COVID-19
‘Incompetence’: Pentagon Doesn’t Know How Much Money It Sent To Chinese Entities For Risky Virus Research
From the Daily Caller News Foundation
By NICK POPE
The Department of Defense (DOD) does not know how much money it directly or indirectly sent to Chinese entities to conduct research on viruses with pandemic potential, according to a new report by the DOD’s Office of Inspector General (OIG).
The OIG’s report found that DOD has supplied Chinese entities — whether directly or indirectly via subgrants — with taxpayer cash to research pathogens and the enhancement thereof, but the exact figure is unknown because of “limitations” in the DOD’s internal tracking system. Government funding for such research in China has come under scrutiny since the coronavirus pandemic, which multiple government entities believe started when an engineered virus leaked from a Chinese laboratory that was hosting U.S. government-backed gain-of-function research.
“Incompetence, absurdity, insanity; it’s hard to find a word that adequately describes this. Of all the things that DOD tracks, funds for dangerous research that could find their way to a hostile regime should be at the top of the list of those they keep close tabs on,” Michael Chamberlain, director of Protect the Public’s Trust, told the Daily Caller News Foundation regarding the OIG report’s findings. “It makes you wonder if they really know where all our nuclear warheads are. The military is one of the few areas of government in which the public still maintains a modicum of trust, but, sadly, it looks like they are working hard to squander even that.”
Due to limitations in the DoD's tracking systems, the full extent of DoD funds provided to Chinese research laboratories for research related to enhancement of pathogens of pandemic potential is unknown. Read our new report now: https://t.co/Ts7V7C15V9
— DoD Office of Inspector General (@DoD_IG) June 20, 2024
The OIG review of this specific issue was required by the terms of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for fiscal year 2024, which President Joe Biden signed into law in December 2023. The OIG’s investigation sought to determine just how much taxpayer cash was routed via “grants, contracts, subgrants, subcontracts, or any other type of agreement or collaboration, to Chinese research labs or to fund research or experiments in China or other foreign countries that could have reasonably resulted in the enhancement of pathogens of pandemic potential, from 2014 through 2023.”
Specifically, the OIG learned from U.S. Army officials that 12 grant awards fit the description of what it was investigating, seven of which were subgrants or subcontracts provided to entities in China or other foreign countries for research involving or related to enhanced pathogens, its report states. The OIG’s review also identified a further $9.9 million in funding that reached Chinese entities for research purposes, though that research was unrelated to pathogens.
“However, we did encounter significant challenges in searching for awards related to section 252 of the FY 2024 NDAA reporting requirement due to limitations in the DoD’s systems used to track contracts and grants,” the OIG report states. “Therefore, the full extent of DoD funds provided to Chinese research laboratories or other foreign countries for research related to enhancement of pathogens of pandemic potential is unknown.”
The issues with DOD’s grant tracking systems created “significant constraints” for OIG that “hindered [its] ability to conduct a thorough examination” of DOD’s involvement in funding this specific type of research, the report states.
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) previously conducted a similar review of DOD’s spending and Chinese entities receiving taxpayer dollars to conduct research on pathogens of pandemic potential, and its final report — published in September 2022 — also detailed similar struggles with the DoD’s grant and sub-grant tracking systems.
Did NIH fund gain-of-function research in Wuhan?
Dr. Tabak in 2024: "If you're speaking about the generic term, yes we did."
Dr. Fauci in 2021: "The NIH has not ever and does not now fund gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Institute…" pic.twitter.com/VIi0PVhFa6
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) May 17, 2024
The Department of Energy (DOE) has concluded that the COVID-19 pandemic most likely began when the virus leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China, which was the site of gain-of-function research funded by the U.S. government via an organization called EcoHealth Alliance. Additionally, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director Christopher Wray has acknowledged that his organization has reached a similar conclusion.
Despite this, former Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Anthony Fauci has reiterated his position that a lab leak is the less likely scenario of the two as recently as Tuesday. The COVID-19 pandemic killed more than one million Americans, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and millions more globally, while the American policy response to the pandemic inflicted considerable economic and social damage on the general public.
The DOD did not respond immediately to a request for comment.
COVID-19
BREAKING: Days before Trump Inauguration HHS fires doctor in charge of gain of function research project
Dr. Daszak will likely be protected by the DoD & CIA from additional penalties.
By John Leake
HHS Formally Debars EcoHealth Alliance, President Peter Daszak Fired.
On January 17, 2025—just three days before President Trump is to be sworn in—Congress issued a press release with the following statement:
Today, after an eight-month investigation, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) cut off all funding and formally debarred EcoHealth Alliance Inc. (EcoHealth) and its former President, Dr. Peter Daszak, for five years based on evidence uncovered by the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic.
As far as I can tell, the New York Times did not report this story, though the New York Post did.
