Fauci E-mails and Honesty

[Robert]

But have you noticed that you repeat that as a mantra, repeatedly, instead of going into the facts in detail?

Not true. I clearly stated why I lost trust in him when it happened and have just been consistent in my position.

[Robert]

https://nypost.com/2021/06/06/damning-s ... ed-in-lab/

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-scienc ... 1622995184

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/24/gottlie ... a-lab.html

Evidence that Covid-19 originally leaked from a Wuhan, China, virology lab is growing, Dr. Scott Gottlieb told CNBC on Monday, pointing to reports that three researchers from the lab sought hospital care with a Covid-like illness in November 2019.

“People a year ago who said this probably came from nature, it’s really unlikely it came from a lab, maybe a year ago that kind of a statement made a lot of sense because that was the more likely scenario,” Gottlieb, a former head of the Food and Drug Administration, said on “Squawk Box.” “But we haven’t found the true source of this virus.”

Scientists still haven’t discovered definitive proof that the virus came from an animal, he said. With other coronaviruses, SARS and MERS, researchers were able to identify the animal those diseases emerged from at this point in those outbreaks.

“It’s not for lack of trying, there has been an exhaustive search,” Gottlieb said.

More to come.

Just remember that many of the things you claimed I was wrong about a year ago are being revealed as correct. The sources I am using seem to be more accurate than some other's sources.

[Josh]

Dr Fauci (along with his friends at the WHO) has claimed:

- this isn’t a pandemic, don’t worry about it

- masks don’t work, don’t use or buy them

- there is absolutely no way this could be manmade

The latter statement is very suspect when we have a person who funded research at a lab, and then proclaims there is absolutely no way that his lab he funded is to blame.

Instead he blames traditional Chinese cuisine practices. Chinese people don’t regularly eat bats any more than you or I do. But they have gotten their fresh vegetables and meat from small markets for a very long time. His call to shut down their markets would be like telling all of us to shut down our grocery stores.

I don’t wish for Dr Fauci to be “cancelled”. I do wish for him not to be given so much power and control he can run our daily lives: he took on the power to tell us if we can work, if we can go go church, and if we can even visit our immediate families.

Such power calls for a lot of scrutiny.

[Bootstrap]

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/24/gottlie ... a-lab.html

Evidence that Covid-19 originally leaked from a Wuhan, China, virology lab is growing, Dr. Scott Gottlieb told CNBC on Monday, pointing to reports that three researchers from the lab sought hospital care with a Covid-like illness in November 2019.

“People a year ago who said this probably came from nature, it’s really unlikely it came from a lab, maybe a year ago that kind of a statement made a lot of sense because that was the more likely scenario,” Gottlieb, a former head of the Food and Drug Administration, said on “Squawk Box.” “But we haven’t found the true source of this virus.”

Scientists still haven’t discovered definitive proof that the virus came from an animal, he said. With other coronaviruses, SARS and MERS, researchers were able to identify the animal those diseases emerged from at this point in those outbreaks.

“It’s not for lack of trying, there has been an exhaustive search,” Gottlieb said.

How does this disagree with what my references said? Looks like a year ago Gottlieb said natural sources were the more likely scenario, he does not say that the lab scenario is the more likely one now, he says we don't know and we need to check it out.

Which is what Fauci is also saying, isn't it? Do you think Fauci was wrong to emphasize the wet markets a year ago? So far, I haven't understood what you are saying Fauci was lying about. What did the science say at the time, how did Fauci misrepresent it, and how does the email prove it? So far, this seems like a baseless claim.

Again:

1. What accusation is being made about whom? The accusation is that Fauci lied and the emails prove it. Right now, we're looking at the Wuhan lab-leak hypothesis.
2. What evidence is given for the claim? So far, none, I think. Lots of "I don't trust Fauci" and attempts to switch to other topics. I think those other topics are also being misrepresented, but one topic at a time please.
3. How solid is that evidence? Should we believe the claim? No evidence to evaluate yet.
4. What does this mean for us as Christians living where and when we do? Well, we could just wait for the investigations to happen. Or we could assume we don't know. Or we could take the time to really dig into all the evidence available to us. But until there is evidence of something, there's not much relevance.

[Bootstrap]

Dr Fauci (along with his friends at the WHO) has claimed:

- this isn’t a pandemic, don’t worry about it

- masks don’t work, don’t use or buy them

- there is absolutely no way this could be manmade

The latter statement is very suspect when we have a person who funded research at a lab, and then proclaims there is absolutely no way that his lab he funded is to blame.

I think you are misrepresenting some things here, but let's stick with the last claim, which is the Wuhan claim. When and where did Fauci say there is absolutely no way this could be manmade?

