The Biden administration has formally suspended funding for the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the Chinese research institute at the center of the COVID lab leak theory, saying the institute does not comply with federal regulations.
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) informed the Wuhan Institute on Monday that the U.S. is cutting off funding, adding that the department is looking to stop funding permanently, <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-07-18/us-suspends-wuhan-institute-funds-over-covid-stonewalling" target="_blank" rel="noopener">according</a> to a memo first reported by Bloomberg News.
The decision comes after a months-long review by HHS, which concluded that the institute, a leader in coronavirus research based in Wuhan where the COVID-19 virus began, “is not compliant with federal regulations and is not presently responsible.”
An HHS spokesperson said the decision to scrap funding came after the Wuhan Institute failed to provide documents related to concerns that it had violated the National Institutes of Health&#8217;s (NIH) biosafety protocols.
Previously, the NIH <a href="https://theintercept.com/2021/09/09/covid-origins-gain-of-function-research/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">helped</a> fund experiments at the Wuhan Institute that involved creating “chimeric” hybrids of SARS-related bat coronaviruses.
“This action aims to ensure that WIV does not receive another dollar of federal funding,” the HHS spokesperson <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/18/politics/biden-admin-suspends-wuhan-lab-funding/index.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a> in a statement.
For months during the thick of the pandemic in 2020, the lab leak theory was mocked and dismissed as a conspiracy theory.
Scientists who authored an early, highly influential paper on the origins of COVID agreed to downplay the lab leak theory, &#8220;given the s*** show that would happen if anyone serious accused the Chinese of even accidental release,&#8221; one <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/scientists-agreed-to-downplay-chinese-lab-leak-theory-for-fear-of-s-show-messages-indicate" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a> in a private Slack message in February 2020.
“Yup, I totally agree that that’s a very reasonable conclusion. Although I hate when politics is injected into science – but its [sic] impossible not to, especially given the circumstances,” one of the paper&#8217;s other authors responded.
“We do not believe that any type of laboratory-based scenario is plausible,” the five prominent scientists later <a href="https://theintercept.com/2023/01/19/covid-origin-nih-emails/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">wrote</a> in their March 2020 paper titled “The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2” that was published in the journal Nature Medicine.
Emails from early 2020 that came to light earlier this year show that Dr. Anthony Fauci and his team suspected all along that the virus may have been the result of a lab leak. Fauci was the longtime director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and served as a prominent member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force in 2020.
At the end of January, Fauci had a call with one of the COVID origin paper&#8217;s authors, Kristian Anderson, that concerned him so much he suggested potentially notifying the FBI.
After that phone call, Fauci wrote in an email that a group of evolutionary biologists should get together to &#8220;examine carefully the data to determine if his concerns are validated.&#8221;
&#8220;He should do this very quickly and if everyone agrees with this concern, they should report it to the appropriate authorities. I would imagine that in the USA this would be the FBI and in the UK it would be MI5,&#8221; Fauci wrote.
&#8220;Some of the features (potentially) look engineered,&#8221; Anderson wrote in an email to Fauci that same evening.
“On a spectrum if 0 is nature and 100 is release — I am honestly at 50!” British medical researcher Jeremy Farrar later <a href="https://theintercept.com/2023/01/19/covid-origin-nih-emails/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">wrote</a> on February 2 to Fauci and Dr. Francis Collins, then the director of the NIH.
The scientists scrambled to look for a natural evolution explanation for COVID-19, but they struggled to find conclusive evidence.
“Our main work over the last couple of weeks has been focused on trying to disprove any type of lab theory, but we are at a crossroad where the scientific evidence isn’t conclusive enough to say that we have high confidence in any of the three main theories considered,” wrote Andersen. “As to publishing this document in a journal, I am currently not in favor of doing so.&#8221;
However, in March, they decided to move forward and publish the scientific paper that downplayed the lab leak theory.
The NIH begrudgingly released the unredacted emails earlier this year after more than a year of litigation involving Freedom Of Information Act requests from journalists.

CHINA-HEALTH-VIRUS

U.S. Formally Suspends Funding To Wuhan Institute Of Virology

Biden Administration

China

COVID

COVID-19

Department of Health and Human Services

Health

Health Care

Pandemic

Wuhan

Way back in 1998, internet media pioneer <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/matt-drudge" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Matt Drudge</a> told a room full of reporters, &#8220;You would be amazed what the ordinary guy knows.&#8221;
It was probably the truest statement ever made in U.S. politics. Americans were reminded of its wisdom yet again after clips from the new PBS documentary &#8220;American Masters: Dr. Tony Fauci&#8221; showed the face of the pandemic, Fauci, getting blasted by &#8220;ordinary&#8221; citizens in one of the roughest, toughest parts of the nation&#8217;s capital over his claims about the COVID vaccine and the pandemic itself.
In the summer of 2021, Democratic Mayor Muriel Bowser and Fauci went door-to-door in Southeast D.C. trying to evangelize the residents into becoming true believers in the COVID vaccine. The evidence indicates that the pair got more than they bargained for.
A man and woman speaking in the documentary clips getting the most attention have been retroactively proven right on just about every point that they raised to the two &#8220;experts.&#8221;
&#8220;People in America are not settled with the information given, so I&#8217;m not going to be lining up taking a shot on a vaccination for something that wasn&#8217;t clear in the first place,&#8221; the unidentified man said.
He even questioned how a vaccine could be trusted when it was created at such blazing speed.
&#8220;And then you all take a shot in miraculous time. It takes years to create a vaccine,&#8221; he continued.
&#8220;Nine months is definitely not enough for nobody to be taking no vaccination that you all came up with,&#8221; he argued.
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Bowser meekly defended the vaccination by saying, &#8220;The only reason I&#8217;m talking to you right now, as close as we are, is that I&#8217;ve been vaccinated. But if thousands of people like you don&#8217;t get vaccinated, you&#8217;re going to let this virus continue to percolate in this country and in this world.&#8221;
The man would not budge.
&#8220;Something like the common flu then, right?&#8221; the man interjected.
After some back and forth, with Fauci arguing that COVID is way more dangerous than the flu, Bowser appeared to understand that she had been defeated.
&#8220;You gonna pass?&#8221; she asked.
&#8220;When you start talking about paying people to get vaccinated, when you start trying to incentivize people with other things, then something else is going on,&#8221; he added.
As the public health team walked away, he shouted after them that their &#8220;campaign is about fear. It&#8217;s about inciting fear in people. You all attack people with fear.&#8221; That&#8217;s what this pandemic is. It&#8217;s a fear, it&#8217;s fear, this pandemic. That&#8217;s all it is.&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
This guy speaks with more clarity and conviction on COVID and the jab than 99% of Republicans. <a href="https://t.co/VQQ5OL3rEw">pic.twitter.com/VQQ5OL3rEw</a>
&mdash; Tim Meads (@TimMeadsUSA) <a href="https://twitter.com/TimMeadsUSA/status/1637831514514702341?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 20, 2023</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
That same man disagreed with the official COVID death toll count.
Well, we know the gentleman is correct. Now, folks like Fauci are saying Americans will &#8220;likely&#8221; learn to live with COVID as we do the flu. It&#8217;s seasonal and here to stay. Fauci himself <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/fauci-now-says-hospitals-are-overcounting-covid-19-cases-in-children-because-they-automatically-get-tested-sound-familiar?utm_source=facebook&amp;utm_medium=social&amp;utm_campaign=dwbrand&amp;fbclid=IwAR1tALbb_xfpaC9N_-pYA0-GMod7Y3k7Y_NIbr3ykviFGK4e3d25rAOlXg0" target="_blank" rel="noopener">admitted that COVID deaths</a> were being overcounted in some instances in 2021.
Then there was another woman in Anacostia who also wasn&#8217;t picking up what Fauci was putting down.
&#8220;Well, I heard that [the vaccine] doesn&#8217;t cure it and doesn&#8217;t stop you from getting it &#8230; sooo,&#8221; she said, perhaps wondering what the point was.
&#8220;On the very, very, very very rare chance that you do get it even if you&#8217;re vaccinated, you don&#8217;t even feel sick. It&#8217;s like you don&#8217;t even know you got infected. It&#8217;s very, very good at protecting you.&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Anacostia resident: &quot;I head the [vaccine] doesn&#39;t cure it and doesn&#39;t stop you from getting it.&quot;
Fauci: &quot;On the rare chance that you do get it even when you&#39;re vaccinated, you don&#39;t even feel sick. It&#39;s like you don&#39;t even know you got infected. It&#39;s very good at protecting you&quot; <a href="https://t.co/QueSljq3kk">pic.twitter.com/QueSljq3kk</a>
&mdash; Greg Price (@greg_price11) <a href="https://twitter.com/greg_price11/status/1637859065761079301?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 20, 2023</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Contrary to Fauci&#8217;s insistence that the vaccines work as advertised except in &#8220;very, very, very rare&#8221; occasions, we know that &#8220;breakthrough&#8221; infections occur and that the vax touted by Fauci at that time became less effective over time. Five shots later, and now health officials say Americans should get a yearly shot — again, like the flu. Other data show that natural immunity is <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/natural-immunity-protective-covid-vaccine-severe-illness-rcna71027" target="_blank" rel="noopener">as protective</a> against severe illness and death from COVID.
In other words, the &#8220;ordinary&#8221; guys appear to be right and the self-proclaimed experts were wrong on COVID. It is nothing new, but it sure is nice seeing it on camera.
The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

