Former CDC director received death threats from fellow scientists over lab leak theory

Dr. Robert Redfield was the CDC director during the Trump administration. Someone in that position was demonstrably qualified to opine to media outlets like CNN about where the COVID pandemic started from.

But today we’re learning that even the scientific community was contentious over who said what about the matter. Especially about publicly entertaining the “lab leak” theory as being a feasible option.

In an in-depth expose published by Vanity Fair, the outlet collects and lays out the most comprehensive version of events (thus far) about the origins of the COVID pandemic.

The summation of it involves elements of the various theories that have been floating around on social media. However, the persistent theme throughout the article is that the scientific community self-censored for the sake of social insulation.

The hostility towards Dr. Robert Redfield came as a result of the political correctness that was used to shut down criticism towards China. In Vanity Fair’s own piece they say there was an increase in anti-Asian hate crimes last year, but all the meanwhile still maintaining a frank matter-of-fact attitude about how the Chinese government impeded the process of investigation into COVID’s origin.

This being on top of the fact that the director of the State Department’s Biological Policy Staff in the Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation, Christopher Park, told investigators to not dig too much into the potential that the US had funded gain-of-function research.

Peter Daszak of EcoHealth Alliance did indeed push for a letter published in Lancet Medical Journal back in February 2020 in order to quash the notion of Lab Leak theory from the get-go. President Trump further dampened the prospect of COVID’s origin investigation in April 2020 with his public finger pointing at China, NIH and the Wuhan lab.

This all lays the groundwork for how the scientific community felt comfortable sending death threats to their colleague, former CDC director Robert Redfield.

In March 2021 he was free to talk to CNN about his personal opinions. Here’s what he said about the COVID pandemic and the investigation into its origins:

“You know, I am of the point of view that I still think the most likely ideology of this pathogen in Wuhan was from a laboratory, you know, escaped. Other people don’t believe that. That’s fine. Science will eventually figure it out.”

Redfield’s colleagues in the scientific community, and apparently even some of his own friends, were furious.

According to Vanity Fair: “After the interview aired, death threats flooded his inbox. The vitriol came not just from strangers who thought he was being racially insensitive but also from prominent scientists, some of whom used to be his friends. One said he should just ‘wither and die.’”

The piece then explains it wasn’t until the Wall Street Journal reported on three Wuhan Institute of Virology researchers getting sick in November 2019, that it suddenly became okay to talk about COVID lab leak theory again.