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FTR #1113 This program was recorded in one, 60-minute segment.
FTR #1114 This program was recorded in one, 60-minute segment.
Introduction: The first program begins with review of the conclusion of FTR #1112, noting the repetitive, drumroll of articles about the economic effects of the coronavirus on the Chinese, U.S. and global economy, this in the context of Steve Bannon’s links to Guo Wengui, J. Kyle Bass and–through Bass–to Tommy Hicks, Jr. (This was covered at length and in detail in FTR #‘s 1111 and 1112.)
Steve Bannon–one of the luminaries of the “Alt-Right,” and a former key Trump aide–is centrally involved in the anti-China effort. Note Bannon’s role in the “Get China” movement and the manner in which Washington is being possessed by this: ” . . . . Fear of China has spread across the government, from the White House to Congress to federal agencies, where Beijing’s rise is unquestioningly viewed as an economic and national security threat and the defining challenge of the 21st century. ‘These are two systems that are incompatible,’ Mr. Bannon said of the United States and China. ‘One side is going to win, and one side is going to lose.’ . . . .”
Next, the program undertakes a review of circumstances that suggest the possibility of investor activity by people linked to Steve Bannon, who is at the epicenter of the anti-China effort. Bannon has been the beneficiary of the enormous wealth of the brilliant, eccentric investor Robert Mercer. Mercer has used AI-directed investment projection to afford a 70% return for his hedge fund.
We wonder if he might have had foreknowledge of the coronavirus outbreak? IF that was the case, this would have enabled him to have made a great deal of money on the torpedoing of the Chinese economy as may well be the case for J. Kyle Bass. On the other side of the coin is Mercer’s/Renaissance Technologies’ enormous investment in Gilead Pharmaceuticals.
IF Gilead’s remdesivir does prove to be the “go-to” treatment for coronavirus, that firm stands to make a great deal of money, as would Mercer/Renaissance Technologies. NB: The information from Dr. Mercola’s post should be factored in to the information about investing and the possibility of short-selling and/or other types of maneuvering to profit from this crisis. Equity markets are very responsive to suggestion, accurate or falacious. We note that the hysteria alluded to in the post by Dr. Mercola may well contribute to the steep decline in markets.
China, of course, has shut down much of its infrastructure to combat the virus. That is contributing, obviously. To what extent they, too, are responding to hysteria is an open question. We also wonder if they know something we don’t. Media have featured pictures of Chinese personnel in protective clothing fumigating public facilities. We wonder if they are protecting against rodents or other animals spreading the virus. Note the reference in the post by Dr. Mercola.
China has begun testing of Gilead’s remdesivir. IF, for the sake of argument, Gilead’s remdesivir becomes the “go-to” treatment for the coronavirus, Gilead–and Mercer–will make a great deal of money. China is a huge market and the drug will find markets elsewhere, as well. Note that a Chinese government research facility has applied for a patent on the drug.
We find it curious that American media outlets have remained silent on such a promising therapeutic regimen. Reuters reported it, as did Agence France Presse. These are major wire services. Why not American media outlets?
Indicative of the “Chicken Little journalism”–weaponzed journalism– that characterizes the U.S. news media is the lack of coverage of the American flu epidemic of 2017–2018. Contrast the statistics about the 2017–2018 flu epidemic in this country with the statistics about coronavirus. In this country, 45 million caught the flu. According to the CDC, 80,000 of them died.
Next, we read in full an Op-Ed column by Rosie Spinks–a rare island of balance and sanity in The New York Times’ coverage of this event. In addition to noting the effects of the coronavirus on the economics of the travel industry, Rosie Spinks notes the draconian reaction of the U.S. State Department. Ms. Spinks tales stock of the relatively mild nature of the virus. ” . . . . Numerous experts have said that the majority of people who contract coronavirus will experience it as a respiratory infection they will fully recover from. But the extreme reactions — the canceling of flights, closing of borders and level-four travel warnings — seem more appropriate for something much worse. . . .”
Because it screens points of entry for MERS coronavirus infection because of its citizens who make the Haj pilgrimage to Mecca, Indonesia has no recorded cases. In the column cited above, Ms. Spinks noted the effectiveness of the kind of prophylactic screening measures taken by Indonesia: ” . . . . Measures like screening at airports, quarantining cruise ships or flights with confirmed cases and isolating communities at the center of an outbreak can be effective, said Erin Sorrell, an assistant research professor at Georgetown University who studies emerging infectious diseases. . . .”
The outbreak has occurred in the context of what we have called a “Full Court Press” against China.
Headed by “ex” CIA officer William Barr, the Justice Department has charged Chinese personnel with having hacked the Equifax credit reporting agencies. The Chinese have denied this. It will be interesting to see if the U.S. deploys cyber-weaponry on Chinese computer and internet systems, as it has in Russia. In turn, it will be interesting to see if the “Full Court Press” strategy encompasses the sabotaging of Chinese nuclear power plants, Project HAARP environmental modification warfare or other draconian measures.
The CIA’s hacking tools are specifically crafted to mask CIA authorship of the attacks. Most significantly, for our the purposes of the present discussion, is the fact that the Agency’s hacking tools are engineered in such a way as to permit the authors of the event to represent themselves as Chinese. ” . . . . These tools could make it more difficult for anti-virus companies and forensic investigators to attribute hacks to the CIA. Could this call the source of previous hacks into question? It appears that yes, this might be used to disguise the CIA’s own hacks to appear as if they were Russian, Chinese, or from specific other countries. . . . This might allow a malware creator to not only look like they were speaking in Russian or Chinese, rather than in English, but to also look like they tried to hide that they were not speaking English . . . .”
Pivoting to what Mr. Emory has termed the “weaponized media coverage” of the coronavirus outbreak, we note The New York Times’ stunningly slanted coverage of the 2016 campaign.
Before discussing Allen Dulles and his relationship to The New York Times, we set forth events illustrating the fundamental place of Sullivan & Cromwell in the development of American Big Money. Both Allen Dulles and John Foster Dulles worked for Sullivan & Cromwell.
A now famous article by Carl Bernstein (of Watergate fame) focuses on CIA presence in major U.S. media. We note, here, the deep historical and political relationship between Allen Dulles and The New York Times’s Arthur Hays Sulzberger. This, again, by way of background to the weaponized coverage of the coronavirus outbreak.
In in his 1985 volume American Swastika, the late author Charles Higham provides us with insight into the Christian West concept, revealing the extent to which these SS/OSS negotiations set the template for the post-World War II world, as well as the degree of resonance that key Americans, such as Allen Dulles, had with Nazi ideology, anti-Semitism in particular. Weighing the long, profound relationship between Dulles and The Times, this is presented as something of a “navigational aid” to analysis of the weaponized coverage of the virus.
In the context of Allen Dulles’s orientation and his relationship with The New York Times, we present a look at The New York Times’ use of a Third Reich alumnus named Paul Hofmann as a foreign correspondent, serving as chief of The Times’ Rome bureau, and covering the Gray Lady’s coverage of the CIA’s participation in the overthrow of Patrice Lumumba.
The program concludes with an item presented in our landmark series of interviews with the brilliant Jim DiEugenio about Destiny Betrayed.
Nothing illustrates this country’s media and their willingness to distort information than the NBC television broadcast arranged by Walter Sheridan. Sheridan is a career intelligence officer, with relationship with the Office of Naval Intelligence, the CIA, the NSA and the FBI.
Exemplifying Sheridan’s methodology was the treatment meted out to Fred Leemans, who was the climactic person interviewed by Sheridan in his special. Note the open intimidation of Leemans and his family, threatening them if they did not perjure themselves, betray Garrison, and cooperate with both Sheridan and Clay Shaw’s counsel!
1. The first program begins with review of the conclusion of FTR #1112, noting the repetitive, drumroll of articles about the economic effects of the coronavirus on the Chinese, U.S. and global economy, this in the context of Steve Bannon’s links to Guo Wengui, J. Kyle Bass and–through Bass–to Tommy Hicks, Jr. (This was covered at length and in detail in FTR #‘s 1111 and 1112.)
. . . . The coronavirus outbreak seems defined by two opposing forces: the astonishing efficiency with which the travel industry connects the world and a political moment dominated by xenophobic rhetoric and the building of walls. . . .
. . . . The United States State Department nevertheless is denying entry to foreigners who have recently been to China, and is screening Americans who arrive home from China as well as asking them to self quarantine for 14 days. It has told Americans not to visit the country at all. British Airways, Lufthansa and all three major American carriers have halted all flights to China, while the cruise line Royal Caribbean is denying boarding to any person who has traveled to, from or through China or Hong Kong in the past 15 days. . . .
. . . . But what has motivated the response from governments? It doesn’t appear to be evidence. . . .
. . . . Coronavirus is different from other tourism disruptions in a significant way: The potential loss of tourism revenue will hurt not only China but also other countries. In the decade and a half since the SARS crisis, the number of Chinese travelers has soared, with China surpassing other nations in its volume of outbound travelers starting in 2012. In 2017, the Chinese made more than 143 million trips abroad; my colleagues at Skift Research predict that in 2029, that figure will be more than 286 million. Luxury retailers all over the world rely on Chinese travelers, and destinations develop sophisticated marketing strategies to cater to them. . . .
. . . . With the rhetoric surrounding coronavirus, however, however, it appears the astonishing growth of the Chinese travel market in the last 15 years did little to rid the industry of the impulse to treat Chinese travelers as “others” in the face of doubt and uncertainty. . . .
“Declaring Health Emergency, U.S. Restricts Travel from China” by Michael Corkery and Annie Karni; The New York Times; 2/1/2020; p. A1 [Western Edition.]
. . . . The travel restrictions and the airline’s announcements showed how rapidly concerns about the virus have escalated into a contest of the global economy, for which there is no precedent. Three weeks after the first virus-related death was reported, China has found itself cut off from its largest trading partner, the United States, and many other nations. . . .
“Governments Expand Restrictions on Travel to China as Cases Spike” by Paul Mozur; The New York Times; 1/29/2020; p. A6 [Western Edition.]
. . . . With China’s Lunar New Year holiday nearing its end, companies ordered workers to stay home and avoid travel. The economic impact of such measures pointed to a deeper political crisis, with many people accusing the Chinese authorities online of failing to act quickly to contain the virus, even as the government continues to struggle to contain its spread. . . .
. . . . Businesses that operate in China have issued warnings of their own. . . .
. . . . Investors in Asia were gripped on tuesdaywith fear about the health of the global economy for a second day, with a widespread sell-off continuing coninuing in the markets. Investos dumped stocks in companies thought to be most vulnerable to the effects of the virus.
“The corona virus is the No. 1 threat to financial markets currently as global investors are becoming jittery on the uncertainty.” said Nigel Green, founder of an investment company, the DeVere group . . .
“Trade Networks Face New Menace in a Coronavirus” China in Cross Hairs; by Peter S. Goodman; The New York Times; 2/3/2020; p. A1 [Western Edition.]
“China Reels From Virus, and Markets Are on Edge” by Alexandra Stevenson; The New York Times; 1/24/2020; p. B1 [Western Edition.]
“Outbreak Rattles Markets, Spurring Downturn Fears” by Matt Phillips; The New York Times; 1/28/2020; p. B1 [Western Edition.]
On same page, relevant to psychological warfare and online activity: “On Chinese Social Media, Anger over Virus” by Raymond Zhong; The New York Times; 1/28/2020; p. B1 [Western Edition.]
“OPEC Scrambles to React as Virus Imperils Demand” by Stanley Reed; The New York Times; 2/4/2020; p. B1 [Western Edition.]
“Virus Threatens an Oil Industry That’s Already Ailing” by Clifford Krauss With a Decline in China’s Demand sending Crude Prices Lowe, Cutbacks by American Companies May Be Coming; For Now, Drivers are benefiting; The New York Times; 2/5/2020; p. B1 [Western Edition.]
“Africa, With Growing Ties to China, Is Especially Vulnerable” by Simon Marks and Latif Dahir; The New York Times; 2/7/2020; p. A10 [Western Edition.]
“U.S. Plans Trade Talks With Kenya to Counter China’s Influence in Africa” by Ana Swanson; The New York Times; 2/7/2020; p. B4 [Western Edition.]
“China’s Command of 5G Is A ‘Danger,’ Barr Says” by Katie Benner; The New York Times; 2/7/2020; p. B7 [Western Edition.]
“Virus Fuels Anti-Chinese Sentiment Overseas” by Motoko Rich; The New York Times; 1/31/2020; p. A1 [Western Edition.]
. . . . In Japan, the hashtag #ChineseDon’tComeToJapan has been trending on twitter. In Singapore, tens of thousands of residents have signed a petition calling for the government to ban Chinese from entering the country.
In Hong Kong, South Korea and Vietnam, businesses have posted signs saying that mainland Chinese customers are not welcome. In France, a front-page headline in a regional newspaper warned of a “Yellow Alert.” And in a suburb of Toronto, parents demanded that a school district keep children of a family that had recently returned from China out of classes for 17 days. . . .
. . . . At a time when China’s rise as a global economic and military power has unsettled its neighbors in Asia as well as its rivals in the West, the coronavirus is feeding into latent bigotry against the people of mainland China . . .
“Virus Puts a Fractured Hong Kong on Edge” by Austin Ramzy; The New York Times; 1/29/2020; p. A1 [Western Edition.]
The two Hong Kong protesters were dressed head to toe in black, their faces coverd in masks. They smashed their Molotov cocktails into the lobby of a public housing estate, and flames and smoke began spewing out. . . .
“Virus Putting E.U. At Risk of Recession” by Jack Ewing; The New York Times; 2/12/2020; p. B1 [Western Edition.]
“Commodities Tumble as Epidemic Snarls Supply Chains” by Matt Phillips; The New York Times; 2/12/2020; p. B3 [Western Edition.]
2. Steve Bannon–one of the luminaries of the “Alt-Right,” and a former key Trump aide is centrally involved in the anti-China effort. Note Bannon’s role in the “Get China” movement and the manner in which Washington is being possessed by this: ” . . . . Fear of China has spread across the government, from the White House to Congress to federal agencies, where Beijing’s rise is unquestioningly viewed as an economic and national security threat and the defining challenge of the 21st century. ‘These are two systems that are incompatible,’ Mr. Bannon said of the United States and China. ‘One side is going to win, and one side is going to lose.’ . . . .”
