Dr. Anthony Fauci engaged in private phone calls with Chinese researchers regarding the COVID-19 outbreak, despite the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director’s recent attempts to distance himself and his agency from Chinese labs potentially linked to the origins of COVID-19, The National Pulse can reveal.
The relationship Fauci divulges during an event at the Council on Foreign Relations in February 2020 undercuts the top pandemic advisor’s recent claims that his agency has no ties – via funding or personnel – to the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
At the event, “Coronavirus Outbreak and Global Health Threats,” Fauci was pressed by a Radio Free Asia journalist on why he “trusts the information China is providing” related to the early days of the COVID-19 outbreak.
“Today, I do for the following reason,” he begins before alleging that the Chinese Communist Party isn’t silencing doctors who share COVID-19-related information that goes against party narratives:
“What has changed in China is that the Chinese officials have been more than adamant about actually punishing people who are holding back information, whereas early on, there was a reluctance and a hesitancy on the part of the scientists to talk about what really is going on there.”
“So, there was a phase early on where the people who I knew – people that I’ve dealt with for years – who were very concerned about speaking out publicly, they would speak to me over the phone, but they wouldn’t speak publicly. Now they feel that the government is giving them the free rein to be completely transparent,” Fauci continues.
The private phone calls with researchers knowledgeable of the outbreak – perhaps from the Wuhan Institute of Virology – are at odds with Fauci’s insistence his agency never collaborated on gain of function research relevant to COVID-19. The unearthed comments also follow The National Pulse highlighting the Wuhan Institute of Virology erasing mentions of both gain of function research and the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) from its website.
Concerning an international investigation into the origins of the virus, Fauci emphasized the importance of being “sensitive” to Chinese officials, reiterating “we’re guests in their country”:
“We’re very sensitive to the Chinese wanting to be the ones that make the statements, where these people are and where they’re going because we’re guests in their country. And although it’s an understandable question, “tell me who’s there and where they are and where they’re going,” we would prefer for you to have that from the Chinese because you don’t want to get ahead of the Chinese because what we don’t want them to do is to pull back on the offer of having our people there.”
