New Report Confirms Fauci, Other 'Experts' Misled Public About COVID Research

One of the most underappreciated aspects of COVID discussions is how much of our public understanding has been shaped by "expert" incompetence, gaslighting, and in some cases, malicious misdirection. 

That's indicated by the "experts" behavior and repetitive, convenient "mistakes" on virtually every important COVID-related question from masks to vaccines to school closures and lockdowns. Another obvious "misstep" came with regard to the origins of the virus. And a new report shows how this "misstep" was, in fact, designed by Anthony Fauci and his peers in the scientific community to purposefully mislead the public.

Peter Daszak, the head of EcoHealth Alliance, was instrumental in organizing the now-infamous Lancet Letter strongly dismissing any possibility of laboratory research leading to the spread of the coronavirus. They also purposefully said any discussion of whether or not the virus had a natural origin or came from a lab as a "conspiracy theory." Seriously.

'We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin," the letter reads.

As part of an investigation by the House's Select Subcommitte on the Coronavirus Pandemic, they interviewed another scientist, Ralph Baric from the University of North Carolina. And Baric's testimony, revealed for the first time today, shows how someone intimately involved with virology and virus research as well as the Wuhan Institute of Virology, specifically and repeatedly said privately the lab leak was an entirely realistic possibility. And that the research approved by Fauci's NIAID was undoubtedly gain of function. Something that Fauci has repeatedly denied. 

The most charitable interpretation of Fauci's actions is that he "misled" the public. An uncharitable, and perhaps more likely, interpretation is that he purposefully lied.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.  (Photo by Anna Rose Layden-Pool/Getty Images)

New Testimony Undercuts Fauci's Public Comments

Baric revealed during his interview that he had warned the top researcher at the Wuhan Institute of Virology that their work was being done at unsatisfactory safety levels. And that the researcher ignored his warnings. Simply as a result of that fact alone, he believes "You can't rule [a lab leak out]…You just can't," Baric said.

Daszak also emailed Baric in 2021 to defend himself and the WIV, saying that while they conducted risky gain-of-function research on coronaviruses in a Bsl2 level lab, as opposed to the necessary Bsl3 level, it wasn't unsafe. Baric didn't take that well.

"Bsl2 with negative pressure, give me a break," Baric said. "Yes, China has the right to set their own policy. You believe this was appropriate containment if you want, but don’t expect me to believe it. Moreover, don’t insult my intelligence by trying to feed me this load of BS."

So Baric acknowledged that the lab in Wuhan was conducting research at an unsafe lab level, something that the Lancet Letter, which was promoted in the media as a definitive answer, essentially ignored. 

He then also undercut another one of the natural origin "expert" preferred talking points: that the Wuhan wet market was the source of the original outbreak thanks to natural spillover from animals for sale. According to Baric, the genomic evidence shows that COVID had already been circulating in humans by mid-October 2019, at the latest. The wet market outbreak was in late-November. Making the wet market an impossible starting point for the virus.

"Clearly, the market was a conduit for expansion," he said in his testimony. "Is that where it started? I don’t think so."

 "The only thing we have really solid data [for] is that the market was the site of amplification in late December, January. That’s still two months from the origin date, based on a molecular clock, which means it was circulating somewhere before it got there. And the question is, where was it?"

Another Fauci and allied "expert" talking point bites the dust.

Speaking of Fauci, Baric's testimony revealed, yet again, that the former head of NIAID was misleading the public.

In discussions with Sen. Rand Paul, Fauci has denied that his organization funded gain-of-function research. But Baric told the committee's investigators privately that a WIV experiment, using a chimeric virus to make mice in labs sicker, "absolutely" met the definition of gain-of-function. Saying specifically, "You can't argue with that." According to Vanity Fair, he also said that the believed an investigation should have been launched into the WIV's methods after seeing those results.

So Fauci misled Paul, and the public, seeking instead to misdirect and redefine what gain-of-function is to escape culpability.

Baric Confirms WIV Researchers Did ‘Irresponsible’ Work

Vanity Fair also reported that Baric "engineered mice with lungs that contained a human gene." Those mice were then shared with WIV, assuming they'd only be used there. Sure enough, they were then put up for sale by an outside commercial company. Baric called it "infuriating," but what's infuriating is that "experts" like him put their faith and trust in a lab in China.

He also said that the work they did was "irresponsible," considering the lack of safety standards used at WIV.

"They actually stated that they were doing the culturing work under BSL-2…. And then they continued that even into September of 2020, which I thought was irresponsible," Baric explained.

Additionally, he revealed he has no idea whether or not the WIV conducted research they proposed to do in a DARPA grant proposal submitted by Dazsak's EcoHealth Alliance. While there "was evidence that they were building chimeras" as well as "doing some discovery work about the functions of spike genes of zoonotic strains that they discovered later on," Baric said he didn't know "if they did any of the engineering or anything."

While he was unwilling to commit to a lab leak being the most likely explanation of events, he admitted that the safety records and notebooks from the WIV would be key to determining what happened. 

"If you had access to the laboratory notebooks, if you had access to the safety records of the Wuhan Institute of Virology, if you had access to the sequence databases, the level of assurance that you would have would be greater. No question," he said.

"Which we didn’t really have?" he was asked.

"Which we don’t really have," Baric replied. "That’s very true."

All of this underscores the real story at the heart of this debate and discussion: Fauci and his expert allies misled the public, purposefully and profoundly, in order to draw attention away from their own actions. Daszak, Baric and Fauci would all be at least somewhat culpable, embarrassed, or discredited in some measure if a lab leak was determined to be the explanation. So, Fauci and Daszak worked to create and disseminate letters labeling any discussion of a non-natural origin as a conspiracy theory. 

And they were very successful, with the help of their ideological partners in the media. 

But what matters here is that they then applied that same strategy to other areas of pandemic debate. Anyone who questioned masks was a "conspiracy theorist" "anti-masker." Anyone who questioned COVID vaccine efficacy was an "anti-vaxxer." Labels meant to discredit and demonize. And it worked, over and over and over again. Even as those who were labeled were repeatedly proven right.

Baric's testimony underscores how, in so many ways, the lies about the origins of the virus laid the groundwork for what was to come. And the lack of accountability highlights how little interest there is in holding those misleading experts responsible for what they did.