Opinion

Ex-CDC Head Finally Says What We’ve All Known Forever About The Source Of COVID-19

   DailyWire.com
People in PPE work in the Huo-Yan (Fire Eye) Laboratory designed for high-capacity 2019-nCoV (SARS-CoV-2) detection in Wuhan in central China
Feature China/Barcroft Media via Getty Images

So I was reading the transcript from former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Robert Redfield’s testimony from earlier this month before the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic (yes, this is what I do in my spare time).

And I gotta’ say, I missed something kinda’ big. The headlines that came that day from the ex-CDC Chief focused on Dr. Anthony Fauci, who Redfield said “sidelined” anyone who dared question him on the origin of SARS-CoV-2, which causes COVID-19.

But the doctor also said something fascinating about the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan, China, where scientists were reportedly doing gain-of-function work on coronaviruses — partly funded by U.S. taxpayers at the behest of Fauci.

“In September of 2019, three things happened in that lab,” Redfield said in the hearing. “One is they deleted the sequences. Was highly irregular. Researchers don’t usually like to do that. Second thing they did was they changed the command and control at the lab from the civilian control to the military control. Highly unusual — and I’ve been involved in dual-use labs when I was in the military.”

“And the third thing they did, which I think is really telling, is they let a contractor redo the ventilation system in that laboratory. So I think, clearly, there was strong evidence that there was a significant event that happened in that laboratory in September,” the doctor said.

That’s not at all what Fauci said. For years, the nation’s top immunologist asserted that the virus appeared naturally, mutating from animals to infect humans.

In April 2020, Fauci cited a study that found the virus’s mutations are “consistent with a jump of a species from an animal to a human.”

“There was a study recently,” Fauci told reporters on April 17, 2020, when asked if it was possible that virus came from a Chinese lab, “where a group of highly qualified evolutionary virologists looked at the sequences … in bats as they evolve and the mutations that it took to get to the point where it is now is totally consistent with a jump of a species from an animal to a human.

“So, the paper will be available. I don’t have the authors right now, but we can make it available to you,” Fauci said.

But then, earlier this month, emails revealed by House Republicans showed a completely different story.

The emails showed Fauci “prompted” that very study to disprove the theory that the virus leaked from the lab in Wuhan, China. In fact, he had final approval of the scientific paper he had commissioned.

That paper, entitled “The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2,” was delivered to Fauci for final approval before it was published in Nature Medicine on February 17, 2020.

The paper “was written four days after Fauci, and his NIH boss Francis Collins, held a call with the four authors to discuss reports that COVID-19 may have leaked from the Wuhan lab and ‘may have been intentionally genetically manipulated,'” the Post wrote.

The House Oversight subcommittee examining COVID released emails earlier this month that show the paper’s co-author, Dr. Kristian Andersen, said Fauci “prompted” him to write the paper with the specific goal to “disprove” the lab-leak theory, The Daily Wire reported.

During the House Select Subcommittee this month, Redfield also said Fauci actively sought to exclude or silence anyone who failed to embrace his chosen narrative. He claimed Fauci intentionally excluded him from conversations because he refused to fall in line.

“This was an a priori decision that there’s one point of view that we’re going to put out there, and anyone who doesn’t agree with it is going to be sidelined. And as I say, I was only the CDC director, and I was sidelined,” Redfield said.

Wait for the next shoe to fall. It all still doesn’t add up.

The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Joseph Curl has covered politics for 35 years, including 12 years as White House correspondent for a national newspaper. He was also the a.m. editor of the Drudge Report for four years. Send tips to [email protected] and follow him on Twitter @josephcurl.

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