Dr. Anthony Fauci, a top adviser to the Biden administration on the coronavirus pandemic, addressed comments that former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Robert Redfield made on Friday.
Dr. Robert Redfield, the former director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said recently he believes the novel coronavirus originated inside a lab in Wuhan, China and “escaped,” and was potentially spreading as early as September 2019. “If I was to guess, this virus started transmitting somewhere in September, October in Wuhan,” the virologist told CNN in a clip that aired Friday. “That’s my own feelings. And only opinion. I’m allowed to have opinions now.” Though a World Health Organization team performing an investigation into the origins of the virus in Wuhan had called a lab-related incident “extremely unlikely,” Redfield said he is “of the point of view that I still think the most likely aetiology of this pathogen in Wuhan was from a laboratory, escaped.” “The other people don’t believe that,” said Redfield, who led the CDC under former President Donald Trump. “That’s fine. Science will eventually figure it out. It’s not unusual for respiratory pathogens that are being worked on in a laboratory to infect the laboratory worker.” The WHO team, which draws on experts from 10 countries, is considering several theories for how the disease first ended up in humans and is expected to release a report of its findings soon. The team’s work is meant to be an initial step in investigating the origins of the virus, which is believed to have originated in bats before being passed to humans via another species of wild animal, such as a pangolin or bamboo rat. Last month WHO food safety and animal diseases expert Peter Ben Embarek said the team’s initial findings “suggest that the introduction through an intermediary host species is the most likely pathway and one way that will require more studies and more specific targeted research.” The possibility of transmission through the trade of frozen products was also likely, he added. “However, the findings suggest that the laboratory incidents hypothesis is extremely unlikely to explain the introduction of the virus to the human population,” Embarek said. “Therefore it is not a hypothesis that we advise to suggest future studies … into the understanding of the origin of the virus.” Health experts have said that the novel coronavirus likely originated in Wuhan in November 2019. Scientists in recent months have questioned whether the virus originated at a live animal market in Wuhan or was the result of a lab accident at one of the city’s two laboratories — the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the Wuhan Centers for Disease Control — that had been studying coronaviruses that originated in bats.
CNN's Sanjay Gupta appeared taken aback in a new interview as former CDC Director Robert Redfield shared his "opinion" on the origins of COVID-19. Gupta spoke with Redfield as part of a new CNN documentary about the COVID-19 pandemic, and the former CDC chief revealed he thinks it's likely the coronavirus originated in a Wuhan lab and was possibly already being transmitted in September 2019. "If I was to guess, this virus started transmitting somewhere in September, October in Wuhan," Redfield said. "That's my own view. It's only an opinion. I'm allowed to have opinions now." Redfield continued that he thinks the "most likely etiology of this pathogen in Wuhan was from a laboratory, you know, escaped," though he said he's not "implying any intentionality" and reiterated "it's my opinion." The World Health Organization's Dr. Peter Ben Embarek said last month it's "extremely unlikely" that the coronavirus leaked from a lab in Wuhan and that instead, "our initial findings suggest that the introduction through an intermediary host species is the most likely pathway," per NBC News. But Redfield told CNN, "I do not believe this somehow came from a bat to a human, and at that moment in time, the virus came to the human, became one of the most infectious viruses that we know in humanity for human to human transmission." He noted, though, that "other people don't believe" this Wuhan lab theory, and "science will eventually figure it out." Gupta commented on the "remarkable" nature of this conversation, noting that these are "significant" statements to be made by an official who served as the CDC's director throughout most of the COVID-19 pandemic. Indeed, Gupta said on CNN while setting up the clip, "This was extraordinary." Watch the exchange below. Despite a lack of clear evidence, former CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield said in a CNN documentary clip released Friday that he believes the novel coronavirus began transmitting in fall 2019 and that the virus may have originated in a lab in China. https://t.co/r4CpbrNsBl pic.twitter.com/GZl1BbM5ZO — New Day (@NewDay) March 26, 2021 More stories from theweek.comGeorgia governor reportedly signs voting restrictions into law under portrait of slave plantationIs Biden setting Harris up to fail?The case for music.gov