Instead he blames traditional Chinese cuisine practices. Chinese people don’t regularly eat bats any more than you or I do. But they have gotten their fresh vegetables and meat from small markets for a very long time. His call to shut down their markets would be like telling all of us to shut down our grocery stores.

So you no longer believe what you wrote about wet markets in earlier times? What changed your mind? Do you have reason to believe that Fauci did not believe this and lied? That seems to be the accusation.

I don’t wish for Dr Fauci to be “cancelled”. I do wish for him not to be given so much power and control he can run our daily lives: he took on the power to tell us if we can work, if we can go go church, and if we can even visit our immediate families.

Such power calls for a lot of scrutiny.

Fauci's main power is the power of persuasion. He does not get to set policy, he has neither executive nor legislative authority.

Scientists generally find him very credible. For instance, Robert just quoted Scott Gottlieb. Here is what Gottlieb has to say about Fauci, the emails, and Wuhan:

The following is a transcript of an interview with former FDA Commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb that aired Sunday, June 6, 2021, on "Face the Nation."

JOHN DICKERSON: We want to welcome back former FDA commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb to our studio. He has not been with us in person in Washington since March 2020. Dr. Gottlieb is also on the board of Pfizer and his upcoming book is 'Uncontrolled Spread: Why COVID-19 Crushed US and How We Can Defeat the Next Pandemic.' Welcome, Scott. Good to see you.

DOCTOR SCOTT GOTTLIEB: Thanks a lot.

JOHN DICKERSON: Very glad you're here. Let's begin with- this week thousands of emails of Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, were released. What did you make of those emails?

DR. GOTTLIEB: I didn't think there was anything remarkable in those emails. I certainly don't think there was anything that Tony sent that expressed any ill intent and nothing really that was new from the standpoint of what we already knew. I do think, though, that some of the discussion that went on in those emails evidences a larger issue, which is that early on the email that's being focused on as a so-called smoking gun, if you will, is an email Tony received from some really good scientists suggesting that they felt this could have been an engineered pathogen early on. They were basing that assessment on their analysis of the sequence strain of the virus. So they were virologists looking at the virus itself. It was reasonable to draw conclusions based on an evaluation of the sequence because that was largely the best piece of information we had. As time evolved and as more virologists looked more carefully at this, the judgment of the scientific community is there's actually nothing that remarkable about this virus. All of the genetic diversity of seeing the virus could have been derived from nature. There are some unusual features, don't get me wrong, but they are still things that we could have found in nature. So their initial analysis was based on the analysis of the sequence. Their current analysis is also based on analysis of the sequence and what- what is lost in this is that there's a broader mosaic here. You know, we have other information now that fits into this picture. The science is one piece of information, but there's a lot of other information that points in the direction that this could have come out of a lab, that we need to have a broader view about the potential risk that this was a lab leak.

JOHN DICKERSON: --initial determination. And then there's kind of a side political fight that's going on about Dr. Fauci. And the claim appears to be that- that he was not forthcoming about the idea that it might have been from a lab leak in his discussions within the administration and in the other work he was doing. And some people have looked at these emails and said that- that it suggests that.

JOHN DICKERSON: Go ahead.

DR. GOTTLIEB: Yeah, I was told at that time back in the spring that Dr. Fauci had gone over to a meeting of world health leaders in Europe around the World Health Assembly, and actually brief them on the information that they were looking at, that this could have been a potential lab leak, that this strain looked unusual. So those discussions were going on. And I was told that by a very senior official in the Trump administration. I've reconfirmed that conversation. That happened, you know, at the time contemporaneously with- with that meeting over a year ago. So I think early on when they looked at the strain, they had suspicions. And in a closer analysis- and it takes time to do that analysis, dispelled some of those suspicions. But I think the broader issue here for me is that we look at these things through the lens of science and we don't necessarily look at it through the lens of national security and a scientific mindset looks at the virus and the virus's behavior and its sequence and draws a conclusion. A national security assessment looks at that as one piece of evidence, but then looks at the behavior of the Chinese government, looks at the behavior of the lab, looks at other evidence around the lab, including the infections that we now know took place, and that changes the overall assessment. So the virologists who are now still focused on saying, we don't think this was a lab source, they're still I think looking at this through the lens of what does the sequence look like, what does the virus look like? That is just one piece of evidence. And I think this is partly why these kinds of assessments need to be in the hands of the national security apparatus, not just the scientific community.

[Josh]

No, I don’t believe what I wrote earlier. I swallowed a lot of the mainstream narrative which was just anti Chinese culture propaganda.

