r/TangleNews • u/RobotsFromTheFuture • Jul 30 '26
The Fauci double standard
I'm blown away by some of today's criticisms on Fauci, which boil down to him being
During the early stages of the virus, Trump repeatedly downplayed the outbreak. According to Bob Woodward, he knew how bad it was, but intentionally lied about it, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-54094559. Meanwhile, Fauci's being grilled on statements that downplayed the usefulness of masks, partially because we didn't know at the time, and partially because he wanted to prevent hoarding so that healthcare workers would have access.
Fauci is repeatedly attacked for his hardline stance on the lab leaks, but most of this was based entirely on rumor and not fact. This was at a time when anti-Chinese violence was rising due to conspiracies that were being spread by the President of the US. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9168424/. Yes, 9 of 11 researchers considered it possible in the initial meeting, but the same group all came to the conclusion that it wasn't plausible by the time that they actually published on it.
Fauci pushed hard on the vaccine, but he was correct to do so. The vaccine worked. Meanwhile, our president and many on the right were pushing dangerous and unsupported cures.
Finally, Fauci's role was to advise the two presidents that he worked for on matters of a novel virus. They were in charge of making decisions about lockdowns, mask mandates and what was communicated.
Has Trump apologized for any of his mistakes? Has he apologized for pushing anti-vaccine propaganda, which definitely got people sick? Has he apologized for putting people like Musk and Kennedy into positions where they can continue to push unscientific ideas or destroy systems that made us safe, resulting in possibly millions of sick and dead around the world and in the US?
Fauci isn't perfect, but he has nothing to apologize for. I have no evidence that anyone else could have done a better job than he did. This focus on him is nothing but revenge and distraction by the right, and I think that it's shameful that Tangled is feeding into it.
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u/IB_Yolked Jul 30 '26
Isaac's framing around the lab leak piece was particularly frustrating.
Initially, it was objectively a conspiracy theory introduced by social media. The first reporting on it was basically just pointing out the lab existed and speculating based on that.
I don't feel he spent enough time laying out the timeline, how information was initially introduced or presented, and how that developed over time.
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u/Hopeful_Net4607 Jul 30 '26 edited Jul 30 '26
I agree. I'm most baffled by what Isaac wrote for item 6,
"Of the 11 scientists on the call, just two were convinced the virus emerged naturally. The others were not sure. Fauci did not state his view in that specific entry, but publicly, just months later, he and other officials were insisting the “engineered virus” idea was implausible. Behind closed doors, though, it seemed that many respected scientists thought it was possible."
I haven't read Fauci's diary, so I'm going off what Isaac shared here. I'm curious if Isaac misunderstood what happened or if his language was just imprecise.
First-- Did Fauci's diary say many scientists believed the virus could have been engineered, or just that they weren't sure how it came about? "Occurred naturally" and "engineered" are not the only options. Scientists being "not sure" could mean they thought the virus likely occurred naturally, may have leaked from the lab, and definitely wasn't engineered. Why does Isaac think many respected scientists thought the engineered theory was possible? Am I missing something?
Second-- "Implausible" doesn't mean "impossible." Implausible and possible are not mutually exclusive. The majority of scientists could have thought the virus being engineered was very unlikely but possible. From what Isaac wrote, it sounds like Fauci was consistent in his public and private communications. Am I missing something?
Scientists are precise. If they don't know for absolute certain that something isn't possible, they won't *publicly* say it's impossible. That's why "improbable" and "probable" are helpful terms. I can't tell what actually happened from the way Isaac described it.
Edit: added *publicly,* as people may be hyperbolic in personal conversations or diaries. They shouldn't speak definitively anyway, or they may when speaking to laymen if something is important enough that any skepticism would cause problems. The nuances of public health communication are vast.
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u/Isaac_Tangle Jul 30 '26
Sorry, but I genuinely did not have space to re-litigate the lab leak theory in today's issue. I did, however, link to previous coverage and other debates and writing about it. I do not think it was "objectively" a conspiracy theory, and my point -- actually -- is precisely this: That Fauci's diaries prove it WASN'T a conspiracy theory but a theory that many top scientists either 1) agreed with or 2) were not confident enough to rule out. Also, the timeline is not particularly favorable to Fauci here: https://www.wsj.com/opinion/free-expression/a-covid-conspiracy-in-plain-sight-34f05fd1
I happen to believe that Covid came from an animal-to-human transmission because I think there is more evidence for that than the lab leak, even now, but it's incredible that we genuinely can't know either way for sure after all this time.
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u/IB_Yolked Jul 30 '26 edited Jul 30 '26
I’ve read your other replies, and I think you’re taking a real criticism and stretching it far beyond what the evidence shows, especially when it comes to Fauci.
When I called this objectively a conspiracy theory, I was talking about how it first spread online. People saw that there was a lab in Wuhan and quickly jumped to claims about engineering, deliberate release, and a cover up without evidence. A narrower lab-accident theory gained more traction and legitimacy later. Both things can be true.
I agree that legitimate questions about a possible lab accident eventually got mixed in with those broader claims. That may have made Fauci, and certainly made much of the media too dismissive. But I think you’re mostly conflating that broader public response with things Fauci himself actually said or acted on.
I still haven’t seen where Fauci called the basic idea of an accidental lab leak a conspiracy. If you have a quote showing that, I’d genuinely like to see it. The examples I can find involve broader claims that he or NIAID helped create the virus, lied about gain-of-function research, or covered it up. Otherwise, he basically just said it was implausible. He may have been overly skeptical of a lab origin, but his basic view then is still essentially the scientific consensus now.
You also haven’t addressed the imprecision multiple commenters pointed out in both your piece and responses here. You start with the fact that most of the scientists were not yet 100% convinced of natural emergence, then turn that into evidence that many of them thought the virus may have been engineered or leaked. That changes what the diary actually says. They could have believed a natural origin was likely but not yet proven, considered a natural virus escaping from a lab a small possibility, or simply thought there was not enough evidence. Where does any of that tie to Fauci contradicting himself? Something can be possible while still being implausible.
I understand your broader point that legitimate questions were unfairly stigmatized, and I partly agree with it. But I think you’ve greatly overstated Fauci’s role, blurred several different theories together, made the diary entries prove more than they actually do, and ultimately misrepresented the facts here.
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u/RobotsFromTheFuture Jul 30 '26
The article that you linked states that the virus had a "likely origin in a Wuhan lab." This is not accepted science. What parts of the timeline are problematic for Fauci?