“A New Red Scare Is Reshaping Washington” by Ana Swanson; The New York Times; 7/20/2019.
In a ballroom across from the Capitol building, an unlikely group of military hawks, populist crusaders, Chinese Muslim freedom fighters [Uighurs–D.E.] and followers of the Falun Gong has been meeting to warn anyone who will listen that China poses an existential threat to the United States that will not end until the Communist Party is overthrown.
If the warnings sound straight out of the Cold War, they are. The Committee on the Present Danger, a long-defunct group that campaigned against the dangers of the Soviet Union in the 1970s and 1980s, has recently been revived with the help of Stephen K. Bannon, the president’s former chief strategist, to warn against the dangers of China.
Once dismissed as xenophobes and fringe elements, the group’s members are finding their views increasingly embraced in President Trump’s Washington, where skepticism and mistrust of China have taken hold. Fear of China has spread across the government, from the White House to Congress to federal agencies, where Beijing’s rise is unquestioningly viewed as an economic and national security threat and the defining challenge of the 21st century.
“These are two systems that are incompatible,” Mr. Bannon said of the United States and China. “One side is going to win, and one side is going to lose.” . . . .
3. Next, the program undertakes a review of circumstances that suggest the possibility of investor activity by people linked to Steve Bannon, who is at the epicenter of the anti-China effort. Bannon has been the beneficiary of the enormous wealth of the brilliant, eccentric investor Robert Mercer. Mercer has used AI-directed investment projection to afford a 70% return for his hedge fund.
We wonder if he might have had foreknowledge of the coronavirus outbreak? IF that was the case, this would have enabled him to have made a great deal of money on the torpedoing of the Chinese economy as may well be the case for J. Kyle Bass. On the other side of the coin is Mercer’s/Renaissance Technologies’ enormous investment in Gilead Pharmaceuticals.
IF Gilead’s remdesivir does prove to be the “go-to” treatment for coronavirus, that firm stands to make a great deal of money, as would Mercer/Renaissance Technologies. NB: The information from Dr. Mercola’s post should be factored in to the information about investing and the possibility of short-selling and/or other types of maneuvering to profit from this crisis. Equity markets are very responsive to suggestion, accurate or falacious. We note that the hysteria alluded to in the post by Dr. Mercola may well contribute to the steep decline in markets.
China, of course, has shut down much of its infrastructure to combat the virus. That is contributing, obviously. To what extent they, too, are responding to hysteria is an open question. We also wonder if they know something we don’t. Media have featured pictures of Chinese personnel in protective clothing fumigating public facilities. We wonder if they are protecting against rodents or other animals spreading the virus. Note the reference in the post by Dr. Mercola:
. . . . In the 1970s, Mercer programmed machine-learning artificial intelligences to process vast sets of data and so predict what was supposed to be the central mystery of capitalism, the movement of markets. And, well, they did–and still do. The hedge fund for which Mercer worked, Renaissance Technologies, has earned an average of 70 percent each year, making Mercer one of the richest men on the planet. . . .
4. China has begun testing of Gilead’s remdesivir. IF, for the sake of argument, Gilead’s remdesivir becomes the “go-to” treatment for the coronavirus, Gilead–and Mercer–will make a great deal of money. China is a huge market and the drug will find markets elsewhere, as well.
. . . . On Thursday, China began enrolling patients in a clinical trial of remdesivir, an antiviral medicine made by Gilead, the American pharmaceutical giant. The drug has to be given intravenously, is experimental and not yet approved for any use, and has not been studied in patients with any coronavirus disease. But studies of infected mice and monkeys have suggested that remdesivir can fight coronaviruses. . . . . . . . Doctors in Washington State gave remdesivir to the first coronavirus patient in the United States last week after his condition worsened and pneumonia developed when he’d been in the hospital for a week. His symptoms improved the next day. . . .
5. A Chinese government research facility has applied for a patent on the drug.
A state-run Chinese research institute has applied for a patent on the use of Gilead Sciences’ experimental U.S. antiviral drug, which scientists think could provide treatment for the coronavirus that has killed hundreds and infected thousands.
The Wuhan Institute of Virology of the China Academy of Sciences, based in the city where the outbreak is believed to have originated, said in a statement on Tuesday it applied to patent the use of Remdesivir, an antiviral drug developed by Gilead, to treat the virus. . . .
. . . . “Even if the Wuhan Institute’s application gets authorized, the role is very limited because Gilead still owns the fundamental patent of the drug,” said Zhao Youbin, a Shanghai-based intellectual property counsel at Purplevine IP Service Co.
6a. Mercer’s Renaissance Technology has a huge position in Gilead stock.
. . . . Renaissance Technology’s top 15 holdings also include 16.4 million shares of the medical device manufacturer Novo-Nordisk valued at $563 million, 7.7 million shares of Gilead Pharmaceuticals valued at $523 million, and 2.4 million shares of Amgen valued at $396 million. An economic analysis of the New York Health Act estimated that the plan would result in $16 billion in reduced spending on pharmaceuticals and medical devices in New York State by negotiating lower prices. . . .
6b. We find it curious that American media outlets have remained silent on such a promising therapeutic regimen. Reuters reported it, as did Agence France Presse. These are major wire services. Why not American media outlets? ” . . . . A Chinese woman infected with the new coronavirus showed a dramatic improvement after she was treated with a cocktail of anti-virals used to treat flu and HIV, Thailand’s health ministry said Sunday. The 71-year-old patient tested negative for the virus 48 hours after Thai doctors administered the combination, doctor Kriengsak Attipornwanich said during the ministry’s daily press briefing. ‘The lab result of positive on the coronavirus turned negative in 48 hours,’ Kriengsak said. . . .
“The doctors combined the anti-flu drug oseltamivir with lopinavir and ritonavir, anti-virals used to treat HIV, Kriengsak said, adding the ministry was awaiting research results to prove the findings. . . . Thailand so far has detected 19 confirmed cases of the virus believed to have originated in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, which is under lockdown. . . .
” . . . .That is the second-highest number of cases outside of China, with Japan recording 20. So far, eight patients in Thailand have recovered and returned home, while 11 remain in the hospital. In a video released Sunday, Thai health minister Anutin Charnvirakul visited a patient from Wuhan who had recovered from the coronavirus, chatting with her amicably in Mandarin as she thanked him and the medical staff. . . .”
A Chinese woman infected with the new coronavirus showed a dramatic improvement after she was treated with a cocktail of anti-virals used to treat flu and HIV, Thailand’s health ministry said Sunday.
The 71-year-old patient tested negative for the virus 48 hours after Thai doctors administered the combination, doctor Kriengsak Attipornwanich said during the ministry’s daily press briefing.
“The lab result of positive on the coronavirus turned negative in 48 hours,” Kriengsak said.
“From being exhausted before, she could sit up in bed 12 hours later.”
The doctors combined the anti-flu drug oseltamivir with lopinavir and ritonavir, anti-virals used to treat HIV, Kriengsak said, adding the ministry was awaiting research results to prove the findings.
The news comes as the new virus claimed its first life outside China – a 44-year-old Chinese man who died in the Philippines – while the death toll in China has soared above 300.
Thailand so far has detected 19 confirmed cases of the virus believed to have originated in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, which is under lockdown.
That is the second-highest number of cases outside of China, with Japan recording 20.
So far, eight patients in Thailand have recovered and returned home, while 11 remain in the hospital.
In a video released Sunday, Thai health minister Anutin Charnvirakul visited a patient from Wuhan who had recovered from the coronavirus, chatting with her amicably in Mandarin as she thanked him and the medical staff.
Thai authorities are trying to balance the screening of inbound Chinese visitors with the economic needs of its tourist sector, which is heavily reliant on arrivals from the mainland.
Messages of support saying “Our hearts to Wuhan” in English, Chinese and Thai were plastered on a Bangkok mall popular with tourists.
The bulk of confirmed cases have been Chinese visitors to Thailand, but on Thursday the kingdom recorded its first human-to-human transmission when a Thai taxi driver was diagnosed with the disease.
The taxi driver had not traveled to China but may have had contact with tourists.
Thailand’s government is also battling public criticism that it has been slow to evacuate scores of its citizens from Hubei province, at the center of the outbreak.
Anutin said the evacuation would happen Tuesday, and the returnees would be quarantined for 14 days.
7. Contrast the statistics about the 2017–2018 flu epidemic in this country with the statistics about coronavirus. In this country, 45 million caught the flu. According to the CDC, 80,000 of them died.
An estimated 80,000 Americans died of flu and its complications last winter — the disease’s highest death toll in at least four decades.
The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Robert Redfield, revealed the total in an interview Tuesday night with The Associated Press. . . .
8. In addition to noting the effects of the coronavirus on the economics of the travel industry, Rosie Spinks notes the draconian reaction of the U.S. State Department. Ms. Spinks tales stock of the relatively mild nature of the virus. ” . . . . Numerous experts have said that the majority of people who contract coronavirus will experience it as a respiratory infection they will fully recover from. But the extreme reactions — the canceling of flights, closing of borders and level-four travel warnings — seem more appropriate for something much worse. . . .”
The coronavirus outbreak seems defined by two opposing forces: the astonishing efficiency with which the travel industry connects the world and a political moment dominated by xenophobic rhetoric and the building of walls.
Respiratory infections, however, know no borders. The virus has spread regardless of extreme measures taken by governments around the world, which include the cancellation of flights, the shutting down of borders and the issuance of travel advisories usually reserved for conflict zones.
Time and time again, destinations perceived as “Western” benefit from a kind of cultural familiarity and presumption of safety that so-called foreign or exotic places do not. When we, as travelers, decide what places are too unsafe to travel, those decisions are determined not just by actual conditions on the ground but also by perceptions shaped by the media, the travel industry and the foreign offices of governments. Whether travelers realize it or not, that is subtly informed by the same power structures that underlie much unfairness in the world.
Valid arguments may exist for shutting down the world to travelers originating in China — and shutting down China to the world — as a reasonable public health response. But the World Health Organization explicitly did not advise that any restriction of trade or travel was necessary when it declared a Public Health Emergency of International Concern last week, and it still doesn’t. Instead, it has called for exit screening in international airports and domestic hubs in China.
The United States State Department is denying entry to foreign nationals who have recently been to China, is screening American citizens who arrive home from China as well as asking them to self-quarantine for 14 days. It has told American citizens not to visit the country at all. Major airlines including British Airways, Lufthansa and all three major American carriers have halted all flights to China, while the cruise line Royal Caribbean is denying boarding to any person who has traveled to, from or through China or Hong Kong in the past 15 days. Travel companies such as those airlines are motivated both by pressure from employees and by the falling demand for flights. Flying empty planes to and from China is, after all, not profitable.
But what has motivated the response from governments? It doesn’t appear to be evidence. Measures like screening at airports, quarantining cruise ships or flights with confirmed cases and isolating communities at the center of an outbreak can be effective, said Erin Sorrell, an assistant research professor at Georgetown University who studies emerging infectious diseases. However, she and other experts say the available evidence suggests that total border shutdowns are not an effective means of containment of respiratory viruses. Resources are better used, she argued, treating sick patients and developing vaccines and other countermeasures.
Sadly, one doesn’t have to look far for evidence of these top-down decisions morphing into outright racism within the general population, a trend that has a long history in the narrative of outbreaks such as this one.
Coronavirus shares something in common with other kinds of civil disruption, natural disasters or emergencies that affect localized travel industries: Its destructive power lies not in the actual risk but in the perception of that risk. Numerous experts have said that the majority of people who contract coronavirus will experience it as a respiratory infection they will fully recover from. But the extreme reactions — the canceling of flights, closing of borders and level-four travel warnings — seem more appropriate for something much worse.
Therein lies a familiar unfairness. When it comes to travel, the perception of risk is rarely meted out objectively. Consider the level-two travel warning imposed by the State Department last month in the wake of the continuing Australian wildfires. It advised travelers to consider postponing their trips because of extremely poor air quality and the threat of evacuation in the monthslong fires. Just a few days later, it was reduced to level one, reportedly in response to the direct appeal of Prime Minister Scott Morrison to the Trump administration. Similarly, in the 2017–18 flu season, when the United States had a particularly bad outbreak, the respiratory virus resulted in an estimated 61,000 deaths and 45 million symptomatic cases — but no travel warnings.
Coronavirus is different from other tourism disruptions in a significant way: The potential loss of tourism revenue and gross domestic product will hurt not only China but also other countries. In the decade and a half since the SARS crisis, Chinese travelers have become the most powerful source market in the world, surpassing all other nations in its volume of outbound travelers in 2012. In 2017, Chinese citizens took more than 143 million trips abroad; in 2029, Skift Research predicts that figure will be 286 million. Luxury retailers all over the world rely on Chinese travelers for their consistent trip spending, and destinations develop and target sophisticated marketing strategies to cater to them.
The world often thinks of travel and tourism as being a collection of different industries, operating separately yet alongside one another. But in reality, it’s a web of economically interconnected parts. While it is subject to the political environment it operates in, it also has a chance to stand up to the political norms of the day, especially when policy goes against best practices recommended by international agencies.
With the rhetoric surrounding coronavirus, however, it appears the astonishing growth of the Chinese travel market in the past 15 years did little to rid the industry of the impulse to treat Chinese travelers as “others” in the face of doubt and uncertainty. Canceling flights, cruises and locking down borders when it’s not advised by international agencies will be not only an act of economic self-harm but also a wasted opportunity to learn from the mistakes of the past.
9. Because it screens points of entry for MERS coronavirus infection because of its citizens who make the Haj pilgrimage to Mecca, Indonesia has no recorded cases. In the column above, Ms. Spinks noted the effectiveness of the kind of prophylactic screening measures taken by Indonesia: ” . . . . Measures like screening at airports, quarantining cruise ships or flights with confirmed cases and isolating communities at the center of an outbreak can be effective, said Erin Sorrell, an assistant research professor at Georgetown University who studies emerging infectious diseases. . . .”
. . . . Health experts have questioned why Indonesia has not yet reported a single case of novel coronavirus, even though officials were slow to halt nonstop flights from China. Indonesia receives about 2 million Chinese tourists a year, most of them in Bali. . . .
. . . . “So far, Indonesia is the only major country in Asia that does not have a corona case,” Indonesia’s security minister, Mohammad Mahfud MD, told reporters on Friday. “The coronavirus does not exist in Indonesia.” . . . .
