Dr Fauci recklessly claimed in May 2020 that it's "very, very strongly" impossible for this to have come from a lab. [1]
When will public officials actually be held to account for their flip flopping, often times leading to massive distrust from the population and killing people?
How many people are refusing vaccines because officials like Dr Fauci have lied repeatedly?
[1] https://edition.cnn.com/2020/05/05/politics/fauci-trump-coro...
There are multiple related claims that fall under the umbrella of lab leaks:
1. Did it escape from a lab?
2. Was that lab manipulating the RNA of the virus?
3. Was the lab doing so for nefarious/biowarfare related ends?
The CNN article is the usual manipulative bilge we might expect from them, because the headline is "Anthony Fauci just crushed Donald Trump's theory on the origins of the coronavirus", but Trump was claiming the virus escaped from a lab (claim 1) and then Fauci makes a counter-claim that it wasn't manipulated by a lab (claim 2).
The claim it escaped from a lab was always pretty strong given the long history of lab leaks and where it started. The claim the lab was manipulating it originally had to rely on RNA evidence, which is rather complex to understand, ambiguous and disputed. But recently people seem to have dug up documentary evidence that the US NIAID (led by Dr Fauci) was directing funding to the WIV specifically to manipulate bat coronaviruses, so claim (2) is starting to look pretty strong too.
Claim 3 looks very weak and is getting far less attention as a result. There's no evidence for it and COVID makes for an objectively very poor bio weapon. It's also not the most parsimonious explanation that works. Virology researchers had convinced themselves that GOF research was something important that they should be doing, and were able to work around US bans on it by doing it abroad and getting it approved by high level enough figures who could override the bans. They had clear incentives to do the work at low bio-safety levels, and appear to have done so (again from documentary evidence). As is often the case they thought they were doing something good for the world, and that the ends justified the means. They were wrong. No more complex explanation is necessary.
Then even Biden and the democrats eroding the trust in vaccines saying they won't get vaccinated if Trump rushes the antivirus. Well, what do you know, the next week after the election we discovered that the antivirus is effective and all adults should vaccinate.
How many anti-vaxxers did Biden create with that irresponsible political statement?