Scientists at center of Covid lab leak cover-up feared s***show from China

Renowned scientists caught up in the controversy over the origins of Covid have admitted that the decision to downplay the lab leak theory was political.

Internal Slack communications obtained by a House subcommittee investigating the early days of the pandemic showed how scientists who wrote a paper dismissing the idea of ​​a lab accident feared retaliation from the Chinese government.

Dr. Andrew Rambaut, a biologist at the University of Edinburgh, co-authored the March 2020 Nature Medicine research paper titled “The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2,” which saw lab leak theory believers degenerate as conspiracy theorists and racists. .

Private messages reveal that Dr Rambaut feared it would create a geopolitical ‘s*** show’ to blame China for ‘even the accidental release’ of the virus, and so he was ‘content with attributing it to a natural process’.

One respondent to that post was Danish biologist Dr. Kristian Andersen, a Danish evolutionary biologist and co-author of the paper, who said in response to Dr. Rambaut that he “completely agreed.”[s] that that’s a very reasonable conclusion,” adding, “While I hate it when politics is injected into science – but it’s impossible not to, especially given the circumstances.”

Private messages reveal that Dr Rambaut feared it would create a geopolitical ‘s*** show’ to blame China for ‘even the accidental release’ of the virus, and so he was ‘content with attributing it to a natural process’

Dr. Kristian Andersen, of Scripps Research, gave testimony at a hearing with the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic on Capitol Hill on July 11, 2023 in Washington, D.C.

Dr. Robert Garry (left), a professor at Tulane University School of Medicine, was also in attendance. Members of the committee gathered to hear testimonies from medical researchers about the origins of Covid-19

The infamous article on proximal origins was partly commissioned by Dr. Anthony Fauci, then head of the US National Research Agency that had funded risky virus research in the Wuhan lab.

House Republicans today grilled two doctors at the center of battle over whether the coronavirus emerged from nature or from a laboratory in Wuhan.

They cited the newly revealed communication between scientists in early 2020 as evidence of a cover-up — something the scientists strongly refuted.

In a report issued Early Tuesday ahead of the hearing, House Republicans pointed to the countless efforts of the scientists investigating the origins of Covid and what they said amounted to blatantly crushing voices calling for a more serious investigation into the theory that the virus originated from the nearby Wuhan Institute of Virology leaked.

The witnesses, Dr. Kristian Andersen and Dr. Robert Garry, co-authored the February 2020 report “The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2,” which was published just days after a conference call in which top scientists, including Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Francis Collins received frantic reports from virologists about the possibility that aspects of the virus appeared man-made.

Internal reports indicate that even Dr. Andersen considered the argument that the genomic makeup of the virus suggested human tampering, though he changed his tune just four days later on Feb. 4, as evidenced by an email sent to Dr. Andersen sent to another group of scientists. by research group Right to Know.

In the post, Dr. Andersen wrote: “The main idiotic theories currently doing the rounds relate to the fact that this virus was somehow engineered on purpose and that is demonstrably not the case.”

Dr. Andersen also said in a series of now public responses highlighted by the House GOP, “While I hate it when politics is injected into science, but it’s impossible not to, especially given the circumstances.” We have to be sensitive to that.’

Dr. Andersen received from Dr. Wenstrup grinned when asked about his involvement.

Dr. Wenstrup said, ‘Grin if you can. Dr. Andersen, grin if you can.”

Around the same time as the scientists pointed out that pinning the origins of Covid to China would make for a ‘s*** show’, Dutch scientist Dr Ron Fouchier added that the debate over a possible lab leak from the Wuhan Institute or Virology, whether intentionally or accidentally, “would unnecessarily harm science in general and science in China in particular.”

House Republican lawmakers, typically aggressive toward China, pounced on what they perceived as too considerate and conciliatory for the communist party in power there. One such lawmaker, New York Representative Nicole Malliotakis, turned her gaze to Dr. Rambaut’s incriminating message and said, “His concern was whether he would anger China, that was his concern.”

‘Something happened here [in the brief time between Dr Fauci’s first contact with Dr Andersen in early 2020]. Politicians can flip-flop. Scientists don’t flip-flop in the space of 72 hours.”

While China insists the virus came from elsewhere, academics, politicians and the media have weighed the possibility that it may have leaked from a high-level biochemistry lab in Wuhan.

Shi Zhengli — dubbed the “Bat Lady” or “Bat Woman” for her work on bat coronaviruses — was investigating the possibility of Covid emerging from her lab in 2020, according to colleagues. Here she is pictured in collaboration with other researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in 2017

Dr. Andersen and Dr. Garry countered that claim by saying they didn’t flip-flop, but learned new information about the virus and changed their hypothesis, a textbook application of the scientific method.

The Republicans’ attempts to pinpoint where exactly the virus came from, whether from a wet market in Wuhan that sells animals infected with the virus or from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, have led to the exposure of the inner operation of scientific authorities such as Dr. Fauci and Dr Collins – popularly referred to as “the Bethesda Boys” by Republicans.

The issue has become largely a political one after years of labeling certain scientists, including Dr. Fauci and Dr. Collins at the center of the debate, as openly biased in favor of theories espoused by many Democrats and government-entrenched scientists .

This includes the theory that Covid-19 likely jumped from an animal intermediate host before infecting humans.