US Cuts Funding To Wuhan Lab At Center Of COVID Controversy
Three Years After The Pandemic Started, We Still Don't Know How It Began
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Good morning,
Here’s a headline we did not expect to see.
Tourists flock to Death Valley to experience near-record heat wave.
That’s right, according to CBS News, it appears climate change tourism has become a thing, and “one of hottest places on Earth is drawing more visitors this week, not in spite of near-record high temperatures but BECAUSE of them.”
The high temperature over the weekend was 126 degrees.
Let’s just hope no one’s car breaks down on the way to take a selfie!
Mosheh, Jill, & Courtney
🎙The Mo News Podcast: Police are puzzled by the story of the Alabama missing woman, the Northwestern hazing scandal grows, and Congress is trying to ban itself from buying stocks.
🗞 U.S. CUTS OFF THE WUHAN LAB
The Biden administration has suspended funding for ten years for the Wuhan Institute of Virology – that’s the Chinese research laboratory at the center of a debate over the origins of COVID-19.
LET’S BACK UP
More than three years after the start of the pandemic— with seven million people dead across the globe, including one million here in the America— U.S. intelligence agencies still don’t have definite answers on where Covid-19 originated.
There is some evidence that the virus may have escaped from the Wuhan lab in late 2019. The FBI and the US Department of Energy intelligence unit have been leaning in that direction. Others, including five other US intelligence agencies, think it came about naturally and spread from a nearby Wuhan seafood market.
But, we still don’t have certainty, (the CIA is 🤷♂️) and the Wuhan lab isn’t helping us get any closer to an answer.
SO, THE U.S. IS NOW CUTTING IT OFF
According to a memo from the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), this ban follows a months-long review that found the lab “is not compliant with federal regulations and is not presently responsible.”
HHS had requested documents and notebooks because of their safety concerns at the lab. The lab didn’t provide them.
A spokesperson for HHS says the action is to ensure that the lab “does not receive another dollar of federal funding...and concerns that the lab violated biosafety protocols.”
HHS adds that the lab has already been cut off for a couple of years, and not received any federal funding from the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) since July 2020.
WAIT. WHY WAS THE US FUNDING THE WUHAN LAB?
The NIH in 2014 gave a grant to EcoHealth Alliance —a US-based organization— that was partly used for research at the Wuhan Institute.
The Wuhan lab received more than $1.4 million in federal awards, including through subgrants from NIH.
At the time, American scientists wanted to collaborate with Chinese scientists and researchers around the globe to better understand animal viruses in their regions that might pose a risk to humans. The EcoHealth Alliance specifically wanted to gain a better understanding for the “risk of a bat coronavirus emergence.”
Researchers at the Wuhan Institute were renowned for their massive collection, and advanced research on, bat coronaviruses. That has made the lab the focus of a leading COVID origin theory — that an accidental leak of the virus sparked the pandemic.
SO, DID THE US POTENTIALLY FUND THE CREATION OF COVID-19?
NIH officials have repeatedly insisted that U.S. taxpayer dollars were not used in any lab work, like “gain of function” research, that would have produced the pandemic.
BUT, at the same time, US officials also acknowledge that they did not have great visibility into everything the Wuhan Institute was working on. It has led to some fiery exchanges on Capitol Hill.
The Wall Street Journal recently reported that a prominent scientist who worked on US-funded projects was one of three Chinese researchers who became sick with an ‘unspecified illness’ during the initial 2019 outbreak.
Bottom line: With China not allowing any independent investigation into either the lab leak or infected animal theory, this looks to remain a mystery for the foreseeable future.
✔︎Mo News Reality Check: The NIH funds thousands of grants around the country and the globe, seeking out researchers and labs that will keep the US on the cutting edge. But, supervising them is a challenge. Josh Rogin, a columnist for the Washington Post, has reported for years about safety issues at the Wuhan lab.
He wrote that as far back as January 2018, officials from the U.S. Embassy in Beijing were issuing warnings about the lab. They wrote numerous cables, including one stating “that the lab’s work on bat coronaviruses and their potential human transmission represented a risk of a new SARS-like pandemic.”
We interviewed Rogin on a recent special edition of the Mo News podcast. You can check it out HERE.
⏳ SPEED READ
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📌 More Northwestern football alums claim they underwent 'ritualized sexual' hazing (NBC NEWS)
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🗓 ON THIS DAY: JULY 20
1944: During World War II, German military leaders attempted to assassinate Adolf Hitler at his military retreat, Wolf’s Lair.
1965: Bob Dylan released his song ‘Like a Rolling Stone’
1968: At Chicago's Soldier Field, the first Special Olympics began, with about 1,000 athletes participating.
1969: One small step for man...
At 10:56 PM ET Neil Armstrong became the first person to walk on the surface of the Moon. Here’s some of the CBS News coverage from that night.
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