Anthony Fauci, longtime director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), was apparently well aware that the Chinese government was withholding crucial information about the coronavirus as far back as January 2020.
The Epoch Times reports that new documents uncovered by Judicial Watch reveal communications between NIAID and their Chinese counterparts which signal that the American agency actively coordinated with the Chinese leading up to the pandemic, and subsequently covered up the fact that China was withholding information.
The 90 pages of communications records, obtained via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, reveal that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) had been sending “experts” from the University of Texas Medical Branch to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) to train Chinese technicians in “lab management and maintenance” about two years before the pandemic started.
One such email from January 8th, 2020, sent by the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, was titled “PRC Response to Pneumonia Cases Shows Increased Transparency Over Past Outbreaks, but Gaps in Epidemiological Data Remain.” The email was circulated by staff at both NIAID and NIH.
“Hi, here is the cable from US Embassy Beijing reporting on the pneumonia outbreak in Wuhan, China,” the email says, written by Dr. Ping Chen, NIAID’s top official in China. “It has ruled out SARS, MERS, and flu. [Redacted] confirmed it is viral infection.”
But in the email, officials from the embassy clearly state that they were worried about the “lack of epidemiological data,” which they said hindered their ability to produce a more comprehensive risk assessment, which in turn prevented them from planning a more appropriate response from public health officials. The officials pointed out that “gaps in details information” and “lack of a final confirmed pathogen” made it “difficult to assess at this time” whether or not the situation presented a greater threat to the United State and the world.
The email notes that the lack of information is due to direct control over the information by Chinese government officials.
“The flow of official PRC information on this outbreak is limited to that coming from the Wuhan Health Commission and National Health Commission,” the email continues. “China CDC is referring queries to the three official notices issued to-date by the Wuhan Health Commission.”
This and other similar correspondences in the latest data dump further indicate that prior accusations of corruption on Fauci’s part were most likely true. Fauci had previously come under heavy fire for repeatedly stating under oath that NIAID had never provided “gain-of-function research” funding to the Wuhan lab, as such funding may have directly contributed to the experiments that led to the creation of COVID-19. But additional documents and testimony eventually confirmed that Fauci’s NIAID had, in fact, provided such gain-of-function funding to Wuhan in the years prior to COVID.