More interesting than the superficial news reporting is the HHS ACTION REFERRAL MEMORANDUM recommending that Dr. Peter Daszak be barred from participating in United States Federal Government procurement and nonprocurement programs.
The Memorandum also states:
Dr. Peter Daszak was the President and Chief Executive Officer of EHA from 2009 until his termination, effective January 6, 2025. Dr. Daszak was the Project Director (PD)/Principal Investigator (PI) for Grant Number 1R01AI110964-01.
I am not sure what to make of this document, which is written in such an arcane and convoluted style that it challenges the attention span of even the most focused reader.
I have been researching this story for four years, and I found the following paragraphs the most intriguing:
9. In a letter dated May 28, 2016, the NIAID contacted EHA concerning possible GoF research based on information submitted in its most recent Year 2 RPPR. The NIAID notified EHA that GoF research conducted under Grant Number 5R01AI110964-03 would be subject to the October 17, 2014, United States Federal Government funding pause, and that per the funding pause announcement, new United States Federal Government funding would not be released for GoF research projects that may be reasonably anticipated to confer attributes to influenza, MERS, or SARS viruses such that the virus would have enhanced pathogenicity and/or transmissibility in mammals via the respiratory route. In the letter, the NIAID requested that EHA provide a determination within 15 days of the date of the letter as to whether EHA’s research under Grant Number 5R01AI110964-03 did or did not include GoF work subject to the funding pause.
10. In a letter dated June 8, 2016, EHA provided a response to the NIAID’s May 28, 2016 letter. EHA explained that the goal of its proposed work was to construct MERS and MERS-like chimeric CoVs in order to understand the potential origins of MERSCoV in bats by studying bat MERS-like CoVs in detail. EHA stated that it believed it was highly unlikely that the proposed work would have any pathogenic potential, but that should any of these recombinants show evidence of enhanced virus growth greater than certain specified benchmarks involving log growth increases, or grow more efficiently in human airway epithelial cells, EHA would immediately: (1) stop all experiments with the mutant, (2) inform the NIAID Program Officer of these results, and (3) participate in decision-making trees to decide appropriate paths forward.
11. Based on the information provided by EHA, the NIAID concluded that the proposed work was not subject to the GoF research pause. In a letter dated July 7, 2016, however, the NIAID informed EHA that should any of the MERS-like or SARS-like chimeras generated under the grant show evidence of enhanced virus growth greater than 1 log over the parental backbone strain, EHA must stop all experiments with these viruses and provide the NIAID Program Officer and Grants Management Specialist, and WIV Institutional Biosafety Committee, with the relevant data and information related to these unanticipated outcomes.
Note that various statements in the above paragraphs are inconsistent with what Baric et al. state in their 2015 paper A SARS-like cluster of circulating bat coronavirus shows potential for human emergence—a research paper funded by the NIAID EcoHealth Grant “Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence.”
As the authors state in the section on Biosafety and biosecurity:
Reported studies were initiated after the University of North Carolina Institutional Biosafety Committee approved the experimental protocol (Project Title: Generating infectious clones of bat SARS-like CoVs; Lab Safety Plan ID: 20145741; Schedule G ID: 12279). These studies were initiated before the US Government Deliberative Process Research Funding Pause on Selected Gain-of-Function Research Involving Influenza, MERS and SARS Viruses (http://www.phe.gov/s3/
dualuse/Documents/gain-of- function.pdf). This paper has been reviewed by the funding agency, the NIH. Continuation of these studies was requested, and this has been approved by the NIH.
As I noted in my series of essays titled The Great SARS-CoV-2 Charade, one of the silliest lies told by Dr. Anthony Fauci has been his insistence that NIAID did not approve Gain-of-Function work by EcoHealth.
Fauci has repeatedly asserted this in a loud and vexed tone, as though he is outraged by the mere proposition. And yet, Ralph Baric and his colleagues—including Zhengli-Li Shi at the Wuhan Institute of Virology—plainly state in their 2015 paper that their Gain-of-Function experiments, performed in Baric’s UNC lab and Zhengli-Li Shi’s lab in Wuhan, were grandfathered in, given that they were funded before the 2014 Pause.
Another statement (in paragraph 11 of the recent HHS Action Referral Memo) that deserves special scrutiny is the following:
In a letter dated July 7, 2016, however, the NIAID informed EHA that should any of the MERS-like or SARS-like chimeras generated under the grant show evidence of enhanced virus growth greater than 1 log over the parental backbone strain, EHA must stop all experiments with these viruses and provide the NIAID Program Officer and Grants Management Specialist, and WIV Institutional Biosafety Committee, with the relevant data and information related to these unanticipated outcomes.
Again, it’s tough to interpret this statement, given that Baric et al. had, by the own admission, already generated chimeras that “replicate efficiently in primary human airway cells and achieve in vitro titers equivalent to epidemic strains of SARS-CoV.”
