Chris Wallace Grills Fauci About China and Origins of Covid: ‘How Certain Are You’ It Was Not ‘Lab Leak?’
CNN anchor Chris Wallace grilled retiring infectious disease honcho Dr. Anthony Fauci about the origins of Covid, asking “How certain are you that it came from a natural spread and not a lab leak?”
Wallace interviewed Fauci for the final batch of Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace this season, and asked Fauci about the Wuhan lab leak theory that has become a rallying point for conservatives:
WALLACE: One of the things that, you know, and Congressman Comer mentioned that they’re going to ask you about is the origin of COVID. How, as you sit here today, how confident are you? How certain are you that it came from a natural spread and not a lab leak?
FAUCI: Okay, so there’s no certainty 100% At this point, that is for sure. Right now, if you look at the data that’s been accumulated by independent international evolutionary virologists, they feel pretty confident that this was a natural occurrence from an animal host into a human. Has it been definitively proven? No, is a lab leak possible? Of course, I keep a completely open mind that we don’t know definitively what the origin is. And that’s the reason why we want to keep investigating and get as much data as we can, so that we can prevent something like this from happening in the future. But the overwhelming data right now from independent people, with no horse in the race, feel rather strongly that it’s a natural occurrence. And again, I say that in the same breath, but we have to keep an open mind that it might possibly have been something that Chinese were doing a virus that they isolated in the wild and we’re having it in the lab and then somehow it escaped out. I don’t think that happened. But I have an open mind.
Wallace also asked Fauci about his heated exchanges with Sen. Rand Paul on that same topic.
Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace drops new episodes Fridays on HBO Max, with a highlights show on CNN Sunday night.
Watch the full exchange above via HBO Max and CNN.
