According to Vanity Fair, there were covert alerts regarding the Wuhan Institute of Virology prior to the pandemic.

Newsmax reports that a National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) representative from the United States visited the WIV to observe work being done on China’s first biosafety level 4 (BSL-4) laboratory. Vanity Fair reported that scientists would be able to study some of the most deadly pathogens in the world in this lab, which was to be run with the strictest safety protocols.

Western governments seeking a closer collaboration with China’s elite scientists funded the project. To support coronavirus research, NIAID provided grant funds via the EcoHealth Alliance, a U.S. organization.

The funding arrangement made it possible for the U.S. embassy in Beijing’s NIAID official to visit the lab.

In emails that Vanity Fair was able to obtain, the NIAID official informed her superiors that the lab was not operating at full capacity and that it was having trouble cultivating staff expertise. According to Vanity Fair, the tour guide at the lab doubled as a technician, providing the information.

“According to [the technician], being the first P4 [or BSL-4] lab in the country, they have to learn everything from zero,” she wrote in her letter. “They rely on those scientists who have worked in P4 labs outside China to train the other scientists how to operate.”

According to the NIAID official, the lab’s scientists were investigating the possibility of engineering Ebola through a process known as reverse genetics, after being unable to carry out research on the disease due to government regulations.

She went on to say: “I don’t want the information particularly using reverse genetics to create viruses to get out, which would affect the ability for our future information gain.”

The NIAID official expressed shock at what the technician said about reverse engineering Ebola in an email dated January 10, 2018.

“I was shocked to hear what he [the technician] said [about reverse engineering Ebola]. I also worry the reaction of people in Washington when they read this. The technician is only a worker, not a decision maker nor a [principal investigator]. So how much we should believe what he said?” She concluded, “I don’t feel comfortable for broader audience within the government circle. It could be very sensitive.”

The official’s statement was supported by F. Gray Handley, who was NIAID’s associate director for international research affairs at the time. He told her, “As we discussed. Take that comment down.”

David Relman, a microbiologist at Stanford University, claims that “reverse engineering Ebola has created a platform that allows you to do a million different things with Ebola, or anything you call Ebola.” It implies that you can now create any variation or Ebola-like structure at will.”

Details from the NIAID official’s tour were included in an unclassified cable released by the U.S. embassy in Beijing on January 19, according to Vanity Fair.

An unredacted copy of the report stated that WIV scientists had discovered a “serious shortage of appropriately trained technicians and investigators needed to safely operate” the lab.

According to an unredacted copy obtained by Vanity Affair, it stated that WIV scientists had discovered a “serious shortage of appropriately trained technicians and investigators needed to safely operate” the lab. What her NIAID colleagues seemed to find most alarming was absent from the cable.

After an NIH spokesperson voiced concerns about the NIAID official’s safety, Vanity Fair declined to reveal her identity.

According to a report that was declassified in June, U.S. intelligence agencies did not discover any concrete proof linking an incident at WIV to the COVID-19 pandemic, as reported by Reuters.

The U.S. intelligence community had not been able to determine the origins of the pandemic and could not completely rule out the possibility that the virus originated in a laboratory, according to a four-page report published by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI).

“The Central Intelligence Agency and another agency remain unable to determine the precise origin of the COVID-19 pandemic, as both (natural and lab) hypotheses rely on significant assumptions or face challenges with conflicting reporting,” the report from the ODNI stated.

{Matzav.com}