Senate committee concludes COVID-19 ‘likely’ the result of taxpayer-funded lab research

To be very, very clear, 9/11 was not “an inside job” carried out by the U.S. government (though our government’s foreign policy is in part to blame for it). Still, there were many people who spent years believing this and combing through the evidence to back it up. Documentaries were made, Reddit threads sprung up, and conspiracy sites still exist on the matter.

But what if it had been true? That our government had funded a tragedy so severe it took thousands of lives from us, wrecked the economy, and sowed mass division among our people? It would be an outrage. People would be up in arms. Accountability for those responsible would be demanded. And we would work diligently to ensure something so awful could never be perpetrated against us again.

But increasingly, it does seem our government was very much responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic, and bizarrely, we are not seeing any of the aforementioned reactions occur—at least not on the scale they should be.

This week, we received further confirmation of this. The U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions released a report that concludes the “emergence of SARS-CoV-2 that resulted in the COVID-19 pandemic was most likely the result of a research-related incident.”

How is this not the top news story at every single outlet?

The report was authored by the ranking member on the HELP committee, Senator Richard Burr. In the opening he writes, “Over one million Americans have died from COVID-19 and tens of millions have died from this virus worldwide. In addition to the tragic loss of life, over the past three years we have experienced the social, educational, and economic costs of a global pandemic.” (Not to mention the economic costs of the bat-s*** crazy—pun-intended—lockdown policies).

Burr continued, “I hope this report will guide the World Health Organization and other international institutions and researchers as they proceed with planned work to continue investigating the origins of this virus. Uncovering the answers to this critical question is imperative to our national and international ability to ensure that a pandemic of this size and scope does not happen again.”

Other key takeaways in the report say that “while it remains possible that SARS-CoV-2 emerged as a result of a natural zoonotic spillover, facts and evidence found in previous documented zoonotic spillover events have not, to date, been identified in relation to this pandemic,” and “substantial evidence suggests that the COVID-19 pandemic was the result of a research-related incident associated with a laboratory in Wuhan, China.”

The White Coat Waste Project (where I am a Fellow) is a free-market, animal-welfare organization that initially discovered taxpayer-funded payments the NIH made to the Wuhan Lab in China via a passthrough organization called EcoHealth Alliance. In response to the report, their Senior Vice President of Advocacy and Public Policy, Justin Goodman, said the following:

“Once again, an authoritative Congressional report has concluded that taxpayer-funded gain-of-function experiments on animals in Wuhan likely caused the Covid-19 pandemic.  Yet, nearly 3 years into the pandemic, the white coats responsible for probably causing and covering up this global disaster—including Anthony Fauci, EcoHealth Alliance and the Wuhan lab—have not been held accountable and the NIH continues to brazenly and recklessly bankroll dangerous animal experiments to supercharge coronaviruses with little oversight.  Lab accidents are common and taxpayers in both parties shouldn’t be forced to pay for another pandemic.  As the very first group to expose this wasteful government spending in Wuhan, we’re rallying Democrats and Republicans in Congress to stop the money and stop the madness.”

He’s right. This is absolute madness.

It’s time for the reaction to this mess to match the audacity of the bureaucrats and politicians who carried it out.

Hannah Cox is a fellow at the White Coat Waste Project.

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