Tuesday on CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) questioned the lack of attention dedicated to determining the origin of the COVID-19 virus.

The Kentucky Republican pointed to an admission from Facebook in suppressing discussion about the virus’ origins and suggested that given the focus on environmental issues, including microplastics in water, the virus that wiped out millions should still be at the forefront.

“As far as the lab and where it came from, lab or animals — in the beginning we were discounted and called conspiracy theorists,” he said. “We were dismissed and no one would interview us. We were actually taken off of social media.”

“Facebook admitted they made a mistake — ‘Whoops, we, for a year and a half, suppressed any knowledge that this could have come from a lab,'” Paul continued. “But now I would say, if you interview scientists, it’s closer to 50-50. If you interview people in the media, or even people from the left or the right, I think quite a few of them would acknowledge that there’s a pretty good chance this did come from a lab. What I need to do is get people convinced enough. Even if there was a 10% chance it came from the lab, wouldn’t we want to try to prevent this from happening again? I mean, look at all of the people going crazy about microplastics in your bottled water, but a million Americans died and they’re not worried about this research going on at labs where they create viruses that don’t exist in nature, that could potentially wipe out millions of people, but they’re worried about microplastic in a bottle of water? I mean, come on!”

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