Only Fauci Knows – And He’s Not Telling
By Cory Franklin
August 19,2026
On January 26, 2020, one week after the first COVID patient was hospitalized in the US, Dr. Anthony Fauci wrote “It now appears using epi(demiologic) data and genomic data that the first infection was in early December and was not connected to the market… Now we know the market was not the source, it was the amplifier.” While reading that over, he may have experienced a sinking feeling in his heart – and perhaps a frisson of fear. Only he knows.
Because he realized the virus must have come from somewhere. And he also realized that somewhere just might be the Wuhan lab, where dangerous viral manipulation experiments, which he championed and funded indirectly, were being performed on coronaviruses. The experiments might have been “gain of function,” a technique designed to make a virus more contagious to humans, although there is a hyper-technical dispute over that. No matter.
The next sentence he wrote that day was, “Having said that, somewhere the virus jumped from animals to humans.” This was an assertion that may or may not be true – most, but not all, human respiratory viruses do jump from animals. Except another possible source is the occasional lab leak.
Was Fauci’s remark an observation of the source likelihood or was it an early denial of a lab leak of a virus he may have had a hand in, thereby setting the stage for establishing his plausible deniability, a deflection of that devastating possibility? Only he knows.
Reading his diary, it’s especially hard to get your head around his subsequent actions. If he discovered at the outset of the pandemic that the Wuhan animal market was not the source of COVID, then why did he actively and aggressively discourage the alternative lab leak theory?
Those actions reveal a glaring inconsistency between what Fauci wrote about the Wuhan wet market in his diary and what he said publicly. It is not hard to conclude that he was attempting to misdirect the public, in effect minimizing or eliminating his role in the possible creation and spread of the virus that went on to kill millions.
Curiously, Fauci never informed the media or said openly that he knew that the Wuhan wet market was not the source of the virus. At a time when interest in the wet market should have been subsiding, a Google N-gram search of term frequency demonstrates the opposite – beginning in 2020 and increasing through 2022, the term “Wuhan wet market” exploded. Even today, much speculation continues to revolve around the wet market.
The net result is the public was misled and was therefore less likely to believe an engineered virus could have escaped the laboratory. Scientists on the other side of the debate were vilified, cancelled and censored while media pundits and commentators, some of whom Fauci courted and who actively courted him, supported this misdirection, then and now, and still brand the lab leak theory ridiculous.
Ridiculous? Hardly.
Viruses and bacteria have been escaping laboratories as long as there have been laboratories. This particular laboratory is a mysterious Chinese lab that does not provide complete biosafety information and does not allow outside investigators.
Further, the longstanding concern of many respected scientists who wanted gain of function research banned years ago was that an engineered virus could escape the lab and kill large numbers of people – pretty much what happened in this case. This fear was the reason President Obama put a moratorium on gain of function in 2014 – in retrospect a wise decision.
Were Fauci and his associates circumventing the moratorium by outsourcing the research to a less secure lab in China? Is it a coincidence that President Biden extended Fauci’s pardon back to that same year, 2014? Only Fauci knows.
Journalists were especially complicit. In May 2021, New York Times science reporter Apoorva Mandavilli tweeted that the lab leak theory had “racist roots” and “Someday we will stop talking about the lab leak theory and maybe even admit its racist roots. But alas, that day is not yet here.”
Donald MacNeil, former science and health writer for The Times, and one of the country’s best COVID writers was initially taken in by Fauci and his experts. But by 2024, he issued a warning every science reporter should study at the beginning of their career, “I feel they clearly misled me early on…I’m disappointed, both in them and in myself, that I was so easily taken in. On the other hand, it’s one thing to be lied to by a politician and fail to check it out. But on viral evolution, to whom do you go for a second opinion? At their level, there are precious few experts. If Albert Einstein assured you that nuclear fission is harmless, whom would you trust to quote saying, “Einstein’s dead wrong”?
The “rally round Fauci” crowd defends him by saying there is no actual proof of a lab leak. It is unlikely we will find out now because neither Fauci nor the Chinese will open up as to what happened. But as the esteemed science journalist Matt Ridley wrote recently, “Researchers have found not a single infected animal in any market, nor any person who caught Covid from an animal. The evidence for the lab is overwhelming: we know they were doing precisely the right kind of experiment on precisely the right strain of virus at precisely the right time in precisely the right city and in precisely the wrong biosafety conditions.”