. . . . Indonesia is experienced at monitoring travelers for illness, he said, because the country has long been on the lookout for another dangerous coronavirus, Middle East Respiratory Syndrome or MERS. About 1.4 million Indonesians go each year on pilgrimages to Saudi Arabia, where they can be exposed to MERS, he said, and they are screened on their return.
“We have experienced this many times,” he said. “Maybe other countries are not as diligent as Indonesia in dealing with this situation.” . . . .
10. Headed by “ex” CIA officer William Barr, the Justice Department has charged Chinese personnel with having hacked the Equifax credit reporting agencies. The Chinese have denied this. It will be interesting to see if the U.S. deploys cyber-weaponry on Chinese computer and internet systems, as it has in Russia. In turn, it will be interesting to see if the “Full Court Press” strategy encompasses the sabotaging of Chinese nuclear power plants, Project HAARP environmental modification warfare or other draconian measures.
Four members of China’s military were charged on Monday with hacking into Equifax, one of the nation’s largest credit reporting agencies, and stealing trade secrets and the personal data of about 145 million Americans in 2017.
The charges underscored China’s quest to obtain Americans’ data and its willingness to flout a 2015 agreement with the United States to refrain from hacking and cyberattacks, all in an effort to expand economic power and influence. . . .
11. The CIA’s hacking tools are specifically crafted to mask CIA authorship of the attacks. Most significantly, for our the purposes of the present discussion, is the fact that the Agency’s hacking tools are engineered in such a way as to permit the authors of the event to represent themselves as Chinese. ” . . . . These tools could make it more difficult for anti-virus companies and forensic investigators to attribute hacks to the CIA. Could this call the source of previous hacks into question? It appears that yes, this might be used to disguise the CIA’s own hacks to appear as if they were Russian, Chinese, or from specific other countries. . . . This might allow a malware creator to not only look like they were speaking in Russian or Chinese, rather than in English, but to also look like they tried to hide that they were not speaking English . . . .”
This morning, WikiLeaks released part 3 of its Vault 7 series, called Marble. Marble reveals CIA source code files along with decoy languages that might disguise viruses, trojans, and hacking attacks. These tools could make it more difficult for anti-virus companies and forensic investigators to attribute hacks to the CIA. Could this call the source of previous hacks into question? It appears that yes, this might be used to disguise the CIA’s own hacks to appear as if they were Russian, Chinese, or from specific other countries. These tools were in use in 2016, WikiLeaks reported.
It’s not known exactly how this Marble tool was actually used. However, according to WikiLeaks, the tool could make it more difficult for investigators and anti-virus companies to attribute viruses and other hacking tools to the CIA. Test examples weren’t just in English, but also Russian, Chinese, Korean, Arabic, and Farsi. This might allow a malware creator to not only look like they were speaking in Russian or Chinese, rather than in English, but to also look like they tried to hide that they were not speaking English, according to WikiLeaks. This might also hide fake error messages or be used for other purposes. . . .
12. Pivoting to what Mr. Emory has termed the “weaponized media coverage” of the coronavirus outbreak, we note The New York Times’ stunningly slanted coverage of the 2016 campaign.
“The Times Owes an Apology [Letter to the Editor];” The New York Times; 10/25/2019 [Western Edition]; p. A26.
“But Her E‑mails . . .” (editorial, Oct. 23) I am disappointed that The Times did not use the opportunity to apologize for its obsessive coverage of this Hillary Clinton non-scandal in 2016. According to an article in the Columbia Journalism Review, “in just six days, The New York Times ran as many cover stories about Hillary Clinton’s e‑mails as they did about all policy issues combined in the 69 days leading up to the election.” Mrs. Clinton lost the election for myriad reasons, but it did not help that The Times’s coverage of this issue reinforced many voters’ suspicions that she was untrustworthy. Jeffrey Toobin, chief legal analyst for CNN, apologized this week for hyping the e‑mail story during that crucial moment. If The Times wants to regain the trust of its readers heading into 2020, it should do the same. JEREMY FASSLER, BROOKLYN
13. Before discussing Allen Dulles and his relationship to The New York Times, we set forth events illustrating the fundamental place of Sullivan & Cromwell in the development of American Big Money. Both Allen Dulles and John Foster Dulles worked for Sullivan & Cromwell.
. . . . . . . . In 1882, it created Edison General Electric. Seven years later, with the financier J.P. Morgan as its client, it wove twenty-one steelmakers into the National Tube Company and then, in 1891, merged National Tube with seven other companies to create U.S. Steel, capitalized at more than one billion dollars, an astounding sum at that time. The railroad magnate E.H. Harriman, whom President Theodore Roosevelt had denounced as a “malefactor of great wealth” and “an enemy of the Republic,” hired the firm to wage two of his legendary proxy wars, one to take over the Illinois Central Railroad and another to fend off angry shareholders at Wells Fargo Bank. It won the first with tactics that a New York newspaper called “one of those ruthless exercises of the power of sheer millions,” and the second with complex maneuvers that, according to a book about the firm, amounted to “deceit, bribery and trickery [that] was all legal.”
Soon afterward, working on behalf of French investors who were facing ruin after their effort to build a canal across Panama collapsed, Sullivan & Cromwell achieved a unique triumph in global politics. Through a masterful lobbying campaign, its endlessly resourceful managing partner, William Nelson Cromwell, persuaded the United States Congress to reverse its decision to build a canal across Nicaragua and to pay his French clients $40 million for their land in Panama instead. Then he helped engineer a revolution that pulled the province of Panama away from Colombia and established it as an independent country, led by a clique willing to show its gratitude by allowing construction of a canal on terms favorable to the United States. One newspaper called him “the man whose masterful mind, whetted on the grindstone of corporate cunning, conceived and carried out the rape of the Isthmus.” . . .
14. A now famous article by Carl Bernstein (of Watergate fame) focuses on CIA presence in major U.S. media. We note, here, the deep historical and political relationship between Allen Dulles and The New York Times’s Arthur Hays Sulzberger. This, again, by way of background to the weaponized coverage of the coronavirus outbreak.
“The CIA and the Media” by Carl Bernstein; Rolling Stone; 10/20/1977.
. . . . The New York Times. The Agency’s relationship with the Times was by far its most valuable among newspapers, according to CIA officials. From 1950 to 1966, about ten CIA employees were provided Times cover under arrangements approved by the newspaper’s late publisher, Arthur Hays Sulzberger. The cover arrangements were part of a general Times policy—set by Sulzberger—to provide assistance to the CIA whenever possible. Sulzberger was especially close to Allen Dulles. “At that level of contact it was the mighty talking to the mighty,” said a high‑level CIA official who was present at some of the discussions. “There was an agreement in principle that, yes indeed, we would help each other. The question of cover came up on several occasions. It was agreed that the actual arrangements would be handled by subordinates.... The mighty didn’t want to know the specifics; they wanted plausible deniability. . . .
15. In in his 1985 volume American Swastika, the late author Charles Higham provides us with insight into the Christian West concept, revealing the extent to which these SS/OSS negotiations set the template for the post-World War II world, as well as the degree of resonance that key Americans, such as Allen Dulles, had with Nazi ideology, anti-Semitism in particular. Weighing the long, profound relationship between Dulles and The Times, this is presented as something of a “navigational aid” to analysis of the weaponized coverage of the virus.
The postwar political and economic realities of the Dulles, Hohenlohe, Schellenberg meetings were further solidified when William (Wild Bill) Donovan entered into his “M” Project. Important to note in this context, is the dominant role in world affairs played by cartels, the fundamental element in the industrial and financial axis that was essential to the creation and perpetuation of fascism. Much of the Third Reich’s military industrial complex, the primacy of Germany in the postwar EU, as well as the correlation between postwar Europe as constructed in the Christian West negotiations and long-standing German plans for European domination are derivative of the power of cartels. The Christian West and “M” Projects:
- Revealed that Allen Dulles’ views resonated with Third Reich anti-Semitism, and that his opinions were shared by other, like-minded American power brokers: ” . . . . He said that it would be unbearable for any decent European to think that the Jews might return someday, and that there must be no toleration of a return of the Jewish power positions. . . . He made the curious assertion that the Americans were only continuing the war to get rid of the Jews and that there were people in America who were intending to send the Jews to Africa. . . .”
- Set the template for the postwar Federal Republic of Germany and the EU: ” . . . . He [Dulles] reiterated his desire for a greater European political federation–and foresaw the federal Germany that in fact took place. . . . Germany would be set up as the dominating force in industry and agriculture in continental Europe, at the heart of a continental state run by Germany, the U.S.A., and Great Britain as a focus of trade. . . .”
- Were the vehicle for Allen Dulles to betray much of the Allied military plans for Southern Europe to the Third Reich: “. . . . Dulles now proceeded to supply Hohenlohe with dollops of secret intelligence, announcing that the U.S. Army would not land in Spain but, after conquering Tunisia, would advance from Africa toward the Ploesti oil fields to cut off the German oil supplies. He said it was likely the Allies would land in Sicily to cut off Rommel and control Italy from there, and thus secure the advance in the Balkans. Having given virtually the entire battle plan for Europe, top secret at the time, to one of Germany’s agents, Allen Dulles proceeded to the almost unnecessary rider that he had very good relations with the Vatican. . . .”
- Directly foreshadowed the confrontation between the U.S. and the Soviet Union which became the Cold War. “. . . . In other meetings, Dulles . . . . predicted that ‘the next world war would be between the U.S.A. and the Soviet Union.’ . . . .”
- Were the occasion for Dulles to laud the “genius” of Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels: “He . . . . described a recent speech by Dr. Goebbels as ‘a work of genius; I have rarely read a speech with such rational pleasure.’ . . . .”
. . . . Dulles pressed ahead. He said that it would be unbearable for any decent European to think that the Jews might return someday, and that there must be no toleration of a return of the Jewish power positions. He reiterated his desire for a greater European political federation–and foresaw the federal Germany that in fact took place. . . . He made the curious assertion that the Americans were only continuing the war to get rid of the Jews and that there were people in America who were intending to send the Jews to Africa. This was Hitler’s dream of course: that the Jews would go to Madagascar and stay there. . . .
. . . . Dulles now proceeded to supply Hohenlohe with dollops of secret intelligence, announcing that the U.S. Army would not land in Spain but, after conquering Tunisia, would advance from Africa toward the Ploesti oil fields to cut off the German oil supplies. He said it was likely the Allies would land in Sicily to cut off Rommel and control Italy from there, and thus secure the advance in the Balkans. Having given virtually the entire battle plan for Europe, top secret at the time, to one of Germany’s agents, Allen Dulles proceeded to the almost unnecessary rider that he had very good relations with the Vatican. . . .
. . . . In other meetings, Dulles . . . . predicted that “the next world war would be between the U.S.A. and the Soviet Union.” . . . . Dulles obtained a great deal of information relating to Germany and plans for its reconstruction after the war. He . . . . described a recent speech by Dr. Goebbels as “a work of genius; I have rarely read a speech with such rational pleasure.” . . . .
. . . . In July, [OSS chief William] Donovan and the OSS began to take matters into their own hands. No doubt inspired by the invigorating meeting in Switzerland, Donovan embarked on the so-called “M” project. . . .
. . . . By now, the German [Franz Von Papen] had read the details of the peace proposal on microfilm and learned that it was more or less on the same lines as the Dulles proposals. Germany would be set up as the dominating force in industry and agriculture in continental Europe, at the heart of a continental state run by Germany, the U.S.A., and Great Britain as a focus of trade. . . .
16. In the context of Allen Dulles’s orientation and his relationship with The New York Times, we present a look at The New York Times’ use of a Third Reich alumnus named Paul Hofmann as a foreign correspondent, serving as chief of The Times’ Rome bureau, and covering the Gray Lady’s coverage of the CIA’s participation in the overthrow of Patrice Lumumba.
. . . . As the Congo crisis reached its climax, a new correspondent for The New York Times showed up in Leopoldville with a distinctly anti-Lumumba bias. Paul Hofmann was a diminutive, sophisticated Austrian with a colorful past. During the war, he served in Rome as a top aide to the notorious Nazi general Kurt Malzer, who was later convicted of the mass murder of Italian partisans. At some point, Hofmann became an informer for the Allies, and after the war he became closely associated with Jim Angleton. The Angleton family helped place Hofmann in the Rome bureau of The New York Times, where he continued to be of use to his friends in U.S. intelligence, translating reports from confidential sources inside the Vatican and passing them along to Angleton. Hofmann became one of the Times’s leading foreign correspondents, eventually taking over the newspaper’s Rome bureau and parachuting from time to time into international hot spots like the Congo. . . .
17. Nothing illustrates this country’s media and their willingness to distort information than the NBC television broadcast arranged by Walter Sheridan. Sheridan is a career intelligence officer, with relationship with the Office of Naval Intelligence, the CIA, the NSA and the FBI.
Exemplifying Sheridan’s methodology was the treatment meted out to Fred Leemans, who was the climactic person interviewed by Sheridan in his special. Note the open intimidation of Leemans and his family, threatening them if they did not perjure themselves, betray Garrison, and cooperate with both Sheridan and Clay Shaw’s counsel!
. . . . One of the more startling declarations that the ARRB uncovered was an affidavit by a man named Fred Leemans. Leemans was a Turkish bath owner who originally told garrison that a man named Clay Bertrand had frequented his establishment. Leemans was the climactic interview for Sheridan’s special. He testified on the show that the DA’s office had actually approached him first, that he never knew that Shaw used the alias Bertrand, that everything he had previously said to the DA’s office were things he was led to say by them, and that they had offered to pay him 2,500 dollars for his affidavit in which in which he would now say that Shaw was Bertrand and that Shaw came into his establishment once with Oswald. In other words, all the things Novel had been saying in his public declarations about Garrison were accurate. At the end of his interview, Leemans told Sheridan and the public that everything he had just revealed on camera was given to NBC freely and voluntarily. Leemans even said that he had actually asked Sheridan for some monetary help but Sheridan had said he did not do things like that.
