John Bickley (4:01)

And to be clear, you're saying January 2020, there's evidence that they knew all the way back then that this most likely came from the Wuhan lab.

Michael Shellenberger (4:09)

Yeah. And not only that, but that it was multiple agencies that knew that in the United States and then multiple intelligence agencies around the world. I mean, it's worth noting that just less than a week ago, and just a few days before the British announcement, two major newspapers in Germany revealed that the German Foreign Intelligence Service, their version of the CIA, had also believed that there was a 80 to 90% chance that the coronavirus had leaked from a Chinese lab. So we don't know if that was all relying on the same intel or if it was different intel. But you certainly had many intelligence agencies in different countries all concluding the same thing.

John Bickley (4:47)

Right. So credible sources of their own, government agencies that are then suppressed by those governments in order to pursue this other narrative that protects not just China, but entities like the NIH here in the US I wanted to highlight that the journal Nature was the one behind the proximal origin paper. They've just released another study last month claiming there's, quote, mounting evidence that points to raccoon dogs as the most likely source of COVID 19. So they're doubling down on this. Is it too strong to say that this is a disgraced journal at this point? That's lost credibility? Yeah.

Michael Shellenberger (5:18)

Oh, 100%. Nature's been behaving badly in a number of areas, basically showing that they have a political agenda that they put before science. So. But, I mean, the entire scientific establishment is implicated by this. You know, the most Important figure in of it all is Anthony Fauci. You know, there's a video of him in 2020 saying, When I heard that this coronavirus had come from Wuhan, the first thing I thought was wet market. Well, I just, I mean, that's like absurd. He's the one that basically skirted the US Ban on coronavirus gain of function research, moved it to China and moved it to the Wuhan Institute of Virology. So I'm sure that when he heard that there was a coronavirus this year from Wuhan, his thought was not wet market, it was Wuhan Institute of Virology. And, oh, God, I can't believe that this happened. And, you know, you sort of see it and he just looks. You just kind of look at it now, obviously in context, and it just appears to be this is one of the most significant cover ups of last 100, 200 years. I mean, it's hard to find a bigger one.

John Bickley (6:29)

Yeah. And like you've highlighted here, increasing evidence and consensus that the origin was in fact what everyone assumed. That was using common sense at the beginning, the Wuhan lab, which makes the most sense. I want to talk about the media response to this. So we talked about nature a little bit, but the New York Times has gotten a lot of blowback in the last few days. They just published an opinion piece saying we were misled about the origin of the virus. And a lot of people are slamming the New York Times, saying, you had a great deal of responsibility in how you covered this. How have you seen the media responding to new evidence and trying to redirect or correct course in the intervening months?

Michael Shellenberger (7:05)

Well, I think people are correctly angry because the person that wrote it is somebody who essentially got the CDC to reverse its position on masks. Now, we don't think that mask mandates had any effect, and of course, we think that they actually had a pretty significant negative effect, particularly on children. Obviously led to a whole set of culture wars. It became a kind of symbol. This is Zeynep Tufeki, who wrote this article. And so I think, you know, the grammar in particular, which was we were badly misled, rubbed people the wrong way, since people think that it was the New York Times who badly misled people. I mean, I observed something else which I think is just as important, which is that over the last several weeks we've had the media just raising the alarm that Trump is going to cut funding for medical research. There's actually a dispute about that because the real issue is that they're demanding that the National Institutes of health reduce the so called indirect costs, which are supposedly overhead to just 15% of the project rather than, you know, in some cases it's 50% or more, which is just clearly overcharging. Well, here you have a very concrete situation where you have US Taxpayer funded medical research that according to the New York Times now and everybody else appears to have led to the coronavirus pandemic and then turning around and like literally in the same breath talking about how outrageous it is that Elon Musk would be auditing the agencies or that the Trump administration would be investigating whether the medical research is being well spent. In fact, Zeynep Tufeki criticized Elon, you know, just last month for, you know, how dare he be involved in this audit. And there must be something nefarious. I mean, there's just a lack of self awareness on the part of the media elites here that is pretty typical of their behavior. I mean, this is a situation where we need significantly more public and white executive branch oversight of our medical institutions. So for them to just turn around and pretend like none of this happened on Covid is particularly galling.

John Bickley (9:09)

Now, you mentioned Fauci. Trump has just made the statements declaring that Biden's preemptive pardons for Anthony Fauci and others are invalid. His argument is that all of these pardons were signed by an auto pin and thus Biden did not actively sign them and allegedly was not even fully aware what was being enacted in his name. Trump's going to try to make that case. We'll see if that holds up. But related to this topic, a lot of people are looking for some sort of accountability, particularly from Fauci. What do you see coming on that front? What investigations are ongoing with congressional members? Where can we look for potential accountability?

Michael Shellenberger (9:41)

Yeah, I mean, first I should say I don't, I don't know that I'm comfortable with this idea that you would revoke pardons. I just think that that opens up a whole panel Pandora's box that I don't think we want to do. And I appreciate the desire people have to get some revenge on Fauci. He certainly appears to have done wrong in many ways. But the most important thing is just to get the truth out. And whatever it takes to do that I think is important. And so I don't know what's possible legally, but I mean, we still don't have all the documents. I mean, we, we reported on a bunch of the documents, but there's just got to be a lot more there at nih. And at the National Institutes of Allergies and Infectious Diseases. There's probably more from various agencies, including the intelligence community. I mean, our sources were in the intelligence community who told us this. We had multiple sources. You know, later we actually had another source that came out and said that the FBI knew since at leave March of 2020, that Covid was the result of a lab leak. And that's because a Chinese national from Wuhan was working as a confidential human source for the FB, and they told their handler at the FBI's Chinese Intelligence Squad, which means that probably the whole squad of 25 people knew. I mean, it's one of those things where in our other reporting as well on these things, you're always a little shocked by how many people knew and they were able to keep it a secret for so long. So we've got to get to the bottom of it. There was this idea spread by Fauci that, oh, we will probably never know where it came from. The evidence is trending in the direction where it appears that there's a growing consensus, including from the folks that had said that the lab leak theory was racist. That was a New York Times reporter increasing consensus that it was a lab leak and that there is more evidence coming out. So I'm happy to see the President push for it. I don't think that. I think the priority should be on getting the truth out, not on prosecuting or incarcerating people that lied.

John Bickley (11:36)

We've seen so far this administration seems like it's pretty committed to transportation transparency. Let's hope that holds up and we get some more transparency on this issue. Thank you so much for talking with us.

Michael Shellenberger (11:46)

Thanks for having me.

John Bickley (11:47)

That was Michael Shellenberger, and this has been a weekend edition of Morning Wire.