Roving Periscope: Ahead of Trump 2.0, COVID-19’s “lab-leak theory” resurfaces

Virendra Pandit

New Delhi: In 2020, then-US President Donald Trump dubbed the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic because of a “Chinese virus,” suspected to have leaked from Wuhan in China. Ahead of his second, non-consecutive term beginning next month, the same theory has resurfaced, thanks to his Republican Party’s findings—and hinting at the US’s potential policies towards China in the Trump 2.0 era.

According to the media reports on Tuesday, a committee of the Republican-controlled United States Congress has backed the theory that a lab leak caused the COVID-19 pandemic.

In a report released on Monday, the House of Representatives Select Subcommittee on the coronavirus pandemic said it had concluded that the killer virus “likely emerged because of a laboratory or research-related accident”.

The 520-page report, which took two years to complete, examined the federal and state responses to the pandemic, its origins, and vaccination efforts.

“This work will help the United States, and the world, predict the next pandemic, prepare for the next pandemic, protect ourselves from the next pandemic, and hopefully prevent the next pandemic,” Brad Wenstrup, who headed the panel, said in a letter to the US Congress.

Among the report’s key conclusions was that the US National Institutes of Health (NIS) funded contentious “gain-of-function” research – which enhances viruses to find ways to combat them – at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China before the outbreak.

The first cases of COVID-19 were identified in December 2019 in Wuhan, in central China’s Hubei Province, and the city is widely believed to be the epicenter of the virus.

The pandemic-sparking virus quickly spread worldwide and created turmoil in the global economy as countries closed borders, ordered lockdowns, and struggled to contain the contagion.

Because of this virus, over 704 million people have been infected so far worldwide. Of them, more than 7 million died, including 1.2 million in the US, 533, 570 in India, and 167,642 in France, among other countries.

While US federal agencies, the World Health Organization, and scientists worldwide sought to determine the origins of COVID-19, a consensus could not emerge, mainly because of China’s non-cooperation with WHO teams during the Trump 1.0 regime.

Many researchers believed the virus had a zoonotic origin – spreading from animals to humans – and may have been transmitted at a wet market in Wuhan, the media reported.

However, the US Department of Energy, during the Joe Biden era, assessed with “low confidence” in an intelligence report in 2023 that the virus most likely escaped from a lab. This was widely seen as an attempt to cover up China’s ‘role,’  by the Left-Liberal cabal in the US and other countries.

The department’s finding echoed that of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), which said in 2021 with “moderate confidence” that the virus probably spread after a laboratory mishap.

The House of Representatives Committee was convinced by the lab leak theory after meeting 25 times over the past two years, conducting more than 30 transcribed interviews, and reviewing more than a million pages of documents.

During its investigation, the panel held two days of interviews with Anthony Stephen Fauci, the government scientist who led public health messaging in the early days of the pandemic before becoming the subject of conspiracy theories about the virus’ origins.

The Republicans accused Dr. Fauci, who retired in December 2022 after 54 years at the NIH, of being responsible for causing the worst pandemic in a century by approving funding for Chinese scientists they believe manufactured the SARS-CoV-2 virus that caused COVID-19.

Dr. Fauci, who regularly clashed with then-US President Donald Trump, during his first term, also faced accusations of suppressing the theory that COVID-19 originated from a lab leak in China.

The 83-year-old immunologist, who now lives with security protection because of death threats against his family, told the panel at a public hearing in June 2024 that it would have been “molecularly impossible” for the bat viruses studied at the Wuhan lab to turn into the virus that caused the pandemic.

“I’ve also been very, very clear, and said multiple times, that I don’t think the concept of there being a lab (leak) is inherently a conspiracy theory,” Fauci said.

“What is conspiracy is the kind of distortions of that particular subject, like, it was a lab leak and I was parachuted into the CIA like Jason Bourne and told the CIA that they should not be talking about a lab leak,” he said.

The probe found that lockdowns “did more harm than good” and mask mandates were “ineffective at controlling the spread of COVID-19”, contradicting research showing that masking in public does reduce transmission rates.

While social distancing guidelines came under criticism, the panel concluded that travel restrictions put in place saved lives.

The Republican panel also labeled Trump’s publicly-funded project to develop COVID-19 vaccines – named Operation Warp Speed – a “tremendous success”, but concluded that school closures would have an “enduring impact” on US children.