WASHINGTON, DC – JUNE 11: Washington DC Mayor Murial Bowser participates in a virtual meeting with Director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Dr. Anthony Fauci at the Town Hall Education Arts Recreation Campus on June 11, 2021 in Washington, DC. Fauci spoke on the urgency to get all eligible individuals vaccinated against COVID-19. design – 2023-03-20T155936.486

WATCH: D.C. Residents Shred Fauci, The Door-To-Door COVID Vax Salesman, In 2021

Anthony Fauci

Muriel Bowser

U.S.

Washington D.C.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Turner (R-OH) slammed Dr. Anthony Fauci, former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, over the weekend for making statements about the origins of COVID that are not supported by the findings of the U.S. intelligence community.
Turner made the remarks during an interview on Sunday with Martha Raddatz on ABC News&#8217;s &#8220;This Week&#8221; when asked about why he and the Department of Energy concluded that the pandemic likely originated from a lab in China.
&#8220;I think there&#8217;s significant evidence that lends itself to that,&#8221; he said. &#8220;That&#8217;s why you just saw unanimously both the Senate and the House pass legislation demanding that the administration declassify the intelligence the intelligence community has with respect to COVID-19. It is incredibly frustrating for members of Congress to watch Dr. Fauci go on television and say things that are absolutely not supported by the intelligence. We&#8217;re seeing the intelligence. It&#8217;s not like we voted to say, show us the intelligence. We&#8217;ve seen it. We’ve voted to say, show the American people.&#8221;
&#8220;They’re not getting the straight answer from Dr. Fauci or from this administration,&#8221; he said. &#8220;They need to be able to see for themselves that they &#8212; what has occurred. And I understand that Dr. Fauci has a reason to say that there was not a lab leak, because he was actively working to fund the lab in – in Wuhan. So, you – you see a gentleman who is – who is biased.&#8221;
&#8220;The evidence totally shows it, that there is funds over which he has control that ended up at the Wuhan lab,&#8221; he concluded. &#8220;So, at this time, you&#8217;ve got a guy who&#8217;s going on national television, I believe, and I think members of Congress believe, saying things that are not reflected in the intelligence. So, our view is, show the American public the intelligence and then you can have the intelligence in front of you. And the next time Dr. Fauci’s on you can say, hey, but the intelligence actually says x, and you can challenge him.&#8221;
WATCH:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
As U.S. intelligence agencies remain divided over COVID-19 origins, Republican Rep. Mike Turner criticizes Dr. Anthony Fauci.
“Unanimously both the Senate and the House passed legislation demanding that the administration declassify the intelligence.&quot; <a href="https://t.co/2jPydU4FUX">https://t.co/2jPydU4FUX</a> <a href="https://t.co/ule5CXFshh">pic.twitter.com/ule5CXFshh</a>
&mdash; This Week (@ThisWeekABC) <a href="https://twitter.com/ThisWeekABC/status/1634922115169222656?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 12, 2023</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
TRANSCRIPT:
<blockquote>MARTHA RADDATZ, ABC NEWS HOST: I want to turn to Covid origins. You&#8217;ve said that you believe Covid originated from a Chinese lab leak based on significant evidence. The Department of Energy said it has concluded the same, but with low confidence. Why are you so certain?
REP. MIKE TURNER (R-OH): Well, actually what I said is, I think there&#8217;s significant evidence that lends itself to that. And – and I still do. That&#8217;s why you just saw unanimously both the Senate and the House pass legislation demanding that the administration declassify the intelligence the intelligence community has with respect to Covid-19. It is incredibly frustrating for members of Congress to watch Dr. Fauci go on television and say things that are absolutely not supported by the intelligence. We&#8217;re seeing the intelligence. It&#8217;s not like we voted to say, show us the intelligence. We&#8217;ve seen it. We’ve voted to say, show the American people. They’re not getting the straight answer from Dr. Fauci or from this administration. They need to be able to see for themselves that they &#8212; what has occurred. And I understand that Dr. Fauci has a reason to say that there was not a lab leak, because he was actively working to fund the lab in – in Wuhan. So, you – you see a gentleman who is – who is biased. I think this (INAUDIBLE) in public this straight &#8212;
RADDATZ: I think Dr. Fauci would dispute that.
TURNER: Well, I think the evidence totally shows it, that there is funds over which he has control that ended up at the Wuhan lab. So, at this time, you&#8217;ve got a guy who&#8217;s going on national television, I believe, and I think members of Congress believe, saying things that are not reflected in the intelligence. So, our view is, show the American public the intelligence and then you &#8212; Martha, you can have the intelligence in front of you. And the next time Dr. Fauci’s on you can say, hey, but the intelligence actually says x, and you can challenge him.</blockquote>

