Dr. Anthony Fauci, the former White House chief medical adviser, believes that we may never know the true origin of COVID despite a new report favoring the lab leak theory.
“We must all keep an open mind to all possibilities” about the origins of the coronavirus, Fauci told The Boston Globe on Monday.
Fauci says the origin of COVID could never be uncovered despite lab leak report findings
He dismissed the US Energy Department’s recent report stating that COVID-19 possibly originated from a Chinese lab.
The 82-year-old claimed that intelligence agencies have not come to a definitive answer on the lab leak theory.
The retired director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases remarked: “I don’t see any data for a lab leak. That doesn’t mean it couldn’t have happened.”
Fauci had previously dismissed the lab-leak theory early in the pandemic and repeatedly stated that the virus was likely natural. In an internal email from April 2020, Fauci called the lab-leak theory a “shiny object that will go away.”
His latest remarks follow the Energy Department’s recent report, which stated it had “low confidence” that the virus came from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Fauci highlights a difference of opinions among experts
Fauci acknowledged that the recent conclusion by the DOE, which was reported by The Wall Street Journal, indicates a difference of opinions among experts. Therefore, it does not provide a clear answer.
The FBI reached a similar conclusion with “moderate confidence” in 2021, but according to Fauci, four other intelligence agencies do not agree with the lab-leak theory.
He mentioned that evolutionary virologists have published two peer-reviewed articles providing biological evidence that strongly suggests the virus was naturally occurring. And that the virus likely jumped from animals to humans at a live-animal market in China, which was demonstrated by DNA evidence, as per Fauci.
Providing an assessment of the pandemic’s status after a duration of three years, Fauci said: “The good news is that we’re much better off than we were a year ago. The sobering news is that we’re not out of the woods yet.”
