Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., told Newsmax on Thursday that the viruses China is currently working with are many times more lethal than COVID-19 and could cause mortality "worse than the Black Plague" if they escape from the lab.
"The only thing we were lucky with COVID is that the death rate was 0.3%, which was still a lot of people and I don't want to downplay that," Paul said on Newsmax's "National Report." "But they're working with viruses in the lab that have 5% to 50% mortality. If a virus escapes with 50% mortality, it'll be worse than the Black Plague in the 14th century when a third of Europe died.
"If a third of America dies or a third of the world dies, there will not be potable water. There won't be chlorine in the water. There won't be the ability to feed people; there will be war and rioting in the streets, and there won't be enough food and the society would descend into chaos if half the people died on the planet."
Paul said that although the United States has stopped funding the Wuhan Institute of Virology, "there is still funding going on in other parts of China."
"To my knowledge, there's still subcontracts that go through American universities to military research in China," he said. "So, all of the money we send to China should stop. May not make them stop doing this crazy research, but that should stop."
Beyond that, there are "at least 12 different laboratories in the United States doing gain of function research," Paul said.
"All of this needs to be reviewed for safety and then there needs to be more controls on how our money is spent domestically — that we can control," he said. "So, I'm working on legislation — hoping to get a Democrat on board — that will set up an independent commission.
"Not people who receive the money; nobody can be a decider on whether this is dangerous that also receives the money, and that's been a problem in the past."
Asked if the National Institutes of Health (NIH) are aware of reports of China's new, more lethal coronavirus strain, Paul said: "We know nothing of what goes on in NIH."
"They're more secretive than the CIA," he said. "They will not reveal any deliberations and we have had virtually no conversations with them. I've been trying to get records from them. We oversee them. That's my job. I'm one of the ranking Republicans on the Health committee overseeing the NIH and the NIH refuses to cooperate.
"This is a real problem. It's a government run amok. Some of this is classified, but most of it's non-classified, but you have a government operating outside of any kind of scrutiny and it is very, very dangerous and it's liable to happen again."
Nicole Weatherholtz ✉
Nicole Weatherholtz, a Newsmax general assignment reporter covers news, politics, and culture. She is a National Newspaper Association award-winning journalist.
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