Top Lawmaker On Intel Committee: It’s ‘Incredibly Frustrating’ To Watch Fauci Say Things That Are ‘Not Reflected’ In Intel

Top Lawmaker On Intel Committee: It's 'Incredibly Frustrating' To Watch Fauci Say Things That Are 'Not Reflected' In Intel

Congress

Politics

Why was a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/communist-china" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Chinese Communist</a>-controlled lab receiving any U.S. tax dollars? It seems that is the question many inside The Beltway don&#8217;t want you asking — especially FBI Director Christopher Wray, based on his comments Tuesday afternoon.
&#8220;So here you’re talking about a potential leak from a Chinese government-controlled lab that killed millions of Americans,&#8221; Wray <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/declassify-the-intelligence-hawley-is-right-covid-origins-info-should-be-released-to-public" target="_blank" rel="noopener">told</a> Fox News&#8217; Bret Baier regarding his agency&#8217;s assessment that COVID began in Wuhan, China.
&#8220;I will just make the observation that the Chinese government, it seems to me, has been doing its best to try to thwart and obfuscate the work,&#8221; he added, regarding COVID origins.
In other words, it sounds as if Wray is blaming the pandemic solely on the Chinese government and its Wuhan Institute of Virology. Now, based on all available evidence, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) does indeed deserve plenty of criticism.
Yet just because the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) implicated by Wray was &#8220;controlled&#8221; by the CCP, that does not automatically mean that actors in the United States are completely faultless for its leak.
Based on data in a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/federal-watchdog-slams-faucis-agency-and-ecohealth-over-deal-with-wuhan-lab" target="_blank" rel="noopener">recent report published by an internal federal watchdog</a>, the United States of America and its bureaucratic maze of pathogenic research requirements and lackadaisical oversight could also be culpable.
That means that the first &#8220;dirty open secret&#8221; is that Wuhan did receive taxpayer&#8217;s money, albeit indirectly as explained later in this column. But perhaps the larger story being kept in the dark is that that money may have contributed to COVID itself —  a possibility that we need more information to answer.
For background, WIV worked with EcoHealth Alliance, a U.S.-based non-governmental organization focusing on scientific research and pandemic prevention for five years between 2014 &#8211; 2019. EcoHealth Alliance was using a portion of American taxpayer-backed grants given to it by the National Institutes of Health to partner with WIV, specifically to focus on coronaviruses in bats.
While this sort of transaction is fairly commonplace in the scientific industry, a recently released Health and Human Services Department’s Office of Inspector General report indicates that both NIH and EcoHealth Alliance were careless in their business dealings with the Chinese lab.
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That alleged trail of negligence, it seems, has left numerous questions in its wake — particularly just how dangerous the research being conducted at WIV was and its relation to the COVID pandemic.
According to the <a href="https://oig.hhs.gov/oas/reports/region5/52100025.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">IG document released</a> in January, NIH and EcoHealth Alliance had established monitoring procedures for WIV, yet both failed to comply with those measures. Given the potential danger of the experiments being conducted by these groups, irresponsibility raises major alarms, according to the government.
Without going into every detail of the 72-page report, NIH did not believe that EcoHealth Alliance and WIV would be engaged in what&#8217;s called &#8220;enhanced potential pandemic pathogens (ePPPs)&#8221; when it was first given the grant money. Per NIH&#8217;s <a href="https://www.nih.gov/news-events/research-involving-potential-pandemic-pathogens" target="_blank" rel="noopener">website</a>, &#8220;ePPP research is a type of so-called &#8216;gain-of-function&#8217; (GOF) research &#8230;&#8221;  which requires additional oversight and higher approval (emphasis added).
It should be <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/federal-watchdog-slams-faucis-agency-and-ecohealth-over-deal-with-wuhan-lab" target="_blank" rel="noopener">noted here</a> that Dr. Anthony Fauci was in charge of NIH&#8217;s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) at that time. As Daily Wire <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/federal-watchdog-slams-faucis-agency-and-ecohealth-over-deal-with-wuhan-lab" target="_blank" rel="noopener">readers</a> know well, he has long <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/rand-paul-addresses-whether-dr-anthony-fauci-could-be-facing-criminal-culpability-for-fraud-repeated-failures" target="_blank" rel="noopener">denied that U.S. taxpayers</a> funded gain of function research, which enhances the transmissibility or potency of a virus, in Wuhan.
In 2018, after regulations regarding GOF were lessened, NIH added a special term to its agreement with EcoHealth that, “should experiments proposed in this award result in a virus with enhanced growth by more than certain specified benchmarks involving log growth increases, EcoHealth must notify NIAID immediately.&#8221;
According to federal officials, EcoHealth Alliance was instructed to provide a five-year progress report in 2019 about the experiments. The NGO allegedly failed to file a progress report and only did so after NIH requested it in 2021.
However, NIH was two years late in requesting that progress report, according to the federal watchdog.
As previously <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/federal-watchdog-slams-faucis-agency-and-ecohealth-over-deal-with-wuhan-lab" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reported</a> by The Daily Wire, when NIH finally saw the report in 2021, it “believed there was evidence that the research conducted by EcoHealth’s sub recipient WIV during Year 5 resulted in enhanced growth&#8221; and that it should have immediately notified NIAID back in 2019.
For its part, EcoHealth Alliance has argued that the specific rules were not clear in the first place and that the conclusion it engaged in &#8220;enhanced growth&#8221; or GOF &#8220;is based on a misinterpretation of what the experiment in question actually showed.&#8221;
In 2021, NIH further requested that EcoHealth Alliance retrieve documentation from WIV and submit it to NIH to clarify what happened.
WIV has yet to turn over that documentation and has shown no signs of being willing to comply since 2020.
NIH is blaming EcoHealth Alliance for this mess and vice versa. Both are blaming WIV to varying degrees and claim no conclusion can be reached until it provides more information.
So, that means we may never know what happened at WIV with U.S. taxpayer money right before the pandemic hit.
Now, it appears that the director of the FBI wants all Americans to have their focus squarely on the Chinese government and no other entity regarding COVID. Perhaps he has good reason for doing so.
If COVID actually did come from the lab, then the IG report leads one to wonder whether taxpayer money given by EcoHealth Alliance was involved in its creation.
If that theory were proven true — which EcoHealth Alliance has adamantly denied — then it would be an indictment of America&#8217;s entire health establishment and an international embarrassment.
It would also mean that both the Chinese and American governments are to blame for the world&#8217;s last three years of misery.
In that case, then it is remarkably easy to see why Wray would publicly scrutinize the &#8220;Chinese government-controlled lab&#8221; and not the American-funded NGO and U.S. health agency connected to it.
Since we already know that U.S. taxpayers were involved in allegedly questionable research in Wuhan, perhaps Wray doesn&#8217;t want any more details about what exactly went on there escaping The Swamp.
The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

