SciCheck Digest

The U.S. indirectly funded some bat coronavirus research at a lab in Wuhan, China. But those experiments could not have led to the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, because the viruses used were very different. Yet former White House trade adviser Peter Navarro repeated a false claim that Dr. Anthony Fauci “killed a lot of people” by funding the lab.

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It’s not known how SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, originated. But many scientists suspect the virus “spilled over” into humans from an animal. There is no evidence the virus was created in a lab, let alone as part of any U.S.-funded research.

For over a year, politicians and others have misleadingly cited certain grants awarded to a group collaborating with a lab in Wuhan to incorrectly suggest that National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Dr. Anthony Fauci is responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic.

While there is a debate about whether some of the research should have been funded or performed, the experiments did not produce SARS-CoV-2, as the National Institutes of Health and others have explained.

The latest iteration of these claims comes from Peter Navarro, former President Donald Trump’s trade adviser, who in a May 16 interview with the conservative outlet Newsmax blamed Fauci for the pandemic and called for his imprisonment.

Navarro began by responding to a clip of Fauci telling CNN on May 15 that he would not serve under Trump if the former president...

Read Full Story: https://www.factcheck.org/2022/05/scicheck-navarro-falsely-links-fauci-to-pan...