A. It does make it more credible (believable or convincing) but not more valid.
In the video below, Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, questioning Dr. Anthony Fauci in a virtual hearing of the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions about funding for, and origin of, SARS-CoV-2, contended (at :25)
For years, Dr. Ralph Baric, a virologist in the U.S., has been collaborating with Dr. Shi Zeng-li of the Wuhan virology institute, sharing his discoveries about how to create super viruses. This gain of function research has been funded by the NIH. The collaboration between the U.SA. and the Wuhan virology institute continues Dr. Baric and Shi worked together to insert bt virus spike protein into the backbone of the deadly SARS virus and then- and then used this man-made super virus to infect human airway cells. Think about tht for a moment..... Dr. Fauci, do you still support funding of the- NIH funding of the lab in Wuhan?
Dr. Fauci responded
Senator Paul, with all due respect, you are entirely and completely incorrect- that the NIH has not ever- and does not- not fund gain of function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Fauci is employing a double negative in saying that Paul is incorrect in stating that the National Institutes of Health has not ever, and does not, not fund gain-of-function research in Wuhan. Obviously, Paul was arguing that the NIH does fund, or had funded, gain-of-function research. Presumably, Fauci was simply tripping over words because he would maintain at 2:55
However, I will repeat again that NIH and NIAID categoricallly has not funded gain-of-function research to be conducted in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
And at 3:31, Fauci can be seen remarking
I fully agree that you should investigate where the virus came from but again, we have not funded gain-of-function research on this virus in the Wuhan Institute of Virology. No many- how many times you say it, it didn't happen.
Three times Fauci appeared to deny, vehemently, that neither the NIH or the NIAID funded gain-of- function research which would be conducted in the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Yet, in an article posted on May 5, 2021 by the Bureau of the Atomic Scientists, science writer, editor, and author Nicholas Wade explains
Baric had developed, and taught Shi, a general method for engineering bat coronaviruses to attack other species. The specific targets were human cells grown in cultures and humanized mice. These laboratory mice, a cheap and ethical stand-in for human subjects, are genetically engineered to carry the human version of a protein called ACE2 that studs the surface of cells that line the airways.
Shi returned to her lab at the Wuhan Institute of Virology
and resumed the work she had started on genetically engineering coronaviruses
to attack human cells. How can we be so sure?
Because, by a strange twist in the story, her work was funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), a part of the US National Institutes of Health (NIH). And grant proposals that funded her work, which are a matter of public record, specify exactly what she planned to do with the money.
The grants were assigned to the prime contractor, (Peter) Daszak of the EcoHealth Alliance, who subcontracted them to Shi.
Wade then quoted from the grants for fiscal years 2018 and 2019, which begs the question of why Dr. Fauci would emphatically deny government subsidization of the gain-of-function research which may have led to escape from the Wuhan lab of the coronavirus. Wade writes
From June 2014 to May 2019, Daszak’s EcoHealth Alliance had a grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, to do gain-of-function research with coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Whether or not SARS2 is the product of that research, it seems a questionable policy to farm out high-risk research to unsafe foreign labs using minimal safety precautions. And if the SARS2 virus did indeed escape from the Wuhan institute, then the NIH will find itself in the terrible position of having funded a disastrous experiment that led to death of more than 3 million worldwide, including more than half a million of its own citizens.
The responsibility of the NIAID and NIH is even more acute because for the first three years of the grant to EcoHealth Alliance, there was a moratorium on funding gain-of-function research. Why didn’t the two agencies therefore halt the federal funding, as apparently required to do so by law? Because someone wrote a loophole into the moratorium.
The moratorium specifically barred funding any gain-of-function research that increased the pathogenicity of the flu, MERS, or SARS viruses. But then a footnote on page 2 of the moratorium document states that “[a]n exception from the research pause may be obtained if the head of the USG funding agency determines that the research is urgently necessary to protect the public health or national security.”
This seems to mean that either the director of the NIAID, Anthony Fauci, or the director of the NIH, Francis Collins, or maybe both, would have invoked the footnote in order to keep the money flowing to Shi’s gain-of-function research.
Six days before Dr. Fauci's testimony, the editorial board of The Washington Post noted
It is known from public documents that Dr. Shi was conducting “gain of function” research on bat coronaviruses, which involves modifying their genomes to give the viruses new properties, such as the ability to infect a new host species or transmit from one host to another more easily. Such research is controversial — a gain of function experiment can create a danger that didn’t exist before. But the research might also help predict how a virus might evolve toward spillover, enabling the development of effective countermeasures such as a broad coronavirus vaccine.
The research carried out by Dr. Shi was financed in part over the years by the United States, China and Europe.
Wade believes that if the virus did originate with the lab, responsibility for the escape and coverup is widespread, lying with Chinese virogogists. Chinese authorities, and the worldwide community of virologists.
But also with "The US role in funding the Wuhan Institute of Virology." That may or may not include the most renowned virologist in the USA, the celebrated Anthony Fauci.
Fauci knew in early spring that donning masks would be effective but claimed otherwise until later in the season. In public pronouncements, he initially underestimated the percentage of individuals necessary to be vaccinated before herd immunity would be reached. In both cases, he thought Americans weren't ready for the truth. He seemed so sincere, as he does now, though facts indicate he is not.
Dr. Fauci- otherwise lying to Rand Paul, a Sentate
committee, and the American people- has helpfully agreed "that you should
investigate where the virus came from." Congress needs to do so or it is
complicit in a coverup. Even liars can offer good advice.
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