During an interview with CBS, Dr. Anthony Fauci defended the NIH funding research at the Wuhan Institute and said “the only regret is that what it has caused right now is such a degree of distraction” from combating the pandemic.
Major Garrett:
“To those who think there might be some type of scandal or something incorrect or ill-advised about those grants, what would you say?”
Fauci:
“Well, what you do, Major, is you take a look at the viruses that [were] worked on under the auspices of that grant and what the grant was directed for. And you look at the publications that came from the research associated with that grant. The viruses that were worked with in that environment, in that particular context of that grant could not possibly molecularly evolved into what we know now as SARS-CoV-2. Because when you look at how you can go from one virus and do something with it to get to be another, the viruses that the grant allowed the investigators, competent investigators to work with, molecularly, were so different than what ultimately came out to be SARS-CoV-2 that anyone that looks at those two viruses who knows anything about evolutionary virology will tell you that they’re so far apart that you couldn’t possibly have had it emerge into that particular virus.”
Garrett:
“Real quickly, no regrets about those grants?”
Fauci:
“Well, the only regret is that what it has caused right now is such a degree of distraction [from] trying to do what we really should be doing, is addressing the outbreak, and what we did, and did quite successfully, was to develop vaccines that have now been life-saving. That’s what the job of myself and my team and my institute is, and, thankfully, we did that very successfully.”
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