Anthony Fauci knew all that in January 2020, and he also knew he played an integral role. Yet his subsequent actions essentially amount to misdirecting the public, the medical community and the intelligence community away from a terrible laboratory mishap. Given what we know now, he appears to have spent considerable time covering his tracks – to minimize his involvement in the most ruinous pandemic in a century. Is there any other logical explanation for why he did what he did? Only Fauci knows.
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Dr. Cory Franklin
Cory Franklin, physician and writer, is a frequent contributor to johnkassnews.com. Director of Medical Intensive Care at Cook County (Illinois) Hospital for 25 years, before retiring he wrote over 80 medical articles, chapters, abstracts, and correspondences in books and professional journals, including the New England Journal of Medicine and JAMA. In 1999, he was awarded the Shubin-Weil Award, one of only fifty people ever honored as a national role model for the practice and teaching of intensive care medicine.
Since retirement, Dr. Franklin has been a contributor to the Chicago Tribune op-ed page. His work has been published in the New York Times, New York Post, Washington Post, Chicago Sun-Times and excerpted in the New York Review of Books. Internationally, his work has appeared internationally in Spiked, The Guardian and The Jerusalem Post. For nine years he hosted a weekly audio podcast, Rememberingthepassed, which discusses the obituaries of notable people who have died recently. His 2015 book “Cook County ICU: 30 Years Of Unforgettable Patients and Odd Cases” was a medical history best-seller. In 2024, he co-authored The COVID Diaries: Anatomy of a Contagion As it Happened.
In 1993, he worked as a technical advisor to Harrison Ford and was a role model for the physician character Ford played in the film, The Fugitive.
Comments 15
Very interesting. It’s nice to hear from another credible source that Fauci may be complicit. Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Dr. Franklin.
I also was taken in by Fauci’s status in the scientific community and length of service. After seeing every TV station running 24-7 chyrons with the latest hospitalizations and death counts, I dutifully got my shots and boosters….and got Covid anyway. I’m thankful that I didn’t have any of the side effects that the media plays down.
He started believing his own press and got a little too arrogant as he made the rounds of the Sunday shows. I can forgive Fauci for being wrong, but I can not forgive the lying to the American public in an attempt to save his own skin. He deserves every bit of scrutiny he’s getting, and this is yet another “conspiracy theory” that has turned out to be true.
I can forgive him for being wrong, if that’s what it was. But “being wrong” implies an unintentional erroneous action. If Fauci’s misdirections were caused, not by human error, but by guilty knowledge of his complicity in farming out (and funding) gain of function work to the Chinese, that’s a lot less forgivable. And increasingly, that’s what appears to have happened. Fauci may not tell now, but his diaries and phone records may.
I always thought there should have been a panel of experts in related fields, not necessarily all in agreement on everything. Now we find out that Fauci’s agency may have directly or indirectly created a spiked version of the virus in a foreign lab. This is like asking a bank robber to help you solve the bank robbery. Also, he shamelessly pushed the Covid vaccines, which were certainly not as effective as promised. Many people suffered serious side effects from the vaccines. There is a video of him and the DC Mayor going door to door pushing the vaccines. One African American man stood his ground claiming Fauci is dealing in fear, the information wasn’t settled and why are they incentivizing people to get the “free” vaccine. Pardon or not, Fauci will never have to answer for the mental health crisis and suicides that his recommended lockdowns resulted in, business destruction, neighbor on neighbor vitriol, negative impact on student learning…He was once put on a pedestal, now he has been knocked off hard. But he got his 15 minutes of fame with the Hollywood crowd and he gets to keep his monster pension.
Fauci needs to be strung up. There can be mo mercy here, he knew what he was doing, he lied (and then hides behind a “pardon” and the 5th Amendment) and we all suffered untold damages. My mother died in a nursing home from “complications of covid.” I want his head.
The Gordian knot for doling his punishment is that it must be directed by the political actors who once vigorously enabled him and proxied him their groupthink.
Self-flagellation is owed but not forthcoming.
The virus did not leak from the lab. It was released intentionally.