D.C.’s Dirty Open Secret About That ‘Chinese Government-Controlled Lab’ In Wuhan

D.C.'s Dirty Open Secret About That ‘Chinese Government-Controlled Lab’ In Wuhan

Christopher Wray

World

Wuhan Institute of Virology

This article is adapted from today’s Morning Wire Afternoon Update. To listen to the podcast version, click <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/podcasts/morning-wire" target="_blank" rel="noopener">here</a>.
Top Cop Goes Before Senate
Attorney General Merrick Garland faced a bevy of questions today from Republican senators, particularly focused on what they say is the politicization of the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/watch-hawley-fiercely-grills-garland-over-arrest-of-mark-houck-in-front-of-his-children" target="_blank" rel="noopener">DOJ against Christians and conservatives</a>. Here&#8217;s what Daily Wire Managing Editor Greg Wilson told the Morning Wire podcast:
<blockquote>Garland was put through the wringer Wednesday as GOP lawmakers on the Senate Judiciary Committee grilled him on everything from topics such as the lack of arrests against left-wing protesters outside of U.S. Supreme court justices’ homes, to alleged anti-conservative bias within the DOJ. He was also asked whether or not America should designate drug cartels in Mexico as terrorist organizations, and there was a particularly heated back and forth between Missouri Senator Josh Hawley and Garland regarding the DOJ’s use of force against now-acquitted pro-life father of seven Mark Houck, [which] seems to be getting the most attention today. That portion lasted nearly 10 minutes, and Garland refused to say whether or not authorities used excessive force after drawing guns on Houck at his family home in Pennsylvania.</blockquote>
Lightfoot Loses Chicago Mayoral Race
Chicago Mayor <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/chicago-democrat-mayor-lori-lightfoot-loses-re-election-race-as-crime-soars" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Lori Lightfoot</a> lost her re-election bid Tuesday night, becoming the first Windy City mayor in 40 years to not win another term. Here with more about the election and the key ballot issue of crime is Daily Wire writer Tim Meads:
<blockquote>Democrat Paul Vallas, a moderate who ran on a tough-on-crime platform, endorsed by the police union, closed the day with a strong lead over the other eight candidates, including progressive Democrat Brandon Johnson, who came in second. Those two will face off in a runoff election on April 4. For her part, Lightfoot had promised to clean up crime when first elected in 2019, but overall crime is up 52% from last year and has risen more than 100% since 2021. Despite that failed promise, Lightfoot blamed her unpopularity on the fact that she is a “black woman in America.”</blockquote>
 Christopher Wray Alleges Wuhan Lab Leak
Following a bombshell report from the U.S. Energy Department, FBI Director Christopher Wray <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/fbi-director-wray-pandemic-originated-in-a-chinese-lab-classified-info-supports-assessment" target="_blank" rel="noopener">confirmed</a> Tuesday that his agency also believes COVID likely began in a Wuhan lab. Wray’s comments come after a report from the energy department allegedly reached the same conclusion, though the Biden administration maintains there is no consensus as to the virus’ origins.
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Eric Adams Calls for Prayers In Schools
Democratic New York City Mayor Eric Adams made what some say were eyebrow-raising remarks this week after he claimed gun violence could in part be explained by the lack of religion in schools. His comments came at New York City’s annual interfaith breakfast:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
NYC Mayor Eric Adams: &quot;When we took prayers out of schools, guns came into schools&#8230;Don&#39;t tell me about no separation of church and state&#8230;you take the heart out of the body, the body dies.&quot; 
Strange to agree with Mayor Adams, but here we are. <a href="https://t.co/FWbvwOX18K">pic.twitter.com/FWbvwOX18K</a>
&mdash; Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) <a href="https://twitter.com/charliekirk11/status/1630701610916810759?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 28, 2023</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Greek Train Wreck
Rescuers searched through the wreckage of two trains that slammed into each other head-on in northern Greece late Tuesday night. At least 36 people are believed to have died. Daily Wire Producer and Researcher Brandon Beville broke down the latest for the Morning Wire podcast:
<blockquote>This is being called the country&#8217;s worst rail crash ever and there are still a lot of unanswered questions regarding this devastating event. The passenger train was traveling from ​​Athens, Greece&#8217;s capital, to the city of Thessaloniki when it slammed head-on into a freight train traveling in the other direction on the same track. So far, we know police have arrested the stationmaster in the city of Larissa near the crash site … while also detaining two other people for questioning. However, police have not released any names yet. Another unknown is the speed at which either train was traveling when they collided. Survivors have said the impact sent passengers flying through cars in all different directions, even throwing some people through car windows. Officials say while many of the 350 people aboard the passenger train were students returning from Greece’s raucous Carnival, eight rail workers are said to have died in the crash. In light of the high-speed crash, transport Minister Kostas Karamanlis has resigned, saying he felt it was his “duty” to step down “as a basic indication of respect for the memory of the people who died so unfairly.” So far, the cause of the crash remains unclear.</blockquote>
Havana Syndrome Isn&#8217;t From Foreign Enemy, Intel Community Claims
And, Intelligence officials told The Washington Post on Wednesday that five U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that it is very unlikely that the mysterious Havana Syndrome which affected hundreds of U.S. diplomats was caused by a foreign enemy wielding some sort of secret weapon, energy-based or otherwise. The report leaves many wondering why so many officials have suffered from acoustic and cerebral symptoms since 2016.
To listen to the audio version of this podcast, <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/morning-wire/id1576594336" target="_blank" rel="noopener">click here</a>. And for more in-depth discussion of the biggest stories of the day, listen to the latest full episode of Morning Wire every morning.

WASHINGTON, DC – MARCH 01: U.S. (EDITOR’S NOTE: Alternate crop) Attorney General Merrick Garland (C) is reflected as he returns from a break in testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee in the Hart Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill on March 01, 2023 in Washington, DC. Garland was asked about a wide spectrum of topics, from protests outside the homes of Supreme Court justices to rules made by the Office of Legal Counsel, and he even quoted Taylor Swift lyrics when referencing anti-trust discussions following recent Ticketmaster drama.

Wednesday Afternoon Update: Top Cop Goes Before Senate, Lightfoot Loses, Wray Alleges Wuhan Lab Leak

