Fauci: 'There's no way' the coronavirus was made with U.S. funds. Here's why
latimes.com
latimes.com
> Generally, the overlap between the genomes of the viruses in the lab and that of SARS-CoV-2 was no more than 80%.
> In evolutionary terms, that’s a chasm. In their critical review, the international group of virologists note that SARS-CoV-2 and its closest known relatives have an overlap of about 96%. That “equates to decades of evolutionary divergence,” they wrote.
That's the TLDR, which wouldn't come across from most the anti-Fauci comments.
Gain of function (or any other engineered pathogen) would be using CRISPR etc to change just the few vital parts like the spike protein. Not going in and making 100 other random pointless edits for no reason.
Forget gain of function. Forget lab leak. Forget emails. Forget intentionally misleading mask efficacy to preserve health care supplies. All of that is nothing compared to staying silent when a single interview could have saved hundreds of thousands of lives.
Biden is president, completely different story: https://www.vox.com/2021/1/21/22243155/fauci-trump-shade-cor...
We have here a man that willing participated in a piss poor pandemic response, despite on multiple occasions offering a half hearted contrarian view but still ultimately supporting the president publicly. As soon as Trump is out, turns tail.
He is a coward, as soon as his job was safe his story changed. Could have, should have done more and didn’t. Ultimately we have an octogenarian who wanted to protect his job more than the American public. I have no respect for someone like that. It’s shameful.
So grain of salt.
Rand Paul: You take an animal virus and you increase its transmissibility to humans. You’re saying that’s not gain of function?
Anthony Fauci: Yeah, that is correct. And Senator Paul, you do not know what you are talking about, quite frankly. And I want to say that officially, you do not know what you are talking about, okay? You get one person … can I answer?
What I do know is that if you accept the role of expert, spokesperson, face of the crisis, whatever, your Prevarication Budget is zero. Once one thing you say is caught out as not being true, people wonder about everything else you have said.
> gain-of-function — a type of research the U.S. government generally defined in 2014 as aiming to “increase the ability of infectious agents to cause disease by enhancing its pathogenicity or by increasing its transmissibility.”
What does Fauci claim the meaning of gain-of-function is, which excludes "take an animal virus and you increase its transmissibility to humans"?
> A few of their [2017] experiments combined different elements of viruses to better understand what’s required to infect human cells. Specifically, the 2017 research used the backbone of WIV1, a bat SARS-like virus reported in 2013, and swapped in the spike protein of two newly identified bat coronaviruses to see if they, like WIV1, can use the human ACE2 receptor to enter human cells. [...]
> Is that gain-of-function? Again, there are different definitions and opinions on that. We reached out to the NIH asking for a more detailed explanation of why the 2017 paper didn’t meet its definition, and we’ll update this story if we get a response.
I think Fauci's testimony is misleading because when Fauci say's no gain of function research was done then his questioners think that means no one was messing with viruses in a way that could have accidentally created a more dangerous virus. But apparently that is still possible under the NIH definition. This happens very frequently when people testify in Congress. They use words in a way that is interpreted in one way by the listener and then when that interpretation is found false they claim the words were meant to mean something different. It is very difficult to work out whether they were being honest and accidentally misled their listeners or whether it was deliberate.
Despite that, I think lying before public should he held accountable. Particularly when the person in question is responsible for life and health for the people all over the world. (Yes, all over the world, because there are a lot of places who blindly follow US in these matters)
> In this study, we confirmed the use of human ACE2 as receptor of two novel SARSr-CoVs by using chimeric viruses with the WIV1 backbone replaced with the S gene of the newly identified SARSr-CoVs. Rs7327’s S protein varied from that of WIV1 and WIV16 at three aa residues in the receptor-binding motif, including one contact residue (aa 484) with human ACE2. This difference did not seem to affect its entry and replication efficiency in human ACE2-expressing cells. A previous study using the SARS-CoV infectious clone showed that the RsSHC014 S protein could efficiently utilize human ACE2 [33], despite being distinct from SARS-CoV and WIV1 in the RBD (S1 Fig). We examined the infectivity of Rs4231, which shared similar RBD sequence with RsSHC014 but had a distinct NTD sequence, and found the chimeric virus WIV1-Rs4231S also readily replicated in HeLa cells expressing human ACE2 molecule. The novel live SARSr-CoV we isolated in the current study (Rs4874) has an S gene almost identical to that of WIV16. As expected, it is also capable of utilizing human ACE2. These results indicate that diverse variants of SARSr-CoV S protein without deletions in their RBD are able to use human ACE2.
