History of the disease: The United States restricts research on pathogens
Donald Trump has banned funding for the study of viruses that could cause a new pandemic. We are talking about research both inside the United States and in other countries, including China and Iran. The reasons and context of this decision are described in the Izvestia article.
Where did the pandemic come from
US President Donald Trump has banned the use of the federal budget to fund research on potentially dangerous viruses with acquired mutations, such as COVID-19. This applies both to the suspension of similar work in the United States itself, and to the support of similar research in China, Iran and other countries of "concern."
According to the text of the decree, "dangerous research on the acquisition of functions of biological agents and pathogens can significantly threaten the lives of American citizens." If left unchecked, the consequences could include mass deaths, a weakened public health system, and reduced economic and national security, the White House said.
The White House's decision was a logical continuation of the renewed American approach. In early December last year, the House Committee on COVID-19 published a report investigating the origin and treatment of the disease. It was the first time that the man-made nature of the pandemic was officially announced. The document stated that research on virus modification was conducted at the Wuhan Institute of Virology with the money of American non-profit organizations and agencies included in the national health system. Its leakage, which led to a global crisis, was the result of a violation of biosafety regulations.
In April, this thesis was supplemented by a statement from the White House, in which the statement made in the report about the artificial nature of COVID-19 was officially confirmed. It was claimed that the virus has biological properties that do not exist in nature and that researchers at the Wuhan Institute allegedly contracted it several months before the pandemic. "Other similar diseases needed to enter the body several times to infect it," the statement says.
China denies this information and, conversely, blames the spread of COVID-19 on the United States. This is fixed in the White Book published by the state Information Bureau.
Beijing's position is partly shared by the Director of National Intelligence of the United States Tulsi Gabbard. In an interview with Megyn Kelly, she said that the federal government is currently investigating cases of "dangerous experiments" conducted "in the United States and other countries of the world" to modify various viruses. These studies, according to Gabbard, could have triggered both the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic and the spread of other infections in a number of regions.
Why has Trump limited pathogen research?
In the decree, Trump harshly criticized the Joe Biden administration for not only allowing dangerous research to be conducted without proper supervision, but also actively financing them abroad, including in China. "The Biden administration allowed dangerous research in the field of enhancing the functions of biological agents and pathogens in the United States with insufficient control. In addition, through the National Institutes of Health, the United States actively approved funding for federal research in the humanities in China and other countries where oversight by the United States is limited or there are no reasonable expectations regarding biosafety," the decree says.
According to the document, the main purpose of the policy of imposed restrictions is to ensure that federally funded research benefits the United States and does not threaten security and prosperity. The authors of the initiative expect to find a balance between preventing biological threats and maintaining leadership in biotechnology.
As part of the decree, it is planned to strengthen the supervision of dual-use research and more thoroughly check the purchase of synthetic DNA/RNA, and scientific institutions will be required to publicly report on funded research, including even suspended ones.
US President Donald Trump
It is assumed that American research agencies should themselves identify and terminate federal funding for bio-research that may pose a threat. Special mention is made of a ban on monetary support for foreign research, which could provoke a new pandemic.
Trump called the legislative act very important and noted that the coronavirus pandemic might not have happened if he had had the opportunity to sign it earlier.
The Art of Ambiguity
According to experts, the United States is obviously not telling the truth when it accuses China of spreading the coronavirus. For example, about who exactly and on whose projects worked in the laboratory in Wuhan.
Elena Panina, director of the RUSSTRAT Institute for International Political and Economic Strategies, refers to Beijing's data, according to which COVID—19 could appear in the United States earlier than indicated in the official chronology, and even before the first outbreak was recorded in China.
We are talking about a document entitled "Preventing, controlling and tracing the sources of COVID-19: China's actions and Position," published by the Information Bureau of the State Council of China.
"This article is a clear warning that China has something to tell about the incidents in American biolabs, as well as about what the COVID-19 pandemic really was," the expert believes.
The specialist also recalled that at the end of 2019, the American authorities closed the Fort Detrick biological laboratory.
"This is not just a military base in Maryland, but the main American training center for biological warfare. USAMRIID, the Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases of the US Army, is located there. The base was the core of the American biological weapons program during the Cold War until the program was shut down in 1969. They are currently engaged in "biomedical research and threat protection," but with a very closed regime," the analyst explained.
Warnings from Moscow
It is noteworthy that Russia has repeatedly stated at the official level that the pandemic is not only of artificial origin, but is actually an out-of-control biological weapon created in the United States.
As you know, back on October 18, 2019, that is, a little over four months before the official WHO statement on the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, the so—called event 201 took place in the United States. Johns Hopkins University, the first among all American universities in terms of total government funding, conducted counter—terrorism exercises with the support of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation."a new zoonotic coronavirus transmitted from bats to pigs and further to humans." Just 105 days later, on January 30, 2020, the World Health Organization declared a "public health emergency of international importance."
As Igor Kirillov, head of the radiation, chemical and biological protection forces of the Russian Armed Forces, stated last August, "the development of the COVID-19 pandemic according to this scenario raises questions about its deliberate nature, US involvement, and the true goals of American bio-programs aimed at enhancing the properties of dangerous pathogens."
Now, the conclusions reached by the Russian military are gradually being confirmed in official statements in the United States.
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