COVID-19
COVID Lab Leak: Over four later, EcoHealth Alliance funding is finally suspended
![](https://www.todayville.com/calgary/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2024/05/tvrd-anthony-fauci-peter-daszak-image-2024-05-16.jpg)
From Heartland Daily News
Thursday, May 16, 2024
Federal Funding Stripped From Nonprofit at Center of COVID Lab Leak Controversy
Today, the Biden administration suspended federal funding to the scientific nonprofit whose research is at the center of credible theories that the COVID-19 pandemic was started via a lab leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
This morning, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced that it was immediately suspending three grants provided to the New York-based nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance (EHA) as it starts the process of debarring the organization from receiving any federal funds.
“The immediate suspension of [EcoHealth Alliance] is necessary to protect the public interest and due to a cause of so serious or compelling a nature that it affects EHA’s present responsibility,” wrote HHS Deputy Secretary for Acquisitions Henrietta Brisbon in a memorandum signed this morning.
For years now, EcoHealth has generated immense controversy for its use of federal grant money to support gain-of-function research on bat coronaviruses at the Wuhan lab.
In a memo justifying its funding suspension, HHS said that EcoHealth had failed to properly monitor the work it was supporting at Wuhan. It also failed to properly report on the results of experiments showing that the hybrid viruses it was creating there had an improved ability to infect human cells.
Congressional Republicans leading an investigation into EcoHealth’s research in Wuhan, and the role it may have played in starting the pandemic via a lab leak, cheered HHS’s decision.
“EcoHealth facilitated gain-of-function research in Wuhan, China without proper oversight, willingly violated multiple requirements of its multimillion-dollar National Institutes of Health [NIH] grant, and apparently made false statements to the NIH,” said Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R–Ohio), chair of the House’s Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic in a statement. “These actions are wholly abhorrent, indefensible, and must be addressed with swift action.”
Beginning in 2014, EcoHealth received a grant from NIH’s National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) to study bat coronavirus in China. Its initial scope of work involved collecting and cataloging viruses in the wild and studying them in the lab to spot which ones might be primed to “spillover” into humans and cause a pandemic.
Soon enough, EcoHealth used some of the viruses they’d collected to create “chimeric” or hybrid viruses that might be better able to infect human lung cells in genetically engineered (humanized) mice.
This so-called “gain-of-function” research has long been controversial for its potential to create deadly pandemic pathogens. In 2014, the Obama administration paused federal funding of gain-of-function research that might turn SARS, MERS, or flu viruses into more transmissible respiratory diseases in mammals.
In 2016, NIH flagged EcoHealth’s work as likely violating the 2014 pause.
EcoHealth President Peter Daszak argued to NIH at the time that the viruses his outfit was creating had not been proven to infect human cells and were genetically different enough from past pandemic viruses that they didn’t fall under the Obama administration pause.
Wuhan Institute of Virology and Peter Daszak of EcoHealth Alliance
NIH accepted this argument under the condition that EcoHealth immediately stop its work and notify the agency if any of its hybrid viruses did show increased viral growth in humanized mice.
But when these hybrid viruses did show increased viral growth in mice, EcoHealth did not immediately stop work or notify NIH. It instead waited until it submitted an annual progress report in 2018 to disclose the results of its experiments.
A second progress report that EcoHealth submitted in 2021, two years after its due date, also showed its hybrid viruses were demonstrating increased viral growth and enhanced lethality in humanized mice.
In testimony to the House’s coronavirus subcommittee earlier this month, Daszak claimed that EcoHealth attempted to report the results of its gain-of-function experiments on time in 2019, but was frozen out of NIH’s reporting system.
The HHS memo released today says a forensic investigation found no evidence that EcoHealth was locked out of NIH’s reporting system. The department also said that EcoHealth had failed to produce requested lab notes and other materials from the Wuhan lab detailing the work being done there and the lab’s biosafety conditions.
These all amount to violations of EcoHealth’s grant agreement and NIH grant policy, thus warranting debarment from future federal funds, reads the HHS memo.
That EcoHealth would be stripped of its federal funding shouldn’t come as too great a shock to anyone who watched Daszak’s congressional testimony from earlier this month. Even Democrats on the committee openly accused Daszak of being misleading about EcoHealth’s work and manipulating facts.
Rep. Raul Ruiz (D–Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the House’s coronavirus subcommittee, welcomed EcoHealth’s suspension, saying in a press release that the nonprofit failed its “obligation to meet the utmost standards of transparency and accountability to the American public.”
An HHS Office of the Inspector General report from last year had already found that EcoHealth had failed to submit progress reports on time or effectively monitor its subgrantee, the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
When grilling Daszak, Democrats on the Coronavirus Subcommittee went to great lengths to not criticize NIH’s oversight of EcoHealth’s work. The HHS debarment memo likewise focuses only on EcoHealth’s failures to abide by NIH policy and its grant conditions.
