Fauci and NIH defend giving $600K to Wuhan to study how viruses can transmit from bats to humans before COVID-19 outbreak

Daily Mail ^ | May 25 | By HARRIET ALEXANDER FOR DAILYMAIL.COM

[RandFan]

Anthony Fauci has defended the United States' 'modest' and 'very respectable' funding of the Wuhan laboratory - which is now at the center of speculation as a possible source of the COVID-19 virus.

Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), appeared before a Congressional budget committee on Tuesday.

He defended allocating $600,000 to a group called EcoHealth Alliance, which then paid the Wuhan Institute of Virology to study the risk hat bat coronaviruses could infect humans.

'You don't want to study bats in Fairfax County, Virginia, to find out what the animal-human interface is that might lead to a jumping of species.

'So we had a modest collaboration with very respectable Chinese scientists who were world experts on coronavirus, and we did that through a sub-grant from a larger grant to EcoHealth.'

Fauci added: 'The larger grant was about $600,000 over a period of five years. So it was a modest amount. The purpose of it was to study the animal-human interface, to do surveillance and to determine if these bat viruses were even capable of' infecting humans.

Francis Collins, the director of NIH, had said earlier in the hearing that the American taxpayer money that went to the Wuhan Institute of Virology was not approved to conduct gain of function research.

Funding by the U.S. government of research in Wuhan has become immensely controversial.

[RandFan]

Now he comes out with some facts..

[InterceptPoint]

“ Francis Collins, the director of NIH, had said earlier in the hearing that the American taxpayer money that went to the Wuhan Institute of Virology was not approved to conduct gain of function research.”

This is either true or another BIG LIE. It is not what we have heard previously and what guarantee do we have that the Chinese would give a damn about what was “authorized” by the grant money.

I remain skeptical.

[Semper Vigilantis]

I read somewhere, I thought here on FreeRepublic, that Fauci had been conducting tests in the Netherlands to see if they could create an airborne virus that would pass from animals (bats) to humans. He was using Ferrets/Weasels as the test recipient because their respiratory system is closest to a human's.
The research was shut down because it was deemed to be too dangerous - too much risk for no real gain. Fauci went lab shopping and ended up in China.

I remember thinking that he was trying to solve the mystery of how to aerosolize a bio weapon and how dangerous that would be in the hands of our enemies.

Try as I might I cannot find that article anywhere....

Well, Fauci found his lab, he paid them to create an infectious aerosol virus and he shared it with our enemies who will most likely pass it on to someone crazy enough to use it.

[Lurker]

“Anthony Fauci has defended the United States’ ‘modest’ and ‘very respectable’ funding of the Wuhan laboratory - which is now at the center of speculation as a possible source of the COVID-19 virus.”

Just weeks ago he denied funding it at all.

Now comes the “this is old news. It’s time to move on” phase.

L

[tennmountainman]

Fauci has been lying from the start.
He got caught.

[Carl Vehse]

Arrest, indict, try, convict, sentence, hang.

[Slyfox]

[Yolanda]

Smart Doctors Francis Collins and Anthony Fauci have know for years that the Wuhan Lab in China was conducting Gain of Function experiments. They are so smart that they directed American taxpayer dollars to the Wuhan lab through a third party. These two brilliant men decided to keep silent about their involvement. How many lives would have been saved if they had been honest?
Their attitude appears to be that human life is expendable if it advances “science”. Sharing their radical beliefs are Joe Biden, Andrew Cuomo, Gov. Wolf, Gavin Newsom, Gretchen Wittmer, Kamala Harris, etc., the Chinese government, the N.Y. Times, the AP, CNN, The Washington Post, MSNBC, the World Health Organization, Big Tech, BLM, and other entities too numerous to list.

[1Old Pro]

Francis Collins, the director of NIH, had said earlier in the hearing that the American taxpayer money that went to the Wuhan Institute of Virology was not approved to conduct gain of function research.

How do we know the funds were not used for this purpose? Do we have inspectors at the Labs?

[BenLurkin]

bttt

[budj]

Dear Doktor, excuses are like a$$holes, everybody’s got ‘em.

[Sequoyah101]

The first clue that all that has been done is nefarious and any subsequent statements are a lie is the deceptive phrase, “gain of function research”. Just code for weaponizing the virus.

What an outright crock of crap.

[BlueMondaySkipper]

Why the h3ll are we sending ANY or our money to Chinese labs for any purpose whatsoever?