Fauci: Can’t rule out China’s blame

Dr. Anthony Fauci said Sunday that he would “absolutely” support a 9/11-style commission to investigate the US response to the COVID-19 pandemic — and that he still hasn’t ruled out that the virus originated at a Wuhan wet market.

The White House chief medical adviser said he believes there will be such an investigation, in which a bipartisan congressional group will look at what led to the crisis, as well as the government’s failings.

“I think what’s going to happen is that you are going to see that for sure,” Fauci told CBS’s Margaret Brennan on “Face the Nation.”

“I think the lack of doing that now is because you’re focusing on getting this thing under control.”

Asked whether he wants there to be a probe, Fauci replied, “Oh, I absolutely want one.”

Fauci said he would be “astounded” if the country didn’t take the steps to study the crisis response after more than 40 million Americans have become infected with the virus, including 760,000 who have died. Given the staggering numbers, the public should not imagine that the nation wouldn’t “look back at this and tear it apart, examine it, do an autopsy on it and try and figure it out,” he said.

Fauci added that he believes that the Biden administration would back a probe.

Asked about the origins of the virus, Fauci said he hasn’t ruled out that it jumped to humans from a wet market in Wuhan, China.

“What the Chinese did, I don’t have firsthand knowledge of that, but the people who were reporting it, who investigated what they did, is they cleaned out the markets as soon as it turned out that it was clear that there were clusters coming from the market,” he said.

“Which, you know, in typical fashion, I think trying to make sure that things don’t get pointed to them, they probably got rid of the animals that were the intermediary hosts there.”

Fauci also responded to Beijing’s assertion that the virus did not come from the market.

“I think you could say we don’t know how and where it originated,” he said. “There were wet markets in Wuhan that are ample opportunity for a virus to jump from an animal.”