Nevertheless, it seems pretty obvious that NIH was failing to abide by the 2014 pause on gain-of-function funding when it allowed EcoHealth to go ahead with creating hybrid coronaviruses under the condition that they stop if the viruses did prove more virulent.
NIH compounded that oversight failure by not stopping EcoHealth’s funding when the nonprofit did, in fact, create more virulent viruses, and not following up on a never-submitted progress report detailing more gain-of-function research until two years later.
The House Subcommittee’s investigation into NIH’s role in gain-of-function research at the Wuhan lab is ongoing. Tomorrow it will interview NIH Principal Deputy Director Lawerence Tabak. In June, it will interview former NIAID Director Anthony Fauci.
Originally published by Reason Foundation. Republished with permission.
Alberta
Crown recommends 9 years in prison for Freedom Convoy-inspired border blockade protesters
![](https://www.todayville.com/calgary/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2024/09/tvrd-ls-coutts-blockade-freedom-convoy-image-2024-09-05.jpg)
From LifeSiteNews
Originally charged with conspiracy to commit murder, Anthony Olienick and Chris Carbert were convicted of mischief and weapons offences during the Coutts blockade in 2022. They’ve already spent more than two years in prison awaiting their trial.
The Crown recommended nine years in prison for two men linked to the 2022 Freedom Convoy-inspired border blockade protest in Coutts, Alberta.
On August 29th, Crown prosecutor Steven Johnston declared that Anthony Olienick and Chris Carbert, who were convicted of mischief and weapons offences at the 2022 Freedom Convoy, should receive nine years in jail despite already spending more than two years in prison awaiting their trial.
“Mr. Carbert and Mr. Olienick believed they were at war. They were prepared to die for their cause. The very real risk is that a firefight would have occurred,” Johnston claimed.
Olienick and Carbert have already spent more than two years in prison after they were charged with conspiracy to commit murder during 2022 Freedom Convoy-inspired border blockade protest in Coutts that protested COVID mandates.
Earlier in August, they were finally acquitted of that charge and instead found guilty of the lesser charges of unlawful possession of a firearm for a dangerous purpose and mischief over $5,000. Olienick was also found guilty of unlawful possession of an explosive device.
Olienick and Carbert have been jailed since 2022 when, at the same time the Freedom Convoy descended on Ottawa to protest COVID restrictions, they joined an anti-COVID mandate blockade protest at the Alberta-Montana border crossing near Coutts. The men were denied bail and kept in solitary confinement before their trial.
At the time, police said they had discovered firearms, 36,000 rounds of ammunition, and industrial explosives at Olienick’s home. However, the guns were legally obtained and the ammunition was typical of those used by rural Albertans. Similarly, Olienick explained that the explosives were used for mining gravel.
Now, they are being recommended to spend nine more years in prison despite their lawyer pointing out that they have already spent 929 days in jail, which equates to nearly four years given the accepted valuation of granting extra credit for time served while awaiting trial.
Justice David Labrenz is set to give his decision on September 9th.
The men were arrested alongside Christopher Lysak and Jerry Morin, and all four were charged with conspiracy to murder. At the time, the “Coutts Four” were painted as dangerous terrorists and their arrest was used as justification for the Emergencies Act, which allowed Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to use draconian measures to end both the Coutts blockade and the much larger Freedom Convoy occurring thousands of kilometers away in Ottawa.
Under the EA, the Trudeau government froze the bank accounts of Canadians who donated to the protest. Trudeau revoked the EA on February 23 after the protesters had been cleared out. At the time, seven of Canada’s 10 provinces opposed Trudeau’s use of the EA.
Recently, Federal Court Justice Richard Mosley ruled that Trudeau was “not justified” in invoking the Emergencies Act.
Many are pointing out that the two were being unjustly held as political prisoners similar to those in communist countries.
It’s unclear why the two Alberta men are denied bail while dangerous criminals are allowed to roam free thanks to Trudeau’s catch and release policy.
Indeed, this policy has put many Canadians in danger, as was the case last month when a Brampton man charged with sexually assaulting a 3-year-old was reportedly out on bail for an October 2022 incident in which he was charged with assault with a dangerous weapon and possession of a dangerous weapon.
COVID-19
Australian Senate report ignores obvious: excess deaths began after COVID jab rollout
![](https://www.todayville.com/calgary/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2024/09/tvrd-ls-australia-covid-vaccine-image-2024-09-03.jpeg)
From LifeSiteNews
By David James
It is considerably more likely that the sudden jump in excess deaths was caused by the vaccines rather than the virus. The same pattern is being repeated across heavily vaccinated countries.
When the Australian Federal Senate announced an inquiry into excess mortality in Australia, there was little hope the participants would undertake a dispassionate examination of the possible effects of vaccines on the population. The report has now been released and it did not disappoint; or, rather, it did disappoint.
