From Fauci to Fiction: Doc Promises COVID Origins, Delivers HIV Lies

Thank You, Dr. Fauci (TYDF) is a documentary promoted as an investigation of COVID-19 origins. Yet, what director Jenner Furst calls a “docu-thriller” [[21]] could be more accurately placed in the subgenre of documentaries lying about HIV. COVID-19 is presented as the latest infectious disease outbreak resulting from scientists’ hubris: HIV/AIDS, Lyme disease, Ebola virus disease, and now COVID-19. There is no evidence supporting a laboratory origin for any of these diseases. The real achievement of TYDF is undermining the credibility of a handful of the scientists who appeared in the movie and claim otherwise. Having failed to make a coherent argument in support of a lab origin of the COVID-19 pandemic, these scientists now help promote a myth that was rightly rejected five years ago: that SARS-CoV-2 was engineered from HIV.

[[21]]: From Incite Studios' press release: "Furst calls his new film a 'docu-thriller' asking viewers to consider painfully uncomfortable questions."

The film was released in late October 2024 for direct sales to viewers. Its advertising campaign largely consisted of paying influencers to support a contrived censorship narrative. On Instagram, accounts including @thatconspiracygirl simultaneously boosted the producers' claims of censorship by Meta (Instagram's parent company).

By all appearances, TYDF was simply too boring and too expensive (initially priced at $19.99) to catch on without an assist. It started airing on the Tucker Carlson Network in late December and is now being promoted across the media empire of Tucker Carlson and Neil Patel.

The supporting evidence in TYDF is objectively false. So, why are some scientists promoting the film? Since I first drafted this review, it was announced that two scientists who appeared in TYDF will be nominated for prominent health positions in the Trump administration. Marty Makary of Johns Hopkins University (Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration) asked his social media followers to "check out the new documentary" while Jay Bhattacharya of Stanford University (Director of the National Institutes of Health) said "it's a must watch film." They and other scientists featured in the film have discussed and promoted the movie on social media and podcasts—invariably and revealingly without detailing the film's HIV-centered "lab leak" theory.

Within Furst’s narrative, a cabal of scientists led by Anthony Fauci has, for decades, published fraudulent research to cover up the truth: infectious diseases arise from science gone awry, and scientists suppress this knowledge to attract biodefense research funding and profit from pharmaceutical interventions. TYDF ties together vaccine research and a laboratory origin of SARS-CoV-2 by centering its story on sequences in SARS-CoV-2 “that don't look natural and could be from HIV.” The paper reporting this was then “withdrawn under intense pressure” from the cabal following a meeting on February 3rd, 2020. The only problem? The paper was withdrawn on February 2nd, so a February 3rd meeting had nothing to do with it [[1]]. Data, both in that paper and from subsequent sequencing of animal viruses, proved that these sequences were not copied from HIV. Thus, it is certain that both the central molecular theory of lab origin in TYDF and the theory that virologists conspired to suppress discussion of it are false.

[[1]]: The paper was posted as a preprint on January 31st and the revision to withdraw the paper was posted on February 2nd.

Pradhan, P. et al. WITHDRAWN: Uncanny Similarity of Unique Inserts in the 2019-nCoV Spike Protein to HIV-1 Gp120 and Gag. bioRxiv. 2020. https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.01.30.927871

Furst borrows footage from The Origin of AIDS (2004), which promoted the disproven theory that HIV/AIDS originated from polio vaccination. That documentary omitted interviews with scientists discussing contradictory evidence [[2]]. Its producer argued, "We were not doing a scientific debate." Furst repackages this myth, and other egregious factual errors in TYDF suggest that he did not consider contradictory evidence at all. In Furst’s telling, Lyme disease, caused by an ancient human pathogen [[3]], is “an augmented strain of Rocky Mountain fever.” This is impossible, as the causative bacterial species are very different, most recently sharing a common ancestor billions of years ago.

[[2]]: "[Beatrice] Hahn and [Michael] Worobey are both disturbed that although filmmakers Peix and Chappell interviewed them extensively and accompanied them on research trips, the film only features scientists sympathetic to Hooper."

