By John Paluska, Founder of The Daily Fodder

A new conspiracy theory has recently sprouted arguing Dr. Fauci planned for a Coronavirus outbreak during Trump's Administration. Amid the others out there (a Coronavirus vaccine with the mark of the beast in it, China purposely trying to infect the world with Coronavirus, and the WHO being a Chinese propaganda arm), this one might just have the most evidence to support it.

The conspiracy theory goes that the virus is the result of a bat disease transmitted to humans that broke out in a Laboratory in Wuhan. Now, this was all planned because the State Department visited this Wuhan lab in 2018 and warned that an outbreak was very likely. But back in 2017, the theorists cry, Fauci stated a pandemic was likely to happen in the next Administration (e.g. President Trump's). And, finally, Dr. Fauci was speaking of a pre-planned outbreak because he funded the project that released Coronavirus in that Wuhan lab.

It sounds something of a Dystopian Science Fiction novel. A lone doctor approves funding for a grant to research an infectious disease found in bats in Wuhan where, years later a planned virus breaks out and the government completely removes everyone's rights globally through all governments having a hive mind. But what if this one could be true? What if it isn't a dystopian novel at all, but actually factual?

We may never know for sure, but here's some interesting food for thought.

It was reported that in 2015 Dr. Fauci did, in fact approve a 3.7 million dollar grant which supposedly completely funded Wuhan Coronavirus experiments with bats. This isn't fiction. This isn't "fake news." This is a veritable, reported-on fact.

Secondly, to the conspiracists' point, Dr. Fauci did, in fact, (along with CDC deputy director for global outbreaks Dr. Hamid Jafari) state that the Trump Adminisration is likely to have a pandemic outbreak ten days before Trump took office on January 10, 2017. But even further, Fauci said it would be a surprise.

Thirdly, State Department Science Diplomats DID visit the Wuhan lab multiple times in 2018 and warned the safety procedures were abysmal. They did this because the lab reportedly became China's first international bioresearch safety lab. But, nonetheless, the warning signs were there, they were almost completely ignored, and now we have an outbreak of pandemic proportions.

So, to the conspiracists' credit, all of the facts they are referencing are completely true. But here's a few they missed that solidifies their case further:

Behavioral Science has been a very busy field in the last 40 years. But nobody knew much about it until recently when a flurry of books were published left and right due to President Trump clinching the nomination from Hillary Clinton. "Propaganda" became a buzzword and "behavioral science" right along with it.

But in 1981, Daniel Kahneman, one of the founders of the field of Behavioral Science, researched the importance of what is called "framing" (a term that had forever changed the field of communications. I learned about its importance at university in almost all of my classes). Framing is when you selectively "reframe" words and phrases to state things that are still true, but do not provide the right picture of the situation. In Kahneman and Tversky's iconic study that forever changed an entire field, they postulated something called the "asian virus."

Here is the original study word-for-word:
"The effect of variations in framing is illustrated in problems 1 and 2. 
Problem 1 [N = 152]: Imagine that the U.S. is preparing for the outbreak of an unusual Asian disease, which is expected to kill 600 people. Two alternative programs to combat the disease have been proposed. Assume that the exact scientific estimate of the consequences of the programs are as follows:
If Program A is adopted, 200 people will be saved. [72 percent] 
If Program B is adopted, there is 1/3 probability that 600 people will be saved, and 2/3 probability that no people will be saved. [28 percent] 
Which of the two programs would you favor? 
The majority choice in this problem is risk averse: the prospect of certainly saving 200 lives is more attractive than a risky prospect of equal expected value, that is, a one-in-three chance of saving 600 lives. 
A second group of respondents was given the cover story of problem 1 with a different formulation of the alternative programs, as follows: 
Problem 2 [N = 155]: If Program C is adopted 400 people will die. [22 percent] 
If Program D is adopted there is 1/3 probability that nobody will die, and 2/3 probability that 600 people will die. [78 percent] 
Which of the two programs would you favor? 
The majority choice in problem 2 is risk taking: the certain death of 400 people is less acceptable than the two-in-three chance that 600 will die. The preferences in problems 1 and 2 illustrate a common pattern: choices involving gains are often risk averse and choices involving losses are often risk taking. However, it is easy to see that the two problems are effectively identical. The only difference between them is that the outcomes are described in problem 1 by the number of lives saved and in problem 2 by the number of lives lost. The change is accompanied by a pronounced shift from risk aversion to risk taking. We have observed this reversal in several groups of respondents, including university faculty and physicians. Inconsistent responses to problems I and 2 arise from the conjunction of a framing effect with contradictory attitudes toward risks involving gains and losses."
 This insightful research proved that, if things are simply phrased a certain way, people will be able to be steered into whichever direction the asker requires of them. Much like what is going on right now.

Many will notice the arguments framed in the "Asian Virus" study are quite similar to what the current requests are:

If we don't have a lockdown, then 2 million people will die. But if we do have a lockdown, we have a 1/3 probability that nobody will die but a 2/3 probability that 3 million people will die.

