With evidence mounting that the coronavirus might have escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, President Biden has reversed course and ordered the U.S. intelligence community to produce a report on the virus's origins within 90 days. Better late than never. For the past year, the media has scorned the idea of an accidental lab release as a far-flung conspiracy theory. In fact, it would have been an extraordinary coincidence for this virus to emerge in Wuhan " home to China's leading research laboratory studying bat coronaviruses " and have had no connection to the lab. Since April 2020 we have known that in 2018 U.S. diplomats warned of inadequate safety at the Wuhan lab. It turns out that [Anthony] Fauci's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) ... awarded a grant for studying bat coronavirus to the U.S.-based EcoHealth Alliance, which then subcontracted the research to the Wuhan lab. Fauci admits this, but insists that the money did not support gain of function research. But as Wade points out, that is exactly what the Wuhan institute was doing. Indeed, the grant proposals from Shi Zhengli " the "Bat Woman" at the Wuhan lab " which are a matter of public record specified that she planned to use the money for gain-of-function research. Fauci is on record supporting such research. And the NIAID was supporting research in Wuhan even though the U.S. government had placed a moratorium on gain of function research.
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