China, Not Fauci, Holds Covid Origins Answers
Get the Health newsletter
Daily health & science — research, biotech, public health, the studies worth knowing. Free.
- Senate committee held Anthony Fauci in contempt of Congress after he invoked his Fifth Amendment defense during hearings on Covid-19 origins, with the committee chair having previously said Fauci "should go to prison."
- Chinese government suppressed information about the early Covid-19 outbreak, frustrated WHO attempts to establish basic facts about transmissibility, denied international access to Wuhan scientists and laboratory records, and threatened countries demanding an open investigation with economic retaliation.
- 2002-2004 SARS outbreak followed a similar pattern: first cases emerged in Guangdong province in 2002 but were not reported to WHO until 2003, and the virus eventually killed people in 29 countries, including 43 in Canada and 33 in Singapore.
- Wuhan Institute of Virology, located 8 miles from the wet market linked to early Covid-19 cases, was known to be conducting experiments on SARS-like viruses obtained from bats 800 miles away in Southern China.
- Chinese authorities had pledged after SARS to limit wild animal sales for food, but live "wet" markets were "still flourishing 18 years later" when Covid-19 emerged, with the original SARS strain having been traced to civets sold in such markets.
- David Hunter, Richard Doll professor of epidemiology and medicine at the University of Oxford, argues blaming Fauci for not knowing Covid's origins "makes as much sense as blaming a detective in Washington, D.C., for not solving a murder in Wuhan, China, when denied access to all the witnesses and evidence."
Why it matters: The Senate's contempt vote directs political energy at a U.S. official who lacked access to early Wuhan data rather than at the Chinese government that controls the lab records, patient timelines, and epidemic curves from the first weeks of the outbreak — the exact information needed to prevent or prepare for the next pandemic, which Hunter argues will likely emerge from China again due to its animal husbandry practices.