In January of 1969, Leemans signed an affidavit in which he declared the following as the true chain of events:
“I would like to state the reasons for which I appeared on the NBC show and lied about my contacts with the District Attorney’s office. First, I received numerous anonymous threatening phone calls relative to the information I had given to Mr. Garrison. The gist of these calls was to the effect that if I did not change my statement and state that I had been bribed by Jim Garrison’s office, I and my family would be in physical danger. In addition to the anonymous phone calls, I was visited by a man who exhibited a badge and stated that he was a government agent. This man informed me that the government was presently checking the bar owners in the Slidell area for possible income tax violations. This man then inquired whether I was the Mr. Leemans involved in the Clay Shaw case. When I informed him that I was, he said that it was not smart to be involved because a lot of people that had been got hurt and that people in powerful places would see to it that I was taken care of. One of the anonymous callers suggested that I change my statement and state that I had been bribed by Garrison’s office to give him the information about Clay Shaw. He suggested that I contact Mr. Irvin Dymond, attorney for Clay L. Shaw and tell him that I gave Mr. Garrison the statement about Shaw only after Mr. Lee [Garrison’s assistant DA] offered me 2,500 dollars. After consulting with Mr. Dymond by telephone and in person, I was introduced to Walter Sheridan, investigative reporter for NBC, who was then in the process of preparing the NBC show. Mr. Dymond and Mr. Sheridan suggested that I appear on the show and state what I had originally told Mr. Dymond about the bribe offer by the District Attorney’s office. I was informed by Mr. Dymond that should the District Attorney’s office charge me with giving false information as a result of the statement I had originally given them, he would see to it that I had an attorney and that a bond would be posted for me. In this connection, Mr. Dymond gave me his home and office telephone numbers and and advised me that I could contact him at any time of day or night should I be charged by Garrison’s office as a result of my appearing on the NBC show. My actual appearance on the show was taped in the office of Aaron Kohn, Managing Director of the Metropolitan Crime Commission, in the presence of Walter Sheridan and Irvin Dymond.”
This is one of the most revealing documents portraying the lengths to which Sheridan would go in tampering with witnesses. It also demonstrates that Shaw’s lawyers—Bill and Ed Wegmann, Irvin Dymond, and Sal Panzeca—knew almost no boundary in what kind of help they would accept to win their case. Third, it reveals that Shaw’s lawyers had access to a network of attorneys that they could hire at any time for any witness they could pry loose from Garrison. Because, as the declassified ARRB documents reveal, there was a CIA cleared attorney’s panel that was at work in New Orleans. Attorneys that the Agency vetted in advance so they would be suitable for their covert use and could be trusted in their aims. The fact that Shaw’s lawyers were privy to such CIA secret knowledge, and wee utilizing it, shows just how willing and eager they were to indulge themselves in covert help—and then lie about it. . . .
The global alarm over the SARS-CoV‑2 coronavirus behind the COVID-19 illness is starting to get extra weird. While Steve Bannon’s media efforts to foment as much alarm as possible about the situation in China is continuing unabated, the larger right-wing media machine that has been heavily promoting Bannon’s idea that the virus is some sort of biowarfare research product of the Chinese government that was either intentionally or accidentally released has a new set of memes to promote now that the virus is showing up in the US and tanking the US stock market.
For starters, Rush Limbaugh has been downplaying the coronavirus as nothing more than the common cold and has been asserting that all of the media attention and alarm and financial market turmoil is all part of a plot to bring down Trump because China wants Bernie Sanders to become president:
“Folks, this coronavirus thing, I want to try to put this in perspective for you. It looks like the coronavirus is being weaponized as yet another element to bring down Donald Trump. Now, I want to tell you the truth about the coronavirus. You think I’m wrong about this? You think I’m missing it by saying that’s — Yeah, I’m dead right on this. The coronavirus is the common cold, folks.”
It’s just the common cold. That’s the meme coming out of Limbaugh is Limbaugh is still the chief right-wing meme-maker. Now, it’s true that the coronavirus looks right now like a particularly nasty version of the flu which is far from the tenor of much of the coverage of the virus. But portraying it as the common cold is a pretty remarkable stretch even for Limbaugh.
Limbaugh then goes on to repeat the prevailing right-wing meme that it came from a Chinese biowarfare lab. But now he’s adding the twist that it’s all a plot against Trump. By China. To get Bernie Sanders elected:
That was the status of the right-wing meme machine a few days ago. Then yesterday we had Trump himself confidentially publicly predicting during a bonkers press conference yesterday that the 15 known cases in the US (it was actually 60 cases at the time) were rapidly going to dwindle down close to 0 zero cases. Yep, he’s assuring everyone that there’s basically going to be no widespread outbreak in the US, which raises the question of who exactly he’s listening to when making these predictions. Because now we’re hearing that Trump became furious when those rosy predictions were undercut by the director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, Dr. Nancy Messonnier, after she issued a public warning that an outbreak in the US now appears inevitable.
It gets worse. It turns out Messonnier is the sister of Rod Rosenstein, the former Deputy Attorney General who became the public face of the #RussiaGate probe after Jeff Sessions recused himself. This relationship between the government official who contradicted Trump on the coronavirus and the much-hate Rosenstein (who is actually a life-long Republican) immediately triggered the far right conspiracy-tainment complex. And now, predictably, the new meme coming from Limbaugh is that the “Deep State” is hyping the coronavirus risk to the US as part of a plot to bring down Trump, with the implication that Dr. Messonnier is part of that deep state conspiracy and that’s why she made that prediction of a public outbreak. And Trump is openly agreeing with this meme:
“All of the conspiracy theories appeared to be based on the fact that Messonnier’s warning was much starker than comments by Trump and administration officials. But Trump and his team went to comical lengths to downplay the risk posed by the virus, which has infected more than 82,000 people. Trump and administration officials similarly went out of their way to hit out at criticism of the president’s handling of the outbreak.”
Contradictions of Trump’s pie-in-the-sky prognostications is the sign of a deep state conspiracy. That’s how Rush Limbaugh reacted to Dr. Messonnier’s warnings of an outbreak and the meme took off:
Even Trump, who was reportedly “furious” about Dr. Messonier’s warnings, was openly agreeing with Limbaugh’s claims when directly asked by a reporter about it:
So it appears the new official meme from the US right-wing media apparatus is that reports about the virus spreading in the US are actually part of a deep state plot to harm Trump. And as the following article makes clear, the Trump administration has a plan for addressing this deep state plot: by putting Vice President Mike Pence in charge of the coronavirus response. More specifically, by declaring Pence is in charge of the response and forcing all public officials to run their public responses past Pence first. For example, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infections Diseases, told associates that the White House had instructed him not to say anything else without clearance. So Pence appears to be the point man for ensuring that the only official reports about the coronavirus are rosy reports:
“The vice president’s first move appeared to be aimed at preventing the kind of contradictory statements from White House officials and top government health officials that have plagued the administration’s response.. Even during his news conference on Wednesday, Mr. Trump rejected the assessment from a top health official that it was inevitable that the coronavirus would spread more broadly inside the United States.”
Preventing contradictory statements coming out of the Trump administration. That’s Pence’s first move. But, of course, this isn’t going to be a move to prevent contradictory statements. It’s going to be a move to prevent statements that contradict Trump. And we already have Dr. Anthony Fauci telling associates that he’s not to say anything without clearance. That’s how this is going to play out: public officials who actually understand the science are going to have to get clearance on what they can say from Pence, who will be getting his own clearance from Trump:
And what about Alex Azar, the health and human services secretary? Well, he was apparently too “alarmist” so he’ll presumably also have to get his clearances from Pence:
Part of what’s so absurd about this situation is that the Trump administration appears to be confusing alarmism over the lethality of the coronavirus with alarmism over the infectiousness of the virus. And those two forms of alarmism are rather at odds with each other since uncounted mild cases lead to an overestimation of case fatality rates. But right now, with Trump’s stance that the virus isn’t going to break out at all in the US, the Trump administration is setting itself up for a situation where it systematically undercounts the number of infections which, in turn, is going to cause an inflated calculated case fatality rate.
So Trump appears to be setting Mike Pence up to be his coronavirus fall guy when the virus inevitably ends up spreading across the US. It raises the question of whether or not the political fallout for a massive bungling of this response is going to be contained to Pence or if it will spread to Trump and the rest of the Republican Party. It doesn’t help that Pence already has a history of fueling an HIV outbreak when he was governor of Indiana. But if Pence does end up becoming a political liability, there’s always Nikki Haley who might step in and take his place. Given that a Trump/Haley ticket in 2020 is probably going to be a lot more politically appealing than a Trump/Pence ticket you have to wonder how much Trump cares that he’s setting Pence up for political disaster:
Finally, it’s important to note that the first case of the coronavirus in the US that doesn’t have a known foreign source has now been reported in California. And it turns out there was an delay in the CDC actually testing the woman for the coronavirus:
It’s the kind of case that suggests the coronavirus is already spreading around inside the US. That’s what was playing out at the same time the Trump administration is both spreading “deep state” conspiracy theories at the same time it’s moving to prevent public officials from raising the alarm when necessary. It’ll be interesting to see how Steve Bannon’s hyper-alarmism operation intersects with the Trump administration’s new ‘everything is fine’ operation.
So that’s where we are. The good news is that the virus probably has a case fatality rate well below the official 2 percent rate found elsewhere simply because the most mild cases aren’t even being detected. The bad news is that the virus appears to spread even more easily than the flu. So it might be deadlier than the flu. Might be about the same as the flu. Or, who knows, maybe even less deadly than the flu if it turns out that many more people have been exposed to the virus than we realize. That’s all still yet to be determined. But at this point the Trump administration appears to have decided that very good news is the only allowable news. Which is incredibly bad news.
In related news, it turns out the Trump administration ended the “Predict” program back in October. That program was set up in 2005 following the H5N1 bird flu scare to track and research exotic diseases around the world. The program had discovered nearly 1000 novel viruses, included a new Ebola virus. And while some of the aspects of program will be switched to different government agencies, the core part of the program of better understanding viruses in animals was ended entirely. And if anyone brings up that Trump ended this program like a month before the coronavirus emerged it means they’re part of the deep state and out to get Trump.
Here’s a set of articles that describe the kind of cutting-edge work global disease experts have been using to both study and predict the kinds viral pandemics like the current COVID-19 pandemic and the push to normalize the creation man-made novel viruses as a means of studying and preventing emerging diseases: First, here’s an article that points out that the characteristics of the COVID-19 disease, created by the SARS-CoV‑2 virus, happen to have a remarkable overlap with a hypothetical disease, dubbed “Disease X” at the time, the World Health Organization (WHO) actually warned back in early 2018 that the world would might have to eventually deal with. One of the most alarming characteristics they gave to “Disease X” that appears to be shared with SARS-CoV‑2 is the ability to rapidly morph from a mild to deadly disease. These sudden turns towards a rapidly deadly disease appears to be due, in part, to an overly aggressive immune response that ends up ravaging the lungs. As one expert points out, this is the same pattern seen in the 1918 “Spanish flu” pandemic. So the WHO warned a couple years ago about a hypothetical “Disease X” disease that was highly contagious with the ability to spread with asymptomatically, is mild in most cases but with the ability to suddenly turn deadly. And here we are two years later with a disease that fits that profile. It was a pretty prescient prediction:
“The World Health Organization cautioned years ago that a mysterious “disease X” could spark an international contagion. The new coronavirus illness, with its ability to quickly morph from mild to deadly, is emerging as a contender.”
Yep, the SARS-CoV‑2 virus that causes COVID-19 sure fits the “Disease X” description: It spreads asymptomatically and is mild in most cases but deadly in a few. And when it becomes deadly it can be very sudden:
And that sudden deadliness appears to be related to an immune system over-response that ends up destroying the lungs. Eerily, it’s a pattern of inflammation-based deadliness that was observed during the “Spanish flu” pandemic of 1918:
Ok, now here’s a recent op-ed in the New York Times by Peter Daszak, a disease ecologist who was one of the experts who worked on the WHO’s “Disease X” project. As Daszak points out, another feature of the “Disease X” hypothetical disease they proposed was that it would shake financial markets even before it achieved pandemic status. It’s not an outlandish prediction that a disease that has the viral characteristics they gave Disease X — asymptomatic spreading with the potential to suddenly turn deadly — given the inherent fears associated with an unknown disease that demonstrates a wide range of symptoms with yet-to-be established case fatality rates. But, again, it’s pretty prescient. As Daszak puts it, “In a nutshell, Covid-19 is Disease X”. Daszak goes on to criticize how we approach the challenge of dealing with these types of infectious diseases that we know will eventually emerge even if we don’t know when or where they’re emerge, where we wait for the new disease to emerge and then scramble to develop vaccines and treatments after the fact. How does Daszak propose we defend against diseases that haven’t emerged yet? Well, he calls for actions like setting more disease surveillance work in hot spots where diseases are expected to emerge (where humans are encroaching into new habitats). And he also calls taking a “know they enemy” approach and discovering and sequencing as many viruses as possible:
“Disease X, we said back then, would likely result from a virus originating in animals and would emerge somewhere on the planet where economic development drives people and wildlife together. Disease X would probably be confused with other diseases early in the outbreak and would spread quickly and silently; exploiting networks of human travel and trade, it would reach multiple countries and thwart containment. Disease X would have a mortality rate higher than a seasonal flu but would spread as easily as the flu. It would shake financial markets even before it achieved pandemic status.”
While the outbreak of COVID-19 ostensibly is a surprise we can’t say it was entirely surprising. The WHO’s “R&D Blueprint” working group predicted almost something exactly like it just two years ago, down to the massive hit to the global financial markets. But Peter Daszak is recommending that the global community go far beyond predicting the characteristics of future pandemic viruses. He’s calling for shifting from a reactionary approach to pandemic to a preventive approach. And at the core of that effort is the mass discovery sequencing of novel virus:
And that recommendation for finding and sequencing novel viruses raises a number of questions in the context the controversial call for “gain-of-functions” experiments to create man-made viruses — like the notorious H5N1 experiment on ferrets — under the premise that we can then study how they work and develop treatments. Because it kind of sounds like that’s what Daszak is hinting at: generating a giant library of viruses, including man-made viruses, as a core part of our plan to have vaccines and other treatments ready for novel viruses when they emerge.
