Naturally Trump puts his ignorant notions, and his need to find a scapegoat above where the facts and the science point. That is that the COVID-19 viurus came from the natural world, and not some laboratory.
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By Brit McCandless Farmer
Several U.S. officials, including Florida Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz, had raised suspicions about the Wuhan Institute of Virology, one of Daszak's key collaborators in China. When a reporter mischaracterized key details of the NIH grant during a White House press conference last month, President Trump said he would check if any U.S. funds had been granted to the Wuhan Institute, and if so, he said, they would immediately be terminated.
But the $3.7 million grant was not given to the Wuhan Institute. It had been awarded to Daszak's New York-based organization, EcoHealth Alliance. A week after President Trump said the funds would be terminated in China, the NIH took action against EcoHealth Alliance, giving the organization no reason for the grant's termination. Ending an NIH grant usually requires a full investigation and proof of an egregious action like scientific or financial fraud—neither of which applied to EcoHealth Alliance.
Fellow scientists have spoken out about the unsettling precedent the NIH set. "This is cutting off your face to spite your nose," Gerald Keusch, a former director of NIH's Fogarty International Center, told Science. "This is the worst kind of thing that political interference can cause in a democracy."
Recognizing the ramifications of NIH's decision involves understanding of the scope of Daszak's work—and its impact on future coronavirus pandemics
Naturally trump hasn’t any understanding of the scope of their work. He sees them as getting in the way of the convoluted lie he’s so desperate to tell us as a nation. All so Trump can evade any blame for the chaotic national disaster he engineered.
Last year, the NIH reauthorized EcoHealth's five-year grant after independent scientists reviewed the application. According to Daszak, EcoHealth's grant received a high-priority score and was in the top three percent of grants the NIH reviewed last year.
An American scientist who collaborates with the Wuhan Institute of Virology had his grant terminated in the wake of unsubstantiated claims that COVID-19 is either manmade or leaked out of a Chinese government lab.
This report enraged Trump, who responded on Twitter.
A previous 60 Minutes episode on the same NIH program.