The families of 4 people who died from COVID-19—along with a 5th man injured by the virus—have initiated a lawsuit against Manhattan-based non-profit EcoHealth Alliance, Inc. and its president, Peter Daszak.
The defendants are accused of “researching, funding and creating the SARS-CoV-2 virus and releasing it, either intentionally or accidentally,” through gain-of-function research on bat coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology—which is located in the same Chinese city where COVID-19 was first detected in the populace in 2019.
The lawsuit, which was filed on August 2, alleges that EcoHealth Alliance and its president were “well aware” of the danger the virus represented, “including the potential of causing a worldwide pandemic.”
“EcoHealth and Daszak, individually and collectively … chose to engage … in dangerous coronavirus research presenting foreseeable and unreasonable risks of harm to others, ” the suit alleges, even though they “owed a general duty of ordinary care to the plaintiffs and to the public generally.”
The suit accuses EcoHealth and Mr. Daszak of failing to ensure adequate safety measures were in place—as well as of conspiring to cover up the origins of the outbreak.
The document also asserts that further defendants—”Jane and John Does #1 through #100″—had “conspired to cover up both the research, creation and release [of the virus], whether accidental or intentional, thus causing Plaintiffs to suffer serious injuries and death.”
The suit alleges these “Jane and John Does” include “governments, government officials, military personnel, scientists, professors, hospital organizations, hospitals, medical providers, elected officials, and other individuals who conspired with” EcoHealth and Mr. Daszak.
The “Jane and John Does” are then alleged to have “conspired to increase the likelihood of death” in those infected with COVID-19 by following certain protocols, which included “the use of Remdesivir, Dexamethasone, Fentanyl, and Midazolam combined with other forms of sedation and eventual intubation”—with the sedation and intubation involving the patients’ being “restrained.”
Conspiracy ‘To Increase The Likelihood Of Death’
“If we had known the source or origin of this virus and had not been misled that it was from a pangolin in a wet market, and rather we knew that it was a genetically manipulated virus, and that the scientists involved were concealing that from our clients, the outcome could have been very different,” Patricia Finn, the alleged victims’ attorney, told the New York Post.
The lawsuit was initiated by the families of Mary Conroy, of Pennsylvania; Emma D. Holley, of Rochester, New York; Larry Carr, of Crossville, Tennessee; and Raul Osuna, of Bennington, Nebraska. The families are seeking unspecified damages. The suit also alleges that Pennsylvania man and plaintiff Paul Rinker also suffered serious injury from being infected with the virus.
“[The families of the deceased] are definitely in mourning, but moreover they’re enraged because the truth of what really happened appears to be coming forward,” Ms. Finn added.
Subsequent lawsuits were also filed by Ms. Finn against EcoHealth and Mr. Daszak in Nassau and Rockland Counties on behalf of families of four other people killed by the virus, as well as two who survived.
“This particular case is highly offensive because it appears they knew and concealed the origin of the virus. The treatment or approach taken in dealing with the virus could have been radically different than it was,” Ms. Finn said.
According to a June report (pdf) by the Government Accountability Office, EcoHealth Alliance gave over $1.4 million dollars to the Wuhan Institute of Virology. This money initially originated from the National Institutes of Health.
A separate investigation further revealed that several more millions of dollars may have been funneled to the Wuhan-based research institutions by U.S. government agencies via EcoHealth, according to the Post.
Furthermore, EcoHealth reportedly received a grant of nearly $600,000 in May to conduct further studies on coronavirus transmission from wildlife to humans, ZeroHedge reported.
The grant to EcoHealth was initially awarded by Dr. Anthony Fauci’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) in 2014. It was terminated by then President Donald Trump in 2020 before being reinstated under the Biden administration.
A total of nearly $4 million was paid by the NIAID to EcoHealth over five years to effectively reverse engineer and genetically manipulate bat coronaviruses, according to The Epoch Times.
