"Why Did You Dismiss The Lab-Leak Theory?": Rubio Grills Fauci On Past Statements Of COVID-19 Origin

thanks to all of you for being here i think i'll direct this to dr fauci but i welcome everybody's answer i just want to go through so what we do know we've heard a lot about what we don't know so here are the things that we do know okay um so sars one we identified the host animal within four months mers i believe we identified the host animal within nine months it's now been 15 and a half 16 months we've still not seen and china has not produced any evidence of the host uh animal that transmitted covert 19 from to a human um we know that china has a history of of lab accidents i think dr fauci you answered senator graham's question i think he phrased it as has ever been a pandemic that came out of a laboratory and the answer was no but we do know of outbreaks that came out of a out of a laboratory i believe uh back in 2004 two researchers in beijing uh were infected doing research on sars and led to an outbreak china has a history of lab accidents this outbreak happened in a city that happened to be the home coincidentally of a lab which we know is involved in extensive research and what they do is they take this naturally occurring virus and they manipulate it and they change it to make it infectious to humans we know that they do that there they've published about it and it also happened in a city in a lab where a rutgers biosecurity expert raised concerns about uh its safety and our diplomats in 2018 were cabling back to washington expressing concern about the safety so i take all those facts together right so as we knew the host in four months mers we knew the host in nine we still don't know the the host in for covet even though and china's not being transparent about it even though they have a vested interest in producing the host so they can put all those down um in a lab that we know is involved in changing viruses synthetically so that they become infectious for humans in a lab that diplomats have told us is unsafe and a country that a history of lab leaks and by the way in a virus that we know can be synthetically created because the swiss did it the swiss created an exact replica of this virus in the lab for purposes of answering it all these facts were available to us last may last april why i'll start with dr fanni why did you dismiss the lab league theory as as credible i have always said that the high likelihood is that this is a natural occurrence i didn't dismiss anything i just said it's a high likelihood that this is a natural occurrence from the environment of an animal reservoir that we have not yet identified well and i still maintain that but as as i just mentioned to the response to other questions that since you don't know 100 percent about that because no one knows including me 100 percent what the origin is is the reason why we're in favor of further investigation well given everything i've decided and if i say if anything i decided is incorrect i i hope it'll be correct that i'm relying obviously it's not my field of study so i'm relying on what other experts and have published what is the basis for this like high likely what is the basis for the conclusion that it is likely to have been naturally occurring than a lab accident i asked a specific question the director of national intelligence and how i posed it is is it not true that it is the assessment that they are equally likely based on our information that we have so as i outline all of these things here is she wrong when she answered me yes and based on everything i've decided why the what is it that we're basing the higher likelihood of naturally occurring is it simply because that's all we've ever seen in the past well we have historical experience that happened with sars kovi won it happened with mares it happened with hiv it happened with virtually all the influenza pandemics so the historical basis for pandemics evolving naturally from an animal reservoir is extremely strong and it's for that reason that we felt that something similar like this has a much higher likelihood but again getting back to what i said and let me repeat so there's no lack of clarity in that no one knows not even i 100 at this point which is the reason why we are in favor of further investigation but going back to precedent the precedents require them to be similar the difference between this one and that one is in as i said four months we knew the hosts for sars nine months we knew the host from earth china has all the incentive in the world to produce this host and hasn't done so and then you add up all these other things i mean is it just a coincidence that happened in the city that's doing this kind of research which by the way is controversial i know you and others have been supportive of it but but it's controversial it's not widely accepted as as good my whole point is there are people out there who had facebook posts taken down were called kooks conspiracy theorists for saying publicly a year ago what we now say may be possible and i think those people deserve an apology at a minimum thank you

Channel: Forbes Breaking News

Views: 2,209,743

Rating: 4.8935094 out of 5

Keywords: Sen. Marco Rubio, Dr. Anthony Fauci, COVID-19

Id: ilt_NcaIIRk

Length: 5min 11sec (311 seconds)

Published: Thu May 27 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/InformationAnarchy]

Good work by Rubio. Fauci is definitely hiding something.

[u/hiswoodness]

Responding like a scientist.