They used that infamous, profoundly inaccurate London Imperial College Model to argue that no action at all is the 3 million deaths (which is absurd because people began acting anyways to do their part. So nobody was really "doing nothing"), but a lockdown has the probability to kill nobody, but at most will kill 3 million (due to other studies showing crowding people into rooms will only propagate the virus).

Now, one may argue that the Kahneman study was from 40 years ago, and not right before the pandemic, so it probably wasn't reference but, this isn't the only study to prove framing works. The same and following years Dr. Fauci funded that Wuhan virology lab, an explosion of framing studies took place. One of them was presented to Harvard medical students and asked about how they would act if a "flu virus" impacted their city. The study found that, depending on how the situation was presented to them, they would follow the choice engineered to sound the most pleasing, despite it actually being the better option.

Another study came out that same year that argued people who do not have a personal risk of something will be more rational and level-headed about decisions affecting others than if they thought they were at risk. In other words, if you tell a person they are at risk to lose something, then they will make irrational decisions, even if you present them another option. The study also proved that people would take the more optimistic option even if it didn't make any sense. Therefore, it also confirmed the "Asian Virus" study from the 1980s. This is important, because the earliest reports of the Coronavirus made everyone fear for their lives, thus, as the study showed, reducing their ability to think clearly and optimally under pressure.

But it doesn't end there. At least 3 other studies (here, here, and here), including one concerning health policy, came out that SPECIFICALLY deal with framing in regard to health care, decision-making for old people, and even whether framing still works if you add in the other side of the argument, but as supplementary information. They all confirmed the 1981 and 2015 studies that simply reframing a problem into one that makes your option look better and the other option seem horrendous will be the option the overwhelming majority of people take.

In particular, the health policy study is specifically in regard to health policy researchers (or "experts") and whether these experts will still choose the options that are "better" for everyone's health by using framing to change the decision. Here's the interesting part, tthe study instead revealed the same framing shortcomings are also present in the heath "experts" themselves. Meaning that there is ample data out there already that suggests the "experts" can be made just as clueless as an average pedestrian on the street!

The study states:
New fields such as Health Policy and Systems Research (HPSR) have arisen to meet the growing demands of policymakers, researchers and practitioners for research that helps solve the problems of health systems in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) (de Savigny and Adam 2009). Understanding the policy process is a central concern in this context because actors are often unsure what causes the rise and fall of certain ideas (Shiffman 2009). Furthermore, to understand how to respond effectively to policy challenges, actors need to know the nature of problematic situations and how specific actions generate particular policy responses (Fischer 2003). In this way, policy analysis can potentially help resolve protracted policy controversies (Schön and Rein 1994) and further the collective goal of sustainable health systems strengthening.
As a coherent body of scholarship materializes, HPSR researchers have increasingly pointed to conceptual and analytical shortcomings within the existing body of LMIC policy research (Walt et al. 2008; Walt and Gilson 2014). This includes research with little reference to methodological design, scarce use of established policy analysis theory, a lack of explanatory focus and a paucity of studies that ‘apply forms of analysis (such as discourse analysis) that consider the role of language, rhetorical argument and stories in framing policy debate’, (Gilson and Raphaely 2008). These shortcomings leave us with a fragile understanding of the policy process and the political forces that create policy change (de Leeuw et al. 2014). Moreover, the HPSR literature often fails to provide insight into how and why proposed policies are supported, dismissed or overlooked (Gilson and Raphaely 2008; Shiffman 2009; Berlan et al. 2014). For this reason, HPSR scholars have called for more research on the health policy process in order to understand the clash of values that determines the mix of policy considerations and collectively contributes towards the achievement of shared health objectives (Bennett et al. 2011; Sheikh et al. 2011). In order to answer these calls, HPSR scholars are looking to other disciplines for methodological inspiration (Gilson et al. 2011).
Now, does any of this "prove" the Coronavirus was a coordinated pandemic to get all governments around the world to work in lock-step to systematically lock down their countries and whatnot? No. Neither do all the facts "prove" that Dr. Fauci deliberately planned the Wuhan outbreak in 2015.

The more you think about it, the more it seems this was a thoroughly-researched pandemic years before the pandemic itself actually came out. I mean even studies from 2010 and 2004 argue Zinc works against different forms of the Coronavirus (BUT NOT NECESSARILY COVID-19). And a clinical trial is underway with the approval of many scientists to see if Zinc, Vitamins A and D, and Chloroquine can be used to combat Coronavirus.

You have to admit, the amount of coincidence here is a bit too much to be "accident." Studies coming out back-to-back, particularly on the health policy system and on making decisions for others and ourselves in pandemics and crises and particularly for the elderly, in tandem with funding for research on a virus that is now being faced globally, by a man who warned it would happen in Trump's Administration and take us all by surprise right before Trump took office is a bit odd.



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