I think Fauci is pulling a "Bill Clinton" here.

a reply to: bloodymarvelous

Fauci says he hasn't been lying when he says it is not true, but then he goes on to say

"You are implying that what we did was responsible for the deaths of individuals...." "I resent that".

Yeah you see is eyes light up and that sly smile back with "ah way out!" popping in his head.

a reply to: SeaWorthy

Get him to say that withOUT the..."deaths of individuals"...part of the sentence and then he'll be lying!

Can't anyone see what he is trying to do??? If he can keep the word "death" in any sentence or question with the words "Gain of Function" then he can deny it and likely get away with it. If he can't keep the word "death" in the sentence then he can't deny he was aware of GoF research going on at Wuhan without lying. It's a classic legal trick. Expand your response to include more than what the question asks and you can argue the whole sentence is not true.

If you want to see Fauci really squirm, ask him the following question...

"Dr. Fauci, with all due respect, please answer the following question. Please do not repeat my question back to me, or paraphrase it in any way, just answer the question asked of you. This question is not about deaths or any other collateral effects. This is a very specific question. Did you, or did you not, know about Gain of Function research related to Covid-19, or any of its variants, taking place at the Wuhan Labs prior to 2019; Yes or No???"

I would put good money on the bet that he will invoke his 5th Amendment rights if asked that question!

Also, have you noticed in virtually all of the testimony he's given to date he looks up and to the left before he begins an answer. I'm pretty confident he's looking up at someone who is giving him a visual cue about whether to answer the question or not. That's how close they've got this guy pinned down now. Ask him the above question and anything short of a straight "No!" answer is gonna' blow this whole thing open! Plus, I don't think he's even capable of giving a one word answer; I don't think his ego will let him do that.

I'm sorry but that is nothing close to what was implied by my correction of the OP's claim.

The fact is this: Rand asked a question and Fauci answered it honestly from all that I can tell. Was he lying? Maybe. I don't know but with all the information and evidence I've seen, he answered that specific question honestly. The GoF research that occurred was conducted right here on US soil. If you have evidence to the contrary, I beg you to post it because I'd be the first one to throw it in people's faces when they say Fauci is an honest man.

But that point is NOT the same as what you've just stated and your ad hominem attacks against a group of people that view life differently than you is certainly not going to help anything. "Liberal toolbags" is largely unnecessary and makes people with similar views as yours (including myself) look bad.

But let's stay on track here because Planned Parenthood has absolutely nothing to do with funding for Gain-of-Function research.
a reply to: SwissMarked

a reply to: SeaWorthy
I think you're all on a hiding to nothing. So what if Fauci was funding GoF. With absolutely no proof I could guarantee you that it's still happening in the US, China, the UK, Russia...need I go on. The nature of funding is not pulling the trigger.
As for proving the "virus" was released purposely or accidentally from Wuhan???? This could ONLY be proven with a credible whistle blower and do you honestly think one of those will appear out of the woodwork. Not a snowballs chance in hell.
The only way to nail Fauci is by using his past statements and advisories ( lies and prevarications) for the government to implement lockdowns when the virus has been shown to be deadly only to the elderly and medically vulnerable.

originally posted by: BrujaRebooted

originally posted by: BatSars
A couple of things here:

1) That was Rand, not Ron.

2) Rand did not ask "if there was any 'gain of function' research funded by NIH," he asked him if the NIH had funded GoF research in Wuhan.

It may seem like I'm splitting hairs here, but there IS a very important distinction. The NIH, from the studies I've read, did NOT actually fund any GoF research in Wuhan. The GoF research the NIH/NIAID funded was right here in the US.

***

Don't get me wrong -- I'm no fan of Fauci, but we should definitely characterize the situation(s) we expound upon accurately if we don't want people to call us conspiracy theorists, etc. I think this is vital for anyone that sees the writing on this COVID wall.
a reply to: bloodymarvelous

Dr. Paul had the budgetary line items detailed and a statement from a Chinese researcher in Wuhan. I think its pretty well established the funding in question is directly connected to the lab in China at ground zero.

Except I've read the study he's referencing multiple times and they didn't do what he claims they did. The action of creating the chimeric virus came from a DIFFERENT study, which was performed in the UNC laboratory in North Carolina.

a reply to: BatSars

It's my understanding that Fauci and NIH continued to fund this study in Wuhan once it was stopped in North Carolina. Wuhan picked up where North Carolina left off.

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

From what I can tell, Fauci keeps stating that the study reports from the Wuhan lab don't desribe or meet the NIH's definition of "gain of function", but other people from the NIH say that's not true.