Most recent weekly average shows 7% increase in Covid infections in US from previous week, at about 57,000 cases a day A nurse cares for a Covid patient in the intensive care unit at Prividence Cedars-Sinai Tarzana medical center in Tarzana, California. Photograph: Apu Gomes/AFP/Getty Images Top US government coronavirus experts warned on Friday that there is deep concern about infections rising again and although there is cause for optimism amid accelerating vaccinations “there is no case for relaxation” in the pandemic. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), said at a White House briefing that the most recent weekly average shows a 7% increase in infections in the US from the previous week, at about 57,000 cases a day. New hospitalizations have slightly increased, too. “I remain deeply concerned about this trajectory. Please, take this moment very seriously,” Walensky said. The US daily death toll continues to hover at about 1,000 people, with confirmed infections rising in around 20 states and deaths rising in 17 states. At his first official press conference as president on Thursday, Joe Biden announced a doubling of his vaccination goal, from 100m vaccinations in the first 100 days of his administration to 200m doses administered. On Friday morning, Walensky warned that, despite encouraging data about vaccinations, the US risked losing hard-earned ground in the fight against coronavirus if the numbers of infections and hospitalizations do not decline. Meanwhile, 46 states and the District of Columbia have announced plans to open vaccination eligibility to all adults no later than 1 May, in alignment with the Biden administration’s recommendations, Jeff Zients, White House Covid response coordinator said. But even as 2.5 million people a day get vaccinated, Zients stressed that Americans must remain diligent in protecting themselves. “It’s clear there is a case for optimism, but there is not a case for relaxation,” he said. “This is not the time to let down our guard. We need to follow the public health guidance, wear a mask, socially distance and get a vaccine when it’s your turn.” Officials say there are now nearly 50,000 locations where people can get vaccinated, a total that will ramp up, including federally run mass vaccination sites. Walensky said she continues to be concerned that the pandemic has disproportionately affected people from marginalized communities. The CDC is addressing these inequities, including more money into vaccine distribution and investment in “access, acceptance and uptake among racial and ethnic minority communities”, Walenskay said. Meanwhile the top infectious diseases official Dr Anthony Fauci announced a new trial testing how well vaccines prevent infection and transmission. “The prevailing question is when these [vaccinated] people get infected, how often is that? If they’re asymptomatic, how much virus do they have in their nose? And, do they transmit it?” he said, adding results would inform the government about recommended actions for those who have been inoculated.
The United States is set to overtake the UK in its vaccination rollout as it surges back toward normality. America's distribution programme forged ahead after Donald Trump bought up vast supplies, then Joe Biden put the country on a wartime footing, poured in money, and appointed a vaccine tsar from Facebook known as “Mr Fix-It”. The UK currently has the fourth most successful national vaccination programme in the world, having delivered 45 doses per 100 people. But the US is in fifth place and closing, with 38 doses injected per 100 people. The US's is the largest vaccine rollout in the world, having delivered 130 million doses, about a quarter of the global total. It is already soaring ahead of the UK on full vaccinations, with 14 per cent of the US population inoculated compared to 3.6 per cent in the UK. That is partly due to 45 million Americans having received Johnson & Johnson’s single-dose vaccine. Last week, the British government warned of a “significant reduction” in weekly vaccine supply from manufacturers, and it faces a battle with Europe over supplies of the AstraZeneca vaccine. By contrast, the US has no supply issues and just hit three million vaccinations a day. Mr Biden wants to ramp that up to five million.
Police who were stumped by the theft of a rare pine tree in November from the University of Wisconsin Arboretum said Friday that they have cracked the case. UW-Madison police said three 19-year-old university students stole the tree as part of a “pledge” activity for the former Chi Phi fraternity, which hasn't been recognized as an official student organization since 2015. The tree was planted in 1988 and its theft drew widespread attention.
