The Intercept obtained over 900 pages about EcoHealth Alliance’s U.S.-funded coronavirus research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China .
The documents detail two unpublished proposals funded by Dr. Anthony Fauci’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and updates to EcoHealth Alliance’s research.
You will see why the left and Fauci owe Sen. Rand Paul a ton of apologies.
If you follow Leslie’s excellent articles about COVID (we are so lucky to have her!), you’ll recognize the names EcoHealth Alliance and its president Peter Daszak.
Daszak appears in the grant “Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence.”
The project summary states:
From The Intercept (emphasis mine):
One of the grants, titled “Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence,” outlines an ambitious effort led by EcoHealth Alliance president Peter Daszak to screen thousands of bat samples for novel coronaviruses. The research also involved screening people who work with live animals. The documents contain several critical details about the research in Wuhan, including the fact that key experimental work with humanized mice was conducted at a biosafety level 3 lab at Wuhan University Center for Animal Experiment — and not at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, as was previously assumed. The documents raise additional questions about the theory that the pandemic may have begun in a lab accident, an idea that Daszak has aggressively dismissed.The bat coronavirus grant provided the EcoHealth Alliance with a total of $3.1 million, including $599,000 that the Wuhan Institute of Virology used in part to identify and alter bat coronaviruses likely to infect humans. Even before the pandemic, many scientists were concerned about the potential dangers associated with such experiments. The grant proposal acknowledges some of those dangers: “Fieldwork involves the highest risk of exposure to SARS or other CoVs, while working in caves with high bat density overhead and the potential for fecal dust to be inhaled.”
Daszak denies COVID-19 leaked from the lab. Broad Institute molecular biologist Alina Chan said EcoHealth Alliance needs to “take the lab leak theory seriously” because the grant highlights the risks.
“They keep talking about people potentially getting bitten — and they kept records of everyone who got bitten,” Chan stressed. “Does EcoHealth have those records? And if not, how can they possibly rule out a research-related accident?”
I wonder if we could get our hands on that information. Imagine the treasure we would find in those documents!
Understanding Risk of Zoonotic Virus Emergence in Emerging Infectious Disease Hotspots of Southeast Asia is the second grant. The scientists wanted to use the money to research outbreaks of an “emergent infectious disease” or EID.
The proposal identified Southeast Asia as a high-risk EID hotspot since the SARS pandemic originated there along with the Nipah virus “and repeated outbreaks of influenza.”
“This is driven by high diversity of wildlife and rapidly expanding demography that brings human and wildlife populations closer,” stated the project summary.
The EID research project also “act as a significant asset to scale-up and deploy resources in the case of an outbreak in the region.”
Sen. Rand Paul demanded gain-of-function answers from Fauci during numerous Congressional hearings.
Fauci acted like a victim and cried. The left immediately protected their precious god because he could never be wrong!
First off, here is the definition of gain-of-function:
Gain-of-function research refers to the serial passaging of microorganisms to increase their transmissibility, virulence, immunogenicity, and host tropism by applying selective pressure to a culture.This is performed in a research context to understand the way in which a pathogen adapts to environmental pressures, allowing disease control measures to be better planned, and potential vaccines and therapies to be explored. Gene editing technology such as CRISPR may be utilized in combination with selective serial passaging to investigate the role of specific genes on protein expression and ultimate organism function.
Gain-of-Function is controversial because (emphasis mine):
As discussed, gain-of-function research can highlight possible mutations that may take place in currently known viruses and allow better community surveillance, identifying when such mutations arise and allowing vaccines to be prepared in advance of such an outbreak.However, the mutations a virus may acquire naturally are widely varied, and not guaranteed to present in the same way as those developed by serial passages in a laboratory. Similarly, the cost and time associated with vaccine development and storage means that preparatory stockpiling of vaccines is also unlikely to become a real benefit of gain-of-function research.Additionally, inter-tropic research such as the abovementioned work on ferrets may not be applicable to viruses in humans as the way in which a mutation alters the interaction of a virus with its environment may differ between hosts. On the other hand, this type of research provided the only means of conclusively demonstrating the possibility that H5N1 had the capacity to transfer between mammals and become airborne.
The second paragraph sounds familiar, doesn’t it? It sounds like something that is happening right now. It sounds like our life since March 2020.
I also bring up gain-of-function because of Paul’s questions to Fauci. Rutgers University molecular biologist Richard Ebright has a fascinating Twitter thread explaining Fauci’s lies in a way we understand. It is long, but I encourage you to read it all.
I googled this story to see how many outlets picked it up. I only saw a few. Is it because The Intercept is not promoting it enough?
Co-founder Glenn Greenwald, who broke up with The Intercept after editors tried to ruin a piece because he dared to tell facts, brought up Robert Mackey’s attack on Paul over his questions to Fauci.
Granted, it looks like the piece is an op-ed and not a report.
However, Greenwald has a point. The documents contradict Mackey’s article, but the article does not mention Fauci. It does not mention gain-of-function. It does not mention the fight between Paul and Fauci about NIH research in Wuhan.
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