Former CDC Director Robert Redfield told Fox News during a Monday interview that after viewing classified information related to the origins of the pandemic, he believes COVID-19 came from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Redfield began the interview by dispelling the notion that SARS-CoV-2 was a “SARS-like” virus and said that the public health response was wrong because officials assumed that it was going to be like SARS.
When asked if he thought that the coronavirus came from a lab, Redfield said, “Well, my professional opinion, as a virologist, is that’s the hypothesis that I support.”
“I had a very high-security clearance to work with the State Department and the national security group, including the secretary, Pompeo, where we reviewed material together to try to understand, help him understand what it meant scientifically,” he said. “I don’t know if he also asked Dr. Fauci to do the same. But I would say I had probably the highest clearance within the agencies within the Department of Health and Human Services, and therefore was privy to a lot of information, some of which now has been declassified.”
“And I think, as you see more and more of it declassified, people start saying, well, wait a minute, maybe we ought to look at this other hypothesis at least with the same rigor,” he continued. “And then, unfortunately, like I mentioned, those scientists and Lancet decided to almost try to power-play you that this is the only way you can think. And I think we’re seeing now that there’s an opening of the scientific community to say, wait a minute, we need to look at both possibilities, and we need to be scientific about this.”
WATCH:
Former CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield after receiving high-level classified information about the origins of the coronavirus: I believe that the coronavirus came from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. pic.twitter.com/GRVCC2vfJf
— Jason Rantz on KTTH Radio (@jasonrantz) June 16, 2021
Redfield said that Dr. Anthony Fauci was an “excellent scientist” but warned that all scientists can form beliefs that are wrong.
“I think Tony is holding on to this hypothesis tightly,” Redfield said regarding Fauci’s assertion that the coronavirus had a natural origin. “Now, why would that be? Well, the reality is, the only way new pathogens historically came into the human species is from a zoonotic source. So, it’s not like this is odd. This is the way it always was.”
“And now you have this other question, as people are doing research, particularly in this range of we call gain of function research, where we’re taking natural pathogens that don’t infect humans, and doing things to them in the lab, where they may gain the capability to infect humans,” he continued. “So, I find it — as a virologist, I find it biologically not feasible now that, all of a sudden, this virus, even if we find this intermediate host, which we haven’t found, is that it immediately has somehow learned how to be highly infectious for man.”
“So, I think — and, sometimes, scientists, when they get on — they bite into a bone on a hypothesis, it’s hard for them to move on. I hope Tony steps back and looks at both hypotheses, as I said, and he works really hard to prove that his hypothesis is incorrect, and people that accept the hypothesis that I have put forward work real hard to prove that our hypothesis is incorrect,” he continued. “But I do think there’s a scientific arrogance that they can control any negative consequences. And you have the Lancet letter, and then you — then you have all of this push back and forth with e-mails that were going back and forth with Tony. It just seemed like a lot of people wanted to squelch any idea that there was another hypothesis.”
Redfield said that those in the scientific community who tried to suppress the lab leak theory were “very anti-science.”
WATCH:
Former CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield after receiving high-level classified information about the origins of the coronavirus says Dr. Fauci is holding on to his beliefs about where the pandemic came from too tightly. pic.twitter.com/4eOv0MO1Xt
— Jason Rantz on KTTH Radio (@jasonrantz) June 16, 2021