Hacker News Reader

> Rand Paul did not actually say that Fauci's gain of function research led to COVID19 but he didn't really need to.

This is true. He strongly implied it did.

Fauci continued to deny the funding went to GoF research even in that heated exchange, so he wasn't changing his position. Paul said it did, Fauci said it didn't. What Fauci didn't say was that GoF research wasn't happening there. It undoubtedly was.

I'm assuming the coincidence with 1984 is ... the book?

>> I'm assuming the coincidence with 1984 is ... the book?

Haha, nice catch; I didn't even see that one. I only mentioned that date to point out that he's been a director for several decades so the NIH didn't fund this research under a different director; it was Fauci himself in charge. I think the date 1984 is much more likely to be a coincidence; I just don't see how that date fits into the motive. I don't think people like Fauci and his friends care much about symbolism; aside from symbols and numbers displayed in their personal bank accounts and on their trading platforms.

The nail in the coffin for me is the clear motive that Fauci had in being appointed to handle the COVID19 response in the US. Combined with the fact that the US government actually funded this research and that Fauci then lied about it and later tried to fudge definitions in an effort to gaslight everyone into thinking that he did not lie when he clearly did... Rand Paul's arguments were delivered with almost Mathematical precision. Not to mention Fauci's earlier lies about masks not providing any protection against COVID19. There's a point when you just have to draw the line, enough lies, this guy is a liar and a manipulator. How many more times does he have to be caught red-handed for us to accept this?

Fauci was not put in charge of the response in the U.S. Rather, Mike Pence was, with Deborah Birx as task force chair. And of course Robert Redfield, the CDC director, was indeed on the task force.

You're confusing who had the best communication and stage presence with who was in charge. Redfield was not a good public communicator, and Fauci was, so Fauci got more screen time.

I don't understand the need to split hairs when it actually reinforces my conclusion but thanks anyway for pointing it out. Isn't it even more surprising that he would step outside of his role to throw himself into the limelight when it's not even his job? Seems like he was desperate to control the narrative.

That's the thing about Fauci; every time a point is made in his defense, it only seems to implicate him further.

No, that's the thing about conspiracy theorists: every time a factual claim they made is demonstrably wrong, they claim it "reinforces their conclusion."

I didn't deny your argument, I accepted it. I merely pointed out that your argument lead to the same conclusion as my argument except that it provided even more certainty.

On the other hand, this comment is an ad hominem attack trying to categorize me as an irrational conspiracy theorist in the hope that readers would dismiss the logic in my comments.

Yes, that is precisely the hallmark I was pointing out: when you were right, that proved your conclusion. But when you were wrong, that provided even more certainty.

That "logic" is irrational.

You just made a bad argument. You focused on a flaw in my argument to try to discredit me as an expert (which I'm not and never claimed to be, I welcome the correction) but in doing so you made my argument stronger.

I can't believe I have to spell it out TBH.

The fact is that Fauci had managed to put himself in a position to control the narrative and also the COVID19 response at a national level. Whether he did it by securing an official position or he simply jumped into the limelight on his own initiative is completely immaterial to my argument. The conclusion is the same; it is very suspicious when someone who is secretly associated with a problem wants to control the narrative around the problem once that problem becomes of public interest.

> "They paint a very clear narrative with means and motives"

Only with the help of motivated reasoning. Any singular focus on Fauci is a distraction mostly motivated by political biases and/or the desire to direct frustrations at a public figure. Unless you have some specific and quantifiable actions to take as a result of this "very clear narrative" then this reasoning is just adding to the noise.

Fauci leads NIAID, focused on infectious disease research. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/cdc-fda-n...

I also forgot some other critical points:

- Several top scientists stepped forward in the early days and claimed that the virus showed signs of being man-made (and they were censored and called conspiracy theorists).

- Some countries have been telling their citizens since the beginning that the virus was likely man-made (this was the official narrative in Russia since the beginning).

- Fauci initially denied the possibility that COVID19 could be man made and said that the 'lab leak theory' was a conspiracy theory.

- Later, Fauci conceded that the lab-leak hypothesis could not be dismissed. Evidence for this has been mounting and the media has done everything it can to avoid discussing this topic.

