Let's Revisit An Old Story

The photo above is of the avuncular Dr Francis Collins, former director of the US National Institutes of Health, who also happens to be a prominent Evangelical who has periodically argued that "rigorous science" poses no conflict with religious belief. But I suppose that depends on what the meanings of "rigorous science" and "religious belief" are -- and they certainly haven't stood in the way of Dr Collins getting the prestigious Templeton Award, notwithstanding his direct subordinate Dr Fauci has constantly insisted that the anti-religious COVID lockdown policies involving church closures are based on "science".

In the context of the recent revelation that Dr Fauci in February 2020 commissioned an academic study that he then cited to refute the lab-leak theory of COVID's origin, it's worth revisiting a story that I first covered here last August, wherein Collins effectively ordered his subordinate Fauci and a colleague to stir up an equivalent academic takedown of another strain of COVID dissent:

The memo first came to light due to a freedom-of-information action by a public interest group in December 2021. At the time, informed medical opinion said,

This week, emails released through a Freedom of Information Act request filed by the American Institute for Economic Research revealed what I see as worrisome communication between Francis Collins, Anthony Fauci, and others within the National Institutes of Health in the fall of 2020. At issue was the Great Barrington Declaration, an open letter written in October 2020 and eventually signed by thousands of scientists. It argues that Covid-19 policy should focus on protecting the elderly and vulnerable, and largely re-open society and school for others.

. . . Collins appeared on television this week to confirm that the email was authentic, and that he stood by the message. At the time, he believed the Great Barrington Declaration idea of focused protection would result in more deaths than the alternative view of one-size-fits all restrictions. Collins also confirmed that he believed the three authors of the declaration were “fringe” scientists.

. . . What concerns me about the NIH director’s email and his interview on television is that he appeared unwilling to have this dialogue. Collins’s day job does not make him arbiter of scientific truth, the Pope for all scientists. On questions of unprecedented pandemic policy, he is surely entitled to his opinion — as we all are — but his is just one opinion of many.

. . . Collins’s response to a memo signed by thousands of scientists should not have been to call for an immediate and devastating take down, but to use his pulpit as NIH director to hold a series of public discussions and dialogues.

I think the memo, and the overall tone of Collins's response to the problem, is a good indication of Collins's actual management style, which seems to have been anything but avuncular. He was saying, in tones that I well recall from my days as an Ivy Leaguer, that there had better be a quick and devastating public takedown of these guys, if Fauci knew what was good for him. In other words, Fauci had better get on it and find a presigious stooge in a lab coat to write it, stat. (I would also suggest that the implication there included the availability of generous NIH money to pay the prestigious stooge.)

I strongly suspect that Fauci's commissioning of the February 2020 study that discounted the lab-leak theory had the precise same origin -- he was following orders from Collins, both to sponsor the study and to use it to support the NIH agenda.

What we're beginning to see as the Morning After phase of the COVID panic continues to unfold is that there was an inner circle that didn't just influence public opinion but micromanaged it.

[I]n the early months of the pandemic, then-CNN president Jeff Zucker would not allow his network to chase down the lab-leak story because he believed it was a "Trump talking point," according to a well-placed CNN insider.

"People are slowly waking up from the fog," the insider told Fox News Digital. "It is kind of crazy that we didn't chase it harder."

But what was Collins/Fauci's problem with the lab-leak theory? As House Judiciary Chairman Jordan put it,

"Why was Dr. Fauci so consumed with making sure the narrative wasn't about the lab?" the Ohio Republican told Fox News's "Sunday Morning Futures" host Maria Bartiromo. "I think it's because they were doing gain of function research there, he didn't want that out, and that was the narrative that everyone on the left bought into."

I think the path to an answer lies in questions that have been around since at least December 2021:

The National Institutes of Health allowed a U.S. nonprofit it funds to police its own controversial research on bat coronaviruses in China, raising new concerns about insufficient oversight at the agency.

. . . In December 2017, the funding for some gain-of-function research was resumed under carefully constructed guidelines for “Potential Pandemic Pathogen Care and Oversight,” or P3CO — but the language suggested by Daszak helped the group evade this oversight as well. In July 2018, NIAID program officers decided that the experiments on humanized mice — which had been conducted a few months earlier — would get a pass from these restrictions as long as EcoHealth Alliance immediately notified appropriate agency officials according to the circumstances that the group had laid out.

. . . In a written response to questions submitted in September and October, an NIH spokesperson told The Intercept that the rule that was supposed to trigger a stop to the research was added “out of an abundance of caution.” Similarly, in a letter sent to the House Committee on Oversight and Reform last month, NIH principal deputy director Lawrence Tabak called the rule “an additional layer of oversight,” implying that the agency had devised the rule itself. But the notes reviewed by The Intercept show that the language was inserted at Daszak’s suggestion and that the NIH and EcoHealth Alliance worked together to evade additional oversight.

It's hard to avoid thinking that the circumstances that led to what's looking more and more like the origins of the pandemic were exceptional, a violation of existing NIH policy, and the result of some sort of deal at the policymaking level, which is to say, at the level of Dr Francis Collins. What were the incentives for the deal? Peter Daszak and the EcoHealth Alliance got money. What did Dr Collins get? I'll bet it was something, and it wasn't something Dr Collins, prominent Evangelical, wanted to be made public.

Templeton Award indeed.