• Dr. Anthony Fauci referred to himself in the third-person when defending himself against an onslaught of attacks to his reputation on Wednesday
  • In an interview with Meet the Press Daily host Chuck Todd, Fauci claimed an attack against him was an attack against science
  • He said he has always followed the scientific process as he critics claim he flip-flopped on the issue of masks 
  • Others are claiming he had known about the idea that COVID-19 originated in a Wuhan laboratory very early on in the pandemic, but dismissed the idea
  • The lab leak theory has since gained traction, with world leaders calling for an investigation into the origins of the virus
  • Some Republicans are now calling on the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases to resign 

White House COVID-19 czar Dr Anthony Fauci has denied he tried to play down claims that the virus was genetically engineered in a Chinese laboratory.

Speaking at The Wall Street Journal’s Tech Health event on Wednesday, Fauci also blasted allegations that he kept quiet about the lab leak theory for political reasons.

Jonathan Rockoff, WSJ Health and Medicine Editor, asked him: ‘Did you downplay the possibility that the virus came from a lab in China, for political reasons?’

Fauci answered: ‘Well absolutely not, and lets go back and talk about that. That’s honestly an accusation that I have to tell you, mildly, is preposterous.

‘Right from the very beginning, when there was an issue of some people who looked at the virus and said maybe it might actually have been manipulated

‘And what we did is that they mentioned it to me, I called together a group of people and said “Let’s take a look at this, make sure, get some virologic evolutionary biologizes together to take a look at it.”‘

Fauci, who is director of the National Institutes of Health, added: ‘This was back at the very beginning of February. Looked at it, had a good discussion, and some people thought maybe it looked like a virus that was manipulated and could have leaked.

‘And most of the people thought – all of us were thinking at the time – that it was very likely a natural evolution.

‘But we never ruled out the possibility, and we were really open about it. It wasn’t like we were trying to hide anything.’

Fauci came under fire last week after emails were released showing other virologists had messaged him suspicions that COVID-19 may have been genetically modified

But he also told the WSJ summit that one of those virologists – Dr Christian Andersen – later came to the conclusion that COVID likely jumped from an animal to human.

Fauci added: ‘There was always an open-mind that it could be something else.  You could have a strong opinion and not necessarily rule out anything else. As a scientist you always keep things open.’

Explaining his animal to human theory further, Fauci said: ‘As a scientist, you always keep things open, and the reason we felt besides the molecular makeup of the virus, that it was a jumping species from an animal to a human, is the historically we have such experience over decades and decades of that’s how viruses get into the human population, by the animal-human interface.’

He referenced other viruses including HIV, Ebola and SARS which were either speculated to have jumped from an animal to human, or have since been proven to have made that biological jump.

Fauci also appeared on MSNBC’s Meet the Press Daily, where he spoke about himself in the third person while defending himself over the same lab leak claim.

‘It’s very dangerous, because a lot of what you’re seeing as attacks on me, quite frankly, are attacks on science because all of the things that I have spoken about consistently from the very beginning have been fundamentally based on science,’ Fauci told host Chuck Todd.

‘Sometimes those things were inconvenient truths for people, and there was pushback against me. So if you are trying to get at me as a public health official, you’re really attacking not only Dr. Anthony Fauci, you are attacking science.’

‘And anybody that looks at what is going on clearly sees that,’ Fauci concluded. ‘You have to be asleep not to see that.

‘Science and the truth are being attacked.’

The comments come as Republican legislators ramp up their attacks against the director of the NIAID after Buzzfeed News published thousands of his emails since the coronavirus pandemic began last year, which critics claim shows him flip-flopping on the issues.