Dr. Anthony Fauci remains in the spotlight months after leaving his post as President Joe Biden‘s top medical adviser, as Republicans investigate COVID-19’s origins and Fauci himself, and as the scientist pushes back.
Fauci has become a lightning rod as the public face of the Trump and Biden administration’s responses to the pandemic and due to his defenses of U.S. government funding of coronavirus experiments in Wuhan. Republicans intend to haul him before their committees now that they hold a House majority, while Fauci seems to relish his battles with the GOP and continues to be a wanted guest on cable news.
FAUCI DEFENDS GAIN-OF-FUNCTION RESEARCH: ‘IT NEEDS TO BE REGULATED’
The Republican-led House Select Committee on the Coronavirus Pandemic kicked off this week with three witnesses arguing on Wednesday that it was possible or even most likely that COVID-19 emerged from a Chinese government lab in Wuhan, a hypothesis Fauci has long cast doubt on.
In a sign of things to come, Fauci was the repeated target for criticism by House Republicans, as well as by Dr. Robert Redfield, the former director of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention under President Donald Trump. Fauci continues to argue that a natural emergence is most likely, but Redfield testified this week that the data “indicates that COVID-19 more likely was the result of an accidental lab leak.”
Fauci went on Fox News on Thursday to declare that he would be “more than happy to testify” before the Republican-led committee if he is called to appear.
Scientists consulting with the U.S. government early in the pandemic in 2020 believed COVID-19 originating from a lab in Wuhan was possible or even likely, but emails indicate Fauci and then-NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins worked to shut the hypothesis down. Some previously-released emails included notes from a Feb. 1, 2020, conference call in which at least 11 scientists theorized about the virus’s origin, with many leaning toward the lab leak.
The three-year-old call and other actions by Fauci were front and center during the House hearing this week.
Redfield testified Wednesday that he didn’t find out about the early 2020 conference call until the emails were made public long after.
“I was quite upset, as the CDC director, that I was excluded from those discussions,” Redfield said, arguing he was excluded “because I had a different point of view, and I was told they made a decision that they would keep this confidential until they came up with a single narrative.”
Fauci argued Thursday that Redfield “is totally and unequivocally incorrect in what he’s saying that I excluded him” and contended that “I had nothing to do with who would be on that call.” Fauci added that “retrospectively, it would’ve been okay” to have Redfield on the call.
Newly-released emails also show Fauci and others “prompted” an influential scientific paper that pushed back on the Wuhan lab leak hypothesis in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Redfield had testified Wednesday that Fauci’s actions were “antithetical to science.”
“This was a narrative that was decided that they were going to say this came from the wet market, and they were going to do everything they could to support that and to negate any discussion of the possibility that this came from the lab,” Redfield testified.
Fauci claimed on Thursday that “I’ve always kept an open mind” on COVID-19’s origins.
“I wasn’t leaning totally strongly one way or the other,” Fauci said, adding, “The evidence weighs more likely towards one, namely a natural occurrence, but I would be perfectly acceptant if there were evidence that it was a lab leak.”
FBI Director Christopher Wray confirmed last week that the FBI has long believed COVID-19 originated at a Chinese government lab, and it was recently revealed the Energy Department now believes with “low confidence” that the coronavirus started at a Wuhan lab.
The assessments in favor of a lab leak are the first movement since the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released an assessment in 2021 stating that one U.S. intelligence agency, the FBI, assessed with “moderate confidence” that COVID-19 most likely emerged from a lab in Wuhan, while four U.S. spy agencies and the National Intelligence Council believed with just “low confidence” that COVID-19 most likely had a natural origin.
Redfield testified Wednesday that the Wuhan lab “absolutely” conducted gain-of-function research on coronaviruses and that there was “no doubt” that NIH was funding such research. He argued, “While many believe that gain-of-function research is critical to get ahead of viruses by developing vaccines, in this case, I believe it was the exact opposite — unleashing a new virus to the world without any means of stopping it and resulting in the deaths of millions of people.”
Fauci contended Thursday that virologists “have to have some degree of being able to manipulate organisms” and that it is “absolutely critical for the health of the country.” The doctor has long insisted NIH did not fund gain-of-function research in Wuhan.
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EcoHealth Alliance leader Peter Daszak steered hundreds of thousands of dollars in NIH funding to the Wuhan lab and was also an integral World Health Organization-China joint study team member in early 2021 when the group dismissed the lab leak hypothesis as “extremely unlikely” in 2021.
NIH continues to fund coronavirus studies conducted by EcoHealth despite concerns from Republicans that the group assisted with gain of function research in Wuhan and despite the Wuhan lab refusing to hand over key information to NIH. Fauci has repeatedly praised Chinese scientists with whom the U.S. had worked for decades.
