(ReclaimingAmerica.net) – US Senator Rand Paul, a Republican, has voiced his belief that recent discoveries about the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, such as infected researchers and funding from the US to China, could reveal a more extensive and deadly cover-up and conspiracy.
Speaking to Newsmax’s show “Rob Schmidt Tonight,” Paul commented on an article published on Substack by investigative journalists and a report in the Wall Street Journal. Both pieces suggested that the first individuals to contract COVID-19 were three scientists from the Wuhan Virology Institute in China, Ben Hu, Yu Ping, and Yan Zhu.
None of these scientists died, but they fell ill with the virus in November 2019, earlier than the reported “patient zero,” China claimed was diagnosed on December 8, 2019.
In addition, the US Government Accountability Office confirmed that several projects led by Ben Hu had received funding from the US taxpayers. In total, $1.4 million in US government funding was granted to the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Senator Paul recalled the first time he heard of these incidents, stating, “We first heard about this when [Secretary of State Mike] Pompeo, at the end of the Trump administration, declassified a report that said three people at the Wuhan lab had gotten sick and that their illness seemed to be the same kind of symptoms you get with COVID.”
He raised concerns about the potential withholding of crucial information, expressing, “If they have known their names the whole time and didn’t release this, the names are important because it wasn’t like researchers who had nothing to do with coronavirus.”
He further pointed out that the three researchers who got infected were conducting what’s known as “gain of function” research under the supervision of Dr. Shi Zhengli, a prominent figure in coronavirus studies. Paul emphasized that one of these researchers could be the actual “patient zero,” suggesting that the virus might have originated from a laboratory rather than a wet market, as initially believed.
Paul emphasized his belief in the laboratory origin, saying, “It should be game over. It should be everybody coming together — all Republicans and Democrats coming together — and saying, this came from the lab.”
He questioned the lack of regulation of this research in China and the US, particularly because US funding was involved. He also criticized Dr. Anthony Fauci for denying the possibility of a lab origin of the virus, accusing him of leading a cover-up to hide his potential culpability. “I think it’s worse than that. There was actually an elaborate cover-up led by Dr. Fauci to prevent the guilt attaching to him and his mistakes,” Paul concluded.
