Jts5665

‘270 DOCTORS’ CALLED OUT JOE ROGAN, BUT THE AUTHORS OF THE LETTER AND THE VAST MAJORITY OF ITS SIGNATORIES ARE NOT MEDICAL DOCTORS:

Well, I reviewed this open letter, and it turns out that only around 100 of the 270+ signatories to the letter are people with qualified medical degrees. And a large chunk of that 100 or so medical doctors are MDs employed at universities who are not in fact practitioners of medicine.

Yet part of the letter reads:

“As physicians, we bear the arduous weight of a pandemic that has stretched our medical systems to their limits and only stands to be exacerbated by the anti-vaccination sentiment woven into this and other episodes of Rogan’s podcast.”

Paradoxically, the disseminators of this petition are guilty of the very misinformation label that they’ve attached to Rogan. In fact, neither of the two reported co authors of the letter — Jessica Rivera and Ben Rein — possess medical degrees. Rivera holds a master’s degree and Rein is a PhD academic who researches psychiatry.

The legacy media is happy to amplify misinformation to attack Rogan, given his numbers: Joe Rogan podcast reaches millions more than cable news: report.

 

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): If Rogan fans operated like the left, they’d be complaining to the signers’ employers and professional licensing boards about their deliberate spreading of misinformation.

SPOILER: NO. No, they aren’t. And it’s not so much a thought as a repeated slogan.

GIVEN THIS AMOUNTED TO A BIO-WEAPON RELEASE BY CHINA:  The New Fauci Emails May Be Even More Damning Than You Think.

And that they’re already our declared enemy, can we call it treason now? And treat it appropriately?

JUST WHEN YOU THINK THIS IS THE STUPIDEST TIMELINE:  Teacher alleges she was fired for not ‘meowing’ back at student who identifies as a cat.

It gets dumber.

YEP. AND THE NORMAL-AMERICAN MAJORITY HAS STARTED TO PAY ATTENTION TO UNIVERSITIES. Penn Prof: Firing Amy Wax Could Open Door To Censorship Of Faculty Teaching Critical Race Theory.

It’s ironic, of course, that Penn is considering disciplining Amy Wax for saying there are too many Asians, when Penn’s admissions policy, along with those of the entire Ivy League, has taken that position for years.

REPORT FROM THE BLUE ZONES:

The post Team USA Urges Athletes to Use Burner Phones to Avoid Chinese Spying during Winter Games appeared first on The Bongino Report.

Professor Barry Mehler at Ferris State University in Michigan clearly does not want to return to in-person classes. Appearing in a video with a space helmet, Mehler went full Howard Beale in a video in which he called his students “vectors of disease” and tells them to “stay the f**k away from me.” While many have declared Mehler completely insane, his video may be as clever as a covid-phobic fox. Let me explain.

FROM LAST NIGHT’S OPEN THREAD:

NOT THE BABYLON BEE: Crime-Swamped Philly Issues Pamphlet on How To Survive Carjackings.

I just found out that author and all around great guy, Dave Wolverton (penname, Dave Farland) has passed away. That sucks. Dave was probably one of the nicest people in the writing business, who helped out more newbs and passed on more advice than any writer ever.

I’ve written about Dave before, specifically in that big post trying to explain why there are so many successful writers in Utah. He was one of the main reasons. He was a mentor, teacher, and elder statesman, who always made the time to help new writers. The man had a technical grasp on story and ability to explain it like no other.

I met Dave at a book signing in Utah, a really long time ago, when some bookstore gathered like twenty authors together for a mega signing… And then hardly any fans showed up so the writers just ended up hanging out and shooting the bull. (Brad Torgersen found some pics of that event and sent them to me this morning)

My very first book tour was driving Dave’s giant ancient Cadillac (I think it was a Caddy? Or something. It was very very wide) around southern California. He was going on tour with some other authors, some of them had to back out at the last minute, so they grabbed me and John Brown, because we were new guys, to fill in. Dave was who showed me how to go schmooze at book stores.

The scariest moment was me trying to park Dave’s giant tuna boat of a car in the only space left in an indoor parking garage in LA, between a Bugatti and a Maserati, and not dinging anybody’s doors. We hit dozens of bookstores in San Diego and LA over a few days, and we did this before GPS. So we spent a lot of time lost.

