Dr. Anthony Fauci suggested on Wednesday that he has never entirely rejected the theory that the coronavirus might have originated in a lab in Wuhan, China.
The story: Fauci, the White House’s chief medical adviser and director of NIAID, made the remark during an appearance on “CBS This Morning.” He claimed that neither he nor the government dismissed the idea that the coronavirus came from a lab.
“If you go back then, even though you lean towards feeling this is more likely a natural occurrence, we always felt that you gotta keep an open mind,” he said. “All of us. We didn’t get up and start announcing it, but what we said, ‘Keep an open mind and continue to look.’ So I think it’s a bit of a distortion to say that we deliberately suppressed that.”
Dr. Fauci on COVID lab leak theory: “We’ve always said ‘keep an open mind and continue to look.’ So I think it’s a bit of a distortion to say that we deliberately suppressed that.” pic.twitter.com/20VuUBHt2Y
— The Recount (@therecount) June 16, 2021
What Fauci said in the past: In April last year, after being asked by reporters to address the lab leak theory, Fauci responded by pointing to a study that found the theory unlikely.
“There was a study recently that we can make available to you, where a group of highly qualified evolutionary virologists looked at the sequences there and 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,” Fauci said at the time.
The researchers in the study said: “We do not believe that any type of laboratory-based scenario is plausible.”
Fauci was quoted in a National Geographic story, published in May 2020, saying there is very little chance that the virus could have escaped from a lab.
“if you look at the evolution of the virus in bats and what’s out there now, [the scientific evidence] is very, very strongly leaning toward this could not have been artificially or deliberately manipulated,” he said, adding that all signs indicate the virus “evolved in nature and then jumped species.”
“If it isn’t manipulated in the lab and you’re trying to say it escaped from the lab, then how did it get in the lab? It got in the lab because somebody isolated it from the environment,” Fauci said. “That’s why I don’t spend a lot of time in that circular argument.”
The National Geographic story was titled: “Fauci: No scientific evidence the coronavirus was made in a Chinese lab.”
In March this year, Fauci brushed aside comments about the lab leak from the former director of the Centers for Disease Control, Dr. Robert Redfield,” saying it’s just an “opinion.”
Critics on social media accused Fauci of lying. Among them was Blaze Media’s Sara Gonzales who tweet screenshots from several media headlines that suggest he downplayed the lab leak theory.
“This is patently false. Dr. Fauci is a liar. I have receipts,” Gonzales wrote.
I have receipts. pic.twitter.com/DqMLn5z0Z1
— Sara Gonzales (@SaraGonzalesTX) June 16, 2021
Fact check? False.
— John Hawkins (@johnhawkinsrwn) June 16, 2021
