The Wuhan Lab and the Virus: The Dr. Fauci, Rand Paul Debate Fact-Checked and Explained On 5/14/21 at 4:00 AM EDT The Wuhan lab and the virus. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) in Washington, D.C. on March 23, 2021. Senator Paul's debate with Dr. Fauci, fact-checked and explained Greg Nash/Getty Senator Rand Paul went on the attack in the Senate chambers earlier this week over the origins of the coronavirus that caused the current pandemic. In his questioning of Dr. Anthony Fauci, the senator raised the issue of whether the coronavirus jumped from animals to humans naturally (as coronaviruses tend to do) or was the result of experiments in which scientists took natural viruses, made them more deadly or infectious or both (which scientists all over the world do), and then somehow allowed it to escape from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.