I was with Dave the very first time I ever sat down and ate lunch with Hollywood producer types. I’ve often told the story about being with another writer in a trendy Hollywood restaurant while the studio people came up with increasingly awful ideas for who they wanted to cast as my characters, I’m freaking out, and how the other writer just whispered to me “Just let it go, they never care what the writers think.” That bit of career advice was from Dave.

Dave was a hell of a story teller, not just in books, but in person. He had a crazy upbringing. His childhood made mine look like Leave it to Beaver. But his all time greatest tale involved him going to China. There was crime, attempted blackmail, drugs, gun running, and undercover agents. The works. I’m laughing just thinking about it.

He is going to be missed by a lot of people. Dave made a difference in many lives.

Once again, eugyppius draws for you the missing graph from the latest UKHSA vaccine surveillance report:

Read more

The post Number of Nursing Home Deaths in Michigan 42 Percent Larger Than Gov Whitmer Disclosed: Report appeared first on The Bongino Report.

"But just imagine the solidarity that universal orphanhood would create. Wouldn’t children, raised in one system, find it easier to collaborate on global problems?"

The post Progressive or Parody? Leftist Columnist Wants You to Give Up Your Kids for ‘True Equity’ first appeared on Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion.

WAIT, I THOUGHT IT WAS DEADLY-POISONOUS FISH MEDICINE: Study finds hydroxychloroquine delays disability for least treatable form of multiple sclerosis.

Sometime in early 2019, a postdoc in a veterinary microbiology lab at Washington State University (WSU) in Pullman came to suspect that a research assistant in her lab was fabricating data. The postdoc had noticed that the research assistant’s experiments always produced positive results, while hers were always negative. And the experiments she performed with … Continue reading Exclusive: How a researcher faked data and gaslit a labmate for years

“If you can use public bathrooms without stares, fear, or anxiety, you have cisgender privilege”

The post CA School in Damage Control Mode After Telling Students They’re Privileged if They’re Christian, Male or Straight first appeared on Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion.

I am exhausted: physically, emotionally, and morally. Although I am not sure moral exhaustion is “a thing,” the daily witnessing of masses of physicians and pharmacists abandoning their core responsibility of placing the welfare of the patient as their primary consideration.. is beyond wearying. 

In the United States of Pharma, individual docs and pharmacists have been led so far astray, forgivably or unforgivably, due to the relentless barrage of dis-information targeted at them by the federal pharmaceutical regulators (further supported by relentless, daily propaganda appearing in both major media and medical journals). 

Let us be clear about the rule and tradition. In the US, doctors are permitted to prescribe any medicine that has been approved by the FDA, even for indications the medicine was not originally approved for. Such “off-label” prescribing is both legal and historically encouraged by the FDA. 

Pharmacies are there to fill prescriptions, and in only rare circumstances and in only a handful of states do they have the right to refuse to fill a valid prescription. Otherwise, what medicines are deployed, for whom, and for what purpose, is a matter between patient and doctor. This is the long-standing rule. 

This principle has been violated now for almost two years. It has created a labyrinth of confusion over basic and well-tested therapies for dealing with a virus that can be very serious for many. 

It is no longer the case that any doctor can depend on any pharmacist to distribute safe and effective medicines. They are very likely now to say no and they do so as a result of having been been unfairly intimidated by the threatening memos issued by federal agencies and the state medical and pharmacy boards, These reprehensible cations are just the latest salvo in the pharmaceutical industry’s decades-long war on off-patent, repurposed medicines..

What prompts me to write this was my most recent failure (and the resulting distress that led to terrible sleep last night) over not being able to get a pharmacist to fill my orders in the hours prior to closing of pharmacies for an acutely ill COVID patient that had contacted me reporting high fevers, sore throat, and body aches. 

I immediately wanted to start him on a short course combination regimen of three, old, safe, cheap generic medications, all with large clinical trials evidence bases showing high efficacy against COVID (ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, fluvoxamine). What is important to note is that, months ago I stopped trying to contact ANY pharmacy unless I KNEW they would fill my scripts for these off-patients medications because unless I knew a pharmacy was “safe”, I ran a high probability of entering an un-affordably time-wasting and ultimately losing argument with some smug, obstinate pharmacist. 