Chinese people don’t eat bats and sell them to each other at wet markets. If you have a bio weapons research lab a few miles from where an outbreak of a novel disease happens that has yet to be found in any bats or to even be capable of infecting bats... maybe we should blame the bioweapon lab, not the traditional food market that’s been there for longer than my lifetime.

I trusted Fauci including denouncing masks in February / March when he told us not to wear masks. Now I look pretty stupid don’t I?

[KirkDaniel]

Whew! Nary a comment this whole day.

Peace at last.

Note to self: Watch what you post on MN about current events. Lesson learned.

[Soloist]

Whew! Nary a comment this whole day.

Peace at last.

Note to self: Watch what you post on MN about current events. Lesson learned.

.... You broke it!!! there will be no more peace now....

[Ken]

No, I don’t believe what I wrote earlier. I swallowed a lot of the mainstream narrative which was just anti Chinese culture propaganda.

Chinese people don’t eat bats and sell them to each other at wet markets. If you have a bio weapons research lab a few miles from where an outbreak of a novel disease happens that has yet to be found in any bats or to even be capable of infecting bats... maybe we should blame the bioweapon lab, not the traditional food market that’s been there for longer than my lifetime.

I trusted Fauci including denouncing masks in February / March when he told us not to wear masks. Now I look pretty stupid don’t I?

My guess is that the Chinese probably already know exactly what happened and will likely never tell. Pandemic tracing is not a particularly high-tech or complicated undertaking. It is just tedious and takes lots of boots on the ground contact-tracing. They certainly have the means and manpower to know exactly what happened.

There is either going to be a chain of infected individuals reaching back in time to some lab worker who got infected via a laboratory accident and unknowingly walked out of the facility carrying the infection with him/her

Or there is going to be a chain of infected individuals reaching back in time to someone working in a wet market or animal farm or slaughterhouse or some such where it can be reasonably concluded that the virus jumped from animals to humans as a result of close contact.

There are probably Chinese virologists and investigators who know exactly what happened but are sworn to secrecy by the Chinese government on pain of execution and seeing their whole families jailed for decades in concentration [re-education] camps. Or perhaps that has already happened as a preventative measure and covering of tracks.

My completely uninformed guess is that the reason they are keeping that knowledge secret is that they are still searching for some way to point the finger at some non-Chinese source of the virus. Because under either scenario (lab leak or wild/domestic animal transfer) China is still to blame for unleashing a virus on the planet. But if they can somehow point to it as having come from Vietnam or India or some other place, carried to China by a visitor to Wuhan in October 2019 or some other plausible fictional story then that is what they are going to do. As long as the origin is unknown, they can still raise reasonable doubts and obscure the issue.

[Soloist]

My guess is that the Chinese probably already know exactly what happened and will likely never tell. Pandemic tracing is not a particularly high-tech or complicated undertaking. It is just tedious and takes lots of boots on the ground contact-tracing. They certainly have the means and manpower to know exactly what happened.

My completely uninformed guess is that the reason they are keeping that knowledge secret is that they are still searching for some way to point the finger at some non-Chinese source of the virus. Because under either scenario (lab leak or wild/domestic animal transfer) China is still to blame for unleashing a virus on the planet. But if they can somehow point to it as having come from Vietnam or India or some other place, carried to China by a visitor to Wuhan in October 2019 or some other plausible fictional story then that is what they are going to do. As long as the origin is unknown, they can still raise reasonable doubts and obscure the issue.

My suspicion is based on their reaction to the disease. Just look at how they reacted to the last diseases coming out of China

Five influenza pandemics had occurred during the past century (1918 "Spanish flu" , 1957 "Asian flu" , 1968 "Hong Kong flu" , 1977 "Russian flu" and 2009 H1N1 Pandemic), accounting for hundreds of millions of people infected and tens of millions dead. China was influenced by all the five pandemics, and three of them (1957 "Asian flu" , 1968 "Hong Kong flu" and 1977 "Russian flu" ) were originated from China. The pandemics triggered the establishment of public health agencies and influenza surveillance capacities. In addition, more resources were allocated to influenza-related research, prevention and control. As a leader in the field of influenza, China should further strengthen its pandemic preparedness and response to contribute to global health.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30180422/
Their reaction to it by locking people in houses, people "dying" in the streets and so on suggests either it was much worse initially and they reacted appropriately, or they knew it was from the lab and were racing to contain something they really didn't know how lethal it really was given they were editing it.
The historical position is that it was from a wet food market or something like that has been pushed consistently, mostly they have not argued it didn't come from China but rather that it was from some natural source.

So... yeah I believe they were editing a virus and didn't know what they actually released in the wild in terms of seriousness.