White House Covid Czar Says He thinks it was Lab Leak

The Overton window keeps shifting

We have come a long way from New York Times science reporter’s tweet asserting that talking about lab leak was racist. Side note: why would a laboratory accident be ‘racist’, but arguing that people in China are eating countless exotic animals in wet markets all the time is not racist?

This week, 5 years later, the former Biden White House COVID Czar admits he, too, believes lab leak was the most likely culprit.

It’s interesting to note the series of events here

1. Fauci/ Collins write a 2011 op-ed in WaPo arguing that gain of function research is a flu risk worth taking.

2. Obama administration prohibited this research from 2014-17

3. A 2014 EcoHealth Alliance grant funded Wuhan Institute of Virology, despite the ban

   

4. Fauci’s pardon covers 2014-25 (interesting that it goes back to the year GOF was banned and EcoHealth Alliance was funded)

5. In 2020, Fauci uses his political capital to ensure the media and peer review literature demonized the lab leak origin story. Including helping to work on a popular paper in Nature medicine called Proximal Origins— that would anchor the debate to wet market spillover.

6. The Proximal Origin authors published in Nature Medicine that they felt wet market was the likely origin, but privately they said this (Alina is an MIT researcher who thought lab leak was likely)

   

7. Fauci and others influenced Facebook to ban discussing gain of function research. This meant you could not even discuss the idea on Meta. This is part of the censorship tactics used during covid. Youtube removed videos saying the IFR was on par with seasonal flu. You had to tip-toe around vaccine safety to post on youtube. It was a violation of the first amendment.

6. NyTimes replaced the seasoned reporter with a woke, incredulous one.

Don McNeil used a racial slur when QUOTING someone, and this occurred years before, and was already disciplined for this. Oddly, this dug back up, and was used to oust him, and elevate Apoorva. Apoorva then published a steady stream of stories fearmongering about the risk to kids and ensuring schools stayed closed.

We studied all covid-19 corrections in the New York Times, and Apoorva was the single reporter most likely to make errors. Generally her errors falsely exaggered covid risks. Look at the figure.

Why does this matter?

7. In May 2021, Don McNeil wrote in Medium that he thought lab leak was possible. Had the New York Times not fired him, this might have gained more legitimacy in 2021.

8. Fauci is a conflicted operator in this space. Even if he did not directly fund the specific experiment that leaked, by funding research in WIV, given that money is fungible, and given his op ed “flu risk worth taking,” he has immense pressure to not consider this possibility fairly.

9. Ashish Jha states that his view changed due to information he saw while at White House.

10. The German spy agency, CIA, FBI, Dept of Energy — all believe lab leak is the most likely outcome. Again, I want to highlight that an intelligence agency saying lab leak is likely is a powerful indicator. These agencies have access to more than viral sequence— they have intelligence information. As I explained in my waiter peed in the soup analogy. If someone says the waiter peed in the soup, you can run assays on the liquid, looking for cells, DNA, and urea, or you can interview two people who saw the waiter pee. These agencies have access to the latter. In fact, Fauci’s diary confirms CIA had access to intercepts of communications in Wuhan.

11. White House issues a website that Lab leak was the culprit - April 2025. It draws from the House investigation.

12. Ashish Jha makes public statement in 2026. The media’s treatment of Ashish is odd. They should ask him: when precisely did you change your opinion? What information have you seen? Have you seen classified information? Did the US intercept Chinese coms describing lab leak? What was the NIAID funding via EcoHealth Alliance in Wuhan used for?

Overall thoughts: The media will have difficulty with the fact that a democratic appointee is now saying lab leak is the most likely origin. They will likely slowly shift the narrative to claim falsely, that they always said it was an open question, and to downplay the CIA/FBI position, and instead say “we can never know for sure.” This is a common tactic when people are wrong. They deny their previously held position. Tony Fauci says he never supported school closure— except his diary reveals otherwise.

Ultimately, history will agree on the positions I have argued in real time, all along

1. Lab leak - likely

2. Masking - doesn’t work, kids masking - terrible idea/ violates common sense

3. Lockdowns - bad idea

4. School closure - human rights violation/ very bad

5. Vaccines - optional for older/high risk, un-immune. Mandates are very bad. Kid vaccine bad. Teens boosters - very bad. Yearly booster - unproven.

6. Paxlovid - doesn’t work in vaccinated/ previously exposed (Ashish’s 10 billion dollar error)

7. Hospital visitor policies - a human rights violation

8. 6ft distancing - made up/ fake

9. IFR - Ioannidis was right (see my interviews with him)

10. Border closure/ outdoor masking/ prohibitions/ park/ playground closure - very bad