That brings us to a 2015 article in The Scientist about a man-made coronavirus developed by Ralph Baric’s lab at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill that includes a statement by Daszak that appears to be supportive of this approach of using man-made viruses to study potential emerging diseases. Unlike the “gain-of-function” experiments on ferrets, which basically sped up natural evolutionary processes, this 2015 experiment involved directly genetically engineering a coronavirus. The virus was basically a version of the SARS coronavirus that infects mice with a surface protein from the SHC014 coronavirus, found in horseshoe bats in China, and demonstrated that the addition SHC014 surface protein allowed this mouse SARS virus to infect humans. Keep in mind that, while the Pangolin is thought to be the animal that the SARS-CoV‑2 virus jump from to humans, that remains inconclusive and that the viruses is genetically most closely related to a bat coronavirus.
The 2015 experiment was allowed to take place to despite the moratorium on such research that was put in place in October of 2013 because the study had been started before the moratorium was put in place. The project was reviewed by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and determined to not fall under the new restrictions. But as the article notes, there were still a number of scientists who felt the experiments were unnecessarily dangerous. Peter Daszak is cited as holding the opposite view and being supportive of the research. Given Daszak’s current calls for creating a global catalog of as many viruses as possible and his 2015 support for man-made genetically engineered viruses, it seems likely that we’re going to be hearing a lot more overt calls for aggressively pursuing this approach to dealing with future pandemics as this current pandemic plays out:
“The results demonstrate the ability of the SHC014 surface protein to bind and infect human cells, validating concerns that this virus—or other coronaviruses found in bat species—may be capable of making the leap to people without first evolving in an intermediate host, Nature reported. They also reignite a debate about whether that information justifies the risk of such work, known as gain-of-function research. “If the [new] virus escaped, nobody could predict the trajectory,” Simon Wain-Hobson, a virologist at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, told Nature.”
Taking the surface protein from a bat coronavirus and inserting it into a SARS-like virus in mice made it capable of infecting human cells. That’s what Baric’s experiment found, demonstrating how the coronaviruses can jump to humans. It’s undoubtedly a useful finding, but it involved literally creating a novel virus capable of infecting humans that didn’t exist before which is an effective way to reignite the debate over whether or not such gain-of-function research should be taking place at all. And we find Peter Daszak coming to the defense of this research:
So when we hear calls from Daszak and other to create giant databases of viral sequences and pair that with these 2015 defenses of Baric’s gain-of-function research that suggests that the envisioned viral databases will probably include quite a few man-made viruses. And in fact that’s exactly what we are hearing from Baric and other in the following MIT Technology Review article from a couple weeks ago about the rush to sequence the new SARS-CoV‑2 virus and how the approach of creating “live” viruses from the DNA sequences alone and manipulating those viruses to learn how they work. As Baric puts it, “This is the future in terms of how the medical research community responds to a new threat.”:
“Led by Ralph Baric, an expert in coronaviruses—which get their name from the crown-shaped spike they use to enter human cells—the North Carolina team expects to recreate the virus starting only from computer readouts of its genetic sequence posted online by Chinese labs last month.”
Ralph Baric’s team is going to recreate the SARS-CoV‑2 virus from scratch using just the DNA sequence. And this virus will be live if they do it right and able to infect cell. That’s the future of medical research in the face of new viral threats: get the sequence and sending that sequence to researchers around the world so they can begin their research and not have to wait months or years to get a look at the germ like they’ve had to wait in the past:
And Baric’s lab is far from alone. The companies that generate made-to-order DNA sequences are saying they’ve been deluged with orders fro the SARS-CoV‑2 virus. Although in most cases only a couple genes from the virus are required to do the kind of research needed to develop a vaccine. Baric’s lab in the only lab in the US known to be trying to recreate the entire virus:
But while these biotech advances and the ability to order made-to-order DNA sequences is clearly going to be extremely useful for researchers, especially when time is of the essence, we can’t ignore the reality that the existence of catalogs of viral sequences and a marketplace for recreating those viruses also makes it easier then ever for bad actors to get their hands on these viruses too. As the article notes, researchers at the CD actually recreated a live version of the Spanish Flu in 2005 using these same techniques. So how is the industry dealing with these risks? Well, it sounds like the companies have gotten together and agreed to limit access to dangerous genes. The big US companies have a database of about 60 lethal germs and toxins called “select agents” and only authorized labs can order them. But as the article notes, companies that manufacture DNA still have discretion over what they sell and to whom. And while that might mean companies can refuse to fulfill DNA orders if they choose to, it raises the question of whether or not rogue companies could just go ahead and sell whatever to whomever if they choose too. Overall, it sounds like we’re all basically hoping all of the actors in this industry act responsibly:
And yet we are assured that only a very few sophisticated centers actually have the ability re-boot a live virus from scratch like Baric’s lab has done. As we are assured, “Fortunately, we are still far from the point when lots of people can synthesize anything”:
And while that may be true at the moment, it’s kind of hard to imagine that’s going to remain true in coming decades. And if we do go ahead and generate create giant virus sequence databases as Peter Daszak proposed in his NY Times piece, isn’t that entire catalog going to be available to damn near anyone once the technology advances to the point where almost anyone can cheaply generate their own DNA sequences? What’s going to stop the nut working from a garage in 2050?
So we appear to be moving into a paradigm for addressing emerging viruses by predicting those viruses and preemptively developing treatments for them. It will be a pretty great paradigm if it works. Having a massive preemptive arsenal of treatments would be very helpful during situations like this. But it’s hard to ignore that the creation of this massive preemptive arsenal of treatments implicitly involves the creation of a massive arsenal of viruses in the first place. And it’s presumably easier to find a nasty virus than find a treatment for it. In other words, a cost of creating the preemptive arsenal of treatments might be the creation of a much larger of untreatable viruses first that would make for the perfect arsenal for bioterrorists.
But while the question of whether or not we should be creating giant viral sequence databases and generating potent man-made viruses is an important question that hast to be answered, there’s no denying that the technology for developing weaponized viruses is only going to be getting better and cheaper and available to more and more bad actors as science technology inevitably advances. That’s just built into the fabric of the structure of life on earth. Viruses are basically the simplest form of life, if we choose to define them as a life form. They’re inherently relatively simple to create and can have devastating consequences. No policy decisions can change that, although policies that minimize human encroachment into new habitats would certainly help avoid new natural viruses from emerging. But no policy decisions can change the inherent ability to cheaply create weaponized viruses. That’s just built into how life works.
It’s all a reminder that, while evolving and man-made super-viruses is going to be a growing concern as we go forward, the lack of the evolution of human thought and morality is still the greatest threat we face. The fact that there are so many extremist movements around the world that would jump at the chance to use a weaponized virus is the ultimate indictment of humanity today and the primary challenge we face going forward. The reality is that as human knowledge and capabilities advance it’s going to be easier and easier for a shrinking number of evil people to carry out horrific acts, like releasing a weaponized virus. That’s just how technological advancement goes. It’s not hard to imagine a future where a single warped individual will have at their disposal the technology to create and disseminate engineered viruses, or advanced future nuclear weapons or who knows what else. Humans are going to develop more and more real power in the form of scientific and technological advancement and that’s going to extremists of all stripes. How do we raise generations of humans that aren’t malicious clueless, selfish and insane? That’s the grand challenge we face and the risk of synthetic weaponized viruses is just one part of that challenge. It’s part of what makes the proposal to create a giant virus catalog difficult to assess. There’s clear dangers to creating such a catalog as we enter into an era where rogue nations or organizations (and eventually nuts on their garages) will be able to pluck those viral sequences from catalogs and spread it around as they choose. Do-it-yourself doomsday recipes. It’s going to become a thing someday. But that era is going to arrive whether or not we create the proposed giant catalog of viruses and conduct the kind of man-made viral research some are advocating. Is it better to accept that eventuality of a future where viral doomsday technology is readily available to the masses and just aggressively work on preemptively developing as many treatments and vaccines as possible or is it better to plan in making access to this kind of information and technology as difficult as possible for non-authorized individuals to get their hands on now and in the future? It’s a horrible set of choices in large part because human societies are so adept of generating the kind of horrible people who would love to abuse this technology so figuring out how to minimize the number of horrible people in the future has to be part of the solution. Because otherwise those horrible people are going to figure out how to minimize the number of everyone else and it will probably involve the use of a weaponized virus. Or two viruses. Or 1000 different viruses. They’ll presumably have a big catalog to select from.
@Pterrafractyl–
Note that, as discussed in FTR #1117, the genetic material from the 1918 flu virus was recovered by a team of Army scientists in 1997.
https://kfjc.org/player/#61388
“Genetic Material from 1918 Flu is Found” by Gina Kolata; The New York Times; 3/21/1997.
A group of Defense Department researchers has found genetic material from the notorious Spanish flu virus that killed at least 20 million people worldwide in the influenza pandemic of 1918.
Fragments of the virus were found lurking in a formaldehyde-soaked scrap of lung tissue from a 21-year-old soldier who died of the flu nearly 80 years ago. And now, medical experts say, investigators at last hope to answer a question that has troubled them for decades: what made this virus so deadly?
One part of the answer is that the Spanish flu virus passed from birds to pigs and then to humans, a mode of transmission that is thought to produce the most dangerous strains of influenza viruses. Indeed, fear of a swine flu epidemic in 1976 caused President Gerald R. Ford to mobilize the nation to immunize against a flu strain that infected soldiers at Fort Dix, N.J. That particular virus, however, turned out not to be a threat.
The search for the 1918 virus is of more than historical interest, said Dr. Jeffrey K. Taubenberger at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology in Washington, the leader of the team whose report is being published today in the journal Science. Dr. Taubenberger and other researchers hope that understanding the genetic code of the Spanish flu virus might help scientists prepare for the next influenza pandemic, which many scientists think is coming soon.
The Spanish flu epidemic seems to have begun in the United States in late spring and early summer of 1918, when doctors reported scattered outbreaks in military installations where recruits were reporting for training before going to France.
By September, when schools opened, the epidemic was roaring through the entire population and spreading rapidly to every corner of the world, attacking the young and healthy and killing them, often within days.
The flu virus itself is gone, vanished with the epidemic. But scientists have repeatedly tried to find traces of it, studying autopsy specimens and even exhuming bodies buried in Alaska where, they hoped, the virus would have remained preserved.
Even now, an expedition is being proposed to Spitsbergen, a Norwegian archipelago in the Arctic Ocean about 400 miles north of Norway, to exhume the bodies of miners who died of the flu.
An epidemic like that of 1918 ”can come again, and it will,” said Dr. Robert Webster, chairman of viral and molecular biology at St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis.
Dr. Joshua Lederberg, a geneticist and Nobel laureate who is president emeritus of Rockefeller University in New York, called influenza ”the most urgent, patently visible, acute threat in the world of emerging infections.” And, Dr. Lederberg added, ”the sooner we can learn what to anticipate, the more likely we will be able to blunt the next appearance” of a deadly flu virus.
Dr. Taubenberger studied specimens from Spanish flu victims that are among the millions of autopsy specimens that the pathology institute has been storing in warehouses since the Civil War. But he said he doubted that the study would succeed in light of the dismal history of failed efforts to find the virus.
For example, in the 1950’s, a group of scientists that included Dr. Maurice R. Hilleman, director of the Merck Institute in West Point, Pa., who was then directing viral research at the Walter Reed Army Institute in Washington, traveled to Nome, Alaska, in a secret mission to examine the exhumed bodies of Eskimos who had died of the 1918 flu.
When Eskimo flu victims died, Dr. Hilleman said, they were buried in the middle of winter, in the frozen ground. The Army thought that these bodies, buried in the permafrost, might have remained frozen and preserved. But, Dr. Hilleman said, ”the bodies were in such an advanced state of deterioration that no live virus was found.”
More recently several scientists, including Dr. Webster, examined autopsy tissue from the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology but were unable to find viruses.
Dr. Taubenberger decided to go ahead anyway. Looking in the computerized records, he requested autopsy slides of the lungs of 198 soldiers who died of the Spanish flu.
In examining the slides, he looked for a particular type of pathology. Since the flu virus stops replicating within a couple of days after a person is infected, Dr. Taubenberger and his team wanted lung tissue from someone who died quickly, within a week after becoming ill, so that there might still be virus particles present.
That was possible, Dr. Taubenberger said, because the 1918 influenza strain was so deadly.
”The lungs of some who died in a few days were completely filled with fluids, as if they had drowned,” he said. ”No one has ever seen that before or since. It was a unique pathology.”
Of the 198 cases that Dr. Taubenberger requested, 7 met his criteria. But only one had other features that led the researchers to believe that the flu virus was actively replicating when the man died.
The man was a private from New York State stationed at Fort Jackson, S.C., when he caught the flu.
”He was a healthy 21-year-old male with no medical history until he got this,” Dr. Taubenberger said.
The soldier died within five days of infection, on Sept. 26, 1918, and in October his lung tissue was shipped to Washington, where it was stored, undisturbed, for nearly 80 years.
With the soldier’s lung tissue in hand, the researchers began the tedious process of trying to extract the viral genetic material. The virus carries its genes in eight pieces of RNA that are packaged together in a protein coat. But over the years of storage, the 15,000 nucleotides that make up the viral RNA had broken apart into shards about 200 nucleotides long.
The researchers spent nearly two years amplifying the tiny segments of viral RNA so that they would have enough to analyze and assemble like a jigsaw puzzle. In their paper in Science, they report on the sequences of nine fragments of the virus that include pieces of its major genes.
The group has analyzed only about 7 percent of the virus, Dr. Taubenberger said, although he expects that he will eventually be able to complete the job. Others, like Dr. Webster, agree, but say it is still uncertain whether even that will reveal the secret of the virus’s lethality.
But with his preliminary analysis, Dr. Taubenberger and his colleagues have already ruled out two hypotheses on why the virus was so deadly.
One was based on an analysis of a chicken influenza virus that swept through flocks of chickens in the early 1980’s, killing them overnight.
The chicken virus was peculiar. One of its proteins had three basic amino acids at a spot where the host’s enzymes had to break that protein in order for the virus to infect a cell. Ordinarily, there was only one such amino acid at that spot. So, investigators thought, maybe the three basic amino acids were a clue to lethality, and maybe they were a feature of the Spanish flu virus.
But, Dr. Taubenberger found, that was not the case. There was nothing unusual about the amino acids at that position in the Spanish flu virus.
