Fox News reports, “The National Institutes of Health (NIH) admitted Thursday that it funded gain-of-function research on bats infected with coronaviruses at a lab in Wuhan, China despite repeated denials from Dr. Anthony Fauci that U.S. tax dollars were used.

Journalist Drew Holden, who is known for pointing out media hypocrisy in lengthy Twitter threads, brought receipts proving mainstream news organizations were wrong when they declared that accusations against Fauci and the NIH over the funding were false.

‘I hope that outlets will correct the record,’ he wrote before sharing the evidence.

?THREAD?

The NIH announced a bombshell: despite what Dr. Fauci said under oath, US taxpayers paid for gain-of-function research in Wuhan.

I hope that outlets will correct the record from when they assured us this wasn’t happening.

If they’ve forgotten, I’ve got screenshots

— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) October 21, 2021

‘You may remember a dust up in July between Dr. Fauci & [Rand Paul] around precisely this point. It seems inarguable that what Fauci told Congress isn’t true. And the press uncritically helped him convince the American people otherwise,’ Holden wrote, referring to Fauci’s July congressional testimony in which he clashed with Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., while claiming that no NIH money went towards gain-of-function research in Wuhan.”

Read the entire story.

The post The media defended Fauci’s false claims about Wuhan lab funding in feud with Rand Paul appeared first on Liberty Tree.

National Review’s Isaac Schorr has a solid collection of “many in the media who reflexively sided with Fauci.”

–CNN’s Brianna Keilar, May 2021: “Nothing brings out Senator Paul’s propensity to act like an ass like a congressional appearance by Fauci… Rand Paul’s COVID BS keeps pouring down…”

–Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler, May 2021: “We wavered between Two and Three Pinocchios…”

CNN’s homepage does not presently acknowledge the NIH letter all-but-admitting to funding gain of function research, instead leading with the story “Liberal Backlash Against Sinema Grows.”
https://t.co/cscQgVzth8

— Isaac Schorr (@isaac_schorr) October 21, 2021

–CNN’s Jake Tapper, July 2021: “I want to start with another kind of misinformation… Fauci was confronted with an accusation basically from Kentucky Republican Senator Rand Paul… Trump allies in Congress and governor’s offices and the media trying to make Fauci a COVID boogeyman.”

–MSNBC’s Ari Melber, July 2021, concurring with Fauci’s characterization of Paul’s comments: “Slanderous.”

–MSNBC’s Steve Benen, July 2021: “Rand Paul keeps doing this, apparently under the impression that there’s some value to the pointless exercises… Is it any wonder that Anthony Fauci seems exasperated with Rand Paul?”

–White House press secretary Jen Psaki, September 2021: “NIH has never approved any research that would make a coronavirus more dangerous to humans.”

Read the entire column.

The post Don’t forget the media figures who reflexively sided with Fauci on NIH funding of Wuhan lab appeared first on Liberty Tree.

HHS Deputy admits Fauci’s NIH funded gain-of-function research in Wuhan but says it was “an unexpected result.” If the experiment combines unknown viruses and tests their ability to infect and damage humanized cells, of course the result is ‘unknown’ before the experiment.

— Senator Rand Paul (@RandPaul) October 21, 2021

Yahoo News reports, “A top NIH official admitted in a Wednesday letter that U.S. taxpayers funded gain-of-function research on bat coronaviruses in Wuhan and revealed that EcoHealth Alliance, the U.S. non-profit that funneled NIH money to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, was not transparent about the work it was doing.

“I told you so” doesn’t even begin to cover it here: https://t.co/9JFn85I24i

— Senator Rand Paul (@RandPaul) October 21, 2021

In the letter to Representative James Comer (R., Ky.), Lawrence A. Tabak of the NIH cites a ‘limited experiment’ that was conducted to test if ‘spike proteins from naturally occurring bat coronaviruses circulating in China were capable of binding to the human ACE2 receptor in a mouse model.’ The laboratory mice infected with the modified bat virus ‘became sicker’ than those infected with the unmodified bat virus.

The revelation vindicates Republican senator Rand Paul, who got into heated exchanges with National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease director Anthony Fauci during his May and July testimonials before Congress over the gain-of-function question. At the second hearing, Paul accused Fauci of misleading Congress by denying that the U.S. had funded gain-of-function projects at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.”

Read the entire story.

The post NIH admits to funding gain-of-function research in Wuhan appeared first on Liberty Tree.

RealClearPolitics reports, “Pfizer board member and former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb weighed in on the new documents showing that the NIH did fund research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology despite repeated assurances from Dr. Anthony Fauci that it did not.

Breaking news Dr. Fauci and NIAID funded gain of function research with a coronavirus MERS (50% mortality!) recombined to create viruses not found in nature AND Fauci is still sending the Chinese $ through 2025!https://t.co/glDfvune8f

— Senator Rand Paul (@RandPaul) September 9, 2021

“Whether or not this [research] was gain-of-function is a political and legal discussion,’ Gottlieb said. ‘The bottom line is they were doing research on viruses in that institute that was making those viruses potentially more dangerous to humans. And handling the viruses in ways that could potentiate their release, particularly by infecting transgenic animals that have fully-humanized immune systems.’

“They were doing things in that lab that could have led to circumstances where a virus that was purposefully evolved in ways that it could be more dangerous to humans could have escaped,” says @ScottGottliebMD. pic.twitter.com/KxWmL2ITnI

— Squawk Box (@SquawkCNBC) September 8, 2021

‘They were doing things in that lab that could have led to circumstances where a virus that was purposefully evolved in ways that it could be more dangerous to humans could have escaped,’ he explained.”

Read the entire story.

The post Ex-FDA head Gottlieb: ‘They were doing things in that lab that could be…dangerous to humans’ appeared first on Liberty Tree.

The Intercept reports, “Newly released documents provide details of U.S.-funded research on several types of coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China. The Intercept has obtained more than 900 pages of documents detailing the work of EcoHealth Alliance, a U.S.-based health organization that used federal money to fund bat coronavirus research at the Chinese laboratory…

One of the grants, titled ‘Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence,’ outlines an ambitious effort led by EcoHealth Alliance President Peter Daszak to screen thousands of bat samples for novel coronaviruses. The research also involved screening people who work with live animals. The documents contain several critical details about the research in Wuhan, including the fact that key experimental work with humanized mice was conducted at a biosafety level 3 lab at Wuhan University Center for Animal Experiment — and not at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, as was previously assumed. The documents raise additional questions about the theory that the pandemic may have begun in a lab accident, an idea that Daszak has aggressively dismissed.

Surprise surprise – Fauci lied again

And I was right about his agency funding novel Coronavirus research at Wuhan.

Read this thread and the papers released. https://t.co/zQizKXLdbd

— Senator Rand Paul (@RandPaul) September 7, 2021

The bat coronavirus grant provided EcoHealth Alliance with a total of $3.1 million, including $599,000 that the Wuhan Institute of Virology used in part to identify and alter bat coronaviruses likely to infect humans. Even before the pandemic, many scientists were concerned about the potential dangers associated with such experiments…

The grant was initially awarded for a five-year period — from 2014 to 2019. Funding was renewed in 2019 but suspended by the Trump administration in April 2020.”

Read the entire story here.

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