So, I'm not a biologist but I have read biology papers before. The way I read that is that they are doing local changes to binding sites, not simply taking spike proteins and putting them on an experimental backbone.
All the opinions and politics aside: is that the right reading of this passage from the article? Seems like that should be an objective-to-answer question, and for my own education I'd appreciate someone explaining to me.
If this research was tolerated and condoned, then what agenda is pushing for throwing good people under the bus? This regardless wether gain-of-function is a good idea or just too unsafe, which need expert record-keeping and analysis anyways.
Seems like someone is on a witch-hunt, rather than for letting the man be allowed to answer fully. Let the one who'd like to be subject to such treatment cast the first stone.
Additionally, he's accredited by a board he himself created. That's like printing your own credentials.
On the topic at hand, some people on the US actually believe covid was created specifically to undermine Donald trump, despite the fact that this is a world problem. Talk about myopic.
No
But there is one less in the jar?
My friends up and down the road have looked in the jar and have assured that no cookie was taken.
But there is one less in the jar?
You have no idea what you are talking about pal.
EDIT: Here is the mental gymnastics the article plays to justify it
>That makes it hard to say whether the altered virus’ ability to invade human cells was a function “gained” or was merely uncovered by WIV scientists.
It is not hard and it is quite simple. Because since "gaining" has to happen before "uncovering", either of the alternative will imply "gain of function".
If it happened naturally in one of the viruses collected by the lab, it wasn't because of gain of function research.
Or you did the same except used tissue samples instead of live mice?
Yes, you merely allowed evolution to "uncover" it, but if you paid for this work you certainly helped it along.
May be. But they were doing GoF (even going by your statement above), which was the question being asked.
* A raccoon took a cookie a few weeks ago, and of course you remember when the cat got onto the counter and took a cookie last year (remember SARS and MERS?)
* We have footage from the home-security camera showing the squirrel entering the window from the outside and running off with the cookie (genetics comfirms natural evolutionary rate, disconfirms gene edits to SARS-COV-2)
* There's a family of squirrels living in the tree whose branches come up to the window (SARS is prevalent in bats and key features of its virulence and provoked immune response come from known SARS viruses in bats and pangolins)
You could be right, but you need non-circumstantial evidence in order to counter our molecular genetic studies.
Edit: Downvoted in under a minute! Use your words, or forever be known as an anonymous coward.
I am quite surprised that he gets away with it in a public hearing.
Doesn't mean that Fauci is necessarily right. But I'm yet to see someone with verifiable scientific credentials hold an opposite point of view.
Before Covid the prevalent opinion among experts is that masks require training to handle properly, otherwise they wouldn't "work". Mind you, they are then thinking about high contagion zones, like in hospital wardens filled with sick people. In such cases, even better equipment and proper handling is paramount.
It was unknown then that regular masks could help, but the consensus shifted during the pandemic as people needed better protection. So even cloth masks were deemed helpful, if just to somewhat prevent making others sick. Later studies found masks helpful, though distancing even more so.
Someone lied to you about this being lies, and not just shifts in consensus and measures during the pandemic. "Nobody" expected a pandemic, for example US pandemic response taskforce and planning were disbanded and defunded.
Besides, this is from a bad-faith hearing after the fact, not concretely what was said and done at the time by who. You'd have to include the entire context for that to be fair.
In our country, we got the message that healthcare workers were prioritized first, so masks had to go to them. Maybe the media frenzy in USA forgot to tell that, or maybe that message got lost on the way to everybody. Why do you assume bad faith from medical officials, and on what grounds?
There was also consensus among doctors that you need qualifications/training for masks to be useful. I see that only as common arrogance and lack of research. This was corrected with later investigations and tests.
