Rand Paul Publishes Slack Chats Revealing Scientists' Doubt on Natural Origin of SARS‑CoV‑2

U.S. Senator Rand Paul released internal Slack messages from the authors of the March 2020 paper “The Proximal Origin of SARS‑CoV‑2.” The messages show that researchers—including Kristian Andersen, Edward Holmes, Robert Garry, Ian Lipkin and Andrew Rambaut—had privately considered a laboratory‑origin scenario far more plausible than their public claim that a lab origin was “implausible.”

In the chats, Andersen reportedly assigned up to a 30 % probability to a lab accident, while Holmes estimated up to 20 %. The discussion highlighted the furin cleavage site in the spike protein and referenced a 2018 grant proposal named “Project DEFUSE,” linked to work at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The leaks also cast new light on German virologist Christian Drosten’s role in the debate. The revelations challenge the long‑standing narrative that the virus most likely emerged naturally and could influence ongoing scientific and policy discussions about COVID‑19 origins.