On January 8 and 9, I participated in a two-day Congressional transcript interview (what other people in general would call a statement) with Dr. Anthony Fauci to learn more about his role in the outbreak and his reaction to COVID-19.
These are my key takeaways from my preparation for the deposition and the deposition itself:
1. We want greater protocols and supervision of biosafety laboratories. Fauci, who was director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), says he didn’t know much about the grants awarded to EcoHealth Alliance and knew nothing about the upcoming grants awarded to the Wuhan Institute of Virology. This is unacceptable. He was the director of the company that made the grants and he was responsible. At least, before his company came to the U. S. As a U. S. citizen at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, he was well acquainted with its operations. He denied any wisdom of the Institute, and even said that if someone said Wuhan before COVID-19, they wouldn’t know if they were referring to Wuhan University, the Wuhan Institute of Virology, or some other entity in Wuhan.
And when EcoHealth Alliance didn’t submit the required reports for more than a year, someone at NIAID was aware of it and raised Cain’s question.
2. We want a sometimes accepted definition of gain of function (GoF) studies for the purposes of US grants. According to Fauci, the NIAID did not fund any GoF studies. According to the definition, that would be the case. But NIAID is a department of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and on the NIH website, at the time the studies were conducted, there was another definition of GoF. By this definition, the NIAID funded the GoF studies. Both definitions are appropriate in a variety of contexts, however, this type of study is too serious not to have a sometimes accepted definition.
On a structural level, some scientists discussed in an email to Fauci that they discovered some confusing facets of the virus. They wondered how this could happen in nature. In examining the composition of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, researcher Mike Farzan questioned how the furin cleavage site was discovered in the virus. He thought it was tricky to know how this could happen outdoors in a lab. While this is possible, it is highly unlikely to occur in nature. In addition, Dr. Bob Garry observed that the virus had a maximum insertion of 12 nucleotides at the furin cleavage site and did not know how this could occur in nature. The cleavage site of furin is largely what makes the virus so contagious. Interestingly, previous coronaviruses did not involve a furin cleavage site.
4. Fauci said he was open-brained about how the COVID-19 outbreak might have started, whether it was spread by animal transmission in a rainy market or by a lab leak, but he believes this is due to animal transmission. However, in his public statements he has given no indication of his openness to the rest of the Americans.
Those who believed that COVID-19 was due to a lab leak were universally shunned, and their perspectives were removed and/or banned from many social media sites.
Based on the evidence I’ve seen, COVID-19 started due to an accidental lab leak. Part of the explanation is that an animal source has never been discovered (in the past, we were able to locate one). In addition, the Chinese government did not consider a large sample of animals as part of its research, nor was the virus detected in animals at the time of the outbreak. If the Chinese thought the virus came from animals, they would have scoured the region for an animal source. Their strenuous lack of effort tells me that the Chinese know the source was a lab leak.
Fauci said we needed to continue to look for the animal source, but also admitted that without Chinese cooperation, we may never be able to determine with scientific certainty which theory is correct.
As a long-time practicing attorney, I only need proof that eliminates reasonable doubt, not proof to a scientific certainty. For example, circumstantial evidence and little else was sufficient to put the murderer of Gina Renee Hall (a student at Radford University) in prison. As you will recall, she disappeared and later in 1980, her murderer was convicted in Pulaski County and given a life sentence based substantially on circumstantial evidence.
That said, the evidence of an accidental lab leak also, in my opinion, leaves room for moderate doubt.
– Congressman Morgan Griffith