Do you believe consensus among experts at the time was that the public would be adequately protected with masks? They knew the virus was more infectious than that at the time. So there's little point in recommending something that will become in too short supply fast and lead to unsafe behaviour. At first, distancing would be best focal point to direct behaviour in the populace, which would be the responsibility of the administration.
Was there any signs of intention from Fauci to mislead the public? What motive would be behind doing it that way?
You might also remember Fauci was later denied making official comments, clarifications and corrections in front of the press. That decision from the top and lack of support from the top, shifts responsibility up.
Pretty obvious from his statements that his motivation was to manipulate the public.
The blowback to his reputation is a reasonable reaction. He made a decision to mislead and that was exposed, and the public trust in the value of his words was diminished. That was always a risk he should have been aware of.
It is not obvious. It is obvious it's easy to create a strawman, and then beat down that strawman afterwards with unfounded accusations. The whole premise is false without concrete quotes or evidence. Wouldn't it be better to know for sure what was said that was so wrong, before jumping to hidden intentions behind why something was allegedly said? What would be the real difference between saying one thing or another, and why would health officials intentionally mislead (motive)? Wouldn't most people start distancing no matter what is said officially, iow follow the right mitigation. Most people are usually not that stupid.
It sounds like you've been convinced of this by someone, but you don't present compelling evidence of actual statements at the time, that Fauci used to mislead the public. Do you believe it is normal to find multiple scapegoats to deflect blame on after the fact, or do you also find that to be assisting of psychopathic behaviour? Scapegoating is just an extension of making strawmen, but it fails the moral compass, as it doesn't help anybody. It's just something someone uses to tear down the people besides them, for their own selfish gains and for everyone's detriment. Why support such behaviour at all, and not give innocent people around the benefit of doubt? What good do you think will come out of rewarding such behaviour?
The main difference may be wether the reasoning is based on reasonable facts and agreements/responsibilities, or if it is based on feelings and emotions. If the latter, it seems misplaced as finding a small fault in others do not excuse the massive strings of manipulations, lies and gaslighting from the top position in that environment. Or should we all be drinking bleach and shine light on our bodies, to be safe from an influenza-like sickness (it is not really)?
It's better to re-examine the main source of problems, what gaslighting is and how it works, rather than officials around scrambling to make the best out of a tough situation, without proper support and room to find a clear voice to the people.
If everyone around a person is hopeless, it is that person that is hopeless. Nothing good comes from supporting people tearing everyone down. The difference is between the occasional mishap, versus a long string of pathological behaviours. It's too easy to hold on to an ideology or ideas, and then excuse such behaviour, but the results will be self-evident from the bad actions themselves.
You may not condone that type of behaviour, but I think it excuses mishaps and mistakes, and should lead to questioning the premises and goals behind accusations.
Good day to you too!
I'm not following the Fauci situation closely either. But there are scientists of the opinion that the Wuhan lab, partly funded by US money via Fauci, was playing with fire. For example, in this tread someone else posted (in support of Fauci) an article that contains this fragment:
> Paul cited Richard Ebright, a professor of chemistry and chemical biology at Rutgers University and a critic of gain-of-function research, who disagrees with the NIH. Ebright has said that the EcoHealth/Wuhan lab research “was — unequivocally — gain-of-function research.”
https://www.factcheck.org/2021/07/scicheck-fauci-and-paul-ro...
for the downvoters: the bifurcation is not down party lines
I guess no one remembers our government's dark past with experiments and how they lie and then lie some more, since it was classified, until they are finally forced to face the truth and then they give a half-hearted apology pretending like it will never happen again.
Let's say US funded the Chinese to develop biological weapons?
This sound plausible to you?
The black budgets are only 600k USD, which provides foreign states with a useless biological weapon that harms everyone, is that it?
https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/d9utd/on_91001_da...
FWIW, I've no stake in the lab leak discussion, except that we be allowed to have it.
Part of an interview: https://factcheckvaccine.com/2021/07/dr-judy-mikovits-ex-nih...
Transcript an interview with Yale Epidemiologist Dr. Harvey Risch: https://vaccineimpact.com/2020/scandal-anthony-fauci-has-bee...
There always needs to be an honest debate. Lives & the economy are at stake.