General

Havana Syndrome

Lori Lightfoot

Senate

New intelligence reportedly prompted a key U.S. science agency to surmise COVID likely leaked from a Chinese laboratory in Wuhan.
The Energy Department, with its network of U.S. national laboratories, revised its assessment to say with &#8220;low confidence&#8221; that the pandemic likely began with a lab leak, <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/covid-origin-china-lab-leak-807b7b0a" target="_blank" rel="noopener">sources told The Wall Street Journal</a>. The report said officials would not share details about the new intelligence which led the agency to shift its view from undecided.
The assessment appears in an update to a 2021 classified report to Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines.
The National Intelligence Council and four agencies, which the newspaper says officials refuse to identify, still believe with &#8220;low confidence&#8221; in the natural emergence theory. The FBI assessed in 2021 with &#8220;moderate confidence&#8221; that the pandemic likely began with a lab leak. The CIA and two other agencies reportedly still have not made a determination.
The updated classified report also affirms the view that COVID did not stem from a biological weapons program, the Wall Street Journal noted. A lack of a definitive animal source has led researchers and U.S. officials to suspect a leak from Wuhan&#8217;s assemblage of laboratories.
More than <a href="https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html">6.8 million people diagnosed with COVID have died</a> since the earliest cases were reported in Wuhan in late December 2019.
Beijing has <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/14/world/asia/china-covid-wuhan-lab-leak.html">denied being to blame</a>, fending off assertions that have come from a variety of people, including former President Donald Trump. But a lack of cooperation from China led to the World Health Organization&#8217;s investigation into COVID&#8217;s origins <a href="https://www.politico.eu/article/who-abandon-covid-origin-investigation-china-data/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">hitting a snag at a key juncture.</a>
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After President Joe Biden ordered a 90-day U.S. intelligence review into the virus origin in 2021, <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/16/politics/biden-intel-review-covid-origins/index.html">it was reported</a> that officials in his administration found the lab leak theory as credible as the natural emergence theory. Following the inquiry, Biden criticized China for a lack of transparency and <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2021/08/27/statement-by-president-joe-biden-on-the-investigation-into-the-origins-of-covid-%E2%81%A019/">pledged a further investigation</a>.
The Energy Department “continues to support the thorough, careful, and objective work of our intelligence professionals in investigating the origins of COVID-19, as the President directed,&#8221; an agency spokesperson told the Wall Street Journal.

Wuhan Lab

New Intel Prompts Energy Dept To Assess COVID Likely Leaked From Wuhan Lab: Report

Department of Energy

<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/no-surprise-faucis-final-message-is-a-lecture-on-masks-getting-the-latest-booster/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Dr. Anthony Fauci</a> would wear a mask for the rest of his life just to hide his face if he weren&#8217;t vaccinated and triple-boosted for shame.
The octogenarian immunologist who once <a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/11/anthony-fauci-i-am-the-science/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">claimed to be the human embodiment of science</a> put on a clinic of mendacity in a November 23 <a href="https://ago.mo.gov/docs/default-source/press-releases/135885afauci112322_full_redacted.pdf?sfvrsn=35f4a425_2" target="_blank" rel="noopener">deposition</a> for a lawsuit brought by the attorneys general for Louisiana and Missouri. Over the course of seven hours, Fauci <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/dr-anthony-fauci-repeatedly-defends-communist-china-from-covid-cover-up-accusations/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">praised the monstrous regime in China</a> for its COVID response, admonished a court reporter for not wearing a useless mask, and invoked some variation of “I don’t recall” nearly 200 times.
But here’s the whopper that scored a John Blutarsky-level 0.0 on the laugh test:
“I’m vaguely familiar with the fact that EcoHealth Alliance has been doing research on trying to understand the bat coronavirus emergence,” he told lawyers alleging the feds colluded with social media to chill debate about COVID policies.
That the man who inspired “In Fauci We Trust” yard signs and <a href="https://www.etsy.com/listing/1316152590/saint-dr-fauci-prayer-candle-saint-dr?gpla=1&amp;gao=1&amp;&amp;utm_source=bing&amp;utm_medium=cpc&amp;utm_campaign=shopping_us_-home_and_living-domestic_low&amp;utm_custom1=_k_ddbf6de1d10313a252f00e6e892fea62_k_&amp;utm_content=bing_412373112_1309518646655325_81844979140035_pla-4585444530274366:pla-4585444530274366_c__1316152590&amp;utm_custom2=412373112&amp;msclkid=ddbf6de1d10313a252f00e6e892fea62" target="_blank" rel="noopener">St. Fauci votive candles</a> could make that statement with a straight face is a testament to his pathological aversion to the truth. EcoHealth Alliance is the federal grant-grubbing “nonprofit” run by Fauci’s longtime pal, Peter Daszak. Fauci’s National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases gave EcoHealth Alliance a <a href="https://nypost.com/2021/06/04/who-is-peter-daszak-exec-who-sent-taxpayer-money-to-wuhan-lab/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">$600,000 grant</a> that wound up funding illegal gain of function experiments with bat coronaviruses at a lab in Wuhan, China.
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/show/fauci-unmasked" target="_blank" rel="noopener">CLICK TO WATCH &#8220;FAUCI UNMASKED,&#8221; THE THREE-PART SERIES FROM THE DAILY WIRE&#8217;S MICHAEL KNOWLES</a>
Fauci has been <a href="https://nypost.com/2021/11/04/rand-paul-calls-on-fauci-to-resign-over-gain-of-function-research/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">asked about this</a> by Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY). He has denied that the experiments, which involved <a href="https://theintercept.com/2021/09/09/covid-origins-gain-of-function-research/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">infecting humanized mice with a genetically altered version of coronavirus</a>, amounted to gain of function research. He has to, because given most people with IQs above room temperature now believe COVID escaped the lab, it starts to look like Fauci picked up the tab for a virus that has killed more than six million people so far.
An honest doctor might have searched his files after being humiliated on Capitol Hill by a fellow doctor, and one who has actually practiced medicine at that. While Fauci has recently begun to claim he <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/fauci-completely-open-mind-covid-19-lab-leak-theory-says-evidence-points-elsewhere" target="_blank" rel="noopener">has an “open mind”</a> about COVID’s origins, if we are to believe his deposition claim, he never looked into what EcoHealth Alliance was doing at the lab. His “vague” familiarity would be believable if he were an ordinary Anthony who relied on the Beltway’s local rag or social media for information. The legacy media is strangely incurious as to how the deadly international pandemic started and, until Elon Musk bought it, Twitter might have banned you for suggesting COVID started in a lab where creepy scientists conducted illegal bat coronavirus experiments with your money.
Fauci didn’t just lack curiosity, he was out to kill off the lab-leak theory that potentially implicates him and EcoHealth Alliance from the beginning. Go back to those early days of 2020, when what we used to call “coronavirus” was spreading like wildfire. We knew it came from Wuhan, but Fauci desperately wanted the world to think it came from a local market, and not the mysterious nearby laboratory where dangerous experiments with bat coronaviruses were taking place. Emails unearthed through FOIA show Fauci and his boss, National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins, <a href="https://townhall.com/tipsheet/saraharnold/2022/11/26/unredacted-documents-reveal-fauci-tried-to-shift-the-narrative-on-the-covid-19-lab-leak-theory-n2616390" target="_blank" rel="noopener">desperately trying to deflect attention from the lab-leak theory</a>.
But just as sure as COVID escaped the lab, the truth has escaped from the lying public health-media complex. A former Daszak lieutenant, Dr. Andrew Huff, who was once vice president of EcoHealth Alliance, <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/whistleblower-says-covid-leaked-from-wuhan-lab/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">says in a new book</a> that COVID-19 was genetically engineered and leaked from the facility.
&#8220;EcoHealth Alliance and foreign laboratories did not have the adequate control measures in place for ensuring proper biosafety, biosecurity, and risk management, ultimately resulting in the lab leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology,&#8221; he writes in his book, &#8220;The Truth About Wuhan.&#8221;
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Huff’s book sounds like the perfect stocking stuffer for Dr. Anthony Fauci, if he has any interest in learning more about his own role in the pandemic. Then again, he’d probably rather have the votive candle.

