• Lack of Oversight at Wuhan Lab Raises Five Questions to Ask NIH

    February 9, 2023

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    Posted in: Other Ideas

    The United States paid for the work that may have created the Covid virus. That research, a virus genetically engineered for the highest possible infectivity for human cells, was subcontracted to the Chinese at Wuhan by an American organization named EcoHealth. And now a new Office of the Inspector General (OIG) report says the National Institute of Health, the originator of the grant, failed to exercise its oversight over EcoHealth, and EconHealth over Wuhan. It’s not a smoking gun but it is pretty damn close. Senator Rand Paul will take up the contents of the OIG report soon in hearings. Here are 5 questions he may want to focus on.

    Question 1: Though the new OIG report does not mention Covid specifically, it is scathing in its denunciation of EcoHealth and the NIH in failing to properly oversee the gain-of-function research it paid for at the Wuhan National Lab in China. Not touched on at all is the question of why bioweapon engineering-type research was subbed out to China, an ostensible adversary of the U.S. So why? Did NIH not know the editorial board of the lead researcher’s virology journal included members of the Chinese military?

    Question 2: OIG stated “Despite identifying potential risks associated with research being performed under the EcoHealth awards, we found that NIH did not effectively monitor or take timely action to address EcoHealth’s compliance with some requirements. Although NIH and EcoHealth had established monitoring procedures, we found deficiencies in complying with those procedures limited NIH and EcoHealth’s ability to effectively monitor Federal grant awards and subawards to understand the nature of the research conducted, identify potential problem areas, and take corrective action. Using its discretion, NIH did not refer the research to HHS for an outside review for enhanced potential pandemic pathogens… With improved oversight, NIH may have been able to take more timely corrective actions to mitigate the inherent risks associated with this type of research.” One timely corrective action missed was not insisting EcoHealth produce a required progress report about its subgrants in the summer of 2019, just months before the advent of the coronavirus.

    What may have been missed?

    Though gain-of-function research does not leave a physical marker to prove origin, to date, there is no evidence Covid was of a natural origin (this is surprising because both the SARS1 and MERS viruses [related to Covid] had left copious traces in the environment.) There is much to show it was not. We do know Wuhan conducted gain-of-function research aimed at doing what Covid does, making a virus originally not dangerous to humans into a super-infector designed to spread quickly while resisting then-existing cures and vaccines. We know the first cases of the virus were in Wuhan, and include researchers at the virology lab who were infected in November 2019. We know precautions at the lab were insufficient to contain the virus. In a murder case this would be enough to show means and method beyond a reasonable doubt.

    Question 3: And it is not as if there wasn’t enough bad stuff already out there that NIH and EconHealth might have had their guard up instead of exercising slack oversight. The Wuhan lab was already a nexus of attention pre-pandemic. Following a controversial September 2019 corona lecture the lead researcher gave in Mozambique, Wuhan pulled their virus database offline. The Chinese government still refuses to provide any of its raw data, safety logs, or lab records (the OIG report criticized EcoHealth’s inability to obtain scientific documentation from Wuhan despite having paid for it with U.S. tax dollars.) Another Wuhan scientist was forced to leave a Canadian university for shipping deadly viruses, including ebola, back to China. The lab also tried to steal intellectual property regarding remdesivir, a class of antiviral medications used to treat Covid prior to the vaccine.

    As early as 2018, Wuhan alarmed visiting U.S. State Department safety inspectors. “The new lab has a serious shortage of appropriately trained technicians and investigators needed to safely operate this high-containment laboratory,” the inspectors wrote. They warned the lab’s work on “bat coronaviruses and their potential human transmission represented a risk of a new SARS-like pandemic.” The Chinese worked under mostly BSL2-level safety conditions far too lax to contain a virus like Covid.

    So a key question for Senator Paul to ask is, given this background, why did the NIH fund a place like Wuhan at all?

    Question 4: What was the role of EcoHealth and others in promoting the as yet-to-be-proved natural origin theory?

    Now years after the pandemic began, Chinese researchers have failed to find the original bat population, or the intermediate species to which Covid might have jumped, or any serological evidence that any Chinese population, including that of Wuhan, had ever been exposed to the virus prior to late 2019. The search in China for the natural origin of the virus, the zoonotic animal-to-human spillover, included testing more than 80,000 different animals from across dozens of provinces. Not a single case of Covid in animals in nature was found (according to a study published in the journal “Nature Medicine” in March 2020, the Covid virus has genetic elements that are not commonly found in naturally occurring zoonotic viruses, suggesting that it may have been engineered or manipulated in a laboratory.) Chinese researchers did find primordial cases in people from Wuhan near the laboratory with no link to that infamous wet market China claims sold an infected bat eaten by Patient One.

