Donald Trump and others in his orbit have begun more aggressively pushing the conspiracy theory that the novel coronavirus was created in a Chinese lab. “It’s a terrible thing that happened,” the president said in an interview with Reuters last week. “Whether they made a mistake or whether it started off as a mistake and then they made another one. Or did somebody do something on purpose?”
But Dr. Anthony Fauci shot down that theory, telling National Geographic in an interview published Monday that there does not appear to be evidence the deadly virus was created in a lab and made it into the general population, either by accident or on purpose as Trump suggested. “What’s out there now is very, very strongly leaning toward this [virus] could not have been artificially or deliberately manipulated—the way the mutations have naturally evolved,” Fauci told the publication. “A number of very qualified biologists have said that everything about the stepwise evolution over time strongly indicates that it evolved in nature and then jumped species.”
The virus, which was first discovered in Wuhan late last year, is believed to have jumped to humans from bats. But as the toll of the coronavirus continues to mount in the United States, which was caught flat-footed by the pandemic despite the president receiving multiple warnings about the severity of the threat, Trump and his allies have gone all in on a theory that China created the virus on purpose. “There’s enormous evidence that that’s where this began,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Sunday on ABC News’ This Week, declining to produce any such proof to support his claim. “These are not the first times that we have had the world exposed to viruses as a result of failures in a Chinese lab.” Both U.S. intelligence and the World Health Organization have publicly refuted the theory, though Fox News’ John Roberts reported over the weekend that some intelligence officials believe a Wuhan lab created the virus and released it as a “mistake.” Pompeo has reportedly pushed for the U.S. intelligence apparatus to find proof to support the theory, but Fauci told National Geographic that the crusade makes little sense. “I don’t get what they’re talking about,” Fauci said. “I don’t spend a lot of time going in on this circular argument.”
Fauci has long been at odds with Trump and members of the administration, who have played down the threat of the virus, promulgated unproven and in some cases obviously dangerous potential treatments for it, and pushed to “reopen” states and businesses despite ongoing deficiencies in U.S. testing capabilities. Speaking to National Geographic, he cautioned against the spread of misinformation like the kind the president has spouted. “Anybody can claim to be an expert even when they have no idea what they’re talking about,” Fauci said. “It’s very difficult for the general public to distinguish.”
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