May 7, 2020—With the key question unresolved about how the COVID-19 virus emerged in Wuhan, China, diplomatic relations between China and the United States as well as other Western governments have ruptured, perhaps permanently.
Funding Pulled
The U.S. government stopped funding a line of research funding that fostered collaboration between U.S. scientists and those in Wuhan, China.
The National Institutes of Health research project received $3.38 million over six years. It was a small part of its overall budget. (For perspective, in 2019, total NIH awards/grants were $28 billion.) But it was still a lot in terms of funding. The project proposed to understand the risk of bat coronavirus that poses “a significant threat to global health and food security.” It came in the wake of SARS and MERS.
Meanwhile, the U.S. recipient of the grant, EcoHealth Alliance, stood by its work. Project leader Peter Daszak, published research entitled “Understanding the risk of bat coronaviruses.”
In an online statement, the nonprofit commented, “The research that the National Institutes of Health terminated aimed to analyze the risk of coronavirus emergence and help in designing vaccines and drugs to protect us from COVID-19 and other coronavirus threats. In fact, genetic sequences of two bat coronaviruses that we discovered with this grant have been used as lab tools to test the breakthrough antiviral drug Remdesivir.”
Trust in that international collaboration broke down shortly after the 2019 virus broke out. The story took on national and international significance. Furthermore, it called into question the reputation and legitimacy of the World Health Organization.
