Fauci Says He Is ‘Open’ on Virus Lab Leak Theory

Dr. Anthony Fauci says he is keeping an “open mind” over claims that the coronavirus may have leaked from a Chinese lab, despite his long-standing assertion that the virus had a natural origin.

“We have an open mind but it looks very much like this was a natural occurrence, but you keep an open mind,” Fauci told Fox News on July 23. The director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases argued that more allegations over the lab leak theory “doesn’t mean there’s more evidence of it.”

The chief medical adviser to President Joe Biden was pressed during the interview on email comments he made two years ago, claiming the lab leak theory would go away in time, despite evidence and internal expert opinions pointing to the opposite; that the virus came from a lab and not an animal.

It came when the P4 laboratory at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a biosafety lab in the Chinese city of Wuhan, was widely believed to be where the coronavirus first emerged.

“When you read the email from Kristian Andersen who says … ‘one has to look really closely to see some features [potentially] look engineered,’” said Fox News anchor Bret Baier. “And you say this is a shiny object and it will go away. It does not look like you’re open minded to it.”

“Bret, I know you’re a good person, I’ve known you a long time,” Fauci responded. “If you take a group of emails when people are considering and thinking out loud, and stop there, and don’t look at the weeks of consideration by the same people who wrote the same emails … in published peer review literature, they explain why they thought it was a natural occurrence.”

Controversies

The emails, disclosed by House Republicans in January this year