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Comment by xenophonf | Hacker News Reader

For a measly $120k grant, I doubt Fauci was involved in the award whatsoever.

EcoHealth secured a NIAID grant of roughly $3.7 million, which it allocated in part to various entities engaged in collecting bat samples, building models, and performing gain-of-function experiments to see which animal viruses were able to jump to humans.

It was a $3.7million dollar grant to EcoHealth Alliance, which I wouldn't doubt he was involved with. $600,000 was sent from EcoHealth to Wuhan Institute of Virology.

...except Peter Daszak, the president of EcoHealth, took it upon himself to thank Fauci for pushing the "natural causes" narrative - https://foxbaltimore.com/news/nation-world/new-emails-reveal...

More explanation of that here... https://youtu.be/jMr-fGmRGco?t=246

That's not all that big of a grant. It's roughly twice the standard NIH R01. I can't imagine the head of NIAID being directly involved in that.

He has now been called in to testify in front of congress on it ... twice. However insignificant the dollar amount, knowing the details of it is his job.

On its face, That’s an absurd statement. NIH offers Very small grants for fellowships ... should he know about those too?

If congress starts calling him to the floor about those fellowships, he'd better make sure to know about those too, yes.

Ultimately yes - but not at grant time, just like how a CEO is responsible for everything in a company either directly or indirectly. Shit flows up, he may not be personally involved in the decision but he absolutely has to be briefed on it (or know who to ask) if things go sideways so he can answer to Congress/President (just like a CEO to the board).

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