In the advent of President Donald Trump’s second term, four significant actions related to the COVID-19 pandemic and its aftermath took place in quick succession.
First, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) under President Joe Biden banned gain-of-function research and debarred EcoHealth Alliance and its former president, Peter Daszak, from receiving federal grants for five years. Second, Biden issued a “preemptive pardon” to Dr. Anthony Fauci, the public face of the federal response to the coronavirus pandemic.
Third, Trump ordered the removal of the United States from the World Health Organization (WHO), and fourth, the CIA revised its assessment of the origin of COVID-19.
EcoHealth Alliance Coverup
In 2019, EcoHealth Alliance and Daszak received a National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant for more than $4 million to conduct research titled “Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence.”
“The grant was initially suspended in 2020, with NIH’s then-principal deputy director Lawrence Tabak revealing in October 2021 that EcoHealth Alliance had violated the terms of its grant by performing the gain-of-function research—which modified novel bat coronaviruses and made them 10,000 times more infectious for research on lab mice—and failing to report the practice to NIH,” the New York Post reported.
The Oversight Committee’s Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic had investigated the relationships between EcoHealth Alliance, Daszak, and the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China, recommending last May the Manhattan-based nonprofit and Daszak be debarred, the official word for banned.
The select subcommittee found EcoHealth Alliance “routinely ignored government oversight requests, failed to report dangerous gain-of-function experiments conducted at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and produced a required research report two years late,” among other offenses, the New York Post noted.
Fauci Pardon, WHO Withdrawal
Immediately before leaving office, Biden issued a “preemptive pardon” to Fauci, former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), who spearheaded the nation’s response to COVID-19 in 2020 through 2022.
Fauci’s pardon covers any offenses between January 1, 2014 and January 19, 2025 related to his service as NIAID director, as a member of the White House COVID-19 task force or response team, or as chief medical adviser to the president.
The pardon covers the time when the Fauci-led NIAID, a division of the National Institutes of Health, awarded a grant to EcoHealth Alliance for what turned out to be gain-of-function research in the Wuhan lab.
Sen. Rand Paul, M.D. (R-KY), chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, blasted the pardon. Paul had repeatedly clashed with Fauci during and after the pandemic.
“If there was ever any doubt as to who bears responsibility for the COVID-19 pandemic, Biden’s pardon of Fauci forever seals the deal,” Paul posted on X.
Paul said he would continue investigating Fauci.
“I will not rest until the entire coverup is exposed,” Paul wrote in the post. “Fauci’s pardon will only serve to pierce the veil of deception.”
Hours after the Fauci pardon, Trump withdrew the United States from the WHO in an executive order (see related article, front page), his second attempt to do so, and ordered his administration to pause all funding to the agency.
CIA Wuhan Reassessment
The CIA, in a shift from its previous position, now favors the Wuhan lab leak explanation as the most likely origin of the coronavirus pandemic.
“CIA now assesses with low confidence that a research-related origin of the COVID-19 pandemic is more likely than natural origin based on the available body of reporting,” the agency said in a January 26 statement.
“Natural origin” refers to the theory the disease jumped from an infected animal to humans. This has been the prevailing view of Fauci, the CIA, the WHO, the Chinese Communist government, and much of the media. No animal or species of animal was ever identified as the origin, and the lab leak theory gradually won out.
The CIA’s latest assessment was completed near the end of the Biden administration, but the agency refused to make it public, according to the Washington Times. New CIA Director John Ratcliffe released the assessment soon after being sworn in.
Safety First
Other than the Fauci pardon, the decisions will help make the world safer, says Jane Orient, M.D., executive director of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons.
“It’s great to see some cracks in the wall of secrecy surrounding research on potential bioweapons, in which the Department of Defense has been deeply involved,” said Orient. “Investigations should not be restricted to Wuhan, China. What about U.S.-owned biological laboratories in Ukraine?”
Peter A. McCullough, M.D., M.P.H., president of the McCullough Foundation, says threats to public health lurk in laboratories elsewhere.
“With 13 biosecurity laboratories in the United States, more than 140 BSL 3 facilities, and BLS 4 facilities, it is almost a certainty there will be a lab leak of a dangerous pathogen, either a virus, bacteria, fungal spore that has the potential to cause the next global pandemic,” said McCullough. “The only way to protect America is to shut down these laboratories and rethink if and how such dangerous research should be conducted.”
“A ban on federal funding alone is not enough, since foundations and even foreign adversaries can step in and fund lucrative research,” said McCullough.
Bonner Russell Cohen, Ph.D., ([email protected]) is a senior fellow at the National Center for Public Policy Research.
See related articles here and here.
Bonner R. Cohen is a senior fellow with the National Center for Public Policy Research, a position he has held since 2002.
