For a contrarian like me, it’s hard not to idolize Li Wenliang. He was a young ophthalmologist, just as I once was. Full of youth, unapologetic, and a force for truth even living in the midst of Communist China, where citizens are serenaded by drones hovering outside the balconies of their high-rise apartments singing the true state anthem: “Control your soul’s desire for freedom.”

Li Wenliang gave his life taking care of Covid patients and trying to warn the world of the impending pandemic. Meanwhile, American government scientists essentially spat on his grave as they buried the truth to cover their asses. At every turn, Anthony Fauci has worked to obscure any connections between the NIH-funded Wuhan lab and Covid-19. Did Li know that his postings on Weibo chat about an unknown SARS-like virus that was killing people in Wuhan would essentially be his last words?

How was this hero, this truth-teller, treated by the Communist Chinese? He was summoned and reprimanded for “spreading rumors” and “severely disturbing the social order.” Li was forced to sign a confession.

Realize that he was accused of spreading “misinformation”—the same sort of accusations that would soon be leveled in the land of the free. I should know. They made the same accusations against me. Major media platforms such as Facebook labeled anyone suggesting that Covid could have originated in the Wuhan lab a purveyor of this so-called misinformation.

The term would become the watchword of the American left, desperate to control the narrative by silencing those who questioned it. According to the official Chinese narrative, Li died from Covid. He was only 33 years old. The death rate from Covid or with Covid in the United States for adults between the ages of 30 and 39 is about 0.04 percent, quite rare. Likely, that rate is even lower if patients with significant comorbidities are excluded. 

Li’s death was a great loss, but also a rare occurrence in his age bracket. Extraordinarily rare. In an authoritarian society, such deaths linger and lead to whispers regarding the veracity of official causes of death. When his death notice was posted online sometime after midnight, the comments on Weibo quickly came in: “I knew you would post this in the middle of the night.... You think we’ve all gone to sleep? No. We haven’t.” Another commenter posted that “countless young people will mature overnight after today: the world is not as beautiful as we imagined. Are you angry? If any of us here is fortunate enough to speak up for the public in the future, please make sure you remember tonight’s anger.”

The wistful responses of China’s youth to the loss of one of their own generation remind me of the Parveen Shakir poem:

They insist upon catching the firefly in the daylight

The children of our age, have grown wiser.

It is yet to be determined whether a new generation of Chinese youth will rise up, remembering the hope that came when Deng Xiaoping dismantled Mao’s brutal shackles. Will a new generation channel the despair of Tiananmen Square to forge a new China? A China whose government does not threaten to one day unleash upon the world, either by accident or by intent, a biological scourge that civilization might struggle to survive? With Li’s untimely passing, even China’s National Supervisory Commission, an anti-corruption department of government, chimed in, saying they would investigate Li’s death “in response to issues raised by the masses.” As CNN reported, “The short statement did not elaborate on the nature of the ‘issues’ raised.”

Li Wenliang was a hero, and I dedicate this book to Li and all others who resist censorship in the hope that the DNA of resistance and independent thought will never be stamped out by government censors.

Once Upon a Nightmare

As news of the mysterious and deadly virus spread, one can only imagine the flop-sweat that must have soaked through Shi Zhengli’s clothing as she paced her office in the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). Known worldwide as the “bat scientist,” Dr. Shi trembled at the thought that a worldwide pandemic may have originated in her lab. News that three of her colleagues were seriously ill with a pneumonia of unknown origin sent shock waves throughout the WIV. Yet in Communist China, one’s first worry isn’t always about the truth, but how the party reacts to the truth. Shi had to act quickly if she were to survive.

She knew there was no tolerance for criticism. She’d seen what happened to colleagues, such as Huang Yanling, who didn’t toe the party line. She didn’t know yet that Huang would ultimately go missing, but Shi wasn’t naïve. Shi hadn’t reached this pinnacle of success in the Chinese research world without understanding the Communist Party roadblocks that could stymie anyone’s ascent to leadership. Any misstep might be her last.

Dr. Shi’s accomplishments were legion. From her field expeditions to remote caves to her collection and identification of over a hundred new coronaviruses to her collaboration with famous American scientists, Shi knew she was a star in government circles. But Shi also understood that no one in China is ever truly safe. Everyone is ultimately expendable, and the trick was staying ahead of the curve, avoiding the hangman’s ax.

Her lab was now under direct military control—not that her lab had ever not been under the military’s watchful eye. It might help her survive if the new military command understood that she had just been following orders. It might help her survive if she reminded everyone that she listened to and obeyed the direct orders of military scientist General Zhou Yusen.

