Many Americans strongly suspect that the COVID-19 pandemic originated as a lab leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China, which was conducted dangerous “gain-of-function” research on bat viruses that was funded by U.S. taxpayers via a National Institutes of Health grant to an organization known as EcoHealth Alliance.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, however, continues to insist that there is “no evidence whatsoever” in support of the lab leak origin theory, and further defended the continued provision of taxpayer-funded grants to EcoHealth Alliance, Not the Bee reported.
Fauci, the longtime director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and current chief White House medical adviser, has from the very beginning of the pandemic worked both to squash talk of a potential Chinese lab leak and to divert attention away from serious lack of transparency issues with EcoHealth Alliance and its leader, his personal friend, Dr. Peter Daszak.
Fauci says “zero evidence” of lab leak origin
During a recent conversation with a Washington Post reporter, with regard to his dismissal of the lab leak theory, Dr. Fauci said, “There is always the concern — and I have kept a completely open mind — about the possibility that there may have been a lab leak.”
“But one thing you cannot walk away from … is that lab leak is a theory with no evidence whatsoever. Do we keep an open mind? Absolutely,” he continued and proceeded to reference a conference call early on with several top virologists in which the theory had been “seriously” discussed but was ultimately rejected in favor of the “natural occurrence” origin theory.
“At the same time that they say we all must keep an open mind that it was a lab leak, but there is evidence to strongly indicate that it is a natural occurrence and zero evidence to indicate that it’s a lab leak,” Fauci added, though he again professed to keeping an “open mind” even as he insisted that all evidence pointed to the virus developing naturally.
Fauci still adamant: “No evidence” Covid came from the Wuhan Virology lab where we were funding gain-of-function research on bat-based coronaviruses pic.twitter.com/pTD8q1yew3
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) October 5, 2022
Can’t cancel grants just because “someone doesn’t like you”
The reporter then referenced the concerns about the lack of transparency for EcoHealth Alliance and the fact that the group had just been awarded a new NIH grant despite those concerns, but Fauci defended the group by speaking bureaucratically about the grant-funding processes and separation between where and what the funding for different grants went toward.
“There is really no mechanism to say arbitrarily, ‘we can’t fund you, even though you’ve been peer-reviewed and highly recommended for funding, because someone doesn’t like you,'” Fauci said. “I mean, if they ever brought that in court, they could sue us and win that in a microsecond. So you’ve got to be careful.”
Despite Covid-19, Fauci defends sending more NIH money to EcoHealthAlliance to fund more bat coronavirus research: “There is no mechanism to say ‘We can’t fund you’ … because someone doesn’t like you” pic.twitter.com/slEMUKD1hO
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) October 5, 2022
New grant for EcoHealth; Fauci actively discouraged lab leak theory
The Intercept reported this week that EcoHealth Alliance was awarded in September a new NIH grant to study bat coronaviruses in Southeast Asia, even though that group is currently under congressional investigation and even the NIH itself had terminated the original controversial grant that funded the lab in Wuhan due to repeated refusals to turn over required documents like lab notebooks and other records.
As for Fauci’s fraudulent claim of an “open mind” and reference to the early conference call with virologists about the lab leak theory, the outlet also noted that emails and notes reveal that some of the call participants had expressed support for the lab leak theory but had been specifically discouraged from pursuing it by Fauci himself along with then-NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins.