Former CDC Director Robert Redfield Shares Fascinating Insights at Yesterday’s “COVID Collateral” Event

Jeffrey A. Singer

Last evening, the US premiere of the documentary “COVID Collateral: Where Do We Go For Truth?” was screened at the Cato Institute’s Hayek Auditorium. The film was produced and directed by Canadian filmmaker Vanessa Dylyn and premiered in Toronto, Canada in May.

While the film wasn’t live streamed, I moderated a roundtable discussion following it that was live streamed and recorded. The roundtable participants included Vanessa Dylyn, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, former Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2018–2021) Robert Redfield, and Cato economist Ryan Bourne.

During the discussion, Dr. Redfield said, “I always felt the basic premise of the Great Barrington Declaration was right on target…it wasn’t really about herd immunity; it was about targeted intervention to protect the vulnerable.”

Dr. Redfield also told the audience he argued against any mandates: “I think in public health, when you mandate somebody to do something they don’t want to do, all you do is reinforce in them the hesitancy to do that. So it was a huge mistake to go for vaccine mandates.”

The former CDC director drew attention to the fact that, as viewers of the film noted, he was not present among the pandemic task force members who stood behind President Trump in a press conference announcing lockdowns in the early days of the pandemic. Redfield chose not to participate in the press conference because “I was not an advocate of that at all.” Redfield added, “They tried to keep me off television. In fact, the secretary didn’t approve my ability to talk on television, which was awkward because I was only the CDC director” and “I always argued that the public health benefit of K through 12 was to stay in school.”

Later in the discussion, I asked Dr. Redfield why the World Health Organization recommended against entry and exit screening of travelers and that most advanced countries abandoned the policy while it persisted in the United States until mid-2022. Redfield responded that he initially recommended the policy in January, but by mid-February, it became clear that it was a mistake and no longer made sense.

Redfield also admitted that the task force underestimated how transmissible the virus was and that it had spread to many more people than they initially suspected, many of whom were asymptomatic.

Dr. Redfield stated he believed as early as January 2020 that the COVID-19 virus was genetically modified in the Wuhan Institute of Virology and escaped in a lab leak.

You can watch the whole discussion here.

Go here to find out when the documentary will become available to the public.