Robert Redfield, the former CDC director explained his reasoning for believing that a lab leak was the most likely cause for the COVID-19 pandemic, in his Fox News interview.
The former CDC director spoke about the continuing debate over the pandemic’s true source during his lengthy interview with Dr. Siegel, a professor from the NYU Langone Medical Center. While Dr. Fauci and other top members of the scientific community have long said that human contact with an animal was the source of the pandemic, calls to look into the lab leak theory have increased in recent days.
Redfield said COVID-19’s human movements contradicted what was seen in other deadly viruses with comparable profiles, like MERS and SARS, which first got to humans through animal contact but moved at a much slower rate.
“When I said I did not believe it was biologically possible that coronavirus moved from a bat to some animal into a human and now has turned into one of the most infectious viruses., Redfield said, “That is not in line with how other viruses move into infecting humans. And, it does point to the alternative idea that it moved out of a lab where it was evolved to become a virus that moved to humans.”
Calls to look into the lab-leak idea, once dismissed as conspiracy, have increased since the Wall Street Journal went public with new information that three scientists at China’s Wuhan Lab went for hospital treatment for symptoms in line with COVID-19 in the later months of 2019.
Redfield, a virologist, showed disappointment in what he said was a “lack of openness” within the community to “look into both hypotheses.”
“I am giving my opinion as a virologist that I don’t believe it is likely that covid-19 moved from a bat to another animal – and then infected humans and suddenly learned how to move between humans to the point of causing one of the biggest pandemics we have ever seen in the history of the world., Redfield added.
President Biden stated in May that the U.S. intel. community had “two possible scenarios” about the pandemic’s sources but had not yet reached a deciding conclusion. The president urged officials to give their best evidence within 90 days.
Author: Blake Ambrose