Fauci Coverup, COVID & Lyme Lab Leaks, Alpha Gal Beef & Dairy Allergy + Dr. Cole’s Tick Bite Protocol | Health Hot Takes

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This is a new format. It doesn't have a polished name yet — we're calling it Health Hot Take — and the idea is simple: between Ask Me Anything episodes, when there's a story in the news or a pattern emerging in our clinical work that deserves a longer conversation than we have time for, we're going to talk about it.

This first one is gain-of-function research. If you've been watching the news over the last few weeks, you may have seen the declassified documents from Tulsi Gabbard's final days as Director of National Intelligence showing over 120 gain-of-function labs in more than 30 countries. Some people know what gain-of-function means. Most people don't. It's a polished phrase for researching how to make pathogens more transmissible, more virulent, more dangerous. The arms race version of public health. And the through line from Wuhan to Plum Island to the Bioethics journal article floating the idea of intentionally engineering ticks to give people alpha-gal syndrome to reduce red meat consumption is, to me, the same worldview: the arrogant belief that you can tinker with nature and control the outcome.

I want to be clear about what this isn't. This isn't political. Trump stood behind Fauci in 2020. Operation Warp Speed is something he still defends. This is a human issue — citizens' right to know what their tax dollars are funding and why transparency is not optional when it comes to public health. And it's a health issue, because the people I've been seeing in telehealth for 16 years — through COVID, through long COVID, through tick-borne illness — are real people trying to heal in real time, and understanding the context of how we got here matters.

But here's what I want you to take from this: you don't have to know the origins to heal. Whether it's long COVID, chronic Lyme, alpha-gal, or mold — the clinical framework is the same. Calm the histamine response. Figure out whether there's an active infection or just an immune system that doesn't know it's safe to stand down. Support the methylation and detox pathways. Build resilience so your body can do what it was designed to do. And don't live in fear. I got bit by a tick recently. I'll tell you exactly what I did about it — including how to ship your tick to a free testing lab.

A few of my favorite things we cover in this episode: 

• The new "Health Hot Take" format explained: a debrief between AMAs where Dr. Cole and Andrea react to trending health news, current events, and clinical patterns they're seeing with telehealth patients
• Gain of function research explained plainly: a polite phrase for researching how to make biological weapons more effective — and the arms race logic that drives it
• Tulsi Gabbard's final act as Director of National Intelligence: declassifying documents showing over 120 gain-of-function labs in 30+ countries — including Ukraine
• The COVID lab leak theory, now largely validated: Fauci's declassified emails, NIH funding of international gain-of-function research, and the lab employee believed to be patient zero
• Fauci testified in Congress in 2024 that he knew nothing about gain-of-function — the emails say otherwise
• Innocent people don't need pardons — Dr. Cole on why Fauci's pardon dating back to 2014 is worth asking questions about
• Plum Island and the Lyme disease origin theory: Willy Burgdorfer (whose name is in "Borrelia burgdorferi") spoke near the end of his life about his involvement in bioweapons — and a Lyme vaccine is now being developed
• Alpha-gal syndrome and the Bioethics journal article "Beneficial Blood Sucking" — postulating intentionally engineering ticks to spread alpha-gal to humans to reduce red meat consumption
• Why this is NOT a Republican or Democrat issue: Trump was standing behind Fauci in 2020, still calls Operation Warp Speed a great achievement — it's a human health issue, not tribal
• HLA gene variants: why the same pathogen decimates one person and not another — the "baby hands vs. adult hands" explanation
• MTHFR, methylation, and detox gene variants as the confluence of why some people can't calm their immune system after a threat
• You don't need to know the origins to heal — Dr. Cole's framework for long COVID, Lyme, and mold: calm the histamine response, address active infection vs. lingering immune dysregulation, make the body feel safe
• Dr. Cole's personal tick bite: what he did proactively, how to send a tick for free testing, and the products he reached for
• Building body resilience so that if and when the world throws something at you, your immune system can do what it was built to do

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Happy listening, and we hope you learned a little bit more on the art of being well!

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In Health,

Dr. Will Cole