A newly released email confirms that former Chief Medical Advisor and leader of the U.S. COVID-19 response Dr. Anthony Fauci was aware as early as January 2020 that the Wuhan laboratory was receiving funds from an American agency to research coronavirus.
The document was obtained through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request sent by the US Right To Know (USRTK), a left-of-center nonprofit organization. In their report about the email in question, they explain how the email was dated to Jan. 27, 2020 and contained media talking points sent by an official, Greg Folkers, from the National Health Institute (NIH) and its subsidiary National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID).
It was sent to Fauci and several other NIH staffers, and extensively went over the research of the Wuhan lab and how it was funded by the NIAID, which Fauci was in charge of for decades. The NIAID funded the Wuhan lab through a non-governmental organization called EcoHealth Alliance, whose president was Peter Daszak and had as a top employee Ralph Baric, a virologist at University of North Carolina. Both Daszak and Baric were mentioned in the new email.
This flies in the face of Fauci’s immediate response in the early days of the COVID pandemic, when he branded any speculation that the virus was the result of a lab-leak, unintentional or otherwise, as “conspiracy theories,” denying that the virus could in any possible way be from a lab.
Francs S. Collins, the NIH Director at the time, agreed and said that without a “natural” explanation of the virus’s origins “the voices of conspiracy will quickly dominate, doing great potential harm to science and international harmony.”
Fauci has been subjected to investigation by Congress for his role in covering up the origins of COVID-19. The Wuhan Institute of Virology has having deep and secretive ties to the Chinese military, according to the U.S. Department of State. This has led the United States to publicly warn that China could be engaged in illegal biological weapon research.
“Dr. Fauci’s involvement in downplaying the lab-leak theory continues to raise more questions and concerns regarding his actions. Americans deserve to hear answers from Dr. Fauci himself,” the spokesperson for the House Oversight’s Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic told the Washington Examiner. They added that the revelation was especially troubling due to the fact the Wuhan lab is known for conducting gain-of-function research, or research into enhancing the transmissibility and lethality of viruses.
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