U.S.-Funded Scientist Among Three Chinese Researchers Who Fell Ill Amid Early Covid-19 Outbreak; Report: U.S. Taxpayers Bankrolled Dangerous Research By ‘Covid Patients Zero’ In Wuhan, and other C-Virus related stories

WSJ: U.S.-Funded Scientist Among Three Chinese Researchers Who Fell Ill Amid Early Covid-19 Outbreak:

A prominent scientist who worked on coronavirus projects funded by the U.S. government is one of three Chinese researchers who became sick with an unspecified illness during the initial outbreak of Covid-19, according to current and former U.S. officials.

The identity and role of the researchers is one piece of intelligence that has been cited by proponents of the judgment that the pandemic originated with a lab leak, though the nature of their illness hasn’t been conclusively established.

Ben Hu, a scientist at the Wuhan Institute of Virology who had done extensive laboratory research on how coronaviruses infect humans, was identified in U.S. intelligence reports as one of the researchers who became ill in November 2019 with symptoms that American officials said were consistent with either Covid-19 or a seasonal illness. None of the researchers died.

More than three years after the pandemic began, and with almost seven million deaths around the world, the virus’s origins remain a subject of debate, with implications for U.S.-China relations, global biosafety and international research practices.

The initial hypothesis that the virus arose naturally has been challenged as a host animal has never been confirmed. The scientific community is divided over the possibility that the virus emerged from a lab leak or was transmitted to humans from an infected animal, as is the U.S. intelligence community.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has assessed with moderate confidence that a lab leak was the most likely origin of the virus and the Energy Department came to a similar conclusion with low confidence. Four other U.S. intelligence agencies assess with low confidence that the virus arose naturally, while the Central Intelligence Agency has been agnostic.

Robert Kadlec, a former senior Health and Human Services Department official, said the three scientists “published on SARS-related coronavirus experiments done at inappropriately low biosafety settings that could have resulted in a laboratory infection.”

Kadlec also conducted a Senate study that concluded a lab leak was the more likely cause of the Covid pandemic. —READ MORE HERE

Report: U.S. Taxpayers Bankrolled Dangerous Research By ‘Covid Patients Zero’ In Wuhan

New open records prove the U.S. taxpayers funded research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology for ‘Covid Patients Zero.’

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. —>READ MORE HERE

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