Staff. Film Raises Ire Over HIV Origins. Wired. May 13, 2004. https://www.wired.com/2004/05/film-raises-ire-over-hiv-origins/

[[3]]: Analysis of DNA from Ötzi the Iceman revealed infection by B. burgdorferi, the bacterial species that causes Lyme disease. Researchers examining the corpse estimated that the individual died several thousand years prior before humans began to conduct biological research in laboratories.

Keller, A. et al. New Insights into the Tyrolean Iceman’s Origin and Phenotype as Inferred by Whole-Genome Sequencing. Nature Communications. 2012. https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms1701

In TYDF, Fauci’s cabal is responsible not only for creating infectious diseases and covering them up, but also for the negative consequences of every public health decision made responding to them. It makes no sense to connect the two, and TYDF doesn't try to make sense of it.

Robert Redfield, then CDC director, is portrayed as wrongly blamed for pandemic missteps, saying “I got iced out.” The implication that Fauci was responsible for Redfield’s diminished role is undercut by Redfield previously attributing this to the Secretary of Health [[5]]. Redfield claims early awareness of human-to-human transmission in Wuhan, saying, “We knew by the first couple of days in January that this wet market story, in my view, was a ruse.” Yet, he announced on January 14 [[6]], “There is no confirmed person-to-person spread.” Although now saying he was marginalized because he doubted zoonotic origin, Redfield was asked about origins at an early-pandemic press conference and did not appear concerned that others assumed a zoonotic origin [[7]]. None of these contradictions are included in TYDF.

[[5]]: Redfield was asked why his public role in the pandemic response was reduced and he did not mention Fauci:

Q: "But you're in charge of it. So why, when we went back and looked at the numbers. In January, you did 10 media telebriefings. In February, you did eight, and then it fell off a cliff. There were two in March, zero in April, zero in May. Why?"

A: "I would say, you know, that ultimately the ability to do those briefings had to be cleared by the secretary of health's office for us to be able to do those. That's the system that's in place under the current relationship between CDC and the secretary of health."

Kelly, M. L. Outgoing CDC Director Warns Of Pandemic’s Peak: “We’re About To Be In The Worst Of It.” NPR. 2021.
https://www.npr.org/2021/01/15/957287120/outgoing-cdc-director-warns-of-peak-pandemic-were-about-to-be-in-the-worst-of-it

[[6]]: Redfield's tweet from January 14, 2020 is archived here. He wrote: "There is no confirmed person-to-person spread of illness in the pneumonia outbreak reported in China. @CDCgov reports no US cases. We are monitoring the situation closely. #coronavirus"

Cloud, D. S.; Pringle, P.; Stokols, E. How Trump let the U.S. fall behind the curve on coronavirus threat. Los Angeles Times. 2020. https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-04-19/coronavirus-outbreak-president-trump-slow-response

[[7]]: January 28, 2020 Coronavirus News Conference. https://www.c-span.org/video/?468647-1/coronavirus-news-conferenc

In TYDF, the imagined HIV research origin of SARS-CoV-2 is not only a narrative device linking the origins of COVID-19 and HIV/AIDS. It also becomes a tool for exploiting Robert Redfield’s patients when it is used to explain why they have long COVID. Since leaving the CDC, Redfield has specialized in what he describes in TYDF as "post-COVID symptoms from the mRNA vaccine." The fact that Redfield is, by far, the physician most highly compensated to promote a different vaccine is not mentioned [[31]]. Worse, TYDF misrepresents the sacrifices made by healthcare workers who died while fighting Ebola in Sierra Leone in 2014, blaming them and surviving colleagues for an invented lab origin of an outbreak that actually started in Guinea in 2013 [[4]]. Even when it comes to the actual horrors of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, TYDF doesn't bother to get the facts right [[32]]. Neil L. Harrison of Columbia University had a chance to rebut these inaccuracies on a recent podcast; he decided not to [[33]].

