American tax dollars spent on... creating COVID-19?

Last year, some Republicans floated the idea that the Coronavirus leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China. Those claims were promptly dismissed by the media and social media as conspiracy theory nonsense. Turns out, some may have been too quick to dismiss the theory.

Investigations are ongoing, but it seems that American tax dollars funded a National Institute of Health grant that was being used at that very Institute in China. Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) recently introduced an amendment to the Endless Frontier Act which states that the NIH cannot fund what is known as “gain-of-function” research.

This is important because “gain-of-function” research is defined as “research involv[ing] experimentation that aims or is expected to (and/or, perhaps, actually does) increase the transmissibility and/or virulence of pathogens.”

If all of this is true, American tax dollars were sent to a Chinese laboratory, where they did research on a virus and potentially made it much more transmissible. And that very same virus sidelined American businesses for over a year.

We can only hope that the US Government does more research to see if this theory is true - and that they ensure that American tax dollars aren’t being spent in such a reckless manner going forward.