“The ambiguity of your recent statements about the virus’ origins raises questions regarding your assertion from a year ago when you confidently stated that the virus could not have been manipulated and that it occurred naturally,” Johnson wrote, referring to the alternate theory that the virus had leaked from a lab in Wuhan, China.
Recently, Fauci said he’s no longer certain that the CCP virus developed naturally, and called for an open investigation into the origins of the virus.
“Certainly, the people who investigated it say it likely was the emergence from an animal reservoir that then infected individuals, but it could have been something else, and we need to find that out. That’s the reason why I said I’m perfectly in favor of any investigation that looks into the origin of the virus,” Fauci added.
Johnson wrote that he finds Fauci’s initial high level of confidence in rejecting a potential laboratory origin “perplexing, given that public reports highlighted safety concerns at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV),” the lab at the heart of the virus origin controversy.
In April, the Washington Post reported on two 2018 State Department cables where U.S. diplomats expressed concerns about the safety of the Wuhan laboratory, Johnson noted, adding that it remains unclear whether Fauci knew about the safety concerns at the WIV when he made his May 2020 statement on the virus’ origins.
Johnson asked Fauci to explain what evidence he relied on in asserting in May 2020 that the virus likely emerged naturally rather than from a lab. He also called on Fauci to explain what evidence led him to his “lowering your confidence” in the natural origin theory and what information and data he relied on in concluding that the virus’s origins should be thoroughly investigated.
The Epoch Times reached out to NIAID with a request for comment on Johnson’s letter, but did not receive a reply by publication time.
He insisted that the NIH didn’t fund so-called gain-of-function research, which he defined as “taking a virus that could infect humans and making it either more transmissible and/or pathogenic to humans,” at the Wuhan lab, claiming that the purpose of the $600,000 grant “was to study the animal-human interface, to do surveillance, and to determine if these bat viruses were even capable of transmitting infection to humans.”
Fauci was further pressed about the matter during a Senate hearing on May 26, with Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) questioning Fauci’s faith in the Wuhan lab’s scientists, whom Fauci called “very respectable” just one day prior.
“How do you know they didn’t lie to you and use the money for gain-of-function research anyway?” Kennedy asked Fauci.
Fauci acknowledged he couldn’t be certain that the money wasn’t used against its intended purpose.
Following Fauci’s remarks, Rep. Warren Davidson (R-Ohio) called for his removal. In an appearance on “Fox and Friends” on May 27, Davidson accused Fauci of providing “cover for China” amid Beijing’s resistance to a transparent probe into the origins of the outbreak.
The Wuhan facility, home of China’s first P4 lab—a class of laboratory with the highest level of biosecurity where research on the world’s most dangerous diseases are conducted—has been in the spotlight amid concerns that the CCP virus may have originated there, rather than by making a natural jump from bats to humans.
The CCP has denied any link between the virus’s origin and the Wuhan lab and has pushed a “natural zoonotic” hypothesis—that the virus was transmitted to humans from an animal host. However, Beijing has so far failed to identify the original animal species that allegedly passed the virus on to humans.
“As far as WHO is concerned, all hypotheses remain on the table ... We have not yet found the source of the virus,” Ghebreyesus said.
President Joe Biden announced on May 26 that he has ordered a closer intelligence review of what he characterized as two equally plausible scenarios of the origins of the CCP virus—one natural, the other a lab leak.