Silence on COVID-19 research raises troubling questions

It was disturbing this week to learn that 15 U.S. federal agencies knew in 2018 that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was trying to create a coronavirus similar to COVID-19.

Government officials representing at least 15 federal agencies were briefed on a project called the DEFUSE project, which proposed a laboratory modification of a coronavirus to create a novel chimeric virus.

This means that at least 15 federal agencies knew from the beginning of the pandemic that EcoHealth Alliance and the Wuhan Institute of Virology were seeking federal funding in 2018 to create a virus genetically very similar if not identical to COVID-19.

What is the really disturbing part of this lack of transparency is that not one of these 15 agencies spoke up to warn U.S. citizens for our representatives that the Wuhan Institute of Virology had been pitching this research.

Not a single one of these agencies warned anyone that this Chinese lab had already put together plans to create such a virus.

University of North Carolina scientist Ralph Baric, a named collaborator on the DEFUSE project, failed to reveal that the Wuhan Institute of Virology had already proposed to create a virus similar to COVID-19.

It is also unthinkable that none of the hundreds of government employees aware of this project directed a warning to anyone.

I remember what a dark period this was around Christmas in 2019 when it had become apparent that this disease was unlike past Corona viruses for lethality.

The Texas Department of State Health Services and Fort Bend County Health and Human Services reported on March 4, 2020 the first positive test result for COVID-19 in Texas outside of the passengers returned under federal quarantine from Wuhan City, China or on a Diamond Princess cruise ship. The patient was a resident of Fort Bend County who had recently returned from travel abroad.

It seems like way more than four years since the whole world got turned upside down by this pandemic.

I clearly remember the fear and uncertainty that overwhelmed family members, friends and fellow workers.

As the rest of the county shut down, we kept the Herald open as an essential business.

There was no foot traffic at the newspaper (or almost anywhere in the county for a while).

I had a lot of time to do research, and soon I was reading about Dr. Ralph Baric, an American virologist who studies corona viruses in his University of North Carolina lab. Baric teamed up with Zhengli Shi, the “batwoman” from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, in 2013 to investigate a new virus she had found in cave guano. Dr. Baric’s team used that virus and parts from another bat virus to make a chimera virus.

It wasn’t long before I came upon some scientific papers detailing what was called “gain of function research.”