It's all semantics at this point.

originally posted by: BatSars

originally posted by: BrujaRebooted

originally posted by: BatSars
A couple of things here:

1) That was Rand, not Ron.

2) Rand did not ask "if there was any 'gain of function' research funded by NIH," he asked him if the NIH had funded GoF research in Wuhan.

It may seem like I'm splitting hairs here, but there IS a very important distinction. The NIH, from the studies I've read, did NOT actually fund any GoF research in Wuhan. The GoF research the NIH/NIAID funded was right here in the US.

***

Don't get me wrong -- I'm no fan of Fauci, but we should definitely characterize the situation(s) we expound upon accurately if we don't want people to call us conspiracy theorists, etc. I think this is vital for anyone that sees the writing on this COVID wall.
a reply to: bloodymarvelous

Dr. Paul had the budgetary line items detailed and a statement from a Chinese researcher in Wuhan. I think its pretty well established the funding in question is directly connected to the lab in China at ground zero.

Except I've read the study he's referencing multiple times and they didn't do what he claims they did. The action of creating the chimeric virus came from a DIFFERENT study, which was performed in the UNC laboratory in North Carolina.

Dr Fauci's National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) allegedly shelled out $7.4 million to the Wuhan laboratory, which was studying bats with coronavirus.
www.thesun.co.uk...

Clearly the lab shut down in Canada and the lab at Harvard and the lab in China were all involved. The information has been out there from the beginning and is overwhelming!

In 2019, with the backing of NIAID, the National Institutes of Health committed $3.7 million over six years for research that included some gain-of-function work. The program followed another $3.7 million, 5-year project for collecting and studying bat coronaviruses, which ended in 2019, bringing the total to $7.4 million.

www.newsweek.com...

originally posted by: BatSars

originally posted by: BrujaRebooted

originally posted by: BatSars
A couple of things here:

1) That was Rand, not Ron.

2) Rand did not ask "if there was any 'gain of function' research funded by NIH," he asked him if the NIH had funded GoF research in Wuhan.

It may seem like I'm splitting hairs here, but there IS a very important distinction. The NIH, from the studies I've read, did NOT actually fund any GoF research in Wuhan. The GoF research the NIH/NIAID funded was right here in the US.

***

Don't get me wrong -- I'm no fan of Fauci, but we should definitely characterize the situation(s) we expound upon accurately if we don't want people to call us conspiracy theorists, etc. I think this is vital for anyone that sees the writing on this COVID wall.
a reply to: bloodymarvelous

Dr. Paul had the budgetary line items detailed and a statement from a Chinese researcher in Wuhan. I think its pretty well established the funding in question is directly connected to the lab in China at ground zero.

Except I've read the study he's referencing multiple times and they didn't do what he claims they did. The action of creating the chimeric virus came from a DIFFERENT study, which was performed in the UNC laboratory in North Carolina.

I didnt talk about a study. I mentioned enumerated budget line items and a statement from a Chinese scientist working at Wuhan.

a reply to: bloodymarvelous

It is worth noting, of course, that Paul's accusation of Gain of Function doesn't extend to Coronavirus. It was other pathogens involved here.

originally posted by: BatSars
A couple of things here:

1) That was Rand, not Ron.

Oh! That explains a lot.

I wondered how he got so much younger all of a sudden.

2) Rand did not ask "if there was any 'gain of function' research funded by NIH," he asked him if the NIH had funded GoF research in Wuhan.

It may seem like I'm splitting hairs here, but there IS a very important distinction. The NIH, from the studies I've read, did NOT actually fund any GoF research in Wuhan. The GoF research the NIH/NIAID funded was right here in the US.

***

Don't get me wrong -- I'm no fan of Fauci, but we should definitely characterize the situation(s) we expound upon accurately if we don't want people to call us conspiracy theorists, etc. I think this is vital for anyone that sees the writing on this COVID wall.
a reply to: bloodymarvelous

You're right. That is a good point.

So who funded the Wuhan lab? Might be a good idea to grill them.

But also: if Fauci wasn't involved in any way with the Wuhan lab, then he isn't even qualified to say whether the disease was released from there. He should be expected to have no more direct knowledge than anyone else, unless he was involved.

originally posted by: BatSars
I'm sorry but that is nothing close to what was implied by my correction of the OP's claim.

The fact is this: Rand asked a question and Fauci answered it honestly from all that I can tell. Was he lying? Maybe. I don't know but with all the information and evidence I've seen, he answered that specific question honestly. The GoF research that occurred was conducted right here on US soil. If you have evidence to the contrary, I beg you to post it because I'd be the first one to throw it in people's faces when they say Fauci is an honest man.