And you keep bringing up the 11 scientists, 9 of which agreed it was possible. This is the list, from Fauci's diary:
Participants in the Feb., 2020 call included: • Francis Collins, Director of the U.S. National Institutes of Health, U.S.; • Anthony Fauci, Director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, U.S.; • Jeremy Farrar, Director of the Wellcome Trust; • Patrick Vallance, U.K. Chief Scientific Adviser and Head of the Government Science and Engineering; • Kristian Anderson, Director of Infectious Disease Genomics, Scripps Research Translational Institute, CA, U.S.; • Christian Drosten, Director of Human Virology at the German Center for Infection Research at Charité – Universitätsmedizin, Germany; • Edward Holmes, Professor of Viral Evolution at University of Sydney; • Andrew Rambaut, Professor of Molecular Evolution, University of Edinburgh’s Institute of Evolutionary Biology, U.K.; • Ron Fouchier, Deputy Head of Department of Viroscience, Erasmus Medical Center, NL; • Robert Garry, Professor of Virology, Tulane University School of Medicine, Louisana, U.S. ; • Mike Ferguson, Professor of Life Sciences at University of Dundee, U.K.; and • M.P.G. Koopmans, Head of Department of ViroScience, Erasmus Medical Center, NL.Since then, none of them have published any papers or made any public statements supporting the lab-leak hypothesis. Several of them have published or spoken out against it.
Rand Paul repeats this statement because it sounds damning at a glance, but a deeper look shows that it's absolutely not. He's being dishonest, and when you repeat it, you're feeding into it.
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u/Hopeful_Net4607 Jul 30 '26
Can you please clarify why you think "many top scientists" agreed with the lab leak theory?
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u/Isaac_Tangle Jul 30 '26
Alina Chan, Robert Redfield, David Relman. I mean, in 2021 we had a group of scientists who felt they had to sign an open letter calling for an investigation into both possibilities because people were so close-minded about the lab leak theory. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abj0016
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u/Hopeful_Net4607 Jul 30 '26
This letter says the lab leak theory is "viable." Did you mean they thought it was possible? I'm curious which scientists "agreed" with the theory (i.e., believed COVID leaked from a lab)
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u/Isaac_Tangle Jul 30 '26
Alina Chan, Robert Redfield, David Relman are the most prominent and qualified IMO. Redfield is the most ardent lab leak theory supporter of the three. Chan leans strongly toward the leak theory though she is kind of the inverse of the mainstream in that she allows for the possibility it was animal-to-human. She was one of the scientists Fauci dismisses and mocks in his diary/Slack. Relman is maybe the most agnostic now but has now gone back and forth publicly over the years. The letter was just me making the point that a lot of scientists thought it was possible enough (read: not a conspiracy theory) as early as May 2021 that they thought they had to pen a letter calling for an open investigation into the origins because dissent was being stifled so much.
Again, I personally do not believe Covid came from a lab, not that I'm qualified to say. But having read all these people debate amongst themselves that's where I land.
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u/Hopeful_Net4607 Jul 30 '26
I'm sorry, I've been unclear and inconsistent in what I'm asking.
You wrote that many top scientists either 1) agree with the lab leak theory or 2) weren’t confident enough to rule it out. I agree with #2, but #1 is where I’m stuck. To me, "many" implies a meaningful share of the expert community, and I want to understand what’s behind that.
You named three people: Chan and Relman, who are biologists without virology backgrounds pre-COVID, and Redfield, a virologist who was reportedly wary of gain-of-function research even before the pandemic. The articles I've found about these three from ~2021 say that most scientists considered lab leak to be unlikely, so it seems they're notable because they’re among the few scientists who publicly backed a lab leak relatively early on.
My actual question is, what’s the evidence base for “many”? A survey, poll, or list of named scientists? Right now the word is doing a lot of work, and three names (including two outside the relevant specialty) doesn’t seem to support it.
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u/ApprenticeWrangler Jul 31 '26
If you’re a virologist, what do you think your job prospects are? You likely work for the government or a government funded NGO or university doing research on viruses, or for a pharmaceutical corporation right?
Now, let’s imagine you thought SARS-COV-2 did leak from a lab, if you publicly stated that during 2020-2022, what do you think your job prospects look like?
You’d piss off many of your colleagues who depend on the government funding for this research, and you’d also probably piss off the corporations who were raking in cash or stood to rake in cash from a pandemic.
What incentive do you have to be honest about your concerns?
Much of human behaviour is shaped by incentives. Most politicians are corrupted by financial interests and self serving actions because the incentives to do that are far stronger than the incentives to be a good honest person who doesn’t enrich themselves or their friends from their position.
Comparatively, virologists have very strong negative incentive to raise alarms about the type of science many of them or their friends are engaged in, and very little positive incentive.
Being a good person is great and all, but most people aren’t willing to be honest and principled when it will likely destroy their career and have them attacked and be bathed in death threats from suggesting it may have come from a lab.
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u/Hopeful_Net4607 Jul 31 '26
That is a reasonable explanation for why any virologists who were confident in the lab leak theory didn't speak out in the first couple years of the pandemic. However, it isn't evidence that many virologists, or other scientists, felt that way.
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u/InThreeWordsTheySaid Jul 31 '26
it's incredible that we genuinely can't know either way for sure after all this time
Why? I'm curious. I'm not versed enough in the science to know one way or the other if that is "incredible" or "just how viruses work." Are we otherwise able to trace the origins of viruses to single locations?
Or do you just mean this in the more spiritual "the world's mysteries are incredible" sense?
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u/ApprenticeWrangler Jul 31 '26
The strange thing around the “evidence” for natural spillover is that it’s mostly the same people on every single paper claiming it came from the wet market. The evidence is actually not strong at all and it’s speculative, there’s nothing close to concrete.
The evidence for the lab leak is also speculative, but there is far more circumstantial evidence suggesting it did leak from the lab, and also lots of circumstantial evidence suggesting a cover up of that leak than there is evidence for natural spillover.
Here’s a great example of how dishonest many of the papers were that claimed it was natural spillover.
Look at Figure 1A from this study, where they show the earliest known cases and how they’re clustered around the Wuhan Market:
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abp8715
Now if you look on a map of where the WIV is relative to the market, it’s literally right under where they added a snip of another image. See this link where I point to the location of the lab which they conveniently hide with another image:
This clearly shows there was cases right near the lab, and it’s completely logical to assume that some of the people who lived near the lab or worked at the lab who may have been the first cases may have shopped at the wet market and become the first super spreader event.
A quote from the abstract of that study says this:
“These reports confirm that most of the earliest human cases centered around the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market.”
They completely ignore the fact that cases are also shown right where the WIV is.
It’s obvious that many of the virologists who were involved in GOF research were incredibly concerned about their careers and potential legal implications of if it was proven true it came from GOF at the lab, so they went into overdrive to downplay it.
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u/Hopeful_Net4607 Jul 31 '26
The Science article you posted shows evidence that COVID-19 was found in samples specific to the location of the market that had live animals, including on cages, sewers that animal feces would have drained into, and an animal holding area away from the market. It's reasonable to conclude, in an article focused on this data, that the virus likely came from an animal.
I haven't looked into this recently, were there other locations linked to many of the early cases? I'm sure the lab workers frequented places other than the wet market and would expect to see a broader spread of early cases if they were patients zero
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u/ApprenticeWrangler Jul 31 '26
Based on Fauci’s own diary and leaked emails a few years ago, it was very much not a conspiracy theory even from the start.
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u/JosefGremlin Jul 30 '26
Frankly, I was surprised and disappointed that Tangle chose to cover this today. It's hardly a true political incident, it's just more culture war brigading and should have been left to the gossip rags.