[[31]]: Redfield has been a paid advisor for Novavax, which makes vaccine based on a protein rather than mRNA platform, since 2021. He was paid $160,000 in 2023: https://openpaymentsdata.cms.gov/company/100001281931

He was more explicit in a recent podcast with Dana Parish than he is in TYDF. He said, "This is why I'm not an advocate anymore of the mRNA vaccines. I think there's a better alternative with the protein vaccine, which is made by Novavax." The podcast is not linked here because Redfield shared personal details about patients with no indication that they provided consent.

[[4]]: Results of this initial epidemiological investigation were proven several times over as additional genomic epidemiological studies were carried out on samples from patients from this outbreak. According to TYDF, this work by a huge number of scientists spanning the globe is a coverup orchestrated by Anthony Fauci.

Baize, S. et al. Emergence of Zaire Ebola Virus Disease in Guinea. New England Journal of Medicine. 2014. https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJMoa1404505

[[32]]: According to one TYDF producer in one of the Zoom segments in TYDF, "When you look at abuses of government power, information takes such a long time to come out." Another producer continues, "The Tuskegee experiment was a U.S.-backed program. For 40 years, the U.S. government injected over 600 Black men with syphilis without telling them."

In reality, in that study, subjects with pre-existing infections were not informed of their diagnosis and were not treated following the standard of care at the time, even as therapy improved dramatically. The horror of the study isn't that "it took a long time to come out," but rather that the study continued as results were published for decades without hiding the fundamental ethical flaws.

[[33]]: Harrison was a guest on Bryce Nickels' podcast in mid-November.

Nickels: "You have recently been featured in a film discussing the origin that we're not going to talk about right now. But in fact, you're wearing the very same yellow hoodie that you appear on in that film."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pFQS6hA5Bw

Science aside, TYDF falls flat. A quarter of TYDF consists of calls between Furst and co-producers (“First of all, thank you both for getting on the Zoom” is quite the opening line). Most interviews are erratically edited—spliced together in 5-second soundbites that build tension rather than convey information. Tension is punctuated by tedious segments, such as Furst listening to Fauci’s memoir while driving through a Burbank car wash. The climactic scene in a Congressional building lacks the expected confrontation between Furst and Fauci. Instead, Furst chases Rep. Jamie Raskin, who calmly offers to consider new evidence.

Yet, when it comes to COVID-19 origins, TYDF offers no new evidence. Rather than ask two interviewees about their theory that a sequence originated in a lab in North Carolina [[8]], TYDF makes an innumerate case that it originated in a lab in Massachusetts [[9]]. Another interviewee in TYDF recently described yet another anomaly in the same sequence. Three unrelated smoking guns in one place? Maybe you're at a firing range and not a crime scene.

[[8]]: Harrison and Jeffrey Sachs argued for a theory in which a sequence was engineered in North Carolina, because a different lab in North Carolina once studied the same sequence. They have yet to flesh out their theory for how this managed to get to Wuhan and start a pandemic.

Harrison, N. L.; Sachs, J. D. A Call for an Independent Inquiry into the Origin of the SARS-CoV-2 Virus. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 2022. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2202769119

[[9]]: TYDF instead prefers a narrative in which the reverse complement of the sequence came from a Moderna patent, which provides a narrative link between laboratory origin and the film's anti-vaccine section. The earliest example I can find of this theory is an anonymous post to a Chinese language bulletin board, now offline. A few months later, it was picked up without attribution by English language conspiracy theorists on Twitter. A few days after that, a manuscript was submitted to a scientific journal implausibly claiming to have independently discovered this using a BLAST search. A commentary was published showing how the whole thing is an unremarkable coincidence.

Dubuy, Y.; Lachuer, H. Commentary: MSH3 Homology and Potential Recombination Link to SARS-CoV-2 Furin Cleavage Site. Frontiers in Virology. 2022. https://doi.org/10.3389/fviro.2022.914888

By portraying Redfield as a skeptical hero and Fauci as a villain in the conspiracy to suppress the truth, TYDF reprises their roles in House of Numbers: Anatomy of an Epidemic (2009), which denied the existence of HIV. Then, some scientists interviewed, including Redfield, protested that they had been misled and that their words had been used out of context [[10]]. This hasn't occurred with TYDF and appears unlikely to happen. Scientists in TYDF almost never discuss science. They focus instead on accusing colleagues of misconduct, always with an imprecision that reveals the hollowness of the accusations. As in House of Numbers, Redfield gets the last word in TYDF. And, again, his words are twisted to suit the narrative of the film [[51]]. Elsewhere in TYDF, Redfield says, "We have a right to make mistakes, but where I get upset is if we don't acknowledge our mistakes so we don't make the same mistake next time."

