Republican Lawmakers Hounding Departments for Information on COVID Origins

Conservatives are demanding documentation and statistics on the sources of the COVID-19 virus; this virus has claimed the lives of over 600,000 Americans since the start of 2020.

This noise is coming in from two directions; several conservative senators are seeking advice from the National Institutes of Health, while House Republicans are requesting papers from the US aid.

Did Chinese Ask a US Department to Delete Information?

GOP Senators Marsha Blackburn, Charles Grassley, and Roger Marshall wrote to NIH Head Francis Collins in late June; this occurred in response to new allegations that Chinese Communist Party authorities requested that important data regarding the viral disease be erased from critical top government databases.

The lawmakers told Collins that the research team ‘targeted’ the National Institutes of Health in China to do away with early COVID-19 genetic sequences from important science archives. 

According to the report, the NIH verified that the genes were erased. The story goes on to say that the erased material contains genetic sequences of SARS-CoV-2; this was obtained from virus samples gathered from hospitalized patients in Wuhan during early 2020.

The congressmembers want Collins to offer a list of answers focusing on the CCP removal orders; this should include who at the NIH had the ability to remove such information, the features of the Wuhan specimens, and a variety of other topics.

This piece of data could include crucial and actionable insights that could aid in determining the virus’s sources. The lawmakers wrote that Chinese scientists’ attempts to remove the data require more explanation.

The Chinese Government has Been Dodgy from Day One.

This same Chinese government has failed to be honest and forthright with the rest of the world about its involvement in the epidemic from the start.

Blackburn is the leading opposition representative of the Consumer Protection, Product Safety, & Data Security Taskforce of the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Working group.

Also on the Judiciary Committee, Grassley is indeed the senior Conservative. Marshall is among the four physicians in Congress, who are all Republicans.

Reps. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, is the opposition member on the Energy and Business Committee, Congressman Brett Guthrie; meanwhile, Rep. Morgan Griffith wrote to USAID President Samantha Power on June 28 about the department’s long-term partnership with the Wuhan Research center of Virology.

According to the three congressional Republicans, USAID started PREDICT; this is a $220 million, decade-long study in 2009. It also serves as a component of its own Emerging Pandemic Risk Initiative to identify pathogens with pandemic potential.

USAID wanted to find pathogens that could cause a spontaneously recurring worldwide epidemic by gathering data including bat coronavirus specimens.

The USAID-funded PREDICT venture collected over 15,000 bat specimens which lead to the discovery of about 500 new coronaviruses; it also detected about 1,200 pathogens that might be expanded from untamed animals to people, with more than 160 of them being novel coronaviruses.