The controversy over the exact origins of the Covid outbreak grows more complex as further information emerges. Not only does this call into question the previously accepted ‘natural transmission through bats’ theory, but is threatening to become a significant factor in tensions between China and the United States.
Leaks from a widely anticipated intelligence report ordered by the Biden administration have caused comment, but the full report has not yet been sanctioned for unclassified release.
Documents released under the United States Freedom of Information Act, and published by The Intercept on Tuesday, appear to confirm claims that not only was gain in function research into coronaviruses being conducted at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, but that the US state was funding Peter Daszak’s EcoHealth Alliance which was at the centre of such research in Wuhan.
Daszak, as we have reported previously, had been a key figure in attempting to discredit a particular strand of inquiry into the origins of the virus.
Now, the documents released under FOI show that one of the grants from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID) was specifically made for a project entitled Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence. The grants were approved in 2014 and the research was centred on screening bats for possible new coronaviruses, and also to screen humans who may have been in contact with them.
The proposal acknowledged that “Fieldwork involves the highest risk of exposure to SARS or other CoVs, while working in caves with high bat density overhead and the potential for fecal dust to be inhaled.”
That is not only an acknowledgement of the possibly of transmission, but also the real danger that if a virus was transmitted under such risk heavy laboratory conditions that it might have been leaked through human error.
That is without even getting into the fraught area of whether gain of function research was being conducted. Clearly, an increasing number of scientists, including Richard Ebright a molecular biologist at Rutgers, believe that it was and that the documents prove this to be case.
Another molecular biologist, Alina Chan of the Broad Institute, claimed that the documents point to records being kept of any lab worker who might have been bitten, and that if EcoHealth have such records, which have not been released, then they must have known of the risk of an accident in Wuhan.
All of this aside, the latest information has contributed to the political controversy surrounding what took place in Wuhan. Republican Senator Rand Paul reacted yesterday by claiming that the FOI documents prove that NIAID Director Dr. Anthony Fauci “lied” to Congress when he denied that NIAID had, by granting EcoHealth, funded gain of function research into coronaviruses at Wuhan.
When Paul aggressively questioned Fauci in July on the gain of function research, Fauci responded by saying that Paul did not know what he was talking about, and attempted to claim that Paul and others were trying to accuse those involved in research of being responsible for millions of deaths.
It is difficult to see how Fauci and others can continue to deny that gain of function research was not only conducted at Wuhan but that US funding through Daszak’s EcoHealth was an integral part of that. If that is accepted, then a serious inquiry is warranted into the possibility of a lab leak, and indeed that Covid-19 might have come about through artificial creation.
That is why many are now demanding the immediate and full publication of the report commissioned by Biden. The Chinese, however, have resolutely refused to allow any new investigation that would involve examination of Wuhan and other Chinese records.
In the meantime, and as an indication of how the origins of the virus are part of high stake international politics, Reuters yesterday referred to a report on the proliferation of social media false fronts as part of the Chinese global propaganda effort. The operation, as described by FireEye security, began as part of Beijing’s attempt to undermine the Hong Kong democracy movement.
More recently, as the focus has turned once more to Wuhan, the Chinese bots have been disseminating the claim that Covid had its origins in the American base at Fort Detrick, Maryland.
China has also cynically attempted to link all of this the Black Lives Matter movement by urging people to stage protests, and ratcheting up its pitch to the world that the United States is endemically racist.