Former CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield said Thursday on FNC’s “America’s Newsroom” that former NIAID director Dr. Anthony Fauci made a “concerted effort” to ensure that no one focused on the possibility of a laboratory leak causing the coronavirus pandemic.

Anchor Bill Hemmer said, “Why would Dr. Fauci not want opinion to be out there in public?”

Redfield said, “Well, you know, I do think I make a compelling argument for the reasons why we have to seriously consider the lab leak. I do believe that there was a concerted effort by Dr. Fauci and Dr. Collins to make sure that no one really focused on the lab leak and that we focused on natural evolution. Again, I really mention that with SARS and MERS that did come through a bat through natural spillover, and those viruses never did learned how to efficiently transmit human-to-human. This virus was very diffrent. It had high efficiency of human-to-human transmission, which to me meant as a virologist that virus had to be educated how to infect humans more efficiently.”

Hemmer said, “Why wouldn’t Fauci want that in your view?”

Redfield said, “I think real reason that Dr. Fauci and Dr. Collins took this perspective is that they really did believe it was in the best interest of science. I happen to disagree with them.”

Hemmer asked, “What does that mean?”

Redfield said, “Collins said we had to maintain scientific harmony with our colleagues around the world, including in China. And that we didn’t want to have any disruption. Obviously, I’m of a different point of view. I’m of the point of view that this pandemic, unfortunately, it was actually the result of science. I have used the term before scientific arrogance. The scientific community never believed this gain-of-function research could get out of control. Unfortunately, I think eventually we will all come to learn that this pandemic was a direct consequence of scientific experiments that were done to increase the infectivity, the transmissibility and the pathogenicity of this pathogen which, unfortunately, and I do believe accidentally, escaped from the Wuhan laboratory sometime between August and October of 2019.”

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