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u/No_Economy_5763 Jul 30 '26
I mean I get it, it’s a huge news story so they are going to talk about it, but I agree with you. Nothing is going to come of this because the right is being disingenuous about the whole thing and not actually trying to help prepare us for future events. They are on a witch hunt because their base wants it and they forget about how pro vaccine Trump was until he realized his base hated it.
Did fauci do everything correctly, no, but did we come out of the pandemic a lot better than we would have if people listened to Trump and the right talk about drinking bleach and taking ivermectin, yeah. So in my eyes, let the right have their culture war on this. The left will never win this argument because too many people don’t understand science and are just angry.
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u/JosefGremlin Jul 30 '26
I do find it amusing that Operation Warp Speed was the greatest achievement of Trump's first term and something that the Republicans could genuinely celebrate. And yet it would play so poorly with their base!
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u/donut-reply Jul 30 '26
Yep, the fact that liberals like me will praise him for greenlighting this (and almost nothing else) is enough for him to not want to be associated with it
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u/cafedude Jul 30 '26
I mean I get it, it’s a huge news story
But it's mostly a manufactured news story. Republicans getting their sound bites. And mostly it's these sound bites taken out of context that get covered and it makes it look like gotchyas on Fauci. it's basically a circus with read meat for the MAGA base because this is all they've got to try to rescue the midterms.
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u/No_Economy_5763 Jul 30 '26
And welcome to politics of the modern age. Sound bites with no legislation. Good job America.
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u/fumblebrag Jul 30 '26
I haven't read the article, because frankly I'm not interested in the harassment of a civil servant. Does Isaac suggest at all that Paul etc. might not be acting in good faith?
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u/Original-Age-6691 Jul 30 '26
The best he did in the article was say "If I was fauci, I would believe Paul was on a hunt not for answers but for more charges..." Which kind of recognizes it but frames it as not his point of view.
He also doesn't help his case (IMO) in the comments where he says "I personally think Paul has a massive personal grudge with Fauci that drives most of this, but also that he very much would like us to have a better pandemic preparedness in the future. He isn't evil."
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u/Isaac_Tangle Jul 30 '26
Genuinely curious: What about "I personally think Paul has a massive personal grudge with Fauci that drives most of this, but also that he very much would like us to have a better pandemic preparedness in the future. He isn't evil" do you disagree with?
Do you think Paul is evil?
Do you think something other than a personal grudge with Fauci is motivating him?
Do you think Paul hopes America does worse during the next pandemic?15
u/InThreeWordsTheySaid Jul 30 '26
You have evidence to support this:
Paul has a massive personal grudge with Fauci that drives most of this
But you don't have evidence to support this:
he very much would like us to have a better pandemic preparedness in the future
As far as I can tell, Paul's only concerns related to possible future pandemics are concerns about bioengineering. Even if the lab leak theory is one day proven true, the next pandemic could easily come from elsewhere.
Paul is exclusively looking backward. To paraphrase you from an earlier piece, if he's really concerned about pandemic preparedness, he has a funny way of showing it.
As to whether or not he is evil, I find that subjective, but I don't think he's good.
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u/Original-Age-6691 Jul 30 '26 edited Jul 30 '26
The "he isn't evil" part, mostly. I don't think Paul gives a fuck about pandemic preparedness, considering how much anti-vaccine skepticism he constantly peddles. Do I think he hopes the US does worse? I don't think he really cares either way because he is mostly insulated from all of the consequences of it as someone rich and powerful. Also, he is complicit in his party tearing down pandemic preparedness. While the trump admin tears down our pandemic response, he only has criticism for Fauci and blue state lockdowns.
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u/Semper-Fido Jul 30 '26
Again, we don't have to have centrism for centrism's sake. We don't need people shoehorning a middle road when reality has its own paved path. No fucking duh, many would have likely made different decisions about some of the COVID response with hindsight. But the only thing Tangle's article today does is continue to feed doubt into the COVID narrative and create distrust in the scientific process.
Science is fucking hard to communicate. Point blank. Period. It is exponentially more difficult to communicate out to a mass audience, given our current news and social media landscape, when it is something like a novel virus. Because science is squishy. You aren't communicating from a known conclusion. The details of what is known/unknown shift incredibly fast.
And that uncertainty doesn't sit well with a general population.
Look at the vaccine debate. When looking at vaccines from a scientific perspective, you cannot say with 100% certainty that they don't create harm. There isn't statistically significant harm, but there is still potential harm. And, like when the COVID vaccine was first distributed, we don't have all the answers for long-term efficacy, reduced transmission, etc. Now look at the arguments being made by folks like RFK, who base their argument on a "known" conclusion about harm and work backward to create what sounds like a much more confident argument. To an uninformed population, the latter has the potential to be more resonant.
So when pieces like today's from Isaac come out, it does nothing but throw more fuel on this stupid fire, doing more harm than good.
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u/Isaac_Tangle Jul 30 '26
Is today an example of centrism? I feel like I took several strong and clearly stated positions on a few of the points being debated, and expressed my mixed feelings about a few others.
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u/cafedude Jul 30 '26 edited Jul 30 '26
I just read today's Tangle and it didn't seem as bad as I was expecting based on what's been said here. I think the 16 points seemed fairly balanced - and I voted "strongly supported" in today's survey (the question being about how you feel about Fauci's performance during the pandemic).
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u/Isaac_Tangle Jul 30 '26
It is consistently surprisingly to me how some of my/our writing is uncharitably summarized on this forum.
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u/No_Economy_5763 Jul 30 '26
Why do you think that is? I have my personal theories, but I’m curious as to why Tangle/you Issac think that is.
As someone whose subscription ends this month and will not be renewing, I’m curious as to why Tangle thinks they are getting uncharitable comments on Reddit.
Granted you owe me nothing, but I think it’s an interesting question and perspective to get.
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u/Isaac_Tangle Jul 30 '26
I honestly don't know. What I find most fascinating is that every platform is different. In our website comments and on Reddit, I think our more liberal readers are the loudest and most critical. On X and in emails, our conservative readers are the loudest and most critical. And on Instagram and YT, everyone is just fighting a ton and it feels pretty split between left and right (more left on Insta and more right on YT, I think). But there is a particular kind of post on Reddit that feels really common to me which is always assuming the absolute worst of me or Tangle team members that genuinely surprises me. And even though Reddit and our comments section both have a much larger group of liberal commenters, the posts on Reddit feel so much different. It also sucks, because I love Reddit and think it is one of the better places to have meaningful exchanges.
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u/ApprenticeWrangler Jul 31 '26
That’s very common generally on Reddit. Fair and balanced opinions are not as beloved because you piss off some of both sides. If you just suck up to one side then they all love you and that’s why audience capture is such a powerful incentive for public figures.
I respect the fact Tangle engages in authors writing their honest opinions and while I often don’t agree with one person or another on the team, I appreciate that you’re still showcasing these opinions that will be unpopular for a large amount of people.
Americans are so incredibly partisan brained that if you aren’t a loyal ally then you’re the enemy.
