Former CDC Director Says China Engineered COVID-19 as Asymptomatic Aerosol Vaccine Vector

Former CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield said he believes China intentionally engineered the SARS-CoV-2 virus to be asymptomatic as a bio-defensive aerosol vaccine vector in a new interview on The Dana Parish Podcast. Dr. Redfield shared his views on the dangers of gain-of-function research and how it can be used as a bioweapons program, or, in this case, a biodefense program.

“They wanted a vector that when you did get infected, you didn’t get sick,” Dr. Redfield said. “So it was intentionally manipulated to be asymptomatic. And I think, again, that’s why the interferon response elements were knocked out of this virus. I think that was all engineered. And then they wanted a virus, a vector, that could be used over and over and over again. So they didn’t want the human to develop a protective immune response that would then not allow that vector to be used again.”

Dr. Redfield said he thinks the virus was engineered intentionally so that it could be reused as a vector for aerosol vaccines. He pointed to evidence that people were getting their second episode of COVID-19 within months of their first episode, which reflects that natural immunity was not working to prevent reinfection for this virus.

“All of that was engineered, in my view, intentionally,” Dr. Redfield said. “But I still argue, and I can’t prove it, and I have some people that strongly disagree with me because they think there may have been more bioweapon intent. I think it was really part of the Chinese military’s biodefense program.”

The conversation about gain-of-function research has resurfaced because a deadline has been missed regarding the end of federal funding for GoF research. This has coincided with criticisms that NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya is supporting Jeffrey Taubenberger in Dr. Anthony Fauci’s old role as acting NIAID Director. Taubenberger reconstituted the 1918 Spanish Flu, which killed between 50 and 100 million people, in GoF experiments. Director Bhattacharya referred to these experiments as “really cool” and has publicly supported Taubenberger as somebody who “opposes dangerous GoF” and is “committed to biosafety, strict prohibition of dangerous gain of function research.”

Dr. Redfield told Parish that he thinks everything Taubenberger has done is “unnecessary and potentially careless.” He added, “I think his scientific judgment is too similar to Fauci’s judgment, which I think got us into the pandemic.”

Dr. Redfield expressed his belief that the United States and China are equally culpable in the creation of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and the subsequent pandemic because the research occurred in Wuhan with funding from the United States.

Senator Rand Paul has recently stated his intent to seek justice against Dr. Fauci for his role in approving the Wuhan GoF research and lying about it during Congressional testimony. This comes as the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Chairman James Comer said, “Executive actions performed by the Biden White House staff and signed by autopen are null and void.” Dr. Fauci received a blanket pardon dating back to January 1, 2014, as the Biden White House signed the pardon during the final hours of the Biden administration and used an autopen to do so.

Dr. Richard Fleming authored a book titled Is COVID-19 A Bioweapon? Dr. Fleming says the virus is a bioweapon that was created with US funding by the work of Ralph Baric in North Carolina, Xi Zhengli, and others. During a speech for the Courage in Health Series said, “The Americans thought, we’ll let Wuhan work on this research and do for us what we supposedly can’t do in the United States or not as easily, right? Because we do have certain rules and regulations that try to oversee things. So let’s outsource it, right?”

Dr. Redfield said the clones used to create the virus probably came from Baric and colleagues in North Carolina. He also said he expects the federal government to come to a “unanimous conclusion” that the virus originated from GoF research in Wuhan.

Director Bhattacharya responded to the latest reporting from Emily Kopp regarding the missed deadlines for the revised GoF policy at the NIH by saying it is “more bad reporting.” Bhattacharya correctly identified the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) as being in charge of revising the guidelines and said the government shutdown is partially responsible. The shutdown is now the longest in history at 35 days, but as Kopp pointed out, the updated guidelines are more than eight weeks past due, and NIH is working in coordination with the OSTP to update the guidelines.

Kopp reported for the Daily Caller about staffing shakeups at the OSTP and that at least two officials working on the new policy were also involved in writing the policy for Dr. Fauci – the same policy that allowed funding for GoF research in Wuhan.

Dr. Redfield said not all GoF research is necessarily bioweapons research, but can be done to learn what makes it pathogenic or non-pathogenic. He said he doesn’t believe we should be doing this kind of research.

“I kind of disagree with Fauci and others that push gain-of-function research,” Dr. Redfield said. “They feel we need to do this to advance science and to be prepared for when a dangerous pathogen evolves from a non-dangerous pathogen. But the point is, I think that our scientific capacity can respond so quickly that we don’t have to create the pathogen to know how to defend against the pathogen.”

During the interview with Parish, Dr. Redfield also referenced a study in which Chinese scientists used a SARS-CoV-2-related pangolin coronavirus in human ACE2-transgenic mice and found that it can cause 100% mortality in these mice. Dr. Redfield said it would be hard to argue that this research is conducted as part of a biodefense program.

“There’s no doubt that the COVID that we have also is a serious virus that interrupts cognitive function,” Dr. Redfield said. “And if you look at people with long COVID, probably one of the most important hallmarks of long COVID is cognitive dysfunction. The Chinese [are] taking the COVID virus and continuing to use gain-of-function research to modify its pathogenicity so now it’s pathogenic in the brain. And in those mice, unfortunately, they were able to convert it to a highly fatal virus.”