US Senator Rand Paul pledged to launch an inquiry into the beginnings of the COVID-19 virus if Republicans reclaim the majority of the Senate.
The libertarian-leaning Kentucky Republican blasted what he perceives as government overreach in response to the COVID-19 pandemic while speaking to supporters at a campaign rally. He commended a recent judge's ruling to overturn the federal mask requirement on airplanes, trains, and terminals.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the country's top infectious disease expert, and Sen. Paul have had numerous disagreements concerning the government's COVID-19 policy and the beginnings of the virus that brought the global epidemic, per The Associated Press.
If the GOP takes the majority in the Senate after the November election, Paul, who is running for a third term in Kentucky, claimed he'll be in line to chair a committee. The Senate is now split 50-50, but Democrats have a little advantage since the vote of Vice President Kamala Harris is a tie-breaker.
Paul claimed that when Republicans "take over" the Senate, he will be a committee chair with subpoena power."And we will get to the bottom of where this virus came from," he said.
In Kentucky's Senate race this year, Charles Booker is by far the most well-known of a handful of Democrats vying for Paul's seat in the May 17 primary. In the Republican primary, Paul faces several unfamiliar contenders.
A general election campaign between Paul and Booker would pit two candidates with completely contradictory ideologies.
Paul vs. Scientists
The senator, who is an eye surgeon, furthered his theory on how the COVID-19 virus came into existence. He said that the evidence is "overwhelmingly, not 100%, but overwhelmingly the evidence points to this virus being a leak from a lab."
Many conservatives in the US have accused Chinese scientists of creating COVID-19 in a lab and allowing it to spread.
According to a Biden-ordered analysis released last summer, US intelligence agencies are split on the genesis of COVID-19 but believe China's leaders were unaware of the virus before the global pandemic began.
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The dreaded virus emerged naturally, not through bioengineering, according to current scientific consensus.
There is "no credible evidence" of genetic engineering, as per Ohio State University researchers headed by Shan-Lu Liu.
The virus's genome has been sequenced, and we would expect to detect traces of added gene sequences if it had been altered. However, it has been discovered that the spots that distinguish the new virus from bat viruses are dispersed in a very random manner, an indication that it has evolved naturally, as per a report from New Scientist.
It Won't Change Much
Meanwhile, Dr. Robert C. Gallo and Dr. Dean T. Jamison of the Global Virus Network in Baltimore said in their Time article that, while there is a great interest in discovering the origins of COVID-19, it may "add little" to the present knowledge in terms of resolving the present and future variants of the virus.
What both experts recommend as "the best way forward" is to "minimize the distraction of a politicized attempt to assess origins" and by "investing in long-term international collaborative endeavors on SARS-CoV-2 and in preparation for future epidemics and pandemics."
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