"The EcoHealth Alliance is a nongovernmental research group that focuses on emerging diseases caused by human and animal interactions. The National Institutes of Health has consistently funded the organization for projects since at least 2002.
In 2014, the NIH approved a grant to EcoHealth Alliance designated for research into “Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence.” The project involved collaborating with researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology to study coronaviruses in bats and the risk of potential transfer to humans.
The original five-year grant was reapproved by the Trump administration in July 2019. In total, $3,378,896 in NIH funding was directed from the government to the project.
The project, which was established “to understand what factors allow coronaviruses, including close relatives to SARS, to evolve and jump into the human population,” yielded 20 scientific reports on how zoonotic diseases may transfer from bats to humans.
Over the course of the two grants approved by the NIH for EcoHealth Alliance, the Wuhan Institute received about $600,000 from the NIH, according to Robert Kessler, a spokesperson for EcoHealth Alliance. The funding was a fee for the collection and analysis of viral samples.
In the grant approved in 2014, about $133,000 was sent to the institute in the first four years and about $66,000 in the past year. In the second grant approved in 2019, about $76,000 was budgeted for the Wuhan Institute, though no money was sent before the grant's termination."
[...]
"The projects funded by the Obama and Trump administrations produced research that highlighted the risk of an outbreak like SARS-CoV-2 in southern China.
The abstract proposal for the project cited concerns that a disease like SARS-CoV, or the earlier SARS outbreak, would arise from the region. "
Fact check: Obama administration did not send $3.7M to Wuhan lab (usatoday.com)
During the Senate committee hearing under questioning by Paul Ryan, Fauci denied that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) or National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) funded so-called "gain of function" research by the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
What is Gain of Function Research?:
“Gain-of-function” is the euphemism for biological research aimed at increasing the virulence and lethality of pathogens and viruses. GoF research is government funded; its focus is on enhancing the pathogens’ ability to infect different species and to increase their deadly impact as airborne pathogens and viruses. Ostensibly, GoF research is conducted for biodefense purposes. These experiments, however, are extremely dangerous. Those deadly science-enhanced pathogens can, and do escape into the community where they infect and kill people. What’s more, this line of research can be used for biological warfare.
What is Gain-of-Function Research & Who is at High Risk? - Alliance for Human Research Protection (ahrp.org)
The project being funded by the
EcoHealth Alliance by way of the NIH was not "gain of function" research. Thus Fauci did not lie to Senator Ryan. If you read
the abstract proposal for the project, there is nothing in there that involves modifying or enhancing the virus samples collected. It is possible, though not probable, that one of the viral samples collected, infected a lab worker, perhaps through a cut. It is also possible, if they were housing infected bats, that a lab worker may have been bitten - I don't know if they housed infected bats. It is also highly possible that COVID-19 was already active in the population of Wuhan Province, since China tends to be the source of these diseases. Is it possible that the Wuhan lab was also doing "gain of function" research, separately from the project being funded? It's possible. Who knows what research the Chinese government is funding? The Wuhan Institute of Virology is only level 4 biosafety lab in China, so if such research is being done anywhere in China, it would be at that lab.
At any rate, trying to hang Fauci and effectively blame him for the outbreak is essentially convicting him on the most flimsy of circumstantial evidence. There was nothing Frankenstein-like in researching how these coronaviruses may transfer to human populations from bats. This zoonotic transfer of coronavirus has happened before, with the SARS outbreak in 2002-2004 and MERS in 2012. The research is carried out in China, because that's where the bats live and where these viruses tend to originate.