Some Potential Untruths By Kristen Andersen. Good News: We Can Check and Double-Check and Find Out

The Select Subcommittee should look into the minutes of a key meeting in January 2020. Specifically, the Advisory Council Review, NIH RFA-AI-19-028.

Kristian Andersen recently appeared and testified before the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic on July 11, 2023. He’s the scientist who contacted Fauci to inform him that the sudden appearance of a novel furin cleavage site was “inconsistent” with an origin via evolutionary processes in the wild. He changed his tune suddenly and dramatically based on no new data a scant number of days following a group phone call with Fauci and overseas colleagues. Here I analyze his statements and find they require a closer look.

The following statements by Kristian are questionable:

“None of this work was influenced by Dr. Fauci.” According to Andersen, Fauci “prompted”, i.e., suggested the paper. The details of the suggestion are somehow muddy to Kristian, but the fact is Fauci suggested it. That’s influence.

He then claims that the fact that he did not use the word “on” but instead “about” the paper “We're still waiting for proofs, so please let me know if you have any comments, suggestions, or questions about the paper or the press release” was proof Fauci never made suggestions on the paper.

“We're still waiting for proofs” means “there’s still time to suggest major revisions and hope the journal abides”. Proofs are final manuscript versions produced by the publishing journal and sent for one final minor check by authors for typos.

Anderson spins the fact that they did not yet have proof as the false claim that because the paper was “in proofs” means no major changes could be made. Bogus. Editors can make important major changes if justified DURING proof production. Whether they should or not is another, but they can. It’s possible. (Here “major” could be a word change or two that completely changes the meaning of a sentence”.

“Our main conclusion in Proximal Origin, that SARS-CoV-2 likely emerged as the result of a zoonosis — i.e., a spillover from an animal host — has only been further supported by additional evidence and studies”. Untrue. Massive amounts of evidence point to a laboratory leak as the most likely source of the virus. The fact that Anderson chooses to ignore that evidence \does not mean they do not exist.

In the proximal origins paper, Anderson and colleagues wrote “Thus, the high-affinity binding of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein to human ACE2 is most likely the result of natural selection on a human or human-like ACE2 that permits another optimal binding solution to arise. This is strong evidence that SARS-CoV-2 is not the product of purposeful manipulation.”

Yet this pattern is perfectly consistent with artificial selection in the laboratory via serial passage. Andersen has no way to distinguish between selection in the lab and selection in the wild. He does not offer this fact up anywhere, and it’s fatal to his claim and the mainstream media’s representation that his studies since the phone call have somehow settled the issue.

In an email to the participants of the exclusive Fauci phone call, Anderson wrote that he did not want to write a paper stating that the origin question was an open question, fearing it could fan the flames of what I would call rational inquiry into an important question worth asking, but instead in the same email, Anderson lived the conspiracy he denied by showing his newly acquired massive bias with the following passage:

“For now, giving the lab theory serious consideration has been highly effective at countering many of the circulating conspiracy theories, including ... ‘bioengineering'...”.

In fact, what Anderson was referring to and rejecting due via stigmatization - the lab origin idea, which I originated in late January 2020 - was, in reality, an open question.

Who was he to decide that taxpayer-funded research should carry a more determined answer, one way or the other? Who was he to restrict knowledge on the state of knowledge at the time for the entire scientific and medical community, indeed for all of humanity? Thusly the bias he held is revealed:

“As I also correctly stated in my email, however, “the scientific evidence isn't conclusive enough” to disprove a “lab leak”. That was correct at the time and is correct today.”

First, that is not what they published in the Proximal Origins paper. Instead, they wrote:

“We do not believe that any type of laboratory-based scenario is plausible”

(See the timeline: https://usrtk.org/covid-19-origins/timeline-the-proximal-origin-of-sars-cov-2/)

But even then, insufficient evidence - even now - to disprove - or fail to disprove - a lab leak? That claim by Anderson is completely untrue and, as he has admitted elsewhere, was motivated to avoid “a sh*tshow” resulting from political fall-out should an origin within the Wuhan Institute for Virology be determined.

That grant he received funded several papers, including this one:

“The evidence remains clear: SARS-CoV-2 emerged via the wildlife trade. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 2022 Nov 22; 119 (47) e2214427119”

Anderson seems concerned that we know that he changed his mind so rapidly as to have a draft manuscript a mere four days after the now-infamous phone call with Fauci. And he should be. Although the paper was formally published 45 days after the phone call, the emails how the authors had a draft four days after the phone call, and the draft appeared on a preprint server a mere 16 days following the phone call, no one ever said they published the paper four days after the phone call.

His focus on this issue reveals only his concern about the fact that he changed his mind 180° after the phone call. That fact remains.

Anderson also tries to deny that there was any conflict of interest. To try to prove no COI, Andersen writes “We applied for this grant in June 2019, and it was scored and reviewed by independent experts in November 2019.”

He failed to report the Advisory Council Review at which final decisions are made was scheduled to occur in January 2020.

One wonders: Did the Advisory Council Review meeting occur as scheduled, when the world was focused on COVID-19? Or, perchance, was it delayed by the chaos of COVID? Were any ad-hoc late decisions made to fund the Center made? And what’s in the minutes of that meeting?

RFA:
https://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/rfa-files/RFA-AI-19-028.html

NIH Reporter

https://reporter.nih.gov/search/Qz3HsocCDEKOIPM500Izmg/project-details/9969022

Timeline and speculation aside, Fauci and his “chain of command” could make further funding more difficult if Andersen did not play ball. That has not happened; in fact, Andersen has been funded repeatedly by NIAID since this COVID-19 episode.

Thus, the COI issue, as phrased in context by Andersen existed, nevertheless.

Other agencies and most other scientists are now convinced the virus, came from, one way or the other, the lab. Andersen knows what they know. Why did his testimony not mention the finding of sick WIV lab workers and scientists right at the likely time of the first cases of COVID-19 in humans? Why did he not mention the evidence of the codon bias in the furin cleavage site, even if only to, as he has before, dismissed it? What about the mapping of most positive swabs in the Wuhan wet market being found closest to the bathrooms on site? Why not declassify the files that led to the conclusions by the FBI and DOE that the origin was lab leak? What about the closely related sequences that are so remarkably similar to SARS-CoV-2, except for the FCS?

The list goes on. The truth will out.

Related:

(30) Covid Lab Leak EVIDENCE in US Gov Hands? BOMBSHELL Proximal Origins Hearing - YouTube