RESTART and resurgence will be the result.....

When 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley recently sought to report on the origin of the novel coronavirus sweeping the globe, producer Ashley Velie pointed him to Dr. Peter Daszak, a disease ecologist whose work in sampling and researching coronaviruses in wildlife has helped identify potentially dangerous emerging diseases in humans.

But this time, Daszak's story took an unexpected turn. Shortly after Pelley finished interviewing him last month about COVID-19's origin, the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) abruptly canceled a five-year, $3.7 million grant supporting his research. Pelley and Velie had a new story to report and returned to Daszak for a second interview. 

Several U.S. officials, including Florida Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz, had raised suspicions about the Wuhan Institute of Virology, one of Daszak's key collaborators in China. When a reporter mischaracterized key details of the NIH grant during a White House press conference last month, President Trump said he would check if any U.S. funds had been granted to the Wuhan Institute, and if so, he said, they would immediately be terminated. 

But the $3.7 million grant was not given to the Wuhan Institute. It had been awarded to Daszak's New York-based organization, EcoHealth Alliance. A week after President Trump said the funds would be terminated in China, the NIH took action against EcoHealth Alliance, giving the organization no reason for the grant's termination. Ending an NIH grant usually requires a full investigation and proof of an egregious action like scientific or financial fraud—neither of which applied to EcoHealth Alliance.