Private messages show COVID origin authors doubted their public claims it was natural

The authors of the "Proximal Origin" paper that National Institutes of Health leaders helped shape, and then used to quash debate on COVID-19's origin, privately expressed doubts that the virus was natural, according to Slack messages published by Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., in his new database on COVID origin investigations.

Scientists Kristian Andersen and Eddie Holmes pegged the odds of a Chinese lab leak at 30% and 20%, respectively, contrary to their public assertion that there was "no evidence" SARS-CoV-2 was engineered, though Holmes later revised down his estimate to 10%.

Their paper in Nature Medicine "was pretty strong in saying 'there's no way,' but I have less confidence in that statement at this stage," Andersen said.

The suspicious furin cleavage site on the virus, which makes it unusually transmissible to humans, also alarmed Andersen, who identified it among "smoking(ish) guns" that "I'm not comfortable with." 

The authors planned to "stay off email" and "carefully curate some emails for the FOI [Freedom of Information] records" after the leak of the DEFUSE proposal to insert furin cleavage sites into bat coronavirus, submitted to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

They also freely discussed their coordination with the U.S. intelligence community and "my spy" in China, as Holmes described one of the contacts feeding him sensitive information in China.

Andersen mentioned being assigned "a handler" the same day then-National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci briefed the IC during a 90-day origins investigation. He also said "the spooks will spend quite a bit of time in Sunny San Diego," where Andersen's Scripps Research lab is based, during the IC review.

The authors discussed "getting something back to Tony['s] team at NIH" about the leaked DEFUSE proposal and "chatting to the intelligence folk."

Directly contradicting Fauci and then-NIH Director Francis Collins, the authors freely admitted the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the prime suspect for a lab leak, was conducting "a lot" of gain-of-function research on SARS coronaviruses, "although there are also other labs that have been doing that." 

One of them belongs to DEFUSE participant Ralph Baric at the University of North Carolina, they noted. Baric is retiring from the University of North Carolina under a cloud, having been kicked off his NIH grants for an apparent "pattern of deception" relating to the nature of his research.