The nation’s top public health official during the Covid-19 pandemic admitted that the origins of the coronavirus remain up for debate, the lab-leak theory is not a conspiracy, and that there was no scientific evidence to support the government’s social-distancing guidance.
Former National Institutes of Health Director Dr. Francis Collins testified behind closed-doors earlier this year and made those admissions to the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, according to a transcript and accompanying subcommittee memo provided to National Review.
“Do you recall science or evidence that supported the six-foot distance?” a staffer asked Collins abouty the Centers for Disease Control’s social distancing guidance during the pandemic.
“I do not,” Collins said.
“Is that I do not recall or I do not see any evidence supporting six-feet?” the staffer replied.
“I did not see evidence, but I’m not sure I would have been shown evidence at that point,” Collins said, according to the transcript, adding that he has not seen evidence since then to support the CDC’s six-feet guidance.
Collins was the boss of Dr. Anthony Fauci, who was the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases during the pandemic. And his testimony is similar to Fauci’s, who admitted to the subcommittee that the six-foot guidance just appeared.
Fauci invited Collins to the February 2020 call that set in motion the publication of the “Proximal Origin” paper in Nature that attempted to discredit the lab-leak hypothesis at the start of the pandemic, Collins testified. Before the phone call, Collins said he had not expressed an opinion on whether the virus came from a lab.
Afterward, he said, he did because he trusted the experts. Collins defended his decision by asserting the need to challenge claims that the coronavirus was engineered by humans.
The subcommittee implicated Collins and Fauci in a report published last year on how top public health officials orchestrated the “Proximal Origins” paper. In an email after the February 1, 2020, conference call, Collins warned of the “voices of conspiracy” doing harm to science. He later influenced the substance of the “Proximal Origins” paper.
Now, Collins believes that the science is not settled on whether coronavirus leaked from a lab in Wuhan, China or came from animals.
“We have talked about this an awful lot, I think I know the answer to the question, but I want to ask it. Is the origin of COVID-19 still unsettled science?” Collins was asked.
“Yes,” Collins replied.
When asked if the idea that the coronavirus may have leaked from a lab was a “conspiracy theory,” Collins replied, “Not at this point.”
On Wednesday, the Department of Health and Human Services suspended taxpayer funding for EcoHealth Alliance, a nonprofit organization that facilitated bat coronavirus research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the lab at the heart of the lab leak theory. The decision followed a recommendation from the subcommittee to debar EcoHealth and criminally investigate EcoHealth president Peter Daszak. The subcommittee last week accused Daszak of deliberately instructing its ongoing investigation.
Collins said he agreed with the enforcement actions taken by NIH against EcoHealth after the organization received widespread criticism for its ties to the Wuhan lab. When asked about the NIH’s vetting process for foreign collaborators, Collins deferred to staff and appeared to know very little about the process.
Earlier this month, lawmakers from both parties grilled Daszak during a public hearing about his organization’s research partnership with the Wuhan lab and its lack of transparency. Daszak denied facilitating gain-of-function research on bat coronaviruses designed to create deadlier pathogens and appeared to be unaware of the Wuhan lab’s links to China’s People’s Liberation Army.
The subcommittee reviewed classified State Department documents indicating the coronavirus leaked from the Wuhan lab and the Chinese Communist Party covered it up, Chairman Brad Wenstrup (R., Ohio.) said in a recent letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
Lawrence Tabak, Collins former deputy, will be testifying publicly before the committee on Thursday. Fauci is set to testify publicly next month and one of his top deputies is expected to testify in the coming weeks.