As a result, we early treatment docs have long since been forced to build lists of “safe haven” pharmacies where we know we can easily get access to these medicines for our patients. 

However, last night, I was inspired to make an attempt on a new, unknown pharmacy on behalf of my new patient as I had just read Steve Kirsch’s substack about my colleague and early COVID-treatment pioneer/expert Dr. Brian Tyson, in which was included the letter written by Dr. Brian Tyson’s attorney (also with the last name Tyson) that was used to “sway” a local pharmacy that had suddenly refused to fill. 

The letter is thorough , deeply well-argued, and informs the pharmacists that they are; 1) violating the civil rights of patients, 2) interfering with a physician’s ability to practice medicine and 3) exhibiting behavior that constitutes the unlicensed and negligent practice of medicine. 

Now, I had argued all these points before in previous “conflicts” with pharmacists, but never all at the same time, and rarely threatening a lawsuit. Duly and newly emboldened.. I made the call.

4:20 Pacific time (pharmacies close there at 6pm).

Transcript (from memory):

“Hi, I’d like to call in a prescription for a couple of patients.”

“OK, what’s the first patients name and date of birth?”

“Timothy Thomas (not his real name), born Nov. 6th, 1977.”

(pause, clacking of keyboard)

“OK, what does he need?” 

(Wait for it)

“He needs ivermectin, 3 milligram tablets, I want him to take 15 each day as he is a big guy, and for 5 days with a refill. Then he needs, hydroxychloro…

“Doctor, I am sorry but I cannot fill the ivermectin. The owner has said we are not to fill for COVID, there is no evidence it works.”

“Listen, I don’t know who the owner is but you are the pharmacist on duty, and I am calling in a prescription to you, not the owner.”

“I,I, I am sorry but I can’t..”

I look at the letter, and then start spewing rapid fire arguments at him, “well unfortunately for you, my patient is an executive of a company and their lawyer is prepared to and will send a letter of intent to sue if it has not been filled because you are violating his civil rights, blocking my licensed ability to practice medicine and care for my sick patient, and you are clearly practicing medicine illegally and highly ignorantly. You should at least know what you are doing if you are going to do it without a license man."

“But I am allowed to refuse, doctor.”

“That is what you think and what you have been told… But, I can promise you, that when you bring your arguments up in court as to why you refused, they will not hold up if any harm comes to my patient by your refusal. They will NOT HOLD UP, but you can try. The lawyer will serve the letter on Monday, I promise you, we are fed up out here and are fighting back, all of my fellow physicians being blocked by pharmacists are now using legal action (OK, so I overstated things a bit), I am sorry you are in the position you are in, but you have no rational or scientific evidence to support a refusal, but if you want to go to court to find out, we can make that happen for you”

“I..I.. feel intimidated.”

“Well, I am sorry for that, but you are hurting my patient and my ability to care for them. It is THEY who YOU are intimidating Sir. All you have to do is take my script, fill it, and we don’t have to go on like this. These medications are FDA approved, I am using them off-label based on a large body of evidence and experience in COVID, and off label prescribing is both legal and historically encouraged by the FDA. You are clearly practicing medicine and I promise that will be proven to you in a court of law. Please just fill it and you wont have to hear from me or my patient again.”

(Pause, silence) 

“I cannot do it, I am not supposed to.”

“OK then, I will also remind you that you are legally required to provide me your name and license number as we will be pursuing legal action against you.”

“I am not giving you my name, I am not comfortable with that.”

“OK, so you think I can’t find it out? Fine, I am also documenting this refusal. Again, I am not interested in a contentious argument, I am asking you simply to fill the prescriptions for two sick patients who need my help, and if you do, you won’t have to hear from me or the patient’s lawyer.”

He whispers.. “OK, tell me the rest of the prescriptions.”

I tell him the rest, then say, “my patient will be there by closing time, thank you and I apologize for my tone but I am just trying to do the best for my sick patients.”

Victory? Yes! Haven’t won one of these in months.

I finish telling him the rest of the scripts for my patient and his wife (I also needed to call in medicines for her so she could have some on hand and also begin ivermectin as a prophylactic agent given it ensures an easier course even if she is already or eventually becomes infected).

