Report: U.S. Taxpayers Bankrolled Dangerous Research By ‘Covid Patients Zero’ In Wuhan
A hypothesis about the origins of Covid-19 censored by Big Tech and labeled a “conspiracy” by corporate media, the federal government, and World Health Organization (WHO) is now backed by new evidence. Documents obtained by a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request show U.S. taxpayers funded the research of three Wuhan Institute of Virology lab staffers in China whom U.S. officials told reporters are “patients zero” for Covid-19.
This adds evidence to the “lab leak theory.” That hypothesis says the deadly virus that provided the justification for unprecedented worldwide government curtailments of civil liberties was created in a Chinese lab with U.S. government funding.
In 2021, the U.S. State Department confirmed that in the fall of 2019, China-based researchers conducting coronavirus animal experiments fell ill with Covid-19-like symptoms, and three became so sick they had to be hospitalized. On Tuesday, journalists Michael Shellenberger, Matt Taibbi, and Alex Gutentag released a report on Substack identifying the three sick Wuhan lab staffers as Ben Hu, Yu Ping, and Yan Zhu, according to an unnamed U.S. government source.
If these individuals are indeed the first to get sick with Covid-19, that adds to the growing evidence the U.S. government funded the Chinese research that unleashed this virus on the world.
Yesterday, White Coat Waste Project (WCW), a nonpartisan watchdog group, publicized FOIA documents from the NIH confirming “that Ben Hu was a lead experimenter on the dangerous gain-of-function experiments funded by taxpayers via Dr. Fauci’s National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).” Gain-of-function makes the viruses more contagious and powerful.
“It is unclear who in the U.S. government had access to the intelligence about the sick WIV workers, how long they had it, and why it was not shared with the public,” the report states.
The documents also reveal Hu’s dangerous “gain-of-function” research on SARS-like coronaviruses received at least $41 million in U.S. taxpayer dollars. However, the total amount “has not been disclosed by the government,” reports WCW.
“You would expect the country of origin to be defensive,” Alina Chan, a molecular biologist at MIT and Harvard, told Public, “but you wouldn’t expect a country receiving the virus to be withholding key evidence.”
More evidence for what has been called the “lab leak theory” spells bad news for a number of powerful people, including former NIAID Director Anthony Fauci and Peter Daszak. NIAID funneled funds for the Wuhan research through Daszak’s nonprofit, EcoHealth Alliance.
In an email made public via open records requests, Daszak thanked Fauci for publicly dismissing the lab-leak theory, even though emails show Fauci was informed the virus possessed “unusual features” that “potentially look engineered.”
From the onset of the Covid outbreak, elites in science, politics, and the corporate media berated and silenced anyone — including doctors — who even discussed the lab leak theory, labeling them racist and crazy. Instead, they amplified demands to indefinitely suspend Americans’ civil liberties from men like Fauci and Daszak, who are partially responsible for the outbreak of Covid if the conclusions sustained by these new documents are true.
“Had U.S. government officials including Dr. Fauci stated from day one that a Covid-19 research-related origin was a very real possibility,” said Chan, “and made clear that we had little idea what viruses were being held at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, what work was being done there, and who was doing that work, our national and global conversations would have been dramatically different.”
Moreover, had Fauci, the WHO, the media, and tech companies allowed people to freely consider and discuss all possible origins of the virus, the American people, who now strongly believe the lab leak theory, may have demanded U.S. tax dollars once and for all stop funding dangerous scientific pursuits. Instead, a shocking loophole in Congress’ omnibus spending package allows EcoHealth Alliance to still funnel U.S. tax dollars into China for “research.”
Evita Duffy-Alfonso is a staff writer to The Federalist and the co-founder of the Chicago Thinker. She loves the Midwest, lumberjack sports, writing, and her family. Follow her on Twitter at @evitaduffy_1 or contact her at evita@thefederalist.com.
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