But that point is NOT the same as what you've just stated and your ad hominem attacks against a group of people that view life differently than you is certainly not going to help anything. "Liberal toolbags" is largely unnecessary and makes people with similar views as yours (including myself) look bad.

But let's stay on track here because Planned Parenthood has absolutely nothing to do with funding for Gain-of-Function research.
a reply to: SwissMarked

This is where you can find it:

www.factcheck.org...

The 2017 paper, authored primarily by Wuhan Institute of Virology researchers including Shi Zhengli, determined that bat coronaviruses in a cave in Yunnan, China, had “all of the building blocks” of the SARS coronavirus, which caused an outbreak in 2003. Shi is famous for her work tracking down the origins of the SARS epidemic.

The authors “speculate that the direct ancestor” of the SARS virus may have been a result of recombination — or the natural combining of genetic material — of precursors of these bat coronaviruses. And the authors found that the bat coronaviruses had the potential for direct transmission to humans.

A few of their experiments combined different elements of viruses to better understand what’s required to infect human cells. Specifically, the 2017 research used the backbone of WIV1, a bat SARS-like virus reported in 2013, and swapped in the spike protein of two newly identified bat coronaviruses to see if they, like WIV1, can use the human ACE2 receptor to enter human cells. The researchers found that both chimeric viruses could use ACE2 to infect and replicate in human cells in culture. (The researchers attempted to make six other chimeric viruses, but when put into monkey cells the viral constructs did not replicate.)

So they weren't doing it as an attempt to deliberately weaponize it. But they DID do it.

They totally created a chimera that had gain of function, as a step to other non gain of function research.

(Ace2 is the receptor that makes Corona so infective, BTW.)

I've read every study conducted in Wuhan, that was funded by EcoHealth, and none of them struck me as Gain-of-Function. Certainly none of them were as obviously GoF as the research conducted @UNC. Granted, they have since changed the website and those studies are no longer listed. I don't know when they changed them but I read through those studies back in November of last year.
a reply to: Deetermined

originally posted by: SeaWorthy

originally posted by: BatSars

originally posted by: BrujaRebooted

originally posted by: BatSars
A couple of things here:

1) That was Rand, not Ron.

2) Rand did not ask "if there was any 'gain of function' research funded by NIH," he asked him if the NIH had funded GoF research in Wuhan.

It may seem like I'm splitting hairs here, but there IS a very important distinction. The NIH, from the studies I've read, did NOT actually fund any GoF research in Wuhan. The GoF research the NIH/NIAID funded was right here in the US.

***

Don't get me wrong -- I'm no fan of Fauci, but we should definitely characterize the situation(s) we expound upon accurately if we don't want people to call us conspiracy theorists, etc. I think this is vital for anyone that sees the writing on this COVID wall.
a reply to: bloodymarvelous

Dr. Paul had the budgetary line items detailed and a statement from a Chinese researcher in Wuhan. I think its pretty well established the funding in question is directly connected to the lab in China at ground zero.

Except I've read the study he's referencing multiple times and they didn't do what he claims they did. The action of creating the chimeric virus came from a DIFFERENT study, which was performed in the UNC laboratory in North Carolina.

Dr Fauci's National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) allegedly shelled out $7.4 million to the Wuhan laboratory, which was studying bats with coronavirus.
www.thesun.co.uk...

Clearly the lab shut down in Canada and the lab at Harvard and the lab in China were all involved. The information has been out there from the beginning and is overwhelming!

In 2019, with the backing of NIAID, the National Institutes of Health committed $3.7 million over six years for research that included some gain-of-function work. The program followed another $3.7 million, 5-year project for collecting and studying bat coronaviruses, which ended in 2019, bringing the total to $7.4 million.

www.newsweek.com...

It IS true that the US funded EcoHealth Alliance, which funded research in Wuhan, but as I've said multiple times in this thread -- I've read every study that was conducted in Wuhan, funded through EcoHealth Alliance, and none of them struck me as GoF.

No one is arguing that money wasn't transferred to the Wuhan Virology lab. No one says they didn't. They did. Where Rand accuses Fauci of lying is the accusation that the US funded GoF research IN Wuhan, but from the research I've seen, that isn't true.

Again, no one is arguing that no money from the US was ever funneled into Wuhan.
a reply to: BrujaRebooted

"So who funded the Wuhan lab" -- Well, they receive funding from the Chinese government, obviously, but they did receive funding from EcoHealth Alliance, which was given money from US entities in a pass-through type of way. So, yes, Wuhan did receive funding from EcoHealth who did receive funding from the US government.

