Dr. Anthony Fauci Claims COVID 'Lab Leak' Conspiracy Theorists Are 'Off The Deep End'
March 12 2023, Published 6:30 p.m. ET
Dr. Anthony Fauci is standing by his belief that the COVID-19 virus that caused the worldwide pandemic could have been a "natural occurrence."
The former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who retired in 2022, is also continuing to roll his eyes at anyone who takes the Wuhan "Lab Leak" theory seriously.
Fauci originally discounted the theory early into the pandemic, but many of his detractors have kept the theory alive after an Energy Department assessment found that the coronavirus likely originated in a Chinese lab.
Fauci appeared on CNN Saturday calling the critics of his handling of the virus "off the deep end."
The 82-year-old former government official admitted to keeping a "completely open mind" as to the origins of the virus, but shies away from the theory that it originated from a man-operated laboratory.
"A lab leak could be that someone was out in the wild, maybe looking for different types of viruses in bats, got infected, went into a lab and was being studied in the lab and then came out of the lab," Fauci told Jim Acosta. "But if that’s the definition of a lab leak, Jim, then that’s still a natural occurrence."
The former head of the Infectious Disease Department also brought up how no investigative agency tasked with finding the origins of the virus have discovered any evidence of nefarious activity at the lab in question.
Fauci maintains that his organization didn't finance the study of how to make viruses more lethal, nor did they study how to make it more transmissible.
Acosta then brought up Tesla and Twitter CEO Elon Musk's call to have Fauci prosecuted for conflating politics with medicine and science, to which the 82-year-old asked, "prosecute me for what? What are, what are they talking about? I mean I wish I could figure out what the heck they were talking about."
Fauci claimed he and his family had to deal with countless threats against their lives due to the “misinformation, disinformation and outright lies” spread about him online.
The doctor said that he would cooperate with the GOP-led House Oversight Committee's investigation into the origins of the virus, but shared he has yet to be invited to testify.
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