Secret Service agents allegedly involved themselves in an incident in which Joe Biden’s daughter-in-law Hallie threw a gun belonging to her husband Hunter Biden in the trash outside a grocery store, Politico reported Thursday. The alleged involvement of the Secret Service in the incident would be inappropriate given that the incident was investigated by Delaware police and the FBI, and because Joe Biden was not under Secret Service protection at the time, law enforcement officials told Politico. “U.S. Secret Service records confirm that the agency did not provide protection to any member of the Biden family in 2018, and that the Secret Service had no involvement in this alleged incident,” the agency said in a statement. On October 23, 2018, Hallie Biden took a .38 revolver belonging to Hunter and placed it in the trash outside Janssen’s Market in Wilmington, Del. After informing Hunter the same day, he told her to go back and retrieve the gun, however the gun was missing from the trash can when Hallie returned to get it. Hallie told the store manager, who passed the information along to Delaware police. According to the police report, which was obtained by Politico, the incident caused heightened concerns because the store was across the street from a high school, and officers worried the gun could be used in a crime. The FBI, which was investigating Hunter’s taxes at the time, also reportedly responded to the incident. At the same time that Delaware police were questioning Hallie and Hunter, two Secret Service agents arrived at StarQuest Shooters & Survival Supply, the gun shop where Hunter bought the revolver, two people familiar with the incident said. The agents asked owner Ron Palmieri to turn over the Firearms Transaction Record Hunter filled out in order to purchase the gun. Palmieri refused, however, reportedly because he suspected that the agents wanted to hide Hunter’s ownership of the gun. The ownership records fall under the purview of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, and Palmieri handed the records to the ATF a day after the incident. Palmieri declined to comment to Politico. The news comes after Joe Biden’s presidential campaign dealt with questions regarding a number of Hunter’s foreign business dealings. Hunter admitted in December 2020 that the FBI and IRS were investigating his “tax affairs,” referencing the probe open at the time of the alleged incident involving his revolver. “I learned yesterday for the first time that the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Delaware advised my legal counsel, also yesterday, that they are investigating my tax affairs,” Hunter said on December 9. Joe Biden has issued multiple statements in support of his son, who has struggled with drug addiction throughout his adult life. “President-elect Biden is deeply proud of his son, who has fought through difficult challenges, including the vicious personal attacks of recent months, only to emerge stronger,” the Biden transition team said in December.
Former CDC director Robert Redfield told CNN that he believes the coronavirus first infected a lab worker in Wuhan. No evidence supports the theory.
The fourth election in just two years brought a stinging rebuke for the prime minister.
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Thursday's press conference was President Biden's first since taking office, so there was a lot of ground to cover. Even so, there were some surprising themes in which topics were addressed, and which were glaringly left out of the conversation. Biden started his White House press conference by announcing a new goal of reaching 200 million COVID-19 vaccine doses within his first 100 days as president. Aside from that, there were no questions and no discussion directly related to the still-ongoing pandemic and the nation's vaccine rollout. No questions on COVID or vaccinations presented during @POTUS @JoeBiden’s first @WhiteHouse press conference of his administration. There are still major challenges with bridging the race gap with vaccinations & the impact of this pandemic on communities of color. #WhiteHouse — AprilDRyan (@AprilDRyan) March 25, 2021 As CBC News' Alexander Panetta pointed out, "sometimes this stuff just happens by accident. Every reporter assumes someone else will ask something about it — and nobody does." The lack of discussion on vaccine eligibility, vaccine hesitancy, or the $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief plan that was just passed stood in contrast to the amount of time spent talking about immigration. 100 million Americans: How do I get my vaccine! This is all so confusing! When can I do my job safely? Fully vaccinated media: Lets talk border and what your plan is in 2024. https://t.co/Ei33LydKlL — Jon Walker (@JonWalkerDC) March 25, 2021 Biden fielded questions on unaccompanied minors arriving at the border, and crowded facilities holding migrants seeking asylum. He also answered questions about whether he'll run for re-election in 2024, and whether Vice President Kamala Harris would be his running mate. He forcefully commented on Republican-led efforts to restrict voting access. He "dodged" on eliminating the Senate filibuster, but there were no questions to dodge regarding unemployment, climate change, or gun reform. Of course, an hour-long appearance can only pack in so many questions, but Biden's first presser is likely to lead to calls for another one very soon. More stories from theweek.comGeorgia governor reportedly signs voting restrictions into law under portrait of slave plantationFormer CDC director surprises CNN's Sanjay Gupta by revealing he believes COVID-19 originated in a Wuhan labIs Biden setting Harris up to fail?