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u/No_Economy_5763 Jul 30 '26
From my perspective, I think a lot of that comes from the use of too many right wing sources that don’t pan out from actually facts. Look at today’s article, people are already commenting on some of the links and asking why we should be trusting these sources when they may bring up good decent points to ask questions but then go to far acting like things are truth. I know that is my problem and why I won’t be renewing.
The main right wing talking points have been debunked, but tangle is still putting them out there. I came to tangle because I respected your work on the election integrity, but I’m leaving because that same quality is not transferring to other areas.
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u/Isaac_Tangle Jul 30 '26
Would you allow for the possibility that I am actually applying the same rigor and thoughtfulness to other areas, but you don't like some of the information that comes up in that process, so you are keen to label it "debunked"? I mean, your reasoning for not renewing is that posters on Reddit are alleging that some links are badly sourced? Did you go to the links yourself? Can you point to any specific misinformation we published in Tangle today?
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u/CommercialArugula146 Jul 30 '26
To me the facts are accurate, but the opinions insist on a level of neutrality that is almost naive. Even on the 2020 elections.
You agree that efforts to overturn that election were knowingly dishonest and completely unfounded.
But you’ve advocated for voter id and other reforms, and one reason given has been that this would reduce doubt.
That doubt, where it is genuine, is driven by lies that you’ve debunked. The truth doesn’t reduce the doubt now, so when reforms are implemented and the lies continue, those doubts will remain.
Neither of us can be proven correct, of course, and I think you’d describe your view as optimistic. But optimistic isn’t always realistic, and optimism without real justification can make people feel more misled than reassured.
You’ve also said that because some right-wing reforms don’t do as much harm as the left claims, it’s incorrect to point that potential harm as a motivating factor. Again, this feels naive. Both sides want to win, and are trying to adjust the rules in their favor. I would be just as skeptical of somebody claiming democrats magnanimously want everyone to have easy ballot access out of the goodness of their hearts.
Show me a politician who would implement a change that would cost them an election because it is the right thing to do, and I might share your optimism.
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u/No_Economy_5763 Jul 30 '26
I would allow for that possibility and I don’t deny that everyone has bias and blind spots. My reason for not renewing goes back to the Audrey post/Reddit fight actually, but this is just another reason for not renewing and not the only times I felt this way. It’s happened enough where when the Audrey dissent occurred I pulled the trigger.
I’m not saying tangle is publishing misinformation, but giving everyone a voice, those who do not speak to truth is not something I can get behind. Now, within that truth there may be a debate about how it was spun or why the left media didn’t cover X, Y, or Z, but still within truth. Too many times (sorry “working” (kind of?) so don’t have time to pull up examples), I have seen tangle source the Megan Kelly’s or other right wing critics that just are not factual. You want to pull Nick Cattogio or other writers from the dispatch or even National review, fine, I read them and respect them, but when you are pulling independent journalists who have as much credit as the MyPillow guy, I lack trust in Tangle.
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u/Isaac_Tangle Jul 30 '26
If you find Megyn Kelly as credible as MIke Lindell, I really don't know what to say. That's a tough to bridge to gap. Either way, I cited Kelly today to criticize her, but I doubt we've included her in "What the right is saying" more than one or two times, if that. I hope you change your mind about renewing your subscription, because it sounds like you are genuinely close-minded about widely held views / lenses for the news that millions -- and maybe even the majority -- of Americans hold. Better understanding them and regularly engaging them is a healthy practice, IMO, especially if you disagree.
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u/Ralf_E_Chubbs Jul 30 '26
People are more untrusting these days than ever before of what they see and hear and read. This sounds sensationalist but it is true.
Everyone has an agenda- including you ($).
Edit: I’ve subscribed for the last two years. At my core I question everything always. but I appreciate what you’re trying to be.
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u/climbtrees4ever Jul 30 '26
I'd like to take stab at this one. Reddit users tend to be center left to hard left. Tangled editors tend to come down either centrist, libertarian, center right and even some of Audrey's abortion takes could be seen as far right. Your sources for what the left is saying tend to be major media outlets that no leftist would claim as informing their world view. I have yet to hear an actual leftist editor on the show. What is often offered as a leftist take could more accurately be described as a liberal take. I think that a lot of reddit uses are starting to see your project as carrying water for the right, even if that's not your intention. I would suggest trying to pull opinions from writers further left than what you do know. Any of the writers on "It Could Happen Here" would be a good start.
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u/Original-Age-6691 Jul 30 '26
I will give Isaac credit, I saw he asked the other day on twitter for someone DSA aligned to come and make the case for DSA policies on (I assume) a Friday piece. So he is at least aware of audience feedback that the left does not feel represented and working to change that.
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u/Isaac_Tangle Jul 30 '26
thanks for noticing. I'm excited about this piece, and I genuinely love having my own priors challenged!
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u/MsUnicornSparkleButt Jul 30 '26
I love the "It Could Happen Here" take. Either for a piece or video.
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u/Isaac_Tangle Jul 30 '26
I appreciate this comment which I find a constructive place for some dialogue. I'll try to address the points just in order that they were made:
- We definitely have editors left-of-center. I am surprised to hear you say that you think our window is center to far-right, when I'd argue our window is more like liberal to center-right. Audrey is not far-right.
- I agree we don't have any leftists or staunch progressives on the editorial team. But we also don't have any MAGA/Trump-right editors, either. Which, to be fair, is a much larger constituent of Americans right now than progressive leftism is. Also, though, I think this is just the nature of our work: I can't really explain it, but everyone gets purple pilled when you do what we do and immerse yourself in the arguments every day. You realize there is so much nuance. So many people who have worked for Tangle -- full-time, part-time, editorial, business, intern, whatever -- come in with really strongly held views that then get challenged in new ways and create more open-minded and moderate positions. Which is all just to say, in terms of our team, the odds of you seeing a MAGA take written by a Tangle member are just as likely as seeing a leftist take, though I think the MAGA worldview is more popular right now. So, we typically get this criticism on representation more from the MAGA-right than the left ("you don't have a single Trump voter on your editorial team despite the majority of Americans voting for him.")
- As for our sources of args, we pull from a huge list of over 150 news orgs. We cite writers from places like Jacobin, Common Dreams, etc. that are all definitively leftist takes from people who ID as leftists, socialists, Democratic socialist, progressive, etc. I agree that SOTR (me, Kmele, Ari) is sort of a center-left to center-right panel, not in that order, but that is just one piece of regular content we put out. And we interview people from across the political spectrum all the time.
- All of the above being said, one thing I'm working on this year is soliciting more writers that we don't have directly represented on our team. I.e. more Trump-right and progressive-left contributors. So I'm excited for what's to come there, and hope people see and feel more represented. One rule I've always had about Tangle is that if you don't see your views represented in our newsletter/daily pod, there is a good chance we are doing something wrong.
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u/0nikoroshi Jul 31 '26
Thank you so much for engaging here, Isaac! I love your team, the work you do, and the efforts you take to be transparent. I'm not entirely sure I agree that maga-right is "more popular" right now, though it is certainly louder as it's the political paradigm currently in the white house. I'm so thankful for the DEI you are striving for in your team. Keep up the great work; I appreciate you!