[[51]]: This was my impression when I watched the movie, and still is my impression. Robert Redfield's closing line: "The great pandemic is coming. It's going to be a bird flu pandemic." Despite avian influenza H5N1 increasingly infecting animal species and humans, TYDF treats this as if it's a prophecy of a lab leak H5N1 pandemic. Redfield recently spoke about this at a Heritage Foundation event and he is clearly focused on a natural H5N1 pandemic: "If we do get a flu virus—a bird flu virus—that knows how to go human to human efficiently, we're gonna have a catastrophic pandemic. There's no doubt about it." However, he adds: "That said, I don't think that that's the greatest threat. I think the greatest threat is the gain-of-function research." He then goes on to confusingly say that scientists in Wisconsin are "teaching" both H5N1 and COVID "to infect humans." Redfield has not detailed his Wisconsin COVID-19 pandemic origins theory. Good luck making sense of all of this—I can't.

[[10]]: A review of House of Numbers details this history. Anthony Fauci was one of the scientists interviewed for that film who did not sign the letter protesting it. He had no reason to sign, since he did not take the bait from filmmakers to criticize colleagues.

Burki, T. House of Numbers. Lancet Infectious Diseases. 2009. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1473-3099(09)70316-0

Professors at Rutgers, Columbia, Stanford, Johns Hopkins, and Cold Spring Harbor prominently feature in the film and promotional material. Why? Whatever the reason is, TYDF does not educate people about COVID-19 origins. The factual errors in TYDF extend far beyond those discussed in this review [[11]]. For example, the film suggests that Moderna, the NIH, and the University of North Carolina conspired with an agreement in mid-December to profit on the pandemic; the film doesn't mention that the agreement was for a MERS vaccine candidate.

Interviews with scientific researchers in TYDF largely serve to provide color: "Fauci's legacy is bullshit," says one. Redfield twice compares Fauci to Oppenheimer [[43]], arguing that "Oppenheimer learned the hard way that there's a downside to science," but that "Tony [Fauci] doesn't see the downside to science. And that is a big problem." Another scientist argues this doesn't go far enough because, "With viruses, it's like that on steroids. This research may have killed 200 times as many people as Hiroshima and Nagasaki." None of the interviews address the flaws in evidence presented. As far as I know, thus far none of the people interviewed have said anything critical of the film.

[[43]]: This reference was apparently deemed too obscure for the audience at the Daily Caller, where a reviewer wrote, "If 'Thank You, Dr. Fauci' gets it all right, it’s no exaggeration to call Fauci a Hitlerian figure."

https://dailycaller.com/2024/12/19/tucker-carlson-network-tcn-jenner-furst-anthony-fauci-documentary/

Instead, the pandemic origin theorizing is handled by characters such as David Asher, who works for a political think tank and explains why he thinks people on the other side of the world would conspire to cover up a pandemic lab origin in Wuhan, China. Others pitch in to support this and it peaks with Furst demanding to know, "What are Fauci and Pfizer doing in the CIA building?" TYDF baselessly suggests that Fauci, pharmaceutical companies, or both had a conservative activist killed.

Regarding the “HIV inserts” that tenuously hold TYDF together, I mailed authors of that paper to ask what happened. I heard back four hours later: they decided to withdraw the paper after others twisted some unfortunate word choice in their paper into a bioweapons conspiracy theory. Almost five years later, TYDF does that again, and it is regrettable that scientists are promoting it.

[[11]]: If you doubt this, find literally anyone who knows literally anything about the topic and ask if this representation of SARS-CoV-2 replication is accurate (snippet from TYDF that was released in a promotional clip shared by social media influencers).