I then happily call the patient, tell him to get his wife to pick up the medicines along with the other over-the-counter compounds that have clinical trials supporting their use. And then I go to the couch to literally lay down (insane day of dozens of patient care requests, other zooms and phone calls, maybe 12+ hours on the phone).

30 minutes later.. patients texts me.. my wife went there and the pharmacist won't fill.

Now, despite the fact that I co-wrote a document with Executive Director Kelly Bumann of the FLCCC and Unity Project Founder Jeff Hanson, called “Overcoming the Barriers to Access,” which is a document full of sound, pragmatic tactics and dialogue examples offered to patients (and docs) in order to help them navigate such pharmacist obstructions, they typically will not work when it is an hour before closing on a weekend. 

So, here I am the next morning. Fortunately I was able to get two of the medicines filled through another pharmacy, with enough for his wife as she unsurprisingly fell ill overnight (omicron moves fast). Unfortunately, they will have to wait until tomorrow to get the third medicine from a “friendly” or “underground" pharmacy (not really underground but you get the analogy). 

This is what it is like out here trying to fight for patients sick with COVID - widespread delays in care as blocking access to generic or “repurposed” medicines by ignorant/arrogant pharmacists is ubiquitous. The majority of pharmacists (not all!) have simply stopped thinking critically or devoting effort to review the evidence base, instead simply believing what they are told by their Boards (a.k.a. their “Ministries of Truth”). As if the insane numbers of ill omicron patients to care for is not challenging enough.

In the words of Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry, who went after his state’s Pharmacy Board when they tried to scare the states pharmacists away from prescribing ivermectin by sending them threatening letters, “it is shocking that pharmacists are suddenly developing a conscience after spending the last decade handing out opiates like they were M & M’s”. 

Well said and tragically absurd. 

This newfound conscience influencing such actions is likely further fueled by a sometime resident psychology of pharmacists who may feel “less than” a physician given their limited scope of patient care tasks. 

Emboldened by a seemingly legal opportunity to assert superiority and control over physicians, many find these irresistible. Consequently,they seem to be “getting off” from telling the “stupid” doctors that the Ministry of Truth has done the research for them and the Ministry has found, that in the name of science, doctors should stop using “ineffective horse de-wormer” to treat COVID. 

Just another day in the life of an early COVID treatment expert.

A version of this article appeared on the author’s substack. 

The story of Tara Henley is the story of countless liberals. Until recently, they were the ones pushing everyone else to be more tolerant, more understanding, more open-minded, more compassionate. Then, something happened — call it ideological succession or institutional capture or the new illiberalism — and, all of a sudden (or so it felt to them), they found themselves to the right of their friends and colleagues. Their crime? Refusing to abandon their principles in the service of some radical, anti-liberal dogma. If you’ve been reading this newsletter, you know well what we’re referring to. (See under: Paul Rossi or Maud Maron or Dorian Abbot.)

And so it was with Henley, an accomplished Canadian journalist whose book, “Lean Out: A Meditation on the Madness of Modern Life,” kind of says it all. Last week, she resigned in style from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and struck out on her own here on Substack.

For obvious reasons, we felt an immediate kinship with Henley. We were moved by her letter and suspect you will be, too.

Thanks to her for allowing us to reprint it — and welcome, Tara, to the new mainstream. 

—BW

For months now, I’ve been getting complaints about the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, where I’ve worked as a TV and radio producer, and occasional on-air columnist, for much of the past decade.

People want to know why, for example, non-binary Filipinos concerned about a lack of LGBT terms in Tagalog is an editorial priority for the CBC, when local issues of broad concern go unreported. Or why our pop culture radio show’s coverage of the Dave Chappelle Netflix special failed to include any of the legions of fans, or comics, that did not find it offensive. Or why, exactly, taxpayers should be funding articles that scold Canadians for using words such as “brainstorm” and “lame.”

Everyone asks the same thing: What is going on at the CBC?

When I started at the national public broadcaster in 2013, the network produced some of the best journalism in the country. By the time I resigned last month, it embodied some of the worst trends in mainstream media. In a short period of time, the CBC went from being a trusted source of news to churning out clickbait that reads like a parody of the student press.

