World: Sheets of conversation by US infectious diseases czar Anthony Fauci fanned the lab leak theory controversy of the novel coronavirus. Out in the public domain now, social media claims that the director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) was part of efforts to cover up the marks of the virus genesis.
The emails were obtained by US-based media via Freedom of Information Act requests. The press firms published the information they received on June 1, which disclosed emails dating back to the initiation of the pandemic, giving insights into how Fauci went about dealing with an unfolding crisis.
A specific email exchange between Dr Anthony Fauci and a virologist associated with the Scripps Research Institute in California advocated the lab leak.
Download Lalluram App to read all the Latest news
On 31 January 2020, Kristian Andersen, the Scripps researcher, wrote to Fauci that, “The unusual features of the virus (Sars-CoV-2) make up a really small part of the genome (<0.1 percent) so one has to look really closely at all of the sequences to see that some of the features (potentially) look engineered”.
As Fauci’s emails were declassified, Anderson was called upon to explain his understanding of the virus. Dismissing claims Andersen clarified that the process at which they arrived was “a textbook example of the scientific method where a preliminary hypothesis is rejected in favour of a competing hypothesis as more data become available and analyses are completed.”
Although Fauci had dismissed the lab leak hypothesis back then, he now demanded a probe into the origins of the virus.