Trump's CDC director says Fauci sidelined him for backing lab leak theory

Dr. Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) during Donald Trump's administration, went to the House hearing on the origin of covid-19 and told how he was excluded from internal discussions about the origins of the pandemic virus.

According to Redfield, his former colleague Anthony Fauci and former National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins "sidelined" him after disagreeing with their views on how the coronavirus emerged and spread around the world.

"This was an a priori decision that there’s one point of view that we’re going to put out there, and anyone who doesn’t agree with it is going to be sidelined. And as I say, I was only the CDC director, and I was sidelined," the former CDC director explained to legislators.

Redfield disclosed that he did not know that Fauci and Collins were on a conference call on February 1, 2020 to discuss the pandemic. The former CDC director explained that he only found out after the internal emails were released in June 2021.

"I was quite upset, as the CDC director, that I was excluded from those discussions (...) Because I had a different point of view. I was told that they had made a decision that they would keep this confidential until they came up with a single narrative — which I will argue is antithetical to science," he said.

The 71-year-old doctor explained that it was of utmost importance to encourage debate so that science would be in charge of finding the truth. "Science never selects a single narrative. We foster — as my colleagues just said — we foster debate. And we’re confident that with debate, science will eventually get to the truth," he said.

A growing number of people believe that covid-19 originated in a Chinese laboratory. Recently an FBI director said he supports this thesis, and a Department of Energy report also reinforced this possibility.