Dr. Fauci Testifies To Senate Health Committee On Country’s COVID-19 Response

‘Vaguely Familiar?’: Here’s The Fauci Fib That Stood Out Most In The Doc’s Dishonest Deposition

'Vaguely Familiar?': Here's The Fauci Fib That Stood Out Most In The Doc's Dishonest Deposition

A scientist who helped lead a group collaborating with coronavirus research at a Chinese laboratory in Wuhan vouches for the theory that COVID-19 was genetically engineered and leaked from the facility.
Dr. Andrew Huff, the former vice president of EcoHealth Alliance who has written a new book, claims grant funding from the United States government for research in China led to the &#8220;biggest US intelligence failure since 9/11,&#8221; <a href="https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/20543847/wuhan-lab-warning-covid-lab-leak/">according to The Sun</a>.
&#8220;EcoHealth Alliance and foreign laboratories did not have the adequate control measures in place for ensuring proper biosafety, biosecurity, and risk management, ultimately resulting in the lab leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology,&#8221; he writes in his book, The Truth About Wuhan.
More than <a href="https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html">6.5 million people diagnosed with COVID-19 have died</a> since the earliest cases were reported in Wuhan in late December 2019. The origin of the pandemic has become a topic of fierce debate, with two leading theories being there was a natural emergence or a lab leak. China and the lab in Wuhan <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/14/world/asia/china-covid-wuhan-lab-leak.html">denied being to blame</a>, but the <a href="https://apnews.com/article/covid-science-health-world-organization-government-and-politics-8662c2bc1784d3dea33f61caa6089ac2">World Health Organization recommended</a> further study into the lab leak theory over the summer.
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EcoHealth Alliance has worked on coronavirus research with the Wuhan Institute of Virology <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/21/science/bats-covid-lab-leak-nih.html">supported by millions of dollars in grants</a> from the National Institutes of Health. Last year, as scrutiny of their work intensified, the group denied claims by the NIH that it <a href="https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3154232/ecohealth-alliance-defends-us-funded-bat-coronavirus-research">failed to properly report its findings</a>.
Dr. Francis Collins, who was the director of the NIH, rejected the notion that federal funding led to the pandemic. &#8220;Analysis of published genomic data and other documents from the grantee demonstrate that the naturally occurring bat coronaviruses studied under the NIH grant are genetically far distant from SARS-CoV-2 and could not possibly have caused the COVID-19 pandemic. Any claims to the contrary are demonstrably false,&#8221; <a href="https://www.nih.gov/about-nih/who-we-are/nih-director/statements/statement-misinformation-about-sars-cov-2-origins">he said</a>.
Huff worked at EcoHealth Alliance from 2014 to 2016 and has since become a whistleblower. He says the <a href="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/nih-unearth-more-grant-violations-by-wuhan-lab-collaborator-ecohealth-alliance">U.S. taxpayer-funded nonprofit group</a> instructed the Wuhan lab in the &#8220;best existing methods to engineer bat coronaviruses to attack other species&#8221; for years and claims &#8220;China knew from day one that this was a genetically engineered agent.&#8221;
Huff says he quit EcoHealth &#8220;due to a large number of ethical concerns with the scientific work and EcoHealth Alliance as a whole.&#8221; He is suing the group in New York, according to The Sun.
Huff indicated that he had seen no evidence to show China deliberately released the virus, The Sun reported. But he says the U.S. government is &#8220;to blame for the transfer of dangerous biotechnology to the Chinese&#8221; and accuses Dr. <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/dr-anthony-fauci-repeatedly-defends-communist-china-from-covid-cover-up-accusations">Anthony Fauci of being involved in a cover-up</a>.
After President Joe Biden ordered a 90-day U.S. intelligence review into the virus origin last year, <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/16/politics/biden-intel-review-covid-origins/index.html">it was reported</a> that officials in his administration found the lab leak theory as credible as the natural emergence theory. After the inquiry, Biden criticized China for a lack of transparency and <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2021/08/27/statement-by-president-joe-biden-on-the-investigation-into-the-origins-of-covid-%E2%81%A019/">pledged a further investigation</a>.
Huff claims he was offered a role with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency in 2019, though he suspects that if he had accepted the position, the agency &#8220;would have disclosed restricted information to me, which would have consequently prevented me from discussing any of this information publicly, like I have been and am doing now.&#8221;
The Truth About Wuhan, published by Skyhorse and distributed by Simon &amp; Schuster, is <a href="https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Truth-about-Wuhan/Andrew-G-Huff/9781510773882">due to be released on Tuesday</a>.

(Photo credit should read Feature China/Future Publishing via Getty Images)

