Dr Robert Redfield was in charge of the US CDC during Trump’s previous administration – and believes Covid-19 was developed by ‘arrogant’ scientists in Wuhan who were trying to push the genetic data to its limits
A former top medical expert believes the devastating Covid pandemic was caused when it leaked from a lab after being engineered by “arrogant” scientists.
Dr Robert Redfield was the Director of the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) under the previous Trump administration. He has consistently said since 2021 that he believes the virus was “ready made” for humans and was leaked from a lab in China.
The infamous Wuhan lab has been at the centre of suspicions for a number of years – but the world is still no closer to a definitive answer on how the pandemic began. In January, the CIA said Covid is “more likely” to have come from a lab leak than from crossing over from animals. The assessment’s release was approved by new director of the agency John Ratcliff, a long-time supporter of the lab leak theory.
Dr Redfield, meanwhile, said President Donald Trump during his first presidency called Chinese President Xi Jinping to try and get some answers. “I went to ask President Trump if he would call the president of China, which he did,” Dr Redfield told The Sun. “I was there in the Oval Office.”
Dr Redfield hoped external investigators would be allowed into the country, but this was denied. He said experts would have been able to assess “within a week” that the virus was “very human-to-human transmissible”.
Rather than having more sinister intentions, it is Dr Redfield’s belief that the Wuhan lab, just 17 miles away from a wet food market that has been attributed by some as being the source of the virus, housed “arrogant” scientists. He thinks they were trying to create a vaccine. “I think that’s when the pandemic started,” Dr Redfield said.
The head of the Wuhan lab operation goes by the moniker “batwoman” for her extensive work on coronaviruses originating in the flying mammals. Shi Zengli spent years manipulating the viruses to adapt their transmissibility, making them more infectious to human beings, experts say.
Details about the origin of the virus itself are said to be represented in its genetic code. Scientists found the “furin cleavage site”, which increases the likelihood of a virus jumping from bats or other animals and into humans.
In theory, the genetic feature can exist in nature. However, it has only been found in Covid-19, which makes experts suspect it was inserted by researchers. Dr Redfield explained: “The furin cleavage site is as close to a smoking gun as you can get. This is the evidence that this was created in the laboratory.”