Fauci is just another in the long list of criminal physicians hired by US govt to do biological warfare preparation. It started when US ‘forgave’ Nazi MDs Blome and Traub for their euthanasia work and weaponization of various biological agents during WWll. Despite their crimes against humanity they lived and worked as high ranking US govt employees (and naturalized citizens) just like Fauci. In fact we ‘forgave’ over 300 Nazi scientists that we brought over.
I have a Masters degree in molecular virology and did virus research before and during medical school. IT WAS FACT back then that it took hundreds if not thousands of years for almost any virus to be able to transfer from animal to human. But all of a sudden it’s being taught that ‘certain’ animal respiratory viruses can readily transfer from animal to infect humans. BS! It occurs because the viruses have been weaponized, ie ‘gain of function’. It needs to stop. We should start by removing the names of the Nazi war criminals, ie, von Braun etc, off any govt. buildings and labs.
A classic misdirection by the media and the government. It is debatable that the virus was intentionally released or was accidental, but it’s pretty clear it did not come from a bat kissing a pangolin. (Oh, look! There’s a research lab 2 miles from the market! Could it have come from there? Nah! Nothing to see there!) I suspect it was an accident, but the cover up was political, either protecting the Chinese or Fauci and the researchers. With his pardon, Fauci had a golden opportunity at the hearing to present all his evidence and explain his rationale ” based on the science”. But, he did not. And we’re not supposed to question him?
The other question is: what the hell are we doing dealing with a Commie lab in a country that plans on destroying us. That’s the real story.
You are 100% right, Dr. Rudd! Based on Wikipidia on Covid – 19 Pandemic, I read:
“In a congressional hearing on May 11, 2021, about Anthony Fauci’s role as the Chief Medical Advisor to the United States Office of the President, senator Rand Paul stated that “the U.S. has been collaborating with Shi Zhengli of the Wuhan Virology Institute, sharing discoveries about how to create super viruses. This gain-of-function research has been funded by the NIH.” Fauci responded “with all due respect, you are entirely and completely incorrect…the NIH has not ever and does not now fund gain-of-function research [conducted at] the Wuhan Institute of Virology.”[88] The Washington Post fact-checking team later concurred with Fauci!
Theologically speaking, the seeds of Covid-19 pandemic were planted right here by Biden -Obama team on this side of Atlantic and Queen Elizabeth and other Western European leaders on the other side and, finally was kicked off the ground into rest of the world by Pope Francis during 2019 Fall thru his support for the Same-Sex Unions and asking the governments of the world to approve same-sex unions!
Let me explain a little. When Biden realized Obama’s 2012 re-election was in trouble he went ahead and declared the government’s support for Gay Unions for their votes. Obama who until then have been maintaining his disapproval of gaydom, suddenly “evolved” and approved his VP’s stance! And any other president would have fired his VP for outspeaking him but Obama needed Biden right from the beginning for his political survival!
-nambi
Dr. Moreau would be proud of Fauci’s actions
Too bad there is no island to isolate this bad actor for the rest of his life
If the Covid was a crime scene then IMO the circumstantial evidence is overwhelming such that a figurative grand jury would return an indictment against the WIV. Dr Fauci was a likely accomplice. Should he be indicted as well? The evidence: The wet market was not the source of the pandemic. The first cases likely occurred in early December 2019 and maybe as early as November 2019 in a city housing a lab conducting high risk coronavirus research. The WIV was a BSL2 lab when the world’s foremost authority on Coronavirus manipulation – Dr Ralph Baric – insisted it should be a BSL3 lab. The Ecohealth Defuse grant request (2018) involving WIV as co-investigator – though denied funding by the DARPA since it was deemed GOF research – proposed inserting a furin cleavage site (a unique feature of SARS -CoV-2 when compared to other SARS-related coronaviruses) into a coronavirus. Might the WIV gone ahead anyway? Finally, after six years, the intermediate host has not been identified.
Yes Bruce, Fauci is guilty as hell, but he was likely only a middle manager! He was the gatekeeper. Pharma does not want to sell drugs with expired patents. They want us to be sick so they can sell us “treatments” that bankrupt us. He did so with AIDS, cancer, and Covid.
It’s sad that at his advanced age, with so few years left, that he wants to face judgement with such horrible deeds on his record.
In fact, give the behavior of so many religious and lay “leaders”. One cannot help but think is organized religion a scam too?
God is perfect. The men who interpret him are not.
Fauci should come clean. If he truly repented, God would forgive him.