Whistleblower Says COVID Leaked From Wuhan Lab

Fauci

Whistleblowers

<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/megyn-kelly" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Megyn Kelly&#8217;s</a> podcast got heated on Thursday as she questioned virologist Dr. Robert Garry about the Wuhan lab leak theory, asking him several times to stop dodging her questions.
During Sirius XM’s “The Megyn Kelly Show&#8221; <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPGY61rro_4">podcast</a>, the host spoke with Garry, a Tulane virologist, about the &#8220;furin cleavage site&#8221; in the virus, and how he allegedly changed his mind in just 48 hours regarding its origin from that of a lab leak in Wuhan, China, to something that started in nature.
Garry said that the furin cleavage site wasn&#8217;t some &#8220;smoking gun&#8221; for &#8220;lab leak proponents.&#8221; Kelly said he was &#8220;backtracking&#8221; as he tried to once again claim it wasn&#8217;t something new in coronaviruses. The host had to remind Garry that earlier in the show, he claimed that there has &#8220;not been another one with furin cleavage site.&#8221;
Kelly then noted that we know, thanks to uncovered emails, that Garry originally thought COVID was likely leaked from the Wuhan lab, stating that he said, &#8220;I just can&#8217;t figure out how this gets accomplished in nature.&#8221;
WATCH:
<iframe loading="lazy" title="Dark Brandon Tries Again, with Andrew Klavan, and COVID Origins Deep Dive - Nature or Lab Leak?" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/SPGY61rro_4?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
After his conversations with Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, as well as then-Director of the National Institutes of Health Dr. Francis Collins, he changed his mind. Kelly said that Garry completely &#8220;reversed” himself, claiming just two days later that &#8220;it can&#8217;t possibly be lab leak, it is nature.”
The virologist said he wanted to correct the record, explaining that it was &#8220;one email” that he sent to his “colleagues that were looking at this, one email out of hundreds of emails,” adding that after he got further into the genome, it became obvious to him that the coronavirus was from nature.
&#8220;But forgive me,&#8221; <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/theres-something-wrong-with-this-guy-megyn-kelly-calls-out-biden-over-viral-video-of-his-weird-touching-of-young-girls-shoulder" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Kelly</a> interjected. &#8220;Wasn&#8217;t it just days … just two days later that you reversed yourself and said, actually no, okay, forget what I said about it coming from a lab. I now say it&#8217;s natural.”
Garry replied that it wasn&#8217;t &#8220;really a reversal,” and claimed &#8220;it&#8217;s what scientists do.&#8221; When pressed by the host about &#8220;what happened in those 48 hours,&#8221; the virologist said he looked at the &#8220;genomes of the viruses more closely.&#8221;
The former Fox News host then pressed Garry over his paper calling the origin &#8220;natural&#8221; after speaking to both Fauci and Collins, who are on record not wanting the virus to be labeled a lab leak.
&#8220;It&#8217;s one thing if you can say, &#8216;Megyn, let me show you what I saw that proved to me it came — we found the pangolin,’” Kelly said. &#8220;You know, that&#8217;s why. I&#8217;d say, gotcha. I get it. But there&#8217;s nothing that proved this thing came from nature in those 48 hours. Nothing. What happened was there was a communication with Fauci and Collins.&#8221;
Garry claimed that Fauci and Collins were agnostic about COVID&#8217;s origin, to which Kelly replied, &#8220;That’s not true. Because we have their writings.&#8221;
The virologist insisted they didn&#8217;t try to influence his article in &#8220;<a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9">Nature Medicine</a>&#8221; magazine, and said we &#8220;changed our minds.&#8221;
&#8220;The science was very clear then; it&#8217;s very clear now,&#8221; Garry added. &#8220;They didn&#8217;t have a virus like SARS CoV-2 at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. They didn&#8217;t stick a furin cleavage site in it.&#8221;
&#8220;You don&#8217;t know that,&#8221; Kelly replied. &#8220;You absolutely do not know that.&#8221;
&#8220;I do know that, actually,&#8221; the virologist insisted. &#8220;I mean, based on all the science and evidence that we&#8217;ve gathered, it&#8217;s just extremely unlikely that they had anything close to SARS CoV-2 in that lab.”
&#8220;Well, that&#8217;s different than no,&#8221; Kelly said. &#8220;Now you&#8217;re admitting that you&#8217;re just positing this. ‘Extremely unlikely’ is different from ‘I know she didn&#8217;t do it.’ There was bat coronavirus, gain-of-function research going on.&#8221;
When pressed by the host if he denies that there was &#8220;gain-of-function research&#8221; taking place at the lab, Garry said &#8220;there was research being done, but there was no research being done on a virus that could&#8217;ve been converted into SARS CoV-2.”
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/megyn-kelly-gets-emotional-on-air-after-revealing-major-loss-in-her-family">Kelly</a> asked again how Garry knows, and he said &#8220;they would&#8217;ve published on it before … it&#8217;s hard to find in nature. So, how did they get it?&#8221;
When she asked how he knows they would&#8217;ve published and wouldn&#8217;t do so if it was being done nefariously, he said once again, &#8220;We’re diving into conspiracy theories there.&#8221;
&#8220;No, it&#8217;s not a conspiracy theory,&#8221; Kelly replied. &#8220;It&#8217;s a question. It&#8217;s a question. You can&#8217;t dismiss a legitimate question by labeling it a conspiracy theory.&#8221;
&#8220;That&#8217;s a tactic!&#8221; the host added. &#8220;That’s not science.&#8221;
The former Fox News host then pushed back on Garry’s suggestion that all these scientists being in on it would amount to a conspiracy theory. &#8220;Why is it not possible that they were working on it in a low-security lab … and then they had a, ‘Oh, you know what’ moment when it got out?”
&#8220;I have to reject the idea that people like Peter Dazak and Ralph Baric were involved in some conspiracy with Zhengli Shi at the Wuhan Institute of Virology to create SARS CoV-2,” Garry shared. &#8220;It just did not happen that way.&#8221;
&#8220;Again, you&#8217;re setting [up] a straw man,&#8221; Kelly replied. &#8220;I&#8217;m not saying that they had a conspiracy to create this particular virus. I&#8217;m saying they were doing bat coronavirus research, gain-of-function research that was very dangerous. And it was not properly supervised in a lab with adequate security, which is what has led many of us to think something went wrong.&#8221;
Near the end of the segment, the virologist flat-out asked Kelly if he had convinced her of his perspective yet, and Kelly said that he hadn’t, but gave him credit for coming on to take the questions.
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/good-riddance-megyn-kelly-drops-brutal-takedown-of-dr-fauci-you-are-not-truth-and-you-will-not-be-missed" target="_blank" rel="noopener">&#8216;Good Riddance&#8217;: Megyn Kelly Drops Brutal Takedown Of Dr. Fauci, &#8216;You Are Not Truth And You Will Not Be Missed&#8217;</a>

Megyn Kelly

‘That’s A Tactic!’: Megyn Kelly’s Podcast Gets Heated As She Questions Virologist Dodging COVID Lab Leak Theory Questions

Entertainment

China has put a million residents in lockdown due to several coronavirus cases in the city of Wuhan, the place where the pandemic originated back in late 2019.
The lockdown in Wuhan’s Jiangxia district for the next several days comes after four asymptomatic cases were found in the area this week.
There is no way to know how many cases were really found as China has repeatedly lied throughout the course of the pandemic on a variety of issues, ranging from the number of cases and deaths in the communist nation to falsely blaming the U.S. military for the virus.
CNN <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/27/china/china-covid-wuhan-shutdown-district-intl-hnk/index.html">reported</a> that entertainment venues, small clinics, supermarkets, restaurants, places of state-controlled worship, learning centers, and tourist areas were all shut down as was public transportation.
In high-and-medium-risk neighborhoods, residents were banned from leaving their homes in an effort to &#8220;further reduce the flow of people, [and] lower the risk of cross-infection and achieve dynamic zero-Covid in the shortest time possible,&#8221; authorities said in a statement.
The coronavirus pandemic, which has caused trillions of dollars in damage to the global economy and killed an <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/health-61327778">estimated</a> 15 million people, broke out sometime in late 2019. However, an exact timeline of events has never been established due to China resisting international pressure for an investigation inside the country.
Three researchers from the Wuhan Institute of Virology — China’s first Biosafety level-4 laboratory — were hospitalized in November 2019 with symptoms consistent with COVID-19, according to a previously undisclosed U.S. intelligence report that was released last year.
As The Daily Wire previously <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/cnn-report-leaked-docs-prove-china-underreported-pandemic-numbers-hid-previously-unreported-number">reported</a>, U.S. officials have indicated that they believe that China <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/breaking-u-s-intelligence-tells-trump-that-china-intentionally-lied-about-coronavirus-outbreak-report-says">“intentionally&#8221;</a> underreported their true numbers <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/u-s-official-gives-fox-news-stunning-estimate-on-chinas-real-coronavius-numbers">“by at least a factor of 50.”</a> British officials reportedly told Prime Minister Boris Johnson early in the pandemic that China could have underreported their numbers <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/british-scientific-advisers-claim-chinas-outbreak-could-be-15-to-40-times-worse-than-reported-report-says">“by a factor of 15 to 40 times.”</a>
The Washington Post reported in April 2020 that <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/washington-post-evidence-coming-out-of-wuhan-suggests-real-death-toll-over-40000">“evidence”</a> coming out of Wuhan suggested that the real death count was over 40,000, which came as China claimed at the time that it only had a little over 4,600 deaths total nationwide. A conservative estimate in April 2020 from the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) — which gave China every benefit of the doubt when coming up with their calculations, and then some — suggested that China severely and <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/aei-releases-conservative-estimate-of-chinas-true-outbreak-numbers-its-staggering">“deliberately”</a> underreported their numbers and that China’s true numbers at the time had to be at least 2.9 million infections with well over 100,000 deaths.
RELATED: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/breaking-biden-admits-he-has-not-confronted-china-about-pandemic-lies-changes-tune-on-mlb-rhetoric">Biden Admits He Has Not Confronted China About Pandemic Lies</a>