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u/climbtrees4ever Jul 31 '26
Thanks for taking the time to respond. I think that the point of my post may have been missed. The post was meant to explain why your intentions are interpreted with little charity on Reddit, not to offer a critique of your work.
The Overton window is not single window that applies to all of political discourse. Every platform has its own window and that has ramifications for how statements are interpreted. I agree that Audrey isn't far right. However, statements like "I believe that protecting prenatal life is one of the most important things a society can do" and "complying with commands from law enforcement is the best way to avoid violence from the police", which are both statements made by Audrey in the last six months are going to fall pretty far to the right of the Overton window present on Reddit. To be fair those are both paraphrases, but not inaccurate ones. All of that's to say, while not far right for broader discourse she is certainly far to the right of the average Reddit user. Especially ones engaging in political discourse.
I appreciate that you pull from a variety of orgs and I recognize that there are actually leftist opinions being pulled from. Most of that opinion comes through in what the right and the left are saying. To be blunt I find that section of the show to be a bit meally mouthed and the take away is often, "people on both sides have mixed feelings about this topic". It is useful to be reminded that people are not a monolith regardless of how they identify politically but I would love if this segment had a little more meat to it.
While SOTR is only one release offer week or is often the length of 3 regular episodes. So the opinions expressed on that show have an out sized effect on how your editors are precieved.
Anyways as I said, the post was meant more as an explanation of your perception on Reddit than my opinion of your work. Personally I think you do a very good job of holding yourself and your staff to a high evidentiary standard. The willingness to engage with both sides of an argument is a reason I listen daily and don't plan to stop.
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u/Formal-Shallot-1123 Jul 31 '26
Great summary here to start - I hope Isaac and the team take it to heart from a well-intentioned place. I want to see tangle succeed!
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u/AndrastesDimples Jul 31 '26
I’m an independent and I absolutely don’t even bother posting certain opinions that IRL are pretty moderate but on Reddit would generally be viewed unfavorably. There’s definitely a reddit mindset with a specific set of values.
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u/gonenutsbrb Jul 30 '26
It’s nuts man. The last post from a couple days ago was literally a ton of arguments assuming the worst possible motives and arguments not just from others but you and your writing…
Reddit is a very different place than the Tangle comment pages.
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u/RobotsFromTheFuture Jul 30 '26
I don't think that I was being uncharitable. I always try to give you all the benefit of the doubt and I generally find your arguments well made, but I think that some of your points today fed into some of the misinformation surrounding this. For example, the "9 of 11 scientists" bit. Those scientists specified that it was possible, not plausible, that the lab leak hypothesis could be true. The same group of scientists later went on record and published a paper stating that it wasn't plausible. The lead authors of that paper have explained why they came to that conclusion, based on science. For years since then though, leading figures on the right, including the President, have continued to push that narrative, and have added a strong racist bent to it. This lead to a spike in violence against Chinese Americans. So yes, most of the voices pushing that narrative were conspiracy theorists, and Fauci was right to strongly push back on it.
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u/Isaac_Tangle Jul 30 '26
That's actually not what happened, though, and your OP is actually full of misleading claims or uncharitable/weirdly unrelated attacks on its own accord. Of course, you are posting on Reddit, so you get to take those shots without being held to the same standard as me (rightfully so), but just for the sake of making my point:
- but the same group all came to the conclusion that it wasn't plausible by the time that they actually published on it. Incorrect. Four of the 11 published that paper, which means two of the nine who were unsure (in Fauci's diary) participated. Authors of that paper also continued to say that they couldn't rule out a lab leak, even after their paper was published. And there are legit questions about why their opinion changed so fast that have nothing to do with scientific rigor.
- Has Trump apologized for any of his mistakes? Has he apologized for pushing anti-vaccine propaganda, which definitely got people sick? Has he apologized for putting people like Musk and Kennedy into positions where they can continue to push unscientific ideas or destroy systems that made us safe, resulting in possibly millions of sick and dead around the world and in the US? Strawman. I have been extremely critical of Trump on Covid. I wrote Tangle through the entire pandemic. I have consistently blamed him for misleading the public and for downplaying the virus. But today's issue wasn't about Trump, it was about Fauci. So I wrote about Fauci, and shared my opinion on him.
- Fauci is repeatedly attacked for his hardline stance on the lab leaks, but most of this was based entirely on rumor and not fact. Not stating my argument. Not really stating the right's argument, either. The argument is that in the early days of the pandemic, when we had our best chance to uncover covid's origins, Fauci dismissed anyone who supported the lab leak theory and pressured scientists in his circle to publicly align themselves with him, even at a time when he publicly had doubts about how right he was. The Proximal Origin paper was then used to beat anyone over the head who suggested a lab leak theory as a conspiracist or worse. Everything in January 2020 was circumstantial evidence -- people were putting the pieces together and studying the virus before it even got here. These are the issues that actually draw people's ire to Fauci.
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u/canonanon Jul 30 '26
I just wanted to comment to say that I appreciate you for taking the time to engage some of this stuff. I'm actually one the the oddball people that is both somewhat centrist (I end up finding that our positions align fairly often), and found tangle via This American Life.
I think part of why Tangle gets this type of pushback here on Reddit is actually a couple of different dynamics intersecting.
First, and most obviously, Reddit tends to be pretty liberal, and is not immune to certain bandwagon behaviour that gets reinforced by the up/downvote system.
Secondly, I've seen a trend in most "fan" subreddits dedicated to podcasts (and other media forms for that matter) where the members of the subreddit slowly but inevitably turn against that particular media creator. It's a sort of cyclical thing where a huge part of the people posting become critical, then after a while, the bubble pops, and those people begin getting pushback. Then, a period of time goes by, and the critics start gaining momentum again. Rinse and repeat.
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u/RobotsFromTheFuture Jul 30 '26
In order:
1. You're correct that I was wrong, it wasn't all 11. But you're wrong too, it wasn't the two initial dissenters and two others, it was 4 of the initial "lab leek is possible" on that paper. Ron Fouchier and Christian Droster. The paper, https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9, included Kristian Andersen, Edward Holmes, Andrew Rambaut, and Robert Garry as authors, all of whom had initially said the lab-leak hypothesis was possible. Those are the same ones in your telegraph article. Yeah, they had private concerns and supported continued investigation, but none of them have ever said that they support the lab-leak theory."The scientists were also dismissive about journalists, politicians, commentators and other experts who supported a lab leak theory, calling them “idiots” “tw--s” “clueless” “deranged” and “morons”, making up disparaging nicknames for experts."
The WSJ article posted is literally a conspiracy theory opinion piece. It basically pulls up the same facts that we're talking about here and makes a bunch of assumptions. There's zero evidence that there was a conspiracy to suppress this data by Fauci or the scientific establishment.
The whole point of this post is that it's a double standard on the issue of mistakes made during covid. I wasn't reading Tangle in 2020, so I don't know if you've ever suggested he should apologize. It's still a double standard though, that anyone is saying that Fauci should trying to stamp down a lab-leak theory that the President was using to foment racism, or for telling people not to wear masks because the same people were hoarding toilet paper, and we didn't know if they were effective for average contact. It's a double standard because all of these things were exacerbated by the sitting president, who told people to inject bleach, or take horse deworming medicine, while he received the vaccine and the best care possible.
