During the covid origins hearing on Tuesday, Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) and other Republicans on the Governmental Affairs Committee and Senate Homeland Security grilled Dr. Robert Garry, an ally of Anthony Fauci.
Paul referred to Garry as a part of Fauci’s “inside circle.” Garry was one of four witnesses present at the hearing. He and another witness, Dr. Gregory Koblentz, expressed their doubt that the virus originated from a lab leak. Drs. Steven Quay and Richard Ebright, the other two witnesses, think the virus originated in a lab rather than organically.
In his remarks, Paul mentioned that Garry, along with several of Fauci’s allies, contributed to a March 2020 Nature Magazine article that stated, “We do not think any type of lab-based scenario is possible.” Paul claims there is a “preponderance of evidence indicating” the virus may have originated in a lab.
Still, Paul notes that private correspondence among some of the paper’s writers—including Garry—during the early stages of the pandemic “differ substantially” from what they have stated publicly:
“I really cannot think of a credible natural scenario where you get from the bat virus, or something very similar to it, to COVID-19, where you have to insert precisely four amino acids and twelve nucleotides at exactly the same moment in order to obtain this function,” Bob Garry stated. I simply don’t understand how nature manages to accomplish this. It’s not crazy, in Garry’s opinion, to think that this may have occurred given the increase in function research that Wuhan was known for.
In his opening remarks, Garry said that “spillover from a bat to another species and finally to a human” is “the most plausible genesis” of the virus. He also stated that he thinks the purported “spillover” happened organically and most likely at the Wuhan market.
“We don’t have the smoking gun evidence that there was an infected animal in the market,” the speaker added.
Despite intensive examination, Paul underlined that “no animal host has been detected,” but he did imply that a “laboratory animal” might have served as the go-between.
Paul added, “But he also fails to mention that the animal host might be a lab animal.” That could allow it to spread serially, which is one way a virus can swiftly adapt and force natural selection to bend it in the direction of humans. In her comprehensive writings, Dr. Alina Chan describes how this virus appeared instantly in humans, showing signs of pre-adaptation in a lab rather than appearing clunky and hardly transmissible.
In the March 2020 Nature article, Garry used a “categorical statement.” Paul asked Ebright about this, as well as what advice he would have for a young researcher about using “categorical comments” in scientific articles when adhering to the scientific method.
Ebright declared that Garry’s paper was not a research study and categorized it as “an opinion piece.”
According to Elbright, “in March 2020, there was no basis to state that as a conclusion, as opposed to simply being a hypothesis.” Garry and the other three authors of the paper, Drs. Kristian Anderson, Andrew Rambaut, and Edward C. Holmes had “private communications” that “show clearly that they knew the conclusion that they stated in that article was invalid.”
“I would advise a younger scientist to always provide proof for their conclusions, even in opinion pieces published in scientific journals, and to never, ever assert conclusions in a scientific journal that you know to be false,” he continued. “That is an example of scientific malpractice, including fraud.”
During a heated argument later in the hearing, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) accused Garry of selling “propaganda” and claimed that Fauci and others had used the article from Nature Magazine “to use it to mobilize our own government to silence those who questioned questions.”
Because of this, some people lost their jobs. Their jobs were lost. They were no longer respected. Facebook shut them off. They lost their Twitter account. Do you feel uneasy about participating in this misinformation effort? Hawley queried.
Hawley accused Garry of lying when he said, “I was, I was simply preparing a paper on our scientific beliefs about where this virus is from.”
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) made the accusation that Fauci was involved in a cover-up with Dr. Garry during the session, and he did so while clutching a stack of his remaining redacted emails.
Gary Peters, the chair of the committee (D-MI), should issue a subpoena for the last pages of Fauci’s communications, Johnson said, adding, “My hunch is the smoking gun lurks somewhere under these severe redactions.”
