Covid-19 origins, the Wuhan lab, US funding, and vaccine connection
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has given millions of taxpayer dollars to a U.S.-based group that partnered with the Wuhan, China lab to study bat coronaviruses.NIH cancelled some funding under pressure in April after the partnership with the Wuhan lab was reported by the media.A few weeks ago, NIH awarded more tax money to the U.S. group.Scientists have long experimented with and genetically altered coronavirus to use as a vaccine "vector."
Starting in 2014, the National Institutes of Health granted millions of dollars in U.S. tax money to a "global environmental health nonprofit" called EcoHealth Alliance based in New York City.
The grant was for an eleven-year-long project entitled: "Understanding the risk of bat coronavirus emergence." It aimed to study coronavirus in bats in China to determine which strains had the greatest risk of spillover to humans. (In other words, in hopes of preventing something like the Covid-19 pandemic and/or providing quick mitigation.)
A total of $3,748,715 was given for the project from 2014-2019.
EcoHealth Alliance's partners on the taxpayer-funded project included at least one scientist at China's Wuhan Institute of Virology.
The Chinese researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology also "received assistance from the Galveston National Laboratory at the University of Texas Medical Branch and other U.S. organizations."
The Wuhan Institute of Virology is located in the area of China where scientists believe the Covid-19 outbreak originated. Investigators have not ruled out the possibility that the virus was somehow released from the lab, either by accident or intentionally.
To date, there is no public evidence revealing whether Covid-19 was naturally-occurring, or involved a stop at the Wuhan lab, which was conducting coronavirus research.
U.S. State Department cables had warned of risky practices at the China lab prior to the Covid-19 outbreak, according to The Washington Post's Josh Rogin.
One cable in 2018 warned "that the lab’s work on bat coronaviruses and their potential human transmission represented a risk of a new SARS-like pandemic."
EcoHealth Alliance's Peter Daszak has reportedly been partnered with Wuhan Institute of Virology virologist Shi Zhengli "for more than 15 years." Zhengli was the scientist named in State Department cables as conducting supposedly risky research on bat coronaviruses that could be dangerous.
In other words: if the Wuhan lab research is ultimately linked to the Covid-19 outbreak, it appears as though it would involve to a project and a scientist who were partnered with and funded by the U.S.
Would U.S. officials and or scientists, therefore, have their own reasons to steer public scrutiny away from the potential lab connection? Could that be a reason why when the perfectly logical question is asked, there seems to be an organized campaign to controversialize whoever asks it and claim it's a "debunked conspiracy theory"?
Daszak stated in April that "no fund from [the grant] have been sent to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, nor has any contract been signed," but he did not provide other details at that time.
The publication "Nature" states that the Wuhan Institute of Virology "is a subrecipient" on the grant of U.S. taxpayer money to EcoHealth Alliance.
With the Wuhan Institute of Virology's possible role in the Covid-19 outbreak an open question, the Trump Administration cancelled remaining funding for the EcoHealth Alliance project in April.
After receiving political backlash for the cancelled funding, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) reinstated the grant, but immediately suspended the China bat coronavirus part of the project pending the Wuhan Institute of Virology granting a request for an outside inspection. NIH also made the project contingent upon getting responses to inquiries regarding the lab's practices and the Covid-19 outbreak. NIH also wanted EcoHealth Alliance to obtain a virus sample from Wuhan.
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