Senator Rand Paul accused Bill Gates of financing "the biggest danger to mankind" with his donations to research that creates virus, "that we may never interact with." The lawmaker said the U.S. and China should be held accountable for the havoc they wreaked on the world by creating the ideal environment in the Wuhan laboratory for which the COVID-19 could jump to humans and cause the pandemic.
.@RandPaul rips Bill Gates' alleged tie to gain-of-function research: 'Funding the biggest danger to mankind' https://t.co/wYuYw8qCjG
— Fox News (@FoxNews) June 18, 2023
Viruses taken out of remote caves and brought to cities
During an interview on Fox's "Sunday Morning Futures," Paul pointed out that the responsibility for the alleged leak from the Chinese laboratory does not lie solely with the Chinese authorities. "The blame equally should go not only to Chinese authorities, but to Anthony Fauci and all those who advocated for this," he said. However, the main focus of his criticism was the founder of Microsoft.
Bill Gates has been over there recently. Bill Gates is the largest funder of trying to find these viruses in remote caves and bring them to big cities. What happened in China is they went 8 to 10 hours south of Wuhan, 2 to 300 feet deep into a cave, found viruses and took them back to a city of 15 million.
"Viruses that do not exist in nature"
The senator criticized that, if viruses like these are already something that scientists regard as a danger, it is even worse to create new types that do not exist in nature: ""[Many scientists think] we don't need to be searching for viruses that may never interact with man, and it's worse than that. They bring viruses that we may never interact with. They bring them back to the lab, but then they manipulate them by combining them with other viruses to create viruses that don't exist in nature."
Paul stressed there is a real risk that a manmade virus could cause a much deadlier pandemic. He therefore put this risk "up there with the danger of a nuclear war."
There are people estimating that the next time this happens, the next time we have a leak from a lab, that between five and 50% of the population could die from another manmade virus. So this is very, very serious. This is up there with nuclear arms control. This is up there with the danger of nuclear war. But this is much more insidious. It's harder to trace. But still, millions of people can die from a manmade virus.
"We could move on in a cooperative way... what we need is an international consortium..."
"between 5-50% of the population could die from another man-made virus, so this very serious. This is up there with nuclear arms control" @RandPaul @MariaBartiromohttps://t.co/E3Ekp0Cewi
— Marty Makary MD, MPH (@MartyMakary) June 18, 2023