Another hypothesis was that the flu had gone directly from birds to humans. Ordinarily, human flu viruses spread only in humans, but genetically distinct flu viruses also fester, independently, in birds, which do not become ill when they are infected. Occasionally, viruses from birds infect animals like pigs, and then jump to people. Even worse, some researchers proposed, might be a virus that jumped directly from birds to humans.
Antibodies of survivors of the 1918 epidemic indicated that the virus had lived in pigs before infecting humans. But the antibody evidence was indirect, and some thought it might be incorrect. The genetic analysis, however, indicated that the virus had, indeed, come to humans from pigs.
”I can’t hold up one gene fragment and say, ‘This is the reason,’ ” Dr. Taubenberger said. ”This is the beginning of the story.”
But it raises additional questions, the most immediate of which is whether the planned expedition to Norway should go forward.
The trip was proposed by Dr. Kirsty Duncan, who studies medicine and geography at the University of Windsor in Ontario. Dr. Duncan learned that seven miners who were digging coal in Spitsbergen died of the flu in 1918 and were buried there. She and her colleagues have been working with Dr. Nancy Cox, the chief of the influenza branch at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, to plan the trip to Norway.
Dr. Duncan said the team would meet in Atlanta. ”We’ll be debating how to proceed,” she said.
Dr. Cox said the study of viral RNA from autopsy specimens might reveal all of the virus’s secrets.
The question, of course, is whether it is worthwhile to risk unleashing live viruses that might still be in the frozen tissue of the miners.
One wonders if some of that 1918 flu virus genome made it into the Covid-19, which exhibits some traits of the 1918 flu virus, according to the first article you cited.
Best,
Dave
@Dave: The exact sequence of chunks from the Spanish Flu virus probably wouldn’t be necessary to have a virus with a similar pattern of inducing sudden extreme immune responses that end up killing the patients. There are a lot of ways viruses and immune systems can interact to do that. But the general question of whether or not something like that might happen points to one of the big general questions regarding the applicability of synthetic biology techniques for biowarfare purposes. Ans that’s the question of the extent to which it will be possible to make a synthetic virus look natural. Thus far, we’ve heard about a range of different types of experiments. There’s been successful attempts to revive old viruses like polio or the 1918 “Spanish Flu”. If something identical to the Spanish Flu was released it was certainly look natural for a DNA sequence standpoint but pretty unnatural from a timing standpoint. But could the virus be tweaked in manner that doesn’t significantly change its virulence but somehow make it look ‘new’ and ’emergent’?
We’ve also heard about successful experiments involving the creation of straightforward chimera viruses where the genes are one viruses are added to another virus like what Ralph Baric’s lab published in 2015 when they attached a coronavirus surface protein gene from horseshoe bats to a SARS-like virus that infects mice resulting in a virus could demonstrably infect human cells. Now if something like that was release it would probably stick out as an engineered virus simply because the genes in the virus would match the known sequence from a particular virus of different viruses. But that still raises the question of whether or not such a man-made virus could be modified in such a way to confuse researchers and given it the appears to being natural. And it might appear natural if you created a chimera from two different mouse-targeting viruses or two horseshoe bat viruses. At the end of the day the call on whether or not a virus is man-made or natural is going to come to a judgement call by experts so if it’s possible to give a man-made chimeric viral sequence the look of being natural that should be a technically feasible procedure. As we saw, any give sequence of viral DNA is made-to-order with today’s technology so it’s just a matter of developing a viable ‘natural’ looking sequence.
And then there’s the experiments we heard about from 2011–2012 with ferrets where the evolution of an H5N1 virus was accelerated and the viruses evolved the ability to infect the upper respiratory tract of the ferrets and spread through the air. That seems like the kind of modification that might also appear to be natural simply because it was natural in a sense. They just sped up the virus’s evolution. They didn’t directly change the sequence themselves. So that sounds like a technique that could more readily be used to create viruses that get released as ‘natural’.
All that said, we certainly can’t rule out the possibility this really was a naturally emerging virus simply because all of the conditions for new naturally emerging viruses are in place. Human encroachment into new habitats is precisely that recipe and that means it really is just a matter of time before the new newly emerging viruses pops up somewhere in a country like China with a massive population routinely getting exposed to novel exotic viruses. Granted, it’s a hell of a coincidence that this virus emerged in China right in the middle what appears to be a Wester-driven psychological and economic destabilization campaign of China and Hong Kong, but coincidences are going to happen even when it comes to emerging viruses. It’s always a bad coincidence when a novel nasty virus emerges.
But as the following New York Times Opinion piece describes, another interesting aspect of the fact that this virus first in Wuhan and appearing to look like it jumped to humans from bats in the region is that researchers found previous evidence of exactly that happening. The article describes the previous research of Zheng-Li Shi of the Wuhan Institute of Virology who was the senior author on studies going back to 2005 of the coronaviruses found in the bats of Yunnan cave, which is about 1000 miles southwest of Wuhan. It was Shi who found in 2005 that the SARS virus came from bats. And in 2017, Shi published a study on the corona viruses found in the horseshoe bats of Yunnan cave and it turns out the DNA sequence of the current COVID-19 coronavirus is 96 percent similar to that 2017 horseshoe bat virus. During that same study they tested the people living near the Yunnan Cave and found that 3 percent of them had antibodies against SARS-related coroaviruses. Peter Daszak — the head of the EcoHealth Alliance who we saw above advocating for the creation of vast databases of viral sequences and the creation of chimeric synthetic viruses to preemptively create treatments for yet-to-emerge viruses — was part of the 2005 and 2017 studies. As Daszak describes, the fact that they found antibodies for SARS-like coronaviruses in the people around these caves suggests that coronaviruses have been jumping from humans to bats repeatedly. In other words, the current outbreak was kind of inevitable.
At the same time, we can’t ignore the fact that the discovery that coronaviruses have been repeatedly jumping from bats to humans would make a coronavirus outbreak in China the perfect candidate if someone wanted to release a coronavirus among humans and make it appear to be a completely natural event. The ‘weaponization’, in this case, could simply be modifications that allow it to infect humans, perhaps something like the ‘gain-of-function’ experiments on ferrets. No other modifications are required if you want to scare the hell out of the globe because an emerging virus with unknown properties is scary enough on its own. As the article notes, the current COVID-19 virus and that horseshoe bat virus they found in 2017 constitute a distinct pair of coronaviruses unlike any other coronaviruses viruses yet. It’s not clear from the article what exactly makes them distinct from the rest of the known coronaviruses but it’s worth recalling that the current coronavirus is the only one known to infect the human upper respiratory tract so it’s already an outlier in that crucial respect.
Another form of “weoponizing” a virus is simply discovering a novel virus that recently adapted the ability to jump to humans and keeping it under wraps until you wait to release it in a population center. In that sense the weaponization wouldn’t involve modifying the virus at all but instead weaponizing the release it at a time and place of your choosing.
It’s all part of what makes assessing these events so tricky in the era of synthetic biology: sure, the viruses could be man-made because we simply can’t rule it out anymore. That ability now exists and lots of governments and private organizations have that capability. But the virus could also be entirely natural. Human civilization is doing everything it can to increase the odds of these animal-to-human jumps of happening and China was already a hot-spot for bat-to-human coronavirus jumps. And we can’t rule out the release of a weaponized virus selected from the viruses known to be most likely to naturally jump to humans to make it look as natural as possible or the intentionally release of an entirely natural novel virus. It’s all technically feasible with today’s technology.
Ok, here’s that NY Times Opinion piece that describes Dr. Shi’s research on bat coronaviruses. As it describes their 2017 findings, a coronavirus unlike any other known coronavirus was discovered in that Yunnan Cave horseshoe bat population and it turns out that new coronavirus has a 96 percent sequence similarity with it. It would be interesting to know if that 4 percent sequence difference includes mutations that make it easier to infect human cells or spread in the upper respiratory tract. And 3 percent of the people in the surrounding area had antibodies indicating they had already been infected with bat coronaviruses. So it was the perfect recipe for a bat-to-human jump in 2017 and it appears that’s exactly what happened. Whether or not the virus had some ‘help’ along the way to ensure it spread at this opportune moment is the kind of question we can’t conclusively answer but have to ask since we’re now living in the age of synthetic biology:
“In a 2017 paper, they set out how, after nearly five years of collecting fecal samples from bats in the Yunnan cave, they had found coronaviruses in multiple individuals of four different species of bats, including one called the intermediate horseshoe bat, because of the half-oval flap of skin protruding like a saucer around its nostrils. The genome of that virus, Ms. Shi and her colleagues have now announced, is 96 percent identical to the Wuhan virus that has recently been found in humans. And those two constitute a pair distinct from all other known coronaviruses, including the one that causes SARS. In this sense, nCoV-2019 is novel — and possibly even more dangerous to humans than the other coronaviruses.”
The sequences don’t lie: a 96 percent overlap between the current COVID-19 virus (known as both nCoV-2019 and SARS-CoV‑2) and the horseshoe bat coronavirus discovered in 2017. These two coronaviruses are very similar. And they form a distinct pair too compared to all other known coronaviruses. That definitely points towards the current COVID-19 virus coming from this family of bat coronaviruses. And as Peter Daszak points out, since the people around the Yunnan Cave have antibodies for SARs-like coronaviruses that tells us these jumps to humans have been happening repeatedly:
So horseshoe bat viruses were clearly a top candidate for a completely natural animal-to-human coronavirus jump and that appears to be precisely what happens. But we still can’t ignore the reality that the discovery of these bat-to-human jumps around Yunnan Cave automatically made this particular bat coronavirus a prime candidate for weaponization. It’s one of the complications with Daszak’s vision for a giant database of viruses that can infect humans: yes, such a database would be invaluable to researchers looking for cures and vaccines. It would also be invaluable to someone looking for top virus candidates for a weaponized ‘natural’ release.
That brings us to the following 2018 article describing a study released by US National Academy of Sciences at the request of the Department of Defense about the threats of synthetic biology. As the study concluded, the techniques to tweak and weaponize viruses from the existing known catalogs of viral sequences is very feasible and relatively easy to do:
“Michael Imperiale, chair of the report committee, and professor of microbiology and immunology at the University of Michigan, said the review used only unclassified information and so has no assessment of which groups, if any, might be pursuing novel biological weapons. “We can’t say how likely any of these scenarios are,” he said. “But we can talk about how feasible they are.””
Yes, we can’t say how likely these synthetic biology warfare scenarios are but we cant talk about how feasible they are. Unfortunately, if it’s feasible someone will probably do it. That’s how humans work. So while we can’t say how likely any of these scenarios are, we can make an educated guess based on human nature and that would strongly point towards these technologies already being used:
The genetic code of almost any mammalian virus can be found online and synthesized. It’s relatively easy to do. And that’s why we can’t rule out the possibility that someone simply took the viral sequence from the 2017 study, maybe tweaked it a bit, and simply released it in Wuhan. China would certainly be a plausible location for something like that to naturally happen so it would be a great candidate for a timed intentional release too.
But at least the study concluded that viruses designed to literally change the human genome as it spreads is still not an immediate threat:
So things could be worse. But it’s also just a matter of time before they are worse and such technology is feasible. And eventually it won’t just be feasible but relatively easy to do. That’s where we’re heading.
At this point we’re going to have to wait and see what the virology community discovers regarding the current COVID-19 virus and its relationship to the horseshoe bat coronavirus from 2017. The two viruses are clearly more similar to each other than they are to any other coronaviruses. So if COVID-19 virus has indeed been weaponized with sequence modifications to make it spread more easily in humans those sequence differences are going to become apparent when comparing it to that 2017 coronavirus from Yunnan. But whether or not those sequence differences would be detectable as intentional modifications or appear to be natural mutations is very much an open question. But it seems like it must be very feasible to make a man-made virus that looks natural if only a few modifications are required and one of the big lessons from the 2017 Yunnan Cave study was that only a few modifications are probably required for a jump to humans to happen. And the “gain-of-function” experiments taking place in labs today are literally all about discovering which modifications are required for a virus to acquire new capabilities, like infecting the upper respiratory tract. Overall, it would appear that it is technologically very feasible that the COVID-19 virus could have been tweaked in a manner that made it more infectious for humans. It’s at least well within the realm of known technological capabilities widely held by governments across the globe.
In other words, now that we’re in the era of synthetic biology, every time we learn about a region of the globe where a new novel virus is poised to naturally jump to humans we’re simultaneously learning about a great new opportunity for someone to stage an animal-to-human viral jump. So as of now it’s looking very feasible that this virus just naturally made the jump to humans because we already saw evidence of that happening in 2017 but that evidence is also what makes this virus a feasible and very tempting candidate for an intentional release of some sort if, for example, someone wanted to created a global emergent viral scare starting in China.
@Pterrafractyl–
You make some good points. As a “stand-alone” event, the 2017 bat-to-human coronavirus discovery would carry larger weight.
It would, as you noted, be simple to have synthesized a similar virus and, as you also noted, releasing it in Wuhan would provide excellent “cover”–an optimum consideration in a covert operation.
I am inclined toward the “bio-psy-op” hypothesis by the other circumstances and events in the context of which this occurs:
Steve Bannon vs. China “One will survive and one won’t;” the other anti-China moves–trade war; anti-Huawei sanctions; sanctions against tech sales to China; Barr’s charging of Chinese agents in Equifax hack; the sanctions against Chinese media outlets; State Department moves in Africa and the very curious investment practices of Bannon associates J.Kyle Bass and Tommy Hicks, Jr.
One of the most important of the considerations is the weaponized media coverage.
The media are guilty of incitement.
Most people are getting nothing more than a mild upper respiratory infection, although SOME are having an over-reaction by the immune system.
85,000 infected worldwide–almost that many died of the flu in this country two years ago.
We didn’t get that Chicken Little Journalism: “The Sky is Falling–Better wear a hard hat” then.
Also: the strident anti-Chinese haranguing and the UTTER ABSENCE in U.S. media of any mention of the success of a mundane drug cocktail in Thailand.
Why not? It certainly is news!
Excellent work!
