Dr. Anthony Fauci, the US’s chief medical adviser at the start of the pandemic, has strongly criticized a book by News Corp investigative journalist Sharri Markson that supports the ‘lab leak’ theory of Covid-19’s origins. In his newly released diaries, Fauci describes Markson’s book as ‘a bunch of nonsense.’ Fauci’s diaries were released ahead of his appearance at a Senate hearing into Covid-19 and his handling of the pandemic. The hearing, led by Republican senator Rand Paul, is a continuation of Paul’s years-long support of the lab leak theory.
Paul has accused Fauci of being involved in the origins of the pandemic and has called for his imprisonment. Fauci has refused to answer questions at the hearing, accusing Paul of an ‘unhinged’ campaign against him. In his diaries, Fauci also criticized Markson’s reporting in The Australian newspaper, which claimed that a facility in Wuhan was ‘immersed in genetically manipulating bat-coronaviruses in perilous experiments.’ On 7 May 2021, Markson reported in The Australian that Chinese military scientists ‘discussed the weaponisation of Sars coronaviruses five years before the Covid-19 pandemic’ and predicted a third world war would be fought with biological weapons.
Fauci wrote in his diary that Markson’s article ‘does not make any sense’ and that ‘something is wrong with this report.’ He also questioned why someone would want to create an agent that could infect their own population. Guardian Australia later found the ‘chilling’ document produced by Chinese military scientists in the article was based on a discredited 2015 book containing conspiracy theories about biological warfare. Markson’s story was criticised as misleading and alarmist by China analysts.
Markson’s book, ‘What Really Happened in Wuhan,’ argues that there is ‘no scientific consensus that Covid-19 has a natural origin’ and that China conspired to cover up the truth. Fauci has taken aim at the book, writing in his diary that ‘the far right continues to try and discredit me.’ Markson told Guardian Australia ‘the majority of the intelligence community now concludes that Covid-19 likely originated in a Wuhan laboratory.’ She also stated that she ‘led the way internationally exposing the role of Anthony Fauci’s agency funding 65 projects at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, funnelling the money through EcoHealth Alliance.’ The origins of the Covid-19 pandemic remain a topic of intense debate among scientists and the public. Two competing theories exist: the natural-origins hypotheses, which suggests the pandemic began when a close relative of Sars-CoV-2 jumped from a wild animal to a human, and lab leak theories, which argue that the virus emerged when Chinese scientists became infected through research-associated activities.
