Thread by @thackerpd

1. WSJ: With US funding, Ben Hu with the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) was studying how coronaviruses infect humans and became ill in November 2019 with symptoms that American officials said were consistent with either Covid-19 or a seasonal illness. wsj.com/articles/u-s-f…

2. @WhiteCoatWaste got the NIAID grant with Ben Hu's name on it. This is the NIH institute that Tony Fauci ran. Ya' know, the guy who said he didn't fund this research?

Document shows Ben Hu is a subcontractor to Peter Daszak's EcoHealth Alliance.

Hu also reports a USAID grant.

3. The Journal notes that they reported back in 2021 that these three WIV researchers had fallen sick. Those names remained classified until now: Ben Hu, Yu Ping, and Yan Zhu.

So this has been known in classified documents ... for years!

4. Ben Hu works under Shi Zhengli at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Gain of function = "modifying coronaviruses so they can bind to human cells" meaning infect them.

5. The United States poured over $1 million into research at the WIV for researchers working under Shi Zhengli, who was a contractor to Peter Daszak EcoHealth Alliance.

FYI: It's ridiculous that people keep goading China to become transparent. Open the books at NIH & USAID!

6. The media has gaslighted us for years about WIV. Here's NY Times @carlzimmer praising Shi Zhengli: "her accomplishments and foresight are exactly what we need if we want to stop more coronaviruses...."

Zimmer went on to write years of misleading NYT articles on virus research

7. Here's another example of media gaslighting.

Buzzfeed's @paldhous smeared @WhiteCoatWaste last year as "right wing." Does this term even mean anything anymore? Again #scicom writers write, they don't report.

W/o @WhiteCoatWaste we wouldn't have these documents.

8. As for Ben Hu's USAID money.... as I reported last year, USAID officials illegally redirected some virus grant money to a new thing called The Global Virome Project that is headed up by a former USAID official, Peter Daszak of EcoHealth, and academics at UC Davis.

9. CBS News reported this March that much of that USAID virus money was likely contract fraud.

I have confirmed that the Inspector General of USAID has a criminal investigation into this matter.

10. You can read the WSJ piece here: wsj.com/articles/u-s-f…

FINAL: NIH didn't respond to WSJ for comments, nor did Peter Daszak.

Both NIH and Daszak only respond to friendly #scicomm writers.