WASHINGTON — Kansas Sen. Roger Marshall likes people to know he’s a doctor. His staff call him “Doc.” He petitioned, when running for U.S. Senate in 2020, to get the nickname on the ballot. The state board of elections ruled against him. He won the race anyway.
He’s vaccinated. His wife is vaccinated. Both his parents are vaccinated and he says they’ll be getting booster shots.
But Doc Marshall is also a politician and a significant chunk of his base doesn’t feel so certain about the pandemic.
Many Kansas Republicans have refused to get vaccinated — Marshall says he thinks vaccines are a personal choice and has tried to fight against federal vaccine mandates. Many Kansas Republicans don’t like mask mandates either — Marshall has publicly said he doesn’t think mask mandates work and doesn’t wear a mask around the Capitol, despite the Capitol physician’s recommendation.
Republicans are less likely to have received a shot of the vaccine than Democrats, a divide that has only grown over time and has led to a higher per-capita death toll in counties that voted for former President Donald Trump than President Joe Biden.
So how does a physician turned first-term senator navigate the politics around a polarized global pandemic while drawing attention for being tough on China and carrying the torch of a relatively popular issue Trump once championed?
He focuses on how it even happened in the first place.
In August, after raising the issue for months, Doc Marshall put on his white lab coat and scrubs and stood in front of a green screen. He spent 12 minutes and 49 seconds trying to explain the uncertain origins of COVID-19 on YouTube.
“There are many reasons why we need to get to the bottom of this virus’ origin,” Marshall says as a picture of the coronavirus looms behind him. “As a physician, I think we always need to know what, where, how and perhaps why whenever any infectious disease outbreak occurs.”
Politicians often gain credibility based on whatever they did before entering politics, regardless of whether it’s outside of their professional area of expertise. Military veterans have it on foreign policy issues. Doctors, like Marshall, get credibility on issues like health care.
As other members of the Congress have focused on different areas of the pandemic like vaccine mandates, eviction moratoriums and the economy, Marshall has pursued COVID’s origins obsessively, issuing an 8-point plan to excavate how COVID came to exist.
He smiled when he was asked whether there was a political advantage to continuing to focus on the origins of COVID-19.
“I’m sure there is, but until you mentioned it right now, the thought never really crossed my mind,” Marshall said.
Checking the boxes
First, a quick refresher course.
There are three theories about how COVID-19 came to be.
The first is that the virus was caused naturally. It came from a bat, which gave it to an animal sold at a market, which gave it to humans.
The second theory says scientists were studying the virus at the Wuhan Institute of Virology when some sort of accident occurred that infected scientists, who then spread it to the community.
The third theory is basically the second theory. But instead of a natural virus, it’s a virus scientists changed to make it slightly more transmissible for research purposes that leaked from the lab.
Scientists have not yet been able to definitively say which theory is correct. Most think the virus spread from animals to humans naturally, the one they’ve pointed to all along. But, because they have not been able to pinpoint the exact path the virus took, they haven’t ruled out the possibility that it came from the virology lab.
While global politics could make it more difficult to get a definitive answer on the origins of COVID-19, the national politics appear to be in Marshall’s favor.
Taking a popular stand? Check. Loyalty to Trump? Check. Looking tough on China? Check. Getting the attention of national conservative media? Check. Looking tough on the CDC, the agency some Republicans fault for upending their world? Check.
Few people took the lab leak theory seriously in the beginning of the pandemic, but it had two major proponents — Trump and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Both went on television and claimed the U.S. had evidence the virus leaked from a lab, part of the “tough on China” posture the Trump administration had taken on during his term.
Public opinion has shifted over time. A slight majority of Americans, 52%, now believe that the virus leaked from a lab in China, according to a recent poll by Politico and the Harvard T. Chan School of Public Health. The shift came after Biden said the intelligence committee would look into whether the virus leaked from the lab and Dr. Fauci said scientists shouldn’t rule out the possibility.
The same poll also showed that 82% of Americans think it’s important for the U.S. government to investigate the origins of COVID-19, with Democrats and Republicans both thinking its important.
