We now know the likely truth about COVID, and how scientists lied.
COVID-19, which killed 1.1 million Americans and destroyed the lives and livelihoods of millions more, is a manmade virus that escaped from a Chinese lab partly funded by the US government.
Even today, you’re not supposed to say that — even though it’s the only plausible scenario.
No, “fact checkers” will rush in to claim that eminent scientists deny this. Which is because those scientists have too much invested — in money, in time, in their own beliefs — to admit the truth.
But as Congress continues to probe, that truth is coming out, little by little, and the lies are being exposed:
China tried to deflect blame immediately by saying the virus supposedly began in a “wet market” of animal meat in Wuhan.
Dr. Anthony Fauci repeatedly argued it “evolved in nature and then jumped species” in the spring of 2020.
Since then, both long investigations and government reports have concluded that the virus is manmade. Fauci grudgingly admitted it “could be” true.
LIE: The virus didn’t come from the lab in Wuhan
Anyone who questioned this claim — including The Post — was censored online in 2020. The reason? A statement published in Lancet by 27 scientists calling it a “conspiracy theory.”
We now know that statement was drafted by Peter Daszak, president of EcoHealth Alliance, the company working on research in the Wuhan lab. He was just trying to cover his own complicity.
All signs point to a lab leak. The only reason we can’t say it conclusively is because China has been allowed to destroy all evidence.
LIE: The US didn’t fund ‘gain-of-function’ research
Scientists sometimes experiment with viruses, making them easier to catch or more deadly, as a way to determine what might happen or what vaccines may be needed.
But in May 2021, Fauci stated unequivocally that the US “has not ever and does not now fund gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.”
On Thursday, NIH deputy director Lawrence Tabak directly contradicted that. US taxpayers did fund EcoHealth, which was working on gain-of-function research in Wuhan.
Tabak’s new excuse? “Gain of function” doesn’t mean what we’ve always been told it means. It’s perfectly “safe,” he claimed.
On cue, the National Institutes of Health has changed the definition of the term on its website to make it sound benign.
Except it isn’t benign. EcoHealth was specifically working in China because such work was not allowed in the United States. What researchers were doing with coronaviruses was very dangerous.
And while there may be a scientific debate about whether such inquiries are worthwhile, deadly viruses have leaked from Chinese labs before. It is the height of irresponsibility for the US to be involved.
The Heritage Foundation has called the cover-up of the origins of COVID “The Lie of Century.” We agree. This is a scandal of colossal scale, one that requires a complete overhaul of the entire National Institutes of Health.
They lied about a weapon that devastated our country. They can’t be allowed to get away with it.