CNN Allows Ex-CDC Director To Make Claim Coronavirus Started In Wuhan

REDFIELD: “If I was to guess, this virus started transmitting somewhere in September/October in Wuhan.”Show more

GUPTA: “September/October?”

REDFIELD: “That’s my own view. It’s only an opinion. I’m allowed to have opinions now. You know, I am of the point of view that I still think the most likely ideology of this pathogen in Wuhan was from a laboratory, you know, escaped. Other people don’t believe that. That’s fine. Science will eventually figure it out. It’s not unusual for respiratory pathogens that are being worked on in a laboratory to infect the laboratory worker.”

GUPTA (voice-over): “It’s also not unusual for that type of research to be occurring in Wuhan. The city is a widely known center for viral studies in China, including the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which has experimented extensively with bat Coronaviruses.”
GUPTA: “It’s a remarkable conversation I feel like we’re having here, because you are the former CDC Director, and you were the director at the time this was all happening.”

GUPTA (voice-over): “For the first time, the former CDC Director is stating publicly that he believes this pandemic started months earlier than we knew, and that it originated not at a wet market, but inside a lab in China.”

GUPTA: “These are two significant things to say, Dr. Redfield.”

REDFIELD: “That’s not implying any intentionality. You know, it’s my opinion, right? But I am a virologist. I have spent my life in virology. I do not believe this somehow came from a bat to a humann. And at that moment in time, the virus came to the human, became one of the most infectious viruses that we know in humanity for human-to-human transmission. Normally when the pathogen goes from a zoonote to a human, it takes a while for it to figure out how to become more and more efficient in human-to-human transmission. I just don’t think this makes biological sense.”

GUPTA: “So in the lab, do you think that process of becoming more efficient was happening? Is that what you are suggesting?”
REDFIELD: “Yeah, let’s just say I have Coronavirus and I’m working on it. Most of us in the lab are trying to grow a virus, we try to make it grow better and better and better and better so we can do experiments and figure out about it. That’s the way I put it together.”