Best,
Dave
@Dave: Regarding the lack of reporting on the relative success of the anti-viral cocktails used to treat a patient in Thailand, one possible explanation for the lack of much coverage of that discovery is that the finding will required followup tests on larger numbers of patients to confirm whether or not it works for larger numbers of cases. It’s a frustrating kind of delay but it might be necessary to ensure there isn’t a sudden run on the drugs when its efficacy hasn’t been confirmed (which could be really bad for all the patients with HIV that need that drug). So we kind of have to hope the apparent lack of excitement over those effective treatments is part of a strategy to avoid a mishap that results in a severe drug shortage and not part of an effort to maximize fear of the virus. Interestingly, there was an update on that Thailand case a couple of weeks ago. It sounds like the cocktail did indeed help but didn’t actually cure the woman entirely. Still, they did see a “dramatic improvement” in her rapidly deteriorating condition which seems like the kind of news that would be welcome. But, officially, the official WHO and CDC guidelines still state that there’s no specific recommended treatment to prevent or cure COVID-19. So technically that drug cocktail in Thailand isn’t considered a cure because it didn’t get rid of the virus entirely despite causing a “dramatic improvement” in a severely ill patient:
“The claim is misleading, Thai doctors said that whilst they successfully treated one coronavirus patient with a cocktail of drugs, they did not “cure” her of the viral infection.”
So the drug cocktail didn’t entirely “cure” the patient and therefore the claims that the drug cocktail successfully treated a patient is misleading. That’s what we’re told, which seems like a remarkably high threshold for considering something to be an effective treatment. If you can take a several ill patient and see a “dramatic improvement” in 48 hours, that sounds like an effective treatment even if it doesn’t get rid of the virus entirely unless it turned out the patient subsequently relapsed. But it doesn’s sound like a relapse happened so it’s unclear why this cocktail isn’t being considered a value treatment simply because it didn’t wipe out the virus entirely:
And as of February 14, the WHO was officially declaring there is “no specific medicine” to prevent or treat novel coronavirus, a guideline shared by the CDD which officially states that “there is no specific antiviral treatment recommended” for the COVID-2019 infection. It’s kind of amazing that the antiviral cocktails aren’t at least recommended at this point. WHO did announce that “Some specific treatments are under investigation and will be tested through clinical trials,” so hopefully that Thailand cocktail is being given a top priority for going through clinical trials (they’re definitely undergoing testing now). If not, that would be pretty scandalous:
It’s possible that announcing that this drug cocktail is an effective cure would predictably result in the drugs getting wasted on mild or moderate cases and global supplies would run short. Still, if there’s a run on the drugs and supplies run out, a big driver for that would be the unreasonable levels of fear getting pushed about the virus and the sense that there’s no known treatment is a big driver for those fears. It’s a ‘chicken and egg’ kind of public disclosure situation.
Now here’s another example of what appears to be the WHO engaging in irresponsible fearmongering about the virus. WHO had a press conference yesterday with COVID-19 updates and it unfortunately turned into some sort of fearmongering event. It’s unclear if it was deliberate or just poor communication. During the press briefing, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director general of the World Health Organization, gave an update on what they’re learning about the case fatality rate and he announced that, “Globally, about 3.4% of reported COVID-19 cases have died.” That’s a dramatic increase from the ~2% case fatality rate that’s been steadily reported.
What caused the sudden spike in the calculated fatality rate? That’s unclear but the fact both Iran and the US have official case fatality rates well above 2% might have to do with it. And Wuhan, China is finding a 2–4% case fatality rate despite a 0.7% rate found elsewhere in China. So it might be technically true that 3.4% of the known cases have died globally. But it’s also unambiguously the case that these estimates are based on undercounts of the total number of cases that artificially inflate the case fatality rate. And if there’s one major thing we’ve been learning about this disease in recent weeks it’s that it appears mild to moderate cases are almost certainly spreading around without being counted.
So it’s just grossly irresponsible fearmongering for the director general of WHO to give a press conference announcing a 3.4% case fatality rate without immediately clarifying that this number is almost certainly an overestimate based on the undercounting of mild and moderate cases. The caveat about the case fatality rates almost certainly being an overestimate really should be given every time the ~2% case fatality rate is given too but that almost never happens. So this awful communication from the WHO press conference was really just an extra bad example of the awful communication that’s been prevalent throughout the entire outbreak. Although not all reporting has neglected to provide these caveats. For example, here’s an article about the WHO’s press conference that actually points out that the true case fatality rates are almost certainly much lower than the official estimates due to missed cases, which raises the question of why the WHO isn’t making these same points during their press conferences:
““Globally, about 3.4% of reported COVID-19 cases have died,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director general of the World Health Organization, said at a press briefing in Geneva. That’s more than previous estimates that hovered around 2% and the influenza fatality rate of less than 1%.”
The COVID-19 disease has a 3.4% case fatality rate globally. That’s what WHO’s director general just told the world. He then added that the epidemic is “affecting countries in different ways”, which appears to be an attempt to address the vastly different case fatality rates found in different countries and even different regions of China. And that stark difference in different parts of the world is certainly something they should addressing. Wuhan’s case fatality rates is 2–4 percent and 0.7 percent outside of Wuhan. That’s a pretty massive difference and it’s not outrageous to imagine that a virus might have different impacts on different countries. But it is pretty outrageous for the director general of WHO to give this new 3.4% case fatality rate and point out how those rates are varying across the world without immediately pointing out one of the obvious possible reasons for those vastly different case fatality rates: differences in the quality of the report of the total number of cases. It’s the elephant in the room with all of these COVID-19 discussions. An elephant being ignored by the authorities we’re supposed to be looking to for answers and guidance:
And note the case fatality rates from the official statistics coming from the US: there are 118 confirmed cases and 9 deaths. That’s a 7.6% case fatality rate based on those official numbers. But it’s also a rate that assumes the 118 confirmed cases are ALL of the cases in the US which is utterly absurd, especially in the face of a growing number of stories about instances of “community spread” in the US. It’s just factually wrong to act that these official case fatality rate estimates aren’t being overestimated right now. And yet this is rarely being acknowledged despite our experiences like the H1N1 outbreak in 2009, where the initial case fatality rate was 7% but was eventually downgraded to around 0.1%. We know this overestimate is part of the pattern of how these novel viral outbreaks occur and not acknowledging that known pattern amounts to fearmongering:
Now here’s an article about that same WHO press conference (which doesn’t point out the issue of undercounting cases) that includes a quote from Dr. Mike Ryan, executive director of WHO’s health emergencies program, that has the appearance of being a point of optimism but is really just a call for every countries to react as aggressively as possible to the spread of the virus. As Ryan put it, “Here we have a disease for which we have no vaccine, no treatment, we don’t fully understand transmission, we don’t fully understand case mortality, but what we have been genuinely heartened by is that unlike influenza, where countries have fought back, where they’ve put in place strong measures, we’ve remarkably seen that the virus is suppressed.” In other words, if countries basically shut their societies down that can potentially suppress the spread of the virus and that’s the good news coming out of the WHO:
“Dr. Mike Ryan, executive director of WHO’s health emergencies program, said Monday that the coronavirus isn’t transmitting the same exact way as the flu and health officials have been given a “glimmer, a chink of light” that the virus could be contained.”
There’s a “glimmer, a chink of light” in the situation. And that glimmer is the observation that countries that “put in place strong measures” have suppressed the spread of the virus. It’s unclear what country he could possible be referring to other than China. Although a number of countries have already closed schools so maybe he was also endorsing those moves. But overall, it sounds like the WHO is advocating that nation’s basically shut themselves down in response to this virus. If it turns out that the SARS-CoV‑2 virus really does have a 2–4% case fatality rate these would be reasonable recommendations given that a +2% fatality rate would be genuinely terrifying given the infectiousness of the virus. But so far everything we’re seeing hints at it being more like 2009 H1N1 outbreak with a significant undercounting of the cases and a corresponding inflation of the case fatality rate.
So we have a combination of a downplaying of potential treatments, an exaggeration of the case fatality rates, and an advocacy of nations taking extremely strong measures to control the spread of the virus. It’s an alarming situation but not just because of the virus.
@Pterrafractyl–
Wish I could place more stock in the official qualifications/disclaimers on the drug cocktail.
The parrying of the information may be due to the misuse of the term “cure.”
It IS, quite obviously, a largely successful treatment.
Not necessarily a cure.
But given the global panic, economic disruption and–again–weaponized anti-China media treatment, it stands in marked contrast to things like this:
https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/coronavirus-vaccine-could-add-billions-in-value-to-gilead-161233464.html
Gilead has been one of Mercer’s major holdings.
It is more than a little interesting to me that no one is connecting this outbreak to the anti-China Full Court Press.
I don’t think WHO can really be trusted past a point.
You are young. I am old.
I watched them gloss over AIDS and the evidence on AIDS being created is overwhelming.
The mutated monkey virus to which pure-bred Northern Europeans–“Aryans”–have a hereditary immunity and to which Africans have a hereditary susceptibility.
And the epicenter of AIDS–foretold in a House Appropriations Subcommittee Hearing for Fiscal Year 1969–1970?
https://spitfirelist.com/for-the-record/ftr-686-update-on-the-update-on-the-national-cancer-institutes-viral-cancer-program-biological-warfare-and-aids/
282 retweets is nothing in the present social media environment, BTW.
Interesting that something so small drew what is termed “factchecking” rebuke.
I continue to find the lack of coverage suspect.
No fewer than three articles in the New York Times about Gilead.
Best,
Dave
@Pterrafractyl–
Actually, upon further reflection, I find discussion of the Thai “treatment”–not “cure” but “treatment” and damned effective, apparently, at that–more than suspicious given the INSANE coverage of this outbreak
Global economy tanking–not just businesses with supply chain in China–but restaurants, tourism (again, not just China) and many things having nothing to do with China.
Governments transfixed, the public panicked, equities markets tanking, central banks flailing about vainly.
This is deliberate fear-mongering on an almost unimaginable scale.
The virus just isn’t that damned serious.
The flu outbreak in U.S. two seasons ago was much, much worse.
Yet, none of this Chicken Little journalism.
And a story re-tweeted “hundreds” of times draws scrutiny?!
Hell, if Alexandria Ocasio “Chandra Bose” re-tweeted it it would have had millions of re-tweets!
How come NO coverage of the Thai doctors’ discovery in U.S. media at all, at least as of a couple of weeks ago.
If a janitor in St. Louis farted and his fart was found to have some genetic material from Covid-19, it would be front page news and St. Louis would be in lockdown.
Since the virus can be TREATED–not “cured” but TREATED, why not at least cover it, given the orgiastic, propagandized and sensationalist coverage of the phenomenon?
Cough, Cough (oh my God, I’m dying!),
Dave
Coronavirus Epidemic Update 11: Antiviral Drugs, Treatment Trials for nCoV (Remdesivir, Chloroquine) – Feb 5, 2020
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfGpdFNHoqQ
This video by MedCram, who produces medical lectures for medical professionals, explains Remdesivir (mfg. by Gilead) was given to a covid-19 patient in Washington under “compassionate use” to see if it works. Within 1 day, the patient felt better and by the 4th day, the fever had gone away. But that’s just a single case. Now, they’re doing trials in China to see if it works on a larger number of people and they should know by the end of April. The other drug they looked at is Chloroquine (generic). He also briefly mentioned the drugs they used in Thailand at the end.
@Dave: Here’s a series of articles about the steps currently underway to develop drugs to treat COVID-19 in relation to the “Thai cocktail” mix of oseltamivir (Tamiflu) with a pair of HIV antiretrovirals (lopinavir + ritonavir) vs the remdesivir alternative developed by Gilead. Overall, it appears that the WHO and many of the experts are strongly pushing for remdesivir over the “Thai cocktail” mix. It’s not entirely clear why they are so dismissive of the “Thai cocktail” but it sounds like remdesivir is more specifically targeting coronaviruses and that’s why it’s being preferred.
Overall, it looks like remdesivir was the drug the experts initially eyed as a possible treatment because it had been tested against a broad spectrum of coronaviruses before and there were already clinical trials underway before the first reports of the success of the “Thai cocktail” in early February. About a day after that initial “Thai Cocktail” success reports we heard that Gilead was starting clinical trials in China in concert with the Chinese authorities.
So part of the mystery of the lack of reporting on possible successful treatments of the coronavirus and the WHO’s official statements (as of Feb 14th) that there were “no specific medicine” to prevent or treat the coronavirus includes the mystery of why there’s been almost no coverage or acknowledgement of the success of remdesivir too. It does seem to be pretty effective. But as we’re going to see in the third article below, it turns out there was another story out of Thailand about a woman making a remarkable improvement on the “Thai cocktail” mix that not only rapidly clear up her symptoms but had her clear of the virus entirely within 10 days. This was on February 20th and there’s been almost no coverage of this case.
It sounds like the clinical trials of remdesivir are expected to be completed by early April and trials of other drug cocktails — including lopinavir + ritonavir (a combination branded as “Kaletra”) — are expected to start being completed by the end of May. So remdesivir is on track to being the only officially accepted cure for COVID-19 for a couple of months before other treatments are validated. And it appears that the official story is going to be that there are no known treatments for COVID-10 until those clinical trials finish and conclude that a drugs regime is both safe and effective. It’s going to be very interesting to see how the coverage of this disease shifts after the first drugs have completed clinical trials, especially remdesivir since that seems to be the drug the WHO is actively pushing.
Ok, first here’s a Febuary 1st article that describes how a patient in Washington State saw their condition dramatically improve after treatment with remdesivir.
:
“After treatment with the antiviral, Remdesivir, “the patient’s clinical condition improved.” The patient is still in the hospital, but all of his symptoms except a cough have resolved.”
So that as the news on February 1st. Remdesivir is effective in at least that one patient.
Now here’s a quick Feb 2 report on the success of the “Thai cocktail” mix of lopinavir + ritonavir (Kaletra) with oseltamivir (Tamiflu). As the article notes, the woman actually tested negative for the virus 48 hours after the treatment. Recall how that Feb 17th AFP “Fact Check” article claimed that the Thai doctors said the treatment didn’t actually “cure” the woman because it didn’t actually cure her of the viral infection. According to these initial reports it did indeed cure her of it:
“The 71-year-old patient tested negative for the virus 48 hours after Thai doctors administered the combination, doctor Kriengsak Attipornwanich during the ministry’s daily press briefing.”
A negative test 48 hours later sounds like a pretty effective “cure”. Perhaps she later relapsed but there don’t appear to be reports on that.
