Virologists told the public the virus could not have come from a lab – but privately knew it was plausible

Early in the COVID pandemic in March 2020, an article in Nature Medicine — known for short as “Proximal Origin” — helped push the lab-leak theory of the origins of COVID-19 to the outer fringes. “We do not believe that any type of lab-based scenario is plausible,” its authors stated. Yet new Slack messages (till 2022) from the Proximal Origin authors, released by Sen. Rand Paul, show that in late 2021, these influential virologists
* Knew it was plausible that Wuhan scientists had created COVID-19 (genetically modified origin)
* Were still talking to Anthony Fauci's people about COVID origins.

Proximal Origin author Kristian Andersen even said in June 2020: "Most scientists I talk to believe there is a likely connection to the lab - people that are themselves doing GOF [virus gain-of-function] and culture-type of experiments, they know the risks and don’t seem to think that a natural explanation is more likely".

You can read researcher Alina Chan's damning thread here. She comments: "I cannot see how anyone can read these 1000+ pages of slack messages and still walk away thinking these Proximal Origin virologists are the good guys (or even good scientists) in this story."

Molecular biologist Richard H. Ebright commented on the revelations: "The claim – repeated literally thousands of times by journalists – that most scientists favour a natural origin of COVID and oppose a lab origin of COVID always was a lie. And almost always was a deliberate lie."

Andrew Noymer, associate professor at the UCI Program in Public Health, commented: "To everyone who threw up the 'proximal origins' ('P.O.') paper as strong evidence of zoonosis [natural spillover of the virus from animals]:
— credulous people like you believed it;
— bad-faith actors espoused it without believing it;
— its own authors, we now know from the Slacks, didn't believe it before or after publication."

Noymer is calling for retraction of the Proximal Origins paper on the grounds that it is fraudulent, in that the "Just-released Slack messages prove that conclusions in P.O. were not the good-faith beliefs of the authors."

GMWatch challenged the Proximal Origins claims from the start, arguing that a laboratory accident or research-related escape was plausible.

In 2021 FBI stopped US Customs and Border Protection from questioning Daszak

Newly released government records show that US Customs and Border Protection prepared in February 2021 to detain and question Peter Daszak, the British zoologist and former president of EcoHealth Alliance, as part of an investigation tied to the origins of COVID-19 after he landed at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport following a World Health Organization mission to China. According to the documents, investigators intended to examine the flow of US federal research funding to the Wuhan Institute of Virology and Daszak’s role in that relationship. But the interview never happened. Three days before the planned stop, the FBI’s New York Field Office intervened, instructing CBP to immediately halt the operation. The previously undisclosed episode came to light through official documents released by Republican Sen. Rand Paul.