Osterholm: Scientists Backed Off of Lab Leak Theory Because Supporting It Was Perceived as Supporting Trump

On Wednesday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “Deadline: White House,” Director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota and former adviser to President Biden’s transition team Dr. Michael Osterholm stated that more people in the scientific community are speaking out on the possibility that COVID-19 came from a lab and that a year ago, discussing the issue “would have meant that you were somehow supporting the president in this approach and so I saw scientists actually backing off of that issue.”

Osterholm said, “I think that what we’re seeing happen right now is not new information. It’s basically we’re weaponizing, in a sense, old information that still is very incomplete with the idea that more people in the science world are speaking out. Because a year ago to speak out would have meant that you were somehow supporting the president in this approach and so I saw scientists actually backing off of that issue. I think that it’s still unclear whether or not there was a potential laboratory leak from the Wuhan lab.”

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