> Several top scientists stepped forward in the early days and claimed that the virus showed signs of being man-made

So, if you're talking about the early days: One of them was in my country, and claimed that CRISPR was used on SRAS-Cov2, probably as a biological weapon. This was the human-made theory in the early days. Two day after his delcaration, the virus sequence was available for everyone on the internet, and he deleted his tweet the day after that.

Then the narrative was about a chimera that escaped the lab (which is way more likely). People conflated the two theories

I'm sorry if people who claimed that were called conspiracy theorist, but the CRISPR theory was junky since the beginning (Since the ACE2 is not the optimal key to bind to a human host. Also you need human test subject to make this kind of experiments, i know the oversight is not the best, but this would have leaked if there was human test in Wuhan). And it was not a conspiracy theory, it was honestly just dumb as f*ck, i don't think anybody here bought it.

Now, a lab-escaped Chimera is a good theory, but since the first theory was so jank, some people thought it was just a rehash, and took it with skepticism, especially since the same network/people share this new theory. I'm still not convinced: fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice... But i won't call anyone a conspiracy theorist over this.

> Fauci has been director of NIH since 1984.

No, Fauci has never held that position.

Fauci has been director of NIAID since 1984, which is one of the institutes of NIH.

> Fauci was put in charge of the COVID19 response in the US

No, under Trump he was a task force member, but the TF coordinator was Deborah Birx. Fauci was one of the more visible spokespeople, but not even approximately in charge.

Under Biden he also got the Chief Medical Adviser to the President title, but on COVID—while.even a more prominent spokesperson than previously—he is a member of the new task force, but Jeffrey Zients is the coordinator.

>> No, Fauci has never held that position.

My bad, I was mislead there. Doesn't change the conclusion of my analysis though. If anything, it strengthens it.

So he was director of National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (a branch of NIH). Coronaviruses are infectious diseases. It seems practically certain that he would have been directly involved. Of the 27 sub-agencies of the NIH, NIAID is the one which matches the category for 'coronavirus gain of function research' most closely.

The list is:

National Cancer Institute (NCI), National Eye Institute (NEI), National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), National Institute on Aging (NIA), National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin, Diseases (NIAMSD), National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB), National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD[69]), National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDOCD), National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research (NIDCR), National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDKD), National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS), National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHHD), National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), National Institute of Nursing Research (NINR), National Library of Medicine (NLM), Center for Information Technology (CIT), Center for Scientific Review (CSR), Fogarty International Center (FIC), National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS), National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH), NIH Clinical Center (NIH CC)

Within which of the above 27 categories does a 'highly infectious disease with immune-system-evading characteristics' such as COVID19 fit into? The fact that NIAID also deals with allergies (whose treatments typically involve regulating the immune system) is too much...

What you're saying makes foul play even more likely. This virus has got Fauci's signature in it and his face is on the packaging.

Not saying he is guilty, but he should be investigated.

You are leaving out the other errors in the basis for your initial conspiracy theory, notably your false claim that Fauci was put in charge of Coronavirus response; as noted in my earlier response, no, he wasn't, he was made a member of both Trump’s and Biden’s COVID task forcez, but neither the formal head (the VP in Trump's case, the President in Biden’s) nor the lead member once elected officials are excluded (in both cases, titled “coordinator”, Deborah Birx for Trump and Jeffrey Zients for Biden.)

You also draw your inference of foul play from the claim that Fauci’s role as “director of NIH” has some nexus to gain of function research but, unlike the CDC, nothing to do with preventing the spread of disease, making his (nonexistent) appointment as head of COVID response suspicious. When informed that he was not head of NIH but of NIAID and never appointed as head of COVID response, you apparently double down on that, because NIAID has a closer nexus to gain of function research. But, NIAIDs nexus to gain of function research is precisely that “conducts and supports basic and applied research to better understand, treat, and ultimately prevent infectious, immunologic, and allergic diseases”.

Theret nothing suspicious about the head of NIAID being appointed to a committee planning response to an infectious disease. It would, indeed, be suspicious if the head of NIAID was excluded from such a committee.