Dr. Anthony Fauci headlined a 2017 conference starring researchers central to COVID-19’s origins and subsequent coverup including EcoHealth Alliance President Peter Daszak and top Wuhan’s lab researcher Shi Zhengli, The National Pulse can exclusively reveal.
The revelations further cloud Dr. Fauci’s attempts to distance himself from the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the gain-of-function research taking place there.
China’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director George Gao – who emailed Dr. Fauci to thank him for publicly dismissing the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s role in creating COVID-19 – was responsible for organizing the 2017 conference alongside three other scientists.
In addition to Dr. Fauci delivering the keynote address, researchers central to the ongoing debate about COVID-19’s origins – who’ve reportedly played major roles in the coverup of the Wuhan lab’s role in the pandemic – also spoke.
One conference speaker, Wuhan Institute of Virology Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases Director Shi Zhengli, was recently the subject of a heated line of questioning from Senator Rand Paul with Dr. Fauci.
“For years, Dr. Ralph Baric, a virologist in the U.S., has been collaborating with Shi Zhengli of the Wuhan Virology Institute, sharing his discoveries about how to create super viruses. This gain-of-function research has been funded by the NIH,” Senator Paul inquired before Dr. Fauci asserted the claims were “entirely and completely incorrect.”
Despite Dr. Fauci’s attempts to distance himself from the Wuhan-based researcher, who has earned the sobriquet “bat lady” for her work on SARS-like coronaviruses, the conference agenda reveals they both spoke at the event.
And the topic of Shi’s speech – “SARS coronavirus may have originated from frequent recombination events between SL-CoVs in a single horseshoe bat habitat” – proves especially pertinent to COVID-19. Dr. Fauci addressed “emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases: from AIDS to Zika.”
Also speaking at the event was Peter Daszak, who serves as the President of EcoHealth Alliance. The nonprofit has come under scrutiny for receiving millions in U.S. taxpayer dollars from Dr. Fauci’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and funneling part of the sum to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, as the Chinese Communist Party-run lab lists Daszak’s group as a partner.
The National Pulse has also unearthed speeches from Daszak where he describes as delegating work on “killer” viruses to his “Chinese colleagues.”
Dr. Linfa Wang, the Director of Duke-NUS Medical School’s Emerging Infectious Diseases Program, also addressed the conference.
In addition to being listed as co-authors on studies alongside Daszak and Shi, Wang was also part of Daszak’s efforts to release a statement in the Lancet medical journal that prematurely debunked COVID-19’s potential man-made origins.
Read the conference documents:
