Dr. Anthony Fauci insists it is “much more likely” that COVID-19 originated in nature rather than from the Wuhan lab, again insisting that the National Institutes of Health had never funded gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has also admitted he doesn’t actually know everything that goes on at the Wuhan lab.
The NIH recently concluded EcoHealth Alliance violated NIH guidelines when conducting bat coronavirus research while working with the lab, but Fauci continued to insist that this wasn’t gain-of-function research during a Senate hearing on Thursday during questioning by Sen. Rand Paul.
“So what you’re doing is defining away gain of function. You’re simply saying it doesn’t exist because you changed the definition on the NIH website,” the Republican said. “This is terrible, and you’re completely trying to escape the idea that we should do something about trying to prevent a pandemic from leaking from a lab. The preponderance of evidence now points to this coming from a lab. And what you’ve done is changed the definition on your website to try to cover your ass, basically.”
Fauci accused Paul of “egregious misrepresentations” and said, “I don’t think I’d be able to refute all of them, but just a couple of them.”
“You have said that I am unwilling to take any responsibility for the current pandemic. I have no responsibility for the current pandemic. The current pandemic, OK?” Fauci said. “Number two, you said the overwhelming amount of evidence indicates that’s a lab leak. I believe most card-carrying viral philologists and molecular virologists would disagree with you — that it’s much more likely, even though we leave open all possibilities, it’s much more likely that this was a natural occurrence.”
RAND PAUL ACCUSES FAUCI OF TRYING TO ‘COVER YOUR ASS’ ON GAIN OF FUNCTION
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence released an assessment this summer stating that one U.S. intelligence agency assessed with “moderate confidence” that COVID-19 most likely emerged from a Chinese government lab in Wuhan, while four U.S. spy agencies and the National Intelligence Council believe with “low confidence” COVID-19 most likely has a natural origin.
The U.S. intelligence community released a declassified version of its assessment last month, including a section titled “The Case for the Laboratory-Associated Incident Hypothesis,” which offered insight into the one intelligence agency that assessed that the virus most likely came from a Wuhan lab.
Numerous former Trump administration officials, along with House Foreign Affairs Committee Republicans, have said a lab leak is COVID-19’s most likely origin.
Fauci continued on Thursday, saying, “You made a statement just a moment ago that’s completely incorrect, where you say we continue to support research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.”
Paul claimed, “You approved it in August of last year.” Fauci announced the creation of the Centers for Research in Emerging Infectious Diseases in August 2020 and said the NIH had awarded approximately $17 million for the first year with $82 million planned over five years. One of the 11 groups to win an award was EcoHealth.
“No, no, your statement says, quote, I wrote it down as you were writing, ‘You continue to support research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology,’” Fauci responded. Paul’s exact quote earlier in the questioning was actually, “You continue to support NIH funding going to Wuhan.”
Paul responded to Fauci, saying, “During a committee a month ago and said you still trust the Chinese scientists and you still support the research over there.”
Last month, Fauci offered a defense of EcoHealth’s collaboration with the Wuhan lab, saying in an interview, “The research was very strictly under what we call a framework of oversight of the type of research. And under those conditions, which we have explained very, very clearly, does not constitute research of gain of function of concern.”
In May, Fauci testified to the Senate that it would have been “almost a dereliction of our duty” if the NIH had not worked with China to study coronaviruses as he defended NIH money going to fund “collaboration” with “very respectable Chinese scientists.”
EcoHealth founder Peter Daszak maintained a working relationship with Wuhan lab “bat lady” Shi Zhengli, sending her lab at least $600,000 in NIH funding. Daszak was also part of the WHO-China team who dismissed the lab leak hypothesis as “extremely unlikely” earlier this year, and he has called the lab leak a “conspiracy theory.”
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The WHO-China study released in early 2021 deemed the lab leak hypothesis “extremely unlikely” while contending that a jump from animals to humans was most likely.
Sen. Patty Murray, the Democratic chairwoman of the Senate committee, jumped in on Thursday to say, “Sen. Paul, I have allowed Dr. Fauci to respond. You’ve had your time.” Paul claimed that “if he’s going to be dishonest, he ought to be challenged.”
Fauci concluded, “I don’t have any more to say except to say that, as usual, and I have a great deal of respect for this body, the Senate, and it makes me very uncomfortable to have to say something, but he is egregiously incorrect in what he says.”
Paul retorted, “History will figure that out on its own.”
