BOOK REVIEW: ‘Deception: The Great COVID Cover-Up’

OPINION:

Sen. Rand Paul is not afraid to stand up to the establishment and the leaders of his own party when they are wrong. In his epic 2013 filibuster, the Kentucky Republican spoke for 13 hours straight with minimal talking points to protest the possibility of the U.S. government using drones against American citizens. This was an act of leadership from a man who is unafraid to fight for what is right in the face of vocal opposition.

Mr. Paul’s new book is another act of leadership pointing out how the government mishandled the COVID-19 pandemic. It is a must-read for all Americans who want the truth about the government cover-up of the origins of the virus.

The book opens with “The COVID cover-up” and, as the senator explains, “the cover-up likely began before Anthony Fauci knew for certain how dangerous the pandemic would become.”

What Dr. Anthony Fauci, then director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, did know was that he “personally approved gain-of-function research in Wuhan.”

Mr. Paul explains that the massive power wielded by Dr. Fauci, who served as a medical adviser to every president since Ronald Reagan, led to a shutdown of small businesses, schools and churches nationwide. Debate and dissent on the cause of the pandemic was also shut down.

The cover-up started in China, where Fudan University professor Yong-Zhen Zhang conducted research that the Chinese government suppressed. The Chinese maintained that there was no evidence of human-to-human transmission when we now know all too well that it is easily transmitted from person to person.

The information uncovered by Mr. Paul is important for all Americans to read to better understand how bureaucrats in both the Chinese and U.S. governments were not forthcoming about the possibility that this was a man-made virus that escaped from a lab — a lab that received funding from you, the U.S. taxpayer.

We likely will never know for certain where the virus originated from, but the evidence is overwhelming that it originated in a lab where government-funded scientists experimented with gain-of-function research, which involves human alteration of an organism. The organism is changed to increase a pathogen’s ability to spread and cause mass death to living beings. This sounds like something out of a horror movie, yet it is something that our own government put its stamp of approval on.

Mr. Paul cites the fact that “many prominent scientists argued that the creation of new pathogens not found in nature had deadly risks for humankind.” Sane scientists thought this type of research could be dangerous. When Dr. Fauci testified before Congress, Mr. Paul asked him directly if his agency had ever funded gain-of-function research.

Dr. Fauci said no and used a confusing definition of the term to cover his backside. Robert Redfield, head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention at the time, was quoted as saying in response to Dr. Fauci’s denial that the U.S. government funded gain-of-function research that “there is too much evidence, that’s just not true.”

Americans have a right to know if their tax dollars were indirectly used to create the COVID-19 pandemic.

Mr. Paul’s book contains email evidence that U.S. officials were aware of the strong possibility that gain-of-function research was the origin of the COVID-19 virus. This information was not shared with the people who paid the government scientists’ salaries. It seems obvious that a lab in Wuhan, China, was a more likely origin than a so-called wet market where animals were sold for food.

Dr. Fauci was aggressive in his denials and frequently invoked personal attacks on Mr. Paul for raising the possibility that the virus was created in a lab by scientists funded by the U.S. government.

The senator writes that one incentive for a cover-up was money. Hundreds of millions of government dollars in the form of grants and unreported royalties for government officials were the motivation for the concealment of information.

Another was the avoidance of embarrassment and humiliation because incompetence and complicity were factors in information being suppressed. The justification for massive lockdowns and policies that, in hindsight, were harmful was based on bad science.

It would be political malpractice for American citizens and political leaders to ignore the conclusions of this book and repeat the mistakes of the past. The truth is important and will help policymakers to avoid repeating the terrible decisions that spun out of the COVID-19 pandemic. It will also stop the government from continuing policies such as gain-of-function research that may do more harm than good.

• Brian Darling is former counsel and senior communications director for Sen. Rand Paul.

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Deception: The Great COVID Cover-Up
By Rand Paul
Regnery Publishing
Oct. 10, 408 pages, $27.44