Dr. Robert Redfield, the former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and top virologist, had one of the highest levels of classified-information clearance among members of President Donald Trump’s coronavirus task force.
He couldn’t tell me everything he knew in June 2021 I interviewed himBut it was also clear that he raised deep doubts based on what he knew that SARS-CoV-2 came from a lab.
Dr. his idea. was drowned out by Anthony Fauci’s irrepressible dogmatic narrative that Covid must have come from nature.
Recently, Redfield told me that the FBI was the agency best positioned to report what happened — and so it came as no surprise to me last week when FBI Director Chris Wray told Fox News Stated that Covid likely came from a lab incident.
Yet the White House still strongly supports dangerous gain-of-function research that makes viruses more transmissible — which Fauci helped fund at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
The White House also fails to acknowledge what the FBI knows, a serious oversight at this late date, especially when we consider how to prepare for the next pandemic, which may very well be artificial. can be made
Consider the facts.
- Most of the coronavirus-carrying bats are found in caves in southern China, where some are captured for their viruses and brought to labs (including the Wuhan Institute of Virology) for study.
- Redfield, China’s own CDC director, Dr. Despite the relationship with George Gao, he was not allowed to put “boots on the ground” until early 2020, when he could have known what really happened.
- Studies by Defense Department contractors and others determined that in summer 2019 there was an influx of patients to Wuhan hospitals from the area surrounding the lab.
- The virus itself has a furin cleavage site (lacking in bat coronaviruses) that allows it to easily attach to human cells. How did it get there?
- According to Redfield, SARS-CoV-2 no longer infects bats well but spreads widely among humans, including asymptomatic outbreaks.
- While it is clear from the studies that the Wuhan seafood market was widespread, the more important question is how it got there, considering that bats are not normally sold in this market. All fingers point to a laboratory origin — and not just an accidental lab origin, but the deliberate manipulation of bat coronaviruses for potential testing.
Why is it important to know for sure if Covid came from a lab?
Because, as Redfield says, it raises concerns that the next pandemic could also come from a lab.
This is especially the case with H5N1 bird flu.
Bird flu continues to infect millions of birds, both domestic and wild, and mortality rates are high.
There is spillover to mammals but no continuous human-to-human transmission.
Profit-of-work research Ron Fouchier and his colleagues in the Netherlands in 2012 showed that H5N1 bird flu is still several mutations away (in nature) from being able to easily transmit to humans, and the virus has not shown any major changes in that direction. since then.
Unfortunately, creating these exact mutations has provided a road map that a rogue scientist can use to engineer the exact mutations we are trying to avoid and introduce a very dangerous virus into the human community. trying to present
Meanwhile, we’re not doing a good job of trying to limit bird flu in bird populations, where millions of infections increase the potential for major mutations.
The Fauchier experiment—which engineered the virus until ferrets (which respond to the flu like humans) were able to transmit it through the air—put a stop to gain-of-function research for H5N1, Even Fauci, then-director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and benefit-of-action-research believer, supported by.
Unfortunately, it The ban was lifted In 2019, with Fauci’s NIAID funding research — amid protests in the scientific community.
Top avian influenza researcher David Swain told me years ago that hemagglutinins in high numbers (including H5) are not – in nature – conducive to human-to-human spread. Nevertheless, they Believes In an effort to carefully monitor and control outbreaks in birds.
Hemagglutinin is the protein on the surface of the flu virus that enables it to attach itself to cells.
H5N1 is highly lethal to chickens but remains relatively asymptomatic. the duckwhich then transmits it widely, though not usually to humans.
Unfortunately, the same magicians who missed Covid now think they are in a position to predict the next big threat.
But the greatest threat to us in the future is not a particular virus, but the manipulation we do with it to protect ourselves by detecting the possibility of our harm.
It is likely that Covid came from a laboratory, and it is also likely that there will be another pandemic without an immediate change in global policy.
Mark Siegel, MD, is a clinical professor and medical director of Doctor Radio at NYU Langone Health and a Fox News medical analyst.
