America's top infectious diseases specialist Dr. Anthony Fauci had been correct to assume in 2017 that former President Donald Trump would face "a surprise outbreak" any time during his four years in office. True enough, the COVID-19 pandemic exploded in the early months of 2020, during which Trump was gearing up for reelection.
But how did Dr. Fauci correctly and confidently say that a surprise infectious disease outbreak would come to pass under the Trump administration?
According to a report from Healio, a health journal, on Jan. 11, 2017, Fauci gave a speech at the Georgetown University Medical Center. The speech, per the Huffington Post, was titled "Pandemic Preparedness in the Next Administration." The speech was delivered just days before the January 20 inauguration of then-President Donald Trump.
During the speech, the country's top infectious disease expert curiously warned, "There is no question that there will be a challenge to the coming administration in the arena of infectious diseases."
Dr. Fauci had long led the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), spearheading the organization since 1984, giving him insider information and capabilities to forecast public health issues.
"Trump administration will not only be challenged by ongoing global health threats such as influenza and HIV, but also a surprise disease outbreak," Dr. Fauci said during his speech, as reported by USA Today. "The thing we're extraordinarily confident about is that we're going to see this in the next few years."
Why could he be that confident?
WND argued that Dr. Fauci knew about the surprise infectious disease outbreak because he "helped develop it."
Fauci, through the NIH, had been involved in funneling dollars into the Chinese Wuhan laboratory to support the "gain of function" research that aims to create bioweapons out of viruses, a project that was supposedly trashed by the Obama administration.
Dr. Fauci is also accused of being aware about how the Wuhan virology lab had "deficiencies [that] could trigger another SARS outbreak."
Meanwhile, Republican legislators are campaigning for Dr. Fauci to resign over his changing positions on whether the U.S government had in fact funded research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, CNBC reported. President Biden already acknowledged that most of the intelligence community believes either of two theories: that COVID-19 came from a lab leak or from an animal.
Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, however, was outraged at the Biden administration's scientists for downplaying the lab leak theory. He said evidence, which Fauci and the other scientists would've seen as well, strongly pointed to the possibility that it came from a laboratory in Wuhan, not from some wet market or animal.
Dr. Fauci, who now serves as a chief medical advisor to the White House, denies being involved in the National Institutes of Health's financial support for the Wuhan Institute of Virology through funding via the nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance. But Republican senators are not convinced.
"Dr. Fauci represents everything that President Eisenhower warned us about in his farewell address: the scientific-technical elite steering the country toward their own ends," Republican Rep. Warren Davidson of Ohio said in a statement, calling for Dr. Fauci's termination. He also introduced the FIRED (Fauci Incompetence Requires Early Dismissal) Act earlier this month to set a 12-year term limit for appointees serving as the Director of the NIAID.
Rep. Guy Reschenthaler of Pennsylvania agreed, saying, "It is long past time for Dr. Fauci to stop talking to the American public. Fauci should resign or be fired immediately."
