The Rand Paul-Anthony Fauci show returned to Capitol Hill on Wednesday. The ensuing fireworks detracted from legitimate questions about the government’s involvement in potentially dangerous research.

Paul, the Kentucky Republican who chairs the Homeland Security and Government Committee, and Fauci, the high-profile symbol of the nation’s pandemic response, have clashed repeatedly in the past over publicly funded scientific research and the origins of COVID-19. Paul has maintained that Fauci was less than forthcoming about the possibility of the virus originating in a Chinese laboratory that had received grant funding from the U.S. government.

The dispute became so heated that, before he left office, President Joe Biden issued Fauci a pardon to protect him from potential prosecution stemming from his previous testimony regarding COVID.

Wednesday’s hearing came amid Paul’s release of the diaries Fauci kept during the pandemic. The writings reveal that, as Robbie Soave of Reason magazine put it, “there’s a massive gap between what Fauci said in public and what he said in private about the likely start of the pandemic.”

Fauci had insisted publicly that there was scant evidence the virus escaped from the Chinese lab, pointing instead to a leap from animals to humans at a seafood market in China. Yet his writings show that Fauci originally privately felt that the market had not been the source. Later, on a conference call with a dozen other experts, his diary reveals that 10 of the participants “felt that deliberate insertion was possible” as an origin explanation.

“That conclusion, however, was inconvenient for Fauci,” Soave notes, “because he had served for decades as the foremost public advocate of gain-of-function research — of experimenting on coronaviruses so that they become more transmissible and more deadly.”

The hearing revealed little new, however, as the proceedings degenerated into camp when Fauci invoked the Fifth Amendment and refused to answer any questions. Team Fauci had previously sent a letter to Paul accusing him of conducting a “years-long public crusade” to get Fauci “prosecuted for imaginary crimes.”

Fauci — like any American — has a right against self-incrimination. And it’s protocol for scientists to examine and consider various explanations for any given phenomenon. But the firestorm that erupted over Fauci’s refusal to testify overshadows the larger issue. As Paul noted: “The real question is whether (this research) was dangerous. Was it wise to fund it?”

Having that debate is one key toward avoiding a repeat of the 2020 pandemic.

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