(The Center Square)- Senator Rand Paul, R-Ky., spoke at an event with The Fund for American Studies this week. Paul was joined by molecular biologist Richard Ebright and scientist Steven Quay, both of whom spoke during the lecture where they discussed the origins of COVID-19.
The event was the latest installation of TFAS Capitol Hill Lecture Series, which came on the heels of Paul speaking about COVID-19 origins at a Congressional hearing on Tuesday.
There have been ongoing debates regarding the origins of COVID. As The Center Square previously reported, some have alleged that the federal government has not been fully transparent about whether COVID-19 originated from lab research or not.
Paul, Ebright, and Quay all discussed their thoughts on the likelihood of the origins of COVID being caused by a lab leak during the lecture.
The talk began with Paul and Ebright discussing evidence supporting Paul’s theories that COVID may have originated from a lab.
“Today, with much more powerful tools for nucleic acid amplification and sequencing, we still have not been able to obtain direct evidence for any animal that was infected before humans.” Ebright said.
Paul talked about differences between how different animal viruses can infect animals versus humans.
“Animal viruses are adapted to infect animals, they are not adapted to infect humans,” he said. “They have to sort of get lucky to get into humans.”
Paul also discussed how some of his opinions on the origins of COVID have been controversial.
“In what world should we be taking Ebola or the avian flu or Nipah virus and manipulating them to make them more infectious?” Paul said. “For a year, if I said this on the internet I was being downgraded or removed from the internet.”
Paul spoke about his opinions on getting vaccinated. He described being vaccinated as a “risk benefit ratio.”
“Most of the media here still doesn’t get it,” Paul said. “They think I’m anti-vaccine. I’m not anti-vaccine at all. I’m pro-choice pro-medical freedom that you get to decide and that you should be told honestly the risk and benefit.”
Paul stressed the importance of not having limits on freedom of speech and debates. He mentioned how Facebook would “suppress” any Facebook posts talking about potential lab leaks in the past because “the government told them it was misinformation.”
As The Center Square previously reported, the U.S. Supreme Court held a hearing in March regarding concerns of free speech being suppressed on social media, especially concerning possible suppression of posts about COVID.
“The thing is, there are two sides to an argument,” Paul said. “We had a good debate, there were two sides. I’m on one side, but in a free country, there always is the other side. And so i’m not for removing anybody from the internet, you can say what you want to say and everyone should have that debate, the more debate the better. But it’s a dangerous world when we start limiting speech, and that is what’s going on now.”
“You have to have the ability to hear both sides.” Paul said.