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A coalition of nongovernmental organizations is calling on President Joe Biden to immediately begin developing plans to share an expected surplus of hundreds of millions of COVID-19 vaccine doses with the world, once U.S. demand for shots is met. Biden has repeatedly said his primary focus is on ensuring all Americans can get vaccinated, and on Thursday he outlined a new goal to deliver 200 million doses cumulatively over his first 100 days in office. In a letter to Biden sent Friday and obtained exclusively by The Associated Press, the groups — 30 NGOs including the ONE Campaign, the International Rescue Committee, Catholic Relief Services and Save the Children — call on Biden's administration to commit to sharing excess doses through the World Health Organization-backed COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access, or COVAX, facility.
(Reuters) -Businessman Mike Lindell appeared on the cable network Newsmax last month and launched into a baseless conspiracy theory blaming a voting machine company for fraud in the 2020 presidential election. The anchor then read a prepared statement that included: “Newsmax accepts the (election) results as legal and final.” Lindell, an ardent ally of losing presidential candidate Donald Trump, refused to drop the subject, and the anchor stormed off mid-interview.
Refresh for latest…: Warner Bros/Legendary’s Godzilla Vs Kong thrashed off to an estimated $21.5M (RMB 140M) start in China today, good for the best opening day of a Hollywood title in the market since Covid began and portending a weekend in the high $60Ms. The film positively dominated the Middle Kingdom with an 88% share and played […]
The U.S. government will distribute 11 million doses of Johnson & Johnson's COVID-19 vaccine next week in its continued effort to get 200 million shots in people's arms in the first 100 days of President Joe Biden's term, the White House said on Friday. The United States is still on track to deliver on its goal of making shots available to all adults by the end of May, Jeff Zients, the White House's COVID-19 response coordinator, told reporters. Vaccine manufacturers Pfizer Inc and Moderna Inc expect to hit their target of supplying 220 million shots between them in the first quarter of 2021, he added.
At least five people were killed in Alabama on Thursday as severe storms spawned tornadoes.
WASHINGTON — He reflected on his reputation as a “nice guy” and a “decent man.” He talked about how his great-grandfather set sail on the Irish Sea to make the difficult journey to America. He observed that “politics is the art of the possible.” In his first formal news conference since taking office, President Joe Biden offered an early glimpse of the man who inhabits the Oval Office and how he is approaching the presidency so far. Unlike President Donald Trump’s hot-tempered blowups or President Barack Obama’s extended answers of professorial cool, Biden was the sober political veteran comfortable with thinking out loud, talking personally and conversationally, and showing occasional impatience before a roomful of reporters. When he received a question he did not like, such as whether he expected to run in 2024 against Trump, he shrugged it off with, “I don’t know where you guys come from, man.” But Biden did say he expected to run again, with Vice President Kamala Harris at his side. Sign up for The Morning newsletter from the New York Times After nearly four decades in politics, including eight years as vice president, he showed himself as a student of the office. “It’s a matter of timing,” he said when asked about his legislative priorities. “As you’ve all observed, the successful presidents better than me have been successful in large part because they know how to time what they’re doing. Order it. Decide priorities. What needs to be done.” To that end, he cited his $3 trillion infrastructure bill as “the next major initiative.” And when asked why he did not push to abolish the Senate filibuster, which requires 60 votes to pass most legislation and which Biden called a relic of the Jim Crow era, he said simply that “successful electoral politics is the art of the possible” — and that he wanted to see whether he could change the filibuster first. Biden also recalled the Senate of yore, as he has done multiple times as president: “It used to be you had to stand there and talk and talk and talk and talk until you collapsed. And guess what, people got tired of talking.” But he joked about how outdated his own views could sometimes sound. “I believe we should go back to a position in the filibuster that existed just when I came to the United States Senate 120 years ago,” he said. The president engaged on questions about his administration’s attempt to ramp up capacity to temporarily care for the thousands of migrant children who are arriving at the southwestern