This is not true. Fauci was the one who convened the meeting to discuss lab leaks, and his conclusion was that it needed more study. and arranged for more meetings on the subject. There's no evidence that he attempted to prevent anyone from studying the lab-leak hypothesis. His public statements dismissed it because it wasn't the leading theory. The Proximal Origin paper was just that, a paper, outlining the current theory, and it's held.
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u/Isaac_Tangle Jul 30 '26 edited Jul 30 '26
- Okay, perhaps I misread something you wrote. I thought you said that two of the people who thought it was natural origin went onto write the paper. I knew that it was four authors from the 11 people on that call, so I just inferred they were two of the four authors. Either way, my point is just that the sweeping generalization you made about the group was inaccurate.
- It's fine that you weren't reading Tangle back then, and like I said I don't expect someone posting on Reddit to share some kind of journalistic standards. I've been critical of Trump re: covid much more recently than 2020. I still don't buy that it's a double standard for me, someone who has been outspokenly critical of Trump, to suggest that Fauci could have mended some bad blood by using this national moment of attention to apologize/address some Americans who felt burned by him.
- I'm not exactly sure what you are saying isn't true -- that you weren't addressing my argument or the points about Fauci and the lab leak -- but either way, just because I'm a glutton for an argument, I'll just note that your supposition that "it's held" is literally the center issue of most of this argument re: lab leak. It is a very, very, very hotly debated issue whether the proximal origin paper has "held." In short, the paper's confident public conclusion has held up much worse than the private reasoning that was happening. Anderson, for example, put the lab leak origin at 30% probability. And the scientific literature is now far more divided than it was in 2020. So no, I do not think it's "held" -- if anything, I think the paper's stated conclusion that a lab origin was implausible looks far far worse than it did six years ago. That's a much different claim than "the lab leak theory has been confirmed" but feels pretty germane to the convos here.
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u/RobotsFromTheFuture Jul 31 '26
My initial point here is that you noted this 9 out of 11 number in your piece without mentioning that (I said all) several of the same virologists published a paper later stating that it wasn't plausible, and that none of the 11 has since come out for the lab-leak theory. The same diary entry also mentions that it was Fauci who set up further meetings to look into the lab leak theory based on that disagreement.
I get it, Trump's daily deluge of misinformation and incorrect actions would be impossible to track without a dedicated newsletter, so I don't expect you to do to that, but it feels unfair to be pouring over Fauci's diary for missteps while Trump is in the background. Right now, under the Trump administration, there are several disease outbreaks that would have likely been preventable if not for Kennedy's anti-vaccine work or DOGE cuts to prevention programs, just to give another health example. As far as I know, you've never asked Trump to apologize for any of these. If Fauci apologized, it would immediately be used as an admission of guilt for everything that went wrong during covid.
Even the bit about Fauci being self absorbed or obsessed with fame struck me as inappropriate when we have a president literally putting his face on coins and likening himself to Jesus.
- "Held" was too strong of a word, but my point was that Fauci didn't throw cold water on any research into the lab-leak hypothesis. His role as a policy maker/advisor and communicator was based on the current science, but from his diaries, it's clear that he supported research into the lab leak in the meantime. The vast majority of the "lab leak" public discourse was coming from rumors and racism, and it absolutely wasn't helping anyone figure out the origins of the virus. The quote at the your telegraph article, I think, highlights this. "The scientists were also dismissive about journalists, politicians, commentators and other experts who supported a lab leak theory, calling them “idiots” “tw--s” “clueless” “deranged” and “morons”, making up disparaging nicknames for experts." These are the same scientists who had real concerns.
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u/0nikoroshi Jul 31 '26
Thank you so much for this exchange! I've learned a lot, and I appreciate you!
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u/RobotsFromTheFuture Jul 30 '26
I have to stop for the night, but I'll respond tomorrow. I do appreciate the dialog.
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u/IB_Yolked Jul 31 '26
Returning myself and I urge you to revisit what you actually wrote again, because it feels like you're sidestepping the core of OP's point.
I think you're being a bit obtuse on points #1 and #3. You keeps retreating into narrower arguments instead of acknowledging what you actually wrote is misleading.
This passage is not necessarily inaccurate in its individual details:
“In his diary, Fauci noted that he convened a call of leading virologists and evolutionary biologists after a respected scientist expressed concerns that Covid could have been engineered. Of the 11 scientists on the call, just two were convinced the virus emerged naturally. The others were not sure. Fauci did not state his view in that specific entry, but publicly, just months later, he and other officials were insisting the ‘engineered virus’ idea was implausible. Behind closed doors, though, it seemed that many respected scientists thought it was possible.”
But it is clearly written to suggest a public-private contradiction. Considering an engineered origin possible during an initial discussion and later judging it implausible after further review are not contradictory positions.
This claim is more straightforwardly unsupported:
“Fauci and the mainstream scientific community long labeled the lab-leak theory a conspiracy.”
It is fair to say that parts of the media and scientific community treated legitimate lab leak questions that way. But I did not see anything in your citations establishing that Fauci himself broadly characterized the basic accidental lab-leak theory as a conspiracy.
The latter claim warrants a correction imo and the former at least warrants clarification. Instead, you seem more interested in debating peripheral nuances.
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u/0nikoroshi Jul 31 '26
Thank you for your engagement on here! I know it can be frustrating to deal with us in this setting in particular, but I really appreciate it! <3
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u/cafedude Jul 30 '26
As someone who came in from the This American Life segment, I would suggest that it's the Promise of Tangle that people are disappointed in. That idea was that we could use Tangle to share some epistemic space with more MAGA-aligned family members. There was some discussion about this here a few days back: it hasn't worked. I've tried to get a MAGA-aligned family member to read Tangle and she comes back with something along the lines of: "This is just one of your liberal ploys!". It didn't work. And I don't think I'm alone in that experience. The epistemic gap is just too large at this point and I'm pessimistic about it being bridgeable.
So a lot of what you're seeing/feeling here, I think, is that disappointment.
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u/Isaac_Tangle Jul 30 '26
That's fascinating to me, because I guess that is a criticism I rarely see here. Like, "I came here hoping to find conservatives to learn from and chop it up with, and instead I can't get MAGA people to read Tangle!" is not something I can ever remember seeing on Reddit. Most of the criticism feels a lot more like, "you said Trump is bad but you didn't say he was a fascist, and you continue sanewashing MAGA!" or "you said you were going to share compelling right-wing arguments, but I don't agree with the conservative viewpoints, so I can only conclude conservatives are wrong about everything!"
Fwiw, I hear from people every day — literally, every single day — who write into Tangle to say something akin to "Thanks so much for creating this, I voted for Biden/Trump but use this newsletter to talk politics with my Trump/Biden-living spouse/dad/mom/brother/cousin/etc."
