News analysis Top U.S. health officials, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, scrambled in late January 2020 to respond to public reporting of a potential connection between COVID-19 and the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China.  The insight into their response comes from examining over 3,000 pages of emails belonging to Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), which were released under the Freedom of Information Act and provide a detailed timeline of events. The emails suggest the officials were concerned about previous U.S. involvement with the lab, and that they had knowledge of public statements made by the Wuhan lab’s director about U.S. funding being used for controversial research conducted there. Following the officials’ conversations, public discussion of the source being a potential lab leak was actively suppressed by social media platforms, health officials, and the World Health Organization (WHO). Jan. 31, 2020 Fauci received …