"Grant proposal: Many people believe a dormant Balrog resides under the Misty Mountains and poses an ongoing threat to the people of Middle Earth. We propose an expedition to awaken the Balrog in order to observe and characterise its unique dangers." - https://mobile.twitter.com/robertwiblin/status/1576712748481...

We’ve had one, yes. But what about second Covid?

You have my sword.

And you have my bow!

And my CASH! - NIH

Corruption in American academia isn't restricted to professors publishing cooked-up data on a regular basis, it's also seen in the funding structure of the major agencies, where insiders funnel grants to their loyal apparatchiks further down the feeding tree.

Really, anyone interested in this topic needs to start with a little dive into the procedures and practices of Trofim Lysenko within the Soviet Academic system (c.1925-1965). Everyone who supported Lysenko's theories got grants and promotions - those who didn't, exited the field.

A similar dynamic exists between advocates of active gain-of-funcdion research at the NIH and affiliates, and various funding decisions.

The NIAID is just a civilian arm of the biological research Gorgon. Without active involvement (and nudge-nudging, wink-winking) of the government there would be no gain-of-function studies.

This proposal appears to be nothing more than a broad survey involving sampling and screening. This does not culture anything or infect any animals or any such.

Sampling is also risky, as it involves traipsing around in bat caves taking samples, hopefully with adequate PPE, and then driving into big cities to study them. It's one of the possible vectors for Covid-19.

True but it’s also how we found the SARS source. Knowing where infections are living has value.

The guy just had a grant terminated for failing to turn over records.

There are multiple stories about what happened to that grant. Demands were made by the NIH suddenly and without precedent. Failing to meet those demands is what got the grant terminated. The motivations for the demands are apparently political rather than scientific and according to some are a "horrible precedent" that may break some explicit ethics rules about how grants and handled. This is particularly sad now that we have essentially proven that the wet market was the source of the virus. This was all about a made up narrative that was intended to serve political ends instead of being motivated by science and the quest for truth.

what could possibly go wrong this time!

I strongly recommend “Viral” by Ridley and Chan to those who haven’t read it.

To say this is bats*t crazy is incredibly appropriate.

The optics of this are bad. I'm surprised NIH bureaucrats let this one through. While the science objectives may be okay, perhaps another group could have done it.

How is this guy not in jail yet? Much less out there receiving more grants?

What’s the backstory here? Why would he be in jail? Also the link in the original post has almost zero detail on what this grant is for.

A lot of backstory on this guy and his organization: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/03/the-virus-hunting-no...

TLDR is that this guy was acting as a fundraiser for research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology where they were specifically making novel coronaviruses, e.g. by creating chimeric viruses of SARS and MERS, and then using those viruses for gain of function research, e.g. by infecting humanized lung tissue in mice.

He is possibly responsible for the creation of covid.

He is the president of EcoHealth Alliance who was helping fund research into corona viruses and gain of function in Wuhan. He also was involved with the WHO investigation on the lab leak hypothesis despite his conflict of interest and basically denied it could have come from the lab.

And also refused to share his research progress reports when asked to by a Covid origin committee he was a member of.

We have investigated ourselves and found no evidence of wrongdoing.

There is a crazy conspiracy theory that he created COVID 19. It's nonsense but people lap it up and pretend they're part of some secret club who alone know the truth.

A meta comment but I think it's worth recognizing that while most conspiracy theories are untrue, the world is actually full of conspiracies.

Dismissing things as a "crazy conspiracy theory" adds nothing.

All indicators point to a lab leak. The project was called DEFUSE, proposed in 2018, it was led by Daszak's EcoHealth Alliance and funded by the NIH.

https://drasticresearch.files.wordpress.com/2021/09/main-doc...

These things are known now, after being long denied by those involved.

There is no evidence, none at all, of a lab leak. Even you admit that when you limit yourself to "indicator".

And it is a conspiracy theory. You need the CCP, Trump, Biden, Facci, dozens of labs staff, and any decent virologist or geneticist to all work together to hide it.

Come on, get real, stop pretending.

You need dozens of lab staff in China and maybe a few admin staff + daszak here in the states to hide it.

Even setting aside that china is a place where scientists who speak out are regularly harassed consider this:. Suppose you set out to save millions of lives and instead wound up saving negative millions of lives. Can you say with certainty that you would have the fortitude to admit your complicity in the mistake?

The guy just had his grant terminated for not turning over records. What’s your explanation for this counter-intuitive behavior?

When was he terminated? One of his grants was suspended when he failed to get the US federal government access to china, something that was a bit above his pay grade, but that was in 2020!?

But please, tell me how that conclusively proves a lab leak?

Come on. You can believe it, that's up to you. But don't pretend there is any evidence.

Because the people most directly involved are dead (e.g. staff from the wuhan lab) and records have either been lost or concealed it'll probably never be possible to prove a 'lab leak' one way or another.

If you look at the defuse project proposal, however, you'll see a proposal that a reasonable person would conclude had a high risk of creating SARS-CoV2.

They proposed to take a bad corona virus and attempt to grow versions that infected humans by growing it in humanized mice. If that failed, they proposed to genetically modify it to insert a furin cleavage site. After getting their humanized virus they intended to expose immune boosted wild bats to it to inoculate them to this 'predicted' virus.

The biggest discrepancy is that SARS-CoV2's closest known ancestor isn't the virus they were proposing to study: instead, the nearest ancestor is the virus the lab was working on immediately prior to the defuse proposal. And CoV2's most conspicious difference from the wild type ancestor is the furin cleavage whos sequence is very distant from the virus and would not likely be produced easily through mutation yet happens to be identical to a sequence in the literature prior to the research.

Even if we had absolutely concrete proof that SARS-CoV2's origin was completely natural since the research proposals obviously could have created it there ought to be serious inquiry and policy review-- because if it wasn't man made it seems like it would only be by good luck. We have been playing with fire.

s/bad/bat/ (only correcting because it took me a moment to figure out myself what the heck I was writing. :) )

Great summary of what's going on from Saager on Breaking Points. You can search for "Fauci CAUGHT Funding Lab Leak Research, Culprit AGAIN" on YT or direct link - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBEEjeG6Xls

Unintended gain of function.

"Unintended"

Oh great. Hopefully it doesn't become fauci 2.0.

We don't know that for sure (though I believe it). He is responsible for defending people who covered it up.