8 ms·
Fauci: 'There's no way' the coronavirus was made with U.S. funds. Here's why
- forcry 5y agoDid you take the cookie? 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".
- belltaco 5y ago>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.
- spfzero 5y agoWhat if it happened "naturally", as a result of workers infecting thousands of mice and killing the ones that stayed healthy, then reinfecting new mice from the remainder, over and over for many generations? 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.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- forcry 5y ago> it wasn't because of gain of function research. May be. But they were doing GoF (even going by your statement above), which was the question being asked.
- jaywalk 5y agoThere have been and most likely will continue to be zero consequences for his actions. So he will continue to lie and mislead, and the media will still happily carry water for him. It's sickening.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- myWindoonn 5y agoIf we continue with your analogy, then you're going to not believe it, but a squirrel came in through the kitchen window and took a cookie. It sounds unlikely, but consider: * 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.
- forcry 5y agoBasically, the point and the whole point I am making is the issue being how Faucci uses appeals to authority, instead of answering or explaining how it is NOT gain of function. I am quite surprised that he gets away with it in a public hearing.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- paulddraper 5y agoThis is also that man who said the U.S. didn't fund gain-of-research. So grain of salt.
- schoolornot 5y agoRand 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? The guy is clearly full of it. He's been at the helm of his org for 40 years. It's time for someone new.
- hellomyguys 5y agoAfter reading https://www.factcheck.org/2021/07/scicheck-fauci-and-paul-round-2/ https://www.factcheck.org/2021/07/scicheck-fauci-and-paul-ro... (happy for someone to provide a better source), I'm not sure I agree with the idea that Fauci is "full of shit" based off of this one exchange.
- dogorman 5y agoThe article you link seems to talk in circles and dwell on the question of whether covid-19 came from that lab, but I don't see where it explains what definition of 'gain-of-function' Fauci is operating under, if not, > 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"?
- bookofsand 5y agoThis is the 'it depends on what the meaning of the word is is' defense: > 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.
- LatteLazy 5y agoThis bs will be the jfk/moon landing of our time.
- yongjik 5y agoArguments employed by the anti-lockdown crowd (of which Rand Paul is one) are increasingly resembling the "climate skeptics" crowd - it doesn't matter whether their various positions are consistent with each other. It only matters that each one of them, taken individually, undermines the "mainstream" narrative. Hence, coronavirus is nothing to worry about, lockdowns are unnecessary, vaccines are unnecessary, and at the same time the CDC is responsible for millions of deaths.
- readflaggedcomm 5y agoWhere does Dr. Paul's argument that the US funded that lab, and the lab's work was not allowed to be funded, go wrong?
- orwin 5y agoSo you're saying that the US founded a lab in china to engineer a deadlier coronavirus?
- totesraunch 5y agoDoctor of ophthalmology doesn't mean anything to me unless we're talking about eyes. 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.
- underseacables 5y agoAt this point, I don’t believe a word this man says. Everything has been turned upside down because of politics and my trust and faith in government scientist is approaching zero.
- Yoric 5y agoSeeing this from Europe, I don't really know or care about US politics. However, when it comes to science, I tend to trust scientists (government or otherwise) quite a bit more than, well, non-scientists. Especially in a political environment where everything gets distorted as a matter of fact. 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.
- hn8788 5y agoBefore the past year I would have agreed with you, but since Fauci admitted that they initially lied about masks not working because they wanted to save them for healthcare workers, I don't think he has much credibility.
- loopz 5y agoExperts are not infallible, as you'd like them to be. Are you infallible? 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.
- 5y ago
- kaliali 5y ago2018 Video Shows Dr. Fauci REINSTATING Gain-of-Function Research at NIH - Defending Its Use https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjUd5otL-ms https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjUd5otL-ms
- l332mn 5y agoIt's transparently obvious that the whole Wuhan lab-leak narrative is purely a smear, possibly even a deflection. It's extremely unlikely that the virus even originated in Wuhan. https://www.livescience.com/covid-19-did-not-start-at-wuhan-wet-market.html https://www.livescience.com/covid-19-did-not-start-at-wuhan-... Moreover, it has likely been present in the US around that time, perhaps sooner: https://www.livescience.com/covid-19-united-states-december-2019.html https://www.livescience.com/covid-19-united-states-december-... Considering the spread of COVID since March 2020, with major epicenters in Europe and the US, on the bare face of it makes Wuhan and even China as a whole look like an extremely unlikely candidate for the place of origination. A much more likely hypothesis is that the virus has been around for a long time in both the US and Europe before it was first discovered in Wuhan. That is simply the most reasonable explanation. There was a major outbreak of lung illness in the US in early 2019, which has mostly just gone under the radar for most people during the pandemic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019%E2%80%932020_vaping_lung_illness_outbreak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019%E2%80%932020_vaping_lung_... Not saying that it's Covid necessarily, but drawing on both the fact that (serious) researchers are up in the air about the place of origination of the virus, and the widespread presence of lung illness outbreaks in the US, it is more likely than not that that the virus originated in the US sometime during 2019.
- krrrh 5y agoThis is such a bizarre comment and your thesis is nowhere near being “transparently obvious”. You’re trying to link the people whose lungs were harmed by vitamin E acetate in black market vaping cartridges to COVID? Credible genetic analysis of the virus shows nearly incontrovertibly that it originated in Wuhan.
