WATCH: NIH Director Sings ‘Over The Rainbow’ To Praise Himself, Health Officials, Insist Pandemic Isn’t Over | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Publisher's Note: This older, but yet to be published post is finally being presented now as an archivable history of the current events of these days that will become the real history of tomorrow.

Publisher's Note: This post appears here courtesy of the The Daily Wire. The author of this post is Hank Berrien.

    In a completely self-indulgent moment, Francis Collins, the outgoing director of the National Institutes of Health, sang a version of the iconic song "Over the Rainbow" with lyrics in which he seemingly refused to acknowledge there are swaths of America that have moved on beyond the pandemic and praised HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra, who interviewed him, for being a "partner" who "will help to make the pathway clear to find true healing." Collins also trumpeted himself and other health officials in the government, singing, "Somewhere past the pandemic we'll hug our friends and thank the people and science that brought the pandemic's end."

    In his preamble, Collins stated, "And now, if you'll indulge me, because it's been kind of promoted as if it might be a grand finale of a musical sort, I guess I'd like to play us out with a little song. So, if I might, I just need a microphone. Why, there's a guitar right here. How about that? Ah, yeah, this is a song where the tune will be familiar to you, unless you came from another planet recently."

    Then he stated that Americans were not past the pandemic, continuing, "But the words are going to be quite different, because this really is a song for you, a song for all of us who have been going through this pandemic and trying to imagine how it's going to feel when we're finally past that. What will that be like? We are gonna get there, and you are going to help us get there. So that's what this is about."

    He sang these lyrics:

    Somewhere past the pandemic when we're free

    There's a life I remember full of activity

    Somewhere past the pandemic, masks will come off

    No more need for a nose swab every time we cough

    As we are gathered here today

    COVID's toll has hit and sent us reeling

    But partners like the ones right here

    Will help to make the pathway clear

    To find true healing

    Somewhere past the pandemic life will resume

    We'll all complain about the traffic

    Forgetting how we hated Zoom

    Somewhere past the pandemic we'll hug our friends

    And thank the people and science that brought the pandemic's end

    My dozen years are almost through

    But it's been great to work with you

    Let's end COVID now

   

    Last June, The Daily Wire reported that the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), led by Collins, deleted gene sequences of SARS-CoV-2 during the early days of the coronavirus pandemic after being asked to do so by Chinese scientists.

    "The removal of the sequencing data is described in a new paper posted online Tuesday by Jesse Bloom, a virologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle," The Wall Street Journal reported. "The paper, which hasn't been peer reviewed, says the missing data include sequences from virus samples collected in the Chinese city of Wuhan in January and February of 2020 from patients hospitalized with or suspected of having Covid-19."

    As reported by The Daily Wire, "The NIH confirmed to The Wall Street Journal that it deleted the gene sequences in June 2020 after they had been submitted three months earlier. This came months after serious questions had been raised about the origins of the pandemic inside China and whether China was being transparent about what was really going on. The NIH said, 'Submitting investigators hold the rights to their data and can request withdrawal of the data.'''

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