Well, ain’t that a kicker? Ready for the next pandemic?

The EcoHealth Alliance, the group that funded gain-of-function research that could well have led to the COVID-19 outbreak, just got a grant renewal from the National Institutes of Health to study coronavirus outbreaks. The very same grant that Trump got canceled for obvious reasons.

A great injustice, that was.

The Biden Administration has renewed it, and the EcoHealt Alliance is shouting from the rooftops how wonderful it is that they are back in the Coronavirus business.

No, I am not joking.

This effectively lifts the suspension on our grant that involved collaboration in China w/ Wuhan Institute of Virology, & was terminated on April 2020 ‘for convenience’. 2/https://t.co/veKjYpTso4

— Peter Daszak (@PeterDaszak) May 8, 2023

I guess the destruction that COVID-19 and the government’s response wasn’t apocalyptic enough, so it’s time for round 2.

It’s no coincidence that this is happening just as Biden finally let the COVID “emergency” lapse after 3 years. No, I am not saying that they are cooking up another virus in Wuhan to get the ball rolling again, although God knows I wouldn’t put it past them given how destructive all their other policies are.

Especially since COVID was very very good for the Elite. The laptop class made bank, power shifted dramatically to the federal government, and the World Health Organization is getting extraordinary powers that will soon override national authorities. COVID proved that the strategic use of public health authorities and information control gives totalitarian powers to the people who wield them.

So I doubt that the Biden crowd would cry many tears if another pandemic came along at a politically useful time.

Still, I am not quite that cynical yet. I suspect that this is just Establishment types shoveling money into their friends’ pockets.

At the very least this shows that no matter how reckless and destructive one’s actions are–and nobody can deny that the EcoHealth Alliance funded illegal gain-of-function research in Wuhan, violating the terms of its grant–you can still get rewarded if you are friends with the right people.

Its termination was widely condemned because 1) our award fit NIAID’s & NIH’s stated goals; 2) it was independently reviewed & ranked in top 3% of proposals; 3) its specific aims targeted exactly the type of events that led to COVID-19 pandemic. 19/ https://t.co/eLbpOvAb1n

— Peter Daszak (@PeterDaszak) May 8, 2023

Still, we don’t have to assign evil motives to the powers that be to understand what is happening here. The EcoHealth Alliance is extremely well-connected and has been a useful conduit for directing largesse to the friends of the bureaucrats who run our lives. Trump temporarily slowed the flow of taxpayer dollars to this organization (they still got other money from the feds), so restoring the funding as quickly as possible became a regime imperative.

When I read the announcement last night I literally laughed out loud about how absurd this is. My wife thought I was going hysterical, I laughed so hard.

No, I don’t think it’s funny that our “leaders” are this reckless, arrogant, and possibly clueless–assuming that cluelessness really is at work.

But it is absurd that we are expected to be gleeful, as Peter Daszek is, about the old order that created such disaster being back. I immediately imagined this scene from Annie Hall.

The EcoHealth Alliance is Duane. Woody Allen is the American people. And Annie’s parents are the bureaucrats who blithely put us into the hands of a psychopath.

Daszek and his organization funded the origins of COVID, either through funding the careless lab that leaked the virus, or even worse funding the gain-of-function research that created it. It is implausible that this virus emerged in Wuhan without at some level going through the lab, and everybody knows that, and everybody knows that EcoHealth Alliance funds the Bat Lady of Wuhan.

Theirs were the actions of a psychopath.

Yet the Biden Administration still put “Duane” in charge of getting us to the airport. They have to finish their drink.