New documents obtained by Freedom of Information Act filings have revealed further details on the United States's funding of coronavirus experiments in Wuhan, China in the years prior to SARS-CoV-2's emergence there.
The Intercept on Monday evening announced that it had "obtained more than 900 pages of documents detailing the work of EcoHealth Alliance, a U.S.-based health organization that used federal money to fund bat coronavirus research at the Chinese laboratory":
The trove of documents includes two previously unpublished grant proposals that were funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, as well as project updates relating to EcoHealth Alliance's research, which has been scrutinized amid increased interest in the origins of the pandemic.
Here's some more deets:
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.
That's not all.
Alina Chan, a molecular biologist at the Broad Institute, said the documents show that EcoHealth Alliance has reason to take the lab-leak theory seriously. "In this proposal, they actually point out that they know how risky this work is. They keep talking about people potentially getting bitten — and they kept records of everyone who got bitten," Chan said. "Does EcoHealth have those records? And if not, how can they possibly rule out a research-related accident?"
Rutgers University virology professor Richard Ebright, who is cited in the article, argued in a viral Twitter thread that the documents prove not only the extent of the coronavirus experiments in Wuhan but that multiple U.S. officials have lied about the extent of those experiments.
Speculation has swirled since last year that the Wuhan lab—which sits just a few miles from the first confirmed outbreak of COVID-19—may have been responsible for the release of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that launched the pandemic in 2019.
Remember when Dr. Fauci said on the record that Sen. Rand Paul didn't know what he was talking about when he grilled Fauci over gain-of-function research (enhancing a virus to make it more infectious to people)?
Yeah, Sen. Paul is feeling pretty vindicated (again, if you count the release of Fauci's emails).
Are you paying attention yet?
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