Frequent critics of the Biden administration on COVID-19 applauded a surprise move this week, but say it should have gone much further.
President Joe Biden has cut off U.S. government funding for China‘s Wuhan Institute of Virology after a review found the facility non-compliant with federal regulations.
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For many observers, especially those favoring the lab leak COVID origin theory, it was long overdue.
“This is a step forward toward acknowledging that COVID-19 likely originated from U.S.-funded gain-of-function research at WIV and toward taking steps toward preventing a future lab-generated pandemic,” said Rutgers University professor Richard Ebright.
But Ebright, a chemical biology professor, also complained the move was insufficient to fully address the problem.
For one, EcoHealth Alliance, a U.S.-based organization that conducted coronavirus research at the lab, is still receiving federal dollars and has not been disbarred. Ebright also says former National Institutes of Health director Francis Collins and former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases leader Anthony Fauci were not held accountable for their role.
He’d like to see a full ban on gain-of-function research.
Others noted the timing of the announcement, well over three years after the pandemic started and with most people no longer thinking about it on a day-to-day basis.
“The funding that was previously denied to have existed has now been stopped,” vaccine skeptic Robert Malone tweeted, along with a link to a Washington Examiner story. “Nothing to see here, move on.”
The WIV’s permanent funding block comes as the lab continues drawing controversy over gain-of-function research that may have unleashed COVID-19 on the world. No governing body has made the definitive determination that the virus leaked from the lab, but the theory has gained steam after being buried early on.
Seven million people have died from COVID-19 worldwide.
Biden previously authorized the release of a COVID origins report in June, which said the federal government will “continue to assess that both a natural and laboratory-associated origin remain plausible hypotheses to explain the first human infection.”
The report did note that multiple scientists at the lab fell ill in the fall of 2019 and that “the institute frequently did not adhere to safety protocols.” The lab has received more than $1.4 million in U.S. federal awards since 2014, though none since 2020.
A review of the Wuhan lab from the Department of Health and Human Services began in September, according to Bloomberg.
House Republicans are also calling for EcoHealth to be disbarred, but arguably the biggest pandemic critic in Congress is Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY). Paul has sparred with Fauci for years and is now holding up State Department nominations as he seeks more documents about the virus’ origin.
The Kentucky senator supports the funding ban, though he noted in a Fox News interview that Fauci at first denied that any U.S. money ever went to Wuhan.
“It’s not going far enough,” Paul said. “It is a good step forward to forbid this, but we need to go beyond that to try to prevent this kind of accident from happening anywhere in the world.”
Not everyone is convinced there’s a deeper meaning behind the funding ban.
Public health professor Andrew Noymer noted that NIH began selectively defunding WIV projects as early as May 2020.
“Some people will read tea leaves that this supports a lab leak origin of COVID-19, but I don’t think we can draw that conclusion,” Noymer, a professor at the University of California, Irvine, said. “This certainly is not a frank admission of a lab leak origin of COVID, and I don’t even read it as a tacit admission.”
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Still, he too calls for further moves to prevent future pandemics.
“We should renew the moratorium on dangerous gain-of-function virology research,” Noymer said.
