Thread by @jbkinney

Fauci repeatedly minimizes and misleads in response to David Wallace-Well's questions about the origin of SARS-CoV-2. 🧵 1/n

nytimes.com/interactive/20…

"Both A and B came from the market. A and B weren’t anyplace else early on." This statement is false. Pekar et al. report many isolates of the A lineage far from the market, and only 1 isolate of lineage A in the market. 2/n

"For the lab leak, you can [mitigate risk] by always re-examining the guidelines that you do for studies, making sure protocols are in place, making sure there’s transparency." If a lab accident killed ~20M people, guidelines and protocols won't cut it. We need new laws. 3/n

"If it’s a lab leak, then we really should have been much, much more attentive to protocols and training and restrictions." So if a lab leak caused the pandemic and killed~20M people, scientists just need to be a little bit more attentive next time?! The hubris is stunning. 4/n

"First of all, all of the intelligence groups agree that this was not an engineered virus." This statement is false, as Wallace-Wells points out. The intelligence agencies said SARS-CoV-2 wasn't a bioweapon, not that it wasn't engineered. 5/n

"And if you look at the...grant..given through EcoHealth to the [WIV]...and...the viruses that they...published... those viruses could not possibly ever turn into SARS-CoV-2" This is a straw man. The WIV has many unpublished CoVs; these could well have been precursors to SC2. 6/n

"[GoF work at WIV] was judged that this type of research was important." Perhaps, but that GoF work was never judged to be *safe*, i.e., it never underwent the required risk/benefit analysis, and that is because Fauci never properly implemented the P3CO framework at NIAID. 7/n

"Some want to pass a law: All gain-of-function should be stopped. But if all gain-of-function stops, you will have no vaccines for flu." This is a straw man argument. The push is to ban "gain of function research of concern", and GOFROC is not used to make vaccines. 8/n

"So if you and I talk about gain-of-function, David, we better define what we’re talking about, because we’re going to confuse the crap out of everybody." Fauci knows GOFROC is well-defined. He is choosing to confuse the discussion rather than address substantive concerns. 9/9