In his notes, Fauci acknowledged that there was considerable concern among those on the call about whether the virus could have been engineered. He wrote, “There was not total agreement about the likelihood of deliberate insertion,” referring to the possibility that the virus had been created in a laboratory. According to the diary, only two participants argued strongly that the virus almost certainly arose naturally, while the remaining scientists believed a laboratory origin was a plausible explanation.

The discussion took place in January 2020, before governments imposed COVID lockdowns and before the World Health Organization officially declared the outbreak a global pandemic.

Fauci elaborated on the differing views among the scientists, writing:

“Ron Fouchier said he was sure that this could occur naturally and we should not waste our time and divert effort to pursue this. This is expected of him since he was the original GOF person with Yoshi Kawaoka. Also, Christian Drosten was with Ron; the rest felt that deliberate insertion was possible and given the fact that Dr. Zheng-Li Shi at the University of Wuhan has been working for years in GOF in coronaviruses to allow adaptation of the spike protein to bind to the human ACE2 receptor, we could not let this go. We decided to have Jeremy with Francis to contact Tedros with Stewart Simonson’s help (I arranged this) to see if Tedros would convene experts.”

Despite those private discussions, Fauci would go on to spend years publicly rejecting the lab leak theory as a conspiracy, even while his own diary reflected a more cautious view. In later entries, he repeatedly acknowledged that the origin of the virus remained uncertain.

Writing in May 2021, Fauci addressed criticism that he had changed his position on the issue:

“The situation continues to get “out of control” with regard to the press reports concerning my ‘flip flopping’ concerning the theory of the origin of the virus. I had always said that the very highly likelihood is that the virus originated naturally from an animal reservoir jumping to a human. However, over the past couple of days given the amount of speculation about the possibility of a lab leak I have been saying that no one is 100% certain of the origin including me and so I am calling for a thorough investigation.”

Another diary entry, dated June 7, 2021, appeared to revisit the January 2020 conference call. In it, Fauci claimed that the participants had been evenly divided over whether COVID originated naturally or may have been engineered. That account appears to conflict with his earlier notes, which indicated that only two scientists favored a natural-origin explanation while the rest viewed a laboratory origin as a realistic possibility.

He wrote:

“Scott Gottlieb had appeared on Face the Nation and mentioned in an attempt to help me then I had actually gone to Europe in Jan/Feb. 2020 to brief health ministers about the possibility that the virus could have been constructed an escape from the laboratory. He did this to indicate that I was not hiding anything because I already knew that this was a possibility and so I didn’t change my mind currently by saying that a lab leak is a possibility since I was talking about it openly back then. As it turns out, he was a little bit mixed up because on January 31st, 2020 I received a call from Jeremy Farrar who conferenced in Christian Andersen to tell me that Ed Holmes and Christian had seen a copy of the sequence of the virus and felt that there was a possibility that because of the unusual furin cleavage site that this could possibly have been a constructed virus. as indicated in my notes of January 31st and February 1st , 2020, since I am not an evolutionary biologist I called together by phone a group knowledgeable scientist together with Francis Collins and a few other people to discuss this. After a considerable amount of discussion about half of the people felt that this was possibly a constructed virus and the other half were convinced that this was a natural occurrence. A few weeks later Christian Andersen got together with Bob Garry and Andrew Rambaut to examine this more carefully and they came to the conclusion that they were convinced that this was a natural occurrence and a jump from the animal reservoir. They published their data in a preprint server in February followed by a nature paper in March of 2020 . That is the reason why it appears that a I briefed people which I did not. I was briefed by them. Scott had said that I had briefed a group of international health people he seemed to have gotten some of the story wrong , but overall he was correct.”

As the pandemic continued, Fauci’s diary entries took a far more dismissive tone toward the lab leak theory. He praised media reports criticizing the hypothesis, writing, “Great Article in Politico that describes the lies of the Trump people about the ‘lab leak’ theory,” and also commended similar reporting by The Guardian.

In another entry, Fauci accused conservatives of promoting politically motivated conspiracy theories surrounding the virus’s origin. He wrote, “The conspiracy of the far right and the trump loyalists continues. Recently representative Mike McCall the minority On the House Foreign Affairs Committee released a report by the panel’s republican staff essentially saying that the lab leak was the cause of COVID-19 and hinting the NIH’s role in creating the virus.”

He continued:

“This is based on no new information or no new data. It is very clear what is going on and it needs to be called out. It is all part of “The Big Lie”. First, trump actually won the election; next, January 6th was a friendly visit to the capital book shop; next trump was right and China caused the virus; next Fauci and the NIH helped the Chinese create the virus; next, discredit Fauci and it looks like trump is telling the truth. It is plain and simple a concerted effort aimed at getting trump re-elected and exonerating him from any blame in the complete mess up of his response to COVID-19.”

Since leaving government service, Fauci has continued to reject allegations that he misled the public regarding gain-of-function research or the origins of COVID-19. At the same time, the Trump White House has updated its official coronavirus webpage to state that a laboratory leak is the most likely explanation for the pandemic’s origin.

The updated White House page argues that “‘The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2’ publication — which was used repeatedly by public health officials and the media to discredit the lab leak theory — was prompted by Dr. Fauci to push the preferred narrative that COVID-19 originated naturally,” adding that the virus “possesses a biological characteristic that is not found in nature” and that “Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) researchers were sick with COVID-like symptoms in the fall of 2019, months before COVID-19 was discovered at the wet market.”

Fauci is scheduled to appear before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs on Wednesday, where he is expected to face questions about the newly released diary entries and his handling of the pandemic’s origins.

{Matzav.com}