Shi simply provided him with samples of the mutant virus. He promised a general vaccine for all coronaviruses. General Zhou insisted that the virus must have significant ability to infect humans; the coronavirus needed to have a special site to allow it to enter human cells. Shi could do that. Shi had even submitted an application for a U.S. defense agency grant to do precisely that. Shi didn’t yet know the virus from her lab would kill millions, but she did hope that the world would one day judge her based on her desire to save lives.

As for her personal survival, Shi pinned her hopes on the “I was just following orders” defense. General Zhou was really the one in charge. He was official military, for goodness’ sake. Surely, he would either absorb the blame or take the fall. Dr. Shi would not know until the spring that General Zhou would not survive the year.

Was he killed because the leaked virus killed millions of Chinese? Or did he commit suicide because the vaccine he developed was not really that effective? Dr. Shi didn’t know General Zhou’s fate yet. All Dr. Shi knew at the time was that mistakes were not tolerated, that errors of this magnitude were terminal, and Shi knew that survival depended not only on demonstrating her usefulness but also showing her party loyalty by expertly covering up all traces of the virus’s true origin.

But now it was a race against time. All evidence of the virus so carefully cultivated in her lab must be eliminated, not just to destroy the evidence but to protect any other lab workers from dying. Once the danger abated enough for her to think, Shi knew the next step was to prevent the world from knowing that the virus originated in her lab. So late one night in September on a muggy day with midday temperatures exceeding ninety degrees, Dr. Shi destroyed the online coronavirus database she had so painstakingly compiled over the years. Much of that research was financed by the U.S. taxpayer.

The cover-up had begun.

And it was only September 2019. The rest of the world would have to wait until January 2020 to learn of the COVID pandemic. And even then, the Chinese government would begin by swearing that the virus did not transmit from human to human….

So many lies.

Not just the lies of the Chinese government—even our own government lied. And lied even more as it tried to hide every bit of evidence of U.S. government funding of dangerous coronavirus gain-of-function experiments in Wuhan.

The Case Against Anthony Fauci

The great Covid cover-up began in China. No one should be surprised that a totalitarian government would seek to hide any responsibility for a worldwide pandemic. But it was mind-boggling to witness the cover-up that took place in our own country, supposedly the land of the free. Fauci and his yes-men might have gotten away with it if a federal judge hadn’t ordered their emails released, revealing that virtually all of Fauci’s colleagues initially believed that Covid originated with a lab leak. The emails showed in real time these very same scientists publicly disavowing the lab-leak theory while privately concluding that in all likelihood the virus did leak from the Wuhan lab.

Those who disdain the moniker “deep state” fail to understand the nature of the epithet. It’s not an accusation of evil men sitting in the dark, rubbing their hands together with glee and plotting to devastate the world by releasing a super-virus. The truth is much more mundane. George Carlin put it well when he said, “You don’t need a formal conspiracy when interests converge.” Why are eight federal agencies resisting my records releases? Why are so many in league that “deep state” describes the situation well?

It’s precisely that their interests converge. Any agency that funded the gain-of-function research in Wuhan or in the United States or anywhere in the world now denies that the research was gain-of-function, and fights tenaciously to keep any record that they funded this dangerous research from the public eye. So fierce is their will that they have refused to divulge records even when I enlisted 25 fellow senators to sign the records requests. The deep state is simply an alignment of interests among bureaucrats throughout the federal government to cover up any responsibility for funding research that, in all likelihood, led to a lab leak that killed millions.

The Truth Emerges

In late February of 2023, when the Wall Street Journal revealed that the Department of Energy now acknowledged that Covid likely leaked from a Wuhan lab, Elon Musk tweeted to his 130 million followers that Fauci had indeed funded the Wuhan lab and, yes, they had been doing dangerous gain-of-function research.

Musk’s tweet was in response to a montage video of my exchanges with Fauci where Fauci repeatedly and pointedly denied funding any gain-of-function research. The video that Musk linked to was titled “Dr. Anthony Fauci funded gain-of-function research at the Wuhan lab, lied to Congress about it, and now both the FBI & the Department of Energy have concluded that the coronavirus originated at the Wuhan lab. Does that mean Dr. Anthony Fauci funded the development of COVID-19?” 

In response, Musk tweeted, “He did it through a pass-through organization (EcoHealth).”

Musk was confirming that I was correct when I challenged Anthony Fauci in committee and Fauci had angrily and vehemently denied funding any gain-of-function research. I asked Fauci again at a subsequent hearing, “Dr. Fauci, knowing that it is a crime to lie to Congress, do you wish to retract your statement... that the NIH has never funded gain of function research in Wuhan?” 

