Rep. Devin Nunes: World can't lock down again over COVID Delta variant, that's what China wants

Republican Rep. Devin Nunes on Tuesday urged world leaders to resist another round of COVID-19 lockdowns to stop the growing spread of the virulent Delta strain, saying such a move would be "playing into exactly what the Chinese want."

The California lawmaker also raised concerns about whether the virus indeed reached humans through an exotic food market in Wuhan, China, as the ruling Chinese Community Party has said.

However, he told the "John Solomon Reports" podcast the top priority is to keep open economies worldwide.

"I would say number one is the world can't ... afford to go into any more lockdown," Nunes said.

He also said he's part of the growing skepticism that the virus didn't reach humans at the market, but instead leaked from the Wuhan Virology Lab.

"Here's like a Delta plus variant now, which is, I think, even more circumstantial evidence that this just didn't come from some animal because this spread so quickly," Nunes said.

He mentioned how treatments and therapeutics, along with other drugs and antivirals like ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine, championed by former President Trump, are now being used by doctors to treat COVID-19.

"[W]e finally got past all the nonsense and pseudo, fake science," Nunes said. "And now doctors are able to actually use treatments and therapeutics, which we've been able – if you catch this early enough, most people can get over it quickly.

"So now, I think people have figured out, 'Well, we're not going to listen to [Dr. Anthony] Fauci and the World Health Organization or the Democrat Socialist Party. We're gonna listen to the doctors and let doctors actually treat this. And we're going to have to go outside the bounds of what the rules and regulations are.'

"And for God's sakes," Nunes continued, "if we're forcing all these Americans to get vaccines that skip the process, we ought to be able to use these long-term therapeutics that have been on the market, in some cases, for decades, to try to treat these new variants. But I will tell you, I think just further lockdowns are exactly – we'd be playing into exactly what the Chinese want. I mean, lockdowns, just, they just don't work. And we know that from our own country."

He also said that COVID might not be over anytime soon.

"The fact of the matter is this is a very dangerous virus because it's so contagious, and that's likely because it was developed in the lab, in a biological warfare lab. And this is not going to be solved overnight. I mean, look, we can knock on wood and hope that these vaccines and people who have already had COVID, that the antibodies will work against this, but this could continue for a while. I mean, we don't know yet, but it's something that we're all paying attention too closely."