Fauci was really careful with wording there. It’s pretty well established GOF research was going on in Wuhan.
Funny is he said he funded the eco guys, not China. As someone who has worked with a $15 million dollar grant for a regional economic recovery plan on the Philippines, we weren’t technically funded by USAID. The university was and they contracted us.
The grant they were specifically talking about was a genomic sequencing deal. You don’t pressure a virus to evolve like you would with gain of function. Instead you monitor it and watch it evolve on its own. I don’t think we have a paper trail yet that shows a grant issued to Americans, who then contracted with Wuhan for GOF on bat coronavirus, and then it broke out.
What we have instead are numerous grants to Americans for GOF research. We also know Wuhan worked on bat corona viruses. Odds are money found it’s way there, which is why Fauci is being so specific in his wording. And it’s why we need to really investigate this. If our tax money is going to shitty labs doing dangerous research, that is a fucking massive problem.