Dr. Fauci is being heavily criticized by conservative media outlets since discovery that that he has a hand in the funding of the research facility suspected to be responsible for the outbreak of COVID-19. The Wuhan lab received $3.7 million for a 5-year research project to study coronaviruses found in bats.
Various media outlets have made remarks that it would not be unreasonable to assume the Obama administration funding the research facility could have led to the current pandemic. Attorney Rudy Giuliani made a Tweet stating “Why did the US (NIH) in 2017 give $3.7m to the Wuhan Lab in Chine? Such grants were prohibited in 2014. Did Pres. Obama grant an exception?”
While that could potentially sound like a great idea, it doesn’t entirely fit the agenda. Based on a fact check by Snopes.com, “However, not all of that $3.7 million went to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and not all of the funding took place under the Obama administration. Approximately $700,000 of the $3.7 million total was approved under Donald Trump.”. Therefor the Trump administration would be partially responsible for the outbreak as well.
According to the project information, the funding for the project was not for Coronavirus specifically. The funding was for “Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence Novel zoonotic, bat-origin CoV’s are a significant threat to global health and food security, as the cause of SARS in China in 2002, the ongong outbreak of MERS, and a newly emerged Swine Acute Diarrhea Syndrome in China.”
All of the evidence that is available does not suggest that COVID-19 has been manipulated in any fashion. Some experts have said that it is possible but not likely and does not appear to be. The funding appears to be for global biosecurity with the US included.
The abstract states that the research is to test the “spillover potential” in order for the facility to make advances in medicine. The goal was to develop future public health interventions to prevent the re-emergence of SARS or SARSr-CoV.