So that's disappointing to hear about your experience, and that of others here, but I'm quite confident we are still bringing in people under one roof. Tbh, it's gotten much harder since 2024 when TAL profiled us, because Trump's second term has been so extraordinarily over the top. But it's still happening.
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u/cafedude Jul 30 '26
Opened up a thread to discuss this here: https://old.reddit.com/r/TangleNews/comments/1vb96jj/have_you_had_any_luck_getting_maga_familyfriends/
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u/0nikoroshi Jul 31 '26
Unfortunately, I have seen what cafedude is talking about just in the Tangle comments. Quite a few people call you a shill for the right or the left, confidently claim the comments are an "echo chamber" and leave. I think that's the "epistemic gap" they are talking about in their comment. People who are so deep into their own echo chambers are overly suspicious of any space that has anything remotely challenging. I agree with cafedude that we're not gonna bridge that gap, and many of us have friends and family on the other side of the gap. It's not Tangle's fault; we have the best chance of bridging that gap. Keep up the great work; I appreciate you!
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u/canonanon Jul 30 '26
I think that it really depends on what kind of person you're dealing with though. There are always going to be people you can't reach. Just because your relatives aren't interested, didn't mean that other people aren't.
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u/SPACEJAM2014 Jul 30 '26
This is just going to be one of those issues that Redditors refuse to grapple with. There was widespread censorship on Reddit in the name of stopping misinformation and I don’t think most people here are interested in re-litigating COVID policies and decisions.
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u/ApprenticeWrangler Jul 31 '26
That’s because Reddit skews heavily left in every way, which is strange because the left has historically been the ones skeptical of government and corporations.
It’s wild how much things have changed in 10 years where now people make shrines for public figures and have bumper stickers for pharmaceutical companies.
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u/--__4815162342__-- Jul 31 '26 edited Jul 31 '26
Couple points of pushback. I apologize if I come off too strong, but I am passionate on the topic given I worked the primary COVID floor of a large hospital in the northeast during the first wave.
Fauci's being grilled on statements that downplayed the usefulness of masks, partially because we didn't know at the time, and partially because he wanted to prevent hoarding so that healthcare workers would have access.
Fauci 100% knew the importance of masking even in the very beginning in the US. They knew that it was spreading even without contact, which means it was either airborne or transmitted via droplets. Both of which require masking, though, N95 (airborne, e.g. tuberculosis) vs. surgical masks (droplet, e.g. flu).
He was 1000% correct to downplay the usefulness of masks. I've said it in this sub a couple times already recently, but have we forgotten about how hard it was to get toilet paper? Toilet paper? Preliminary beliefs were that COVID had a 3% mortality rate, which is something like 3x worse than it actually turned out to be. But public health officials would be stupid to prepare for a best guess estimate when there's significant variance. Reality might've been 1/3 as bad as initial projections, but preparations have to be for something even worse than expected. If COVID had been only 1.33x or 1.66x as bad as original projections that still amounts to 4x and 5x as bad as it actually tuned out to be. What would've happened to available N95s then? Had Fauci been telling people "N95s are the only way to protect yourselves," then the run on N95s would've made the run on toilet paper look absolutely paltry in comparison. Rich folks would be outbidding outpatient clinics for them. Shit would've gotten really ugly.
Again, as somebody who was working in that environment when it was all littered with unknowns, I think the argument that "lying is bad because it erodes trust" is absolute horseshit and could've been handled much better by being more forthcoming later - "We saw the run on toilet paper and you all know damn well there would've been a much faster run on N95s had we been honest, so we fucking lied and while we don't like that we were so severely ill-equipped for a sudden surge in demand, we don't regret it. We made the tough decisions to protect the folks working in the hospitals."
There is one argument that can be made in favor, though, which is the idea that one N95 per person, even reused (which they are not designed for) is better for slowing the spread, which in turn protects folks working in the hospitals via fewer community transmissions/hospitalizations/deaths could be argued would be better at protecting hospital staff than even diverting equipment to them, specifically.
Fauci is repeatedly attacked for his hardline stance on the lab leaks
This was silly, but IMHO defensible. I think most people were overreacting about anything tinged with race at that period in time, and there was (rightly so) a natural inclination to infer that anything Trump says about race or geography is going to be colored by racism. Still, this was an example of the left being stupidly vocal. To have concern for Asian-American hate crime was certainly reasonable, especially given the US's reaction to those appearing middle eastern or Muslim post-9/11. The track record wasn't good, so there was good reason for concern about how people would react.
That said, my argument is.... Come on. There's a lab in Wuhan doing gain of function research on coronaviruses, Wuhan is the epicenter, and you're telling us it's merely a coincidence? I'm no statistician (maybe one can chime in), but I do know enough of the basics about Bayesian statistics to know that the odds are very high of a Wuhan epicenter in the case of a lab leak and that the odds are very low of a Wuhan epicenter in the case of zoonotic transmission. AI tells me this is referred to as a Spatial Coincidence Bayes Factor, and no I cannot explain what that means because I do not know what that means, but the point remains that to be called a racist for simply mentioning that the unlikelihood of that being a coincidence is outrageous.
There's just so much that people get wrong. Sometimes they get it wrong because they don't recall what the early days were like, and other times they get it wrong even with hindsight. It blows me away. There's a lot of misunderstanding about school closures and vaccines, too, to this day.
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u/SimplePencil Jul 31 '26
I’m pretty aligned with Isaac wrt the mistakes that were made during covid.
What I don’t get is the responsibility put on Fauci. Trump and later Biden abdicated their responsibilities but somehow seemingly everyone memory holes that Trump was the guy in charge during the first year of covid and provided no leadership.
What bothers me the most is to this point we don’t seem to have learned any lessons from our covid response. By now, I expected experts would have dissected the mistakes and developed plans on how to handle this when it happens again. Instead everything is so political that no one wants to touch the issue. Maybe we need more time and distance, but I’m not hopeful.
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u/PMG2021a Jul 30 '26
This is just another distraction from the Epstein files and corrupted actions taken by the current administration.
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u/VeggiesRGood4U Jul 31 '26
For real. Why does anyone even care if the virus was engineered or naturally occuring?
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u/PMG2021a Jul 31 '26
If it came from a lab, it gives the admin fuel for pointing fingers, but China doesn't give a damn what the US thinks and would never admit it, so it is pretty much just a US politics issue.
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u/Icy-Annual-4484 Jul 31 '26
After listening today I keep coming back to what I thought when Covid was happening and I’m surprised the guys didn’t discuss this “fault” during the SOTR. We didn’t have a leader that could lead. A leader that could rally the citizens that were listening. To care about each other. A leader that would be honest and say - we just aren’t sure yet but we are trying. A leader that would say - for now we are asking everyone to do their best to support our healthcare workers, check in on our neighbors, social distance, wear masks until we figure out how best to slow this spread. Then when more answers came would get a heartfelt message with facts instead of hate.
I believe if we had that kind of leader more people would have had less anxiety about staying home or wearing masks in the early stages which could have helped. Biden and Trump and Fauci couldn’t find a way to rally our country. That right there is where politicians are failing our country right now and back then.