But I read the studies which EcoHealth funded and none of them appeared to me to be GoF research. I may not be a geneticist but I do have a BSN and understand what I'm reading, for the most part, and none of it appeared to me to be GoF. The study conducted in UNC, however, was CLEARLY GoF, though no one is arguing that point.

Fauci is a scumbucket either way. This guy has been pro GoF for YEARS and he argued up one side and down the other about its importance, etc. etc.

I've even read documents from our pro-GoF research that openly admit that it's important for the US to be conducting these types of research FIRST, because otherwise "nefarious" groups will beat us to the punch. Kinda' sad, if you ask me.

So while Fauci may not have been "technically" lying, he is absolutely part of the problem here. There's no doubt about that.

As for direct involvement -- I have seen no 'direct involvement' links between Fauci & Wuhan, but researchers from the US, who do receive ample funding from the US, meets with Chinese researchers every year in a big conference. In fact, one of the years, it was held right there in Wuhan.

But, that isn't a surprising thing given that they're all technically colleagues and share information regularly, etc. And there's no doubt in my mind that most of those researchers have no nefarious will towards anyone and they're just doing what they do: research, experiment, etc.

Like Oppenheimer - sometimes you create something you later regret, but it doesn't mean that while you're creating it, your intention was impure. I don't know that Oppenheimer believed in his mind that he would kill that many people in such a short span, but his reaction once the first one was detonated told a story all on its own. I think that probably haunted him for the rest of his life.
a reply to: bloodymarvelous

If you notice, they cite their own research from 2013, which was the very strain that the UNC used to create a chimeric virus.

But in the study cited in the article you cited, no GoF activity was actually performed:

journals.plos.org.../journal.ppat.1006698#sec011

In the current study, we successfully cultured an additional novel SARSr-CoV Rs4874 from a single fecal sample using an optimized protocol and Vero E6 cells [17]. Its S protein shared 99.9% aa sequence identity with that of previously isolated WIV16 and it was identical to WIV16 in RBD. Using the reverse genetics technique we previously developed for WIV1 [23], we constructed a group of infectious bacterial artificial chromosome (BAC) clones with the backbone of WIV1 and variants of S genes from 8 different bat SARSr-CoVs. Only the infectious clones for Rs4231 and Rs7327 led to cytopathic effects in Vero E6 cells after transfection (S7 Fig). The other six strains with deletions in the RBD region, Rf4075, Rs4081, Rs4085, Rs4235, As6526 and Rp3 (S1 Fig) failed to be rescued, as no cytopathic effects was observed and viral replication cannot be detected by immunofluorescence assay in Vero E6 cells (S7 Fig). In contrast, when Vero E6 cells were respectively infected with the two successfully rescued chimeric SARSr-CoVs, WIV1-Rs4231S and WIV1-Rs7327S, and the newly isolated Rs4874, efficient virus replication was detected in all infections (Fig 7). To assess whether the three novel SARSr-CoVs can use human ACE2 as a cellular entry receptor, we conducted virus infectivity studies using HeLa cells with or without the expression of human ACE2. All viruses replicated efficiently in the human ACE2-expressing cells. The results were further confirmed by quantification of viral RNA using real-time RT-PCR (Fig 8).

This SOUNDS troubling, but is actually not gain-of-function. Using bacteria to infect with parts of a naturally-occurring virus to detect virility does not constitute gain-of-function because nothing was gained. They merely sequenced the backbone (much like the vaccine mfg did with the spike protein) and used something to infect certain cells to determine whether it acts upon certain receptors, etc.

This is really no different from adenovirus vaccines, or mRNA vaccines. It's similar to using a chemical process to determine whether something will react to it. There was no change or gain of function with any of the viruses.

And I hope people don't think I'm trying to defend Fauci here, because I think Fauci is a skeevy piece of crap, but the question was whether or not he lied, and to-date, I haven't seen evidence that he has.

Using the study Rand cited (and you), there is not enough there to say "yes he lied" because it's a debate of semantics at this point, which is not enough to charge Fauci with perjury.

a reply to: bloodymarvelous

i've got one better than that Biden said he was in Iraq, that is up there or bypasses Gore's "I invented the internet"

If I understand right, then the problem isn't that they actually created a virus with gain-of-function.

The problem is they developed, and publicly shared, a method for creating a virus with gain of function.


It's like the difference between building a car, and building a factor that makes cars. (I think I would rather if they had gone with the first of those options, rather than the second.)