If the Republicans win control of Congress in January, they plan to begin a full-blown investigation into the source of the worldwide epidemic with the help of subpoena authority.
To understand more about the work being done at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China, Republicans have been appealing to Democrats for months to obtain more information, but to no success. In a Republican victory in the midterm elections, Republicans vow they would utilize all of their legislative power to find solutions.
Republicans pledge to uncover COVID origins: 'We will leave no stone unturned'https://t.co/U6YF5MGlWs
— Fox News (@FoxNews) February 16, 2022
According to Washington GOP Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, “House Republicans on Energy and Commerce are determined to get to the bottom of the origins of COVID-19, and we will leave no stone unturned,” he said to Fox News Digital.
COVID-19 has two opposing explanations for how it came to exist; either lab released or natural. The new coronavirus, or SARS-CoV-2, would have started in an animal and spread to humans directly or via an intermediary host species. Researchers from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which specializes in bat coronaviruses, believe the virus originated there. While experimenting, a researcher may have been exposed to a virus and subsequently mistakenly released it into the public.
Neither the scientific community nor the U.S. intelligence community can agree on where the virus came from or what set off the global epidemic that has claimed the lives of over 5.8 million people.
In addition to developing public policy to make China responsible for the worldwide epidemic, figuring out the outbreak’s source might help avoid future attacks. It’sIt’s also possible that if the new coronavirus was created via dangerous lab research, then government funding for gain-of-function Research may be regulated or even stopped.
However, investigators in the U.S. think that a New York-based organization called EcoHealth Alliance, which got $117 million in U.S. government funding and has performed Research with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, may provide important information.
Furthermore, EcoHealth Alliance president Peter Daszak submitted a funding request to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in 2018 for Project DEFUSE, a hazardous study on bat coronaviruses with the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China. According to the proposal, coronaviruses should be engineered to have more human infections and transmissions. The virus would then be introduced in bat caves by experts, where researchers would test the flying animals with vaccinations to determine whether they could heal the infection.
The United States Agency for International Development (USAID), NIH, and EcoHealth Alliance has received a flurry of emails from Republicans in the minority asking what the U.S. government knows about the sort of Research that U.S. taxpayers indirectly funded the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Except for information obtained via public records requests and litigation, Republicans have been unable to wrest control of the conversation. EcoHealth Alliance has been stonewalling, according to a GOP committee staffer who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Regaining control of Congress would give the Republicans the ability to determine the agenda, convene hearings, and summon witnesses. If Republicans have their way, the National Institutes of Health and EcoHealth Alliance will be forced to give over information and react to letters they claim have been ignored. A Republican staffer on the Energy and Commerce Committee told Fox News Digital that Republicans might require EcoHealth Alliance head Peter Daszak, who has vigorously supported the natural origin idea, to appear before Congress and offer information to the American people.
The main point is whether the epidemic started in a lab or not; Republicans argue that more information about the Research that U.S. taxpayer monies have funded should be made public.
Extracting viruses from animals and engineering them in the laboratory to be more easily transmitted and more lethal to humans is the goal of gain-of-function Research. Research like this aims to give scientists a leg up on the competition when researching cures for various infectious illnesses.
Controversial Research in this area was put on hold by the Obama administration in 2014 because of worries that developing more hazardous germs outweighed the benefits of preparing for future epidemics. The administration implemented a new set of rules in 2017 to abolish the government financing prohibition.
House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, a Republican from Kentucky, said that even though Democrats have refused to investigate the origins, Republicans have uncovered important information. Including how Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the NIH and White House’sHouse’s top medical advisor, was aware that NIH was funding risky experimental Research on bat coronaviruses at a laboratory in Wuhan, China, and how Fauci “may” have been aware of the Research.
“When Republicans are in power in 2023, we will use every tool at our disposal to get answers for the American people and hold accountable those who have shielded the truth,” Comer declared to Fox News Digital.
Fox News’ inquiries for a response from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and EcoHealth Alliance were not answered. USAID insists, though, that it has worked closely with Congress.
U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) spokeswoman described that over $73 million EcoHealth Alliance had received grants and subgrants from the federal government since 2009. For health security capacity improvement, risk communication initiatives, laboratory strengthening, and virus detection work in collaboration with partners in 12 countries, a total of $64 million was allocated between 2009 and 2020. According to USAID, the project in China was completed in 2019.
A USAID spokesperson stated to Fox News, “USAID has provided extensive documentation to Congress about awards and sub-awards to EcoHealth Alliance, has proactively and regularly briefed our oversight committees, and has responded to requests for information from other key members of Congress. USAID has not and does not fund gain-of-function Research.”
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has maintained that the award to EcoHealth Alliance does not qualify as “gain of function” research. Genetic sequencing of the coronavirus suggests that the NIH-funded study could not have sparked the epidemic.
In October, the former director of the National Institutes of Health Francis Collins said, “NIH wants to set the record straight on NIH-supported Research to understand naturally occurring bat coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, funded through a sub-award from NIH grantee EcoHealth Alliance. Analysis of published genomic data and other documents from the grantee demonstrates that the naturally occurring bat coronaviruses studied under the NIH grant are genetically far from SARS-CoV-2 and could not possibly have caused the COVID-19 pandemic. Any claims to the contrary are demonstrably false.”
Emails between virology specialists and Fauci and Collins at the start of the epidemic, which have just come to light, add to the alarm of congressional investigators. In the emails, Fauci and Collins seek to reassure scientists that COVID-19 is not a lab-made virus.
Prominent scientists are implicated by critics of not inciting public outrage by disclosing their work on gain-of-function Research or drawing more attention to the idea that a US-funded facility in Wuhan may have tampered with coronaviruses in order to cause a worldwide epidemic.
Former State Department Bureau of Arms Control, Verification, and Compliance acting assistant secretary Thomas DiNanno termed the Fauci emails “devastating.”
There is little doubt that Fauci and his “world club of virus scientists” were concerned about lab leaks, but rather than bring this to Trump’sTrump’s attention, they pushed the natural origin idea instead, according to DiNanno, who spoke to Fox News Digital.
State Department personnel were told by DiNanno not to investigate COVID-19’sCOVID-19’s origins, and he has said openly, “He and Collins did everything they could to bury the truth and to put their thumb on the scale that it was a natural origin. They were concerned [with] international harmony. Instead of playing public health expert, which was their role, they took on the job of the national security adviser, secretary of state, and the president.”
He has been pushing for Democrats to probe and conduct hearings.
“It seems for whatever reason; the majority party considers the exploration of the origins to be a partisan attack or personal attack against Dr. Fauci. It’sIt’s not. People sometimes lose the fact that he is both the president’s coronavirus adviser and a senior official at the NIH, which looks like it was funding dangerous Research with the Chinese government,” DiNanno defended.