Those of us on the inside know just how swiftly — and how dramatically — the politics of the public broadcaster have shifted.

It used to be that I was the one furthest to the left in any newsroom, occasionally causing strain in story meetings with my views on issues like the housing crisis. I am now easily the most conservative, frequently sparking tension by questioning identity politics. This happened in the span of about 18 months. My own politics did not change.

To work at the CBC in the current climate is to embrace cognitive dissonance and to abandon journalistic integrity.

It is to sign on, enthusiastically, to a radical political agenda that originated on Ivy League campuses in the United States and spread through American social media platforms that monetize outrage and stoke societal divisions. It is to pretend that the “woke” worldview is near universal — even if it is far from popular with those you know, and speak to, and interview, and read.

To work at the CBC now is to accept the idea that race is the most significant thing about a person, and that some races are more relevant to the public conversation than others. It is, in my newsroom, to fill out racial profile forms for every guest you book; to actively book more people of some races and less of others.

To work at the CBC is to submit to job interviews that are not about qualifications or experience — but instead demand the parroting of orthodoxies, the demonstration of fealty to dogma.

It is to become less adversarial to government and corporations and more hostile to ordinary people with ideas that Twitter doesn’t like.

It is to endlessly document microaggressions but pay little attention to evictions; to spotlight company’s political platitudes but have little interest in wages or working conditions. It is to allow sweeping societal changes like lockdowns, vaccine mandates, and school closures to roll out — with little debate. To see billionaires amass extraordinary wealth and bureaucrats amass enormous power — with little scrutiny. And to watch the most vulnerable among us die of drug overdoses — with little comment.

It is to consent to the idea that a growing list of subjects are off the table, that dialogue itself can be harmful. That the big issues of our time are all already settled.

It is to capitulate to certainty, to shut down critical thinking, to stamp out curiosity. To keep one’s mouth shut, to not ask questions, to not rock the boat.

This, while the world burns.

How could good journalism possibly be done under such conditions? How could any of this possibly be healthy for society?

All of this raises larger questions about the direction that North America is headed. Questions about this new moment we are living through — and its impact on the body politic. On class divisions, and economic inequality. On education. On mental health. On literature, and comedy. On science. On liberalism, and democracy.

These questions keep me up at night.

I can no longer push them down. I will no longer hold them back.

I have been a journalist for 20 years, covering everything from hip-hop to news, food to current affairs. The through line has always been books, which I’ve engaged with at every stage of my career and at every outlet I’ve worked for. In 2020, I published my own book, “Lean Out: A Meditation on the Madness of Modern Life,” which was an instant bestseller in Canada.

Books have always opened new worlds for me, introduced me to new perspectives, and helped me to make sense of humanity. I need books now more than ever.

During lockdown, when I wasn’t covering Covid-19, I spent a lot of time interviewing authors for a new book I’m working on. Their boldness and insight and humor saved me from despair. These writers gave me ideas on how to move forward, and how to maintain hope. Most of all, they gave me the courage to stand up — and to speak out. 

My new work on Substack will be entirely independent and entirely free from editorial control, allowing me to say the things that are not being said, and ask the questions that are not being asked. If you care about the world of ideas and value open inquiry, as I do, please consider subscribing.

Imagine the visceral horror that the self-appointed members of the credentialocracy must experience at the mere thought that the rest of us mouth breathers are being permitted to run about making decisions without their input and patient guidance?

What in the actual heck??

I’M EXPECTING PUSHBACK ON THIS FROM THE LEGISLATURE: U. Tennessee to launch CRT center, require professors commit to DEI for tenure.

CHINESE VIRUS PROBLEMS IN CHINA: Chinese Authorities Seal Residents’ Doors in COVID-Hit Xi’an, Depriving Them of Food Supplies.

Chinese authorities sealed residents’ homes in the city of Xi’an on Jan. 8 because of a COVID-19 outbreak, but didn’t arrange for a reliable food supply, residents say. Now, after being locked down for almost three weeks, they’re lacking in food and are on the edge of mental breakdown.

The Chinese regime has claimed that the outbreak in Xi’an has been under control since Jan. 5. However, the regime has upgraded some of its control measures, although some Xi’an residents still weren’t able to leave their homes as of Jan. 11.