Daily Life In Wuhan During Lockdown

China Sends Wuhan Back Into Lockdown Over Coronavirus Outbreak

Coronavirus

The top official at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has admitted to federal lawmakers that the agency hid the early genomic sequences of COVID-19 that it had uncovered after Chinese scientists requested the move.
Acting director Lawrence Tabak told a House Appropriations subcommittee on Wednesday that NIH “eliminated from public view” the data that had come from a lab in Wuhan, China, the city where the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19 first emerged.
But Tabak said that &#8220;researchers can still access it via an archaic &#8216;tape drive,'&#8221; the New York Post <a href="https://nypost.com/2022/05/11/nih-director-tabak-confirms-agency-hid-covid-genes-per-chinese/">reported</a>.
The admission followed a Vanity Fair <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/03/the-virus-hunting-nonprofit-at-the-center-of-the-lab-leak-controversy" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">report</a> that traced an evolutionary biologist named Jesse D. Bloom&#8217;s actions as he tried to &#8220;dig deep and discover the truth.&#8221; Bloom wrote a scientific paper and gave it to top U.S. immunologist Dr. Anthony Fauci, setting off a firestorm.
&#8220;Bloom’s paper was the product of detective work he’d undertaken after noticing that a number of early SARS-CoV-2 genomic sequences mentioned in a published paper from China had somehow vanished without a trace,&#8221; Vanity Fair reported. &#8220;The sequences, which map the nucleotides that give a virus its unique genetic identity, are key to tracking when the virus emerged and how it might have evolved. In Bloom’s view, their disappearance raised the possibility that the Chinese government might be trying to hide evidence about the pandemic’s early spread.&#8221;
&#8220;Piecing together clues, Bloom established that the NIH itself had deleted the sequences from its own archive at the request of researchers in Wuhan. Now, he was hoping Fauci and his boss, NIH director Francis Collins, could help him identify other deleted sequences that might shed light on the mystery,&#8221; the magazine wrote.
In the House hearing, Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler (R-WA) asked Tabek why U.S. health officials would comply with China&#8217;s request to hide the genomic sequences.
“There’s no question that the communication that we had about the sequence archive — Sequence Read Archive — could have been improved. I freely admit that,” Tabek said. “If I may, the archive never deleted the sequence, it just did not make it available for interrogation.”
But he added that researchers can still get to the original sequences if they so desire.
It&#8217;s not the first scandal about the Wuhan lab. Documents published in September by The Intercept revealed that U.S. health officials indirectly funded so-called &#8220;gain of function&#8221; research at the Wuhan lab — including the modification of three bat coronaviruses distinct from COVID-19 and the discovery that they became much more infectious among “humanized” mice when human-type receptors were added to them. U.S. officials have denied the funding went to &#8220;gain of function&#8221; research.
Joseph Curl has covered politics for 35 years, including 12 years as White House correspondent for a national newspaper. He was also the a.m. editor of the Drudge Report for four years. Send tips to josephcurl@dailywire.com and follow him on Twitter @josephcurl.

Covid-19 Omicron sign

NIH Director Admits Agency Concealed Early COVID Genomic Sequences At Request Of Chinese Scientists

National Institutes Of Health Director Admits Agency Concealed Early COVID Genomic Sequences At Request Of Chinese Scientists

Francis Collins

The World Health Organization (WHO) is launching its probe into the origins of the coronavirus pandemic, which comes after an investigation The Lancet into the same issue was closed down due to bias concerns.
“A new team of about 20 scientists—including specialists in laboratory safety and biosecurity and geneticists and animal-disease experts versed in how viruses spill over from nature—is being assembled with a mandate to hunt for new evidence in China and elsewhere,” The Wall Street Journal <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/who-seeks-to-revive-stalled-inquiry-into-origins-of-covid-19-with-new-team-11632657603">reported</a>. “The possibilities that the new team is charged with examining include whether the Covid-19 virus could have emerged from a lab, according to WHO officials, a hypothesis that has especially angered China.”
The new effort comes after Beijing restricted the WHO’s first investigation into the origins of the pandemic, <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-56054468">refusing</a> to hand over raw patient data from early cases to investigators. China has sought to deflect attention over the possibility that the pandemic started in one of China’s labs that had serious <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/04/14/state-department-cables-warned-safety-issues-wuhan-lab-studying-bat-coronaviruses/">safety issues</a> by falsely blaming the United States, claiming without evidence that the coronavirus could have come from a lab in the U.S.
The WHO appears to be pressing ahead hard this second time around as they worry that time is running out to determine the pandemic’s origins since evidence such as samples are discarded and antibodies from early patients are fading.
“It took more than a year after the pandemic began for that original team to get visas and permission to enter China, which repeatedly delayed a probe it saw as an attempt to assign blame,” The Journal added. “After that visit, the team recommended further testing of animals in China and traders there who deal with wild or farmed mammals that are susceptible to Covid-19. Yet China’s government has shut down such farms across large regions, making it much harder—perhaps even impossible—to establish whether the Covid-19 virus spread to humans via such species, many scientists say.”
The news comes on the heels of another report from The Journal that said that a commission from The Lancet, which was also investigating the origins of the pandemic, was shut down over concerns that the commission was too closely linked to a controversial organization that is tied to the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Columbia University professor Jeffrey Sachs “chairman of a Covid-19 commission affiliated with the Lancet scientific journals, said he closed the task force because he was concerned about its links to EcoHealth Alliance,” The Journal <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/covid-19-panel-of-scientists-investigating-origins-of-virus-is-disbanded-11632571202">reported</a>. “The New York-based nonprofit has been under scrutiny from some scientists, members of Congress and other officials since 2020 for using U.S. funds for studies on bat coronaviruses with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a research facility in the Chinese city where the first Covid-19 outbreak occurred.”
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/scientist-leading-who-team-investigating-origins-of-pandemic-reverses-course-reveals-china-pressure-tactics">Scientist Leading WHO Team Investigating Origins Of Pandemic Reverses Course, Reveals China Pressure Tactics</a>

UC Irvine Immunology Professor Developing Universal Vaccine

WHO Relaunching Probe Into Pandemic Origins As Another Probe Closes Over Ties To EcoHealth Alliance

World Health Organization

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