NEW YORK — Remember when Sen. Rand Paul accused Dr. Anthony Fauci of funding China’s Wuhan virus lab?

Fauci replied, “Sen. Paul, you do not know what you’re talking about.”

The media loved it. Vanity Fair smirked, “Fauci Once Again Forced to Basically Call Rand Paul a Sniveling Moron.”

But now the magazine has changed its tune, admitting, “In Major Shift, NIH Admits Funding Risky Virus Research in Wuhan … Paul might have been onto something.”

Then what about question two: Did COVID-19 occur because of a leak from that lab?

When Paul confronted Fauci, saying, “The evidence is pointing that it came from the lab!” Fauci replied, “I totally resent the lie that you are now propagating.”

Was Paul lying? What’s the truth?

The media told us COVID came from an animal, possibly a bat.

But in my new video, Paul points out there were “reports of 80,000 animals being tested. No animals with it.”

Now he’s released a book, “Deception: The Great Covid Cover-Up,” that charges Fauci and others with funding dangerous research and then covering it up.

“Three people in the Wuhan lab got sick with a virus of unknown origin in November of 2019,” says Paul. The Wuhan lab is 1,000 kilometers away from where bats live.

Today the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Department of Energy and others agree with Paul. They believe COVID most likely came from a lab.

I ask Paul, “COVID came from evil Chinese scientists, in a lab, funded by America?”

“America funded it,” he replies, “maybe not done with evil intentions. It was done with the misguided notion that ‘gain of function’ research was safe.”

Gain of function research includes making viruses stronger.

The purpose is to anticipate what might happen in nature and come up with vaccines in advance. So I push back at Paul, “They’re trying to find ways to stop diseases!”

He replies, “Many scientists have now looked at this and said, ‘We’ve been doing this gain of function research for quite a while.’ The likelihood that you create something that creates a vaccine that’s going to help anybody is pretty slim to none.”

Paul points out that Fauci supported “gain of function” research.

“He said in 2012, even if a pandemic occurs … the knowledge is worth it.” Fauci did write: “The benefits of such experiments and the resulting knowledge outweigh the risks.”

Paul answers: “Well, that’s a judgment call. There’s probably 16 million families around the world who might disagree with that.”

Fauci and the National Institutes of Health didn’t give money directly to the Chinese lab. They gave it to a nonprofit, EcoHealth Alliance. The group works to protect people from infectious diseases.

“They were able to accumulate maybe over $100 million in U.S. taxpayer dollars, and a lot of it was funneled to Wuhan,” says Paul.

EcoHealth Alliance is run by zoologist Peter Daszak. Before the pandemic, Daszak bragged about combining coronaviruses in Wuhan.

Once COVID broke out, Daszak became less eager to talk about these experiments. He won’t talk to me.

“Peter Daszak has refused to reveal his communications with the Wuhan lab,” complains Paul. “I do think that ultimately there is a great deal of culpability on his part … They squelched all dissent and said, ‘You’re a conspiracy theorist if you’re saying this (came from a lab),’ but they didn’t reveal that they had a monetary self-incentive to cover this up,” says Paul.

“The media is weirdly un-curious about this,” I say to Paul.

“We have a disease that killed maybe 16 million people,” Paul responds. “And they’re not curious as to how we got it?”

Also, Our NIH still funds gain of function research, Paul says. “This is a risk to civilization. We could wind up with a virus … that leaks out of a lab and kills half of the planet,” Paul warns.

Paul’s book reveals much more about Fauci and EcoHealth Alliance. I will cover more of that in this column in a few weeks.

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Every Tuesday at JohnStossel.com, Stossel posts a new video about the battle between government and freedom. He is the author of “Give Me a Break: How I Exposed Hucksters, Cheats, and Scam Artists and Became the Scourge of the Liberal Media.”