Straining Credulity, Dr. Fauci Asserts Covid Lab Leak Could Still be Considered a ‘Natural Occurrence’
Fauci rewrites both science and history as real facts about covid’s origins are closer to being made public.
Over the past few weeks, more reports from US government sources indicate the source of the novel coronavirus that is responsible for the covid pandemic is a laboratory from China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology.
I recently noted that Dr. Anthony Fauci, the now-retired coronavirus advisor to the White House, commissioned and had final approval on a scientific paper written in February 2020 designed to disprove this theory.
Evidence that he now realizes this plan has wholly gone awry comes in the form of an interview with CNN’s Jim Acosta, during which Fauci argued the pandemic could be considered a “natural occurrence” if the definition of lab leak meant that someone was infected in the wild and went “into a lab,” was studied in a lab, and then “came out of the lab.”
The former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who retired at the end of last year, made the remarks on CNN Saturday, two weeks after an Energy Department assessment found that the coronavirus likely originated in a Chinese lab.
In the months after the pandemic began, Fauci had discounted the theory that the virus had emanated from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
The 82-year-old now said he was still keeping a “completely open mind” to the origin of the virus, while explaining how a lab leak still could be considered a “natural occurrence.”
“A lab leak could be that someone was out in the wild, maybe looking for different types of viruses in bats, got infected, went into a lab and was being studied in the lab and then came out of the lab,” Fauci told anchor Jim Acosta.
“But if that’s the definition of a lab leak Jim, then that’s still a natural occurrence.”