In Defense of Former CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield on a Wuhan Lab Leak
Cancel Culture Goes After the Doctor and COVID Expert
The Biden Administration, the World Health Organization (WHO) and the liberal media are so determined to appease communist China that they refuse to even acknowledge the very real possibility that COVID-19 came from a government lab.
In order to keep the public believing the only way the virus came to be was from a rat-to-human transfer, they have canceled the doctor who ran the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) during the first year of the pandemic.
Trump’s CDC Director
Dr. Robert Redfield is a well-respected virologist who was the director of the CDC in the Trump administration.
Redfield got canceled this week and his medical career is now in jeopardy because he broke from the diplomatic health organizations and all the other political scaredy cats to challenge the narrative they have been feeding the media for over a year.
Redfield told CNN’s Sanjay Gupta on Sunday:
"I still think the most likely aetiology of this pathogen in Wuhan was from a laboratory -- escaped. The other people don't believe that. That's fine. Science will eventually figure it out. It's not unusual for respiratory pathogens that are being worked on in a laboratory to infect the laboratory worker.”
Two days later, the WHO released its big report on the origin of COVID, and it merely said that the virus was most likely transmitted from bats to humans through another animal, but it still can’t find the source after all this time. The organization continues to bat down — pun intended — the theory that the virus leaked from a lab as “extremely unlikely.”
Maryland Cancels Doc
The forces trying to cancel Redfield are strong in his home state of Maryland, where he has served as an unpaid adviser to Republican Gov. Larry Hogan since leaving the CDC earlier this year.
“It’s outrageous that Dr. Robert Redfield went on national news to peddle a debunked Trump-era conspiracy theory about the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic,” Comptroller Peter Franchot, who is running for governor as a Democrat, tweeted Monday. The comptroller declared that Redfield must either “retract his statement, or step down from his position as adviser to the governor.”
Maryland Senate President Bill Ferguson, a Democrat, said that Redfield’s comments are “unacceptable”, and the doctor should not be advising the governor if he’s going to “traffic in inappropriate assumptions based not on facts, but on gut or instinct.”
Hogan on defense
The Baltimore Sun editorial board tried to push Hogan to fire the doctor:
Dr. Redfield may have run the CDC, but as a Trump appointee, he rarely contradicted Mr. Trump’s most foolhardy actions and comments on the subject of the coronavirus, at least not publicly. That track record alone should have precluded him from service in Maryland.
To his credit, Gov. Hogan on Thursday said the Democrats should apologize to Dr. Redfield for the “political nonsense.” Hogan, whose wife and children are Asian, said Redfield’s comments on CNN were “not in any way inflammatory” and just his “professional opinion.”
Media Busted Bias
At least two big news outlets changed their headlines this week on Redfield’s story from backlash, for opposite, non-factual reasons.
The CBS News headline has odd quotation marks in it: “Former CDC chief says ‘most likely’ cause of coronavirus is that it ‘escaped’ from a lab.” Apparently, this wasn’t the original headline because it has an editor’s note at the bottom:
This story has been updated to more clearly show that no credible scientist believes the novel coronavirus was man-made and that investigations are ongoing into how it was first transmitted to humans. The headline has been updated.
The New York Times ran a news story in its science section with this headline: "Ex-CDC Director Favors Debunked Covid-19 Origin Theory." The Washington Examiner’s Jerry Dunleavy caught the headline and blasted its factual error. Three days later, the Times issued a correction and changed the headline to one that reads like it should be on the opinion pages: “The C.D.C.’s ex-director offers no evidence in favoring speculation that the coronavirus originated in a lab.”
Wuhan Lab Evidence
Actually, Redfield gave plenty of evidence. He explained why COVID’s strength and transmission don’t make sense for a zoonotic disease, meaning it started in an animal and jumped to a human.
“I do not believe this somehow came from a bat to a human. And at that moment in time, the virus came to the human - became one of the most infectious viruses that we know in humanity for human to human transmission,”
“Normally, when a pathogen goes from a zoonot to human, it takes a while for it to figure out how to become more and more efficient in human to human transmission. I just don’t think this makes biological sense."
Journalists’ Opinions
CNN seems twisted in knots over airing the Redfield interview but not giving it any legitimacy. Gupta looked at his with one eyebrow cocked, which made Dr. Redfield exclaimed:
“That’s not implying any intentionality,” he said while waving an open hand. “It’s my opinion. But I am a virologist. I have spent my life in virology.”
To further ensure its viewers think Redfield is a kook, CNN ran this story in its health section this week: “Lab leak Covid-19 theory is like something out of a comic book, virologist says.”
The media is obsessed with shutting down any debate on the working theory that the virus came from a lab. Almost every news story includes the point that Redfield said it was his “opinion” but does not explain to readers that his opinion is based on his career experience working with viruses in both labs and the real world while serving in the military and running the CDC.
It’s not like Redfield is grabbing this theory out of thin air. The laboratories in Wuhan do viral studies and have experimented with bad coronaviruses. And it’s been over 15 months since Redfield was first in direct contact with his counterpart in China who admitted the coronavirus was spreading human to human at a 5-10% rate.
Since the WHO has proven to be too weak or too corrupt to do a real investigation, the Biden administration…