“I think the broader public interest is… if it’s preventable, they don’t want this to happen again,” Robert Blendon, a professor of public health and policy at Harvard T. Chan School of Public Health.
‘America deserves to know’
Marshall is most focused on the theory that the virus was created in a lab.
That would bolster his argument to stop something called “gain-of-function” studies. These are experiments in which scientists change a biological agent (like a virus) to either give it new or enhanced abilities.
Often, the point of these experiments is so scientists can be better prepared to stop future outbreaks. But they can be very dangerous. If something goes wrong in the lab and the scientists are infected, it could trigger a pandemic.
In 2011, there was controversy over this type of research because of its potential danger. The National Institutes of Health created a committee to weigh whether or not these experiments should be funded. Some scientists have criticized the process for a lack of transparency.
Meanwhile, politicians have latched onto the idea that gain-of-function research could have led to COVID-19. In a Senate hearing earlier this year, Sen. Rand Paul, accused the NIH of funding a gain-of-function experiment at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
“Senator Paul, with all due respect, you are entirely and completely incorrect, that the N.I.H. has not ever and does not now fund gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Institute,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, responded.
Marshall said he doesn’t trust the CDC or scientists to review proposed gain-of-function research. He thinks Congress should step in to block it.
“I am really, in my heart, am worried that viral gain-of-function with studies that started here in the United States and then with United States funding led to this virus,” Marshall said. “So I think America deserves to know.”
It is unlikely that Marshall, or the Senate, will be able to answer that question. It’s also uncertain that scientists studying the virus will be able to quickly answer the question.
It took until the 1930s for scientists to figure out that the influenza pandemic that spread across the world in 1918 was a virus and not bacteria. HIV spread silently through the 1970s and then, once discovered, it took years before researchers could figure out a way to reliably test for the virus.
“We’re in a very recent moment in terms of the ability of an interconnected, international scientific community to be able to even pursue options that have the potential to be satisfactory,” said Richard McKay, a historian at the University of Cambridge who studies epidemics.
The involvement of politicians like Marshall is likely not helping. As the U.S. and other countries have questioned whether the virus was leaked by a lab it has created a standoff with China, where it’s difficult to get the information necessary to rule out the scenario.
Causation and blame
For as long as we have known about diseases, there have been people trying to figure out where they came from. It was as true in 430 BC, when Athenians thought their enemies in the Peloponnesian war, the Spartans, were spreading a poison, as it was in the 14th century, when Jews were falsely blamed for the Black Death and massacred, as it was in the 1980s and 1990s when a French-Canadian flight attendant was falsely accused of being the person who introduced HIV to North America.
“It’s nothing new,” McKay said. “I think it touches on how we as human beings think about causation.”
And, McKay points out, there is a fine line between looking at causation and placing blame.
Right now, Marshall is blaming China.
Not necessarily for starting the pandemic, at least not yet. His argument is that China has not provided as much information as he thinks scientists need in order to find out where the virus came from.
“I think this is one more piece of that puzzle of why we have to be tough on China,” Marshall said.
Last week, Marshall filed a bill called the Chinese Communist Party Accountability Act of 2021, which would impose sanctions on China’s minister of the National Health Commission and the director of the China’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
It’s unlikely his bill will pass, as Democrats control Congress. But it’s part of his eight steps for investigating the origins of COVID-19. Other potential steps include holding up nominations to posts in the Biden Administration and forming bipartisan investigations across multiple committees.
The broader public interest has also enabled Marshall to get bipartisan support for a deeper investigation into the origins of the virus. In August, he worked with Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, a Democrat from New York, to pass a resolution calling for an inquiry into the outbreak.
And it has helped him get on Fox News.
“It really does help if you appear and you’re a conservative on Fox News,” Blendon said. “You have a very broad constituency who at least lean that way and you get an incredible amount of recognition for that.”
Marshall, when asked if getting on Fox News was important to his base, said it’s important for him to communicate to “all the people of Kansas.”
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