border without legal guardians. He also took aim at the zero-tolerance policies enacted by Trump, saying his administration is trying “to put in place what was dismantled.” “I like to think it’s because I’m a nice guy,” Biden said. “But it’s not. It’s because of what’s happened.” At times, he was equal parts off the cuff — “I guess I should be flattered,” he responded when pressed on his “moral” approach to detaining families at the border — and exasperated. “That’s a serious question, right? Is it acceptable to me? Come on,” Biden said when asked if the state of Customs and Border Protection facilities in Texas, where children are being temporarily housed, was acceptable to him. Other times he was solicitous of reporters. “Am I giving you too long an answer?” he asked Yamiche Alcindor of PBS NewsHour. “If you don’t want the details — I don’t know how much detail you want about immigration. Maybe I’ll stop there.” He spoke of immigration in personal terms, as the last resort of desperate people seeking a new life in the United States. When families decide to leave Mexico or Guatemala, the president said, they do not say, “I got a great idea: let’s sell everything we have, give it to a coyote, have him take our kids across the border into a desert where they don’t speak the language, won’t that be fun?” Biden added: “That’s not how it happens. People don’t want to leave. When my great-grandfather got in a coffin ship in the Irish Sea, expectation was he going to live long enough on that ship to get to the United States of America? They left because of what the Brits had been doing. They were in real, real trouble. They didn’t want to leave. But they had no choice. So, you’ve got — we can’t — I can’t guarantee we’re going to solve everything. But I can guarantee we can make everything better. We can make it better.” The president’s appearance came after weeks of requests from reporters and speculation about why the White House was delaying the decision to have him hold a news conference. Biden’s advisers had said that the plan had been to pass the $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package into law before holding one. As he took questions for over an hour, the president also did little to fuel the narrative being crafted by conservative news media that he is lacking in his mental facilities. He appeared well prepared and sure of his facts, although he did refer to the “North China Sea,” which does not exist. During the news conference, a limited number of journalists were allowed in the room. Those who attended wore masks and sat 6 feet apart to comply with social-distancing rules. Biden called on reporters by their first names, from a list drawn up beforehand by his staff. In that sense, it was another return to normalcy, after four years of Trump’s free-for-all, fact-challenged news conferences. At one, Trump mocked a reporter for wearing what he called “the largest mask I think I’ve ever seen” and at another claimed that injecting disinfectants into the human body could help combat the coronavirus. Reporters shouted to be heard, and Trump appeared to relish the chaos. Biden’s performance, in contrast, was relatively sedate. “It’s a really big relief after four years, when every presidential news conference was a cataclysmic event,” said Lis Smith, a Democratic strategist. She said Biden had stayed on message and “has woven in empathy into everything he does.” “Biden did what he needed to do,” said David Axelrod, a former top adviser to Obama. “He drove the progress on the virus at the top, parried difficult questions on the border and filibuster, and generally refrained from making unwelcome news.” It is unclear where Biden will fall in terms of regularly addressing the news media in a formal setting. Trump gave 44 formal news conferences during his presidency, though he regularly had lengthy question-and-answer sessions with reporters during Oval Office events or before crossing the White House lawn to board Marine One. Obama held 65 news conferences, according to data compiled by The American Presidency Project, which tracks such solo appearances. Biden also left a series of open questions about some of the most politically contentious problems facing his administration. He would not say how soon he planned to allow reporters to see the conditions at migrant detention facilities along the U.S.-Mexico border. He did not commit to a timeline for pulling U.S. troops out of Afghanistan. And he declined multiple times to say whether he would try to change how the Senate functions. In those moments, Biden, a politician who has only recently embraced the art of restraint, seemed aware of the perils of making promises to a room full of reporters. “I’m not going to lay out a strategy in front of the whole world,” he said, “and you, now.” This article originally appeared in The New York Times. © 2021 The New York Times Company
