Former U.S. Health and Sport official lies awake at night over his actions
A senior U.S. Department of Health official, who consulted with Anthony Fauci on how to downplay the lab leak, says no lessons have been learned from the outbreak and warns of the likelihood of a new pandemic due to risky experiments.
On the basis of a report from Sky News
November 27, 2023 – 6:09AM
The health official who, with Anthony Fauci, prepared the trivialization of the Wuhan lab leak, confesses that he lies awake at night because of the chain reaction of events they set in motion.
Dr. Robert Kadlec, former Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response at the U.S. Department of Health, told Australia's Sky News that he felt compelled to reveal confidential conversations he has had with Dr. Fauci, America's top infectious disease adviser, about diverting attention to the lab-leak theory.
Kadlec is no stranger, see the Senate COVID-19 Origins Report which he has been working on for years, published in April 2023. In fact, he doesn't tell much new now – except that his conscience gnaws at him. That is sometimes more telling than a complex report of more than 200 pages.
In his first television interview, which will be broadcast on Sky News on Tuesday evening, he also warns of the emergence of a new pandemic as a result of risky experiments in laboratories worldwide, saying that the lessons of Covid-19 have not been learned.
According to top virologist Ron Fouchier, virologists are now focusing on viruses that cause neurological damage. This underlines the seriousness of the matter.
"The tools of science to do this kind of synthetic biology and this risky research are not limited to China. It is also happening in the United States and possibly also in Rotterdam. It's happening in many places around the world and we could have another pandemic like this if we don't want to believe it," he says in the new Sky News documentary "What Really Happened in Wuhan, the Next Chapter".
Dr. Kadlec, who has worked for Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump and led U.S. efforts to develop a Covid-19 vaccine, said his initial intention was to downplay a lab leak to encourage China's cooperation in the early days of the outbreak.
But the public denial of the lab leak theory spiraled and the claim that Covid could have leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology quickly became a conspiracy theory.
"I usually wake up around 2 or 3 a.m. and then genuinely think about it, because it's something we've all played a part in," says Dr. Kadlec.
"Yes, we had some successes, we had some other non-successes, or failures. And part of the reason I still want to bring up this topic is because it's important that we know what happened."
Dr. Kadlec now suspects that Fauci had other reasons to divert attention from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. He said Fauci was likely worried about his reputation if it turned out that his institute had funded the "gain-of-function" research that caused the outbreak.
In this way, the shadowy non-science leads to more and more speculation.
"It would be a natural reaction from him, or anyone else, especially I think, for him to say, 'What could this do to me and our institution if we were to be at any fault or involved in this?'" A thought that must have occurred to Dutch virologists as well.
U.S. agencies, including Dr. Fauci's, funded research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology through a nonprofit organization, EcoHealth Alliance. When asked if he appears in front of the cameras to ask for forgiveness, Dr. Kadlec replied that he sees it as his duty to inform the public about the discussions that have taken place behind closed doors at the highest levels of the U.S. government.
"I just feel obligated to tell you what happened. And I think I should try to keep this factual, not to get sympathy or forgiveness, but more to get the facts straight: this is what happened. This is what we were trying to do. Did it work? No. What you actually regret is that the downstream effects were uncontrollable," he said.
There is no doubt that the administrative layer is bad at estimating the side effects of their decisions. Especially if those decisions are made behind closed doors, there is a high risk that the necessary feedback will be missing. Especially if there is no need to account for "confidential" consultations afterwards, there is no longer any obstacle to making irresponsible decisions.
The white lie grew into a medical scam of legendary proportions. The consequences included scientists publicly insisting that a lab leak was a conspiracy, even though they had suggested elsewhere that it was a likely option.
Private emails and slack messages released earlier this year show that the group of scientists assembled by Dr. Fauci initially thought it was impossible to determine whether it was a natural or genetically engineered virus based on the genetic sequence of the virus.
But the public was led to believe that there was overwhelming evidence pointing to the zoonotic origins of Covid-19. Critics were ridiculed, censored, punished, and worse, sometimes with consequences for their careers.
Dr. Kadlec has now dedicated more than 18 months to investigating how the pandemic began, examining both the natural origin hypothesis and the lab leak.
As a result of his extensive research, he believes he has "come close to the truth."
Dr. Kadlec points to the risky vaccine research on live animals by Chinese military scientist Zhou Yusen, who was creating a vaccine for Covid-19 in October 2019.
Zhou Yusen died around May 2020, three months after filing his patent for the Covid vaccine on February 24, 2020, as Sky News first revealed in a world exclusive two years ago.
"It looked like he was being censored as a result of what happened. Our evidence suggests that an incident occurred while he was doing his job, which we believe was when the virus first emerged. And whether he was held accountable through formal proceedings or not, he was definitely dead in July (2020)," Dr. Kadlec said.
When asked if it's possible that he was killed because he caused the pandemic, Dr. Kadlec said, "It's certainly possible, we considered that a plausible possibility, but we didn't have evidence to make that assessment."
Whether that evidence is there now, the article leaves open. So it probably won't – unless they think they can present it as a sensational scoop. We'll see which media will pay attention to it in that case.
On the basis of a report from Sky News
November 27, 2023 – 6:09AM
Also read Jan Bonte's detailed response to this testimony. Very worthwhile.
Yes. What I am most concerned with is the failure of the system. Which puppets happened to be in which positions of power at that moment is secondary to me. I don't think it would have been any different if there had been other people. The system forces are simply too great for that.