Dr. Fauci Testifies in Congress

**Brian Lehrer** (0:10)
Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Now we'll look at some of the science behind the rivalry between Senate Rand Paul and Dr. Anthony Fauci that caused Fauci to repeatedly take the fifth, the invocation of his right not to incriminate himself at a Rand Paul-led Senate hearing last week. Here's how the White House, ever eager to show up, someone they perceive as a political rival, even using the official White House website to do that, not a political one, posted a montage of some of those instances complete with bed music and game show style bells.

**Chelsea Cirruzzo** (0:44)
Well, nothing says honesty like taking the fifth, huh, Doc?

**Nick** (0:46)
What day of the week is it today?

**Anthony Fauci** (0:48)
On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution.

**Chelsea Cirruzzo** (0:54)
What color tie are you wearing?

**Anthony Fauci** (0:55)
On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution.

**Brian Lehrer** (1:03)
You get the idea. Now, here's 20 seconds of how Fauci explained why he was going to repeatedly take the fifth in his opening statement to Senator Paul's committee.

**Anthony Fauci** (1:13)
The only conclusion I can reach is that the sole reason he is calling me before this committee is to get me to say something, anything, that could vindicate his repeated public pledges, that I end up in his words, quote, behind bars.

**Brian Lehrer** (1:36)
So again, you get the idea. The Trump administration, as we all know, has been on a campaign of retribution, trying to prosecute people or investigate people, at least for evidence of criminality.
When those people are perceived as rivals, James Comey, John Bolton, Senator Alyssa Slatkin, New York State Attorney General, Letitia James, Lisa Cook and Jerome Powell from the Federal Reserve Board. I could go on. But what's the science that Paul and Fauci actually disagree on? Is it really science as opposed to a public health approach to public interest versus a libertarian one? Senator Paul is also a doctor, an ophthalmologist if you didn't know, but also a political libertarian, which means the least government involvement of any political philosophy. Remember this libertarian moment from the first real month of the pandemic, March 2020, when people were first beginning to die in great numbers, when the Lieutenant Governor of Texas, Dan Patrick, basically suggested that people his age, he was about 70 and above, be willing to risk their lives and die in the interest of keeping businesses open.

**Dan Patrick** (2:45)
No one reached out to me and said as a senior citizen, are you willing to take a chance on your survival in exchange for keeping the America that all America loves for your children and grandchildren? If that's the exchange, I'm all in.

**Brian Lehrer** (3:04)
Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick in March of 2020 With me now is Chelsea Cirruzzo, Washington correspondent for the Health Sciences and Health Policy News Organization, STAT News. Chelsea, always good to have you on. Welcome back to WNYC.

**Chelsea Cirruzzo** (3:20)
Yeah. Thanks so much for having me again.

**Brian Lehrer** (3:22)
One major issue between Paul and Fauci, just to dive right in, is whether it's been proven that COVID-19 came from a lab leak in China or some natural process of jumping from animals to humans, and whether Fauci was honest about that issue. You wrote last week going into the hearing that there is no proven link to the lab, and that Fauci has long said, a lab leak cannot be ruled out. What is the uncertainty based on today, more than six years after the start of the pandemic?

**Chelsea Cirruzzo** (3:55)
A lot of this stems from some recent so-called diary entries that Senator Paul released that Dr. Fauci had taken, had written in his, it seems though his government computers about his experiences during the pandemic. And early on in early 2020, there are entries where he is describing questions about the origins of COVID. There is one particular entry where he says the Wuhan wet market, which is where a lot of scientists said that the virus originally appeared was not the source of the outbreak, but an amplifier.
Taken out of context, that may seem like, well, maybe he's saying that a lab leak is possible.
Really what he was writing was that he believes that the virus had jumped from animals to humans at some point and had been amplified or spread further in the wet market. At the same time, he does describe meeting with scientists who are concerned about a potential lab leak. But of course, all of this was taken, documented between January 2020 and March 2020 The science was emerging. He was literally writing as things were unfolding. It wasn't clear. There weren't really any conclusions. But Senator Paul really has pulled from this to show that he believes that Dr. Fauci misled the public to hide that there is a potential lab leak.