This is news to me. Wtf?
I'm sorry, that essay (which is an opinion piece, not a work of investigative journalism) says absolutely nothing of the sort. What's your source on that? That's a pretty ridiculous accusation if you don't have evidence.
Didn't anybody think it was weird that the head of the NIH, a research institution, not a public health institution, became the top public health communicator during COVID instead of the heads of the CDC? He had a massive conflict of interest and wanted to protect it.
1. How does being the "top public health communicator" protect his conflict of interest?
2. Fauci isn't the head of the NIH, his position was "Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases"
3. Sure, it might sound weird, but what does previous pandemics show? Who was "top public health communicator" during the previous pandemics?
Yeah, this didn't happen.
No matter how much posturing and geopolitical theatre is going the same fragmented transnational elite is continuing actual resource oriented realpolitics completely outside of the narratives presented in the media that is owned by this class.
Whatever the purspose of this gain of function research is - it's not even discussed in MSM media even though you can go read the docs right out in the open. Same with the EMA bird flu pharma scandal that no one talks about these day that just happened 10 years ago.
Regarding the research it seems it's obviously not about bilateral war, as both complexes in China and the US is "in on it", could be everything from a push towards surveillance, depopulation, centralisation to stock manipulation. Who knows, when there is seemingly no actual research journalists left. The ones who do question things, are quickly removed from Google, banned from Twitter and deleted from Facebook.
Actual oldschool journalism today will make you a "conspiracy theorist" by todays standards because a small minority of people are stupid and being actively misled. Dystopian!
2. I was wrong. Wikipedia shows that the NIAID is part of the NIH. Still a research organization, not a public health organization.
3. Previous outbreaks, such as Ebola, SARS, MERS, etc. have _all_ been spearheaded by the CDC. The CDC is the branch of government responsible for managing disease outbreaks. The CDC head is therefore the "top public health communicator." It's worth noting that being a "communicator" here is much more than about talking to the public; it's also about who talks to the politicians.
So I choose to believe that you're just wrong about what he said. Again, Fauci covertly directing funds to an area of research that the medical community has recognized as ethically problematic for decades would be huge news. And all you have is a podcast? Seriously?
According to Rogin, Fauci did not so much covertly direct funds, but rather, quietly reinstated gain a function research which was stopped by the Obama administration (without approval from the Trump administration). He also doubled down with new grants in the same area as a response to the pandemic.
I personally find none of this particularly difficult to believe given other positions the medical establishment has taken over the coarse of the pandemic and the extreme lack of curiosity in the press.
I watched the Joe Rogan Josh Rogin clip you linked to. It's very interesting. But what Rogin says is that Fauci "found a way to turn gain-of-function research back on". He doesn't say that Fauci did anything covertly. He's describing effective bureaucratic maneuvering, which Fauci must be good at. He couldn't have stayed in his job for decades otherwise.
"Covert" means something very different, for example if he had taken money that was assigned to different research, funneled it to gain-of-function labs, and then falsified reports about how the money was spent. Some outrageous scenario like that is what you're implying with that word. Rogin implies nothing of the sort. Actually, from the facts in the OP article, which are drawn from public reports, it's clear Fauci got what he wanted overtly. That's how effective bureaucrats get things done.
By overstating the claim, you distracted from the significant thing, which is that Fauci was a major funder of gain-of-function research and, in the dispute between virologists about whether it was too risky or not, was strongly on the side that advocated for it. The other side managed to get the research shut down for a while, and then Fauci managed to get it turned back on. There's no suggestion or evidence that he did so in bad faith, as Rogin is careful to point out. But it does mean that he has a conflict of interest in dismissing the lab leak hypothesis, just like Daszak does. That's already a very strong point, and a lot for people to take. If you say that it was "covert" on top of that, you're acting like the very conspiracy theorist they want to tell everyone you are, and helpfully providing them with a bit that is easily debunked.
I'm sorry, but I've been digging and I just don't see any major justification here. I'm sure there's subtlety, but there's just no one in the research world coming out to say this. There are no accusations being made. There's no memo with his name on it. There's no specific study cited that he pushed. There's nothing. No one is covering this.
This is just the next conspiracy theory, isn't it? It's not falsifiable, so everyone is going to believe it anyway. This is how we got Q. You're doing it again.
So there's a hidden truth that happens to confirm the priors of a bunch of highly-on-the-internet people, but without any evidence in public. And the fact that the evidence doesn't exist is being cited as an argument that it must exist because of asserted suppression.
Well, for sure someone's going to be labelled as a conspiracy theorist. Seriously: it doesn't surprise you that the same folks that were so into Q a few months back are suddenly all aflutter with this omg-Fauci-created-covid nonsense?
For example, here's another one of those odd coincidences that gets easily dismissed as a conspiracy theory: September 2019 there was a pandemic wargame called "Outbreak 2019", specifically based around an infectious disease that causes respiratory failure.
https://www.military.com/daily-news/2020/04/01/naval-war-col...
No, its not "the fact that it doesn't exist" that lends credence to existence. The incentives involved for everyone who ostensibly would look for its existence align to have them look the other way. Given other circumstantial evidence, that is suspicious!
> Seriously: it doesn't surprise you that the same folks that were so into Q a few months back are suddenly all aflutter with this omg-Fauci-created-covid nonsense?
As near as I can tell, your argument here is: create a crazy conspiracy theory, attribute it to Rogin, point to the conspiracy theory as proof that Rogin is crazy. No one in this thread nor Rogin have claimed that Fauci literally created the corona virus. The claims are 1. Fuaci is a proponent of research that Obama shut down because its of little value and dangerous, 2. a lab in china with shit opsec was doing the same research on corona viruses which happened to be where the outbreak started, 3. Fauci re-instituted the research program under Trump without input from the Trump administration.