Extended Interview: NIH director Jay Bhattacharya on Fauci hearing, COVID-19 origins, more
What this video covers
A CBS Evening News extended interview in which Bhattacharya — who reveals in the conversation that he is also serving as acting CDC director — is pressed on the released Fauci diary, COVID origins and gain-of-function research, a Cyclospora outbreak, and his positions on vaccines, autism, measles, and flu shots.
Key points
- On the Fauci diary, Bhattacharya says it reveals a disjunction between Fauci’s private thinking and his public advice — including, he says, a written recommendation to close schools in California despite Fauci later saying he never recommended school closures, something he notes kept his own kids out of school for a year and a half.
- He argues the diary was kept on government servers and concerns a figure who affected every American’s life, so its release is in the public interest — and notes his own official notes are available through FOIA.
- Pressed repeatedly, he declines to say Fauci “lied” about COVID origins (“more complicated than he let on”), declines to judge whether Fauci committed a crime despite Sen. Rand Paul’s prosecution calls, and declines to call it malpractice, saying those are legal questions.
- He names what he calls Fauci’s primary abuse: shutting down scientific debate and denigrating scientists who disagreed with him, including Bhattacharya himself, instead of fostering open discussion as the head of a research institute.
- On origins, he says the evidence makes a Chinese lab origin “really quite likely,” claims Fauci authorized US-taxpayer-funded research at the Wuhan lab and found ways around the Obama-era pause on such work, and says that history is why his NIH has moved to make sure dangerous gain-of-function experiments never happen again under federal support.
- On the Cyclospora outbreak, he says CDC teams worked closely with the FDA to trace the source quickly, and that decisions about sourcing produce from particular Mexican farms belong to the FDA.
- Asked whether vaccines cause autism, he says that based on the evidence he has seen, he does not think so — while noting he cannot be certain about every vaccine — and points to the NIH’s Autism Data Science Initiative, launched the previous year, to investigate why autism rates have risen.
- On measles, he repeats his Senate testimony that vaccinating children is the best tool available, and says that as acting CDC director he recorded a direct-to-camera video recommending it during the South Carolina outbreak.
- On flu shots, he says he will recommend the flu vaccine especially for elderly and other vulnerable people, that it will remain available and subsidized for the poor, and that for most people it “makes sense” — while advising people to talk to their doctor.