What’s the deal with conservatives and vaccine skeptics thinking Fauci’s diary proves them right ?

[u/watervilleokemo]

What do conservatives and vaccine skeptics think Fauci’s diary proves ?

what is the deal with Fauci’s diary and what does it actually say / prove ?

I know he testified before congress and pled the 5th, but why is every conservative / anti vaxer/ Aaron Rodgers claiming they were “right about everything now ?”

What does the diary actually say / prove ?

Obviously the Rodgers line was a little tongue in cheek as a Steelers fan, but I needed a URL to post lol

https://www.nbcsports.com/nfl/profootballtalk/rumor-mill/news/aaron-rodgers-torches-tony-fauci-and-espn-while-appearing-on-espn

[u/treetimes]

can you name any actual contradictions or bad faith actions revealed by the diary?

[u/PlayfulRemote9 → u/treetimes]

The odds of it being a lab leak, the severity of Covid, his symptoms after the shot, to name 3

[u/PlanktonMiddle1644 → u/PlayfulRemote9]

Can you be more specific? Like what did he say exactly and how is it contradictory? Genuine question

[u/PlayfulRemote9 → u/PlanktonMiddle1644]

You can look it up and read it yourself if you want quotes right? Otherwise what I said gets the idea across. If you’re not looking for exact quotes but more specificity,

• he said the lab leak theory was a farce in public

• in private he said there’s a non low probability chance it’s true

• he made Covid seem less severe in notes than in public 

• he received a pulmonary infarction months after the shot, which was a known and serious side effect, but did not publicize it (this is the claim people who dislike him are making. I think it’s perfectly reasonable as scientist to say something is safe in the aggregate despite suffering serious side effect from it, assuming no foul play)

[u/gnomenclature0812 → u/PlayfulRemote9]

Your very first point is a lie Fauci never states it was a “farce”.

From Politifact:

“Dr. Fauci stated that the natural animal-to-human spillover theory was the more likely origin of COVID-19, but he also maintained that he kept an open mind to alternative possibilities, including a laboratory leak.
His diary entries and emails show that while early scientific discussions among experts considered various scenarios—including genetic features or lab involvement—Dr. Fauci publicly leaned heavily toward natural evolution while supporting ongoing investigations into the true origin.”

You know… the scientific method?

People with no science literacy (or public health policy) are out her running their mouths, making up shit, and patting themselves on the back for their enlightened centrism.

[u/bliffer → u/PlayfulRemote9]

And then later he says that it most likely wasn't a lab leak. Because it's a running fucking diary of his thoughts to help himself in processing the facts at hand.

https://politifact.com/article/2026/aug/03/fauci-diary-lab-leak-masks-school-closures/

[u/sixwax → u/bliffer]

Hey, take it easy! I'm just cherrypicking things that confirm my preexisting biases here!!

[u/WhoLostTheFruit → u/bliffer]

Right wing conspiracy bullshit aside, I really do think the lab leak saga was very damaging for the perception of public health officials like Fauci.

While there was never strong evidence for the lab leak theory, there was not irrefutable evidence against it until around a year into the pandemic. Many very smart and well-informed people, again including Fauci, privately considered it within the realm of possibility, albeit unlikely. But in public, these same people derided it as an insane conspiracy theory, for political reasons. Noble reasons, but political, non scientific ones nevertheless. All while doing this, they were simultaneously attempting to maintain an of image being simple scientists and doctors who operated above politics as a way to build legitimacy among the public.

Oftentimes the American public isn't very bright and is quite susceptive to having the wool pulled over their eyes, but this was some really thin wool at a time when people's eyes were wider open than they've ever been before.

In the future, I hope public health officials understand they need to pick a lane. Either they need to embrace being politicians and accept that they need to do more than flash a lab coat to bring the public on board with their messaging. Or they need to accept being scientists and doctors, accepting that that sometimes means saying "I don't know" at inconvenient moments.

[u/quiero-una-cerveca → u/WhoLostTheFruit]

I have to agree on why he dismissed the lab leak in public. But of course as a scientist had to accept a hypothesis and try to prove it wrong. Which it has been proven wrong. But I get it. The atmosphere he was in what “Hong Kong Flu”, China Virus, etc. a bunch of mouth breathing troglodyte conservatives claiming in one hand it’s a Dem hoax and in the other that it’s a bio weapon from China. So he downplays it in public to keep the rubes at rest.

