While Congress sparred over the question of then-President Donald Trump’s (first) impeachment, Sen. Tom Cotton was preoccupied with what would become the story of the decade. The Arkansas senator was begging the White House to take a novel coronavirus circulating in China more seriously. He warned that, despite the Chinese Communist Party’s narrative that it emerged from a wet market, Wuhan was also home to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, China’s only BSL-4 laboratory known to conduct experiments on novel coronaviruses.
Cotton’s queries about the true origin of the virus were written off at the time by the rest of the federal government and the media. But the circumstantial evidence was always there. The closest known genetic cousin of SARS-Cov-2 is RaTG13, a coronavirus with a 96.1% nucleotide similarity. RaTG13 was discovered more than 1,000 miles away from Wuhan and brought back to the WIV by Shi Zhengli, who was conducting gain-of-function experiments on coronaviruses with the explicit purpose of making them more transmissible and dangerous.
Despite the State Department’s 2018 warning that such experiments were risky, it now seems likely that the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, headed by none other than Dr. Anthony Fauci, funded these experiments.
Fauci got just about everything wrong in the early days of the pandemic, from masks to outdoor transmission. But his early support for the wet market theory seems like no mere mistake. His nearly omnipotent control over government funding of virology successfully silenced most of the virology industry.
Fauci categorically denies funding the WIV’s gain-of-function experiments with novel coronaviruses. The evidence tells a different story. In 2017, virologists successfully lobbied to rescind a moratorium on federal funding for gain-of-function research, a dangerous scientific practice reviled by other biologists. But between that moratorium’s imposition in 2014 and its repeal, 10 projects received exceptions. One of those awardees was EcoHealth Alliance, a pandemic prevention nonprofit organization led by Peter Daszak. The description of Daszak’s project, per his application for federal funding, reads, in part, as follows (emphasis mine).
<bsp-quote data-state="{"cms.site.owner":{"_ref":"00000161-3486-d333-a9e9-76c6fbf30000","_type":"00000161-3461-dd66-ab67-fd6b93390000"},"cms.content.publishDate":1620759355689,"cms.content.publishUser":{"_ref":"00000174-da0c-dc88-a3f4-db2c0f230001","_type":"00000161-3461-dd66-ab67-fd6b933a0007"},"cms.content.updateDate":1620759355689,"cms.content.updateUser":{"_ref":"00000174-da0c-dc88-a3f4-db2c0f230001","_type":"00000161-3461-dd66-ab67-fd6b933a0007"},"quote":"This project will examine the risk of future coronavirus (CoV) emergence from wildlife using in-depth field investigations across the human-wildlife interface in China, molecular characterization of novel CoVs and host receptor binding domain genes, mathematical models of transmission and evolution, and in vitro and in vivo laboratory studies of host range … This project aims to understand what factors increase the risk of the next CoV emerging in people by studying CoV diversity in a critical zoonotic reservoir (bats), at sites of high risk for emergence (wildlife markets) in an emerging disease hotspot (China). The three specific aims of this project are to: 1. Assess CoV spillover potential at high risk human-wildlife interfaces in China. This will include quantifying he nature and frequency of contact people have with bats and other wildlife; serological and molecular screening of people working in wet markets and highly exposed to wildlife; screening wild-caught and market sampled bats from 30+ species for CoVs using molecular assays; and genomic characterization and isolation of novel CoVs. 2. Develop predictive models of bat CoV emergence risk and host range. A combined modeling approach will include phylogenetic analyses of host receptors and novel CoV genes (including functional receptor binding domains); a fused ecological and evolutionary model to predict host-range and viral sharing; and mathematical matrix models to examine evolutionary and transmission dynamics. 3. Test predictions of CoV inter-species transmission. Predictive models of host range (i.e. emergence potential) will be tested experimentally using reverse genetics, pseudovirus and receptor binding assays, and virus infection experiments across a range of cell cultures from different species and humanized mice","_id":"00000179-5c91-db86-adff-5dfd95d30000","_type":"00000161-3461-dd66-ab67-fd6b92f10002"}”>This project will examine the risk of future coronavirus (CoV) emergence from wildlife using in-depth field investigations across the human-wildlife interface in China, molecular characterization of novel CoVs and host receptor binding domain genes, mathematical models of transmission and evolution, and in vitro and in vivo laboratory studies of host range … This project aims to understand what factors increase the risk of the next CoV emerging in people by studying CoV diversity in a critical zoonotic reservoir (bats), at sites of high risk for emergence (wildlife markets) in an emerging disease hotspot (China). The three specific aims of this project are to: 1. Assess CoV spillover potential at high risk human-wildlife interfaces in China. This will include quantifying he nature and frequency of contact people have with bats and other wildlife; serological and molecular screening of people working in wet markets and highly exposed to wildlife; screening wild-caught and market sampled bats from 30+ species for CoVs using molecular assays; and genomic characterization and isolation of novel CoVs. 2. Develop predictive models of bat CoV emergence risk and host range. A combined modeling approach will include phylogenetic analyses of host receptors and novel CoV genes (including functional receptor binding domains); a fused ecological and evolutionary model to predict host-range and viral sharing; and mathematical matrix models to examine evolutionary and transmission dynamics. <b>3. Test predictions of CoV inter-species transmission. Predictive models of host range (i.e. emergence potential) will be tested experimentally using reverse genetics, pseudovirus and receptor binding assays, and virus infection experiments across a range of cell cultures from different species and humanized mice</b>Although EcoHealth Alliance was based in New York, Daszak collaborated with Zhengli, routing NIAID funding to her coronavirus gain-of-function research.
Funding EcoHealth Alliance is a feature, not a bug, of Fauci’s career goals. After the outbreak of AIDS and then 9/11, Fauci’s anti-terror “biodefense” budget exploded to $1.7 billion by 2003. In a 2011 Washington Post op-ed deeming gain-of-function experiments a “risk worth taking,” Fauci wrote, “Working carefully with influenza viruses they have engineered in isolated biocontainment laboratories, scientists in Europe and the United States have identified several mechanisms by which the virus might evolve to transmit efficiently in the ferret, the best animal model for human influenza infection.”
“The question is whether benefits of such research outweigh risks,” he continued. “The answer is not simple. A highly pathogenic bird flu virus transmissible in humans could arise in ways not predicted by laboratory studies. And it is not clear whether this laboratory virus would behave in humans as it does in ferrets. Nonetheless, new data provide valuable insights that can inform influenza preparedness and help delineate the principles of virus transmission between species.”
So it should come as little surprise that Fauci and NIH Director Francis Collins wrote a loophole in the moratorium that allowed them to continue funding Daszak’s work despite full knowledge of the risks. Unless the bat-borne RaTG13 really managed to mutate naturally into SARS-Cov-2, travel over 1,000 miles without infecting anyone along the way, and end up in a wet market that sold neither bats nor pangolins, then … well, do the math.
Somehow, Fauci has become a national hero, and the Chinese communists have gotten off scot-free. Daszak’s reward? Becoming the only American on the China-approved sham World Health Organization “investigation” designed to shut down an increasingly credible lab leak hypothesis.
