Former White House senior medical adviser Anthony Fauci reiterated his position on the origins of COVID-19 on MSNBC on Tuesday, saying a natural outbreak is “more likely” than a virus leak from a lab.
Fauci appeared on “The Beat with Ali Melber” to discuss the origins of COVID-19 and his recent New York Times article Opinion articles The report said there was no “strong evidence” to support a natural beginning of the disease. After detailing the report, MSNBC host Ari Melber asked the former White House adviser whether it was “likely” that COVID-19 “came from that lab.”
“No,” Fauci said, “I don’t think the New York Times article is based on science at all. If you talk to 100 virologists and read the article, you’ll see that there’s no scientific basis for what she’s saying. But let’s put that aside for a second. I’m very surprised that the Times even published that opinion piece.”
Melber disputed the idea that the virus had a natural origin and countered Fauci with other examples from various media outlets that support the lab leak theory. (Related article: “More tight-lipped than the CIA”: Rand Paul says NIH won’t reveal key COVID-19 discussions)
“Firstly, we have to keep an open mind, we don’t know where it’s going to be. [came] “It could have come from a lab, I’m not biased. It could have come from natural occurrence. But four of the intelligence agencies believe it’s much more likely that it came from natural occurrence,” Fauci replied.
“And based on what you know now, do you believe that’s more likely? Naturally?” Melber asked.
“So let me tell you what I believe, and I think we have to be open-minded,” Fauci continued. “What’s confusing about this, Ali, is that the NIH gave grants years ago to do surveillance for nasty viruses, and that was the right grant because we knew that the original SARS had gone from bats to civets to humans. So obviously it would have been almost irresponsible not to try and find out what else there was.”
“The virus that was studied under the NIH grant was so evolutionarily different from SARS that any competent evolutionary virologist would say that the progenitor virus bore no similarity whatsoever to evolutionary SARS, so it couldn’t have come from them,” Fauci said. “But then you set that aside and ask, could it have come from a Chinese lab? Of course it could have. That’s why we’re keeping an open mind.”
“But if you look at the analysis of evolutionary virologists and the data that looks at ‘Did it come from a lab leak’ versus ‘Did it arise naturally from an animal reservoir,’ the overwhelming majority of evolutionary virologists say, although it’s not conclusive and there’s no proof, it’s likely that it came from a natural reservoir. What data is there that says it came from a lab? I haven’t seen it. No one has. That’s why I disagree with the New York Times editorial, because there was no new data there. Again, I’m not biased. It could have gone either way.”
The former White House medical adviser continued to deny that the initial lab leak claim was dismissed as a conspiracy theory, even as the Biden administration reportedly closed a State Department investigation into the possibility in 2021.
Fauci was grilled by lawmakers about his leadership during the pandemic when he testified before a House COVID-19 subcommittee earlier this month, and the former adviser said on CNN afterward that he was shocked by the “level of condemnation” from Republican lawmakers.
