Dr. Redfield is entitled to his professional opinion, but his professional opinion is in a minority amongst professional opinions. In fact, we can almost call it it a solo minority. Viruses mutate in nature. HIV started in wildlife and jumped to humans. So did SARS-CoV2.
30 years ago in Australia a new virus began infecting horses (Hendra virus), it crossed to humans and infected 4 people who came in contact with the horses and all 4 died. In 2012, 3 men who worked in a copper mine died after being infected with a new bat virus. Stuff happens.
New viruses that jump species are not unusual. There is even a journal dedicated to it: Emerging Infectious Diseases. The entire point of the discipline is to find and isolate new viruses to prevent a global pandemic. Virologists have warned about it for decades.
And for decades we took the threat seriously. We funded scientists who traveled the world to do this work. The only odd thing is that the Trump Administration defunded that scientific investigation, and then it happened. This won't be the last virus. We need to fund science!
Further, it only takes 1 person to start a pandemic. There are almost 8 billion of us on this planet. Those are terrible odds. Combine that with public health challenges such as vaccine conspiracists and it makes us a stupid population primed for disaster. And here we are.
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