Fauci facing calls for resignation after shifting positions on probe of Wuhan lab

Republican lawmakers are calling for Dr. Anthony Fauci to be fired, amid his litany of shifting opinions on the coronavirus, its origin and his stance on an investigation into the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Fauci is coming under fire from congressional Republicans who point to his admission that the NIH earmarked $600,000 for the Wuhan Institute of Virology to study the possibility that bat coronaviruses could be transmitted to humans.

He told members of a House Appropriations subcommittee on Tuesday that the money was provided to the lab through the nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance and funded a “modest collaboration with very respectable Chinese scientists who were world experts on coronavirus.”

But Fauci emphatically denied that the money went toward so-called “gain of function” research, which he described as “taking a virus that could infect humans and making it either more transmissible and/or pathogenic for humans.”