Email exchanges between Dr. Anthony Fauci and other scientists, including the President of the EcoHealth Alliance – a group that has extensive ties to the Wuhan lab gain of function research – were discovered in a trove of emails obtained by The Washington Post through a FOIA request.
Included in the emails is Dr. Fauci’s response to the former health and human services secretary, Sylvia Burwell, when she asked him about wearing face masks while traveling.
“Masks are really for infected people to prevent them from spreading infection to people who are not infected rather than protecting uninfected people from acquiring infection. The typical mask you buy in the drug store is not really effective in keeping out virus, which is small enough to pass through material. It might, however, provide some slight benefit in keep out gross droplets if someone coughs or sneezes on you,” Fauci wrote in a response.
This is in line with what MIT researchers concluded in April, as well as what every randomized clinical trial ever done on the efficacy of masks has concluded over the past few decades. Despite the vast majority of scientific studies concluding masks do not prevent the spread of any respiratory infection, Fauci later pivoted on his position, and masks eventually became mandatory in almost every state in the US.
The emails also reveal that Dr Fauci was informed at the end of March about pooled randomized, controlled trial data showing masks did not work in community settings to prevent the spread of respiratory viral infections.
The randomized clinical trial (RCT) is recognized as the most credible research design for clinical investigation. Bias can be reduced by concealing the randomization sequence from the investigators at the time of obtaining consent from potential trial participants. Allocation concealment is a very simple maneuver that can be incorporated in the design of any trial and that can always be implemented.
In Long, Y. et al 2020 – which was a meta-analysis including a total of six randomized control trials involving 9,171 participants – scientists found ‘there were no statistically significant differences in preventing respiratory viral infections while wearing any type of mask.
Another recent study from Denmark involving a sample size of 6,000 participants found that “there was no statistically significant difference between those who wore masks and those who did not, when it came to being infected by Covid-19.”
In the email Fauci advised Burwell not to wear a face mask because she was visiting “a very low risk location.” Dr. Fauci initially advised against wearing masks as late as March of 2020, when he told the media, “there’s no reason to be walking around with a mask.”
Another January 2020 email to Dr Fauci from the director of the country’s largest biomedical research facility suggested the “unusual features” of the virus may indicate it is “engineered”, Dr Fauci responded to this email by saying he will reach out via phone.
In April 2020, another email from the director of the National Institute of Health, Francis Collins, nudged Dr Fauci with the subject line “conspiracy gains momentum”. The doctor’s response to this email was fully redacted in the email release.
In May of 2021, Dr Fauci said he is “not convinced” the virus originated naturally from animals and expressed support for an investigation.
In another email, a researcher who helped to fund the Wuhan Institute of Virology thanked Dr. Fauci for publicly dismissing the lab leak theory early on during the pandemic.
In the email Dr. Peter Daszak, President of the EcoHealth Alliance – a group that has extensive ties to the Wuhan lab gain of function research – called Fauci’s comments on the lab leak theory ‘brave’ and that he wanted to personally thank Fauci ‘on behalf of our staff and collaborators.’
The email states:
“As the Pl of the ROl grant publicly targeted by Fox News reporters at the Presidential press briefing last night, I just wanted to say a personal thank you on behalf of our staff and collaborators, for publicly standing up and stating that the scientific evidence supports a natural origin for COVID-19 from a bat-to-human spillover, not a lab release from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
From my perspective, your comments are brave, and coming from your trusted voice, will help dispel the myths being spun around the virus’ origins. Once this pandemic’s over I look forward thanking you in person and let you know how important your comments are to us all.”
Daszak was one of the lead investigators on the WHO panel tasked with investigating the origins of the virus. Daszak, like Fauci, has also since denied that there was any gain of function research being conducted at the Wuhan lab, and that it wasn’t being funded by EcoHealth Alliance or via the NIH with US tax dollars.
According to studies, gain of function research definitively was conducted there. This paper, which was funded by the NIAID – which Anthony Fauci has run since 1984 – proves that this is the case.
The majority of the authors are listed as working at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and/or the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan. One very notable exception to this is Peter Daszak, the man who is listed as the Project Leader on the grant. He procured the funding via Ecohealth Alliance from Fauci’s NIAID.
According to the paper, they were taking coronaviruses and splicing together different parts from different coronaviruses and seeing how tightly they bound to HUMAN ACE2 receptors, which is the receptor that SARS-COV2 binds to initially in order to enter human cells. This is the exact kind of research that would produce a virus like SARS-COV2, the virus which causes the disease COVID19.
This is gain of function research.
The emails also reveal Dr. Anthony Fauci‘s cozy relationship with Dr. George Gao, China‘s top infectious disease expert during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, and an exchange with physicist Erik Nielsen who told Fauci the virus was likely spreading for months and past the point of containment.
Several exchanges that took place between Fauci and Gao in March and April of last year, show that Fauci took a warm and friendly tone with Gao, and did not ask any questions about the origins of the virus.
In the exchange with Nielsen, the physicist suggested that Fauci knew the virus had been spreading since November of 2019, and Nielsen recommended two drugs for treatment – one of the drugs was Hydroxychloroquine.
Another email exchange between Dr. Fauci and Kristian G. Andersen of the Scripps Research Institute from January 2020 shows that Fauci knew very early on – even before the WHO even declared a pandemic – that researchers suspected the virus had been ‘potentially engineered’ in a lab.
Another message sent on April 1st reveals Fauci spoke by phone with Bill Gates regularly, including occasions where they discuss the possibility of the government working together with The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation on a potential coronavirus vaccine.
Bill Gates was mentioned over 30 times in the emails.
In another email exchange Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg reached out to Dr Fauci to say thank you for ‘all the work’ he has done, and expressed interest in creating several Facebook videos with Dr Fauci about the Virus in their new ‘coronavirus information hub.’
Fauci told a colleague of his that he was going to call Zuckerberg to tell him that he was interested in doing this.
Several other messages show that the doctor was in turn alarmed and amused by the fact he had become a household name overnight. One colleague also sent a link to another article detailing that Fauci themed socks and donuts had been put up for sale.
‘Truly surrealistic. Hopefully, this all stops soon,’ Fauci replied. ‘It is not at all pleasant, that is for sure.’