Now here’s a February 20 article in the Bangkok Post about a 74 year old woman with a severe case of COVID-19 related pneumonia. She was initially first just treated with lopinavir and ritonavir (Kaletra) but not oseltamivir. After five days she failed to recover to they added the oseltamivir and she recovered in 48 hours and tested negative for the virus. So it looks like lopinavir and ritonavir alone might help, but it’s when you add oseltamivir to the mix that doctors are finding these remarkable results. The case is one of four experimental cases involving this “Thai cocktail” that Thai health authorities were working on at the time:
“According to Mr Sathit, the woman was first treated with two anti-HIV medications — lopinavir and ritonavir — for five days, but failed to recover. Doctors at Rajvithi Hospital then added the flu drug oseltamivir to her prescription, leading to a marked improvement. Her severe pneumonia abated in 8–12 hours, and after 48 hours she tested negative for Covid-19.”
Once again, we find a severe case of pneumonia abating and a negative text for COVID-19 after just 48 hours on the “Thai cocktail”, much like that Feb 2 case. She was left on the cocktail for another 10 days and no trace of the virus was found over the next 20 days. That sure sounds like a cure:
And there’s four other people also on the cocktail. This is as of February 20th so it would be interesting to know what the follow results are, whether positive or negative. Also note how the results of the successfully treated patient are going to be used for a research report for international publication. That’s going to be something to watch in terms of the relative lack of interesting in the “Thai cocktail”:
Ok, now here’s a Feb 25 article that mentions how NIH scientists began testing remdesivir on a patient infected with SARS-CoV‑2 (the virus that causes COVID-19). The article describes it as the first trial testing a drug for treating COVID-19, although note that it’s really just the first trial in the US. There had already been clinical trials in China. The article also mentions a vaccine being developed by Moderna. It’s a reminder that it’s very possible an annual coronavirus vaccine could become part of the annual vaccine regiment many people take along side the traditional flu vaccine:
“NIH scientists also began testing an antiviral drug called remdesivir that had been developed for Ebola, on a patient infected with SARS-CoV‑2. The trial is the first to test a drug for treating COVID-19, and will be led by a team at the University of Nebraska Medical Center. The first patient to volunteer for the ground-breaking study is a passenger who was brought back to the US after testing positive for the disease aboard the Diamond Princess. Others diagnosed with COVID-19 who have been hospitalized will also be part of the study.”
So the first trial in the US was getting underway a couple of weeks ago involving remdesivir. Note that Gilead announced its planned clinical trials of remdesivir in China — in partnership with the Chinese government — on February 3, which would have been like a day after the announcement of the recovered patient in Thailand using the “Thai Cocktail”. So clinical trials of remdesivir were probably already underway in China.
Ok, now here’s a February 28 article about the hunt for a treatment. It describes the interest in both remdesivir and the lopinavir/ritonavir (Kaletra) combination (but doesnt mention the lopinavir/ritonavir + oseltamivir combination). The article notes that, like remdesivir, Kaletra has also been tested with the earlier SARS and MERS coronavirus outbreaks. The results were unclear. Studies with SARS patients did show an improvement under Kaletra but the study design was such that they couldn’t conclude that the improvement was due to the drug.
Interestingly, the director of the Center for HIV Cure Research at Gladstone Institutes warned about the possible development of drug-resistant strains. “Introducing one drug at a time is a recipe for resistance, like we saw in HIV,” he said. “We don’t have the luxury of four different antivirals against coronavirus, and hopefully we don’t have to deal with [resistance] down the road.” So a cocktail of antivirals would be ideal from a drug resistance standpoint. It’s unclear why the lopinavir/ritonavir + oseltamivir doesn’t help avoid that resistance problem.
The direct also remarks that if the lopinavir/ritonavir combination does end up being effective that would be “very lucky” as “these drugs are like lock-and-key” in terms of treating viruses. As he put it, “It would be unexpected the key to one house would open the door to another house, but it might”. So there appears to be an expectation in the field that the lopinavir/ritonavir combination probably won’t work well (despite the evidence coming out of Thailand):
“Remdesivir, an investigational therapy developed by Gilead Sciences specifically to treat Ebola, has been the highest-profile candidate so far. Two clinical trials of the therapy are currently ongoing in China, and on Tuesday, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases announced an identical trial in the U.S. involving the drug.”
Remdesivir has indeed been the highest-profile candidate so far. And it did have the positive case in Washington State so there’s at least some basis for optimism based on that case. Although as the article notes, when remdesivir was tested against Ebola it didn’t really work that well (note, Ebola isn’t a coronavirus). But one patient has been enrolled in the study so far as of a week ago so that study is at least started:
Now note the interesting caveats from Warner Greene, MD, PhD, of University of California San Francisco (UCSF) and director of the Center for HIV Cure Research at Gladstone Institutes about the utility of using cocktails of drugs to avoid the development of drug resistance. Greene also notes the lopinavir/ritonavir (Kaletra) and describes it as “unexpected” and “very lucky” if the those drugs actually worked against the coronavirus since the drugs were designed to target HIV proteases:
And yet another UCSF researcher comments that this isn’t the first time lopinavir/ritonavir has been tried in coronavirus outbreaks and that it showed potentially positive results with people infected with SARS. So it’s unclear why there’s so much skepticism about its efficacy against this coronavirus:
And for some there’s no mention at all about the remarkable successes of the lopinavir/ritonavir + oseltamivir combination.
Finally, here’s a February 27th Nature Biotechnology news article that’s summarizing the various attempts to develop drugs and vaccines for COVID-19. The article mentions how, from the start of the outbreak, medical practicioners have followed China’s guidelines set up in January. Those guidelines included treating hospitalized patients with a‑interferon (alpha-interfon) combined with Kaletra. So a cocktail of Kaletra (lopinavir/ritonavir) + a‑interferon has been recommended by Chinese authorities from the very beginning and used on hospitalized patients. It makes the seeming lack of interest in the lopinavir/ritonavir + oseltamivir “Thai cocktail” all the more bewildering. Are patients outside of Thailand being given that cocktail at all? Or is everyone else waiting for clinical trials to be completed?
The article notes that clinical trials of the “Thai cocktail” are planned, along with a number of different drugs that are being tried in combination with Kaletra. So the “Thai cocktail” is undergoing clinical trials, but it’s not clear that the Thai cocktail clinical trials are being given a priority.
At the same time, the article includes more comments from experts downplaying the potential utility of lopinavir/ritonavir and promoting remdesivir. For example, Erik De Clercq, of the Rega Institute for Medical Research in Leuven, Belgium, tells us that, “We should stay away from antivirals known to be acting at targets not playing a role in the replication of coronaviruses.” That would include lopinavir/ritonavir, which are targeted at the HIV protease. De Clercq instead favor targeting a virus-specific protein such as the RNA-dependent RNA polymerase. That’s the protein that remdesivir targets. It’s a confusing point made by De Clercq because the article also notes that lopinavir/ritonavir work by inhibiting viral replication.
Bryan Mounce, assistant professor, Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Loyola University Chicago, adds that, “Broad-spectrum agents are ideally suited for outbreak situations where we don’t entirely know what we are dealing with in terms of pathogens...Although we might not understand all the mechanisms underlying their antiviral activity, it is important that they have as few side effects as possible.” Remdesivir is one of those broad-spectrum agents. And his note about as few side effects as possible is a valid point. It raises the question of what the actual side effects are of remdesivir vs the “Thai cocktail”. It’s very possible the “Thai cocktail” has more side effects, but there’s been no reporting on that yet.
George Painter, president of the Emory Institute for Drug Development, Emory University, also cautioned against relaying on lopinavir/ritonavir, saying, “It’s probably a long shot to go for drug repurposing activity against the coronavirus using HIV drugs; these were protease inhibitors that were designed specifically for HIV.” Painter appeared to be echoing the skepticism we saw in the above article about using drugs design for HIV to combat a coronavirus. And yet we have the “Thai cocktail” cases and lopinavir/ritonavir have been part of the Chinese government’s guidelines from the beginning. It’s a bit bewildering.
Vincent Munster, chief, Viral Ecology Unit, US National Institute of Health, makes an important point about remdesivir and the types of patients it can be most effective for: because remdesivir works by inhibiting the virus’s replication it might not actually be that useful for the already very sick patients who already have complications including pneumonia. Recall that the second patient successfully treated by the “Thai cocktail” reportedly had pneumonia and saw a rapid recovery. So it’s possible remdesivir is most effective for preventing the disease from becoming severe and the “Thai cocktail” or some other treatment is more effective fore the already severely ill, although keep in mind that not only does the Kaletra component of the “Thai cocktail” work by inhibiting viral replication but so does the oseltamivir component so that’s a bit confusing. But the fact that we have the cases out of Thailand showing a marked improvement in severely ill patients suggests that the “Thai cocktail” and remdesivir might be useful at different points during the outbreak, with the “Thai cocktail” being most useful right now when patients don’t yet have access to remdesivir to prevent the illness from getting worse.
So, overall, we are getting an array of mixed messages about what might work and why. But the one consistent message is that remdesivir is the favored treatment among the experts. And since the clinical trials for remdesivir are expected to be completed in early April, and the rest of the trials aren’t expected to be completed until the end of May or later, it appears that we’re on track for maintaining a “no available cure” official message for another month and then — if the remdesivir clinical trials are a success — we’ll transition to a “remdesivir is the only known cure” phase of the outbreak some time in April:
“From the start of the COVID-19 outbreak, medical practitioners have followed China’s guidelines set up in January and treated hospitalized patients with a‑interferon combined with the repurposed drug Kaletra, an approved cocktail of the HIV protease inhibitors ritonavir and lopinavir. The World Health Organization has noted that this combination could provide some clinical benefit. Kaletra, manufactured by AbbVie, is also being tested in other combinations, with repurposed drugs known to target parts of the replication machinery of other viruses that are similar to those in SARS-CoV‑2 — for instance, with the guanosine analog and RNA synthesis inhibitor ribavirin, with reverse transcriptase inhibitors (emtricitabine/tenofovir alafenamide fumarate) or with Moscow-based Pharmstandard’s membrane fusion inhibitor umifenovir. Umifenovir is also in trials as a single agent.”
Yep, from the start of the outbreak medical practitioners have followed China’s guidelines set up in January and treated hospitalized patients with a‑interferon combined with Kaletra. So Kaletra has been the recommended drug from the beginning. But remdesivir is clearly the drug of choice among the international community of experts developing a treatment. And it’s not an unexpected candidate drug. As the article notes, experimental data showed remdesivir was better against the related MERS virus than Kaletra + interferon beta at improving lung function. There’s real evidence for its possible efficacy in this case. But Kaletra + interferon beta isn’t the same as the “Thai cocktail” so it remains interesting why there’s still so little apparent interest in the “Thai cocktail”:
And as the article also notes, Kaletra has indeed been shown to improve clinical outcomes in a trial against SARS. So it seems like the same rationale for using remdesivir (it showed effectiveness against a SARS-like virus so it might work for COVID-19) should apply to Kaletra. But we keep getting warnings that Kaletra is something we want to avoid using. Erik De Clercq warns against Kaletra because it was designed for HIV and George Painter speculates that the fact that Kaletra was designed for HIV makes it a long shot. Those would both be reasonable assumption without any data about Kaletra’s potential efficacy and the “Thai cocktail” experiences in Thailand:
And then the article points out that, despite these warnings about Kaletra, several clinical trails of it in combination with other drugs is on the way. This includes oseltamivir. The clinical trials are expected to end from the end of May onwards. So the clinical trial involving the “Thai cocktail” might be over by the end of May but it could take longer. The remdesivir clinical trial is expected to end by early April:
As Bryan Mounce points out, broad-spectrum agents really are ideal for a novel viral outbreak. And that’s a very valid point. Broad-spectrum antivirals would probably be more effective in the face of mutations and be more useful for future novel viral outbreaks. So there really is value in focusing on a broad-spectrum antiviral drug like remdesivir. It just remains puzzling what the focus appears to be almost exclusively on that drug:
Finally, note the point made by Vincent Munster about how antivirals that target replication like remdesivir might have limited use for already very ill patients. The article notes that Kaletra also works by inhibiting viral replication (which is also the case with oseltamivir). And as the “Thai cocktail” cases demonstrated, that combination of Kaletra + oseltamivir was pretty effective for already severely ill patients with pneumonia. So it seems like the “Thai cocktail” might also work at preventing the disease from progressing:
But it’s important to acknowledge that it’s very possible there are going to be cases with severely ill patients suffering damage from their immune response that wouldn’t be helped by the “Thai cocktail” alone and require additional immune-suppressing drugs. This disease can clearly manifest in a number of different ways and one of the ways it gets lethal is by triggering an overwhelming immune response.
That’s the overall status of the search for a “cure” for COVID-19. What’s clear now is that we are officially going to be told there is no cure until there have been clinical trials completed that show a drug is safe and effective. And that won’t happen until early April at the earliest when the remdesivir trial is expected to be completed. It’s also clear that the research community really really strongly prefers remdesivir and doesn’t appear to be very interested in the “Thai cocktail”. Why that is remains unclear, but the “Thai cocktail” clinical trials are underway and should be completed some time later this year. Maybe we’ll learn that it wasn’t really that effective and the incidents out of Thailand were a fluke. We’ll see. But it looks like we have at least one more month of all the governments and health officials and publications running around telling the world that there’s an unstoppable killer virus on the loose.
This next article shows how former MI6 Chief, Richard Dearlove, is spreading incorrect information by mischaracterizing a report to blame the Chinese for spread of COVID-19 that it was a man made accident engineered by a Chinese lab. The paper that Dearlove claimed was “smoking gun evidence” was was co-authored by Professor Angus Dalgleish, a renowned oncologist and vaccine researcher who works at St George’s Hospital, University of London, and Birger Sorensen, He said does not contain the stark allegations made by the anti-Chinese media organization Epoch Times. The facts were twisted.
Spy chief in coronavirus storm: Downing Street hits out at former MI6 boss Richard Dearlove’s ‘fanciful’ claims that Covid-19 was made in a lab
• Ex-MI6 chief accused of peddling ‘fanciful claims’ about Covid-19 pandemic
• Health Secretary said there is ‘no evidence’ to back up laboratory theory
• British security agencies believe its ‘highly likely’ the virus occurred naturally
• Here’s how to help people impacted by Covid-19
By LARISA BROWN DEFENCE AND SECURITY EDITOR FOR THE DAILY MAIL
PUBLISHED: 17:00 EDT, 4 June 2020
https://mol.im/a/8389809