'Sounds like' is not authoritative

An opinion page article by Michael Barone included this paragraph:

"Dr. Anthony Fauci and his then-boss Dr. Francis Collins as former head of the National Institutes of Health had something to cover up. In 2014, NIH and NIAID started financing the manipulation of SARS-related viruses in Shi Zhengli's Wuhan laboratory. That sounds like the 'gain of function' experiments that make viruses more transmissible, which they supported on flu viruses in 2011."

I italicized "sounds like" in Barone's paragraph. I hear conservative conspiracy theorists saying things like that quite a bit. And I recall a testy exchange between Sen. Paul and Dr. Fauci where doctor Fauci responded that the senator literally did not know what he was talking about. This is not an adequate explanation from Dr. Fauci, but I suspect an adequate explanation does exist that refutes the conspiracy theorists, but Dr Fauci thinks he cannot provide the explanation for some reason I do not know about. (National Security?)

Somehow this theory needs to be put to rest by either being confirmed or being successfully refuted in a manner that is convincing enough to most reasonable people. At a minimum, it might be helpful if an authoritative conservative that is "in the know" could state that it is not true.

John Captain

Antioch