The media ignored a very fateful event in the waning days of the Obama administration

© Provided by Washington Examiner A worker in protective suit wipes his face shield at a coronavirus testing side in Beijing, Monday, Dec. 5, 2022. China is easing some of the world's most stringent anti-virus controls and authorities say new variants are weaker. But they have yet to say when they might end a "zero-COVID" strategy that confines millions of people to their homes and set off protests and demands for President Xi Jinping to resign. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)

Independent journalist Mike McCormick served as a White House stenographer during the Obama administration, an experience that provided him with both insider knowledge and a unique perspective. In a recent Substack post, McCormick questioned why, less than two weeks prior to former President Donald Trump’s inauguration, the Obama administration chose to give the “green light” to lift the moratorium on federal funding for gain-of-function research, or research intended to increase the lethality or the transmissibility of a pathogen.

In the process, he exposed some fateful developments, largely unreported by the press, that occurred in the weeks before former President Barack Obama handed over the reins to his successor.

Heretofore, Obama appeared throughout his presidency (at least publicly) to be leery of the risks associated with GOF research. His concern grew after a series of “biosafety incidents” had occurred at government research facilities. And in October 2014, his administration announced a pause on all funding of GOF research, during which they would conduct an assessment of its “potential risks and benefits.”

This “deliberative process” ended on Jan. 9, 2017, when the White House Office of Science and Technology set in motion the events that would lift the moratorium on funding later that year.

“Today, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) is releasing ‘Recommended Policy Guidance for Departmental Development of Review Mechanisms for Potential Pandemic Pathogen Care and Oversight (P3CO).’ Adoption of these recommendations will satisfy the requirements for lifting the current moratorium on certain life sciences research that could enhance a pathogen’s virulence and/or transmissibility to produce a potential pandemic pathogen (an enhanced PPP). [Emphasis added.]

Issuance of this policy guidance concludes the deliberative process launched in October 2014 by OSTP and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).”

This stunning announcement received little or no press coverage. By that time, the media’s obsession with taking down Trump and painting him as an agent of Russia was dominating the news cycle.

The NIH’s decision to start funding GOF research again suddenly should have set off national alarms, especially since it ran counter to warnings from the scientific community. In a November 2015 report on GOF published in the science journal Nature, scientists concluded that “building chimeric viruses based on circulating strains [is] too risky to pursue, as increased pathogenicity in mammalian models cannot be excluded.”

The recommendation to end the moratorium also flew in the face of what Obama’s Homeland Security adviser, Lisa Monaco, considered “one of the gravest risks for the new administration”: the emergence of an “infectious disease.” The President’s Council of Advisers on Science and Technology similarly sent a letter to Obama just days after Trump’s victory warning him of the very real threat of biological attack. The 16-page letter explicitly warned that the “modification of pathogens to overcome existing immunity or to be resistant to available drugs.” In other words, GOF posed a serious threat to national security.

Despite these warnings, the National Institutes of Health lifted the pause on GOF funding in December 2017 — conveniently placing responsibility for this unfortunate decision on Trump.

Just four days later, White House officials conducted a tabletop exercise with their incoming Trump administration counterparts. The topic? How to respond to “the worst influenza pandemic since 1918.”

The similarities of this fictitious scenario with the pandemic that would devastate the world less than three years later are staggering. During the White House exercise, participants were asked to imagine that a highly transmissible respiratory virus was already raging in London, Seoul, and Jakarta. Medical service providers in affected areas were overwhelmed and some travel bans had already been implemented in this hypothetical.

Little did they know that this hypothetical would soon become the world’s reality.

In China, a U.S. team of scientists led by Dr. Ralph Baric, a well-known University of North Carolina virologist and professor, and a Chinese team led by Dr. Shi Zhengli, the director of the Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, better known as the “batwoman,” were collaborating on a project that is now well known. In the end, they “created a modified coronavirus that was shown to be able to latch on to human cells and replicate in lung cells, efficiently enough to cause a pandemic.”

The NIH’s quiet and inexplicable decision allowed then-Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Dr. Anthony Fauci to direct funds to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a lab known for its inadequate safety practices, where Baric and Zhengli’s COVID research was taking place. Keep in mind: Zhengli herself was an author of the report that had recently concluded the COVID experiments were “too risky to pursue.” Yet our government sent hundreds of thousands of dollars to the WIV anyway.

McCormick called this “Obama’s poison pill,” a characterization I initially considered to be alarmist. I’ve changed my mind. After looking at the timeline, I find it appropriate.

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Elizabeth Stauffer is a contributor to the Washington Examiner and the Western Journal. Her articles have appeared at MSN, RedState, Newsmax, the Federalist, and RealClearPolitics. Follow her on Twitter or LinkedIn.

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Tags: Opinion, Beltway Confidential, Blog Contributors, Opinion, Barack Obama, NIH, Coronavirus

Original Author: Elizabeth Stauffer

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