American taxpayers might have subsidized the outbreak of the Chinese virus pandemic with research grants to the lab that officials think loosed the deadly pathogen upon the world.
Public documents, Fox News reported today, show a flow of research money to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which is now suspected of releasing the virus. Early reports blamed the city’s filthy wet markets that sell exotic animals and pets for human consumption.
This latest report backs up another from yesterday that tied the virus to the lab. Another report in the Washington Post divulged the grave concern among U.S. science diplomats that the lab was a viral weapon of mass destruction waiting to explode.
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Your Tax Dollars at Work
“Both the United States and Canada have sent money to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the Chinese lab that multiple sources tell Fox News is suspected of being the likely source of the coronavirus pandemic — with the Canadian funding coming as recently as last month,” the network’s Tyler Olson reported.
In March, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research announced the expenditure of “millions in funding to research and develop tools such as vaccines and tests to combat the coronavirus,” Olson reported. “One project that got $828,046 from the agency was aimed at developing a rapid coronavirus test ‘using isothermal amplification and CRISPR technology.’ Among the organizations on the project was the Wuhan Institute of Virology.”
Fox picked up the item from Rebel News, a Canadian website.
That’s bad enough. But Fox also reported that the United States contributed funds to the disaster:
According to public documents compiled by the White Coat Waste Project and shared with Fox News, The Wuhan Institute of Virology has been involved with research funded by $7.1 million worth of U.S. government grants from the National Institutes of Health as it has participated in projects in collaboration with U.S. institutions. One grant for research on bat coronaviruses has received $3.7 million and another grant involving injecting viruses into mice’s brains got $3.4 million.
It is not clear exactly how much U.S. funding went directly to the Wuhan Institute of Virology because it worked in collaboration with other institutions on the projects funded by the American grants.
The Wuhan Institute of Virology also has official approval from the National Institutes of Health to conduct taxpayer-funded research on animals in what is called “Animal Welfare Assurance” issued by the Public Health Service.
Chinese Coverup
As The New American reported earlier today, U.S. officials told Fox News that a “patient zero,” who worked at the lab, inadvertently let the bat-borne virus loose and caused the pandemic. To cover it up, the Chinese government blamed bats sold in the wet markets.
The network also noted that Chinese officials knew the virus was spreading as they permitted tourists and Lunar New Year’s revelers to flood Wuhan for six days before the president warned the public about the outbreak.
As for the lab itself, even worse than the tax subsidies are what they subsidized: unqualified lab workers.
On Tuesday, the Post reported that U.S. diplomatic cables “warn[ed] that the lab’s work on bat coronaviruses and their potential human transmission represented a risk of a new SARS-like pandemic.”
The cables worried that a new lab at the Wuhan Institute of Virology “has a serious shortage of appropriately trained technicians and investigators needed to safely operate this high-containment laboratory.”
The summary of it all is this: With U.S. and Canadian taxpayer support, unqualified Communist Chinese lab workers were mucking around with SARS-CoV-2 at the lab in Wuhan, one of whom unleashed the virus there. Chinese officials repeatedly lied about the virus: how it leapt from bats to humans, how quickly it was spreading, and how many people it killed. Those lies slowed the U.S. response.
The result? Thousands dead in the United States and abroad, and a national lockdown that has wrecked the U.S. economy, with major losses in the stock market and nearly 23 million unemployment claims since March 1.
Stop the Subsidies
Representative Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) wants the subsidies stopped. “I’m against funding Chinese research in our country, but I’m sure against funding it in China,” he told Tucker Carlson. “The NIH [National Institutes of Health] gives a $3.7 million grant to the Wuhan Institute of Virology [and] they then advertise that they need coronavirus researchers and following that, coronavirus erupts in Wuhan.”
Said Senator Martha McSally (R-Ariz.), “There is zero doubt that the Chinese communist government has American blood on its hands.”
Photo: NoDerog / iStock / Getty Images Plus
