Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) released a more than 1000-page report revealing that the authors and scientists behind the infamous “Proximal Origin” paper doubted their own conclusions.
The paper, published in 2020, sought to provide an explanation for the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic. It argued that “any type of lab-based scenario” was not “plausible.”
Following the paper’s publication, authors Kristian Andersen and Eddie Holmes exchanged messages backtracking on their initial conclusions. “Our paper was pretty strong in saying ‘there’s no way,’ but I have less confidence in that statement at this stage,” Andersen wrote. He went on to admit that the paper misstated a key element about bat-coronaviruses: where the paper said the work is performed all over the world, it has “exclusively been going on at the [Wuhan Institute of Virology] (WIV),” the author wrote in a message.
Another author, Andrew Rambaut, encouraged the other authors to either “stay off email” or to “carefully curate some emails for the FOI records.” He also cautioned against association with scientists Peter Daszak and Ralph Baric.
In a statement on the new messages, Paul said, “Behind closed doors, the scientists who authored the Proximal Origin paper privately questioned their own conclusions. Publicly, however, they shamed, attacked, and censored those who raised legitimate questions—all in the name of damage control.” He added that the “cover-up is not a question. It is only a question of how pervasive,” and doubled down on his call for “accountability for every lie and every effort to keep the public in the dark.”
In 2023, American Faith reported that the then-Chairman of the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, former Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-OH), released an interim report detailing that the report skewed the available evidence to align with a narrative as envisioned by Dr. Anthony Fauci.
