During an exclusive interview on Tuesday with Fox News, former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield broke his silence on recent revelations that COVID-19 emerged from a Wuhan lab.
“When I said before that I didn’t think it was biologically plausible that COVID-19 went from a bat to some unknown animal into man and now had become one of the most infectious viruses,” said Redfield. “That’s not consistent with how other coronaviruses have come into the human species. And, it does suggest that there’s an alternative hypothesis that it went from a bat virus, got into a laboratory, where in the laboratory, it was taught, educated, it evolved, so that it became a virus that could efficiently transmit human to human.”
Fox News reports:
Redfield, a virologist, expressed disappointment in what he described as a “lack of openness” within the scientific community to “pursue both hypotheses.”
“I’m just giving my best opinion as a virologist, and I don’t think it’s plausible that this virus went from a bat to an animal – we still don’t know that animal – and then went into humans and immediately had learned how to be human-to-human transmissible to the point of now causing one of the greatest pandemics we’ve had in the history of the world,” Redfield added.
The Chinese government has been swift to deflect blame regarding the lab leak theory amid calls for further investigations into the origins of the virus.
Redfield also expressed doubt about the integrity of the World Health Organization, which concluded in a joint report with China released in March that a lab leak was “extremely unlikely.” He argued the WHO was “too compromised” by Beijing’s influence to conduct a truly transparent investigation.
“Clearly, they were incapable of compelling China to adhere to the treaty agreements that they have on global health, because they didn’t do that. Clearly, they allowed China to define the group of scientists that could come and investigate,” Redfield said. “That’s not consistent with their role.”