Let’s review what Baric et al. state in their Abstract about the functionality of the chimeric virus (named SHCOI4-MA15) they claimed to have generated. Using humanized mice (genetically modified to have primary human airway cells) as their experimental animals, the authors state:
Using the SARS-CoV reverse genetics system2, we generated and characterized a chimeric virus expressing the spike of bat coronavirus SHC014 in a mouse-adapted SARS-CoV backbone.
The results indicate that group 2b viruses encoding the SHC014 spike in a wild-type backbone can efficiently use multiple orthologs of the SARS receptor human angiotensin converting enzyme II (ACE2), replicate efficiently in primary human airway cells and achieve in vitro titers equivalent to epidemic strains of SARS-CoV. Additionally, in vivo experiments demonstrate replication of the chimeric virus in mouse lung with notable pathogenesis.
To this day, no legal authority that I am aware of has investigated the question: What became of the the chimeras SHC014-MA15 and WIV1-MA15? The latter chimera was documented by Baric et al. in their March 2016 paper titled SARS-like WIV1-CoV poised for human emergence—a chimera “that replaced the SARS spike with the WIV1 spike within the mouse-adapted backbone.”
What did the Wuhan Institute of Virology do with these chimeras? Did its researchers continue to modify and experiment with these chimeras?
Another exceedingly silly claim made by U.S. government officials—including members of Congress—is that the true origin of SARS-CoV-2 is likely to remain a mystery, given that the Chinese government and military will almost certainly never agree to perform a full and transparent investigation of their Wuhan Institute of Virology.
What did the U.S. government expect when it agreed to share cutting edge American biotechnology with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which has long been known to be run by the Chinese military?
One grows weary of our U.S. government officials evading responsibility by pretending to be imbeciles or by revealing themselves to be true imbeciles.
If you found this post informative, please consider becoming a paid subscriber to our Substack. Penetrating the smoke and mirror show performed by the abominable U.S. government requires a great deal of time and effort.
COVID-19
Canadian judge rejects complaint against maskless workplaces as frivolous
From LifeSiteNews
Federal Court Justice Benoit Duchesne ruled that Elections Canada manager Nicolas Juzda’s complaint of feeling ‘unsafe’ following the end of mask mandates in federal workplaces was unreasonable
A federal judge ruled that complaints that maskless workplaces pose a danger to employees’ health are frivolous, ending the final chapter of COVID regulations.
According to information published on January 15 by Blacklock’s Reporter, Federal Court Justice Benoit Duchesne ruled that Elections Canada manager Nicolas Juzda’s complaint of feeling unsafe following the end of mask mandates in federal workplaces was unreasonable.
“The applicant’s concern about an unsafe workplace was based on his assessment that a significant number of people would return to the workplace under the return-to-work model, that any of these people may have contracted Covid-19 and that the non-mandatory recommendations and precautions relating to Covid-19 fell short of what he believes would be a safe work environment,” wrote the court.
Masks were mandated in federal workplaces from April 20, 2020, to February 14, 2023, under the direction of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. At the same time, millions of Canadians were forced to mask in public settings such as grocery stores or hospitals.
After the mandate had lifted, Juzda, a “fully vaccinated” individual without any particular health issues, complained that he felt unsafe in the Gatineau headquarters.
“I must excuse my right to refuse work that constitutes a danger,” he wrote, referencing the Canada Labor Code that allows federally regulated staff to refuse work “that constitutes a danger to the employee.”
Juzda claimed that masking “reduces the risk of contracting Covid-19 but is of limited effectiveness if not combined with other measures, particularly during prolonged exposure to unmasked infected individuals such as being nearby in an indoor office for an entire day.”
“Covid-19 is a disease that in addition to often being extremely unpleasant during the acute period poses significant risks including death,” he continued.
“Handwashing and workplace cleaning are of minimal use in limiting the spread of Covid-19,” Juzda claimed.
His complaint was quickly dismissed as “frivolous” by executives, a move which Duchesne agreed with, calling Juzda’s concerns unwarranted.
Indeed, LifeSiteNews has reported extensively on overwhelming evidence showing that masks are ineffective in preventing transmission of COVID and that they come with harmful effects.
Back in 2021, 47 studies confirmed the ineffectiveness of masks for COVID, while 32 more confirmed their negative health effects.
According to another 2021 report, more than 170 studies have found that masks have been ineffective at stopping COVID and instead have been harmful, especially to children.
In fact, in 2020, before masks were widely mandated, Canada’s chief public health officer Dr. Theresa Tam admitted that masks were not effective in preventing COVID.
“There is no need to use a mask for well people,” she said in the first few weeks of the pandemic. “It hasn’t been proven really to protect you from getting the virus.”
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