We finally know the origin of COVID-19

OPINION:

Shortly after SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, hit U.S. shores, social media platforms banned posts that speculated — or even pondered — from whence it had come.

After about 18 months, when even Democrats were beginning to openly muse about the virus coming from China, former “Daily Show” host Jon Stewart had a wild appearance on “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert.”

Toeing the liberal line, Mr. Colbert asked: “Do you mean perhaps there’s a chance that this was created in a lab? If there’s evidence, I’d love to hear it.”

“A chance? Oh my God!” an incredulous Mr. Stewart replied. “There’s a novel respiratory coronavirus overtaking Wuhan, China; what do we do? Oh, you know who we could ask? The Wuhan novel respiratory coronavirus lab!”

“The disease is the same name as the lab! That’s just a little too weird, don’t you think?” he said.

Yeah, that is a little too weird.

Former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield thinks so, too.

Last month, he testified before the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic. The headlines that came from the ex-CDC chief focused on Dr. Anthony Fauci, who Mr. Redfield said “sidelined” anyone who dared to question him on the origin of SARS-CoV-2, which causes COVID-19.

But the doctor also said something fascinating about the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan, China, where scientists were reportedly doing gain-of-function work on coronaviruses — partly funded by U.S. taxpayers at the behest of Dr. Fauci.

“In September of 2019, three things happened in that lab,” Mr. Redfield said. “One is they deleted the sequences. Was highly irregular. Researchers don’t usually like to do that. Second thing they did was they changed the command and control of the lab from the civilian control to the military control. Highly unusual, and I’ve been involved in dual-use labs when I was in the military.”

“And the third thing they did, which I think is really telling, is they let a contractor redo the ventilation system in that laboratory. So I think, clearly, there was strong evidence that there was a significant event that happened in that laboratory in September,” the doctor said.

That’s not at all what Dr. Fauci said. For years, the nation’s top immunologist asserted that the virus appeared naturally, mutating from animals to infect humans.

In April 2020, Dr. Fauci cited a study that found the virus’s mutations are “consistent with a jump of a species from an animal to a human.”

“There was a study recently,” Dr. Fauci told reporters on April 17, 2020, when asked if it was possible that virus came from a Chinese lab, “where a group of highly qualified evolutionary virologists looked at the sequences … in bats as they evolve and the mutations that it took to get to the point where it is now is totally consistent with a jump of a species from an animal to a human.

“So, the paper will be available. I don’t have the authors right now, but we can make it available to you,” Dr. Fauci said.

But now, new emails revealed by House Republicans tell a completely different story.

The emails show that Dr. Fauci “prompted” that very study to disprove the theory that the virus had leaked from a lab in Wuhan, China. In fact, he had final approval of the scientific paper he had commissioned.

That paper, “The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2,” was delivered to Dr. Fauci for final approval before it was published in Nature Medicine on Feb. 17, 2020.

The paper “was written four days after Fauci, and his NIH boss Francis Collins, held a call with the four authors to discuss reports that COVID-19 may have leaked from the Wuhan lab and ’may have been intentionally genetically manipulated,’” The Washington Post wrote.

The House Oversight Subcommittee examining COVID-19 released emails earlier this month that show the paper’s co-author, Dr. Kristian Andersen, said Dr. Fauci “prompted” him to write the paper with the specific goal to “disprove” the lab-leak theory.

So now we know: Dr. Fauci was an imperial and impetuous despot (wait, we knew that already), and all signs point to the virus originating in the Wuhan lab.

The more you know, indeed.

• Joseph Curl covered the White House and politics for a decade for The Washington Times. He can be reached at josephcurl@gmail.com and on Twitter @josephcurl.

For more information, visit The Washington Times COVID-19 resource page.