- l332mn 5y ago> Credible genetic analysis of the virus shows nearly incontrovertibly that it originated in Wuhan. What are you talking about? That's just not true. There is zero incontrovertible evidence that it originated in Wuhan. "https://www.reuters.com/article/health-coronavirus-who-china-int-idUSKBN2A90CQ https://www.reuters.com/article/health-coronavirus-who-china..." '“The possible path from whatever original animal species all the way through to the Huanan market could have taken a very long and convoluted path involving also movements across borders,” Embarek told a nearly three-hour media briefing. Embarek said work to identify the coronavirus’s origins points to a natural reservoir in bats, but it is unlikely that they were in Wuhan.' - Peter Ben Embarek, who led the team of independent WHO experts in Wuhan.
- BrianOnHN 5y agoThe Fauci-hating in this thread is beyond unhelpful. > 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.
- bananabiscuit 5y agoSome questions about these statements: are they based on what was seen in the WIV database before it got taken down in September of 2019? Independent of that, how can we be sure WIV isn’t just withholding genomes that are more closely related to SARS-CoV-2?
- LatteLazy 5y agoIt's worth noting too that that 4% diff is equally distributed across the genome. 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.
- paulddraper 5y agoEvolutionary changes could have happened as well.
- kcplate 5y agoMy issue with Fauci is this—why would an 80+ year old man at least a decade beyond average US retirement age, who has a microphone to literally the whole world in all of 2020 specifically choose to NOT become a whistleblower if the Trump administration was eschewing his advice (he who is the US authority on pandemics for decades) to the detriment of hundreds of thousands of dead? 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.
- dannyz 5y agoSome of the comments here are eye opening on how effective the misinformation campaign has been on this issue. There is no real evidence that SARS-CoV-2 originated from a lab leak. Rand Paul is being intentionally distracting to push a false narrative.
- SideburnsOfDoom 5y agoAgreed. You do have to ask, why the misinformation campaign happened in the first place, and to what extent are we seeing the misinformation campaign still being deliberately continued (rather than the aftermath echoing) in this thread and other recent ones.
- forcry 5y ago>There is no real evidence that SARS-CoV-2 originated from a lab leak. Rand Paul is being intentionally distracting to push a false narrative. 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)
- Dwelve 5y agoSome of the comments here are eye opening how effective the government propaganda has been on this issue. Rand Paul is not the person in here that is being "intentionally distracting". The science^1 has turned into a pathos that can literally do a 180 in a week because of "new evidence" and people will blindly accept it, even encourage this because "they are willing to change their opinion based on new evidence". Doomsday cults had better excuses for why their apocalypse failed than these "experts". [1]https://www.firstthings.com/article/2016/05/scientific-regress https://www.firstthings.com/article/2016/05/scientific-regre...
- briantakita 5y agoFauci was accused of withholding medicine for AIDS by former NIH research scientist & whistleblower Dr. Judy Mikovits, who helped isolate HIV. Like HCQ, the antibiotic Bactrim was withheld despite being effective in early trials. The delay benefited makers of more expensive & less effective drugs which took years to go to market. Part of an interview: https://factcheckvaccine.com/2021/07/dr-judy-mikovits-ex-nih-whistleblower-exposes-fauici/ 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-been-mass-murdering-people-for-decades-prevented-aids-patients-from-receiving-life-saving-cheaper-drug/ https://vaccineimpact.com/2020/scandal-anthony-fauci-has-bee... There always needs to be an honest debate. Lives & the economy are at stake.
- encryptluks2 5y agoLet's say hypothetically we found out that the government was lying to us all along all while destroying our livelihoods and trying to restrict us from seeing our own families. Eventually it comes out that the virus was caused by government research in biological weapons. Do you really trust the government and media to have your backs at that point? They'll gaslight the public every chance they get... saying, it was a necessary lie to protect you and label people upset with the government as domestic terrorist threats. 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.
- iamstupidsimple 5y agoLooks like you've fallen to the propaganda, comrade. It's a good job various world governments are pushing large multinationals to engage in fact-checking and anti-disinformation campaigns on their platforms. Can't risk embarrassing the officials. FWIW, I've no stake in the lab leak discussion, except that we be allowed to have it.
- encryptluks2 5y agoYou know what political scientists and politicians think of people that believe everything the government tells them? That they're ignorant and naive.
- loopz 5y agoListening to lies, doesn't bring "more truth" though. Let's say US funded the Chinese to develop biological weapons? This sound plausible to you?
- encryptluks2 5y agoActually, yes it does sound plausible. Doesn't mean the scientists there were even aware of the intention. Do you really expect the CIA or a black budget agency to build a lab in America with giant letters that say "Biological Weapons Research"?
- loopz 5y agoLab-leak was always a possibility, but remains unlikely when the pandemic virus is so unlike the lab viruses themselves. 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.
- jkingsbery 5y agoDr. Anthony Fauci has received plenty of vitriol, some of which is at least uncharitable (even wrong-headed). However, this article did a disservice in not addressing the exchange fully either. According to the accounting of another news outlet, Paul cited a specific paper (https://journals.plos.org/plospathogens/article?id=10.1371/journal.ppat.1006698#abstract0 https://journals.plos.org/plospathogens/article?id=10.1371/j...) that discusses experiments within WIV: > 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.