Dr. Anthony Fauci, the U.S. scientist who helped lead the nation’s COVID-19 pandemic response, is set to face off — again — with a Republican senator probing the origins of the coronavirus. Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky subpoenaed Fauci to appear before a Senate committee Wednesday.
Pandemic Origins
Leading up to the hearing, Paul released more than a thousand pages of Fauci’s personal diary covering the pandemic years. Pointing to some notes about early efforts at understanding how the virus emerged, Paul wrote on the social media platform X that what Fauci “wrote privately and what he told the country are two different stories.”
Some of the diary entries – including his uncertainty in the pandemic’s earliest days as scientists around the world raced to understand the new virus and how best to curb it before vaccines could be created – already were reflected in Fauci’s 2024 memoir and in interviews at the time.
Scientists scrambled to Fauci’s defense ahead of the unusual hearing — the second time the longtime National Institutes of Health scientist has been back before Congress to discuss pandemic origins since leaving the government in 2022.
In a public letter, more than 150 infectious disease experts and other scientists wrote that “no credible evidence has been produced to support these absurd charges” and that they are “urging our elected representatives in Congress stop these witch-hunts.”
The expected crux of Wednesday’s hearing: whether NIH-funded research in China may have played any role in how the pandemic started. Many scientists believe the virus most likely emerged in nature and jumped from animals to people, coming to light when it spread at a wildlife market in the Chinese city of Wuhan.
Original reporting: WPBF (Treasure Coast / Hearst) — read the source article.
