman of China’s National People’s Congress Standing Committee, which Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said had assisted “Beijing’s unrelenting assault against Hong Kong’s democratic processes.”
EcoHealth Alliance received at least $3.7 million from NIH from 2014 to 2020, and Peter Daszak, a key member of the WHO-China joint study team and the leader of EcoHealth, steered at least $600,000 in NIH funding to the Wuhan Institute of Virology for bat coronavirus research. Daszak criticized the United States for appearing skeptical of the WHO’s findings earlier this year and defended China to Chinese Communist Party-linked outlets. U.S. Embassy officials in China raised concerns in 2018 about lax biosecurity at the Wuhan lab led by Shi Zhengli, dubbed “bat woman,” who worked closely with Daszak.
Daszak messaged Fauci on April 18, 2020, lamenting being “targeted” by Fox News reporters and told Fauci, “I just wanted to say a personal thank you on behalf of our staff and collaborators, for publicly standing up and stating that the scientific evidence supports a natural origin for COVID-19 from a bat-to-human spillover, not a lab release from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.” After a redacted section of the email, Daszak concluded, “From my perspective, your comments are brave, and coming from your trusted voice, will help dispel the myths being spun around the virus’ origins. Once this pandemic’s over I look forward thanking you in person and let you know how important your comments are to us all.” Fauci replied the next day, saying, “Many thanks for your kind note. Best regards.”
Fauci also repeatedly shared an article for Science by Jon Cohen that was titled Mining coronavirus genomes for clues to the outbreak’s origins, which skewed toward the natural origins hypothesis and away from the lab leak possibility.
Cohen wrote that “the viral sequences, most researchers say, also knock down the idea the pathogen came from a virology institute in Wuhan.” He wrote that “conspiracy theories also abound” and that “the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which is the premier lab in China that studies bat and human coronaviruses, has also come under fire.” Cohen also pointed to a Washington Post article related to the Wuhan lab titled Experts debunk fringe theory linking China’s coronavirus to weapons research.
Holmes was quoted in the piece, saying, “The positive tests from the wet market are hugely important. Such a high rate of positive tests would strongly imply that animals in the market played a key role in the emergence of the virus.” Andersen said in the piece that “until you consistently isolate the virus out of a single species, it’s really, really difficult to try and determine what the natural host is.”
Cohen noted that Richard Ebright, a professor of chemistry and chemical biology at Rutgers University, told Sciencelnsider last year that the COVID-19 data was “consistent with entry into the human population as either a natural accident or a laboratory accident.” Cohen called this “conjecture” in his piece, then quoted Daszak at length, casting doubt on the lab leak hypothesis.
“Every time there’s an emerging disease, a new virus, the same story comes out: This is a spillover or the release of an agent or a bioengineered virus,” Daszak said. “It’s just a shame. It seems humans can’t resist controversy and these myths, yet it’s staring us right in the face. There’s this incredible diversity of viruses in wildlife and we’ve just scratched the surface. Within that diversity, there will be some that can infect people and within that group will be some that cause illness.”
Fauci had forwarded the article to Farrar and Andersen on Jan. 31, 2020, saying, “This just came out today. You may have seen it. If not, it is of interest to the current discussion.” Andersen noted that he and Holmes were quoted in the “great” piece and suggested that the SARS-CoV-2 genome looked strange for a natural virus, replying, “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. … I should mention that after discussions earlier today, Eddie, Bob, Mike, and myself all find the genome inconsistent with expectations from evolutionary theory. But we have to look at this much more closely and there are still further analyses to be done, so those opinions could still change.”
In response to the email emerging this week, Andersen tweeted: “We seriously considered a lab leak a possibility. However, significant new data, extensive analyses, and many discussions led to the conclusions in our paper… The conspiracies have created a narrative where we all ‘dismissed it out of hand.’ That’s absurd and couldn’t be further from the truth. It’s just that the data don’t support the hypothesis.”
Cohen has a long Twitter history of casting doubt on the lab leak hypothesis. He tweeted on April 30, 2020, that “Trump insists, without evidence, that a Wuhan lab is linked to the pandemic’s origin.” On May 2, 2020, Cohen claimed, “At the risk of repeating myself, data speak louder than chatter. If a lab spillover occurred, there likely would be evidence.” Cohen added that “Shi Zhengli’s lab was internationally respected and I see no evidence of a competency issue with her group” and called an accidental lab escape “speculation atop speculation.”
During a May 4, 2020, National Geographic interview, Fauci laughed off the possibility that COVID-19 escaped from a lab. But a year later, when asked by Politifact about whether he was still confident that COVID-19 emerged naturally, he said he was unsure.
“No, actually. … No, I’m not convinced about that. I think that we should continue to investigate what went on in China until we find out to the best of our ability exactly what happened,” Fauci said during the interview. “Certainly, the people who’ve investigated it say it likely was the emergence from an animal reservoir that then infected individuals, but it could’ve been something else, and we need to find that out.”
A State Department fact sheet released in January under the Trump administration contended that Wuhan lab researchers conducted experiments involving COVID-19’s closest known genetic relative, carried out gain-of-function research, secretly collaborated with the Chinese military, and that lab workers became sick with COVID-19-like symptoms in autumn 2019.
Fauci and Collins are adamant in insisting the NIH did not fund “gain-of-function” research at the Wuhan lab, but they also admit they don’t actually know what the secretive Chinese lab has been up to.
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A largely-redacted April 16, 2020, email from Collins to Fauci had the subject line of “conspiracy gains momentum” and included a Mediate link related to Fox News host Bret Baier reporting that “multiple sources … are saying that it is increasingly likely, that there is increasing confidence that the virus — Covid-19 — started in a Wuhan lab.” Fauci’s response is entirely redacted.
Former President Donald Trump said in May that he has “very, very little doubt” COVID-19 originated at a Wuhan laboratory. The intelligence community confirmed last week that at least one of its 18 spy agencies is leaning toward the Wuhan lab leak hypothesis on COVID-19’s origins while two are leaning toward a natural origin, with the vast majority remaining undecided.