Fauci, in a transparent attempt to change the subject, abruptly pivoted to the shrill accusation that I was somehow responsible for death threats against him.

And what of the man behind this subversion of truth and abuse of power? Even though 2023 found Anthony Fauci allegedly gone, he really wasn’t. Rumors were he was still coming to the office a few days a week, keeping himself on the federal payroll so he could get free 24-hour security. Some speculated that Fauci also intended to utilize government lawyers if he was indicted for lying to Congress or hiding official communications.

Fauci intended to milk the position for as long as he could.

In late August 2023, it was announced that Fauci had joined the faculty of Georgetown University. Before that, while Fauci officially remained on the government rolls, he had simultaneously earned $100,000 a speech in the private sector and was no longer available for routine questioning.

How convenient.

In his last hours in office, President Joe Biden granted Fauci a preemptive pardon - something unprecedented in modern American politics - that gave him blanket immunity for any crimes committed going all the way back to January 2014.

Fauci accepted the pardon and insisted that he had “committed no crime and there are no possible grounds for any allegation or threat of criminal investigation or prosecution of me.”

What a curious response.

So why the pardon?

The Evidence is Clear

When the Covid “experts” pronounced that mass gatherings for “worthy” purposes such as the George Floyd protests were not risky, but gatherings for school and church were dangerous and therefore outlawed, we were told to shut up and comply. We were not allowed to challenge this absurdity, or we would be labeled a racist. The experts told us the virus would not spread when one was screaming into a bullhorn and chanting arm-in-arm for social justice. It also definitely wouldn’t spread while looting, setting fires, and attacking police. These gatherings were necessary during the pandemic. As for church? Well, God could wait.

It wasn’t just schools, churches, and businesses. Your elderly parents locked down in solitary confinement in an assisted-living condo? They could spend the year lonely and isolated. It was too dangerous to give them any human contact. Your loved one’s funeral? That was too risky and not allowed. Grieve alone, the experts said.

George Floyd, however, required four massive funerals with thousands of mourners, because, again, the virus does not spread when one is singing and chanting for social justice. Don’t you know anything? In the face of such obvious contradictions and lies, Americans were astonishingly compliant. We were told so many absurdities repeatedly by the media that a form of mass manipulation of the American psyche occurred.

Remember the famous image of a CNN reporter standing in front of a burning street filled with looters and broken windows while the chyron below him read, “Fiery but Mostly Peaceful Protests”? Nothing to see here! Don’t believe your eyes. Don’t think too hard. Just listen to the experts. Stay home. We are all in this together! Wear a mask. Watch Netflix. Order from Amazon. Take your Soma.

Above all, do not question.

To do so risks social condemnation as a racist, a “denier” of the latest approved belief, an “anti-vaxxer” or “anti-masker.” Once branded as such, you could lose not just friends and family members, but your job. Your bank could cancel you. Best to remain silent. Listen to the experts. Believe the science.

And as Anthony Fauci famously told you, “I am the Science.”

How did Dr. Anthony Fauci, lifelong government bureaucrat, become “The Science”? As Jean Giraudoux is quoted as saying, “The secret of success is sincerity. Once you can fake that you’ve got it made.”

Likely, no other government official, elected representatives included, could fake sincerity like Anthony Fauci. Will investigators finally uncover, from purposefully lost databases, the real precursor to Covid-19?

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Time will tell. But from what we know of the Covid cover-up, the evidence is clear that Fauci and others worked together to obscure and distort the truth. The Chinese government orchestrated its own cover-up. Multiple U.S. government agencies to this day continue to hide evidence that they funded dangerous research in Wuhan. I believe that history will judge them harshly.

In the end, one must imagine Fauci and others all believe they got away with it. But still, late at night, even the guilty must become anxious, rerunning the scenarios through their minds, wondering... latching onto lingering doubts...and worrying: Did their actions lead to the largest man-made plague in human history? Are the millions dead the result of their experiments to increase the pathogenicity of deadly viruses? History will judge. But the facts as we now know them paint a sordid tale of dishonesty, misjudgment, and ultimately hubris the likes of which this world has rarely seen.

This has been excerpted from Sen. Paul’s 2023 book “Deception: The Great Covid Cover Up” published by Regnery Publishing. 
*The portions on Shi Zhengli are based on facts but fictionalizes herfeelings and thoughts about the origins of COVID. Obviously, this reverie is conjecture, and the character does not purport to be an objective portrait of any real person living or dead.