NIH director Francis Collins scrambles to respond to revelations on his COVID lab leak stance following Fauci emails

The center point of focus here is an April 16th 2020 email. Francis Collins of the NIH sent an email to Fauci with the subject line “conspiracy gains momentum,” while linking to this Mediaite report.

NIH director Francis Collins is seemingly aware of the heightened public attention surrounding the recent email dump made possible by an FOIA request from BuzzFeed.

By that meaning, in a recent interview on Fox News, Collins at his most direct of moments had this to say: “I categorically deny that NIH in its grant funding in a subcontract to the Wuhan Institute of Virology was permitted to do anything that would’ve created a virus that would’ve been increased in it’s transmissibility or it’s virulence for humans. I categorically deny that.”

In his response to Martha MacCallum of Fox News, NIH director Francis Collins responds to the email reply in question by trying to make distinctions in minutia.

• Collins says he was referring to the notion that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was somehow making a “bioweapon.” He doesn’t believe in that.
• On top of that, Collins dismisses the assertion that the NIH was “complicit” in any sort of thing of that nature.
• However, NIH director Collins leaves the possibility that the virus escaped the Wuhan Institute of Virology by accident as a feasible theory.

Even so, Francis Collins attempted to downplay such beliefs. MacCallum said there was a lack of evidence to the opposite being proven about COVID developing naturally.

The Fox News host presses her guest about the Wall Street Journal report that reignited the lab leak debate. The fact that three researchers were sick in November 2019 was impossible for Collins to dispute on-air.

Collins shirked responsibility when it came to stories from the Washington Post accusing Senator Tom Cotton of espousing conspiracy theories of COVID’s origins, last year.

Other highlights from the massive email dump include: Fauci privately telling people to not wear masks if you weren’t sick, early findings from researchers pointing to COVID looking “engineered,” and the impact of the pandemic of kids being determined minimal at best.

The responses on social media are ire and annoyance. As people are upset that the establishment press doubled down on masks, asserting the potential that COVID was a naturally forming virus, and closing down schools en masse in favor of virtual learning.