HANSON: History will grind out the truth
“History will figure that out on its own.” That is what Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) recently replied to Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
In a heated congressional exchange, Fauci derided the idea that the COVID-19 pandemic was due to the leak of a dangerous virus, engineered in the Chinese Wuhan virology lab — and in part funded by U.S. health agencies, on the prompt of Fauci himself.
Fauci offered arguments from authority by citing his own expertise, as well as that of “card-carrying” specialists.
But in truth, there is little evidence that any animal species has been found infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus or a close relative that causes COVID-19 or a similar illness.
Others concede that Fauci and Dr. Peter Daszak–who was involved in gain-of-function research, often in cooperation with the Chinese–were not candid about the full extent of their ties to the Wuhan lab. But despite Chinese resistance to releasing pertinent data, history eventually will sort the truth out–as it does with most controversies of the moment.
Five years ago, the New York Times, the Washington Post, most of the mainstream media, and the majority of the bipartisan Washington, D.C., political and government establishments insisted that Donald Trump had colluded with Russia to rig the 2016 election.
In support of such conspiracy theories, they fixated on the so-called Steele dossier. It was a supposedly independent research effort detailing “proof” of Trump-Russian cooperation to rob Hillary Clinton of the election.