    So why does the natural origin theory persist? One of the strongest shows of support was a letter from dozens of scientists published in early 2020 in the British medical journal Lancet. The letter had actually been written not by the scientists, but by Peter Daszak, president of EcoHealth, the grantee who subcontracted with Wuhan. If the virus had indeed escaped from research they funded, EcoHealth would be potentially liable, as of course would the American government. EcoHealth went on to plant never-challenged stories in the MSM labeling anyone who thought Wuhan was to blame a conspiracy crank. Then, when the pandemic began, EcoHealth president Peter Daszak argued that criticizing the zoonotic hypothesis would only stoke xenophobia toward China.

    Meanwhile, a Chinese-affiliated scientific journal at the University of Massachusetts Medical School commissioned commentary to refute that Covid originated in the Wuhan lab, the same position held by the Chinese government. Mirroring the American media, the journal called anything to the contrary “speculations, rumors, and conspiracy theories.” Chinese officials also objected elsewhere to any name, such as the Wuhan Flu, linking the virus to China.

    Question 5: Did Dr. Anthony Fauci participate in a cover-up and/or did he perjure himself before Congress? In answer to Senator Rand Paul at a hearing in the midst of the pandemic, Fauci stated “you are entirely and completely incorrect—that the NIH has not ever and does not now fund gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.” He appears to have committed perjury, as Fauci later admited “there’s no way of guaranteeing” American taxpayer money routed to Wuhan didn’t fund gain-of-function research, and the recent OIG report confirms it in fact did. Fauci also reversed himself completely in saying he is no longer convinced Covid developed naturally. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene accused Dr. Anthony Fauci of complicity in gain-of-function experiments and called for his firing as the nation’s top infectious disease expert. Fauci has since retired.

    Optional Question 6, should Senator Paul call any member of the MSM to his hearings. “Do you now have any regrets over your coverage of the origins of Covid given all of this information, some which existed when you mocked laboratory origin as a conspiracy theory? Anything you’d do differently, such as tell the American public the truth?”

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      02/9/23 5:47 PM | Comment Link

    • John Poole said...

      2

      If Anthony Fauci were 6’3″ and wore a cape the bat thingee would make perfect sense. There is something a little ghoulish about the guy but I guess that comes with his expertise.

      02/10/23 9:24 AM | Comment Link

    • Rich Bauer said...

      3

      Not surprised China is the epicenter of so many of these lethal viruses. Given China’s deplorable livestock conditions and its mistreatment of animals, perhaps the viruses are just a defense mechanism to kill off their parasites.

      02/10/23 10:08 AM | Comment Link

    • Charles Dunaway said...

      4

      Senator Paul might also want to investigate other similar labs overseen by EcoHealth or DoD such as those in Ukraine, Georgia, and other Central Asian nations. Are they conducting similar research? Why is the government conducting this dangerous research in foreign nations, particularly those close to Russia and China?

      02/10/23 10:33 AM | Comment Link

    • Rich Bauer said...

      5

      Geez, these Russian Internet RESEARCH Agency disinformation Covid conspiracy rumors keep coming back. Talk about bio-warfare, co-founder of the Russian mercenary group Wagner, Yevgeny Prigozhin, who is known to have close ties to President Vladimir Putin, has acknowledged for the first time that he owns the Internet Research Agency — a so-called “troll factory” in St. Petersburg specialized in creating fake social-media accounts and spreading disinformation and propaganda.

      In February 2018, the Justice Department indicted the Internet Research Agency and two other companies controlled by Prigozhin — Concord Management and Concord Catering — as well as Prigozhin himself and 15 other Russian individuals for alleged fraud “for the purpose of interfering with the U.S. political and electoral processes, including the presidential election of 2016.” In a written response to a group of Western journalists’ questions, Prigozhin said on February 14 that “I planned it, I created it, and I used to direct it for a long time.”

      Rumors persist the Russian Troll also directs TAC.

      02/14/23 3:46 PM | Comment Link

    • John Poole said...

      6

      Bauer- are you certain about Prigozhin? George Santos has claimed he created the Russian Troll program just to keep the intelligence agencies on their toes. I think the Ruskies have as many idiotic braggarts as the USA. Hey, go easy on Conrade Van Buren. He and I once shared a wooden bowl of gruel in one of the gulags after we started the rumor that Putin was non binary.

      02/15/23 12:08 PM | Comment Link

    • Rich Bauer said...

      7

      Go EZ on Benedict Van Buren? The guy is only in it for the money. The guy gets paid by Dreher, who gets paid by a Hungarian tyrant, who gets paid by Putin for blowjobs. How do you think BvB can afford his life in Hawaii?

      02/17/23 3:14 PM | Comment Link

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