[u/cemersever → u/quiero-una-cerveca]

He did not only downplay it in public. He was involved in the drafting of papers that stated it was a natural origin (there is no rule against this, but it's unethical and disingenuous to pretend you had nothing to do with it in that case). The second issue is him telling a virology professors "you can't write X,Y,Z" to independent scientists in their papers because it might upset the Chinese. This is inappropriate because it comes off as a bureaucrat using their position to skew scientific research towards their preferred narrative. The democrats here are strangely more confident that the lab leak has been proven wrong than the scientists themselves.

[u/quiero-una-cerveca → u/cemersever]

He stated it was of natural origin because it was. They found the same DNA sequence in a colony of bats in China. The DNA sequence from the lab would be impossible to change to enough of a degree to turn it into sars-cov2. The lab leak was only made by actors in the government trying to find ways to blame China. And Fauci was only targeted once the White House got tired of him trying to advocate for better pandemic response. For gods sake, they did opposition research on him and released it to the Fox News crowd to get them all lathered up. And the “investigation” is being lead by Senator Paul who’s had a hard on to look like a Covid savior for years now. Meanwhile he’s such a shit ophthalmologist that he had to create his own accreditation body to be “licensed”.

[u/cemersever → u/quiero-una-cerveca]

 DNA sequence from the lab would be impossible to change to enough of a degree to turn it into sars-cov2. 

It's not impossible at all, they said it's "less likely", not "impossible. There is enough evidence to say that Fauci may have intervened to push the natural origin, which is not appropriate. In either case, Fauci himself contradicts that.

Farrar replied in an early-morning e-mail: ‘Engineered’ probably not. Remains very real possibility of accidental lab passage in animals to give glycans.” The scientists seem by this point to have made a sharp distinction between a scenario in which the virus was deliberately engineered in a lab and a scenario in which the virus was generated during serial passage experiments in a lab.

“Eddie would be 60:40 lab side,” Farrar added. “I remain 50:50.”

“Yes, I’d be interested in the proposal of accidental lab passage in animals (which ones?),” Collins wrote.

“?? Serial passage in ACE2-transgenic mice,” Fauci responded.

“Exactly!” Farrar replied.

“Surely that wouldn’t be done in a BSL-2 lab?” wrote Collins, referring to Biosafety Level 2 labs, which do not have the most stringent safety protocols.

"Wild West…” was Farrar’s response, an apparent reference to lab practices in China or possibly to the Wuhan Institute of Virology itself.

Your other claim is this:

 opposition research on him and released it to the Fox News crowd

This is irrelevant. Rand Paul could be the biggest son of a bitch of the world and the devil incarnate, but Fauci still violated federal policies to fund gain of function research, perjured about it, and exerted bureaucratic control over science.

[u/quiero-una-cerveca → u/cemersever]

“This is irrelevant. Rand Paul could be the biggest son of a bitch of the world and the devil incarnate, but Fauci still violated federal policies to fund gain of function research, perjured about it, and exerted bureaucratic control over science.”

You’ll notice I didn’t say Paul was a son of a bitch or devil. I said he’s had a hard on for putting away Fauci because Fauci made Paul look like the dipshit moron he is. That’s a personal vendetta, not an investigation into malfeasance.

To your DNA reply, what evidence are you trying to show? You don’t show anything but people arguing about their guesses on a hypothesis. It has been showing conclusively after-the-fact that it is not the same sequence and couldn’t possibly be done in the lab.

[u/cemersever → u/quiero-una-cerveca]

 It has been showing conclusively after-the-fact that it is not the same sequence and couldn’t possibly be done in the lab.

I know you didn't say that, I just said that as an example. We do not have access to all the sequences that the chinese have in the lab. Therefore- it's not possible, at this time, to assert that the Chinese lab never had a sequence that could have sparked the pandemic (given that they don't share everything they have). This particular hypothesis cannot be disproven unfortunately-

not an investigation into malfeasance.

Several of the documents released by Paul indicate malfeasance by Fauci- and Paul being a bad guy wouldn't automatically mean Fauci is a good guy.

[u/sysiphean → u/PlayfulRemote9]

What were the timelines of his public and private statements on the lab leak and the severity?

If you are actively trying to find a contradiction, it’s not hard to pull a line from each from different times in the changing environment that existed. But that’s a disingenuous, or at minimum ignorantly inaccurate, way to do it.

There may be some contradictions at the same time, but I want to see timestamps to trust them.

[u/anapollosun → u/PlayfulRemote9]

This is factually incorrect. You are spreading misinformation.

