Thursday, former Biden transition team COVID-19 adviser Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel dismissed the importance of investigating whether the COVID-19 outbreak was the result of a leak at the Wuhan lab.
Emanuel acknowledged the need for “transparency” but said that the real issue is not how the pandemic happened. Instead, Emanuel emphasized the importance of protecting against future pandemics.
After pointing to uncertainty in the intelligence community about the leak’s origins, MSNBC’s Kasie Hunt asked, “What is your sense of how this happened?
“Look, I think everyone is being honest,” Emanuel said on MSNBC’s “Andrea Mitchell Reports.” “We don’t know. And one of the reasons we don’t know is China hasn’t been completely transparent with all the data, including the blood samples from the people in the Wuhan Institute who got sick early in November. We need all the data, and we need transparency, and we do need the Chinese to participate because, you know, the real issue is not how did this happen. The real issue is how do we protect ourselves from the next pandemic and how do we have an early warning system for whether it’s naturally occurring or a laboratory leak.”
“We still need to protect ourselves, so we don’t have 3, 4, 5, 10 million people die unnecessarily,” he concluded.
Follow Trent Baker on Twitter @MagnifiTrent
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