The report was an exercise in misdirection and concealment by bureaucrats, industry bodies, and political parties. It did, though, settle the question of whether what the Australian authorities did was due to incompetence or darker motives. Based on the non-arguments proffered it is clear that there has been a sustained and organized exercise in lying.
The Senate committee, according to the state broadcaster, the ABC, found that “COVID-19 was the main cause of excess deaths in 2021, 2022, and up to August 2023”. It is a message that has been repeated across the mainstream media, providing an apparent reason to forget about the whole COVID problem.
Bindi Kinderman, general manager of the People and Place Division of the ABS, told the inquiry COVID-associated deaths were behind the unusual rise in death cases between 2021 and August 2023, adding that “in 2020, COVID-19 ranked as the 38th leading cause of death in Australia. In 2021, it moved up to the 34th position.”
Apart from the obvious problem that the 34th leading cause of death is hardly likely to be responsible for extreme changes to death levels, the ABS found in its own reporting that in 2021 the mortality rate in Australia from respiratory diseases was the second lowest on record (after 2020). There were 1,122 deaths attributable to COVID-19, less than a third of the number who died from influenza in 2019.
That suggests that any attempt to blame Covid-19 for the excess mortality had to begin at 2022 – after the mass vaccination.
References to 2021 were only made to create the false impression that the excess deaths started earlier than they actually did. The reason? Because there was a desire to avoid comparisons of what happened before the mass inoculation with what happened after.
The deception becomes especially obvious after looking at the ABS’s own data on excess deaths. In 2020, when Australians were being warned that a deadly disease was ravaging the country, excess mortality was actually negative: minus 3.1 per cent. In 2021 it was a comparatively modest 1.6 per cent above average. But in 2022, after the mandating of jabs, it soared to 11.7 per cent before falling to 6.1 per cent in 2023.
Additionally, in 2022 the number of deaths from Covid increased more than nine times from the 2021 level, invalidating the claim that the “vaccines” provided protection.
READ: Supreme Court of Canada refuses to hear high-profile cases against COVID mandates
It is routinely pointed out that “correlation is not causation”; that just because two things coincide does not necessarily mean one causes the other. That also works in reverse. Without some kind of correlation there is no reason to look for causation. There is no correlation between COVID infections, which the ABS said started in March 2020, and excess mortality. So why would the virus suddenly have started causing excess deaths in 2022, when by that time it had mutated and become less deadly? The timeline does not add up.
A study entitled Too Many Dead by the Australian Medical Professional’s Society (AMPS) makes this point. “Why did the official death rates attributable to COVID-19 disease only become notable after the vast majority of Australians had received allegedly ‘safe and effective’ vaccines for the infection? Furthermore, why did the much milder Omicron variant take such a toll on a heavily vaccinated population, if indeed the much-repeated therapeutic claim of protection from severe illness and death was in effect?”
It is considerably more likely that the sudden jump in excess deaths was caused by the vaccines rather than the virus. The same pattern is being repeated across heavily vaccinated countries. According to the OECD, excess mortality is still high, at levels comparable with what happens during war time. In Australia excess mortality is still running about 10 per cent above average, according to the OECD. A study in the European Society of Medicine into the effect of vaccine boosters in Australia has found there is a “strong correlation” with the excess mortality.
A dissenting report by Senator Ralph Babet, who instigated the inquiry, makes the most interesting reading. Babet notes that there was a lot of suppression of submissions, which is unusual in such an inquiry. Only half were uploaded for public viewing.
“The submissions that the committee chose to suppress by taking as ‘unpublished correspondence’ include those from professors, doctors, medical specialists, academics, actuarial and subject matter experts, as well as concerned Australian citizens,” Babet wrote. He pointed to delays and road blocks, unreliable or unavailable data, and limited investigation of vaccine-related deaths.
It is no surprise that almost no-one will come forward to take responsibility for what appears to be the greatest man-made medical catastrophe in Australian history. It is no surprise that politicians, bureaucrats, health bodies and industry groups lack collective conscience and honesty. They are only interested in lying to protect themselves.
The question that remains unanswered is: “What kind of government and health system is left once it has lost its integrity and credibility?”
-
Agriculture1 day ago
P&H Group building $241-million flour milling facility in Red Deer County.
-
Censorship Industrial Complex1 day ago
Canada wants to add DEI measures to globalist WHO pandemic treaty
-
Crime2 days ago
Hunter Biden pleads guilty to tax charges, avoids public trial
-
International1 day ago
Telegram founder Pavel Durov criticizes French authorities in first statement after his arrest
-
National1 day ago
Unemployment Surges as Trudeau’s Policies Wreak Havoc on the Economy
-
Brownstone Institute10 hours ago
The Curious Case of Mark Zuckerberg
-
Crime2 days ago
Officials Arrest Father Of Suspected Georgia School Shooter
-
International9 hours ago
ISIS supporter used Canada in terror plot to massacre New York City Jews, motivated by October 7th Hamas attack on Israel: FBI