“I had never been diagnosed with COVID-19. Why did they seal my door?” Cai Jiaying (a pseudonym), a resident of the Rongshang Compound, Changyanbao Community, Yanta District in Xi’an, told the Chinese-language Epoch Times on Jan. 9. “Our residential compound has been locked down for 21 days. … In the beginning [of the lockdown], I consoled myself. I was disappointed days later and then felt hopeless and despair.”

Cai said she and her husband had bought only a little food in the past three weeks, and they didn’t know when they would be able to buy more.

Lockdowns don’t work anywhere. Why are they so popular with officialdom?

A FRIEND WHO LIVED IN CHINA FOR SOME TIME SAYS THE WORD TO LISTEN FOR IS “HARMONY”:  FAUCI & “TOP SCIENTISTS” LIED TO US ABOUT POSSIBLE COVID LEAK THEORIES – VIVA FREI VLAWG. [VIDEO]

His comments on this, filtered through my memory:
One of the nation’s top scientists agreed with lying to the public in order to preserve “international harmony”. Exact words. “Harmony” is just about the most Chinese trump card against objective reality you can find. You might be telling the truth, but if you are “disharmonious”, off to the laogai with you. I hadn’t known that exat term was used when this was first reported. Knowing it now, it’s the clearest confession of loyalty to PR China that I have ever seen from a government official, to include Clinton taking cash from Chinese fixers and Swalwell banging a hot Chinese spy.

So, there you have it.   To quote Kipling: “They sold us, and delivered us bound to our foe.”

ZIONIST…. DOLPHINS?  Hamas accuses Israel of deploying ‘killer Zionist dolphins’ near Gaza.

Only oikophobic leftists would give credibility to the medieval barbarians of Hamas.

RESIGN! Education Secretary Miguel Cardona under fire for soliciting parents-as-terrorists letter.

A conservative education activist is calling for Miguel Cardona’s job after emails revealed the education secretary solicited the infamous letter from the National School Boards Association calling parents protesting at school board meetings domestic terrorists.

Ian Prior, the executive director of the Fight for Schools PAC, told the Washington Examiner that every political officer involved in colluding with the NSBA should lose their jobs, especially Cardona and Attorney General Merrick Garland.

I agree. Characterizing political opponents, or parents, as “domestic terrorists” is a poisonous abuse of power. It should be a crime, or at the very least a firing offense.

PIVOT! Christina Pushaw and others spot suspicious timing in the AP’s new guidance on reporting Covid cases and hospitalizations:

 

Update (from Steve):

Indeed.

The reason they don’t care is the mainstream media no longer plays to mainstream America. The audience for the Democrat-Media Complex consists of the Democrat-Media Complex.

SHE’S RIGHT, YOU KNOW:

SHOCKER: Fauci Was Told Privately by Key Scientists That COVID-19 Natural Origin Was ‘Highly Unlikely,’ Newly Unredacted Emails Confirm.

Top U.S. health officials, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, scrambled in early 2020 to respond to public reporting of a potential connection between COVID-19 and the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China.

This response, which included a secret Feb. 1, 2020, teleconference, was loosely detailed in previously released and heavily redacted emails. Those emails strongly suggested that Fauci and a small group of top scientists sought to promote the natural origin theory, despite having evidence and internal expert opinions that pointed to the possibility of a leak from the Wuhan lab.

Unredacted versions of some of the emails made public by lawmakers on Jan. 11 further confirm this.

The newly unredacted emails, released by House Oversight Committee Republicans, confirm and illustrate a pattern of lies and coverup. From the emails, it appears the effort was spearheaded by Fauci himself but also involved his boss, recently retired National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Dr. Francis Collins, as well as Jeremy Farrar, the head of the British Wellcome Trust.

It was previously revealed that at least two scientists, both of whom had received funding from the NIH, had told Fauci during the teleconference that they were 60 to 80 percent sure that COVID had come out of a lab.

The most significant new revelations in the unredacted emails come from two of these scientists, Robert Garry and Mike Farzan, who both noted the difficulties presented by the presence of a furin cleavage site in the COVID-19 virus—a feature that would later be cited as the defining characteristic of the virus.

