[caddemon]

Yes they were, NIH grants went to WIV. Here is a government science website saying as much: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/search/research-news/9563/

It went through a non-profit, but trust me there is careful accounting of where money goes with NIH grants, there is no way the government was not aware that some of it's money was funding research at WIV. Especially because they suspended the funding once COVID blew up, per that article.

The commenter was implying the info didn't come from real intelligence but is actually a fabricated leak. I saw the other reply about Iraq and thought the implication was the US wanted to mislead about this, but it indeed could be another country.

[cratermoon]

Note that the NIH funding was cancelled under the Trump administration. That administration also attacked its own public health officials, denied the science, catastrophically failed in its response, and was generally incompetent. There's no reason to believe the cancellation was anything other than posturing for political reasons, coming from an Oval Office that never stopped referring to COVID-19 as the "Chinese Virus" while pushing hydroxychloroquine and suggesting that a cure was as simple as shoving a flashlight up your butt while drinking bleach.

[caddemon]

I never made a comment one way or the other about whether the cancellation was logical, I was just responding to the claim that there was no funding to begin with.