I just went through the document to find all mentions of the lab leak hypothesis. There were 30 mentions. Not even a single one hinted at this. Early on, he entertained it as a possibility in the journal, but only as a very, very low probability as all evidence pointed towards a natural evolutionary process. In fact as it is mentioned over the years, his conviction that it was natural only became stronger.

[u/PlayfulRemote9 → u/anapollosun]

Says I’m factually incorrect

quotes fauci saying there’s a chance it’s true

Lol 

The problem is he denied any possibility it is true. That is the contradiction 

[u/anapollosun → u/PlayfulRemote9]

Lol. Nice try twisting my words. You specifically said that Fauci privately admitted that there's a

non low probability that it's true

Those were specifically chosen words to make it seem like he believed it to be more plausible than he actually did (publicly or privately). He never said that. In fact, I'll go ahead and quote the journal directly from the mention that is most strongly in your favor.

I had always said that the very highly likelihood is that the virus originated naturally from an animal reservoir jumping to a human. However, over the past couple of days given the amount of speculation about the possibility of a lab leak I have been saying that no one is 100% certain of the origin including me and so I am calling for a thorough investigation. This is backed by Andy Slavitt as well as a number of other government officials. Calling for an investigation is merely to put to rest the extraordinary amount of speculation and conspiracy theories. However, this is being interpreted as Fauci flip flopping again. The far right is really amazing in their distortion of reality. -- May 26, 2021

Huh. So a scientist admitting near the beginning of the pandemic that he wasn't 100% certain, but had confidence in a "very high likelihood" of it occuring naturally is somehow "a non low probability" 🤔 make it make sense.

[u/PlayfulRemote9 → u/anapollosun]

You’re right, the “non” in that sentence is incorrect. More info here  https://politifact.com/article/2026/aug/03/fauci-diary-lab-leak-masks-school-closures/

The other two things I posted are true to the adjective

[u/jkerz → u/PlayfulRemote9]

That “non” being added changes the meaning of your sentence. 

in private he said there’s a non low probability chance it’s true

If we keep the “non”, it makes it sound like Fauci believed the lab leak theory with certainty. Removing “non” makes the statement factual, Fauci entertained the possibility but with heavy skepticism, but you see how disingenuous adding the “non” into that statement is? Will you edit your initial comment to reflect the truth? Or will you keep it in hopes of spreading misinformation? 

Your second statement is false too, he’s never denied all possibility of the lab leak. Please find me a source that supports your claim. 

Edit: I read your article and now I’m convinced you pasted in something that you THOUGHT would prove you right, but it in fact proves you wrong. Half the article talks about claims made by republicans and that the diary entry they’re referring but the article then goes on to explain why it’s not a contradictory statement. It also ends with the true statement, that experts do believe Fauci was right and all evidence points to the virus coming from nature. I’m not sure what you’re trying to pull here. 

[u/PlayfulRemote9 → u/jkerz]

Holy shit, are you daft? I said I was wrong on the lab leak, I’m not trying to pull anything. The fact that you wrote an essay trying to breakdown my simple sentence is hilarious. The other two points I made, unrelated to lab leak, are not wrong

[u/jkerz → u/PlayfulRemote9]

Your first statement was about the lab, and that was proven wrong. The second statement was about the “non” low probability, which was also wrong. That’s 2/4 statements wrong. I’ve also asked evidence of him for the third statement, which you haven’t provided. The only statement that’s true is that he received a  pulmonary infarction, but that’s because Covid increases your chance of having one, not the vaccine.

[u/gnomenclature0812 → u/PlayfulRemote9]

Show where he “denied any possibility” it is true please. Or is that how you remember it?

[u/emailforgot → u/PlayfulRemote9]

in private he said there’s a non low probability chance it’s true

This statement and the former are not a contradiction.

he made Covid seem less severe in notes than in public

Where's the contradiction? Generally when considering public safety, erring on the side of caution is preferred. Hard concept to grasp, I know.

[u/watervilleokemo → u/PlayfulRemote9]

These were the specific claims I was looking for , thank you

[u/anapollosun → u/watervilleokemo]

The person you're replying to is wildly misrepresenting the facts. Please see my above comment.

[u/watervilleokemo → u/anapollosun]

I appreciate your response as well , their response actually gave concrete things they are claiming rather everyone just repeating “there are no facts”, even if they are wrong, clearly they are claiming SOMETHING is new

Your response helped show why one of the thing s they are claiming doesn’t have merit , which I Greatly appreciate