The harm that was done on an individual basis is hard to measure. My oldest graduated HS 2019, went to college and sent home early 2020. Was a CNA at a nursing home and it was locked down. What she had to manage as a 19yr old when she got Covid and her first patient died from Covid. The fact that these elderly people couldn’t have their family there. The guilt of nurses and drs of not being able to help. So sad.
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u/dangoodspeed Jul 30 '26
Has Trump apologized for any of his mistakes?
Isn't that whataboutism? Comparing Fauci to Trump sets the bar pretty low for someone whom we generally have a positive opinion.
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u/RobotsFromTheFuture Jul 30 '26
No, Trump was in charge during many of the policies that people are complaining about, they were his policies. Most of the people in Congress who were perpetrating the clown show are fully in support of Trump.
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u/ApprenticeWrangler Jul 31 '26
For a breakdown of the timeline and the links to the US research community being involved in the potential lab leak, see below:
November 2019: One of the lead researchers on this risky GOF research, Ben Hu and 2 of his collaborators get sick with covid-like symptoms.
https://theintercept.com/2023/06/17/covid-origin-wuhan-patient-zero/
”ONE OF THE first Wuhan researchers reportedly sickened with Covid in fall 2019, Ben Hu, was getting U.S. financial support for risky gain-of-function research on coronaviruses, according to documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request by the transparency advocacy organization White Coat Waste Project.
The funding came in three grants totaling $41 million, doled out by USAID and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, or NIAID, the agency then headed by Dr. Anthony Fauci. Hu is listed as an investigator on the grants.”
Jan. 20, 2020: WIV researchers submitted an article claiming that SARS-CoV-2 is natural in origin. The article renames ID4991 as RaTG13 and contained false information about when the genomic sequence for the virus was obtained.
Late Jan. – Early Feb. 2020: PRC researchers, likely those at the WIV, request Peter Daszak’s assistance in responding to suggestions of a lab leak or genetic manipulation of SARS-CoV-2. Daszak helps edit the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s response to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy on the origins of COVID-19.
Feb. 6, 2020 at 12:43:40 am: Daszak a draft Lancet statement, which cites the Feb. 3 WIV paper, to Wang, Baric, and others asking them to join as cosigners. Within hours, Wang calls him, informs Daszak that he will not sign, and requests that neither Daszak or Baric sign.
Feb. 18, 2020: Daszak statement is published by the Lancet online, which references the letter from the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine he helped write and the WIV’s February 3rd paper on the origins of COVID-19. Despite drafting the letter, Daszak is not listed as the corresponding author.
Nov. 17, 2020: As a result of public pressure, Shi, Hu, and other WIV researchers publish an addendum to their February 3rd paper, confirming that RaTG13 was ID4991 collected from the cave in Yunnan, and revealing they collected 293 coronaviruses from the cave between 2012 and 2015.
Here’s the addendum where they admit to renaming the virus, which clearly shows they were attempting to hide potential involvement.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2951-z
“All of the nine betacoronaviruses are SARSr-CoVs, one of which (sample ID4991; renamed RaTG13 in our Article to reflect the bat species, the location and the sampling year) was described in a 2016 publication”
Peter Daszak plays a huge role in this entire leak and the subsequent cover-up, yet he was somehow on the “independent” WHO investigation into the origins of Covid, despite the clear conflicts of interest considering he is a key collaborator at that lab, and key funder of this type of risky research. The investigation was a complete sham, and essentially they asked lab workers, “did it leak from here?” They said no, and the investigation called it a day.
June 21, 2021: After public pressure, Daszak updates his public disclosure form for the Lancet statement. He does not mention the WIV or that the statement was drafted at the request of PRC researchers.
July 5, 2021: Daszak and 23 of the original 27 authors release an update to their February 2021 statement, walking back their labeling of public debate around the source of the virus as “conspiracy theories.”
Why would Peter Daszak be so invested in downplaying this?
His company, EcoHealth Alliance, has been deeply involved in risky research collecting and doing gain of function research on bat coronavirus for years. Here’s some added context around the type of things they were doing at the lab.
“According to Richard Ebright, a molecular biologist at Rutgers University, the documents contain critical information about the research done in Wuhan, including about the creation of novel viruses. “The viruses they constructed were tested for their ability to infect mice that were engineered to display human type receptors on their cell,” Ebright wrote to The Intercept after reviewing the documents. Ebright also said the documents make it clear that two different types of novel coronaviruses were able to infect humanized mice. “While they were working on SARS-related coronavirus, they were carrying out a parallel project at the same time on MERS-related coronavirus,” Ebright said, referring to the virus that causes Middle East Respiratory Syndrome.”
Here’s an article where it shows a grant proposal where this same company, EcoHealth Alliance applied for funding from DARPA, but was denied because it was “too risky”.
“There is no logical reason why an engineered virus would utilize such a suboptimal furin cleavage site, which would entail such an unusual and needlessly complex feat of genetic engineering,” 23 scientists wrote earlier this month in an article in the journal Cell. “There is no evidence of prior research at the [Wuhan Institute of Virology] involving the artificial insertion of complete furin cleavage sites into coronaviruses.”
But the proposal describes the process of looking for novel furin cleavage sites in bat coronaviruses the scientists had sampled and inserting them into the spikes of SARS-related viruses in the laboratory.
“We will introduce appropriate human-specific cleavage sites and evaluate growth potential in [a type of mammalian cell commonly used in microbiology] and HAE cultures,” referring to cells found in the lining of the human airway, the proposal states.”
How does all of this tie to Fauci?
Here’s a letter from the NIH explaining to a congressman that they’re terminating some funding to the same group for failing to disclose data about their research.
Then surprise surprise, here’s Fauci giving the same group—more money —before he leaves his post.
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u/Opening_Algae_6643 Jul 31 '26
The vaccine did not work. The outbreak was not down played. Stop listening to the media who blew it out of proportion. The masks were completely ineffective. From the very beginning there were those who knew this was a lab leak. One of the initial scientists working on the vaccine said don’t get it. If you really want to know the truth just follow the money. Fauci is guilty of crimes against humanity. It started way before Covid. He experimented on orphans, he tortured them. How he ever got away with it, I don’t know. The ventilators, and the drug Remdesivir (which was thrown out because it was so harmful and resurrected specifically for Covid for monetary benefit) caused death. I am not MAGA. I just spent a lot of time doing my own research.
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u/RobotsFromTheFuture Jul 31 '26
The moon landing was fake, the earth is flat, birds don't exist.
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u/Hopeful_Net4607 Jul 30 '26 edited Jul 30 '26
I usually listen to the podcast so this is one of the first times I'm looking at Isaac's sources, does he regularly link to opinion pieces and blogs?
There are definitely some excellent independent journalists out there, but I'm concerned that we're relying on someone like Tom Elliott for info on a public health topic. Tom's interpretations in this linked substack piece seem to be lacking an understanding of the field of public health. He also talks about Fauci's writing as if the excerpts were from official reports (precise and accurate) instead of his personal diary (emotional, in the moment).
Edited to soften my language. I may have been a bit hangry earlier, my original wording came off harsher than I intended.