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Hubris, Horseshoe Bats, Humanized Mice: Uncovering Fauci’s COVID Lies
The Biden administration’s Department of Energy has just joined the FBI — and countless others — in concluding a lab leak in Wuhan most likely caused the pandemic.
In response, former White House medical adviser Anthony Fauci predictably doubled down on his lab-leak dismissal — but hedged his bets. “I don’t see any data for a lab leak. That doesn’t mean it couldn’t have happened,” he said. “We must all keep an open mind to all possibilities.” But “we may never know” how the pandemic began.
Of course, having funded the shady Wuhan animal lab, an inconclusive origins investigation would be incredibly convenient for the good doctor. Fortunately, the American people and Congress aren’t letting him off the hook that easily.
Now in the majority, House Committee on Oversight and Accountability Chairman James Comer and Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic Chairman Brad Wenstrup have launched an effort to secure testimony from Fauci about the gain-of-function experiments he recklessly funded in Wuhan and his suspicious actions following concerns about a potential lab leak.
How a Little-Known Scientist Cashed in After Helping Fauci Bury Lab-Leak Theory
If Anthony Fauci’s desperate, years-long effort to hide evidence that the mystery bat virus came out of China’s mysterious bat virus laboratory is finally unraveling, don’t blame Kristian Andersen.
The FBI, Department of Energy, and a U.S. Senate investigation have all determined that COVID, which has now killed nearly 7 million people around the world, likely emerged from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. In doing so, they seem to have rejected Fauci’s improbable claim that the mystery bat virus broke out just a couple of football fields away from the mysterious bat virus lab, completely independent of the dangerous research Fauci’s agency was likely funding inside.
Andersen, a British virologist with the San Diego-based Scripps Research Institute, had even more reasons than mere proximity to suspect a lab leak back in January 2020 when COVID was just starting to emerge. Andersen and three virology peers had studied the genome sequence of SARS-CoV-2 and suspected right away that it was cooked up in a lab, not a bowl of bat soup from the Wuhan food court.
“Eddie, Bob, Mike and myself all find the genome inconsistent with expectations from evolutionary theory,” Andersen wrote in an email to Fauci dated Jan. 31, 2020.
By Feb. 4 he was characterizing claims the mystery bat virus came from the mysterious bat virus lab as one of several “crackpot theories” about COVID’s origin. In March of that year, he co-published a paper in the journal Nature Medicine that declared COVID was not made in a laboratory or “purposefully manipulated.” A few months later, Andersen got a $1.88 million research grant from Dr. Francis Collins’ National Institutes of Health, according to author Andrew Huff.
Senate Seeks COVID Origins Information Declassification
The Senate voted unanimously Wednesday night to require Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines to declassify information on the origin of COVID-19.
The bill (S. 619), which passed without objection or a roll-call vote, could put pressure on the Biden administration to voluntarily declassify.
The move comes after the Wall Street Journal reported that Haines’s office provided classified intelligence to the White House and key members of Congress showing the Energy Department had concluded COVID most likely came from a lab leak in China.
Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) said he plans to call officials from the Energy Department before his Energy and Public Works Committee to testify publicly on the suspected origins of the virus, which killed over 1 million Americans.
House Subcommittee Announces First Hearing on COVID Origins
The House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic has announced that it will hold its first hearing on the origins of COVID-19 on March 8.
The committee’s chairman, Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio), said in a March 1 statement announcing the hearing that Americans “deserve real answers” on the origins of the virus, having suffered through the pandemic and the government policies related to it.
The announcement comes as the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is facing renewed scrutiny that its Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) could be the origin site of the virus.
“We can’t accept more years of stonewalling; the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic is committed to conducting a proper investigation that the American people have demanded,” Wenstrup added.
Flu and COVID Combo Shots Won’t Come in Time for This Year, FDA Official Says
Vaccines that offer protection against both COVID-19 and influenza with a single shot will likely not be ready in time for this year, a top federal official said Wednesday. However, tweaks to update the current COVID vaccines and drugs are expected soon.
The Food and Drug Administration‘s top vaccines official, Dr. Peter Marks, had previously said in September that vaccines to cover both viruses could be deployed this year. But at a webinar this week by the National Foundation for Infectious Disease, Marks acknowledged the effort had proved “too heavy a lift” for this fall, ending hopes of a combined option for the 2023 fall and winter respiratory illness season.
Moderna, Pfizer and Novavax have all announced plans to pursue trials of standalone flu vaccines in addition to versions combined with their COVID-19 shots. Pfizer executives told investors in January they did not expect approval of their combination shot until 2025.
A combo shot could also simplify an increasingly complex annual vaccination schedule ahead of the expected rollout of new RSV vaccines — to protect against the respiratory syncytial virus — which may need to go into arms around the same time.
COVID Call Centers and Testing Sites Close in Further Sign U.S. Is Moving Past the Pandemic
COVID-19 call centers and testing sites are closing across the United States as more Americans look to move on from the pandemic and with the emergency declaration set to end in May. In Rockland County, New York — just north of New York City — the call center closed Tuesday after three years in operation.
In nearby Massachusetts, the state’s department of public health announced Monday it is shutting down its remaining free PCR testing sites, which were known as “Stop the Spread” sites, at the end of March.
It comes as several COVID data trackers also shut down, including Johns Hopkins University’s Coronavirus Resource Center, one of the first to launch in early 2020 and a vital source that filled in information gaps.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services also shut down its data website last month but has kept the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s dashboard running.
‘You Cannot Hide’: Biden Administration to Go After Scammers Who Stole Billions in COVID Relief
The Biden administration announced a series of measures Thursday to track down and punish fraudsters who scammed billions of taxpayer dollars that were supposed to provide relief to Americans during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Biden is pledging $1.6 billion to bolster law enforcement manpower and new programs that will be used to prosecute scammers, prevent fraud and provide assistance to victims of identity theft.
The administration’s plans call for creating 10 Department of Justice “strike forces” that will include U.S. attorneys and other law enforcement officials to investigate COVID-relief fraud and help recover stolen tax dollars. The teams will target criminal syndicates and other major fraudsters. Three strike forces already are in place and have recovered millions of dollars in stolen relief funds, officials said.
Long COVID Patients Show Lower Levels of Brain Oxygen
U.S. News & World Report reported:
People who have long COVID — lingering symptoms after a COVID-19 infection — may also have lower brain oxygen levels, cognitive problems and psychiatric troubles, such as anxiety and depression.
Researchers from the University of Waterloo in Canada and Drexel University in Philadelphia combined two parallel studies to better understand what is happening in long COVID patients.
People who had been infected did not have the expected increase in oxygen level in an area of the brain that is normally engaged during one of these tasks, the investigators found.
Brain imaging found that older women were most affected. “We don’t know for sure why this was the case, but there have been other studies showing that older women are especially impacted by some post-COVID-19 syndrome symptoms,” Hall said.
Regulators Extend Shelf Life of Valneva’s COVID Vaccine Candidate
Vaccines company Valneva (VLS.PA) said on Thursday that its inactivated COVID-19 vaccine candidate product VLA2001 had its shelf life extended to 21 months from 18 months previously, as it unveiled regulatory updates for the product.
“As previously announced, Valneva will not invest in further development of the vaccine, in the absence of a new partnership. It is, however, completing remaining clinical studies and submissions as agreed with regulators,” added Valneva.
