Documentary shows Fauci laughing off lab-leak theory

Dr. Anthony Fauci was shown laughing off the widely accepted lab-leak theory as “molecularly impossible” in a new documentary — while also saying he would’ve implemented quarantines and mask mandates sooner.

The then-White House adviser was followed by PBS throughout 2021 and 2022 as he became a polarizing figure while leading President Biden’s response to the pandemic.

In it, he railed against Sen. Rand Paul “insidiously” suggesting in Congress in July 2021 that his National Institutes of Health had funded gain-of-function research at the lab in Wuhan where COVID first emerged.

Fauci confirmed that the “number of experiments that needed to be done on viruses” include “doing something under certain circumstances that make a pathogen more transmissible or more pathogenic.”

“Which some people refer to as ‘gain of function,’” he said with a look of disgust at the term he has always denied.

“Rand Paul was insidiously throwing into his suggestions that the work done in the Wuhan lab, funded by a small grant from NIH … created a virus that made COVID,” Fauci said.

The Wuhan lab-leak theory is now eyed as the likely source of the virus by many government agencies, including the US Department of Energy and the FBI.

Fauci, however, laughed as he mocked the theory in one of 10 interviews he gave PBS throughout 23 months of filming.

“The microbe that we were working on, not only was not SARS-CoV-2, it would be molecularly impossible for them to turn it into SARS-CoV-2,” he said of the scientific name.

“They were so different, it’s kind of like you have a Chevrolet and you got a motorcycle and you say, ‘I want to make that Chevrolet into the motorcycle.’

“No matter what you do to that Chevrolet. You’re not going to make it into a motorcycle.

“Like, what are you talking about?” he said, presumably addressing the criticism and not his analogy.

“You get attacked by right-wing crazy people,” he said dismissively of criticism by the “hyper far-right conservative members of Congress.”

“People believe anything that somebody puts in front of them,” he said of the now-widely held belief that the Wuhan lab was the source.

“American Masters: Dr. Tony Fauci,” which aired Tuesday, caught Fauci enjoying his then-growing fame while working from his home, which is covered in images of his own face, including on cushion covers and even his own bobblehead.

He was seen wiping away tears while watching President Biden’s inauguration, then saying that the White House “doesn’t approve anything” on COVID “unless I say yes.”

He was seen watching interviews he gave early in the pandemic dismissing masks as ineffective — and then later being the driving force for mandating them.

“Did you flip-flop? No,” he said of his own change of messaging. “You got additional information that made you change what you’re saying.”

Despite standing behind his change of heart, Fauci admitted that he regretted not ordering quarantines and telling people to wear masks sooner, despite numerous studies now suggesting both were ineffective.

“Maybe I should have done that,” he said. “Yeah, I was wrong.”

With Post wires