The Private Messages Rand Paul Just Released Could Change Everything We Were Told About COVID

Sen. Rand Paul released internal Slack messages Tuesday revealing that authors of a key 2020 scientific paper on the origins of COVID-19 privately expressed significant doubts about their own public conclusions.

The paper, “The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2,” published in Nature Medicine, was widely cited as evidence against a laboratory origin. Yet the messages show author Kristian Andersen assigning a 30 percent probability to a lab origin and Eddie Holmes initially estimating 20 percent.

Andersen later wrote, “We really don’t have any hard evidence one way or the other… Our paper was pretty strong in saying ‘there’s no way,’ but I have less confidence in that statement at this stage.”

Paul stated, “The idea that it came from a lab is implausible, and, yet, privately they’re saying the opposite. … This level of dishonesty, I think, needs to be exposed.”

The documents also show the authors discussing the furin cleavage site and coordinating with intelligence and NIH officials. Paul has subpoenaed Dr. Anthony Fauci to testify later this month on the origins of the virus.