Anthony Fauci: Where did COVID come from?

Chris - How did it then play out? Vaccines began to be used. Did that give you enormous optimism, did you think 'Right. We're finally getting control of this.' Because many people thought, thank goodness for this. But then they didn't realise that another year of this lay ahead of us,

Anthony - We were following the classic historical paradigm of an outbreak of a viral disease such as influenza. And we found out, as the months and then as the years went by, that this virus was not following any classic paradigms. And one of the paradigms that was breaking in addition to important ones, like many of the transmissions were from people without any symptoms, was that in the same outbreak we saw the evolution of new variants that were able to escape the protective effect, at least against infection and symptomatic disease, not only escaped the protection of vaccines, but even escaped the protection of prior infection. And it took us a while to realise that the vaccines as highly, highly effective as they were in preventing hospitalizations and deaths were not nearly as effective in preventing acquisition of infection. But one of the things that became clear is that if you compare the benefit among those vaccinated versus those unvaccinated, it was clear that the overwhelming majority of the infections that led to hospitalisation and death were among people who were unvaccinated compared to those who were vaccinated. So it became a complicated issue. Do vaccines work really, really well? Well, if you're talking about protecting you from hospitalisation and death, they work extremely well. If you're talking about preventing you from initially getting infected, the duration of the protection is really measured in months and not years and decades. The way other vaccines like measles vaccine or polio vaccine for smallpox vaccine, which once you get vaccinated, you're protected, measured in decades, if not a lifetime. We painfully found out that the durability of protection of the covid vaccines, as good as they were, was really not very long in duration.

Chris - And of course, that handed quite a big stick with which to beat the medical profession, to the people who were very of the anti-vax mindset. But did COVID emerge naturally? Or was this someone's experiment they took home with themselves by accident and released it and unleashed on the population?

Anthony - You know, we don't know definitively what the answer to that question is, and that's the reason why it's very important to continue to keep an open mind. But when you look at the data that's accumulated over the last few years from rather competent, experienced evolutionary virologists, not only from the United States, but from Australia and the UK and the European Union, the data that this is a natural spillover from an animal to a human is pretty strong, but not definitive. And that's the reason why even though many of the most qualified evolutionary virologists feel that it weighs much more heavily as being a natural spillover from animal to human. Since you don't know definitively, you absolutely must keep an open mind that it could have been a lab leak, it could have been something else, and you must always be flexible and keep an open mind to that until we get definitive proof.

Chris - You've stepped down from your role in 2022. So what are you going to do now?

Anthony - <laugh>? Well, I'm going to do a number of things. I'm going to continue in the field of public health in writing and lecturing as I've been doing over the past few months. I will hopefully be able to get moving on the beginning of writing a memoir aimed at younger people who want to go into medicine, science, or public health. Hopefully my more than 50 year career will be somewhat of an inspiration to some people to go into medicine. So I think that will likely keep me busy for a while. And I probably will associate myself for the University Medical Center ultimately in a teaching role, particularly teaching young people who are trying to go into science. So I think that's the general direction I'm going to take over the next several years.

Chris - No more basketball then?

Anthony - Well, I'm going to go one-on-one shooting with my wife, <laugh>, who is actually not a bad basketball player, <laugh>. But I'm not going to get into any competitive games.

Chris - Anthony Fauci, thank you very much indeed.

Anthony - My pleasure. It's good to be with you.