Farzan, an immunologist who in 2005 discovered the receptor of the original severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) virus, sent his post-teleconference notes to Farrar, who then shared them with Collins, Fauci, and Lawrence Tabak—top officials at the NIH. In those notes, Farzan wrote that he was “bothered by the furin site” and had difficulty explaining it “as an event outside the lab.” Farzan noted that it was theoretically possible the virus’s furin cleavage site could have arisen in nature but that it was “highly unlikely.”

The furin cleavage site is the defining feature that gives COVID-19 the ability to easily infect humans and has long been puzzled over by scientists, since no such site has ever been observed in naturally occurring SARS-related coronaviruses.

Farzan, like scientist Kristian Andersen, who has received funding from Fauci’s NIAID, works at the Scripps laboratory. As was already known from previously released emails, Andersen had privately told Fauci on Jan. 31, 2020 that the virus looked engineered. Andersen would later spearhead Fauci’s efforts to promote a natural origin narrative. . . .

In layman’s terms, Farzan concluded that the pandemic likely originated from a lab in which live coronaviruses were passed through human-like tissue over and over, accelerating virus mutations with the end result being that one of the mutated viruses may have leaked from the lab. Farzan placed the likelihood of a leak from a Wuhan lab at 60 to 70 percent likely.

The emails indicate that Farzan was cognizant that the Wuhan lab conducted these types of dangerous experiments in Level 2 labs, which have a very low biosecurity standard. This fact was later admitted by the Wuhan lab’s director, Shi Zhengli, in July 2020. Notably, since the start of the pandemic, Farzan has received grants totaling almost $20 million from Collins’s NIH and Fauci’s NIAID.

Do tell.

Plus: “Garry’s privately stated view is even more remarkable because only a day earlier, on Feb. 1, 2020, Garry had helped to complete the first draft of the Proximal Origin paper that promoted the idea that the virus had originated in nature. That paper became the media’s and the public health establishment’s go-to evidence for a natural origin for the COVID virus. It was published online on Feb. 16, 2020, and firmly excluded the possibility of a lab leak.””

WHEN SCIENTISTS DON’T “FOLLOW THE SCIENCE:” Why did scientists suppress the lab-leak theory? In private, they said it was plausible. In public, they called it a conspiracy theory.

We were assured by leading scientists in China, the US and the UK that this really was a coincidence, even when the nine closest relatives of the new virus turned up in the freezer of the laboratory in question, at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Now we know what those leading scientists really thought. Emails exchanged between them after a conference call on 1 February 2020, and only now forced into the public domain by Republicans in the US Congress, show that they not only thought the virus might have leaked from a lab, but they also went much further in private. They thought the genome sequence of the new virus showed a strong likelihood of having been deliberately manipulated or accidentally mutated in the lab. Yet later they drafted an article for a scientific journal arguing that the suggestion not just of a manipulated virus, but even of an accidental spill, could be confidently dismissed and was a crackpot conspiracy theory. . . .

Two years later, no such natural furin-cleavage-site insertion has yet turned up in the many wild SARS-like viruses found since then. But what has turned up is a grant proposal put to the US’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in 2018 to fund experiments that would deliberately insert novel furin cleavage sites into novel SARS-like coronaviruses to help them grow in the lab. And who was party to that proposal? Why, the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Indeed, it had already done a similar experiment with the spike protein of a MERS-like virus a few years before. It’s not quite a smoking gun, because the proposal was turned down, but it’s an open secret in science that you sometimes put things into grant proposals that you have already started doing, and the Chinese Academy of Sciences was funding most of the work in the Wuhan Institute of Virology anyway.

The emails unveiled this week reveal no good scientific reason at all for why these leading virologists changed their minds and became deniers rather than believers in even the remote possibility of a lab leak, all in just a few days in February 2020. No new data, no new arguments. But they do very clearly reveal a blatant political reason for the volte-face. Speculating about a lab leak, said Ron Fouchier, a Dutch researcher, might ‘do unnecessary harm to science in general and science in China in particular’. Francis Collins was pithier, worrying about ‘doing great potential harm to science and international harmony’. Contradicting Donald Trump, protecting science’s reputation at all costs and keeping in with those who dole out large grants are pretty strong incentives to change one’s mind.

In short, the fatcats lied to cover their asses.